Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Russia-Ukraine reality check | Ian Bremmer's Quick Take" video.

  1. For better or worse, I disagree with your assessment. Russia's economy is on a war footing and has increased by 26.2% this year according to CEPA. This rate of growth is not sustainable, but neither is that growth rate necessary for Russia to support its war or for Russians to support their government. Russia is not isolated from the second, fifth, or eighth largest economies in the world. Being that Russia has pretty much everything it needs within its borders and is also able to trade with China, India and Brazil, means that they can import and export what they need to operate pretty much indefinitely. As for your history, Russia was raped after the fall of the Soviet Union by rapacious opportunists from outside and from within. Russia went into third-world status and remained there during the Yeltsin regime. Putin may be a dictator and he may be an asshole (no argument from me on that), but he brought Russia back to the big kids table and the people of Russia appreciate being able to proudly admit their heritage again. They genuinely love him and there will not be a regime change until Putin dies, and with most of the Russians clamoring for a stronger battlefield showing, at that time it's likely that the real dogs will be released. Russia could probably be defeated if NATO opened up the bag of total war. But that means European, Canadian, and American soldiers being killed in the numbers we haven't seen in almost eighty years, and that's assuming that the conflict didn't escalate into a nuclear exchange, which would be a genuine possibility.
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  2. …so realistic.
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  3.  @kabzaify  Some of that depends on your definition of defeat. If NATO put everything they had into it and stayed the course then I believe they could push Russia out of the territory that Ukraine held prior to 2014. I think a push into 2014 Russia would probably have similar results to 1812 and 1944.
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  4. More and more countries are trying to get into BRICS. Those countries are not going to work against Russia. A lot of these countries see the west as the aggressive party, and they now have other trade and investment pitch options.
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