Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Professor Gerdes Explains 🇺🇦 " channel.

You are right. As it was in the 1980s, so it likely will be again, self-defeat. It is a regime characteristic.
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Small percentages can probably be adjusted to, but yeah, at some point those lower priorities, that were still priorities, don't get fueled.
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Well said.
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@avishnevsky7394 Prior to these facts, the Budapest Memorandum was set aside. What a tremendous concession by Ukraine, to transfer their Soviet nuclear weapons (which the West could have re-manufactured into Ukrainian nuclear weapons) to Russia in the interest of nuclear de-escalation in exchange for a document on which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity! What a concession! Imagine North Korea making such a concession. 3) The Budapest Memorandum was set aside.
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@dacorum8053 My goodness, one would think every migrant would be busting down the doors to get into Russia and earn citizenship through military service.
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@lg2058 Why wouldn't Europe, with a larger population than Russia's, not have a right to bear nuclear weapons?
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@lg2058 Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal. (Really? Maybe? Maybe not?) That is expensive. European nations would rather not spend 2% of their GDP on defense. A review of their defense budgets, and Trump's and Obama's complaints bear witness to that. This is to say that NATO for quite some time was really trying to minimize its own defense costs in favor of social welfare. They were not ambitiously increasing their military arsenals and manpower. Quite the opposite. Russia had cause to not fear NATO too much, and even had cause to consider NATO weak and unable to stop Russia's incremental advances on its borders. Russia is going to think the way Russia is going to think. Likewise for the Europeans. Russia was making money selling to Europe. What Russia saw was not so much NATO, but that Russia's control over Ukraine's market share of European trade was being undermined, due to an emerging Ukrainian interest in Western assistance and investment. And Western investors are always looking for new opportunities. The job of Yanukovich, like Maduro, was to regulate competition against Russian export revenue, the spice of the Russian regime, by which its various agents are maintained. Ukraine's sin was its challenge to Russian exports, and thus the Russian regime. "NATO" is veneer, pretext. Money and power and a fancy with luxury are often at the core of human ambition. And yet the palace in Sochi has been demolished! Is this some sort of purification? A return to the asceticism war and victory require? And now, with NATO defense budgets enlarged, and Western military-industrial capacity being increased, Russia's grave security concerns can only be graver than ever. And what do Russians do? They just keep fighting. Their manner of thinking seems rather . . . stuck. The US stated its goal very early on: weaken Russia. How can that be accomplished? Soviet innocence. Soviet infallibility. Soviet sense of infinite capacity. Soviets stuck in stubbornness. Soviet fall. Russian innocence. Russian infallibility . . . On your last day, will all this be glorious, or pitiful? Go ahead. Do the serious work of creative drama and rehearse your last day. Work on it as hard as you work here. Deep down, @jonson856 is trying to lead you to the truth. He is trying to save your soul.
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@lg2058 Sevastopol isn't what it used to be. Sea drones, reconnaissance drones, and land-based anti-ship missiles increasingly control the Black Sea. Türkiye has cause to see itself as a target of Russian strategy. Ergo it stays in NATO.
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@lg2058 Totally in line with a "weaken Russia" strategy, isn't it? And Russia just falls for it.
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@lg2058 Bunk. Freedom of the seas means a peaceful Russia can use the Black Sea. But Russia wants control, not just use.
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@lg2058 A superb projection of Russian thinking onto American and European thinking.
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@jonson856 I appreciate your effort, sir.
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I think the average Russian has been traumatized into compromise, submission, alcoholism, and an early death. A few find a decent niche and work hard and quietly to keep it. Part of their job is to make the regime look less brutal than it is. I admire the Russian who emigrates from such oppression.
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Hard to get NATO to agree on a NATO action. However, the UK might consider taking next steps on providing Ukraine with improved intelligence on Russian forces in and near Ukraine. The courageous thing would be to fly F-35s near enough to the front to provide Ukraine targeting information on Russian artillery, aircraft, and moving vehicles that Ukrainian drones don't have the range to see. Important to stay over Ukrainian held territory and have rescue forces nearby. When there's only small changes to the front, the side with the better ISR can turn things their way. It would be a bold UK step, perhaps achievable by longer range surveillance drones, but the F-35 is designed for this scenario. It keeps being held back for something in the future. Isn't this the future we've been holding it back for? Maybe it is time to play the card.
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@louisecorchevolle9241 The metric is how many years the man on top has been the man on top.
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Putin might want NATO retaliation to confirm a larger war to the Russian people and use that to mobilize them. The strategy seems to be to let him think he is gradually winning while his military and economy are reduced. Ukraine is right to go after Russian oil. The 1980s fall in oil prices contributed to the breakup of the USSR.
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@fjkelley4774 Putin probably believes that any replacement leader would always see him as a potential rival and seek his demise. He would not agree to step aside without a potent praetorian guard, and a new leader would be hesitant to let him have that. The nature of the regime is to command until death. Yeah, he's stuck in this war and the need to suppress any substitute for himself. Any competent younger military leader is a potential threat. Doesn't help Russia self-correct. Formula for the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 21st Century. Self-defeat, again.
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Maybe that's what Putin thinks he needs to rile up his population enough to get more volunteers for the Russian army.
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Huge European investment in a new high-speed railway linking the Baltics to Poland underway. Why just hand that over to the Russians? When Russia starts exercises near the border, that railway will be bringing in troops and supplies. Railways are hard to keep out of service.
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Putin is out to rile up the Russian people into a long-term war mentality. Long enough for him to live out his days with the privileges he is accustomed to. He is the agent of Russian self-defeat.
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Putin kept his plans to himself for too long. And others saw bluffing for concessions. So the opportunity for corruption offset any concern for actual deployment. And here he is eeking out the rest of his life. A retired dictator is always a threat.
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It is in Russia's interest to control the price of export commodities as much as they can. See Venezuela. Ukraine had been explored by Western energy companies and found to have natural gas and frackable oil reserves that could be competitively brought to the European market. The United States invaded Iraq in large measure because Saddam Hussein was developing the capacity to exert more control over oil prices at a time when the American economy still relied heavily on oil imports. Ukraine's grain capacity was also a temptation for the Kremlin as another expanded revenue stream. Much of the rest is pretext. The Russian regime is about wealth for the maintenance and expansion of financial power. Financial power is then used to increase influence abroad in order to further expand wealth. It is wealth addiction, a human trait that is not uniquely Russian.
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@сырпошехонский Exxon, Chevron, and Shell were in Ukraine getting ready to apply their evolved extraction technologies. It was a serious threat to Russia's influence on the prices of these commodities and their share of the European market. See Venezuela. Somehow an oil export nation, Russia, chooses not to help restore Venezuela's 3 million bbl per day capacity, but lets Maduro pump enough to pay his forces. Oil and gas can be a curse.
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@lg2058 And yet, the Budapest Memorandum was set aside by Russia. So "required to oblige" is for the little people?
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@lg2058 Russia obtained a non-nuclear neighbor, Ukraine, in exchange for a Russian pledge of respect for its territorial integrity. The US, in order to firmly establish its influence in Ukraine at a time when Russia was weak, could have assisted Ukraine with the conversion of Soviet nuclear weapons into Ukrainian nuclear weapons. Instead, the UK, the US, and Ukraine, showed a high level of deference to Russian security concerns in the signing of the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine has received little deference or respect from Russia in exchange.
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@lg2058 The Russian navy calls at ports in Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua. Neutrality is not required. Russia has embassies, and the "specialists" that go with them, all over the Americas. The "Monroe Doctrine" is rather liberal these days. US policy toward Russian client states in the Americas is to let them rot in their own autocracy, corruption, and alliances. Their human talent moves elsewhere, and a result is the US population and economy outpaces the Russian. How did Russia EVER let the Cuban electricity grid get to this point?
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@lg2058 Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are not US client states. They are Russian client states, and woe to them. Their talent leaves.
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@lg2058 Key naval base for what kind of naval resources? So why aren't they there now? Things have changed.
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@lg2058 The reality was cash flow to Russia. Russian enforcers expect compensation. An autonomous Ukraine was a threat to Russian cash flow. An autonomous Ukraine was a threat to Russian market share. Russian geopolitical influence is about influencing the price of commodities Russia exports. See Venezuela and its very large petroleum reserves mostly just sitting there under Russian influence. If Putin doesn't supply the cash, then the enforcers replace him. So there is no end to what he will do to keep them paid. Interest rates and inflation are not going his way on this. He really, really needs Trump and Musk to end this, and he will foment unrest in the United States itself if he has to.
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@jonson856 Securing assets would have been a clear signal of invasion. Somehow he thought Europe would just capitulate more easily, like after Crimea. That's a tell that he does not have much fear of NATO. After all, look how the West shakes when he rattles his nuclear saber. What he does fear is losing cash flow from Ukraine and having Ukraine as a competitor in the EU market. Putin's survival depends on his delivering cash to the regime. It's only his if he pays for it. See North Korea.
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@jonson856 Maybe he just needs to deliver cash and a series of victories to his supporters.
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@lg2058 Russia doesn't need an army to occupy all of Ukraine. If it has the cash, it sends in the FSB to take over local law enforcement and local politicians, which it then uses to extract more cash from the economy, securing Russian control of law enforcement and thus commerce and the population. It also acts to regulate any competition with Russian revenue streams. It taps the local businesses for protection fees. The American mafia has some sophistication, but I am confident the Russian mafia considers itself far superior. The army is for beating up the other guy's army. Once that's done, the FSB moves in. Maidan did upset the FSB program for Ukraine. Ergo the war, with little fear of NATO. Seriously, they just send the CIA head to say the CIA sees what Russia is doing? That must have seemed so lame to the Russians. It probably raised their confidence that the West has declined and will not resist. Drop the 101st and 82nd Airborne into Ukraine with USAF air support during the Olympics? That would have been exciting. Imagine the howls. But if the US did that, then Russia would not be weakened. What is Jake Sullivan up to? All he says is "catastrophic".
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@lg2058 I can go to Key West, and not far away is Cuba, a Russian client state. Lights out much of the time now. Does that have anything to do with Russian cash flow? Doesn't Russia help with regular maintenance, upgrades, and fuel? Why isn't China in there putting up solar panel farms? Why would Cuba need anything from the United States? US just got ushered out of some bases and Russia moved in. Ask Trump where that was. Just happened in Mali as well I think. No war. Well . . . some Wagner guys are no more, but we say they started it, and Russia said they didn't have any forces in the area. It's over. So the hypothetical US getting debased doesn't work. The US is trying to conserve its military resources for a fight (or to try to prevent a fight) with China over Taiwan. So it makes sense that Russia would see that strategically as an opportunity.
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@jonson856 Because the US did not drop the 82nd Airborne with air support into Ukraine to deter the invasion. They just sent the CIA Director to Moscow to say "We see you." Putin was not impressed. He was probably emboldened. Meanwhile, Jake Sullivan was modeling the course of geopolitics over the next ten years. Austin gave it away . . . "weaken Russia". And here we are, a weaker Russia with weak arguments, stubbornly repeating them over and over again as they get weaker and weaker.
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@sokol5410 No doubt the Siloviki enjoy a higher standard of living than many people in Western Europe. It's what they are all about. And they have to show some deference to their scientists, engineers, and technical workers who make the prosperity and military power possible. But if Russian GDP was on a par with Italy, then GDP per capita in Russia means a lot of Russians live below Italian standards.
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