Ukraine Conflict - "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Darkpriest said:

Meanwhile, CISCO alone lost 40billion in market cap, just because it admited 200mil lost on Russia revenue. 

You will see a lot of backtracking on Russia as US and more importantly EU will go into long stagflation period, where food price and energy will be increasing to the point of social unrests, that will be magnified by large migrant waves from African and West Asian countries struck by hunger (Sri-Lanka is a prelude to what will happen on a larger scale in a couple of months)

EU has so much bad debt that it is paralyzing ECB from increasing the rates, because they well know it will crash soverign debt of a couple countries of EURoZone, like Italy. 

The state of the Sri Lanka is terrible but thats an example of a country that has for years mismanaged its overall economy similar to the PIGS countries before the necessary austerity.

@kanisatha Whats your high level view on the reasons  for the collapse of the Sri Lanka economy ?

 

[Darkpriest]

@BruceVC

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/one-four-britons-skip-meals-due-inflation-survey-shows-2022-05-17/

[BruceVC]

13 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

@BruceVC

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/one-four-britons-skip-meals-due-inflation-survey-shows-2022-05-17/

These stories are always terrible to hear about. War always comes at a price for everyone 

 

@Pidesco @Azdeus @Elerond

I am watching the speech from the Swedish PM and the Finnish president in the US. Very constructive and encouraging words from your leaders about the reasons for joining NATO and the support for NATO. If you get a chance you should listen to it or download it for later

 

[kanisatha]

9 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

@kanisathamay be interested in a 17-point thread by Timothy Snyder on the question of giving Putin an "out". Snyder's point is that Putin always has it, as he is a dictator.

As far as "changing the subject" (quoting Snyder) is concerned, we have a very recent example of this. The president of Finland had a telephone conversation with Putin. Putin argued that Russia has to "liberate" the east of Ukraine from the nazis. President Niinistö countered by saying that what about Kyiv, then, why was Kyiv attacked, it has nothing to do with the east of Ukraine. The journalists gathered around Niinistö were very keen to hear how Putin responded to this. "He said nothing. Nothing at all", Niinistö told them. "And then he changed the subject."

 

 

Excellent find! I would largely agree with Tim Snyder (I have a couple of his books on my office shelf). His concern is exactly what I've been concerned about myself right from the very beginning of the war, that some Western leaders--in their desperation to give Putin an "out" from his war--which would actually be about an "out" for themselves too, may start talking about giving Putin things he does not deserve (or has earned), effectively moving towards appeasement as the endgame for the war. And on my list of things I hate with a white-hot passion, appeasement is pretty up there.

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

The state of the Sri Lanka is terrible but thats an example of a country that has for years mismanaged its overall economy similar to the PIGS countries before the necessary austerity.

@kanisatha Whats your high level view on the reasons  for the collapse of the Sri Lanka economy ?

 

Don't want to side-track this thread, but yeah things are utterly ****ty in Sri Lanka right now. And yeah, I also tell my students that Sri Lanka is the proverbial canary in the coalmine; even the US could someday end up in that state when wastefully running up the national debt in a stupid way.

My mom texts me every day with the latest, for example that her medications (she is a recovering breast cancer survivor and a diabetic) are going up in cost from one month to the next by about 40%. Just yesterday she texted me about a loaf of bread now costing 400 rupees. That's insane! My mom at least has two financially successful sons sending her funds in hard currency every month. What about the average villager living on less than $2 a day (the UN's global poverty line)? Revolution is coming in Sri Lanka, and this time the bastards at the top are not able to divide the people against each other on ethnic and religious-communal lines, or even socioeconomic class lines.

[Darkpriest]

Seems more POW from Azovstal

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/ongoing-surrender-far-bigger-scale-kyiv-has-acknowledged-azovstal

[Malcador]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/19/politics/senate-vote-ukraine-aid-package/index.html

A good day for the arms industry

 

[Elerond]

39 minutes ago, Malcador said:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/19/politics/senate-vote-ukraine-aid-package/index.html

A good day for the arms industry

 

One would think so, but in stock market weapon manufactures are having mixed results. 

[Lexx]

I'm still sad I didn't bought Rheinmetall stock when it was at 90€. Thought it is pretty much at the top already and buying into it was too late. Then war started for realz and it went up to 220€. Even right now it's still at 180€, so pretty much 100% increase. Crazy - some people got really rich.

[HoonDing]

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, HoonDing said:

I honestly dont get the humor\race baiting in this image, I know its their I just dont see it ?

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, Elerond said:

One would think so, but in stock market weapon manufactures are having mixed results. 

Interesting, so do you think maybe the global, Capitalist weapons industry is not responsible for the invasion of Ukraine ?

 

[Mamoulian War]

On 5/19/2022 at 7:47 AM, pmp10 said:

Not at these stakes he doesn't.
An 'out' of admitting defeat leads to him losing power and possibly the whole political system becoming unstable. 

 

On 5/19/2022 at 8:05 AM, BruceVC said:

And you dont think a protracted war of attrition  in Ukraine and a collapsed Russian economy will also lead to political instability ?

In other words Putin can find a way to withdraw without losing face because the media narrative is state controlled  and its not like the Russian people are going to overthrow his autocratic government either way? 

 

I would not bet on the political instability.

Do not mind the clickbatey headline, but this guy sheds a little bit of light, on how the siloviks view the current situation, and I bet, that some of them are already in diplomatic talks with the west...
 

 

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

 

 

I would not bet on the political instability.

Do not mind the clickbatey headline, but this guy sheds a little bit of light, on how the siloviks view the current situation, and I bet, that some of them are already in diplomatic talks with the west...
 

 

What an interesting video, its good news he feels the chance of nukes being used is remote

I hope he is right that Putin wont be in power in 3 months but Im not convinced?

[Malcador]

8 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I honestly dont get the humor\race baiting in this image, I know its their I just dont see it ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks

[Chilloutman]

now I get it

[kanisatha]

More scapegoating by Putin (should I feel bad for these guys?):

https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-05-19/putin-loses-faith-in-top-generals-following-high-profile-failures-in-ukraine

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

More scapegoating by Putin (should I feel bad for these guys?):

https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-05-19/putin-loses-faith-in-top-generals-following-high-profile-failures-in-ukraine

am maintaining our distance from ukraine specific discussion, however, we couldn't help but recall another uc berkeley talks event. long but worth a listen.

now keep in mind am not suggesting the russian generals deserve to be fired. is tough to tell how much the fails o' the invasion is due to military blunders as 'posed to political interference and the russian culture o' kleptocracy. is also kinda weird how guys such as michael kofman constant warn us to not underestimate russian military based on the social media coverage o' ukraine while they simultaneous blast russian efforts thus far with more than a little frequency. is just one reason am keeping some distance from commentary 'cause many is generalizing, often self contradictory, 'bout situations which is ambiguous... save for stating obvious that the only way the original invasion made real sense is if russian leadership genuine believed the ukranians were just gonna roll over and effective surrender with little resistance, 'cause were nowhere near the manpower or the resources required to achieve meaningful successes assuming any kinda meaningful ukranian opposition.

regardless, point is a willingness to fire generals were arguable a strength o' the ww2 era US military which has been lost. combat relief due to lack o' effectiveness or a refusal to be a team player were not career ending for a ww2 US combat commander-- leadership had "sixty-to-ninety days" to prove itself. in fact, in the linked video, is anecdotal examples offered o' commanders being relieved after three days.   

also, am gonna admit the linked video is 'bout generals firing generals and not so much civilian leadership doing so, but am gonna suggest a willingness to relieve combat commanders quick is not necessarily a problem. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Mamoulian War]

Incoming Wall of Text, but I think it is worth to read, to get a little bit into what is going on in Russia atm.

 

It was written in Polish, then translated to Czech, and I have translated it to you through Google Translate, so I hope nothing is lost from the original article.

 

"Tyrant's new dress
or Why Putin pretends and the world jumps at it

Sergei Guriyev, a professor of economics, a former adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and a former chief economist at the EBRD, on what Putin and Russia can expect under his dictatorial rule.
JACEK ŻAKOWSKI (JŻ): Can you still understand Putin 9 years after fleeing Russia?
SERGEI GURIEV (SG): It's hard for everyone to understand. But I can rationally explain what he does.
JZ: Because you know him.
SG: We never talked in plain sight. But I met him in a group of several people. He always tried to give the impression that he understood and accepted the main arguments of his partners. He took that from the KGB school. He avoids polemics. He tries to find out how the interview partner thinks and what he wants, as if he wants to recruit him. He approaches conversations solely in terms of usefulness. He is cynically rational.
JŻ: When it is rational, then it is also predictable.
SG: Unless, in his opinion, unpredictability is more rational. Therefore, it is always easier to explain what he has done than to predict what he will do. That is his tactics. This is different from Western politicians, who try to be predictable so as not to raise unnecessary fears in others and escalate unnecessary tensions.
JZ: And Putin is chimerical.
SG: He's pretending. For the West, unpredictability plays a role. And a lot of people jump at him. I still read that he is detached, obsessed, emotionally unstable. Or he may be highly uninformed. But we don't know what his ignorance is about. That is why it is difficult for us to predict what he will do.
JŻ: So what is its rationality?
SG: Political and economic. The political is based on the experience of the annexation of the Crimea in 2014. It lost popularity, so he made an annexation and again became popular. According to a study by the Levada Center, between 2010 and 2013, ie before the annexation, its popularity in Russia fell from 80 to 60 percent and after the annexation it jumped to an unprecedented 90 percent. But then stagnation began, real wages fell, and Putin's popularity gradually returned to about 80 percent. It was not until 2018 that it increased when the retirement age was raised and it dropped again to 60 percent after the outbreak of the 2019 pandemic. Therefore, he concluded that he needed another Crimea. It never occurred to him that this time the war would look different.
JŻ: That wasn't very rational anymore.
SG: That rationality was based on false assumptions. Putin did not know about the extent of the changes that took place in Ukraine after 2014. He misjudged Zelenský. He knew too little about the competence and determination of Biden's team, which could not afford to show weakness after Afghanistan. And the worst part for him was that he didn't realize the extent of the disintegration of his own army. That's why he takes revenge on the intelligence. If he knew all this, he would probably attack elsewhere. Trebas in Georgia.
JŻ: Did he have to attack?
SG: He had no idea how to regain support when real wages fell next year. Already in 2019, they were on average 7% lower than in 2013.
JŻ: 2013 was still a good year in Russia. Why did you, the golden child of the Russian economy, travel so suddenly?
SG: As an economist, I had to teach students real economics. That is, one that knows that economic growth requires good institutions - such as independent courts, fair competition, conscientious officials, promotion based on competencies, politically independent companies. And as rector of a private university, responsible for, among other things, funding, I had to appear in public debates. And in public I had to say what in the lectures. And Putin stopped liking it. For example, I was among the nine people whom then-President Medvedev publicly asked what we thought about Khodorkovsky's conviction. I replied that, as a holding economist, I considered this verdict to be unfounded. Putin didn't like it. Then Navalny came to me in May 2012 and said, "I am setting up an anti-corruption foundation, I want you to support it." I could not refuse, because as an economist and manager, I knew that corruption was Russia's biggest economic development problem. Putin didn't like that either. I was summoned for questioning, after which I realized that there was no place for me in Russia.
JŻ: Somehow it doesn't surprise me.
SG: Not me either, but I had no choice. How would I explain this to the students if I rejected Navalny? You can't teach one thing and do something else in public. It has already been seen that the economy is slowing down due to corruption. And then she stopped.

JZ: Because of the sanctions.
SG: The sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea were practically insignificant. They have never reduced Russian GDP growth by more than one percentage point. Even if there were no sanctions, the Russian economy would grow by less than 2 percent a year. It is not the growth that gives the dictatorial power that gave popularity. And it couldn't be higher, because the system is based on corruption and favoring friends. In the state and economy of Putin's Russia, the loyal, not the competent, are promoted. This is causing more and more economic problems and growing inequality because the protégés of state power are greedy. And when there is no growth, they can only get rich at the expense of others.
JŻ: The greed of the oligarchs forced the war?
SG: The impunity greed of hundreds of thousands of privileged companies and officials at very diverse levels. But the system would not have felt it politically without the opposition, which has become extremely effective on the social media. By exposing state corruption, it has increasingly disarmed the spin on which Putin based his popularity. Because he was still a typical spin dictator.
JŻ: What does that mean?
SG: The spin dictatorship is a great discovery of the twenty-first century autocrats. We still hear that Putin is the Stalin of our time. But what is Stalin without great purges and fears, without the Gulag, mass deportations, staged monstrous trials, moreover with legal opposition and very limited but legally functioning independent media, with the sincere support of the majority and not particularly false election results? The patent of the spin dictators - Putin, Orban, Nazarbayev, Chavez, Bolsonar, Trump - is that instead of killing people, they kill their minds. Instead of a big horror, they use a big spin. Instead of intimidation, they seduce, corrupt and demobilize resistance. This is a global trend based on universal know-how. Together with Daniel Treisman, we calculated that from the 1940s to the 1960s, one in four dictators who came to power was responsible for at least 100 political assassinations a year. In the zero years, it was less than every tenth. Similarly, 40 to 60 percent of dictators coming to power between 1945 and 1970 imprisoned more than a thousand political prisoners. But in the 21st century, less than 20 percent.
JŻ: Dictatorships have become more pleasant?
SG: The goal of a dictatorship is power and the benefits that power brings, not the killing of people. But a dictatorship is still a dictatorship, even when it uses informational and economic violence instead of physical violence and uses television, the press, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok instead of rifles and batons.
JŻ: We both remember that in the 20th century, dictatorships did both.
SG: Now they do both, but the proportions are opposite. The discovery of spin dictatorships is that if, instead of imprisoning or killing critics, they are allowed to function in some nice way and are downplayed in the dominant media, then people can be convinced that the dictator is a great democrat and his enemies are an elite who wants to harm ordinary people. A legal opposition niche is essential for a spin dictatorship so that it can be blamed for all the failures. Pseudo-alternatives are key. Without them, it would be difficult to explain to people the inevitable defeats and injustices of spin dictators. The classic spin argument is: "if they didn't interfere, everything would be better" or "if they ruled, it would be much worse."
JŻ: Fascists and communists said the same thing.
SG: But they imprisoned, murdered and intimidated their opponents. This deprived them of credibility. In a spin dictatorship, repression is an extreme used only when dissent comes from seclusion and begins to threaten the maintenance of power. Navalny was safe until his online announcements gained mass reach and influenced public opinion. Every week, he uploaded more episodes of a series on corruption by the Putin elite, which was watched by millions of people and tolerated by the authorities. It wasn't until years of stagnation and declining living standards in April 2020 that Putin's popularity dropped below 60 percent that his people resorted to repression to cut off the younger generation from dangerous content on the Internet. Navalny was poisoned and then imprisoned, the Memorial Association was dissolved, and most of Nik's free media were abolished. And when that turned out to be no longer enough to restore the popularity of power as the Internet spiraled out of control, Putin reached for a tool that worked in 2014 and sparked another war with Ukraine.
JZ: Stalin said that "in building socialism, the class struggle is intensifying." The example of Putin's Russia shows that this is true of the progress made in building various dictatorships.
SG: Most. Few dictatorships can modernize quickly and stably enough to compete effectively with democracies. And if they modernize successfully, they are usually doomed to democratization, like South Korea. Because the growing urban middle class demands freedom.

JŻ: So the paradox of tyranny is that it must perish - either because of failure or because of success - but in any case they go through a phase of cruelty when they die?
SG: If they want to stay open to the world - which is one of the basic preconditions of spin dictatorships - they cannot be permanent. But when they resort to repression, they can close themselves off from the world and remain in ever deeper autarchy for a long time as the usual dictatorships of fear. Like North Korea. Singapore is a critical exception. Despite the rapidly growing wealth, the dictatorship is not threatened, but the regime is softening. Of course, we do not know what will happen to China, which probably has its best years behind it. Rich countries are democratic with the exception of commodity dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. But these are also gradually softening dictatorships. But Putin's Russia is beginning to take the North Korean route. It falls into isolation and poverty, the spin dictatorship ends, replaced by the old-fashioned dictatorship of fear, which may persist for some time, but will become poorer, more cruel and isolated.
JZ: For Russia, this is another failed attempt at modernization. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas II, Lenin, Gorbachev, Putin - everyone tried to catch up with the West in their own way. Some were already quite close, but a crisis broke out that destroyed everything. You are an Ossetian, not a Russian, but you know Russia through and through. What's wrong with him?
SG: Nothing. It simply still has a system that hinders its development. Economic growth is the result of investment and free enterprise. Russia had a period of large investments, but these were state investments or heavily controlled by the state. Freedom, including economic freedom, has always been limited or non-existent. Property protection and social cohesion, the rule of law, competition have built up Western power - and Russia is still lacking. From tsarism to Putin, corrupt, incompetent regimes ruled, stifling innovation and initiative. The result can not surprise anyone.
JZ: The curse of eternal tyranny?
SG: The same was said of many other countries before they democratized.
JŻ: Some - like Turkey, Hungary or Poland - only for a short time.
SG: South Korea was always a dictatorship before it became a democracy. Sweden too. I Germany. There are many more democracies in the world than there were 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago. If we live for a while, we will see a democratic Russia. I'm sure of that.
JZ: That's good news for Russia and bad news for Putin.
SG: Sure.
JZ: So in your opinion, Putin is in a tragic situation. It cannot maintain its popularity without economic growth, and the Russian economy will not be able to grow as long as Putin's authoritarian rule continues.
SG: Exactly. The interests of Putin and the Russians have diverged. He tries to maximize his personal power. The Russians want to live better. For the first 10 years of Putin's rule, these goals coincided because raw material exports were enough to reduce poverty. Putin was really popular then. But then corruption, censorship, the feeding of the oligarchs and their surroundings at the expense of other Russians stopped the growth. The stronger Putin was, the weaker the Russian economy. The war radicalized this process. We all see Putin destroying Ukraine with bombs and rockets. But the media does not see how much Putin is destroying Russia. Hundreds of thousands of young Russian professionals have already fled abroad. Russia's economy is isolated and increasingly destroyed by breaking ties with the world.
JŻ: Not with the whole world.
SG: With the developed world. Putin is strengthening relations with some less developed countries. This can make an impression at the UN, because it is clear during the vote that he is not completely alone. But that will not bring Russia development. What can Russia sell them? Raw materials, weapons, very simple products. And they can offer Russia the same. For a while, it will be enough for Russia not to back down in civilization. But development will not bring it. And the West will move forward.
JŻ: Repetition of the late USSR?
SG: More or less. But the severance of ties with the West is already causing the biggest recession since the early 1990s. After 23 years of absolute rule, Putin has brought Russia to a state where he has taken power and gained popularity precisely for getting Russia out of this state. For years, it was believed that what was good for Putin was good for Russia. The attack on Ukraine ended this phase. What is good for Putin has become bad for Russia.
JZ: Does Putin understand that?
SG: He understands. But the question is what he sees when he looks in the mirror and how he explains it.

 

JŻ: And?
SG: He thinks things are more important than GDP. He reiterates that Russia is a proud country, that more important is its imperial spirit, that the Russians must resist the West, because that is their historical mission. Of course, he knows how much Russia and its power and war cost. But he thinks it's worth paying the price, and in the end Russia will benefit. Because the only alternative he can imagine is the triumph of American imperialism, the exploitation of Russian wealth by the West, and the tightening of the NATO loop around Russia. If anything really scares him now, it is the prospect of Finland and Sweden joining NATO quickly. Even though he has some tactical success in Ukraine, the strategic effects of the war are exactly the opposite of his intentions. Ukraine is consolidating against Russia. NATO is moving closer and more firmly integrated. The West is leaving Russian raw materials. Russia is compromising and degenerating economically. The Second World Army is rotting in the Ukrainian mud for the third month in a row and cannot cope with the resistance of many times smaller Ukraine.
JZ: This war is a tragedy for Ukraine, it is destroying Russia, it is damaging the whole world, because the war is raising energy and food prices. But there is also an optimistic spark, which is essential. For two decades, the world has been under the growing impression of the success of the spin dictatorships that you and Daniel Treisman described in the book. Do the impacts and limits of the greatest spin dictatorship free us from the illusion that spin dictators are an alternative that will replace outdated Western market democracy?
SG: That's the point of the book. Spin dictatorships are the same impasse as previous dictatorships of fear, communism or fascism. In the beginning, they can give the impression of efficient systems. They tend to be really effective for a while. But they inevitably lead to self-destruction because they run out of resources. They need educated people to develop, but educated people rebel or emigrate to the free world. The more developed a company is, the more it costs to control it. As costs begin to outweigh the benefits. This is an irreparable internal contradiction of any dictatorship, which is best seen in Cuba and Venezuela.
JŻ: In this way, the Soviet bloc and the formerly Francoist Spain and Salazar's Portugal fell.
SG: Now this is the path of all post-Soviet spin dictatorships, led by Putin's Russia.
JŻ: Turkey too.
SG: Turkey is a strange case. Erdogan combines spin with terror and the appearance of democratic freedom. Prisoners of thousands of professors, judges and opposition. He controls and pursues the media. But - unlike Putin - he lost the last election in the five largest cities. The Turkish opposition was not driven to seclusion. This is a borderline case. The impact is similar to that in Russia - a deepening economic crisis, irreparable tensions masked by muscle strain and still strong support for the government. However, it is worth looking at Armenia, whose dictator tried to impose apparent democratization in 2018 and had to leave under the influence of mass protests when he was appointed prime minister after his party's election, although he had previously promised to retire. The democratization of Armenia shows what a good end to spin dictatorships may look like.
JZ: Kazakhstan is on this road.
SG: It's not democracy yet, but he's embarked on a path that Turkey and Russia can take after the war.
JŻ: Antony Blinken says that Russia will not win the war. What should that mean?
SG: A spin dictator can't lose. He still has to talk about his successes. He presents every defeat as a victory. However, there are limits to distorting the facts. Putin cannot tell the Russians that the war brought nothing and ended with a return to the February 24 border. He must connect at least a piece of territory to Russia.
JŻ: Donbas?
SG: At least part of Donbas and maybe Transnistria. Then he says: we have conquered new territories, we have defended our brothers in the Donbas, we have conquered Kherson, so we have water for Crimea, we have destroyed the fascist infrastructure and ousted NATO - so success again!
JŻ: The Russians will jump at that?
SG: Maybe most. But it will not be the end. The West will see this as a brutal violation of international law, will maintain sanctions, and Putin's Russia will become a classic dictatorship of fear. Because who cares about Kherson, when wages fall, prices rise, shops are empty, you can forget about holidays abroad, and even athletes do not leave the country. From month to month, Kherson will be less important, and emptying refrigerators will be increasingly important.
JŻ: Will this be the end of "illiberal democracy" as an enticing alternative to democratic capitalism?
SG: The final end. The spin of the dictatorship will end, as did Soviet communism.

JŻ: A good emperor will become a cruel wounded emperor. The place occupied by spin doctors will be taken by physicists and police officers with batons. And then what?
SG: We both grew up in a similar system. It can't last forever. It is much less stable in the twenty-first century than in the twentieth century. At the time, Western Radio was the only source of independent information. There are now Internet media and VPNs. YouTube still operates legally in Russia. After blocking Instagram, people en masse turned on VPN and the ban is ineffective. I'm not saying it will be easy to reach most Russians, but it will be incomparably easier than it was 30 or 50 years ago.
JŻ: Will Putin - like Pinochet, Honecker, Jaruzelski - be ready to resign in such a situation?
SG: No. He is already accused of war crimes and his surroundings as well. No one resigns to go to prison. But people close to him can arrest him. Although it seems unlikely - like any palace coup until it happens. There may be mass protests that the police will no longer want to suppress. This also looks unrealistic today, but it was similar during the Ukrainian Maidan and many other revolutions. This is how the fall of the famous Berlin Wall came about. Ceaușescu also did not intend to resign, but the Romanians overthrew his regime within three days.
JŻ: When will the Russians overthrow Putin?
SG: It's not known. But there is no going back after February 24th.
JŻ: Will Russia become different without Putin, or will it be like the declining USSR, where Brezhnev replaced Andropov, Andropov Chernenko and only after them Gorbachev appeared, until Yeltsin finally came?
SG: There are several scenarios. Putin may be overthrown by one of the generals who wants to become the new dictator. But it will not work because Putin has built this system for himself. He had long since got rid of all those who could replace him. It is more likely that governments will be seized by a junta of several generals. This will quickly run out, because everyone is very unpopular and Russia is facing difficult times. Under the influence of unrest, they will blame each other and eliminate them until everything falls apart. The third scenario is that, according to the constitution, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will take power, and he will call new, freer elections to deal with the West and prevent large-scale protests.
JŻ: So liberalization?
SG: Which is usually out of control with such regimes. We saw it during perestroika and during the French Revolution. Because such regimes almost always start changing too late and too slowly.
JŻ: And then you return to Russia?
Maybe. In the social sciences, we know that such changes cannot be planned. But as a former EBRD chief economist, I co-created the team with which we developed a post-war reconstruction plan for Ukraine. It was an offer I could not refuse - just like Navalny's offer had once been. I think that before I return to Russia, I will work with other economists to help Ukraine. This is my duty as an economist, as a European and as a citizen of Russia.

Jacek Żakowski spoke
Sergei Guriyev - Economist, Professor and Scientific Director of Sciences Po in Paris. He was Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2015-2019). In 2004-2013 he was rector of the Moscow New Economic School and, among other things, a member of the board of directors of Sberbank (Russia's largest retail bank). Adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012). He co-financed Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption fund and co-authored his economic program. He has recently published (with Daniel Treisman) a book: “Spin Dictators. The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century ”(Princeton, 2022)."

[pmp10]

Final azovstal defenders are to surrender soon.
If Putin plans to pursue any off-ramps this would be the best occasion to declare victory. 

[Mamoulian War]

2 minutes ago, pmp10 said:

Final azovstal defenders are to surrender soon.
If Putin plans to pursue any off-ramps this would be the best occasion to declare victory. 

Nope, they wat to get at least the full control of Luhansk, so no victory declaration before that.

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

Nope, they wat to get at least the full control of Luhansk, so no victory declaration before that.

^This. Once they believe they have enough of Luhansk and Donetsk to sell to the Russian people the notion of a "victory," that's when they will start talking about "ending" the "operation." But I think they're also struggling right now to come up with a sellable justification for why they should also get to hold on to the areas in southern Ukraine currently under their occupation. That's the part for which even their ludicrous mythmaking hasn't yet been able to come up with a justification that can be presented to the world at large.

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Incoming Wall of Text, but I think it is worth to read, to get a little bit into what is going on in Russia atm.

 

It was written in Polish, then translated to Czech, and I have translated it to you through Google Translate, so I hope nothing is lost from the original article.

 

"Tyrant's new dress
or Why Putin pretends and the world jumps at it

Sergei Guriyev, a professor of economics, a former adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and a former chief economist at the EBRD, on what Putin and Russia can expect under his dictatorial rule.
JACEK ŻAKOWSKI (JŻ): Can you still understand Putin 9 years after fleeing Russia?
SERGEI GURIEV (SG): It's hard for everyone to understand. But I can rationally explain what he does.
JZ: Because you know him.
SG: We never talked in plain sight. But I met him in a group of several people. He always tried to give the impression that he understood and accepted the main arguments of his partners. He took that from the KGB school. He avoids polemics. He tries to find out how the interview partner thinks and what he wants, as if he wants to recruit him. He approaches conversations solely in terms of usefulness. He is cynically rational.
JŻ: When it is rational, then it is also predictable.
SG: Unless, in his opinion, unpredictability is more rational. Therefore, it is always easier to explain what he has done than to predict what he will do. That is his tactics. This is different from Western politicians, who try to be predictable so as not to raise unnecessary fears in others and escalate unnecessary tensions.
JZ: And Putin is chimerical.
SG: He's pretending. For the West, unpredictability plays a role. And a lot of people jump at him. I still read that he is detached, obsessed, emotionally unstable. Or he may be highly uninformed. But we don't know what his ignorance is about. That is why it is difficult for us to predict what he will do.
JŻ: So what is its rationality?
SG: Political and economic. The political is based on the experience of the annexation of the Crimea in 2014. It lost popularity, so he made an annexation and again became popular. According to a study by the Levada Center, between 2010 and 2013, ie before the annexation, its popularity in Russia fell from 80 to 60 percent and after the annexation it jumped to an unprecedented 90 percent. But then stagnation began, real wages fell, and Putin's popularity gradually returned to about 80 percent. It was not until 2018 that it increased when the retirement age was raised and it dropped again to 60 percent after the outbreak of the 2019 pandemic. Therefore, he concluded that he needed another Crimea. It never occurred to him that this time the war would look different.
JŻ: That wasn't very rational anymore.
SG: That rationality was based on false assumptions. Putin did not know about the extent of the changes that took place in Ukraine after 2014. He misjudged Zelenský. He knew too little about the competence and determination of Biden's team, which could not afford to show weakness after Afghanistan. And the worst part for him was that he didn't realize the extent of the disintegration of his own army. That's why he takes revenge on the intelligence. If he knew all this, he would probably attack elsewhere. Trebas in Georgia.
JŻ: Did he have to attack?
SG: He had no idea how to regain support when real wages fell next year. Already in 2019, they were on average 7% lower than in 2013.
JŻ: 2013 was still a good year in Russia. Why did you, the golden child of the Russian economy, travel so suddenly?
SG: As an economist, I had to teach students real economics. That is, one that knows that economic growth requires good institutions - such as independent courts, fair competition, conscientious officials, promotion based on competencies, politically independent companies. And as rector of a private university, responsible for, among other things, funding, I had to appear in public debates. And in public I had to say what in the lectures. And Putin stopped liking it. For example, I was among the nine people whom then-President Medvedev publicly asked what we thought about Khodorkovsky's conviction. I replied that, as a holding economist, I considered this verdict to be unfounded. Putin didn't like it. Then Navalny came to me in May 2012 and said, "I am setting up an anti-corruption foundation, I want you to support it." I could not refuse, because as an economist and manager, I knew that corruption was Russia's biggest economic development problem. Putin didn't like that either. I was summoned for questioning, after which I realized that there was no place for me in Russia.
JŻ: Somehow it doesn't surprise me.
SG: Not me either, but I had no choice. How would I explain this to the students if I rejected Navalny? You can't teach one thing and do something else in public. It has already been seen that the economy is slowing down due to corruption. And then she stopped.

JZ: Because of the sanctions.
SG: The sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea were practically insignificant. They have never reduced Russian GDP growth by more than one percentage point. Even if there were no sanctions, the Russian economy would grow by less than 2 percent a year. It is not the growth that gives the dictatorial power that gave popularity. And it couldn't be higher, because the system is based on corruption and favoring friends. In the state and economy of Putin's Russia, the loyal, not the competent, are promoted. This is causing more and more economic problems and growing inequality because the protégés of state power are greedy. And when there is no growth, they can only get rich at the expense of others.
JŻ: The greed of the oligarchs forced the war?
SG: The impunity greed of hundreds of thousands of privileged companies and officials at very diverse levels. But the system would not have felt it politically without the opposition, which has become extremely effective on the social media. By exposing state corruption, it has increasingly disarmed the spin on which Putin based his popularity. Because he was still a typical spin dictator.
JŻ: What does that mean?
SG: The spin dictatorship is a great discovery of the twenty-first century autocrats. We still hear that Putin is the Stalin of our time. But what is Stalin without great purges and fears, without the Gulag, mass deportations, staged monstrous trials, moreover with legal opposition and very limited but legally functioning independent media, with the sincere support of the majority and not particularly false election results? The patent of the spin dictators - Putin, Orban, Nazarbayev, Chavez, Bolsonar, Trump - is that instead of killing people, they kill their minds. Instead of a big horror, they use a big spin. Instead of intimidation, they seduce, corrupt and demobilize resistance. This is a global trend based on universal know-how. Together with Daniel Treisman, we calculated that from the 1940s to the 1960s, one in four dictators who came to power was responsible for at least 100 political assassinations a year. In the zero years, it was less than every tenth. Similarly, 40 to 60 percent of dictators coming to power between 1945 and 1970 imprisoned more than a thousand political prisoners. But in the 21st century, less than 20 percent.
JŻ: Dictatorships have become more pleasant?
SG: The goal of a dictatorship is power and the benefits that power brings, not the killing of people. But a dictatorship is still a dictatorship, even when it uses informational and economic violence instead of physical violence and uses television, the press, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok instead of rifles and batons.
JŻ: We both remember that in the 20th century, dictatorships did both.
SG: Now they do both, but the proportions are opposite. The discovery of spin dictatorships is that if, instead of imprisoning or killing critics, they are allowed to function in some nice way and are downplayed in the dominant media, then people can be convinced that the dictator is a great democrat and his enemies are an elite who wants to harm ordinary people. A legal opposition niche is essential for a spin dictatorship so that it can be blamed for all the failures. Pseudo-alternatives are key. Without them, it would be difficult to explain to people the inevitable defeats and injustices of spin dictators. The classic spin argument is: "if they didn't interfere, everything would be better" or "if they ruled, it would be much worse."
JŻ: Fascists and communists said the same thing.
SG: But they imprisoned, murdered and intimidated their opponents. This deprived them of credibility. In a spin dictatorship, repression is an extreme used only when dissent comes from seclusion and begins to threaten the maintenance of power. Navalny was safe until his online announcements gained mass reach and influenced public opinion. Every week, he uploaded more episodes of a series on corruption by the Putin elite, which was watched by millions of people and tolerated by the authorities. It wasn't until years of stagnation and declining living standards in April 2020 that Putin's popularity dropped below 60 percent that his people resorted to repression to cut off the younger generation from dangerous content on the Internet. Navalny was poisoned and then imprisoned, the Memorial Association was dissolved, and most of Nik's free media were abolished. And when that turned out to be no longer enough to restore the popularity of power as the Internet spiraled out of control, Putin reached for a tool that worked in 2014 and sparked another war with Ukraine.
JZ: Stalin said that "in building socialism, the class struggle is intensifying." The example of Putin's Russia shows that this is true of the progress made in building various dictatorships.
SG: Most. Few dictatorships can modernize quickly and stably enough to compete effectively with democracies. And if they modernize successfully, they are usually doomed to democratization, like South Korea. Because the growing urban middle class demands freedom.

JŻ: So the paradox of tyranny is that it must perish - either because of failure or because of success - but in any case they go through a phase of cruelty when they die?
SG: If they want to stay open to the world - which is one of the basic preconditions of spin dictatorships - they cannot be permanent. But when they resort to repression, they can close themselves off from the world and remain in ever deeper autarchy for a long time as the usual dictatorships of fear. Like North Korea. Singapore is a critical exception. Despite the rapidly growing wealth, the dictatorship is not threatened, but the regime is softening. Of course, we do not know what will happen to China, which probably has its best years behind it. Rich countries are democratic with the exception of commodity dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. But these are also gradually softening dictatorships. But Putin's Russia is beginning to take the North Korean route. It falls into isolation and poverty, the spin dictatorship ends, replaced by the old-fashioned dictatorship of fear, which may persist for some time, but will become poorer, more cruel and isolated.
JZ: For Russia, this is another failed attempt at modernization. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas II, Lenin, Gorbachev, Putin - everyone tried to catch up with the West in their own way. Some were already quite close, but a crisis broke out that destroyed everything. You are an Ossetian, not a Russian, but you know Russia through and through. What's wrong with him?
SG: Nothing. It simply still has a system that hinders its development. Economic growth is the result of investment and free enterprise. Russia had a period of large investments, but these were state investments or heavily controlled by the state. Freedom, including economic freedom, has always been limited or non-existent. Property protection and social cohesion, the rule of law, competition have built up Western power - and Russia is still lacking. From tsarism to Putin, corrupt, incompetent regimes ruled, stifling innovation and initiative. The result can not surprise anyone.
JZ: The curse of eternal tyranny?
SG: The same was said of many other countries before they democratized.
JŻ: Some - like Turkey, Hungary or Poland - only for a short time.
SG: South Korea was always a dictatorship before it became a democracy. Sweden too. I Germany. There are many more democracies in the world than there were 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago. If we live for a while, we will see a democratic Russia. I'm sure of that.
JZ: That's good news for Russia and bad news for Putin.
SG: Sure.
JZ: So in your opinion, Putin is in a tragic situation. It cannot maintain its popularity without economic growth, and the Russian economy will not be able to grow as long as Putin's authoritarian rule continues.
SG: Exactly. The interests of Putin and the Russians have diverged. He tries to maximize his personal power. The Russians want to live better. For the first 10 years of Putin's rule, these goals coincided because raw material exports were enough to reduce poverty. Putin was really popular then. But then corruption, censorship, the feeding of the oligarchs and their surroundings at the expense of other Russians stopped the growth. The stronger Putin was, the weaker the Russian economy. The war radicalized this process. We all see Putin destroying Ukraine with bombs and rockets. But the media does not see how much Putin is destroying Russia. Hundreds of thousands of young Russian professionals have already fled abroad. Russia's economy is isolated and increasingly destroyed by breaking ties with the world.
JŻ: Not with the whole world.
SG: With the developed world. Putin is strengthening relations with some less developed countries. This can make an impression at the UN, because it is clear during the vote that he is not completely alone. But that will not bring Russia development. What can Russia sell them? Raw materials, weapons, very simple products. And they can offer Rus

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Incoming Wall of Text, but I think it is worth to read, to get a little bit into what is going on in Russia atm.

 

It was written in Polish, then translated to Czech, and I have translated it to you through Google Translate, so I hope nothing is lost from the original article.

 

"Tyrant's new dress
or Why Putin pretends and the world jumps at it

Sergei Guriyev, a professor of economics, a former adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and a former chief economist at the EBRD, on what Putin and Russia can expect under his dictatorial rule.
JACEK ŻAKOWSKI (JŻ): Can you still understand Putin 9 years after fleeing Russia?
SERGEI GURIEV (SG): It's hard for everyone to understand. But I can rationally explain what he does.
JZ: Because you know him.
SG: We never talked in plain sight. But I met him in a group of several people. He always tried to give the impression that he understood and accepted the main arguments of his partners. He took that from the KGB school. He avoids polemics. He tries to find out how the interview partner thinks and what he wants, as if he wants to recruit him. He approaches conversations solely in terms of usefulness. He is cynically rational.
JŻ: When it is rational, then it is also predictable.
SG: Unless, in his opinion, unpredictability is more rational. Therefore, it is always easier to explain what he has done than to predict what he will do. That is his tactics. This is different from Western politicians, who try to be predictable so as not to raise unnecessary fears in others and escalate unnecessary tensions.
JZ: And Putin is chimerical.
SG: He's pretending. For the West, unpredictability plays a role. And a lot of people jump at him. I still read that he is detached, obsessed, emotionally unstable. Or he may be highly uninformed. But we don't know what his ignorance is about. That is why it is difficult for us to predict what he will do.
JŻ: So what is its rationality?
SG: Political and economic. The political is based on the experience of the annexation of the Crimea in 2014. It lost popularity, so he made an annexation and again became popular. According to a study by the Levada Center, between 2010 and 2013, ie before the annexation, its popularity in Russia fell from 80 to 60 percent and after the annexation it jumped to an unprecedented 90 percent. But then stagnation began, real wages fell, and Putin's popularity gradually returned to about 80 percent. It was not until 2018 that it increased when the retirement age was raised and it dropped again to 60 percent after the outbreak of the 2019 pandemic. Therefore, he concluded that he needed another Crimea. It never occurred to him that this time the war would look different.
JŻ: That wasn't very rational anymore.
SG: That rationality was based on false assumptions. Putin did not know about the extent of the changes that took place in Ukraine after 2014. He misjudged Zelenský. He knew too little about the competence and determination of Biden's team, which could not afford to show weakness after Afghanistan. And the worst part for him was that he didn't realize the extent of the disintegration of his own army. That's why he takes revenge on the intelligence. If he knew all this, he would probably attack elsewhere. Trebas in Georgia.
JŻ: Did he have to attack?
SG: He had no idea how to regain support when real wages fell next year. Already in 2019, they were on average 7% lower than in 2013.
JŻ: 2013 was still a good year in Russia. Why did you, the golden child of the Russian economy, travel so suddenly?
SG: As an economist, I had to teach students real economics. That is, one that knows that economic growth requires good institutions - such as independent courts, fair competition, conscientious officials, promotion based on competencies, politically independent companies. And as rector of a private university, responsible for, among other things, funding, I had to appear in public debates. And in public I had to say what in the lectures. And Putin stopped liking it. For example, I was among the nine people whom then-President Medvedev publicly asked what we thought about Khodorkovsky's conviction. I replied that, as a holding economist, I considered this verdict to be unfounded. Putin didn't like it. Then Navalny came to me in May 2012 and said, "I am setting up an anti-corruption foundation, I want you to support it." I could not refuse, because as an economist and manager, I knew that corruption was Russia's biggest economic development problem. Putin didn't like that either. I was summoned for questioning, after which I realized that there was no place for me in Russia.
JŻ: Somehow it doesn't surprise me.
SG: Not me either, but I had no choice. How would I explain this to the students if I rejected Navalny? You can't teach one thing and do something else in public. It has already been seen that the economy is slowing down due to corruption. And then she stopped.

JZ: Because of the sanctions.
SG: The sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea were practically insignificant. They have never reduced Russian GDP growth by more than one percentage point. Even if there were no sanctions, the Russian economy would grow by less than 2 percent a year. It is not the growth that gives the dictatorial power that gave popularity. And it couldn't be higher, because the system is based on corruption and favoring friends. In the state and economy of Putin's Russia, the loyal, not the competent, are promoted. This is causing more and more economic problems and growing inequality because the protégés of state power are greedy. And when there is no growth, they can only get rich at the expense of others.
JŻ: The greed of the oligarchs forced the war?
SG: The impunity greed of hundreds of thousands of privileged companies and officials at very diverse levels. But the system would not have felt it politically without the opposition, which has become extremely effective on the social media. By exposing state corruption, it has increasingly disarmed the spin on which Putin based his popularity. Because he was still a typical spin dictator.
JŻ: What does that mean?
SG: The spin dictatorship is a great discovery of the twenty-first century autocrats. We still hear that Putin is the Stalin of our time. But what is Stalin without great purges and fears, without the Gulag, mass deportations, staged monstrous trials, moreover with legal opposition and very limited but legally functioning independent media, with the sincere support of the majority and not particularly false election results? The patent of the spin dictators - Putin, Orban, Nazarbayev, Chavez, Bolsonar, Trump - is that instead of killing people, they kill their minds. Instead of a big horror, they use a big spin. Instead of intimidation, they seduce, corrupt and demobilize resistance. This is a global trend based on universal know-how. Together with Daniel Treisman, we calculated that from the 1940s to the 1960s, one in four dictators who came to power was responsible for at least 100 political assassinations a year. In the zero years, it was less than every tenth. Similarly, 40 to 60 percent of dictators coming to power between 1945 and 1970 imprisoned more than a thousand political prisoners. But in the 21st century, less than 20 percent.
JŻ: Dictatorships have become more pleasant?
SG: The goal of a dictatorship is power and the benefits that power brings, not the killing of people. But a dictatorship is still a dictatorship, even when it uses informational and economic violence instead of physical violence and uses television, the press, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok instead of rifles and batons.
JŻ: We both remember that in the 20th century, dictatorships did both.
SG: Now they do both, but the proportions are opposite. The discovery of spin dictatorships is that if, instead of imprisoning or killing critics, they are allowed to function in some nice way and are downplayed in the dominant media, then people can be convinced that the dictator is a great democrat and his enemies are an elite who wants to harm ordinary people. A legal opposition niche is essential for a spin dictatorship so that it can be blamed for all the failures. Pseudo-alternatives are key. Without them, it would be difficult to explain to people the inevitable defeats and injustices of spin dictators. The classic spin argument is: "if they didn't interfere, everything would be better" or "if they ruled, it would be much worse."
JŻ: Fascists and communists said the same thing.
SG: But they imprisoned, murdered and intimidated their opponents. This deprived them of credibility. In a spin dictatorship, repression is an extreme used only when dissent comes from seclusion and begins to threaten the maintenance of power. Navalny was safe until his online announcements gained mass reach and influenced public opinion. Every week, he uploaded more episodes of a series on corruption by the Putin elite, which was watched by millions of people and tolerated by the authorities. It wasn't until years of stagnation and declining living standards in April 2020 that Putin's popularity dropped below 60 percent that his people resorted to repression to cut off the younger generation from dangerous content on the Internet. Navalny was poisoned and then imprisoned, the Memorial Association was dissolved, and most of Nik's free media were abolished. And when that turned out to be no longer enough to restore the popularity of power as the Internet spiraled out of control, Putin reached for a tool that worked in 2014 and sparked another war with Ukraine.
JZ: Stalin said that "in building socialism, the class struggle is intensifying." The example of Putin's Russia shows that this is true of the progress made in building various dictatorships.
SG: Most. Few dictatorships can modernize quickly and stably enough to compete effectively with democracies. And if they modernize successfully, they are usually doomed to democratization, like South Korea. Because the growing urban middle class demands freedom.

JŻ: So the paradox of tyranny is that it must perish - either because of failure or because of success - but in any case they go through a phase of cruelty when they die?
SG: If they want to stay open to the world - which is one of the basic preconditions of spin dictatorships - they cannot be permanent. But when they resort to repression, they can close themselves off from the world and remain in ever deeper autarchy for a long time as the usual dictatorships of fear. Like North Korea. Singapore is a critical exception. Despite the rapidly growing wealth, the dictatorship is not threatened, but the regime is softening. Of course, we do not know what will happen to China, which probably has its best years behind it. Rich countries are democratic with the exception of commodity dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. But these are also gradually softening dictatorships. But Putin's Russia is beginning to take the North Korean route. It falls into isolation and poverty, the spin dictatorship ends, replaced by the old-fashioned dictatorship of fear, which may persist for some time, but will become poorer, more cruel and isolated.
JZ: For Russia, this is another failed attempt at modernization. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas II, Lenin, Gorbachev, Putin - everyone tried to catch up with the West in their own way. Some were already quite close, but a crisis broke out that destroyed everything. You are an Ossetian, not a Russian, but you know Russia through and through. What's wrong with him?
SG: Nothing. It simply still has a system that hinders its development. Economic growth is the result of investment and free enterprise. Russia had a period of large investments, but these were state investments or heavily controlled by the state. Freedom, including economic freedom, has always been limited or non-existent. Property protection and social cohesion, the rule of law, competition have built up Western power - and Russia is still lacking. From tsarism to Putin, corrupt, incompetent regimes ruled, stifling innovation and initiative. The result can not surprise anyone.
JZ: The curse of eternal tyranny?
SG: The same was said of many other countries before they democratized.
JŻ: Some - like Turkey, Hungary or Poland - only for a short time.
SG: South Korea was always a dictatorship before it became a democracy. Sweden too. I Germany. There are many more democracies in the world than there were 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago. If we live for a while, we will see a democratic Russia. I'm sure of that.
JZ: That's good news for Russia and bad news for Putin.
SG: Sure.
JZ: So in your opinion, Putin is in a tragic situation. It cannot maintain its popularity without economic growth, and the Russian economy will not be able to grow as long as Putin's authoritarian rule continues.
SG: Exactly. The interests of Putin and the Russians have diverged. He tries to maximize his personal power. The Russians want to live better. For the first 10 years of Putin's rule, these goals coincided because raw material exports were enough to reduce poverty. Putin was really popular then. But then corruption, censorship, the feeding of the oligarchs and their surroundings at the expense of other Russians stopped the growth. The stronger Putin was, the weaker the Russian economy. The war radicalized this process. We all see Putin destroying Ukraine with bombs and rockets. But the media does not see how much Putin is destroying Russia. Hundreds of thousands of young Russian professionals have already fled abroad. Russia's economy is isolated and increasingly destroyed by breaking ties with the world.
JŻ: Not with the whole world.
SG: With the developed world. Putin is strengthening relations with some less developed countries. This can make an impression at the UN, because it is clear during the vote that he is not completely alone. But that will not bring Russia development. What can Russia sell them? Raw materials, weapons, very simple products. And they can offer Russia the same. For a while, it will be enough for Russia not to back down in civilization. But development will not bring it. And the West will move forward.
JŻ: Repetition of the late USSR?
SG: More or less. But the severance of ties with the West is already causing the biggest recession since the early 1990s. After 23 years of absolute rule, Putin has brought Russia to a state where he has taken power and gained popularity precisely for getting Russia out of this state. For years, it was believed that what was good for Putin was good for Russia. The attack on Ukraine ended this phase. What is good for Putin has become bad for Russia.
JZ: Does Putin understand that?
SG: He understands. But the question is what he sees when he looks in the mirror and how he explains it.

 

JŻ: And?
SG: He thinks things are more important than GDP. He reiterates that Russia is a proud country, that more important is its imperial spirit, that the Russians must resist the West, because that is their historical mission. Of course, he knows how much Russia and its power and war cost. But he thinks it's worth paying the price, and in the end Russia will benefit. Because the only alternative he can imagine is the triumph of American imperialism, the exploitation of Russian wealth by the West, and the tightening of the NATO loop around Russia. If anything really scares him now, it is the prospect of Finland and Sweden joining NATO quickly. Even though he has some tactical success in Ukraine, the strategic effects of the war are exactly the opposite of his intentions. Ukraine is consolidating against Russia. NATO is moving closer and more firmly integrated. The West is leaving Russian raw materials. Russia is compromising and degenerating economically. The Second World Army is rotting in the Ukrainian mud for the third month in a row and cannot cope with the resistance of many times smaller Ukraine.
JZ: This war is a tragedy for Ukraine, it is destroying Russia, it is damaging the whole world, because the war is raising energy and food prices. But there is also an optimistic spark, which is essential. For two decades, the world has been under the growing impression of the success of the spin dictatorships that you and Daniel Treisman described in the book. Do the impacts and limits of the greatest spin dictatorship free us from the illusion that spin dictators are an alternative that will replace outdated Western market democracy?
SG: That's the point of the book. Spin dictatorships are the same impasse as previous dictatorships of fear, communism or fascism. In the beginning, they can give the impression of efficient systems. They tend to be really effective for a while. But they inevitably lead to self-destruction because they run out of resources. They need educated people to develop, but educated people rebel or emigrate to the free world. The more developed a company is, the more it costs to control it. As costs begin to outweigh the benefits. This is an irreparable internal contradiction of any dictatorship, which is best seen in Cuba and Venezuela.
JŻ: In this way, the Soviet bloc and the formerly Francoist Spain and Salazar's Portugal fell.
SG: Now this is the path of all post-Soviet spin dictatorships, led by Putin's Russia.
JŻ: Turkey too.
SG: Turkey is a strange case. Erdogan combines spin with terror and the appearance of democratic freedom. Prisoners of thousands of professors, judges and opposition. He controls and pursues the media. But - unlike Putin - he lost the last election in the five largest cities. The Turkish opposition was not driven to seclusion. This is a borderline case. The impact is similar to that in Russia - a deepening economic crisis, irreparable tensions masked by muscle strain and still strong support for the government. However, it is worth looking at Armenia, whose dictator tried to impose apparent democratization in 2018 and had to leave under the influence of mass protests when he was appointed prime minister after his party's election, although he had previously promised to retire. The democratization of Armenia shows what a good end to spin dictatorships may look like.
JZ: Kazakhstan is on this road.
SG: It's not democracy yet, but he's embarked on a path that Turkey and Russia can take after the war.
JŻ: Antony Blinken says that Russia will not win the war. What should that mean?
SG: A spin dictator can't lose. He still has to talk about his successes. He presents every defeat as a victory. However, there are limits to distorting the facts. Putin cannot tell the Russians that the war brought nothing and ended with a return to the February 24 border. He must connect at least a piece of territory to Russia.
JŻ: Donbas?
SG: At least part of Donbas and maybe Transnistria. Then he says: we have conquered new territories, we have defended our brothers in the Donbas, we have conquered Kherson, so we have water for Crimea, we have destroyed the fascist infrastructure and ousted NATO - so success again!
JŻ: The Russians will jump at that?
SG: Maybe most. But it will not be the end. The West will see this as a brutal violation of international law, will maintain sanctions, and Putin's Russia will become a classic dictatorship of fear. Because who cares about Kherson, when wages fall, prices rise, shops are empty, you can forget about holidays abroad, and even athletes do not leave the country. From month to month, Kherson will be less important, and emptying refrigerators will be increasingly important.
JŻ: Will this be the end of "illiberal democracy" as an enticing alternative to democratic capitalism?
SG: The final end. The spin of the dictatorship will end, as did Soviet communism.

JŻ: A good emperor will become a cruel wounded emperor. The place occupied by spin doctors will be taken by physicists and police officers with batons. And then what?
SG: We both grew up in a similar system. It can't last forever. It is much less stable in the twenty-first century than in the twentieth century. At the time, Western Radio was the only source of independent information. There are now Internet media and VPNs. YouTube still operates legally in Russia. After blocking Instagram, people en masse turned on VPN and the ban is ineffective. I'm not saying it will be easy to reach most Russians, but it will be incomparably easier than it was 30 or 50 years ago.
JŻ: Will Putin - like Pinochet, Honecker, Jaruzelski - be ready to resign in such a situation?
SG: No. He is already accused of war crimes and his surroundings as well. No one resigns to go to prison. But people close to him can arrest him. Although it seems unlikely - like any palace coup until it happens. There may be mass protests that the police will no longer want to suppress. This also looks unrealistic today, but it was similar during the Ukrainian Maidan and many other revolutions. This is how the fall of the famous Berlin Wall came about. Ceaușescu also did not intend to resign, but the Romanians overthrew his regime within three days.
JŻ: When will the Russians overthrow Putin?
SG: It's not known. But there is no going back after February 24th.
JŻ: Will Russia become different without Putin, or will it be like the declining USSR, where Brezhnev replaced Andropov, Andropov Chernenko and only after them Gorbachev appeared, until Yeltsin finally came?
SG: There are several scenarios. Putin may be overthrown by one of the generals who wants to become the new dictator. But it will not work because Putin has built this system for himself. He had long since got rid of all those who could replace him. It is more likely that governments will be seized by a junta of several generals. This will quickly run out, because everyone is very unpopular and Russia is facing difficult times. Under the influence of unrest, they will blame each other and eliminate them until everything falls apart. The third scenario is that, according to the constitution, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will take power, and he will call new, freer elections to deal with the West and prevent large-scale protests.
JŻ: So liberalization?
SG: Which is usually out of control with such regimes. We saw it during perestroika and during the French Revolution. Because such regimes almost always start changing too late and too slowly.
JŻ: And then you return to Russia?
Maybe. In the social sciences, we know that such changes cannot be planned. But as a former EBRD chief economist, I co-created the team with which we developed a post-war reconstruction plan for Ukraine. It was an offer I could not refuse - just like Navalny's offer had once been. I think that before I return to Russia, I will work with other economists to help Ukraine. This is my duty as an economist, as a European and as a citizen of Russia.

Jacek Żakowski spoke
Sergei Guriyev - Economist, Professor and Scientific Director of Sciences Po in Paris. He was Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2015-2019). In 2004-2013 he was rector of the Moscow New Economic School and, among other things, a member of the board of directors of Sberbank (Russia's largest retail bank). Adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012). He co-financed Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption fund and co-authored his economic program. He has recently published (with Daniel Treisman) a book: “Spin Dictators. The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century ”(Princeton, 2022)."

This has got to be one of the most interesting and realistic interviews of Putin and Russia I have ever read, it highlights so many points we often discuss like the state of mind of Putin, the end of the invasion  and the reality of the faltering Russian economy

Thanks for posting, very applicable and pertinent. And the translation was successful  so well done 

Edited May 21, 2022 by BruceVC

[Zoraptor]

Looks like Ukraine now has a real problem around Severodonetsk where they are in danger of being surrounded. While there is still a ~15km gap between the Russian attacks from north/ south there are only two roads in (with some swampy ground in between), and they're close enough to hit anything traveling along them with mortars or ATGMs- they may be close enough to the southern one to hit it even with HMG fire. Ukrainians have a lot of troops there as it is their de facto administrative capital of Lugansk and they really don't want to lose it. We've already seen some complaints from the troops there that they are running out of supplies too. It's also unlikely to last anywhere near as long as Mariupol if it is cut off despite having a similarly sized force since even Severodonetsk and Lysichansk together are nowhere near as big, and lack the two big steelworks as defensive focuses.

Russia is also claiming 2400+ surrendered from Azovstal. Which is way higher than I'd have expected, but I've also seen usually pro Ukrainian sources say that there were actually 2700 there in which case they're a few hundred short. Certainly most of the leaders have surrendered now, as the Russians are making propaganda hay via showing videos of them.