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   simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:54:30 JST simsa02

   • simsa04
   • es0mhi

   @es0mhi @simsa04
   We are mostly on the same page and differ only slightly in details.The main difference is that I don't see sanctions to be so effective that they can indeed press Russia & its people to change the course, i.e., beyond the level where the burdens of bearing poverty outweighs the need for "meaning". The main reason is that in particular Germany's import dependency on Russia (2019/2020: 42% of its hard coal, 55,2% of its natural gas, 42,4% of its crude oil came from Russia) >
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   • Embed this notice
     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:54:30 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     puts the effectiveness of any major sanctions like SWIFT-decoupling squarely out of reach. It's primarily Germany that undermines any meaningful western sanctions regime. And when the German government repeatedly refused to send weaponry to Ukraine, even forbids countries like Estonia to send weaponry that once have been produced in Germany (while at the same time being the 4rth-largest exporter of weapons in the world), then nothing but laughter echoes from the >
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:55:07 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     walls of the Kremlin. Germany in particular faces a shock in realising that most of its recent "Ostpolitik" with its reliance on economic entanglement has come to ashes. But that doesn't mean that politicians will change course, not the Social Democrats (in the end it's their "Ostpolitik" of Willy Brandt), not the Greens (it's their "success" in exiting nuclear energy) not the other, liberal and conservative parties who cherish the markets in the east.
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:55:40 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     I was a bit suprised that the Ukrainians put up a such a strong resistance. I feared that the build-up of 190,000 troops and heavy equipment around Ukraine's borders would have a similiar effect as the U.S.'s military concentration in Iraq in 2003. I thought that this massive troop deployment was to "shock and awe" Ukrainian soldiers into a sense of hopelessness and to surrender. This has not been the case (yet). And right now I cannot imagine a proper Russian strategy:
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:56:17 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     Stay in Ukraine and risk continued guerllia warfare; or leave Ukraine and the Ukrainians taking back their government and their institutions. In the end, I think, Russia can keep a thumb on Ukraine only if it can come up with some means of lasting pressure. Which I don't see yet.

     I kind of share your opinion that in the long run we're seeing a cracking Russia and that this, in a sense, is the "beginning of the end" – or rather, to me, the "final breakdown" of the former >
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:57:05 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     Soviet Union who's collapse seemingly took decades more than its dissolution in 1991, with years of seeiming stabilisation (after Yeltsin), and a fruther slide into oblivion after its attack on Ukraine. That Putin even invaded Ukraine at all is to me a sign that not his grip on Russia but Russia itself is at a point in which it senses forebodingly the writing on the wall and turns to suicidal methods which may, for a short period of time, yield some of the desired results.
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:57:45 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     But the price for Russia, the Ukraine, and Europe at large is high. We can only hope and pray that no scuffles occur between Russian and NATO troops. Declining states, in their way down, esp. with a large military force, prove to be the most dangerous ones, in the most dangerous moments of their history. And that's when states like Russia may freeze in a kind of coccon and endure aggressively deprivation, militarism, and the mutual lateral violence of its citizens, all >
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:58:20 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     while blaming the West for its misery and waiting for the day of payback. Appeasement in this situation may take off some pressure and consolidate the situation for the moment – which can be useful –, but in the long run invites this further aggression the nation bred in its cocoon of timeless hopelessness. Either way, we'll have to brace for major economic devastations and military confrontations in the whole of Eastern Europe.
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:58:56 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     PS: Your claim "Built on an absurd narrative it was still very robust and resistant. But in the end it crashed through economic difficulties" seems to me to miss the point I was up to:

     The Soviet Union wasn't built on a *narrative* but on the *sacrifices* thereof. It's the sacrifices, the mutual violence, & that things couldn't have been in vain after all what had been endured that made the "narrative" & clinging to the state (psychologically) so compulsory & effective.
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     simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 18:59:29 JST simsa02

     in reply to

     • simsa04
     • es0mhi

     @es0mhi @simsa04
     It's improbable that another "anchor for identification" can be found quickly to open a path for change. Cf. this recent thread of mine: https://gnusocial.net/conversation/6475754#notice-11007325

     Sorry for all the barrage of stuff :-)
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