Another August, another war scare. Intermittent reports of Russian military forces “staging” near Ukraine. Are the guns about to honor the title of a famous history book once again?
Almost certainly not. Or at least, not by Russia’s hand.
(1) Though you could play a drinking time for every mention of “Gleiwitz” in conjunction with the recent terrorist incidents in Crimea, no evidence has since been furnished in support of the theory that Russia set the whole thing up. As Alexander Mercouris points out, the Ukrainian counter-allegation that the shootout was the result of drunk friendly fire and that Evgeny Panov, the ringleader of the plot, had been abducted from Ukraine to play the role of scapegoat is “too fantastic for anyone to take seriously.”
(2) The Russian version of events – that there were two shootouts with Ukrainian sabotage teams, during which an FSB officer and a Russian Airborne Troops soldier were killed – remains the most self-consistent and credible one to date. Elements of the Maidanist Ukrainian elites have ample reasons to mount such an operation, including: (a) Spoiling the Crimean tourist season; (b) Disrupting the forthcoming elections in Crimea; (c) Remedying the decidedly embarassing lack of “native” Crimean resistance to the so-called “Russian occupation”; (d) Reigniting Western interest in Ukraine, which has been slacking off lately (see below).
(3) Although there has been some tough rhetoric from Russia after the incident – Putin talked of Ukraine “resorting to the practice” of terror – nothing much has since come of it apart from Russia cancelling the next round of Normandy Four talks scheduled for September in China. Otherwise, diplomatic relations with Ukraine aren’t even getting cancelled, a possibility that was mooted by Izvestia in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. All in all, this has been an extremely milquetoast response to terrorist attacks organized out of a hostile neighboring country, for which Putin has been excoriated by Russian nationalists. “The “war with the junta” has been postponed for an indefinite period,” Igor Strelkov complained, pointing out that the Kremlin now seems to be more concerned with Syria instead of the plight of the Donbass under Ukrainian bombings. “Putin saved the Syrians. And is prepared to save them further. Together with the “cursed pindosy” and “Turkish backstabbers”… that is, “dear friends.” Hard to keep track of these things. But what’s the difference, in the end? The main goal, after all, is to save Syrians.”
(4) The 40,000 Russian troops – a consistently familiar figure throughout the past two years – that have been claimed to be at Ukraine’s border are not enough for a proper invasion. Stratfor estimated that Russia would need about 30,000 personnel to seize the “land corridor” to Crimea, though that was back in early 2015 when the Ukrainian Armed Forces were much weaker. The much cited recent Institute for the Study of War map purporting to display Russian military dispositions as of August 12 shows that at best only half that number is present on the requisite front.
(5) The Saker might claim that “Ukronazi attack against Novorussia would be exceedingly unlikely to succeed” and even that “Novorussians are capable of not only stopping a Ukronazi attack, but even of an operationally deep counter-attack,” but people who are actually on the ground seem to disagree. For instance, here is what Alexander Zhuchkovsky, an NVF insider and generally reliable source, has to say about that: “I am a big patriot of the DNR and our Armed Forces, but one has to be objective. It’s clear to everyone that without Russia’s help we will not be able to last even a week against the Ukrainian Armed Forces, if they throw all their forces against the LDNR. Not because we are worse than they are (we’re better), but simply because the correlation of forces are against us.” At its core, the NVF remains a militia (opolchenie); a very well armed and trained militia, to be sure, possibly even the world’s most powerful one, but a militia nonetheless – good in defense, but not much of a factor in any truly large-scale offensive operations, and outnumbered 40,000 to 250,000.
(6) Some of the conspiracy theories have revolved around the idea that Putin is plotting a war to raise United Russia’s ratings in the forthcoming parliamentary elections: “He constantly needs a series of quasi-wars to keep the pro-Putin majority mobilized,” according to an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center. Such ideas are based on a fundamental misreading of the Russian economy and society – namely, that living standards have collapsed due to the sanctions and that the Putin system is in crisis (which one can creatively tie in with recent political reshufflings, such as the replacement of Sergey Ivanov with Anton Vaino as head of the Presidential Administration). In reality, the recession has been mild, at least so far as recessions go; it has almost certainly either ended or is close to ending; and according to opinion polls, United Russia faces absolutely no challenges to its dominance (if anything, electoral law chances since the last elections cycle means that United Russia is likely to actually increase its share of the Duma’s seats this year).
(7) Like it or not, but outright war with Maidanist Ukraine has been ruled out from the beginning, as the more perceptive analysts like Rostislav Ischenko have long recognized. If there was a time and a place for it, it was either in April 2014, or August 2014 at the very latest. Since then, the Ukrainian Army has gotten much stronger. It has been purged of its “Russophile” elements, and even though it has lost a substantial percentage of its remnant Soviet-era military capital in the war of attrition with the LDNR, it has more than made up for it with wartime XP gain and the banal fact of a quintupling in military spending as a percentage of GDP from 1% to 5%. This translates to an effective quadrupling in absolute military spending, even when accounting for Ukraine’s post-Maidan economic collapse. Russia can still crush Ukraine in a full-scale conventional conflict, and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future, but it will no longer be the happy cruise to the Dnepr that it would have been two years earlier.
By the same token, however, now is absolutely not the worst time for the Ukrainian Maidanists themselves to heat things up.
(1) The economic collapse has stabilized, but the economic miracle that Maidanists have been promising as soon as Ukraine was to be “freed” from Russo-Soviet kleptocracy has yet to happen. The economy remains in the doldrums, and along with it, Poroshenko’s approval ratings, which are currently lower than Viktor “Vegetable” Yanukovych’s absolute minimum while he was in power.
(2) Due to nationalist pressure, Ukraine is incapable of implementing Minsk II in principle. The longer it dithers, however, the more Western politicians lose interest in it, and even begin to talk up the possibility of restoring normal relations with Russia again – the new Tory government of Theresa May and her FM Boris Johnson in the UK are the most striking example to date, though similar sentiments have been expressed by people such as Italian PM Matteo Renzi and German FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Poroshenko’s failure to stem corruption is beginning to lose him the trust even of the most hardcore foreign svidomy activists. The Maidanist regime has even been unable to fulfill one of the Maidan’s most elementary demands, that of visa-free travel with the EU; they have only succeeded in making said “bezviz” an ironic meme to make fun of svidomy on Ukrainian discussion boards.
(3) And if all this isn’t enough there is also the trumpening presence of Donald Trump on the American electoral horizon – a man who has made it clear he has no quarrel with Russia, doesn’t see enabling Eastern Yuropeans to pursue their Russophobic vendettas as a good use of American resources, and recognizes the democratic choice of the Crimean people to be with Russia. Unsurprisingly, Maidanist politicians have been lining up to ritualistically denounce Trump as a “dangerous outcast” and thrice-accursed traitor to freedom/democracy/fluffy kittens/etc. A Trump victory will therefore be a huge ideological and PR blow against the Maidan regime, even if Trump’s apparent Russophilia turns out to be phantasmagorical and contents himself with leaving Obama’s realistic non-interventionist policy towards Ukraine intact.
A new war nicely takes care of all three factors.
(1) Permanent austerity can be ascribed to perpetual war, while providing a pretext for suppressing dissent from aspiring political challengers. In particular, the collapse of Poroshenko’s ratings has made Yulia Tymoshenko, a businesswoman-politician previously discredited by corruption allegations that went into the hundreds of millions of dollars, a credible political figure once again (if only because the rest of the Ukrainian elite is at least equally bankrupt in terms of legitimacy). Moreover, Tymoshenko has become the chief political patron of Nadia Savchenko, the “hero airwoman” who has lost the trust of the svidomy who had formerly adulated over her in record time by making overtures to the heads of the LDNR and calling for direct negotiations with them. This is not welcome news to the ruling Maidan elites.
(2) Limited war with Russia will make it much harder for the US to “abandon” its “ally” Ukraine, and will torpedo current trends towards normalizing relations between Russia and the West. Since Ukraine’s strategy boils down to the West “suffocating” Russia before Russia suffocates Ukraine, that would be a highly positive development that might even be worth the loss of extra territory to the LDNR. The Western media can be relied upon to blame Russia regardless of what happens, and by extension, the people they have associated with “enabling” Putinist imperialism – namely, Donald Trump (incidentally, this is why him getting rid of the competent-but-compromised Paul Manafort as head of his campaign is a regrettable but prudent strategic move).
(3) This brings us to Peter Lavelle’s notion of an “October Surprise”: Poroshenko is “Washington’s man in Kiev,” he is in a “position to offer some favors,” and considering that the Maidan regime was ultimately enabled by Hillary Clinton’s proteges at the State Department – that is, the Nuland gang – it’s not exactly a wild bet that he will deliver:
What is now needed and is probably being planned is a manufactured incident to make it look like Russia attacked and invaded Ukraine. The American public will be rallied with the usual mantra “something must be done” and the Trump campaign will be left flat footed, red faced, and denounced. Joe McCarthy will smile with glee from the grave.
At the beginning of 2016, I predicted a 30% chance that the war in Donbass will reignite sometime this year. However, this was done under the assumption that Trump only had a 40% chance of securing the Republican nomination, and before he had made his antipathy to the Pozocracy really explicit. So, unfortunately, I have to raise this to as high as 50% now.
And if that coin toss leads to renewed war, it’s a safe bet that Ukraine would be the main instigator.
I don’t think Manafort’s departure had anything at all to do with the pathetic excuse for kompromat released against him or with Russia. Trump simply was never at ease with his fundamentally uncombative approach. Trump has to be Trump to appeal to voters.
I think you are overestimating the UAF, Mister Karlin.
As you said in another article,…
hence the UAF’s superior numbers are much smaller in Donbass.
The wartime XP gain was in static battle, not the maneuver warfare which is the kind of war Russia could and would fight in the Ukraine.
There are reports that Ukraine’s increased military spending is not enough to fund maintenance and repair: http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1894426.html
Which leads to new schemes to avoid paying their industry till the Ukraine gets enough IMF-money: http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2060599.html
Combined with the constantly decreasing amount of military equipment inherited from the USSR, it suggest that the available equipment of the UAF should be worse, not better than in 2014.
Besides – Ukrian Neperemozhliva Armija is still made up mostly of conscripts. Sorry, sorry – “temporarily mobilised” guys – after all, draft is barbarous Sovit practise that has no place in democratic Best Ukrajina!
But the result is the same – after one year in the trenches guys of all age groups (poor enough not to bribe their RVKs to avoid the service) are getting beck home – shellshocked and with no compensation for their service to Ridna Nen’ka Ukrajina.
The one’s who really accumulates XP? NatzBats and their colourful characters! But, OTOH, they tend to be less supplied of all and have to resort to the time honured European practices right from the 17th c. to keep themselves fed, armed and clothed.
By pure coincidence Poroshenko and his Camarilla would gladly see these “Lytsars of Dignity” dead.
I think Mr Karlin is overestimating the quality of the average Ukrainian conscript, as other contributors have mentioned. I’m reminded of the Communist era when Yugoslavia had the 5th largest army in the world. How did that turn out, chaps ?
Maybe better would be the German Army immediately before Conscription ended, except the Ukrainians have older and less effective equipment.
But how can you take seriously an army whose special forces can’t even carry out covert attacks competently. The loss of life apart, it has aspects of the Keystone Cops about it, with Petro “too much chocolate” Poroshenko playing the Fatty Arbuckle role.
I agree with almost all the points raised in this article, but there is an important error: the 250.000 number is for the whole ukraine, while the number deployed in the Donbass was never higher than 60.000-65.000 over the whole course of the war. Besides, this number (60000) was true in 2015, but in the last year several waves of mobilization came back home and where only partially replaced. Moreover, even though there were XP gains, alcoholism has become a very serious problem in the several parts of the Ukrainian front, if not epidemic like in the Luhansk front. This is why the Saker’s analysis can not be quickly dismissed and it is quite realistic
But 250k could be deployed against DNR/LNR (assuming no Russian intervention).
If Trump loses will there be any permanent effect on GOP foreign policy?
I doubt it. They might assimilate his thinking on immigration, but is foreign-war-fatigue a big enough factor for them to consider?
Warfare is not a linear affair. In case of Russian and Ukrainian Armed Forces we have a generation (or more) abyss separating the two. This is if even exclude Air Force which is a force multiplier. Obviously Ukraine doesn’t have de facto operational AF. Here, XP or no XP is the same as with inexperienced at the time US Armed Forces (granted, within “coalition”) demolishing an extremely experienced Saddam’s Army in 1991. It is not only materiel comparisons (Biddle’s dyadic comparison could be used here) which should be accounted for but C4ISR which on Russian side is simply from the different universe when compared with Ukrainian one, even when augmented with NATO capabilities. It is the frequency of OODA loops, even when materiel element is comparable, which defines the “yield point” for opposition forces. Russian Armed Forces OODA frequency is on several orders of magnitude larger than that of Ukraine’s Army. And yes, materiel component is pretty much one-sided in Russia’s favor, especially in the field which matters today the most (always did, really–hence artillery’s preponderance as a decider since Borodino) for combined arms operations–Stand Off capability. So, I will go out on a limb here and, keeping in mind derivative for duration of battle from Lanchester’s Square Law, would say that–no, Ukrainian Armed Forces’ yield point will be achieved even BEFORE any ground force of Russian Army makes a contact with any surviving units of Kiev’s force. So, this brings us to merely calculating Operational Tempo for Russia’s VKS and other stand off capabilities in completely decapitating military-political top of Ukraine. Once it is done, the drive to Dnieper will be just that–drive. The issue of remaining pockets of resistance and sabotage and partisan groups could be decided by other means. It is also where most casualties of Russian Army will be.
They won’t adapt his immigration positions, either. They are trying to torpedo his chances so that all Trump’s issues, popular with the American people, can be seen as losers and the GOP can get back to arguing about transsexuals in bathrooms or whatever other nonsense is in vogue. The Republicans know they are a party of controlled opposition and now are merely trying to hold on to their sinecures.
Mr. Karlin, how do you think a Ukraine flare-up would influence the US political climate? Obviously the (((media))) will try to crucify Trump over his “shady Russian connections”, but Hillary is such a naked Neocon interventionist that I could see it backfiring. We have something of a proud history of not fighting Russia, and I don’t think too many people (average folks, anyway) are too eager to give that up.
I’m assuming that if it ever comes to a real, literal war between Russia and the Ukraine, professional Ukrainian officers would just get on the phone with their Russian counterparts nearby and start negotiating the terms of their units’ surrender. Since the Ukrainian state cannot survive such a war, there would be nobody to try them for treason later. The volunteer nationalist battalions would fight, but they aren’t nearly as well-armed as the rest of the Ukraine’s forces, and they’ll simply become the main category of casualties of that kind of war.
I’m very curious about what stopped the planned Russian intervention on 4/25/14. If we don’t know what it was, how can we know whether it’ll continue to be a factor indefinitely?
At the level of inklings and hunches I think that both a repeat of the 2014-2015 kind of limited proxy war and the freezing of the conflict for the duration of the Putin era are more likely than an all-out war of the kind I described above.
I’m assuming that Hillary will win comfortably. The things that can scuttle that are a huge terrorist attack or the release of some truly devastating leak right before the election. The DNC leak was perfectly timed for the DNC convention, so there’s hope that something even better would be timed for week before the election. It’s kind of the last hope at this point. Not a very strong one.
I took Trump’s second change of campaign manager as a good sign, a sign that he’s not resigned to losing, that he’s still trying to find the right guy, the right approach.
[I’m very curious about what stopped the planned Russian intervention on 4/25/14. If we don’t know what it was, how can we know whether it’ll continue to be a factor indefinitely?]
We don’t even know for sure that it was planned. It could have been a head-fake from the beginning.
The attempted attack in Crimea really makes Russia look bad. The border of Crimea to Ukraine should be one of the easiest to control (I think it’s just 8 kilometers or so). Yet multiple Ukrainians were able to infiltrate.
If Russia were facing a serious adversary instead of Ukraine they could be in deep trouble.
Anybody with any sense in Kiev (agree that is not all) can see that Crimea is gone. Equally, simply waiting for the Donbass to collapse further is the most cost effective and effective strategy. Any quick deal will be on Russian terms that force federalism and Donbass veto powers on Ukraine. In return for what exactly? A rust belt with a past and a present but the future belongs to India (and indeed Russia which has some modernised plant). Russia seems to help the slow collapse of the insurgency with regular assassinations of the more aggressive insurgent leaders. The retirements of Putin’s key lieutenants are also removing hawks. Sechin, if not removed, has been muted. Chechnya is climbing up the agenda with the failure of Turkish talks and Kadyrov’s overtures to the Saudis. The hawks might go for some military consolidation of the enclave before Chechnya blows up but there is a risk of a war on three fronts for a country where the best economic news is that the rate of collapse is slowing down. The massive fall in the workforce has kept unemployment at bay but also guarantees long term economic decline without huge increases in productivity that require foreign capital and know how to achieve. Political gestures of confrontation based on secure oil sales are over. Time for Realpolitik about Russia’s place in the world or paying a heavier and heavier cost for fantasies of regional hegemony.
If alcoholism is a problem for Ukraine, the Donbass militia are drowning in vodka, especially Lugansk where they were mafia based anyway.
Six guys from a SERIOUS ADVERSARY could have conquered a province with tens of thousands of Russian troops in it. Top kek.
I think I tend to lean towards that explanation. Russia then could have been bluffing that it was going to invade to make the Ukrainians pause and give the then still inchoate DNR/LNR militias some critical time to prepare.
This event would, of course – if done successfully – appear as a last minute decision not to invade.
It did not work.
I doubt that this was the goal.
The Russian government did not want the fighting in Donbass in the first place.
Peace and stability.
What are you talking about?
Rather than making questonable claims, read more about the rebel areas: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/08/18/guns-money-and-fun-in-rebel-ukraine
It wouldn’t matter. Once Hillary gets 20 million illegals legalized, there will never be a Republican president in our lifetime.
The good news for us Russians is that Hillary’s immigration policy will accelerate America’s transformation into a third-world country.
Gorbachev is right.
The USA needs a Perestroika as well.
I was about to write a retort, but this comment is so deluded, so obviously detatched from reality, that I’ll just leave this Russophobe in his imaginary universe.
America is screwed either way. Demographics is as they say destiny, and America’s future looks a lot like Brazil. But Hillary can accelerate this process, so perhaps her win is for the best? (from Russian perspective) Problem is stupid hag can give us a lot of trouble in the next 8 years.
Why has the Left suddenly become so Russophobic? They used to never talk about Russia and they couldn’t even fake interest in the Ukraine crisis when it first broke out, the NeoCons were screaming bloody murder but the Left just shrugged.
Now they are all die hard Russia haters. What happened? Is it all because of Trump?
Depends on who you mean by the left. The MSM, which of course roots for the Dems, has been anti-Putin ever since he started asserting Russian independence in the early part of the previous decade. But since everyone in power and everyone who had a shot of getting into power in Washington shared in this anti-Putin consensus, this wasn’t a big topic of discussion for the MSM. When it looked like Ron Paul was doing well, they shut him up very vigorously with those old newsletters of his.
Trump does not share in the DC anti-Putin consensus, so the MSM is scared of him. “OMG, we have a presidential candidate who says good things about PUTIN!” They were in panic mode, especially the week after the GOP convention, when Trump was leading in the polls. And because of this panic you’ve been seeing more than a usual amount of anti-Putin, anti-Russian stuff in the MSM. But they’ve been anti-Putin and anti-Russian for a long time, just quieter, because they didn’t feel as much of an urgency and anxiety about this issue before Trump showed up, threatening to turn US foreign policy in a different direction.
If you take the long historical view it is leftists/progressives who have historically been far less enarmored with Russia.
Who talked of the “gendarme of Europe” and “prison of peoples” in 19th century political discourse? Socialists, not conservatives. Marx had very little good to say about Russia and Eastern Europe in general, the idea being that the advanced Western nations were the only ones of interest from a Communist revolutionary perspective. (Though he did modify this view somewhat towards the end of his life).
Today’s situation is in many ways a reversion to traditional forms after the abberation that was the Soviet period. The Russophobia/Russophilia spectrum now runs from the “militant cosmopolitanism” of European socialism (which today is homosexualist neocon SJWism of the Kirchick sort) that characterizes the former, to the outright Russophilia of a large part of the Alt Right and neoreaction.
Thanks for that nice analysis of the situation. It makes sense to me.
The early USSR was socially liberal: it legalized homosexuality and abortion, promoted modernist “art” and the “glass of water” theory of sexuality (aka free love), abolished grades in education, blew up churches, etc. At that time it was natural for the Western left to turn from Russophobia to, if not Russophilia, then to Sovietophilia.
In the mid-30s Stalin turned the USSR around to social conservatism. And this conservatism lasted until Gorbachev. You’d think that the Western right could have turned to Russophilia/Sovietophilia in response to that, but it didn’t. Why?
It could have partly been cluelessness on the part of the Western right. Also, the US right is implicitly white, and the USSR supported guys like Fidel and Che, who, in spite of being white themselves, dispossessed Latin American whites. It’s my impression that modern Russia is still closer to people like Chavez/Maduro/Morales in Latin America than to their whiter enemies.
Nixon, unusually for a US right-winger, understood that the USSR was socially conservative:
http://www.csdp.org/research/nixonpot.txt
And let’s look at the
strong societies. The Russians. God damn it, they root them out [Glossy: he was talking about homosexuals just before that],
they don’t let them around at all. You know what I mean? I don’t
know what they do with them. Now, we are allowing this in this
country when we show [unintelligible]. Dope? Do you think the
Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can allow, not if they
can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope,
immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies.
That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the
stuff, they’re trying to destroy us.”
The USSR wasn’t pushing homosexuality or drugs on the West. But the rest in the above quote is correct. Nixon was the brightest post-WWII US president, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. He understood a lot of stuff that most US right-wingers of his time didn’t, which is probably why he was eventually forced to resign. Could the above line of thought have led him towards détente? That seems plausible to me.
Putin turned Russia towards social conservatism after the 1990s, though not to the same extent as Stalin, and with much milder methods. But unlike the second, socially-conservative USSR, he seeks out ties with Western right-wingers. And they’ve been slowly responding to him. Is that a smart strategy from Russia’s perspective? I don’t know. I sympathize with social conservatism, but Western social conservatives are less powerful than Western liberals.
Smart Westerners, and that’s who you want on your side, are much more comfortable with people like Bernie and Corbyn than with people like Trump and Le Pen, and if your brand is tied to Trump, it’s harder to appeal to the kind of people who voted for Bernie and Corbyn. I personally prefer Trump to Bernie for a lot of reasons, but I don’t know which is the smarter strategy from Russia’s perspective. Can Russia do both? I don’t know if the Western public has enough tolerance for cognitive dissonance for that.
Anyway, this is all fun to ponder.
You’re simplifying a bit. The European hard left can generally still be pretty Russophile while simultaneously holding SJW positions (e.g. Die Linke in Germany).
Because according to Marxist doctrine there could be no workers revolution without proletariat class consciousness, which didn’t exist in multiethnic, pre Industrial, Tsarist Russia. When Russia modernized things ended up playing out along the lines of Marxist theory.
Engaging in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the break in of the offices of the Democratic party also probably didn’t help.
It’s widely believed that Kennedy stole the 1960 election from him. There was pro-Dem voting fraud in Chicago. If I remember correctly, some precincts were reported as being 100% Dem?
What I’m saying is that a certain amount of illegality is forgiven if the powers that be are for you. This has just happened with Hillary and those e-mails. But if the powers that be are against you, they use these same or smaller amounts of illegality to ruin you.
Well, sure. But I don’t think it’s a particularly bad simplification.
I remember looking at opinion polls of the French on Russia by party. The Communists/Melenchon supporters were the most “Russophobe”; the most Russophile, of course, were the “far right” FN.
I suspect Die Linke’s relative Russophilia might have more to do with its strong presence in the territories of the former DDR, which is way more Russophile than the rest of Germany in general.
The think is that the whole “seeking out ties with Western right-wingers” has only happened after attempts to establish solid ties with the Western establishment failed.
And being rather anti-left, the Russian establishment would rather not being to close to the Western non-establishment left-wing which leaves the Western non-establishment right-wingers.
So, it is less about “smart strategy” than taking the only strategic choice left to maintain closer ties to Western politicians.
The only mistake Nixon did was getting caught.
Not sure about the states, but certainly in the UK it’s been like this for at least a decade. There was once a clear divide between the middle class, “Guardian left”, and the workin class, “daily mirror left”. The former had Luke Harding, Nick Cohen, Dennis McShane, Soros and assorted atlanticist Eastern Europeans and Russians ranting away on an almost daily basis, the latter mostly stuck to car crash, bear and vodka stories. This changed after MH117.
I suspect the influence of Eastern Europe (and atlanticist Russian emigrants) has played a big role in this; a lot of young journalists have spent a good proportion of their formative years there, and these attitudes have metastasised. (Buzzfeed Ben being the prime example).
A lot of what passes for the mainstream left in developed countries are liberals with a leftist veneer and they’re much better at packaging their militarism in a way that appeals to liberal sensibilities. Whilst it failed to prevent the war, there was a huge anount of liberal opposition to Iraq, largely because they hated Bush and thought he was just a dumb hick who wanted to stick it to the A-Rabs. Liberal anti war sentiment mysteriously disappears when a democratic administration does the same thing.
Just to engage on one of your many cogent points, one of the truisms of history that you can always say about any period from 1700 onwards is “Russian artillery was superior to the enemy’s”. I can’t think of an example when that wasn’t true.
That is why in Russia artillery is called a God Of War. Statistically, upward to 80% of enemy losses are inflicted by artillery, including MLRS and such other terrifying things as TOS “Buratino”. Colonel Douglas Macgregor makes an excellent point in his Time magazine piece:
http://nation.time.com/2012/12/03/usmc-under-utilized-superfluous-military-capability/
Ivanov, Yakunin, Surkov is slipping away, the FSB raid on the Investigative Committee offices. Lift your eyes beyond the propaganda machine.
And yes. Life goes on. Contrary to say, Save the Donbass or Anna News, the Ukrainian government was not turning the Donbass into another Syria. The Lugansk militia in particular are still drunken thieves and rapists though. Their HQ was in a brothel for ages.
The USSR wasn’t that strong. It was awash with alcohol and divorce and collapsed economically and politically. France in 1967, for example, was far more resilient.
I agree with you about Nixon in general thought. The elder Bush probably had Russia assessed best. He thought that with no more subsidies to Ukrainian agriculture and Central Asian backwardness, Russia would be a much stronger economy than the USSR.
This is dumb thinking. One could eliminate the subsidies without giving up territory. Russia needs these territories to project power into regions of South Asia and Eastern Europe.
According to Anatoly Karlin
Yakunin was a hypocrite who failed to do his job: http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14069
Surkov is not liked by supporters of Novorussia.
None of them seem to be real hawks.
You do sound like a propagandist, though.
I guess I will follow this advice.
Would that be ‘phantasmagorical’, Anatoly?
Even during the Soviet period the western left was mostly Trotskyite, and therefore, at some level, anti-Soviet. From the end of the WW2 onward, their usual position with regard to the USSR and the US was something along the lines of ‘a plague on both their houses’. With the rise of Stalin, the USSR ceased to be culturally radical, and also–perhaps not coincidentally–ceased to be Jewish dominated. Although Stalin had a fair number of Jewish followers himself, it is undeniably true that the Trotskyites were disproportionately Jewish; and his followers tended to be the sort of Jews who were more interested in burning churches than building factories. They were far more interested in being culturally ‘avant-guarde’ than in modernizing Russia economically. That’s why industrialization proceeded much more rapidly under Stalin, especially from 1929 onward, than it had before.
I think that’s a factor, but I also think Linke’s position has more to do with their general pro-peace and anti-NATO stances than pure Russophilia. It’s not as though they’re in favor of importing contemporary Russia’s social or economic policies, for example. But, yes, as a rule, the East Germans seem more favorably disposed towards the Russians than the Wessis.
Surkov is ‘not liked” by some of the supporters of Novorossia largely due to incessant propaganda by Girkin and so called Colonel Cassad, which, by sheer incompetence of originators of this propaganda, assigned to Surkov every single evil intention those supporters could think of. The fact that Surkov was merely a caretaker and a figure appointed by and totally dependent on Putin somehow escaped the minds of Cassad and Girkin. Obviously, very many other things and obvious facts escaped those minds too, but then again, GOU of General Staff and GRU somehow failed to include Mr. Strelkov or Colonel Cassad into their list of people with “access” (dopusk) to their briefings.
Actually, it was Trotsky who wanted an all-out industrialization already in the early-to-mid-twenties, when Stalin was still in favor of NEP. Trotskyites were happy in 1929 when Stalin finally started to implement their program, in fact, many joined Stalin and received high positions, until in the second half of the thirties they got finally killed by Stalin. Ordzhonikidze’s conflict with Stalin was based on the fact that Stalin had his ex-Trotskyite deputy arrested, and Ordzhonikidze tried to protect him (in vain) on the grounds that he did nothing wrong and was helping the industrialization process. Finally after a heated argument with Stalin he shot himself.
Does the Russian government even have a plan for Ukraine, beyond waiting for Ukraine to fall to pieces of her own accord?
Barring the worst-case scenario of a Trump presidency, Poroshenko looks like he can stay in power almost indefinitely. The oligarchs have proven they can’t unite against him, and the failure of Kolomoisky’s great stand on the Dnieper bodes ill for any renewed bid for power from Timoshenko. The nationalist gangs are not a coherent threat and a popular uprising is not on the cards, since those who suffer most from austerity measures either have the option of skipping the country, or are too weak and vulnerable to do anything but die(quietly or otherwise). The only potential internal challenge to him is the DNR, which – assuming it is capable of a successful large-scale offensive – will do nothing as long as Moscow wants to avoid being lumbered with any more Ukrainian territory.
They had a plan.
The problem was that the plan depended foolishly on the cooperation of Porky.
Of course, it did not work.
What about nationalists within the Ukrainian state?
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/report-on-donbass/
I guess that makes Putin a rather questionable leader.
Or maybe something escaped you, and not them who have closer ties to this conflict.
Hey Anatoly, a bit topic here but check this out: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280735749_Gene_pool_similarities_and_differences_between_Ukrainians_and_Russians_of_Slobozhanshchina_based_on_Y-chromosome_data
Haplogroup frequencies of ethnic Russian and Ukrainian populations in the borderlands. Basically, next time a svidorast mentions Finno-Ugrians (and if you spend any significant amount of time talking to them, you know it’s coming in 5-4-3-2-1), slap em upside the head with this.
No, this merely makes him a President of 148 million citizens of Russian Federation to have the right not to listen to advice of former NCO and a civilian blogger.
It is not something, but rather very large arrays of information (and knowledge) available only to people on the level of Chief Of general Staff and Director of FSB. I talk about it constantly, it is just that my background allows me to admit this and resign myself to the fact that people at the top know something I am not even supposed to know.
Hm, I thought that Girkin and Cassad were closer to the Director of FSB and Superintendent of GRU. I wonder if Girkin also has a direct line to Putin personally.
P.S. Don’t remember where but this thesis of “different towers” was fairly recently (2-3 months ago) completely debunked.
Which is to say comes down to the issue of general incompetence of Russian so called “elite” which is deeply rooted in 1990s. Zurabov being one of them. Latest cadre reshuffle is a rather healthy process.
Did you read the article?
It stated:
So, even in perhaps the most mixed border region there are measurable, if small, differences between Ukrainians and Russians with Russians having a stronger Finnic component.
The article furthermore concludes:
As always, your comments are worthwhile reading.
You are not the first one to make the analogy between a potential Russia-Ukraine was to the war between America and Iraq. This analogy many be roughly correct in terms of Russia’s technological advantages and all that implies, but ignores the soldiers – Ukrainians are not Arabs after all, but Slavs with a military tradition and history not too dissimilar to Russia’s.
It would seem, then, that contemporary Russia would be fighting against not another Saddam’s Iraq, but against a 1990’s Russia that had a little more than twice Iraq’s population. Contemporary Russia would of course win this war, but I suspect that such a war would be less easy than was America’s invasion of Iraq.
Ukraine’s regional GRP figures for 2015 came out. Here is a map of Ukraine showing GRP decline by region in 2014:
http://i.imgur.com/XSMQWDW.png
One can see how bad 2015 was, because in 2014 some regions had actually experienced economic growth.
That being said, modest growth is projected for 2016 (forecasts are in the 1% to 2% range, depending on source).
As a comparison, Russia’s economy declined by about 3% in the same time period (.7% growth 2014, 3.7% decline 2015).
What do you think of this thing?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/fd5cf143-441a-3ec3-ab65-a948f90e7078/next-big-future%3A-poland.html
Basically, every part of Ukraine that had an economy recorded 10%+ decline in 2015. The people of Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk have paid dearly for their political passivity. And they are set to pay more! Svidomy barbarians won’t stop until the entire East is reduced to wasteland.
Having a strong faith in svidomites’ measurement of their own GDP is like having the same faith in a teenager’s measurement of his own penis.
No. A chart shows 2014 figures here:
http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2008/vvp/vrp/vrp2008_u.htm
Most provinces did not decline 10% or more in 2015. Lviv, for example, had 1.4% decline in 2014. It had about 3.6% decline in 2015, for a total 5% decline 2014-2015 relative to 2013. Kharkiv’s decline in 2014 matched Lviv’s at 1.4%. Because its total 2014-2015 decline was 9.1%, its economy certainly did not shrink more than 10% in 2015, but under 8%.
If they had chosen rebellion and turned their provinces into war zones they might have seen results similar to those of the two Donbas oblasts – over 60% decline.
Ukraine’s economy has stopped its slide and is projected to grow 1%-2%. I don’t know how this growth is expected to be distributed, however.
Back to your obsession?
Biletsky, Yarosh et al can’t really be considered ‘outside’ the Ukrainian state any longer. Apart from their role as enforcers, they also soak up the militant and malcontent youth of Ukrainian society and direct its energies down paths that lead absolutely nowhere. Parubiy probably hasn’t changed his beliefs since the old days, but now that he’s found comfortable (and presumably profitable) niche for himself he’s content to serve. There have been a few known Banderites in the regular armed forces, but does anybody seriously expect the Ukrainian military to start making and unmaking governments in the south American manner?
Where the growth is supposed to come from? They are now cut off from vast and diverse Russian market and there is no room for Ukraine in the European market. I read somewhere that Ukraine tried exporting honey to EU, but its annual quota was filled within a few weeks! lol
Let’s face it, West Ukraine lives off subsistence farming and seasonal work in Poland and Russia. The same hopeless future awaits the East if they don’t wake up.
No growth at all?
What happened to the recovery in the second half of 2015.
It is 1%. The economy of the Ukraine did not growth in the first half of 2016.
Why not?
The Ukraine’s democracy is dysfunctional, the armed forces more respected than any government institution.
So far, money and rhetoric keep them quiet, but that can change.
Russia does not even have so many citizens.
Maybe he should so that his Ukraine-policy is less of a failure.
Then why did they fail in the past so badly if they have access to so many informations?
They have local contacts and are/were in the disputed territories in person.
If intelligence services are so clever and well-informed, there should be less failure like the recent loss of two men against Ukrainian state terrorists in Crimea.
Where and how? How does that explain the impressions of the people on the ground?
OK. 143.5 million.
Define failure? I would also love to read your list of Russia’s objectives in Ukraine, in Europe and globally, and the way they are interconnected and interact.
Vasilevsky, as a Chief Of General Staff, visited actual front lines once in a while–this didn’t prevent him from becoming one of the most outstanding military leaders of the century. The moment GRU and FSB officers stepped on the ground in Donbass, I, frankly, stopped being interested in any contacts Girkin or Cassad have or may have in Donbass. Call it a hunch.
Once Command and Control chain is broken, it really means little, in operational sense, how good of a soldier one is.
Ukraine’s IT industry made $2.5 billion in exports of services in 2015, up from $2.2 billion in 2014. Growth is expected to continue and indeed expand. Kiev and Lviv are the main centers for this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-m-francis/ukraines-booming-it-secto_b_9333070.html
A lot of these professionals move West once they become successful, but they are outnumbered by new people being produced by Ukraine’s university system.
As AK pointed out once, a factor that may to a significant extent account for the success of this industry in Ukraine may be the fact that IT services are more difficult for oligarchs to steal from their owners than are physical factories.
See above. Western Ukraine is very diverse. Lviv is Ukraine’s per capita IT leader. That region also hosts a lot of light industry. A friend of mine here in the USA works for a German auto parts manufacturer; their largest plant, which produces electronic cables for VW and other companies, is outside Lviv. It’s not the only company doing this: the Japanese just opened a factory in Lviv producing such cables. French are also expanding such operations:
http://open4business.com.ua/french-cable-producer-nexans-seeks-to-launch-one-more-plant-in-lviv-region-in-2017/
That being said, outside Lviv oblast and pockets such as Ivano-Frankivsk city, western Ukraine is dirt poor.* Fortunately a lot of the villagers from this area have easy access to next-door Poland, where they work and send money home.
For whatever reasons, there is simply no tradition of military coups in the post-Soviet world.
I will try, when I have the time, to find it. As per “impressions”–there is a huge difference between information and knowledge. Impression is not a knowledge, but here we get to the issue of situational and tactical (and strategic) awareness and OODA loops. Guess why serious general staffs have massive analytical apparatuses, same goes for intelligence organizations and guess what those organizations do–they collect information and turn it into knowledge. In order to do that, one has to have a fairly impressive set of skills which I can tell you right now–neither Girkin nor Cassad have.
The August coup did discourage to establish one, but that applies only to pure military coups.
Indeed auto cables seems to be quite an industry in the city of Lvov! It’s funny that you decided to mention this, because Anatoly Shariy covered it in his latest episode. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=973ySL3LNFw) Turns out Japanese plant was opened in April, but in his recent speech to Ukrainian diaspora Porky lied that it happened “a few weeks ago.”
There is no rush of international investors to Ukraine. And that still doesn’t explain what Eastern Ukraine is going to do.
Those plants are located throughout the oblast. Auto cables and IT outsourcing and startups.
I only wasted time on one Shariy episode; it was just b.s. Maybe that was an exception, but I suspect he’s just a mirror of pro-Kiev b.s.-ers.
It’s closer to the war so investors are afraid. Some companies have moved from Kharkiv to Kiev or Lviv.
Western Ukraine should try to increase its efforts to establish more certified organic farms. There is a growing demand for organic food (including from the US), for instance, Latvian farmers have been able to export organic milk and other products to the US and they say the demand is growing, Ukrainians could do very well with this.
Happy Independence day, Ukraine!
Are they, really? With Viktor Muzhenko in charge?
You are missing out! Most Ukrainian “journalists” are taking Ukraine way too seriously. Shariy tells it like it is. He is perceptive, he is critical and he is fun
Or maybe they see no reason investing in an area, that has no economic future, being cut off from Russia and all. I get the point that Lvov can survive without Russia, being so close to the Polish border, but the rest of the country is not Lvov.
Vienna somehow prospered during the Cold War, despite being cut off from Czechoslovakia and Hungary; if there is peace it will probably be possible for Kharkiv to get by.
There was a lot of trade, just no free travel. I think by the late 1980s Austria became one of the biggest trading partners of Hungary. (The Bundesrepublik was even bigger, I think in the 1980s it was second after the USSR, overtaking it sometime maybe in 1988 or 1989.)
I’m not sure how much trade still there is between Ukraine and Russia, but even if it’s low, I can imagine it will revive even in the absence of a political thaw.
I doubt it very much. Unless Ukraine is “reconstituted” (term used by many competent observers) as a country, the process of decoupling Russia from what’s left of Ukraine’s industrial (and agricultural) sector will continue. Just in the last year and a half a massive Ukrainian-import substitution effort was undertaken in Russia and current Ukraine will have zero chances of coming back to Russian market even if it suddenly becomes less hostile. The decline and, most importantly, obliteration of the last vestiges of Ukraine’s serious manufacturing will continue until country is completely de-industrialized. That in itself will have a profound socio-cultural negative effect.
Austria was neutral, not tied to bloc that was hostile to Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The same does not apply to the Ukraine.
You better look at the Zonenrandgebiet of the Federal Republic of Germany, the area adjacent to the German Democratic Republic if you want to see what should be expected.
It suffered despite subventions like tax reliefs and investment supplements from economic structural problems.
You are correct in terms of the ultimate fate of manufacturing of heavy machinery but complete de-industrialization might be going too far. Light industry and pharmaceuticals in particular have seen significant growth, as has the steel industry still within Ukraine’s borders.
Lviv had a huge bus factory which is now basically gone. It produced Soviet televisions and electronics for the Soviet military (my uncle was the chief engineer at this secret factory) which is gone, killed when Kuchma (on Washington’s behalf) refused to sell systems to Saddam. But it has seen an explosion of IT work from outsourcing to startups and a large-scale influx of Western light manufacturing; the city looks much wealthier and nicer than it ever did in Soviet times. The chief engineer’s son is a manager of an IT company and is much better off than his dad ever was.
Lviv’s model won’t work everywhere of course.
A good point. This assumes a strict cold war between Russia and Ukraine. Who knows if that will be the case, in the medium to long term. What is trade like between, say, Estonia and Russia (I don’t know)? There is no reason to assume things won’t settle to that level eventually.
That being said, border areas like Kharkiv will probably indeed be worse off than they would have been had Ukraine pursued close integration with Russia and turned its back on the West. The West of the country and probably Kiev will be better off eventually.
Economically, this seems to be the end goal.
Exports to Russia decreased last year by 35%, imports by 11%: https://www.stat.ee/277520
Estonia is also losing its role as transit country for Russia trade: http://periskop.livejournal.com/1528495.html
The mentioned & alleged Gleiwitz Incident has been utterly refuted, see:
http://www.cwporter.com/gleiwitz.htm
https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/alfred-naujocks-and-the-start-of-world-war-ii/
http://carolynyeager.net/gleiwitz-%E2%80%9Cfalse-flag%E2%80%9D-incident-pure-fiction
more here:
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7282
Simple fact:
Russia does not want Ukraine in any shape or form. It would be nothing but an expense.
Russia is quite content with what they have.
That’s true of the western Ukraine, but by no means of the south and east. Those should and will be absorbed into Russia. Then one will be able to say, “Jetzt wachst zusammen, was zusammen gehört.” Merkel, take note.
No, I didn’t read the article, AP, and I need a svidorast like you to interpret it for me – thanks for the help, really.
The difference in N1c frequency between these samples is very small: 5.58% for Ukrainians compared to 10.5% for Russians. That’s a paltry difference. Furthermore, these types of frequencies of N1c for ethnic Russians (6.3% – 13.3%) are reproduced and confirmed in many other samples from wide swathes of central and southern Russia (places like Ryazan, Penza, Tambov, Tula, Tver, Vladimir, Yaroslavl). Thus they are in no way whatsoever the result of mixing with Ukrainians, as you seem to think. Furthermore, there’s another sample (N=97, decent size sample) of eastern Ukrainians giving a N3 frequency of 9.6%: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15125258
That comment about “the most mixed border region” is just asinine and shows that you don’t know what you’re talking about. For your information, there was very little mixing in the rural areas of the border region before the Revolution. Largely because Russians were very socially conservative and viewed any kind of mixing with khokhly as extremely undesirable. And these studies focus on people who claim a certain lineage for as many generations as they can recall.
You also overlook the fact that N1c isn’t the only haplogroup that is relevant here – there is also R1a. And the frequency of R1a among these southern Russians (58.13%) is nearly 19% greater than among the neighboring Ukrainians (39.48%). The Russians couldn’t have gotten this higher frequency of R1a by mixing with Ukrainians. When Ukrainians talk about Finno-Ugrians, they usually do it in the context of claiming that Russians are not Slavic, while Ukrainians are pure Slavs and so on. That’s just garbage. As we can see, these Russians have a very strong Slavic component. And in reality, Ukrainians have a significant Balkan/”Vlach”/Turkic component that is easily comparable to the Finno-Ugrian or other admixture in Russians.
It’s almost twice as much. The 5% difference is small, but still significant.
Keep in mind this is for Southern and Central Russians only. Northern Russians are far more Finno-Ugric (over 35%). Among central Russians (Russia’s historical heartland) the Finno-Ugric frequency is 16%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253976/
I was writing about the population mixture not individuals’ mixture. Is a region a person? It seems reading comprehension is indeed a problem for you. The article made it very clear that there was relatively little mixture between peoples in this ethnically mixed region.
Good that you understood at least a little bit from that article.
Yes. R1A is found not only among Slavs but also among Balts, and certain Asian peoples. The higher frequency of R1a among Russians does not necessarily mean significantly more Slavic ancestry.
See above. R1A isn’t only found among Slavs in Europe. But yes, of course Russians have a very strong Slavic component. Did anyone here deny this?
You claimed the difference between Ukrainians and southern Russians in terms of N1c frequency (5.58% vs. 10.5%) was “paltry.” The differences between Ukrainians and southern Russians in terms of Balkan ancestry is indeed significant and surpasses the Ukrainian-Southern Russian Finno-Ugric difference by a large margin. In terms of the two Balkan haplogroups (E1b and I2a), Ukrainian and Russian frequency was 31.52% vs. 17%, respectively (it’s rather high among Russians, too).
Turkic? Not so much. Haplogroup “G” associated with Turkey (and especially the Caucuses) had a frequency of 3.41% among Ukrainians and .93% among Russians. About a 2.5% difference, or slightly less than half the “paltry” difference between Ukrainians and Russians with respect to Finnic ancestry. But wait – haplogroup “J”, also found in Turkey and the Caucuses, is more common among Russians than among Ukrainians (3.17% vs. 1.85%, respectively). So overall, there is no real difference between Ukrainians and Russians when it comes to Turkic or Caucasian ancestry. Why did you add Turkic to Balkan components in your comment?
You forgot to mention that Ukrainians also have higher frequencies of western European haplogroup R1B and Scandinavian/Nordic I1 haplogroups – collectively, Ukrainian and Russian frequency was 15.03% vs. 8.07%.
So in terms of ancestry of the Ukrainians and southern Russians, both groups are basically Slavic, but the southern Russians have a lot more Balto-Slavic ancestry (who knows if more Slavic, specifically) and more Finn0-Ugric ancestry, Ukrainians have a lot more Balkan and more Western/Northern European ancestry.
But, the bottom line is – you stupidly tried to “prove” something about Finno-Ugric percentages among Russians by linking to an article that stated “In comparison with the Ukrainians, the Russians had a twice greater frequency of haplogroup N1c M178(p= 0.0497), which is characteristic of the Finno-Ugric, Baltic, and North-Russian populations in the Baltic Ural region.”
And this Russian group, with twice Ukrainians’ Finno-Ugric ancestry, happens to be the Russian group with the lowest Finno-Ugric ancestry – southern Russians. How convenient for you.
Anyways, I hope I have adequately interpreted this for you. Did you understand it this time?
Frankly the Y-haplogroup frequency variation between South Russians and Ukrainians looks like one of the least significant differences between them. Almost like ex-Yugoslavian regional bickering.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253976/figure/fig7/
Economy and culture do seem better points to focus on, if something has to be focused on.
The northern Russians with 35% or more N3 are a much a smaller part of the population than the center/south, which is where by far most of the population has historically lived. And there are samples for Novgorod, Vologda, and Arkhangelsk that are closer to typical central Russian levels than figures like 35%. On the whole, the northern territory is probably far from uniform, with many “pockets” of relative highs and lows.
You’re misrepresenting the data. The only truly “central” region in that study is Kashin, halfway between Tver and Yaroslavl – the rest are peripheral or near-peripheral. And for Kashin, the results are 11% N3, 56.2% R1a – almost exactly like the southern populations mentioned earlier.
You think that’s a fluke? Here’s another sample for Tverskaya oblast: http://ychrom.invint.net/upload/iblock/108/Fechner%202008%20Boundaries%20and%20Clines%20-%20Y-Chromosome%20Landscape%20-%20European%20Part%20of%20Russia.pdf.
Results: 55.8% R1a, 9.3% N3.
Another study: http://ruthen-info.fatal.ru/files/mtDNA_Y_Chromosomes_in_Russian_Populations.pdf
The sample size for Yaroslav is too small for my liking, so I’ll combine it with Vladimir to get a larger sample and: 58.1% R1a, 12.16% N. Combined Tula + Kaluga sample: 50.0% R1a, 8.14% N.
At what point are you going to understand that southern Russians are descendants of central Russians? This is documented fact, supported by genetic evidence. They are not some separate group that migrated over there and was magically assimilated. They are a demographic extension of the “historical Russian heartland”. They migrated all over the south from the area around Moscow, both north and south of it. Their high R1a and low N3 couldn’t have been obtained from any non-Slavic group, because there is no neighboring non-Slavic group with R1a in the 60% range and low N3.
Ukrainians deny it on a regular basis. Go on any Ukrainian forum and you can’t miss it. It’s a core part of the svidorast ideology. And it’s not “because of Crimea” – it was going on long before that.
It is paltry. There are bigger differences than that among the neighboring Ukrainian populations in the study, for example. And it’s especially paltry compared to the big difference in R1a.
From that link, central federal district Russian oblasts, percentage N3:
Smolensk oblast: 16.3% N3
Bryansk Oblast: 16.3%
Ivanovskaya Oblast: 22.5%
Tambov: 6.3% N3
Ryazan: 8.3%
Tver: 9.3%
Rough average (I averaged the % by oblast, not taking into account varying populations) is 13.17%.
Oops, you forgot Oryol, 19.7% N.
So in general, % N among central Russians is in the low teens, among southern Russians around 10%, among Ukrainians, 5- 6% N.
Did I claim otherwise? Lower Finno-Ugric and higher Balkan among southern Russians than among central Russians does suggest some Ukrainian admixture as well.
I asked about anyone here, not about “Ukrainians on forums.” Argue with them about this, not with me. At any rate, having a strong Slavic component does not mean that ancestry cannot also have a significant Finno-Ugric one.
Claims about Russian Finnish-ness by non-Russians haven’t only been used by Ukrainian nationalists on internet forums. Here is Polish poet Zalesky describing a visit with Gogol:
I don’t know what Gogol and the Poles had against Finns and why they believed Finnish songs were “cannibalistic” but the use of the Russian = Finno-Ugric idea as a tool with which to engage in anti-Russian rhetoric is not limited to Ukrainian nationalists.
You’ve gotta be kidding me… how is having a little bit of Finnic genes bad? Is it because it supposedly makes you less Slavic? I mean, northern Russians are still pretty Slavic looking. I didn’t realize it was such a big issue among Slavs.
So is Putin Karelian? He looks a bit Finnic to me.
Finnish and Estonian songs are very gloomy, indeed.
I’ve seen claims that Putin has Vepsian or even Bulgarian ancestry.
http://www.novinite.com/articles/137889/Researcher+Says+Russian+Leader+Putin+Has+Bulgarian+Origins
As you might expect, these stories tend to lack solid backing. If Putin’s ancestry is typical of Tver region he’s your average Russian.
I agree it’s silly and trivial.
I suppose this stems from the 19th century, before Finns were generally perceived as ultracivilized, fairly wealthy and successful Scandinavians (though Russian Finnic ancestry stems not from Finns from people such as the Mari in the Russian interior, who were absorbed by the Slavic settlers there).
Actually I think it’s the Tver connection (+ looks) that started those Karelian ancestry rumors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tver_Karelians
They’re not natives of the area and we think they’re descendants of the waves of Orthodoxes who fled after the Swedish conquest of what’s now St Petersburg and surroundings 400 years ago. Their original numbers were never clear and they’ve had both population growth and assimilation over the centuries but thanks to urbanization and intermarriage during Soviet industrialization times there are a lot of Russians with a Karelian grandparent there (and not a lot of Karelians).
I don’t find it surprising if no one wants to be Finno-Ugric. Finns don’t want to be Finno-Ugric either. Most of our nationalists seem to be obsessed with trying to prove that we are some lost Germanic tribe and not at all Finno-Ugric.
The way I heard it, Putin’s Tver ancestry has been used to link him with old Russian nobility.
http://www.pravdareport.com/business/finance/05-11-2002/1528-putin-0/
On this page if you scroll down a bit you can see both of his mother and father’s close ups:
http://viola.bz/family-album-of-putin/
I didn’t forget anything. The sample size (36) is too small and the results are contradicted by other, larger samples from the region. See here:
Bolkhov, Orlovskaya oblast (http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/raspredelenie-odnonukleotidnyh-polimorfizmov-y-hromosomy-sredi-naseleniya-tsentralnoy-rossii). Sample size: 82 (decent size sample); 6.1% N3, 53.66% R1a.
What “higher Balkan” among southern Russians? Various central Russian regions have easily enough haplogroup I and also E to explain anything seen in the southern populations. You’re focusing too much on that “Central” group from the Balanovsky study, which is heavily skewed by the samples from Pskov, Smolensk, and Kostroma regions, which are not the main places of origin of the southern populations, to put it mildly. You have to look at regions like Tula, Kaluga, Ryazan, Moscow, Vladimir. Also, N3 in the southern populations varies from about 6% to 13%. This is easily matched by the core central regions, from which the ancestors of the southern populations came.
What is the source for this “quote”? I want to see how you justify posting that garbage here. It’s not the first time you’ve posted it either. Here, read this: http://day.kyiv.ua/ru/article/istoriya-i-ya/sluchay-mazepy
From there: “Письмо появилось в печати в дополнении к «Gazety Lwowskiej» (1901 г.), а отправлено оно из Франции 19 февраля 1859 года.”
So wait a minute – this so-called letter first appears decades after Zaleski’s death in 1886 in a Polish Galician newspaper. And we’re just supposed to assume that the letter is real and that everything in it is actually true?
Look at what this letter says. Do you think Gogol was an expert in Czech and Serbian songs? That even knew those languages?
The most ridiculous quote: “For every human feeling there was a song — our, Slavic songs were gentle and soft, while the Moscow songs were wild, gloomy, even cannibalistic at times — in other words, typically Finnish.”
Does that seem realistic to you? Are typically Finnish songs actually cannibalistic? How the hell would Gogol even know? We are supposed to believe that Gogol was an expert in both Slavic AND Finnish songs – and that this was somehow hidden from view during his lifetime, so that only this Zaleski knew about it? Also note how there are no specifics mentioned about these songs or anything else – because if the author had to be specific, he’d fall flat on his face immediately.
Also AP, unlike you, I actually know what real Russian folk songs sound like, what kind of instruments were used, etc. So I know on that level that what is said in that “letter” is complete nonsense.
Poles first created it and Ukrainians copied it and ran with it – and are still running with it to this day. What’s so hard to understand?
That’s funny, because in your previous comment you included data from Yaroslavl with N % 8.7, with a sample of only 23, by including it together with the Vladimir sample. But you chose to ignore this sample, whose N% was 19.7, because it contradicted your claims.
This highlights a pattern of yours, of cherry-picking and ignoring inconvenient data to make a point. You are not discussing things in good faith.
So for example, the huge study by Balanovsky et al in The American Journal of Human Genetics 82(1):236-50 · February 2008 :
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5670279_Two_Sources_of_the_Russian_Patrilineal_Heritage_in_Their_Eurasian_Context
Shows N3 percentage as 35.5% in northern Russia (total sample 380), 16.3% in central Russia (total sample 364), and 9.5% in Southern Russia (total sample 484).
See the study above. I1b of 5.7% frequency among northern Russians, 10% among central Russians, and 15.9% among southern Russians.
You will probably respond by picking out particular samples in Central Russia with lower N %, such as “Kashin”, in order to try to “disprove” the big picture.
It’s in numerous sources if you google it. It appears in the several books, such as Livak’s The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination: A Case of Russian Literature published by Stanford University Press, Bojanowska’s Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism published by Harvard, Norris and Sunderland’s Russia’s People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present published by Indiana University Press, etc.
Let me guess: you know better than all those authors and their peer reviewers about what is real and what isn’t.
It was published in 1901, 15 years after Zalewski’s death in 1886. Is 15 years “decades”?
The letter was sent to Franciszek Duchiński, who died in 1893. Duchinsky, a politically active person, probably had thousands of letters. Do you really think it would be strange that it took 8 years after his death, for the contents of one of these letters to be found and printed?
Does one need to be an expert on Czech and Serbian songs to, as the letter states, quote from them and make comparisons?
Do I agree with Gogol on this? No. Would Gogol have said this while hanging out with his violently anti-Russian Polish friends in Paris? Why not?
The fact is that the Polish poet Zalesky took part in a violent anti-Russian uprising and went into exile, and Gogol chose to stay with him in Paris. This gives us a clue about Gogol’s attitudes at that specific time in his life.
BTW, in another letter, Zalesky wrote that after he later met Gogol, Gogol’s attitude towards Russia had completely changed from when Gogol had been in Paris. Was that letter also fake, in your “expert” opinion?
I explained to you what’s wrong with this “Central” group for purposes of comparing it to the Southern group. Ostrov, Roslavl, and Unzha are not the places of origin of the southern populations. It doesn’t matter if this study labels them “Central” or whatever. And it is you who is not discussing things in good faith since you choose to ignore that.
Laughable. You claimed that elevated levels of I1b in southern Russians (compared to what, friggin Ostrov – are you kidding me?) suggested Ukrainian admixture. But the frequencies of R1b and E3b are clearly higher in that “Central” group than in the Southern group, whereas you would expect the opposite to be true since they’re clearly higher among Ukrainians than among southern Russians. You see, even this weak “Central” group confirms what I’m saying – that haplogroup frequencies among southern Russians are explained by those in certain central Russian regions.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the letter itself was real, but its content is obviously nonsense.
Zaleski was such a close friend of Gogol that, in this letter, he calls Gogol a famous poet. Yet he remembers how this “poet” wrote a “brilliant” essay comparing Slavic and Finnish songs? Also, the letter is dated 1859 and in it Zaleski says that these things happened about 25 years prior. 1859-25=1834. Gogol would have been about 25 years old at the time. At that time, he was a big fan of Pushkin and part of Pushkin’s circle. He wasn’t known for engaging in kaklostani separatist tomfoolery. You’re not seeing the inconsistencies in all of this?
So you have evidence of which specific parts of central Russia were the point of origin for settlement of southern Russia?
Well, the massive Balanovsky study has maps that may help you:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5670279_Two_Sources_of_the_Russian_Patrilineal_Heritage_in_Their_Eurasian_Context
Scroll down to page 239. You will see low N percentage across Ukraine and stretching out into southern Russia.
Scroll down to page 240. You will see high I1b percentage across Ukraine and over the border into southwestern Russia.
Here is a perfect example of your cherry-picking and arguing in bad faith.
You had earlier described the ~5% difference between Ukrainian and Russian samples from the Ukrainian-Russian border region in terms of N as “paltry.” R1b % in the central group is only 2.3% higher than in the southern group; E3b % of the central group is only 2.8% higher than in the central group. Somehow this becomes significant for you…while the 6.8% difference in N3 and 5.9% difference in I1b are not.
Gogol was in Paris in 1836-1837. So 23 years is indeed about 25 years.
It is much more likely that Zaleski was mistaken about Gogol being a poet rather than a writer in his letter written about 25 years after meeting Gogol, than that Poles faking a letter in 1901, and the editors printing this “hoax”, when Gogol was well known, all made this mistake.
And the name of the ‘confessing’ nazi was Naujocks as in Now Jokes.
“Marx had very little good to say about Russia”
Marx, was protected by the wealthy both on the continent and moreover held under the protective wings of the British elites. He was dependent of the librarians in the British Museum, and his close associate, David Urquhart, used that to feed Marx with an anti-Russian biased selection of information.
Progressives are generally passionate and unsuspecting. They want to believe. So they reason, when being reminded about Marx having such an easy time in the financier lions den, that this is because “there are kind capitalists”.
The British with Lord Palmerston, were instigating republican revolutions on the continent but Marx was even given the impression that Russia was behind it. And for a while even was led to believe that the foreign minister Palmerston was a Russian spy.
In order not to arouse suspicion from Marx, the British had to get rid of Urquhart and he was declared insane. Marx wasn’t streetsmart, he was an academic. The British elites, since at least 1600, have had a double-natured quality about them. Tremendously important in connection with their plotting of the world wars. And also for understanding the role played by the Fabian society in coordinating all things progressive. So called.
Latvian woman,
Where did you learn that there is such a thing as “Finnic genes”?
Finnic refers to languages; Estonian, Finnish and Karelian. I suspect a writer to be a queer Communist when I start seeing “Finnic genes.”
Another Communist-trained poor Finn, deciding by the name.
A Frenchman, Count Arthur de Gobineau, and various hairy-headed linguists are the originators of these canards. They are related to the Aryan race fantasies that are still popular in some circles.
Finn O’Filet, that is really funny about the queer Communist. And you are right – there is no “Finnic gene”, I mean, you must know what I was talking about – before the Indo-Europeans arrived in North Eastern Europe, there were Uralic peoples there (Livonians in my country, etc) They were assimilated. IE language is more recent. I’m not a fan of “Aryan race fantasies”, I like indigenous Europeans as they are.
The manufacture/assembly of automotive wiring components is an industry that requires little in the way of capital equipment investment and assuming good JIT inventory management, little materials/finished goods inventory investment. If and when the poop hits the fan in Lviv, it should be no great loss to a company like VW or Toyota.