Even the honest-to-god financial markets did badly on this prediction. The moment Russia started invading, MOEX and oil prices had wild shocks, as if something unexpected had happened, even though we already had abundant ahead-of-time warnings about their attack from U.S. intelligence. My suspicion is that everyone, including market analysts, expected Russia to simply annex the seperatist eastern terrority of Donbas. They expected the war to end quickly and with little bloodshed, and for the Ukrainian government to capitulate. The presumption was that they’d be fighting over a small separatist province, and it would have made sense—Putin gets what he wants, which is to look powerful, and he can come back again in 5-10 years for another piece.
Instead, Putin has chosen to do something insane—he is forcing his armed forces to attack and at least temporarily occupy the entirety of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lziz, and Odessa. These are centers of the Ukrainian resistance that nobody, not even a brainwashed Russian populace, could possibly believe are secretly interested in unification. Maybe he underestimated the response or maybe he doesn’t care, but now western countries are thinking of kicking Russia out of their banking systems entirely, and the Ukrainian leadership has decided to face death at the hands of their oppressors instead of desert their country. There’s going to be a total war—perhaps a quick one, but many Ukrainians and Russians will die. I wonder if Vladimir Putin actually anticipated this would be the consequences of his actions. It gestures suggestively to a God complex that might be undermining the decision making of Russia’s governor and his coconspirators.
I wonder if in the aftermath we will be able to decipher the scope of the increase in risk, financially, between the separatist-territories and full-invasion scenarios. I imagine this is questions like $ of assets destroyed or put offline, in addition to the question of sanctions.
Or perhaps Putin has a more accurate world-model and correctly predicted that the world will just sit and watch? Could change any moment of course, but at least thus far it seems he’s right about Western threats of severe sanctions being hollow.
Even the honest-to-god financial markets did badly on this prediction. The moment Russia started invading, MOEX and oil prices had wild shocks, as if something unexpected had happened, even though we already had abundant ahead-of-time warnings about their attack from U.S. intelligence. My suspicion is that everyone, including market analysts, expected Russia to simply annex the seperatist eastern terrority of Donbas. They expected the war to end quickly and with little bloodshed, and for the Ukrainian government to capitulate. The presumption was that they’d be fighting over a small separatist province, and it would have made sense—Putin gets what he wants, which is to look powerful, and he can come back again in 5-10 years for another piece.
Instead, Putin has chosen to do something insane—he is forcing his armed forces to attack and at least temporarily occupy the entirety of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lziz, and Odessa. These are centers of the Ukrainian resistance that nobody, not even a brainwashed Russian populace, could possibly believe are secretly interested in unification. Maybe he underestimated the response or maybe he doesn’t care, but now western countries are thinking of kicking Russia out of their banking systems entirely, and the Ukrainian leadership has decided to face death at the hands of their oppressors instead of desert their country. There’s going to be a total war—perhaps a quick one, but many Ukrainians and Russians will die. I wonder if Vladimir Putin actually anticipated this would be the consequences of his actions. It gestures suggestively to a God complex that might be undermining the decision making of Russia’s governor and his coconspirators.
I wonder if in the aftermath we will be able to decipher the scope of the increase in risk, financially, between the separatist-territories and full-invasion scenarios. I imagine this is questions like $ of assets destroyed or put offline, in addition to the question of sanctions.
Or perhaps Putin has a more accurate world-model and correctly predicted that the world will just sit and watch? Could change any moment of course, but at least thus far it seems he’s right about Western threats of severe sanctions being hollow.