I’ve talked to a number of people living in Crimea over the years. Some were pro-Russian, some were pro-Ukrainian, some undecided. Here are some observations.
People weren’t particularly afraid of Ukraine. But since 2014 literally everyone is afraid to say openly anything that’s not supportive of Russia. Fear is everywhere. So much for accurate polling data. Since February 2022 people became much more afraid of Russia. I talked to people who fled Crimea after the announcement of mobilization. They were in panic.
Since 2014 a lot of people left Crimea. Instead a lot of Russians moved to Crimea. People living in Crimea now and Crimean people in 2014 are two completely different sets of people. It feels like one third of people in Crimea are from Russia now.
I know people who were born in Crimea and still were forced to go through a lengthy, complicated and humiliating procedure of proving they are Crimean enough to be allowed to live in Crimea. I know a person who went through an unnecessarily humiliating questioning by Russian FSB for no other reason than going from Crimea to Kyiv.
Now more general thoughts.
One doesn’t have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
All that said nothing I said above or you said in your post matters. Nuclear risk and global security matter. I understand why in politics you have to first prove someone’s not a good guy before suggesting to stop helping. I did not expect to hear something like this here. I just don’t see how the conclusion you’re making follows from the statements you make in the post even if all of them are true.
For some reason public discourse in the Western countries gravitates towards either “let’s stop helping Ukraine” with weak justifications like “will of the Crimean people” and “Ukrainians aren’t saints too” or going all in up to directly fighting Russian army on the ground. I think policy of helping Ukraine but not engaging Russian army directly (basically just sticking to what’s already being done) is superior to either extreme.
For some reason public discourse in the Western countries gravitates towards either “let’s stop helping Ukraine” with weak justifications like “will of the Crimean people” and “Ukrainians aren’t saints too” or going all in up to directly fighting Russian army on the ground.
Yes, this is a good point.
I think policy of helping Ukraine but not engaging Russian army directly (basically just sticking to what’s already being done) is superior to either extreme.
Wait what? I mean yes, obviously this is superior to batshit crazy options like sending troops to Ukraine or telling Russia it owns Ukraine now, but in terms of nuclear risk and global security it’s pretty stupid. The current approach incentivises both Ukraine and Russia to continue and escalate as they both ultimately see themselves as prevailing given enough time.
I don’t see better options. What would you suggest?
It’s pretty hard to disincentivise anyone to fight. Ukrainian population wouldn’t accept defeat. Putin can’t either. Both will fight regardless of whether they see themselves prevailing eventually. It’s worth noting that Putin probably cornered himself by formally annexing more territories on purpose.
One would think that maybe we can make some kind of a peace deal. Maybe Ukraine recognizes Crimea as Russian in exchange for stopping hostilities? The problem is it’s not the first time. The first time was in 2014. No one responded to the annexation of Crimea. Just a couple of months later Russian agents start a war in Donbass. Then in 2015 there was a peace deal freezing the conflict. Everyone in the West was afraid of supporting Ukraine in retaking Donbass. They thought it might provoke Putin. Which gave him time to prepare for a full scale invasion. If there’s another peace deal now Russian army would most likely use the next few years to recruit and train more soldiers and produce more weapons. And boom, a bigger invasion.
It may sound counterintuitive but my intuition says that the best we can hope for is this war never ending without any side having a decisive victory.
One of the underlying assumptions here of course is that letting Russia to just grab land is bad. It’s hard to estimate probability of WW3 through the same mechanism as WW2. But probably not low enough to just let Russia do what it wants.
I don’t see better options. What would you suggest?
The situation is pretty difficult,
a) Providing clear, unambiguous and automatic mechanisms for repealing Western sanctions that are also realistic (i.e. not “we drop sanctions once you get out of Crimea”). While I also like Bryan Caplan’s suggestion to offer asylum + military compensation to defecting Russian soldiers, I recognize that this is politically not feasible.
Sanctions that are not directed at the military antagonize the Russian population. Somewhat counterintuitively, they can even lead ordinary Russians to increase their support for Putin.
b) Recognition of the annexation of Crimea, subject to a (future) internationally recognized referendum legitimized by a UNSC resolution and potentially some kind of autonomy within Russia. Ideally, this would be modeled on Kosovo or Hong-Kong in some way.
c) Some form of Minsk III that gives hard guarantees to Donetsk/Luhansk for a referendum, or makes them de facto independent states that are de-jure part of Ukraine.
d) Making weapons-deliveries to Ukraine conditional on Ukraine stating that it might be willing to give up Crimea + DNR/LNR under suitable terms. Something like this for the Russian side could be (a).
While I recognize that Russia will try to game this as far as possible, the main issue I see with this is that it may incentivize similar behavior by other states in the future. Borders are supposed to be fixed not because this is “fair” or anything, but to avoid people starting wars over borders.
(a) There’s nothing valuable Putin would willingly give in exchange for repealing sanctions. He doesn’t care that much. And potential marginal increase in Putin’s support doesn’t matter either. The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.
Asylum and financial rewards for defecting Russian soldiers were announced by Ukraine in the beginning of the invasion. But I don’t know how well it works in practice.
(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn’t control.
(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.
(d) This is something that may end up as the solution the US chooses, maybe after the next presidential election. The problem is it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion. The amount of military equipment Ukraine currently receives is inadequate for the next invasion. So if you want to ask Ukraine to stop its counteroffensive without allowing Putin to do what he wants you would need to give Ukraine much more equipment. Hundreds of billions dollar worth of weapons. Instead of $40+B it received so far. But then what is there to stop Ukraine from retaking Crimea anyway.
That’s why I say that the best we can hope for is that the war goes on without any side having a decisive victory. That way Russian army will hopefully lose soldiers and equipment as fast as they are mobilized and Ukraine can protect itself with just around $50B worth of weapons per year.
Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion. The amount of military equipment Ukraine currently receives is inadequate for the next invasion.
Why do you believe that Russia is capable of a much bigger invasion?
Putin already showed willingness to increase number of people fighting. Russia lacks time to train them. Given enough time it would train them much better. There’s no major obstacles to an another round of mobilization. Also number of active soldiers in Russian army is more than a million. Only ~200K of them were used in the invasion. Russian economy is going strong (just −3% this year according to IMF). Only ~5% of Russian GDP is spent on military this year. Usually it spent around 4% of its GDP. You know, looking at those numbers I start to question even more where this whole narrative of “Russia is losing, don’t corner Putin” is coming from.
In comparison Ukraine lost more than a third of its GDP and spends almost half of the remaining part on the military.
The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.
A nice story, but I don’t buy it. How exactly does banning Russian flights to Europe, or banning Russian tourists, or banning Russian bank accounts with more than €100k from transacting make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war? Or confiscating/stealing the wealth of oligarchs? If Putin “doesn’t care that much” about sanctions, isn’t it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?
(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn’t control.
Maybe not, but better than not trying at all. Putin’s rhetoric about the West being hypocritical is spot on, except for the fact that Russia is just as hypocritical. Offering Putin the “rules-based” and law-based international order he has been asking for since at least 2008 is in my opinion a no-brainer, even if he goes on to reject it.
(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.
Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s the constitution that says this or the law. I don’t see how this problem is unique to what I’m proposing, if Ukraine just gradually keeps winning like it is doing right now, the Russian constitution/law will still say this, and it will be an even bigger problem.
The problem is it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion.
Again: I see this argument thrown around a lot, but nothing solves this fundamental problem, so the existence of this problem proves nothing. Even a long dragged out war doesn’t stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.
Fundamentally, Russia has nukes and Ukraine does not. In this sense, anything that de-escalates this war, while at the same time convincing Russia and China that trying something like this is a bad idea, is the way to go. If Russia decides that it doesn’t like the way the West is supporting Ukraine, it has the means to escalate. In the end, the way I expect this to go is for Russia to credibly threaten/use some kind of nuke in Ukraine, and thereby forcing an agreement with the West. Alternatively, the West gets bored of Ukraine after another year of fighting and Russia slowly but surely takes the regions it has annexed. But saying “I hope everything keeps going like it is going” is magical thinking—the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.
Sanctions are of 2 types: strategical and moral. The first kind are aimed at stopping an adversary from being able to produce vital stuff, like the recent chip embargo on China. These are often quite effective at producing an effect, as can be seen in how Russia is having massive logistical problems and having to pull out old Soviet tanks, rather than producing new one. The second kind are to show people that you’re Doing Something and that you are Very Serious. These are very much less effective. Though they’re aimed at appeasing the people at home, rather than changing how a foreign actor acts. The current sanctions are a big bag of both kinds, some of which are in fact quite successful at what they’re supposed to do, i.e. make it harder for the Russians to wage war.
Russia has an interesting history of loosing wars to embarrassingly weaker opponents, which then trigger deep changes. Not that it’s a rule or anything, but it is suggestive. Though frankly I’m not sure if I’d prefer someone other than Putin in charge of the nukes. He at least seems rational, albeit working under the wrong assumptions.
I agree, though sanctions are always sold as being strategic even when they are moral.
The fact that Putin has not used nukes yet is to his credit, but I do think that there is a marked shift in his demeanor from how would sound in speeches before to now. Make of that what you will.
If Putin “doesn’t care that much” about sanctions, isn’t it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?
Sanctions turned out to be pretty underwhelming. And surely, one can easily see that the portfolio of sanctions could be much more effective. Personally I think some sanctions are needed but much better thought through.
Maybe not, but better than not trying at all.
If you mean something like we tell Putin “If you do the referendum with the UN supervision and allow pro-Ukrainian people in Crimea to freely and publicly debate with pro-Russian people, then we would recognize Crimea as Russian if and only if after long debates people in Crimea still decide to be in Russia”. Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death. But at least there’s no downside. On the other hand, if you mean something like stopping fighting after Putin promises to do a fair referendum you would just significantly increase chances of Ukraine ceasing to exist.
Even a long dragged out war doesn’t stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.
But that’s the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower. At the same time every Ukrainian child hit by a rocket makes the US send more firepower to Ukraine. Which acts as a counterbalance to the fundamental asymmetry between Russia and Ukraine. If you stop the fighting Russia will stop losing its army and Ukraine will get much less military aid.
But saying “I hope everything keeps going like it is going” is magical thinking—the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.
Let’s consider some strategies the US can use.
Just support Ukraine. At some point Ukraine probably goes “too far” and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia. And let’s say Putin would have payed his cost for invading Ukraine. If Ukraine doesn’t accept defeat after being nuked it would be the best deterrent to future uses of nuclear weapons since they don’t achieve the desired outcome of quick victory.
Calibrate military aid to make sure neither Ukraine nor Russia win. In theory you can prolong the war until either Putin dies or internal politics in Russia destabilizes after a couple million coffins are sent back from Ukraine. The obvious problem is that you can’t control how the war works precisely. Maybe you can ask Ukrainians to slow down a bit from time to time.
Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.
As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.
Optimal strategies are either steady support no matter what (including nukes) or calibrated aid. I’m really anxious because I think the current policy is steady support but with direct engagement in case of nukes. I’m also afraid that fans of a peace deal prevail and we’ll still get a WW3, just a bit later.
I mean we can talk about unrealistic scenarios. You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.
Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death.
It’s not that simple. Nobody in the West is even in principle open to Crimea becoming Russian (and for good reason). So this wouldn’t be as ridiculous as you make it sound, especially given Putin’s rhetoric over the years and how salty he is about Kosovo.
But that’s the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower.
That’s one way of seeing it, but neither Russian firepower nor manpower should be thought of as a fixed finite resource. If Russia’s current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt. We know that it is capable of doing so, see e.g. the withdrawal at Kiev. If Russia were fighting an existential war for survival and had already pulled all the stops, steadily destroying Russia would be a viable strategy. But Russia has no interest in being steadily destroyed, and still has plenty of ways it could escalate, especially when it comes to actions that hurt the West.
At some point Ukraine probably goes “too far” and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.
I’m so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.
It’s already not contained to Ukraine and Russia (see: the shattered remains of NS1 and NS2 on the sea floor), so even more magical thinking here. If Russia detonates a nuke in Ukraine, the best case is that absolute chaos breaks out in European cities.
Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.
Why would he win in a few years if he cannot win now?
As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.
You really haven’t explained this reasoning? So Putin “wins”, and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.
Russia would call that bluff the moment it was made.
If Russia’s current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt.
This gave me an interesting thought. Either Putin thinks retreating is deadly for him or not. If he does he will keep sending more forces to be steadily destroyed. If he doesn’t retaking Crimea wouldn’t trigger nuclear response by default as he will hope to conquer it again later.
I’m so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power. But the price is artificially prolonging the conflict or increased nuclear risk in Ukraine. Which is why I said prolonging the conflict looks like a better option.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting. I know more than one person who donated significant amounts of money to the army. A vibe I’m getting from many is victory at any cost. Ironically once I had difficulty convincing one Ukrainian why NATO can’t be more involved.
Polls say that only around 10% of Ukrainians think that Ukraine should hold peace talks with Russia. Even after conventional rocket showers 80+% say that Ukraine should keep fighting. Also Ukraine would in a different situation than Japan. If Putin orders a nuclear strike it would mean Ukraine is otherwise winning. So morale would be super-high among Ukrainians. Unlike losing Japan in 1945.
Another thing to consider is that the first use of nuclear weapons was a shock to everyone. Many Ukrainians understand the fact that they can be nuked. Though about 2⁄3 (according to another poll) still don’t believe Russia is capable of actually ordering a nuclear strike.
If you think about it Mariupol could be even worse than a nuclear explosion. Tens of thousands dead but waiting for their fate for many weeks without much water and food, hiding from bombs, seeing familiar faces lying dead on the streets, constantly being in terror. This didn’t stop Ukrainians.
There is a lesswrong post that describes a subtle way Russia destroys lives of its own people. Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
Seeing a mushroom cloud can easily change public opinion but it’s far from obvious that Ukraine would just give up.
So Putin “wins”, and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
Well, the obvious historical analogy is there. And if you plot size (by some appropriate metric) of the wars Putin was involved in so far my guess is there would be something resembling an exponential curve.
In December 2021 Putin openly demanded that NATO returns all former Soviet republics to Russia. The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries). The implied threat was “or else I invade Ukraine”. NATO hadn’t budged. Putin went on to invade Ukraine. If one takes Putin’s words seriously one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans to get all former Soviet republics under his rule.
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power.
Not it isn’t, because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin. I hope there are alternatives to Putin that are both realistic and also better, but I haven’t seen much evidence for this coming out of Russia.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945
Are you familiar with Japan pre 1945 at all? You have heard of kamikaze pilots at the very least, right? I will quote the Wikipedia article on them: “The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death”. Unless your argument is “Ukraine and its leaders are a death cult”, I’m going to respectfully ignore this point as “throwaway62… has no idea what they’re talking about”.
This didn’t stop Ukrainians.
Yes it did. Unless you’re living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol. Sure, Ukrainians in the West will wax poetic about how they will rather die than submit, but when push comes to shove one hopes that this kind of idiotic WWI-style nationalism will give way to cooler heads.
Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries).
You’ve made a number of very questionable claims in your comment, so I think I’ll start winding down this conversation. Removing NATO forces from post-soviet countries is not “thinly veiled” legalese for returning Soviet republics to Russia, it’s not even close.
one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans
Words have meanings: is it “thinly veiled”, or is it “open”?
Unless you’re living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol.
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don’t you? To restate—the siege of Mariupol didn’t stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin
We’re afraid he may start a nuclear war. That’s pretty bad already. And he clearly gets worse with time. Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Actions speak. I know Ukrainians who were hiding from military enlistment officers for years in relatively peaceful years. I tried to give them advice how to hide from mobilization during the invasion. But they just stopped hiding.
You’ve made a number of very questionable claims in your comment
I shared both strong and weak evidence. I didn’t initially think that it’s gonna be a debate… If I treated this like a debate I could say something like: “Putin never said that he’s gonna use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. On the contrary, he said he’s not going to use nukes in Ukraine. Therefore there’s nothing to worry about.” But I’m not saying it.
Look, the point is Putin lied so many times about not being involved in Ukraine. He lied about not intending to start a full scale invasion. Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don’t you? To restate—the siege of Mariupol didn’t stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
I don’t see what’s offensive, and I’m not twisting your words but pointing out something that’s almost obvious: IF you have no chance of winning THEN you should stop fighting. This was true in Mariupol, and is true for the rest of Ukraine also. The siege of Mariupol absolutely stopped Ukraine from defending Mariupol. The important question is whether the IF applies. But once it does, throwing away human life just to make a point strikes me as somewhat nihilistic.
We’re afraid he may start a nuclear war. That’s pretty bad already.
Yes, is there anyone who could lead Russia of whom you would not be afraid that they’d start a nuclear war?
Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
No I don’t “want” to “give” him anything, I’m just recognizing the realities of the situation, and noticing that what you’re describing could happen with or without Putin.
Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.
I agree. But this doesn’t mean that compromises can’t be worked out, see e.g. the Black sea grain deal.
Your if clause is somewhat of a false dichotomy. There are other reasons to keep fighting:
you might be fighting a rear action that you know you won’t win, but will allow the rest to escape
you might be bogging down an enemies strength to keep them from going somewhere else
you might be able to inflict enough damage on them to cause them to be ineffective in later battles
you might want to inspire others
you might care about glory
you might have nowhere else to go
you might just be nihilistic
you might have someone pointing a gun at your back to stop you from retreating
Most of these boil down to iterated games, rather than just a one off prisoner’s dilemma.
Mariupol is a tragedy. But it really didn’t stop Ukrainians from continuing the fight as long as they could. The reason they stopped was because they ran out of supplies. They also inflicted massive damage on their enemy. There is a lesson here.
Stories of last stands are powerful. A large bunch of inspiring stories are about doomed last stands—Thermopylae, Beowulf, Roland’s song, Westerplatte etc. We can argue about whether they were worth the suffering of the protagonists, whether it’s morally good, etc., but they work.
Yes, I agree, and my argument was an oversimplification. That said, I don’t think you’re properly considering its context. The context here is that if Ukraine were to be in a situation where it had no chance of winning the war (e.g. due to nuclear weapons being in play). Here is what I’m replying to:
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting.
Many of your examples (1-3, arguably 4) apply to individual local events/battles, or are hard to apply as-is to this context (6, 8).
There is a lesson here.
The lesson is that even the defenders of Mariupol eventually decided to stop fighting rather than to die. And those defenders were highly motivated, patriotic/nationalistic soldiers. I would expect and hope that the threshold for “normal” citizens is lower.
whether it’s morally good, etc., but they work.
Define “work”. They may “work” for an individual battle, but they tautologically don’t win the war. It’s telling that almost all of your examples are fictional or have unreliable (ancient) sources. I’ve never heard of a last-stand involving an entire army, and even completely crazy countries (WW2 Japan, Germany) capitulate eventually when faced with overwhelming firepower. And nuclear weapons are overwhelming firepower.
I’m not entirely convinced nukes are a “I win” button in this war. What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population? In that case, even full counter-value targeting of Ukraine with the full Russian atomic stockpile probably kills under a million people. I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren’t as cost-effective as precision weapons. That, in fact, NATO is entirely capable of supplying so much precision weaponry to Ukraine that it does more damage to combat units than the entire Russian tactical nuclear stockpile combined. My best-guess scenario for Russia using all their tactical nuclear weapons is that, between poor target info and poor maintanance of the Russia atomic stockpile, they at most render the Ukrainian Army 50% combat ineffective. That still isn’t enough to knock them out of the fight, and an influx of NATO weapons afterwards will stabilize the front.
I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren’t as cost-effective as precision weapons.
We still live in a world where all use of nuclear weapons is strategic.
What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population?
So what? the point of Russia using nukes is to signal that it will do whatever it takes to defeat Ukraine. The tactical effects are beside the point. It’s hard to predict what will happen exactly, but if a nuke gets used anywhere, there will be panic in every European city worse than the covid panic of 2020. The knock-on effects are debatable, but the ones that primarily affect this conflict will be the effects on the population in the West, who after all elect their leaders and therefore constrain them. I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict. This is especially true if the nuke is used e.g. in the context of a nuclear test on Crimea.
But your discussion on tactical nukes misses an important point: Russia is so far not trying to exterminate Ukraine and its people. If it were willing to do so and use nukes, it could wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership in a way that goes for beyond “50% combat ineffective”. Armies needs supplies, working logistics, etc. If someone is reckless enough to start using nuclear weapons, I don’t think it’s safe to assume they will be prudent enough only to use them on military targets.
Biden’s statement was that using a tactical nuke would just result in increased weapons deliveries and expanding the range of delivered weapons and not doing other retaliation.
That was an available move because the tactical utility of the weapons is very low. India in particular and likely also China, do care about no nukes getting detonated and Russia could lose their support for donating tactical nukes.
I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict.
While there’s no appetite for unlimited support, I think currently the biggest limit for support is cost. The Republicans who question support for Ukraine do it based on arguments about the cost of that support. If Russia detonates a tactical nuke, it becomes very hard for anyone to argue about cost, and the current opposition of part of the Republicans to support for Ukraine is essentially destroyed.
I’m saying that Russia can’t, in fact, “wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership” with nuclear weapons, at least not for long. Rails are made of hardened steel. Roads are made of asphalt. Neither can really be “knocked out” without being inside the fireball of a nuclear weapon. Russia can use its entire nuclear stockpile to seriously damage Ukrainian logistics for a while, but I don’t think their command structure can really take advantage of that, based off their recent performance. And trucks can still drive off-road. With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud, if that’s what it takes to get supplies to the front. As for leadership, they can disperse as well. With Starlink, they are entirely capable of directing operations from a corn field in either Poland or Ukraine. The Ukrainian command structure is also specifically built to survive decapitation strikes and interdiction of communication. Both NATO and PACT forces had detailed plans for fighting a total war after a strategic nuclear exchange. On the battlefield, nuclear weapons aren’t eschalogical, they’re just another weapon.
Also, Russia can’t exterminate the Ukrainian people with nuclear weapons, even if it uses its entire strategic stockpile there, especially if Ukraine disperses their population. It’s a matter of math, not will. If the people aren’t in cities, what is Russia going to target? A villiage of a few hundred with a strategic nuclear weapon? It’ll run out long before making a big dent on Ukrainian demographics.
So let’s say it’s mid 2023, Ukraine is pushing the Russians, and Russia conducts a nuclear test in Crimea. Ukraine responds by pausing operations for a week and dispersing its population. Then continues to drive into Crimea. What does Russia do then? Tactical nukes might slow things down, but only until they run out. Strategic weapons may result in conventional NATO retalliation and again can only do so much. Nuclear weapons can’t stop a dominant Ukrainian military if the political and military leadership stands firm, and based on what I’ve seen so far I think they will.
Something that sounds simple—“dispersing” your population—really comes with a huge cost. You can’t just send your population into the fields and expect them to live there.
And trucks can still drive off-road.
For which they require gasoline.
With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud
I don’t think this is accurate, Nato doesn’t just have a million trucks a month lying around somewhere to send.
If the people aren’t in cities, what is Russia going to target?
I don’t particularly enjoy playing this morbid game of guessing what Russia could do, but targeting things like dams, bridges, power-plants, and other infrastructure would do far more damage than you seem to acknowledge.
Then continues to drive into Crimea.
Do they drive through the water, or how does this work? I feel like your arguments prove to much. If Ukraine had it that easy, why haven’t they taken even Kherson yet?
Ukraine is recieving ~70% of its pre-war GDP in military aid alone. They’ve already sent much of their civilian population to the EU. If there’s a serious nuclear threat, population dispersal is simply a continuation of existing policies. The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
There are millions of civilian trucks in Europe. Yes, attrition rate will be high if they are used in a military context, but if nukes get dropped there are bigger things to worry about.
Russia knocking out dams, bridges, and power-plants doesn’t do much in the long-run. Sure, Ukrainian civilians won’t be operating with power, and hospitals won’t work, but those are small things in the context of nuclear war. The only major river in Ukraine is the Dnepier, and Russia is currently running a significant part of its supply lines through pontoons there right now. Nuking hospitals might kill a lot of people, but it doesn’t do much for the war effort.
As for Crimea, we’re talking about the context of Russia using nuclear weapons, which pre-supposes Ukraine being able to take Crimea. And I think they will, in time. Russia is currently only spending ~5% of its GDP on its military. Ukraine, when taking into account foreign military aid, is spending 90%+.
The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
We are at the point where German mainstream media is willing to write stories about how the people in Crimea are standing behind Putin. If you want to know where that media outlet is located on the political spectrum Wikipedia points out that it’s partly owned by the SPD which is the main party in Germany’s governing coalition.
Germany was never really willing to support Ukraine to retake Crimea. That’s why Ukraine got so little German support pre-2022 invasion.
The idea that Germany is willing to just spend tens of billions to support Ukraine seems very unrealistic to me.
You cite anecdotal evidence—which is valuable as such, but likely biased in some way. Can you indicate the number of sources and their socio-economic background?
Sure, it’s biased. The point mostly was that my personal experience confirms the reasons why the polls cited in the original post are even more biased.
The first Gallup poll I cited was from July 2014. Do you think that a lot of people left Crimea by then?
One doesn’t have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It’s unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
I just don’t see how the conclusion you’re making follows from the statements you make in the post even if all of them are true.
If you agree that Crimea would not be peaceful under Ukrainian rule and in a state of constant violent conflict and you care about global security, having Crimea under Ukrainian rule is not good.
The idea that if Ukraine only manages to retake all its former territory that means it’s safe from future attacks from Russia is faulty especially if there’s a lot of resistance in Crimea to Ukrainian rule.
Nuclear risk and global security matter.
I think if you believe that the borders of Ukraine don’t matter and what matters is nuclear risk, then it’s useful to be able to make a peace deal that does not back Putin into a corner where using nuclear weapons is the only thing that might keep him in power.
Food prices are also a huge global security risk and having a peace deal sooner than later would be good on that front.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
This is the first time I heard anything like that, so I checked Wikipedia, and the Russian page says:
В 2022 году в ходе российского вторжения город был оккупирован вооружёнными силами России и самопровозглашённой ДНР после продолжительной блокады и обстрела российскими войсками, в результате чего, по оценкам ООН, в городе были повреждены или разрушены до 90 % жилых зданий и до 60 % частных домов.
In 2022, during the Russian invasion, the city was occupied by Russian armed forces and the self-proclaimed DNR after a lengthy blockade and shelling by Russian troops, which, according to UN estimates, damaged or destroyed up to 90 percent of residential buildings and up to 60 percent of private homes in the city.
So, seems like the editors of Russian Wikipedia haven’t heard about it either.
(My Russian is not fluent enough to check the entire talk page carefully, but skimming the text did not reveal any edit war about who actually destroyed Mariupol. I am saying this because even where Wikipedia editors are biased, one can usually find the accusations of bias on the talk page.)
Russian Wikipedia is very oppositionary. It tells pro-western point of view with 90% propability (this pro-western point of view is usually also truth, but the point is that you should not additionally update from Russian Wiki).
There’s an RT article that makes the claim. I’m unsure about whether it’s wise to currently link directly to RT, especially when posting censorship-circumventing links.
Quoting RT is a bit like quoting QAnon. If there is not even another Russian source that would confirm the information, I think it is quite safe to assume that it was made up.
For those unfamiliar, watch this. (Yay, European censorship trivially circumvented.)
Christian is not saying that RT is reliable, only that we can’t trust either side. Only if both sides report something or if there is independent reporting—but where will you find that? I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia on this either—who knows what filtering/blocking of accounts goes on.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Please do not “both sides” at me when one of those sides is RT. Note that I am not saying “Russia” here, but “RT” specifically. Using RT as an argument for… anything… is just silly.
Sorry, I am running out of patience here. Using RT in a discussion is exactly the same level of insanity as using QAnon. If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source. If RT is the original, then please let’s just not discuss that at a wannabe rationalist site at all.
With regards to Wikipedia, I do not trust the articles, but I trust that if a controversy exists, it will appear on the talk page. (At least in form of: “A suggests X” “B suggests to ban A; A is banned”.)
If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source.
Are you actually reading what I write? This has nothing to do with what I said. I have two independent sources, not one source repeating what another source says. Neither of the two nor them together is enough for me to be confident that the claim is true.
I did refer to both sources. The other is an eye-witness report (with two people in between) and not a media report. Given that I noted that in the first post, it feels strange to me that you assert I somehow only referred to RT.
If RT makes a claim then that claim is a claim that’s alleged. Then it’s a set of the “all war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” that throwaway62654 talked about. You can talk about how important that set happens to be but if you want to make arguments about its nature, then to me this clearly falls into that set.
mainstream Russian media
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Russian, so I can’t check what mainstream Russian media says about Mariupol.
I’m not saying “both sides” here. I see Russia as the much worse aggressor. It seems clear that Putin used the real but very weak Nazi accusations to expand his energy empire. But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Agree.
I understand Christian’s point as primarily about stopping the war to help people on the ground—with all the difficulties that brings—many might not want to be “liberated” . Cheering Ukraine isn’t helping that cause.
But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
I know we’re in a hostile information space, but this takes epistemic learned helplessness way too far. There are lots of ways to find things out other than being told about them, and when you don’t have specific knowledge about something you don’t have to adopt a uniform prior.
Taking Mariupol as an example, our two suspects are the Russians, who were attacking Mariupol and didn’t have any assets there, and the Ukrainians, who were defending Mariupol and did. Given those facts, before we hear from either side, what should we expect? If you’re unsure, we can look at other events in similar reference classes. For example, of the German towns destroyed during World War 2, how many would you predict were destroyed by Allied attackers, and how many by German defenders?
Usually that’s just about denying strategic assets, though: blowing up railroads, collapsing mine shafts, that sort of thing. Blowing up the museums and opera houses is pointless, because the enemy can’t get any war benefit by capturing them. All it does is waste your own explosives, which you’d rather use to blow up the enemy. Scorched earth practiced by attackers, on the other hand, tends to be more indiscriminate: contrast the state of Novgorod post-WW2 with that of the towns west of it, or the treatment of rice fields by North Vietnamese vs. Americans during the Vietnam war.
The Wikipedia number for Mariupol’s ethnic Russian population is 44%. Russia certainly had the intention to make Mariupol Russian territory. Making Mariupol Russian territory is worth more if it stays standing. Russia has to invest less money into rebuilding Mariupol if it’s not destroyed.
The inability of the Russian army was not as apparent at the time Mariupol was taken as it’s now, so it’s quite plausible that Ukrainians didn’t expect to be able to retake it at the time.
World War II was not a far fought to take over German territory, so it’s not in the same reference class. That’s especially true because of lessons from World War I, that the German population might have to see part of Germany being destroyed to really understand that they lost.
I’m a little curious what reference class you think the battle of Mariupol does belong to, which makes its destruction by its defenders plausible on priors. But mostly it sounds like you agree that we can make inferences about hard questions even without a trustworthy authority to appeal to, and that’s the point I was really interested in.
The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
The idea that if Ukraine only manages to retake all its former territory that means it’s safe from future attacks from Russia is faulty especially if there’s a lot of resistance in Crimea to Ukrainian rule.
The idea that if Ukraine make a peace deal with Russia means it’s safe from future attacks from Russia is even more faulty. In fact Ukraine made a peace deal with Russia in 2015. And I’m not even talking about Budapest Memorandum.
I think if you believe that the borders of Ukraine don’t matter and what matters is nuclear risk, then it’s useful to be able to make a peace deal that does not back Putin into a corner where using nuclear weapons is the only thing that might keep him in power.
Borders don’t matter in and of themselves. But they matter to Putin. Somewhat. Therefore they can be used as a tool to prevent him from being encouraged to continue his conquest.
In fact Ukraine made a peace deal with Russia in 2015.
They didn’t. They made a ceasefire agreement. Then they wanted to pass laws to do what the ceasefire agreement calls for and then there was the episode with the grenade in front of the Ukrainian parliament and they didn’t pass laws.
Therefore they can be used as a tool to prevent him from being encouraged to continue his conquest.
Taking territory against the will of the local population is hard and painful as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. This whole episode should be good in showing that the Russian army is not capable of doing that.
Reducing the amount of territory that could be taken with the support of the local population discourages conquest.
The idea that Putin would just accept Crimea as being Ukrainian without planning another attack to take it back seems strange to me.
The idea that Putin would just accept Crimea as being Ukrainian without planning another attack to take it back seems strange to me.
He won’t. I don’t even know if retaking Crimea is a wise strategy. Ukrainian military may well decide to not proceed to Crimea because of nuclear risk. My point was that any attempt at peace without Putin giving up something of value would play directly into his hands.
The paragraph explicitly states 1) Russian aviation and TOS-1 Buratino targeted residential areas with bombings.. 2) Russian commanders prioritized capturing the city swiftly, disregarding the safety of civilians. 3) Russian commanders provided false information to their subordinates regarding the presence of civilians in residential areas.
You can get some insight into the situation from the text, I believe. It’s just one data point but there are countless evidence like that provided by Russians themselves. And nothing that kind of magnitude from Ukrainian sources.
But ofc you can not really answer “Why are there so many destroyed homes in Mariupol?”. Each side should provide a spreadsheet indicating the number of houses destroyed with video confirmations to really answer the question :)
Well, I think I have nothing to say anymore. Have a good day!
I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
This is an easily exploitable position. Coincidently, the one that Russian state is optimized to manipulate very well by throwing lots of completely unevidenced claims and talking about them as facts, so that reasonable people put them in the alleged category.
Russian media is extremely untrustworthy. If you think that of course it is, after all Western media is untrustworthy as well—you have no idea. The Russian media and Western media are in two completely different reference classes of untrustworthiness. My best example is your outgroup network, but completely unrestrained with even a resemblence of memetic competetion with your ingroup network. There is no insentive to be correlated with facts at all moreover there is an insentive not to be.
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
Who said that I have only two mental boxes? I responded to a statement about what “alleged claims” happen to be. I wouldn’t have brought this up if we wouldn’t have talked about what claims are alleged.
While I’m referring to RT, my process was “friend makes a claim, that’s sourced independently of RT and not to any Russian media outlet but to people on the ground” → search additional sources to see whether that’s actually what the Russian position is.
I didn’t cite any Russian media in my main post. In the comments, I once referred to https://khpg.org/ for a translation but not for other factual claims because it might be a too Russian-leaning source.
I only referred to Russian media when discussing what claims are alleged.
Here you are talking about separating claims in these two mental categories.
I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
Also you acted as if at the moment you were indeed using only two of them.
You brought up Ukrainians war crimes in the post, crediting respectful sources as Amnesty International. Than throwaway62654 replied that even if it was true it is tiny compared to credible Russian crimes like destroying Mariupol. Till this moment the mental box “alledged Ukrainian crimes” include only those who came from reasonable sources which are somewhat correlated with the truth. You reply with
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
Thus putting a very improbable crime into the mental box. What used to be “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International” is now “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International and Russian state media”, which isn’t a helpful category anymore, but exactly the kind of mental category Russian propaganda machine wants people to have.
I don’t think of the crimes that are well-documented by Amnesty International as alleged crimes but as well-documented crimes. That’s the mental category in which they are for me. As Viliam explained in detail, those are claims by a source with left-wing London values and not one with pro-Russian values.
It feels very strange to see the set as alleged crimes, as only those alleged by Western sources and not count allegations by non-Western sources.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment. I admit that after reading it I was under the impression that you were giving at least some credence to the claim that the Ukrainians turned Mariupol into Grozny 2.0. Though rereading it now, I see that my impression was coloured by your other comments—I interpreted it as “no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other” rather than “it’s worth knowing what both sides of an argument are saying if you want to come to a compromise”.
This is a pity, since while I don’t agree with you on (my understanding of) your stance on the war and how to best end it, you raise important points which should definitely be considered.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment.
I’m not sure what you think “allegedly perpetrated” is supposed to mean when it’s not about who alleges things when I respond to a comment that’s about what’s alleged.
“no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other”
I do think that it’s pretty hard to know anything about what happens on the ground in a warzone in real time. I do believe that it’s useful to be generally skeptical of one’s knowledge. People are generally biased to be overconfident when thinking about politics and that’s especially true in times of war.
I don’t think claims from either side should make one confident of what happened. Independent claims like those from Amnesty or the UN human rights council are better. Currently, Amnesty seems to give Russia the blame for bombing a theatre with a lot of civilians in it but doesn’t make claims about the responsibility for leveling a lot of civilian buildings to the ground.
Then why are you spreading unconfirmed claims? That is not nice. The city was encircled by Russians on 1st March. Could you explain me how and why AFU destroyed half-million city just in one week? :) If you’re really honest here do at least some fact-checking.
throwaway62654 stated that Russians destroyed Mariupol.
One doesn’t have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
You opposed and made the statement about possible involvement of Ukrainians.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It’s unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
According to Russian sources all the war crimes are done by Ukrainians. Does it make Ukraine a subject to praesumptio culpae? Is it a reasonable framing? Should we from the beginning include Ukraine into that category? Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I can write an article that Mariupol was allegedly destroyed by North Korea (sorry for using absurdity). Will you include North Korea to the list of possible actors? Will it be useful? If not than what is the difference?
Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I don’t think anybody in this discussion is operating with the authority of the Ukrainian government, so this is a quite strange claim. I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
Yeah but by assuming things (directly or not) you are framing the discussion in a way which significantly influences perception of the topic.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :) Or I can expand shoulds to should we dilute our attention and efforts with statements which are most certainly false to find the truth.
Anyway I see we are kinda stuck here and I have nothing more to add.
I’d like to object that it’s rational. Sooner or later any lie will be revealed and the reputation/trust will be lost irrevocably. Without trust Ukraine will lose external and internal support and then the war. The risks are just not worth it.
It would be great if war propaganda lies would lead to irrevocably lost trust, but in most cases that’s not what happens. Most people excuse lies from people they consider to be on their side in war.
In any case, at the start of this war, we had false propaganda stories like the Ghost of Kyiv. They didn’t choose the strategy of not telling any lies and I’m not aware of any army doing that during a war.
Yes, they didn’t. And I think the story about the Ghost of Kyiv is net negative. But not all propaganda is equal. One thing is to lie about a mythic mighty pilot to comfort people (which is still bad imo) and completely other thing is to say that Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol, killed people in Bucha or spend millions to vilify Ukraine and poison EU in information space.
I’ve talked to a number of people living in Crimea over the years. Some were pro-Russian, some were pro-Ukrainian, some undecided. Here are some observations.
People weren’t particularly afraid of Ukraine. But since 2014 literally everyone is afraid to say openly anything that’s not supportive of Russia. Fear is everywhere. So much for accurate polling data. Since February 2022 people became much more afraid of Russia. I talked to people who fled Crimea after the announcement of mobilization. They were in panic.
Since 2014 a lot of people left Crimea. Instead a lot of Russians moved to Crimea. People living in Crimea now and Crimean people in 2014 are two completely different sets of people. It feels like one third of people in Crimea are from Russia now.
I know people who were born in Crimea and still were forced to go through a lengthy, complicated and humiliating procedure of proving they are Crimean enough to be allowed to live in Crimea. I know a person who went through an unnecessarily humiliating questioning by Russian FSB for no other reason than going from Crimea to Kyiv.
Now more general thoughts.
One doesn’t have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
All that said nothing I said above or you said in your post matters. Nuclear risk and global security matter. I understand why in politics you have to first prove someone’s not a good guy before suggesting to stop helping. I did not expect to hear something like this here. I just don’t see how the conclusion you’re making follows from the statements you make in the post even if all of them are true.
For some reason public discourse in the Western countries gravitates towards either “let’s stop helping Ukraine” with weak justifications like “will of the Crimean people” and “Ukrainians aren’t saints too” or going all in up to directly fighting Russian army on the ground. I think policy of helping Ukraine but not engaging Russian army directly (basically just sticking to what’s already being done) is superior to either extreme.
Yes, this is a good point.
Wait what? I mean yes, obviously this is superior to batshit crazy options like sending troops to Ukraine or telling Russia it owns Ukraine now, but in terms of nuclear risk and global security it’s pretty stupid. The current approach incentivises both Ukraine and Russia to continue and escalate as they both ultimately see themselves as prevailing given enough time.
I don’t see better options. What would you suggest?
It’s pretty hard to disincentivise anyone to fight. Ukrainian population wouldn’t accept defeat. Putin can’t either. Both will fight regardless of whether they see themselves prevailing eventually. It’s worth noting that Putin probably cornered himself by formally annexing more territories on purpose.
One would think that maybe we can make some kind of a peace deal. Maybe Ukraine recognizes Crimea as Russian in exchange for stopping hostilities? The problem is it’s not the first time. The first time was in 2014. No one responded to the annexation of Crimea. Just a couple of months later Russian agents start a war in Donbass. Then in 2015 there was a peace deal freezing the conflict. Everyone in the West was afraid of supporting Ukraine in retaking Donbass. They thought it might provoke Putin. Which gave him time to prepare for a full scale invasion. If there’s another peace deal now Russian army would most likely use the next few years to recruit and train more soldiers and produce more weapons. And boom, a bigger invasion.
It may sound counterintuitive but my intuition says that the best we can hope for is this war never ending without any side having a decisive victory.
One of the underlying assumptions here of course is that letting Russia to just grab land is bad. It’s hard to estimate probability of WW3 through the same mechanism as WW2. But probably not low enough to just let Russia do what it wants.
The situation is pretty difficult,
a) Providing clear, unambiguous and automatic mechanisms for repealing Western sanctions that are also realistic (i.e. not “we drop sanctions once you get out of Crimea”). While I also like Bryan Caplan’s suggestion to offer asylum + military compensation to defecting Russian soldiers, I recognize that this is politically not feasible.
Sanctions that are not directed at the military antagonize the Russian population. Somewhat counterintuitively, they can even lead ordinary Russians to increase their support for Putin.
b) Recognition of the annexation of Crimea, subject to a (future) internationally recognized referendum legitimized by a UNSC resolution and potentially some kind of autonomy within Russia. Ideally, this would be modeled on Kosovo or Hong-Kong in some way.
c) Some form of Minsk III that gives hard guarantees to Donetsk/Luhansk for a referendum, or makes them de facto independent states that are de-jure part of Ukraine.
d) Making weapons-deliveries to Ukraine conditional on Ukraine stating that it might be willing to give up Crimea + DNR/LNR under suitable terms. Something like this for the Russian side could be (a).
While I recognize that Russia will try to game this as far as possible, the main issue I see with this is that it may incentivize similar behavior by other states in the future. Borders are supposed to be fixed not because this is “fair” or anything, but to avoid people starting wars over borders.
(a) There’s nothing valuable Putin would willingly give in exchange for repealing sanctions. He doesn’t care that much. And potential marginal increase in Putin’s support doesn’t matter either. The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.
Asylum and financial rewards for defecting Russian soldiers were announced by Ukraine in the beginning of the invasion. But I don’t know how well it works in practice.
(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn’t control.
(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.
(d) This is something that may end up as the solution the US chooses, maybe after the next presidential election. The problem is it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion. The amount of military equipment Ukraine currently receives is inadequate for the next invasion. So if you want to ask Ukraine to stop its counteroffensive without allowing Putin to do what he wants you would need to give Ukraine much more equipment. Hundreds of billions dollar worth of weapons. Instead of $40+B it received so far. But then what is there to stop Ukraine from retaking Crimea anyway.
That’s why I say that the best we can hope for is that the war goes on without any side having a decisive victory. That way Russian army will hopefully lose soldiers and equipment as fast as they are mobilized and Ukraine can protect itself with just around $50B worth of weapons per year.
Why do you believe that Russia is capable of a much bigger invasion?
Putin already showed willingness to increase number of people fighting. Russia lacks time to train them. Given enough time it would train them much better. There’s no major obstacles to an another round of mobilization. Also number of active soldiers in Russian army is more than a million. Only ~200K of them were used in the invasion. Russian economy is going strong (just −3% this year according to IMF). Only ~5% of Russian GDP is spent on military this year. Usually it spent around 4% of its GDP. You know, looking at those numbers I start to question even more where this whole narrative of “Russia is losing, don’t corner Putin” is coming from.
In comparison Ukraine lost more than a third of its GDP and spends almost half of the remaining part on the military.
A nice story, but I don’t buy it. How exactly does banning Russian flights to Europe, or banning Russian tourists, or banning Russian bank accounts with more than €100k from transacting make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war? Or confiscating/stealing the wealth of oligarchs? If Putin “doesn’t care that much” about sanctions, isn’t it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?
Maybe not, but better than not trying at all. Putin’s rhetoric about the West being hypocritical is spot on, except for the fact that Russia is just as hypocritical. Offering Putin the “rules-based” and law-based international order he has been asking for since at least 2008 is in my opinion a no-brainer, even if he goes on to reject it.
Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s the constitution that says this or the law. I don’t see how this problem is unique to what I’m proposing, if Ukraine just gradually keeps winning like it is doing right now, the Russian constitution/law will still say this, and it will be an even bigger problem.
Again: I see this argument thrown around a lot, but nothing solves this fundamental problem, so the existence of this problem proves nothing. Even a long dragged out war doesn’t stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.
Fundamentally, Russia has nukes and Ukraine does not. In this sense, anything that de-escalates this war, while at the same time convincing Russia and China that trying something like this is a bad idea, is the way to go. If Russia decides that it doesn’t like the way the West is supporting Ukraine, it has the means to escalate. In the end, the way I expect this to go is for Russia to credibly threaten/use some kind of nuke in Ukraine, and thereby forcing an agreement with the West. Alternatively, the West gets bored of Ukraine after another year of fighting and Russia slowly but surely takes the regions it has annexed. But saying “I hope everything keeps going like it is going” is magical thinking—the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.
Sanctions are of 2 types: strategical and moral. The first kind are aimed at stopping an adversary from being able to produce vital stuff, like the recent chip embargo on China. These are often quite effective at producing an effect, as can be seen in how Russia is having massive logistical problems and having to pull out old Soviet tanks, rather than producing new one. The second kind are to show people that you’re Doing Something and that you are Very Serious. These are very much less effective. Though they’re aimed at appeasing the people at home, rather than changing how a foreign actor acts. The current sanctions are a big bag of both kinds, some of which are in fact quite successful at what they’re supposed to do, i.e. make it harder for the Russians to wage war.
Russia has an interesting history of loosing wars to embarrassingly weaker opponents, which then trigger deep changes. Not that it’s a rule or anything, but it is suggestive. Though frankly I’m not sure if I’d prefer someone other than Putin in charge of the nukes. He at least seems rational, albeit working under the wrong assumptions.
I agree, though sanctions are always sold as being strategic even when they are moral.
The fact that Putin has not used nukes yet is to his credit, but I do think that there is a marked shift in his demeanor from how would sound in speeches before to now. Make of that what you will.
Sanctions turned out to be pretty underwhelming. And surely, one can easily see that the portfolio of sanctions could be much more effective. Personally I think some sanctions are needed but much better thought through.
If you mean something like we tell Putin “If you do the referendum with the UN supervision and allow pro-Ukrainian people in Crimea to freely and publicly debate with pro-Russian people, then we would recognize Crimea as Russian if and only if after long debates people in Crimea still decide to be in Russia”. Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death. But at least there’s no downside. On the other hand, if you mean something like stopping fighting after Putin promises to do a fair referendum you would just significantly increase chances of Ukraine ceasing to exist.
But that’s the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower. At the same time every Ukrainian child hit by a rocket makes the US send more firepower to Ukraine. Which acts as a counterbalance to the fundamental asymmetry between Russia and Ukraine. If you stop the fighting Russia will stop losing its army and Ukraine will get much less military aid.
Let’s consider some strategies the US can use.
Just support Ukraine. At some point Ukraine probably goes “too far” and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia. And let’s say Putin would have payed his cost for invading Ukraine. If Ukraine doesn’t accept defeat after being nuked it would be the best deterrent to future uses of nuclear weapons since they don’t achieve the desired outcome of quick victory.
Calibrate military aid to make sure neither Ukraine nor Russia win. In theory you can prolong the war until either Putin dies or internal politics in Russia destabilizes after a couple million coffins are sent back from Ukraine. The obvious problem is that you can’t control how the war works precisely. Maybe you can ask Ukrainians to slow down a bit from time to time.
Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.
As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.
Optimal strategies are either steady support no matter what (including nukes) or calibrated aid. I’m really anxious because I think the current policy is steady support but with direct engagement in case of nukes. I’m also afraid that fans of a peace deal prevail and we’ll still get a WW3, just a bit later.
I mean we can talk about unrealistic scenarios. You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.
It’s not that simple. Nobody in the West is even in principle open to Crimea becoming Russian (and for good reason). So this wouldn’t be as ridiculous as you make it sound, especially given Putin’s rhetoric over the years and how salty he is about Kosovo.
That’s one way of seeing it, but neither Russian firepower nor manpower should be thought of as a fixed finite resource. If Russia’s current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt. We know that it is capable of doing so, see e.g. the withdrawal at Kiev. If Russia were fighting an existential war for survival and had already pulled all the stops, steadily destroying Russia would be a viable strategy. But Russia has no interest in being steadily destroyed, and still has plenty of ways it could escalate, especially when it comes to actions that hurt the West.
I’m so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
It’s already not contained to Ukraine and Russia (see: the shattered remains of NS1 and NS2 on the sea floor), so even more magical thinking here. If Russia detonates a nuke in Ukraine, the best case is that absolute chaos breaks out in European cities.
Why would he win in a few years if he cannot win now?
You really haven’t explained this reasoning? So Putin “wins”, and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
Russia would call that bluff the moment it was made.
This gave me an interesting thought. Either Putin thinks retreating is deadly for him or not. If he does he will keep sending more forces to be steadily destroyed. If he doesn’t retaking Crimea wouldn’t trigger nuclear response by default as he will hope to conquer it again later.
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power. But the price is artificially prolonging the conflict or increased nuclear risk in Ukraine. Which is why I said prolonging the conflict looks like a better option.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting. I know more than one person who donated significant amounts of money to the army. A vibe I’m getting from many is victory at any cost. Ironically once I had difficulty convincing one Ukrainian why NATO can’t be more involved.
Polls say that only around 10% of Ukrainians think that Ukraine should hold peace talks with Russia. Even after conventional rocket showers 80+% say that Ukraine should keep fighting. Also Ukraine would in a different situation than Japan. If Putin orders a nuclear strike it would mean Ukraine is otherwise winning. So morale would be super-high among Ukrainians. Unlike losing Japan in 1945.
Another thing to consider is that the first use of nuclear weapons was a shock to everyone. Many Ukrainians understand the fact that they can be nuked. Though about 2⁄3 (according to another poll) still don’t believe Russia is capable of actually ordering a nuclear strike.
If you think about it Mariupol could be even worse than a nuclear explosion. Tens of thousands dead but waiting for their fate for many weeks without much water and food, hiding from bombs, seeing familiar faces lying dead on the streets, constantly being in terror. This didn’t stop Ukrainians.
There is a lesswrong post that describes a subtle way Russia destroys lives of its own people. Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
Seeing a mushroom cloud can easily change public opinion but it’s far from obvious that Ukraine would just give up.
Well, the obvious historical analogy is there. And if you plot size (by some appropriate metric) of the wars Putin was involved in so far my guess is there would be something resembling an exponential curve.
In December 2021 Putin openly demanded that NATO returns all former Soviet republics to Russia. The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries). The implied threat was “or else I invade Ukraine”. NATO hadn’t budged. Putin went on to invade Ukraine. If one takes Putin’s words seriously one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans to get all former Soviet republics under his rule.
Not it isn’t, because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin. I hope there are alternatives to Putin that are both realistic and also better, but I haven’t seen much evidence for this coming out of Russia.
Are you familiar with Japan pre 1945 at all? You have heard of kamikaze pilots at the very least, right? I will quote the Wikipedia article on them: “The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death”. Unless your argument is “Ukraine and its leaders are a death cult”, I’m going to respectfully ignore this point as “throwaway62… has no idea what they’re talking about”.
Yes it did. Unless you’re living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol. Sure, Ukrainians in the West will wax poetic about how they will rather die than submit, but when push comes to shove one hopes that this kind of idiotic WWI-style nationalism will give way to cooler heads.
the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
You’ve made a number of very questionable claims in your comment, so I think I’ll start winding down this conversation. Removing NATO forces from post-soviet countries is not “thinly veiled” legalese for returning Soviet republics to Russia, it’s not even close.
Words have meanings: is it “thinly veiled”, or is it “open”?
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don’t you? To restate—the siege of Mariupol didn’t stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
We’re afraid he may start a nuclear war. That’s pretty bad already. And he clearly gets worse with time. Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
Actions speak. I know Ukrainians who were hiding from military enlistment officers for years in relatively peaceful years. I tried to give them advice how to hide from mobilization during the invasion. But they just stopped hiding.
I shared both strong and weak evidence. I didn’t initially think that it’s gonna be a debate… If I treated this like a debate I could say something like: “Putin never said that he’s gonna use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. On the contrary, he said he’s not going to use nukes in Ukraine. Therefore there’s nothing to worry about.” But I’m not saying it.
Look, the point is Putin lied so many times about not being involved in Ukraine. He lied about not intending to start a full scale invasion. Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.
I don’t see what’s offensive, and I’m not twisting your words but pointing out something that’s almost obvious: IF you have no chance of winning THEN you should stop fighting. This was true in Mariupol, and is true for the rest of Ukraine also. The siege of Mariupol absolutely stopped Ukraine from defending Mariupol. The important question is whether the IF applies. But once it does, throwing away human life just to make a point strikes me as somewhat nihilistic.
Yes, is there anyone who could lead Russia of whom you would not be afraid that they’d start a nuclear war?
No I don’t “want” to “give” him anything, I’m just recognizing the realities of the situation, and noticing that what you’re describing could happen with or without Putin.
I agree. But this doesn’t mean that compromises can’t be worked out, see e.g. the Black sea grain deal.
Your if clause is somewhat of a false dichotomy. There are other reasons to keep fighting:
you might be fighting a rear action that you know you won’t win, but will allow the rest to escape
you might be bogging down an enemies strength to keep them from going somewhere else
you might be able to inflict enough damage on them to cause them to be ineffective in later battles
you might want to inspire others
you might care about glory
you might have nowhere else to go
you might just be nihilistic
you might have someone pointing a gun at your back to stop you from retreating
Most of these boil down to iterated games, rather than just a one off prisoner’s dilemma.
Mariupol is a tragedy. But it really didn’t stop Ukrainians from continuing the fight as long as they could. The reason they stopped was because they ran out of supplies. They also inflicted massive damage on their enemy. There is a lesson here.
Stories of last stands are powerful. A large bunch of inspiring stories are about doomed last stands—Thermopylae, Beowulf, Roland’s song, Westerplatte etc. We can argue about whether they were worth the suffering of the protagonists, whether it’s morally good, etc., but they work.
Yes, I agree, and my argument was an oversimplification. That said, I don’t think you’re properly considering its context. The context here is that if Ukraine were to be in a situation where it had no chance of winning the war (e.g. due to nuclear weapons being in play). Here is what I’m replying to:
Many of your examples (1-3, arguably 4) apply to individual local events/battles, or are hard to apply as-is to this context (6, 8).
The lesson is that even the defenders of Mariupol eventually decided to stop fighting rather than to die. And those defenders were highly motivated, patriotic/nationalistic soldiers. I would expect and hope that the threshold for “normal” citizens is lower.
Define “work”. They may “work” for an individual battle, but they tautologically don’t win the war. It’s telling that almost all of your examples are fictional or have unreliable (ancient) sources. I’ve never heard of a last-stand involving an entire army, and even completely crazy countries (WW2 Japan, Germany) capitulate eventually when faced with overwhelming firepower. And nuclear weapons are overwhelming firepower.
I’m not entirely convinced nukes are a “I win” button in this war. What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population? In that case, even full counter-value targeting of Ukraine with the full Russian atomic stockpile probably kills under a million people. I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren’t as cost-effective as precision weapons. That, in fact, NATO is entirely capable of supplying so much precision weaponry to Ukraine that it does more damage to combat units than the entire Russian tactical nuclear stockpile combined. My best-guess scenario for Russia using all their tactical nuclear weapons is that, between poor target info and poor maintanance of the Russia atomic stockpile, they at most render the Ukrainian Army 50% combat ineffective. That still isn’t enough to knock them out of the fight, and an influx of NATO weapons afterwards will stabilize the front.
We still live in a world where all use of nuclear weapons is strategic.
So what? the point of Russia using nukes is to signal that it will do whatever it takes to defeat Ukraine. The tactical effects are beside the point. It’s hard to predict what will happen exactly, but if a nuke gets used anywhere, there will be panic in every European city worse than the covid panic of 2020. The knock-on effects are debatable, but the ones that primarily affect this conflict will be the effects on the population in the West, who after all elect their leaders and therefore constrain them. I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict. This is especially true if the nuke is used e.g. in the context of a nuclear test on Crimea.
But your discussion on tactical nukes misses an important point: Russia is so far not trying to exterminate Ukraine and its people. If it were willing to do so and use nukes, it could wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership in a way that goes for beyond “50% combat ineffective”. Armies needs supplies, working logistics, etc. If someone is reckless enough to start using nuclear weapons, I don’t think it’s safe to assume they will be prudent enough only to use them on military targets.
Biden’s statement was that using a tactical nuke would just result in increased weapons deliveries and expanding the range of delivered weapons and not doing other retaliation.
That was an available move because the tactical utility of the weapons is very low. India in particular and likely also China, do care about no nukes getting detonated and Russia could lose their support for donating tactical nukes.
While there’s no appetite for unlimited support, I think currently the biggest limit for support is cost. The Republicans who question support for Ukraine do it based on arguments about the cost of that support. If Russia detonates a tactical nuke, it becomes very hard for anyone to argue about cost, and the current opposition of part of the Republicans to support for Ukraine is essentially destroyed.
I’m saying that Russia can’t, in fact, “wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership” with nuclear weapons, at least not for long. Rails are made of hardened steel. Roads are made of asphalt. Neither can really be “knocked out” without being inside the fireball of a nuclear weapon. Russia can use its entire nuclear stockpile to seriously damage Ukrainian logistics for a while, but I don’t think their command structure can really take advantage of that, based off their recent performance. And trucks can still drive off-road. With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud, if that’s what it takes to get supplies to the front. As for leadership, they can disperse as well. With Starlink, they are entirely capable of directing operations from a corn field in either Poland or Ukraine. The Ukrainian command structure is also specifically built to survive decapitation strikes and interdiction of communication. Both NATO and PACT forces had detailed plans for fighting a total war after a strategic nuclear exchange. On the battlefield, nuclear weapons aren’t eschalogical, they’re just another weapon.
Also, Russia can’t exterminate the Ukrainian people with nuclear weapons, even if it uses its entire strategic stockpile there, especially if Ukraine disperses their population. It’s a matter of math, not will. If the people aren’t in cities, what is Russia going to target? A villiage of a few hundred with a strategic nuclear weapon? It’ll run out long before making a big dent on Ukrainian demographics.
So let’s say it’s mid 2023, Ukraine is pushing the Russians, and Russia conducts a nuclear test in Crimea. Ukraine responds by pausing operations for a week and dispersing its population. Then continues to drive into Crimea. What does Russia do then? Tactical nukes might slow things down, but only until they run out. Strategic weapons may result in conventional NATO retalliation and again can only do so much. Nuclear weapons can’t stop a dominant Ukrainian military if the political and military leadership stands firm, and based on what I’ve seen so far I think they will.
Something that sounds simple—“dispersing” your population—really comes with a huge cost. You can’t just send your population into the fields and expect them to live there.
For which they require gasoline.
I don’t think this is accurate, Nato doesn’t just have a million trucks a month lying around somewhere to send.
I don’t particularly enjoy playing this morbid game of guessing what Russia could do, but targeting things like dams, bridges, power-plants, and other infrastructure would do far more damage than you seem to acknowledge.
Do they drive through the water, or how does this work? I feel like your arguments prove to much. If Ukraine had it that easy, why haven’t they taken even Kherson yet?
Ukraine is recieving ~70% of its pre-war GDP in military aid alone. They’ve already sent much of their civilian population to the EU. If there’s a serious nuclear threat, population dispersal is simply a continuation of existing policies. The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
There are millions of civilian trucks in Europe. Yes, attrition rate will be high if they are used in a military context, but if nukes get dropped there are bigger things to worry about.
Russia knocking out dams, bridges, and power-plants doesn’t do much in the long-run. Sure, Ukrainian civilians won’t be operating with power, and hospitals won’t work, but those are small things in the context of nuclear war. The only major river in Ukraine is the Dnepier, and Russia is currently running a significant part of its supply lines through pontoons there right now. Nuking hospitals might kill a lot of people, but it doesn’t do much for the war effort.
As for Crimea, we’re talking about the context of Russia using nuclear weapons, which pre-supposes Ukraine being able to take Crimea. And I think they will, in time. Russia is currently only spending ~5% of its GDP on its military. Ukraine, when taking into account foreign military aid, is spending 90%+.
We are at the point where German mainstream media is willing to write stories about how the people in Crimea are standing behind Putin. If you want to know where that media outlet is located on the political spectrum Wikipedia points out that it’s partly owned by the SPD which is the main party in Germany’s governing coalition.
Germany was never really willing to support Ukraine to retake Crimea. That’s why Ukraine got so little German support pre-2022 invasion.
The idea that Germany is willing to just spend tens of billions to support Ukraine seems very unrealistic to me.
If you look at German politics, I don’t think it’s that easy to just spend tens of billions in foreign aid.
And it would be a strong signal that NATO promises are worth nothing, which is bad for the Baltic states.
Constitution in Russia isn’t nearly as sacred as constitution in US. Really, no one cares about constitution.
You cite anecdotal evidence—which is valuable as such, but likely biased in some way. Can you indicate the number of sources and their socio-economic background?
Sure, it’s biased. The point mostly was that my personal experience confirms the reasons why the polls cited in the original post are even more biased.
The first Gallup poll I cited was from July 2014. Do you think that a lot of people left Crimea by then?
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It’s unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
If you agree that Crimea would not be peaceful under Ukrainian rule and in a state of constant violent conflict and you care about global security, having Crimea under Ukrainian rule is not good.
The idea that if Ukraine only manages to retake all its former territory that means it’s safe from future attacks from Russia is faulty especially if there’s a lot of resistance in Crimea to Ukrainian rule.
I think if you believe that the borders of Ukraine don’t matter and what matters is nuclear risk, then it’s useful to be able to make a peace deal that does not back Putin into a corner where using nuclear weapons is the only thing that might keep him in power.
Food prices are also a huge global security risk and having a peace deal sooner than later would be good on that front.
This is the first time I heard anything like that, so I checked Wikipedia, and the Russian page says:
So, seems like the editors of Russian Wikipedia haven’t heard about it either.
(My Russian is not fluent enough to check the entire talk page carefully, but skimming the text did not reveal any edit war about who actually destroyed Mariupol. I am saying this because even where Wikipedia editors are biased, one can usually find the accusations of bias on the talk page.)
Russian Wikipedia is very oppositionary. It tells pro-western point of view with 90% propability (this pro-western point of view is usually also truth, but the point is that you should not additionally update from Russian Wiki).
There’s an RT article that makes the claim. I’m unsure about whether it’s wise to currently link directly to RT, especially when posting censorship-circumventing links.
Quoting RT is a bit like quoting QAnon. If there is not even another Russian source that would confirm the information, I think it is quite safe to assume that it was made up.
For those unfamiliar, watch this. (Yay, European censorship trivially circumvented.)
Christian is not saying that RT is reliable, only that we can’t trust either side. Only if both sides report something or if there is independent reporting—but where will you find that? I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia on this either—who knows what filtering/blocking of accounts goes on.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Please do not “both sides” at me when one of those sides is RT. Note that I am not saying “Russia” here, but “RT” specifically. Using RT as an argument for… anything… is just silly.
Sorry, I am running out of patience here. Using RT in a discussion is exactly the same level of insanity as using QAnon. If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source. If RT is the original, then please let’s just not discuss that at a wannabe rationalist site at all.
With regards to Wikipedia, I do not trust the articles, but I trust that if a controversy exists, it will appear on the talk page. (At least in form of: “A suggests X” “B suggests to ban A; A is banned”.)
Are you actually reading what I write? This has nothing to do with what I said. I have two independent sources, not one source repeating what another source says. Neither of the two nor them together is enough for me to be confident that the claim is true.
I did refer to both sources. The other is an eye-witness report (with two people in between) and not a media report. Given that I noted that in the first post, it feels strange to me that you assert I somehow only referred to RT.
If RT makes a claim then that claim is a claim that’s alleged. Then it’s a set of the “all war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” that throwaway62654 talked about. You can talk about how important that set happens to be but if you want to make arguments about its nature, then to me this clearly falls into that set.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Russian, so I can’t check what mainstream Russian media says about Mariupol.
I’m not saying “both sides” here. I see Russia as the much worse aggressor. It seems clear that Putin used the real but very weak Nazi accusations to expand his energy empire. But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
Agree.
I understand Christian’s point as primarily about stopping the war to help people on the ground—with all the difficulties that brings—many might not want to be “liberated” . Cheering Ukraine isn’t helping that cause.
I know we’re in a hostile information space, but this takes epistemic learned helplessness way too far. There are lots of ways to find things out other than being told about them, and when you don’t have specific knowledge about something you don’t have to adopt a uniform prior.
Taking Mariupol as an example, our two suspects are the Russians, who were attacking Mariupol and didn’t have any assets there, and the Ukrainians, who were defending Mariupol and did. Given those facts, before we hear from either side, what should we expect? If you’re unsure, we can look at other events in similar reference classes. For example, of the German towns destroyed during World War 2, how many would you predict were destroyed by Allied attackers, and how many by German defenders?
Ever heard of scorched earth?
Usually that’s just about denying strategic assets, though: blowing up railroads, collapsing mine shafts, that sort of thing. Blowing up the museums and opera houses is pointless, because the enemy can’t get any war benefit by capturing them. All it does is waste your own explosives, which you’d rather use to blow up the enemy. Scorched earth practiced by attackers, on the other hand, tends to be more indiscriminate: contrast the state of Novgorod post-WW2 with that of the towns west of it, or the treatment of rice fields by North Vietnamese vs. Americans during the Vietnam war.
The Wikipedia number for Mariupol’s ethnic Russian population is 44%. Russia certainly had the intention to make Mariupol Russian territory. Making Mariupol Russian territory is worth more if it stays standing. Russia has to invest less money into rebuilding Mariupol if it’s not destroyed.
The inability of the Russian army was not as apparent at the time Mariupol was taken as it’s now, so it’s quite plausible that Ukrainians didn’t expect to be able to retake it at the time.
World War II was not a far fought to take over German territory, so it’s not in the same reference class. That’s especially true because of lessons from World War I, that the German population might have to see part of Germany being destroyed to really understand that they lost.
I’m a little curious what reference class you think the battle of Mariupol does belong to, which makes its destruction by its defenders plausible on priors. But mostly it sounds like you agree that we can make inferences about hard questions even without a trustworthy authority to appeal to, and that’s the point I was really interested in.
The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
I agree that ending the war sooner rather than later is politically the most important priority.
The idea that if Ukraine make a peace deal with Russia means it’s safe from future attacks from Russia is even more faulty. In fact Ukraine made a peace deal with Russia in 2015. And I’m not even talking about Budapest Memorandum.
Borders don’t matter in and of themselves. But they matter to Putin. Somewhat. Therefore they can be used as a tool to prevent him from being encouraged to continue his conquest.
They didn’t. They made a ceasefire agreement. Then they wanted to pass laws to do what the ceasefire agreement calls for and then there was the episode with the grenade in front of the Ukrainian parliament and they didn’t pass laws.
Taking territory against the will of the local population is hard and painful as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. This whole episode should be good in showing that the Russian army is not capable of doing that.
Reducing the amount of territory that could be taken with the support of the local population discourages conquest.
The idea that Putin would just accept Crimea as being Ukrainian without planning another attack to take it back seems strange to me.
He won’t. I don’t even know if retaking Crimea is a wise strategy. Ukrainian military may well decide to not proceed to Crimea because of nuclear risk. My point was that any attempt at peace without Putin giving up something of value would play directly into his hands.
So, Do you think after Russians had encircled the city Ukrainians somehow were able to destroy it? :)
P.S.: It is so shocking to see such statements in LW that I even registered here after 10 years of read-only.
@ChristianKl So, how are things with crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine? This one is from Wagner’s channel.
https://t.me/grey_zone/19363
That paragraph looks to me to be about how they handled civilians on the battlefield and is not about the number of destroyed homes in Mariupol.
It does not really answer “Why are there so many destroyed homes in Mariupol?”
The paragraph explicitly states 1) Russian aviation and TOS-1 Buratino targeted residential areas with bombings.. 2) Russian commanders prioritized capturing the city swiftly, disregarding the safety of civilians. 3) Russian commanders provided false information to their subordinates regarding the presence of civilians in residential areas.
You can get some insight into the situation from the text, I believe. It’s just one data point but there are countless evidence like that provided by Russians themselves. And nothing that kind of magnitude from Ukrainian sources.
But ofc you can not really answer “Why are there so many destroyed homes in Mariupol?”. Each side should provide a spreadsheet indicating the number of houses destroyed with video confirmations to really answer the question :)
Well, I think I have nothing to say anymore. Have a good day!
I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
In this instance, the claim is that Ukrainians destroyed it before that point.
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
This is an easily exploitable position. Coincidently, the one that Russian state is optimized to manipulate very well by throwing lots of completely unevidenced claims and talking about them as facts, so that reasonable people put them in the alleged category.
Russian media is extremely untrustworthy. If you think that of course it is, after all Western media is untrustworthy as well—you have no idea. The Russian media and Western media are in two completely different reference classes of untrustworthiness. My best example is your outgroup network, but completely unrestrained with even a resemblence of memetic competetion with your ingroup network. There is no insentive to be correlated with facts at all moreover there is an insentive not to be.
Who said that I have only two mental boxes? I responded to a statement about what “alleged claims” happen to be. I wouldn’t have brought this up if we wouldn’t have talked about what claims are alleged.
While I’m referring to RT, my process was “friend makes a claim, that’s sourced independently of RT and not to any Russian media outlet but to people on the ground” → search additional sources to see whether that’s actually what the Russian position is.
I didn’t cite any Russian media in my main post. In the comments, I once referred to https://khpg.org/ for a translation but not for other factual claims because it might be a too Russian-leaning source.
I only referred to Russian media when discussing what claims are alleged.
Here you are talking about separating claims in these two mental categories.
Also you acted as if at the moment you were indeed using only two of them.
You brought up Ukrainians war crimes in the post, crediting respectful sources as Amnesty International. Than throwaway62654 replied that even if it was true it is tiny compared to credible Russian crimes like destroying Mariupol. Till this moment the mental box “alledged Ukrainian crimes” include only those who came from reasonable sources which are somewhat correlated with the truth. You reply with
Thus putting a very improbable crime into the mental box. What used to be “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International” is now “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International and Russian state media”, which isn’t a helpful category anymore, but exactly the kind of mental category Russian propaganda machine wants people to have.
I don’t think of the crimes that are well-documented by Amnesty International as alleged crimes but as well-documented crimes. That’s the mental category in which they are for me. As Viliam explained in detail, those are claims by a source with left-wing London values and not one with pro-Russian values.
It feels very strange to see the set as alleged crimes, as only those alleged by Western sources and not count allegations by non-Western sources.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment. I admit that after reading it I was under the impression that you were giving at least some credence to the claim that the Ukrainians turned Mariupol into Grozny 2.0. Though rereading it now, I see that my impression was coloured by your other comments—I interpreted it as “no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other” rather than “it’s worth knowing what both sides of an argument are saying if you want to come to a compromise”.
This is a pity, since while I don’t agree with you on (my understanding of) your stance on the war and how to best end it, you raise important points which should definitely be considered.
I’m not sure what you think “allegedly perpetrated” is supposed to mean when it’s not about who alleges things when I respond to a comment that’s about what’s alleged.
I do think that it’s pretty hard to know anything about what happens on the ground in a warzone in real time. I do believe that it’s useful to be generally skeptical of one’s knowledge. People are generally biased to be overconfident when thinking about politics and that’s especially true in times of war.
I don’t think claims from either side should make one confident of what happened. Independent claims like those from Amnesty or the UN human rights council are better. Currently, Amnesty seems to give Russia the blame for bombing a theatre with a lot of civilians in it but doesn’t make claims about the responsibility for leveling a lot of civilian buildings to the ground.
Then why are you spreading unconfirmed claims? That is not nice.
The city was encircled by Russians on 1st March. Could you explain me how and why AFU destroyed half-million city just in one week? :)
If you’re really honest here do at least some fact-checking.
throwaway62654 was talking about “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine”. I made a statement about what crimes have been alleged.
It’s useful to be able to discuss what has been alledged and what has not been alleged.
throwaway62654 stated that Russians destroyed Mariupol.
You opposed and made the statement about possible involvement of Ukrainians.
According to Russian sources all the war crimes are done by Ukrainians. Does it make Ukraine a subject to praesumptio culpae? Is it a reasonable framing? Should we from the beginning include Ukraine into that category? Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I can write an article that Mariupol was allegedly destroyed by North Korea (sorry for using absurdity). Will you include North Korea to the list of possible actors? Will it be useful? If not than what is the difference?
I don’t think anybody in this discussion is operating with the authority of the Ukrainian government, so this is a quite strange claim. I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
Yeah but by assuming things (directly or not) you are framing the discussion in a way which significantly influences perception of the topic.
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :)
Or I can expand shoulds to should we dilute our attention and efforts with statements which are most certainly false to find the truth.
Anyway I see we are kinda stuck here and I have nothing more to add.
It’s rational for Ukraine to engage in war propaganda that’s not always true. That’s generally what most countries do when they are at war.
I’d like to object that it’s rational. Sooner or later any lie will be revealed and the reputation/trust will be lost irrevocably. Without trust Ukraine will lose external and internal support and then the war. The risks are just not worth it.
It would be great if war propaganda lies would lead to irrevocably lost trust, but in most cases that’s not what happens. Most people excuse lies from people they consider to be on their side in war.
In any case, at the start of this war, we had false propaganda stories like the Ghost of Kyiv. They didn’t choose the strategy of not telling any lies and I’m not aware of any army doing that during a war.
Yes, they didn’t. And I think the story about the Ghost of Kyiv is net negative. But not all propaganda is equal. One thing is to lie about a mythic mighty pilot to comfort people (which is still bad imo) and completely other thing is to say that Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol, killed people in Bucha or spend millions to vilify Ukraine and poison EU in information space.
https://www.civic-synergy.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Words-and-Wars.-Ukraine-Facing-Kremlin-Propaganda.pdf
It is typical of the intellects that hang out here, honestly.