The ahistorical ignorance of exculpating Russia through an energy-centric explanation for launching a genocidal war against Ukraine demands an evidence-based response. Russia as a state is a land-based colonial empire built on five centuries of conquest and subjugation of the nationalities on its periphery. This is simple historical fact.
Here's your whataboutist balloon punctured: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/russias-imperial-ukraine-war-whataboutist-delusions-left-right-335f3034e4d9
Like a Filipino in 1941, or a Brit on June 23, 1941 you have a choice between bad and worse: the American empire that gave us coups in Iran in 1953,, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973 and quagmire wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, or the genocidal Russian kleptocracy. The History Restaurant doesn't offer good vs bad or none of the above on its menu. Also, like the Hotel California, you can check out, but you can never leave. In energy terms it's CNQ, CVE, VET or Gazprom, Lukoil and Rosneft. If you don't know what CNQ, CVE and VET are, you know nothing about the Canadian alternative to Russian energy. So choose the less bad empire and who gets natural gas market share.
Before going further, here's how I have evidence Scott doesn't:
I live in Latvia, speak Russian, invested in a Ukrainian tech startup, now relocated to Warsaw, and in daily contact with one of its advisors who coordinates the territorial defense of 11 villages 9 km west of Kyiv in Bilhorodka and also with a retired British Lt Col colleague at Riga Business School who worked for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense since 2014. I therefore have much more access to facts on the ground knowledge than you do.
Understand a simple fact: the Ukrainians are winning due to breathtaking Russian military incompetence, low morale, institutional corruption (rations expired in 2015 is just one example of many) and institutional culture totally unprepared for this kind of small unit asymmetric attrition warfare. Listen to this Borderlands podcast and get some real detailed on the ground knowledge from veteran military experts who know what's going on: https://www.facebook.com/SamuelPNCook/videos/471425721352377
Russia is stuck in a quagmire far worse than Afghanistan against a far more formidable and vengeful enemy that reads all its communications and is favored by a shift in the balance of power between armor and anti-armor missiles and drones. One US infantry veteran said he used to envy the tank crews sheltered behind all that armor, but not anymore. Now they're justifiably terrified of being burnt alive by a Javelin or NLAW.
Go to Igor Sushko's Twitter account and read the letters from inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin about how the FSB analysts were forced to provide what the big boss wanted to hear, which proves that Putin believed his own nationalist mythology.
Follow Michael Kofman's, Kamil Galeev's, KT Counterintelligence's and Rob Lee's Twitter accounts to get a realistic read on the day to day military situation.
Russians have 20000 dead in 51 days vs 15000 dead in 10 years in Afghanistan. Do the math going out 6 months and the Russian military collapses as in 1917. The simple fact is that Russia's only military victories occurred when Russia had a powerful western ally: the UK against Napoleon, the USA against Germany. In WWI Russia was defeated even when it had western allies. In 1905 Japan soundly defeated Russia. In Crimea in 1855-57 Russia was defeated and humiliated, which yielded the suicide of the Tsar Nicholas I whose portrait hangs in Putin's office.
Sanctions: Russia's oil can't flow without Russia's airlines' aircraft delivering spare parts and crews to Siberian oil fields and pipelines without road access. They're already cannibalizing planes for spare parts not delivered due to sanctions.
The Russian Avtovaz factory producing tanks had to stop production due to lack of imported western components.
On April 1 130000 Russian families will be notified that their sons are conscripted into the army to replace the conscripts whose one year of service has expired. Don't expect all of them to obediently agree to be cannon fodder. Also, the majority are not ethnic Russians since ethnic Russians are now a minority in the Russian "Federation", which is one of the most misnamed political entities on earth. You may not now know who the Kalmyks, Karelians, Tatars, Dagestanis, Bashkortostanis and Yakuts are under whose land Russia's commodity wealth lies. But you're about to find out when their families resist conscription.
Ukraine has a citizen army, Russia a serf army. Since Greece vs Persia 2500 years ago we know which wins.
China gets 80% of its oil from the Gulf. Who guarantees the safety of those shipments? The US navy. Who guarantees their passage through the Strait of Malacca? Singapore.
What happens to China's economy when western corporate supply chains get relocated to Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Bangladesh, Mexico, the USA? $170 oil and $20 natural gas is China's worst nightmare. High valued added manufacturing then relocates to the cheap energy USA and Canada, which can also replace Russian and Ukrainian grain farmers.
Russia is once again Upper Volta with nuclear weapons, as Gyorgy Arbatov, the 1970s and 80s head of the Soviet North American Studies Institute, called the USSR. Now it's destined to be North Korea with rogue Burger Kings.
You have the geopolitical chess board exactly backwards. Next time before you write easy and lazy evidence-free wooly-headed generalizations about a genocidal war being about efficiency and codepency, research some evidence.
