Russia's War Against Ukraine

[FarAway Sooner]

I've heard the targeted oligarchs described as being "Putin's cronies", "Putin's buddies", and "Putin's primary allies".  Many of  them nominally hold assets that actually belong to Putin.  They aren't captains of industry the way many in America see successful businessmen.

I've also heard them described as fellow kleptocrats who benefitted greatly from the corruption that Putin has embedded in Russia.  Nobody makes lots of money in that country without Putin's cooperation, and without paying tribute to Putin.  The thinking on these sanctions, when they were first rolled out after the invasion of Eastern Ukraine, was to target the Russian elites to try to undermine Putin's support.

The widespread thinking among diplomats, academics, and journalists is that this hasn't worked.  These oligarchs are essentially facing the decision:  "I own US$10,000,000,000 worth of stuff.  The West is now seizing half of it, so I only have $5,000,000,000 stuff.  Do I want to renounce Putin and lose the rest of it?"

[MengJiao]

I've heard the targeted oligarchs described as being "Putin's cronies", "Putin's buddies", and "Putin's primary allies".  Many of  them nominally hold assets that actually belong to Putin.  They aren't captains of industry the way many in America see successful businessmen.

I've also heard them described as fellow kleptocrats who benefitted greatly from the corruption that Putin has embedded in Russia.  Nobody makes lots of money in that country without Putin's cooperation, and without paying tribute to Putin.  The thinking on these sanctions, when they were first rolled out after the invasion of Eastern Ukraine, was to target the Russian elites to try to undermine Putin's support.

The widespread thinking among diplomats, academics, and journalists is that this hasn't worked.  These oligarchs are essentially facing the decision:  "I own US$10,000,000,000 worth of stuff.  The West is now seizing half of it, so I only have $5,000,000,000 stuff.  Do I want to renounce Putin and lose the rest of it?"

  I thought that in theory, the Oligarchs had some say in how the economy functioned -- I guess you could see them as purely dysfunctional, but Russia does have an actual economy and
somebody must be managing it.  So in theory, if the oligarchs are actually managing some aspects of the Russian economy, then sanctioning them could have a set of
very strange impacts on the economy.

  Of course, it may be that removing the Oligarchs and eventually Putin (assuming he gets kicked upstairs ie removed from having a direct say in economic management) might be very
good for the Russian economy since the profits would go into actual investment and not big boats in Italy.

   I would think that sanctioning the klepto-class (Putin and the Oligarchs) could literally shift the actual power in Russia from Putin and co. to the people who can actually manage things inside
Russia without shipping all the profits aboard.  This
might be invisible from the Western point of view, but the sanctions might result in an entirely different power structure in Russia
and no one would even need to tell Putin and company since
the new managers could just misinform the old kleptocratic regime and claim any problems were the result of the sanctions.  So rather than replacing or overthrowing Putin and the Oligarchs,
a new class of managers could simply take over under cover of the sanctions and just not tell Putin and the Oligarchs what was actually happening.  i guess they could leave the war on
autopilot and just ship megatons of HE to be fired into the Donbas for the next few decades

[MengJiao]

  i guess they could leave the war on
autopilot and just ship megatons of HE to be fired into the Donbas for the next few decades

  Putin has a least one more plan (and the Russians have to do more than kill civilians all over the map this time so they may use chemical weapons and nukes if this offensive starts to stall ):


  NATO expects "very concentrated" Russian attacks in Donbas as war reaches a "crucial" phase
From CNN's James Frater and Amy Cassidy

NATO is expecting Russia to conduct a "very concentrated" attack in the east of Ukraine, with the aim of capturing the entire Donbas region, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

"We now see a significant movement of troops away from Kyiv to regroup, re-arm and re-supply, and a shift in focus to the east," he told reporters in Brussels.

"In the coming weeks we expect a further Russian push in the east and southern Ukraine, to try to take the entire Donbas and to create a land bridge to the occupied Crimea."
Pro-Russian separatists already control parts of the Donbas region. Fighting has endured there since 2014, and Russian President Vladimir Putin formally recognized the two breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent republics, just before the recent invasion began.

"So this is a crucial phase of the war," warned Stoltenberg.

Ukrainian Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba will join NATO foreign ministers for a summit in Brussels Thursday, in which allies will "discuss what more they can do" as Ukraine "faces this new offensive", Stoltenberg said.

"Our allies are determined to provide further support to Ukraine, including anti-tank weapons, air defense systems and other equipment."

[Jarhead0331]

Here is an infographic of who the top Russian "oligarchs" are...they are real people, with real businesses. Sure, they take advantage of their connections with Putin, but the top players in western business and technology take advantage of their political connections and benefit from political corruption all the same. I'm not defending these guys, but they aren't mysterious boogie men of the Russian underworld, and I do not see them as being much different than the super rich in the US and Europe. they are all corrupt and wield far more influence and power than they should. 

[Pete Dero]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kremlin-editorial-ukraine-identity-1.6407921

A Kremlin paper justifies erasing the Ukrainian identity, as Russia is accused of war crimes

An editorial in a prominent Kremlin media outlet appears to provide justification for the war with its call to erase the Ukrainian identity — language that geopolitical experts say is especially alarming after the discovery of dozens of dead civilians in a Kyiv suburb.
Written by Timofei Sergeitsev in RIA Novosti, the rhetoric in the editorial — entitled "What Russia should do in Ukraine" — is inflammatory, even by the usual Russian state media standards.
It claims the word "Ukraine" itself is synonymous with Nazism and cannot be allowed to exist.   
"Denazification is inevitably also De-Ukrainianization,"  Sergeitsev writes, stating that the idea of Ukrainian culture and identity is fake.

Yet Sergeitsev's editorial seizes on those words and takes them much further, writing that Ukraine's elite "must be liquidated as re-education is impossible" and since a "significant part of the masses ... are passive Nazis and accomplices," Russia's punishment of the Ukrainian people is justified.

A former Canadian ambassador to Ukraine said those words caused him significant concern, noting the editorial read like an instruction manual for Russian soldiers.

"It's essentially a rhetorical 'licence to kill,'" said Roman Waschuk, who continues to work closely with the Zelensky government in Ukraine.
"It says if someone strikes you as terribly Ukrainian, you can 'just off them' for the good of the cause."

The editorial was published on April 3, the same day as the bodies of at least dozens of civilians were discovered in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after the retreat of Russian forces.     

[Gusington]

'Liquidation'

[Windigo]

It's not entirely clear to me what kind of authority, power, control or influence these so called "oligarchs" wield with Putin and within the power centers of Russian government. It seems that there is a possibility that this is not entirely unlike a foreign power seizing assets of Jeff Bezos because of his influence over Joe Biden to pressure a change in policy. Not sure I see this as being impactful or morally justified.

How they obtained their wealth cannot be morally justified either. So IMO its a wash.

[Jarhead0331]

It's not entirely clear to me what kind of authority, power, control or influence these so called "oligarchs" wield with Putin and within the power centers of Russian government. It seems that there is a possibility that this is not entirely unlike a foreign power seizing assets of Jeff Bezos because of his influence over Joe Biden to pressure a change in policy. Not sure I see this as being impactful or morally justified.

How they obtained their wealth cannot be morally justified either. So IMO its a wash.

Can you be more specific? How was their wealth acquired in such a morally reprehensible way that it would justify direct sanctions by foreign powers?  I'm asking not to pick a fight, but because it is not an issue I have done extensive research. To make a statement like the above, I'm assuming you have. 

[Pete Dero]

The original Russian oligarchs got their start in the '90s, Winters said.
"When the Soviet Union broke down, there were an enormous number of state-owned assets and corporations and financial institutions, and a very small set of well-connected, smart, ambitious people basically grabbed those assets."
Assets in oil, in gas, in finance. The oligarchs became powerful, and when Putin became president, he had to break that power.
"Eventually, that involved putting some in jail," Winters said.

At the same time, Putin groomed a newer, different kind of oligarch, one whose wealth came from Putin and the access he granted to the coffers of the Russian state.
It would work something like this, according to Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven: "You would have a government deal and you would inflate your prices."
You would get overpaid by $500 million, he said. "The main oligarch would keep, you know, $300 million and use the other $200 million to dole out money to other people, including Vladimir Putin. And that was the deal, and that's how everybody got rich."

Some oligarchs were Putin's friends from his KGB days or his days as a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Whomever they were, their fortunes — and sometimes their lives — now depend on Putin.
"The richer they become, the more fearful they become — they have more money to lose," Åslund of the Stockholm Free World Forum said.

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/10/who-are-russian-oligarchs-being-sanctioned-how-did-they-get-so-rich/
https://theweek.com/politics/1012021/the-role-of-oligarchs-in-russia

A newer group of oligarchs became wealthy through their ties to Putin, who has ruled Russia in one form or another since 2000. Putin has alternately enriched and punished oligarchs, treating tycoons and their businesses as pawns in his political chess matches. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, was arrested in 2003 for tax crimes after he supported Putin's political rival. (Khodorkovsky said the charges were fabricated; he was pardoned and released in 2013). However, many of today's oligarchs are current or former Putin officials. Yuri Kovalchuk, a longtime friend and advisor to Russia's leader, obtained large stakes in insurance and media companies through his ties to Putin.

While oligarchs' closeness to Putin varies, all rely on his patronage. "Given the way that the Russian economy is structured, so much depends either directly or indirectly on the state," says Brian Taylor, a political science professor at Syracuse University. Oligarchs "are not autonomous, economic actors who are in a position to stand up to the state or talk back to the state."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2022/03/14/what-is-an-oligarch-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-russias-billionaires/?sh=48907ae1271f

Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government). In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances. The loyalists who remained — and the new ones who got filthy rich during Putin's long reign — became like ATM machines for the president and his allies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy?t=1649173429775

[Hot lead and dirty talk!]

That was an extremely good post and sorted out a lot of things that I didn't understand.

Thanks

[Con]

It's a twitter link but this is bonkers hidef video of a single Ukrainian tank ambushing a Russian convoy
This feels right out of combat mission and totally mad short ranges these guys are engaging at. Balls of titanium.
https://twitter.com/arslon_xudosi/status/1511376081407905793?s=21&t=_3unbpCANVlD0g124hR9ow

[ArizonaTank]

Meanwhile the US strikes at the oligarchs! -- First yacht seized (The EU has gotten dozens already.)

Ukraine should just issue "letters of marque" that would clear the oceans of yachts pretty quickly...along with anything flying a Russian flag... The Russian navy would object...but somehow I don't see them as being ready to split up and run down a bunch of privateers.

I know the US Constitution gives Congress the power to issue them...and I believe the last time it was used was WWII...  But there are probably more modern treaties banning them... still would be nice to see.

[Jarhead0331]

Meanwhile the US strikes at the oligarchs! -- First yacht seized (The EU has gotten dozens already.)

Ukraine should just issue "letters of marque" that would clear the oceans of yachts pretty quickly...along with anything flying a Russian flag... The Russian navy would object...but somehow I don't see them as being ready to split up and run down a bunch of privateers.

I know the US Constitution gives Congress the power to issue them...and I believe the last time it was used was WWII...  But there are probably more modern treaties banning them... still would be nice to see.

Although the Constitution enumerates Letters of Marque as an exclusive power of congress, Letters of Marque and Reprisal were abolished by the Treaty of Paris in the 1850s.

Just read that in February of 2022, House bill H.R. 6869 was introduced, and if passed would "[authorize] the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal" in relation to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. How do you like that?

[Gusington]

^That's frickin' awesome.

[Con]

The bill should enforce a strict buccaneer uniform code
1 parrot trained to say pieces of rubels
1 eye patch (2nd one optional)
1 hook for hand or 1 peg leg. Must be missing one appendage
Thick pirate beard.
Naval cutlass 1890 pattern
Outlandish hat with a feather