You can have stagflation: a recession with inflation. This is the economic boogeyman that literally every central banker has worried about for his or her entire career. Inflation is certainly not “over” - still running extremely hot relative to the last decade. Better than before the rate hikes, but by no means good or over.

(which begs the question: what does it mean to be artificially low? Compared to what?)

This is as red herring as it can be. No remotely serious analysis of this war can take anything Kremlin says at face value.

Ukraine already tried appeasing Russia in 2014 after the last invasion and now they have the current situation so I doubt any decision with actual skin in the game (aka Ukraine) are going to be trying that again anytime soon.

"Potentially think about negotiations" is a long long way from the war ending.

Also Putin's terms are absurd. He wants to keep half of Ukraine while evading persecution for the crimes against humanity the Russian army caused against civilian population.

That's not gonna fly in Kiev, who wants all their territories back including Crimea, and the guilty parties held accountable at the Hague for their crimes, plus war reparations being paid, which is not gonna fly in Moscow.

"Reopening", and caused by it pandemic speedrun is already bringing back more supply chain disruptions

> - Russia’s war with Ukraine will end (Putin is now agreeing to potentially think about negotiations). Oil prices will ease

Putin is trying to "win" the war by insisting on talks where they keep the territory. Anyone looking closely knows that's not going to be accepted even as a premise to start talks.

Ukraine is defending so… I dunno, I guess they aren’t very motivated to make concessions. I guess the starting point for negotiations for them would be Russia leaves, and then the details of where on the spectrum from “huge” to “massive” the reparations are can be worked out.

If people don’t want to negotiate that’s their prerogative. I’m more interested in the difference between what I’m told by media and reality, and more precisely if there has been a softening of Russias stance I want to see where.

We can influence the Ukraine/Russia negotiation of course, by increasing or decreasing our support for Ukraine. But, since they seem to be willing to continue fighting, decreasing aid would be a pretty huge betrayal.

My understanding of the situation is that realistically the US has a lot of latitude to influence Ukraine, but should not go behind their back and negotiate with Russia. Any diplomacy that routes around Ukraine means their priorities will be given less emphasis. Since they are the ones actually paying in blood and human suffering, we owe them deference when it comes to when and how to negotiate. We’re spending money but it is the sort of spending we can handle for a while.

First, hypothetically is the US were to fight Russia, we’d use a different mix of weapons. So it is putting unexpected pressure on our supply of Javelins, because they are doing the work that would normally be done by, whatever, JDAMs or something.

Also there must be some of what we programmers would think of as oversubscription or deduplication of weapons — I mean if we have like 2 war’s worth of weapons to handle all our competitors and we expend one war’s worth of weapons to handle one competitor, then we suddenly only have one war worth of weapons to handle all the rest. We haven’t expended one war’s worth of resources on Russia but it is worth keeping in mind that this isn’t like, literally zero cost or something like that.

Edit: also another thing that rubs me the wrong way with this description is, it seems to play into the narrative that Russia and the US never could have gotten along. The real hope is that the overwhelming US lead has a deterrent effect on countries that might want to start a war. The best weapons are ones that don’t get used.

Right now the EU is bearing the brunt of the economic costs and they're not wealthy so they'll run out of money sooner. But ignoring the money spent costs; what is being discovered in this war is the efficacy of mass low cost long range drones. It's unlikely to ever be cost effective to defend against this and conflicts settled this way will be immensely destructive. I remember when it was unthinkable to militarize drones to remotely kill people from a long way away, then we did it, and soon it'll be done to us.

I'm still confused when people assert there's any chance Putin will use a nuke in Ukraine.

I'm far from an expert on Russian politics, so I imagine I'm missing something in terms of reputation or intimidation or face saving, but I always figured that Russia wanted to own/control Ukraine, since it's a fertile, resource-rich part of the former USSR (it's a huge grain exporter; consider all the famine warnings since the war began?)

Why would they choose to destroy this thing they want to control? Using a thermonuclear weapon specifically seems really counter-productive. If I stretch I could imagine a future where they deploy some tiny tactical nuke for intimidation/escalation, but same logic applies, I don't think they want to destroy the thing they're trying to conquer, so they'd want to limit collateral damage.

This isn’t the motivation. Putin has been saying since 2007 that NATO expansion is an existential threat to Russia. Now whether we agree with that or not is besides point. They view it that way.

They warned in 2007 Ukraine entering NATO would lead to war, but we basically told Russia that there a has been and they don’t matter. This led to what happened in 2014. Then in 2021, we basically come out in full support of pulling Ukraine into NATO.

What’s happening now is extremely dangerous. Russia can’t win in Ukraine because of west helping Ukraine and their economy is ruined after sanctions. They see this as an end of Russia.

You’re backing them in the corner. This is when rational state actors act irrational. The chance of thermonuclear war is increasing because Russia cannot take on the west in a conventional war.

We had a significant role in how we got to this war, but we won’t ever take responsibility. We pulled out of Afghanistan and now the military industrial complex is making billions through Ukraine.

I'm saying "may" because while Russia clearly has the ability to make Nukes, and ICBMs, that would have required constant heavy, maintained, spending on their military that they clearly didn't do for, oh, tanks, air defense, aircraft, new aircraft designs ... At best their Nuclear arsenal is one generation ahead of what the Soviets had, whilst the West's defenses have advanced 5 generations in the same time. I get that's a gamble, but ... Nuclear weapons require constant re-enriching of the warheads fissile material, and maintaining 7000 warheads requires running tens of gigawatts of nuclear power plants without getting any electricity or heating out of them. Not to mention: you need tens of thousands of highly qualified engineers to do it. Are they doing that, not just lying about it? I mean, I get that they're hiding this, but one reason we don't hear much of it could be that it simply doesn't exist anymore. I've never once read an explanation of how this infrastructure survived the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia is vastly overplaying their hand. We can be sure of that, given the facts.

Second, the Russian economy will die faster than the European or Ukrainian economy over time. Time is not on their side. Russia is slowly losing the ability to attack even without any war, without anyone destroying them. Europe, and European states will gain more and more ability to attack over time. I'm saying whatever their reason was to attack in 2014 and 2022, they will have more reasons to attack as time goes on. This war won't end just because we force it to, it will simply move.

And all of that is assuming we DON'T move away from fossil fuels. If by some miracle we move either transportation or heating of of fossil fuels, then Russia is done for 10 years before such a move is complete. That will definitely kill their ability to support their military. I mean what do you expect Russia to do? Attack France when ITER declares success? Because ITER, and 100 other similar efforts, also are existential threats to Russia.

Russia has "lost", the empire doesn't exist anymore, and the conflict in Ukraine, even if they 100% win, doesn't change that. If their perception is such that if they lose they will use nuclear weapons, then it's unavoidable, and the conclusion is just the opposite of what you suggest.

The correct course of action if Russia will truly will chose to go out in a nuclear "blaze of glory" or if Putin has the ability to "commit suicide by World War 3", then the only option is for NATO to attack Russia, ASAP. For the simple reason that Russia, the empire, is done for.

If Ukraine is "pressing its advantage", it's to take back the territory that Russia has illegally attempted to annex.

Please stop spreading Russian propaganda.

At the onset of the current war, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey immediately to begin diplomatic talks. You do realize we intervened and told Ukraine to walk away?

This whole narrative that Putin is irrational, that Russia is just plain evil, and any contrary perspective is “Russian propaganda” reminds me of 2003 when questioning the Iraq war effort would get you labeled as a terrorists sympathizer.

This war is far more nuanced than the US government-backed narrative being pushed in the mainstream media. That itself is propaganda.

And what’s truly embarrassing is people like yourself actively try to shut down any discussion or contrarian views. If it doesn’t conform to your view of the world, it’s propaganda.

"Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

> "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it.

And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine.

Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war.

Certainly, it’s easier to ignore the past two decades of context, how we got to where we are now, and just draw Nazi Germany comparisons. No one in their right mind would defend Nazis, and so you can use that tactic to ignore facts and quickly shutdown the debate.

IMO you can decide not to put in the research and go with the distorted NYTimes propaganda, but the Nazi comparisons are just intellectual dishonesty and bad faith.

I've read multiple analyses, very cogent and well-sourced, that concluded that what Putin wants is not just to conquer Ukraine, but to reassemble the USSR, or the Tsarist Russian Empire before it, with him at its head. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a stain on Russia and on him personally, and he wants to restore his/its "dignity".

As part of this, he believes that Ukraine is Russian, and that any Ukrainian who does not see themselves as Russian is wrong, and likely either an American-sympathizing traitor, or mentally ill.

"He does't want Ukraine to join NATO" is true, of course, but in the same sense as "he doesn't want to lose his power." He wants to keep both of those things and gain much more. Making it all about NATO is 100% part of the propaganda he has been spreading.

Your so-called context is a strange kind of provincialism that makes everything a result of US actions (and thus sets a blame on them), and ignores history and recent developments in Russia and Eastern Europe in general. Neutrality was tried in 1930s, didn' work, countries got picked off one by one. It wasn't an option anymore in 1990s, EE countries weren't going to make the same mistake twice.

Eastern Europe lost any illusions towards "new Russia" when the first Chechen war started 1994. THAT was the turning point in European diplomacy that your pre-packaged "America is bad" narrative ignores because it doesn't fit the timeline. From how the war was waged, it was obvious that nothing had changed and that Russia was still the same shithole with an inferiority complex that uses genocidal wars against neighbors as a coping mechanism. In 1995, the first Chechen president Dudayev predicted that Russia's ambitions would not be limited to them alone[1], and it was clear to everyone else too. From then on, the clock was ticking: either build strong relationships with free countries (and become one) to acquire as good security guarantees as you can get, or get left out in the cold alone to be mauled by Russia.

As to comparisons with Nazi Germany, I see no reason to soften phrasing anymore, any differences have become superficial. Russia is openly a Nazi country. It has an intense personality cult around its leader, a pseudohistoric expansionist racial ideology of "Russian world" in theory and in practice as it wages a war of extermination against its neighbor, with the goal of destroying Ukrainian statehood and people, ultimately forcing the whole Europe under its influence. Lebensraum, Herrenvolk, Volksgemeinschaft, and so forth - it's all represented. What differences are there left, that they don't build freeways as much? It's a country where prime-time TV, under direct government editorial control, discusses bombing London, drowning Ukrainian children and setting their families on fire - none of it would look out of place in Völkischer Beobachter in 1942.

That shows like this[2] are deemed fit to air in Russia (and even represents the mainstream) tells everything you need to know.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddtnFJvrbns

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lkshypC2Rk

1) Russia: for Ukraine to accept territorial concessions (Donbas + Crimea)

2) Ukraine: for Russia to retreat from all Ukrainian territory, (maybe) except Crimea (meaning they're willing to sit down at a negotiation table without the Russians agreeing to retreat from Crimea)

So the two sides are far apart. Russia is judged weak because the prediction is that without negotiations they will lose all territory inside Ukraine. They are dependent on negotiations, and unwilling to accept the reality that they've lost the Donbas (Luhansk and Donetsk), Kherson, and Zaporizhia, and are unlikely to be able to hold Crimea in the long term.

Furthermore, Russia has consistently failed to demonstrate capabilities they threatened Ukraine with. They claimed to be able to take Ukraine "in 2 weeks, maybe less" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_RReQj7PpY), they claimed they couldn't be stopped in the Donbas. They have been stopped. They have been claiming for 40 years to have the tightest air defense network on the planet. The air defense network couldn't stop drones (which are unmanned planes, designed to fly slowly), not even with 6 WEEKS warning. They have panicked and deployed additional air defense platforms around Moscow, in other words, they're afraid they cannot protect the Kremlin from Ukraine's military, 450km from the nearest Ukrainian border whilst they cannot (effectively) hit Kiev's presidential palace, at 200km from their borders, and less than 70 from their deployed soldiers in Belarus. This is not the way to show strength.

They are known, even long before this conflict, to constantly lie about everything, to ignore agreements made before. So it's not even very clear what an agreement with Russia would even entail. If they say they won't attack, they can't be trusted to uphold the agreement. So what's the point? There must be a good military reason for them not to attack or there's no point.

Or to put it in negotiation parlance: BATNA for Ukraine is better than the conditions Putin demands to even talk. Nevertheless, these aren't small organizations: whether or not they've agreed to talk high-level, they're constantly talking.