Russia/Ukraine conflict

[petit_bateau]

As the USSR learned to its frustration at the beginning of the Korean War that in the UN, the Security Council - and uninterrupted presence therein - is the be-all and end-all of the United Nations. The General Assembly is....well, maybe a good analogy is the Graduate Student Council of any US university. With that, and following up on the one or two references above that Russia thus can thwart any UN-derived reparation or other knuckle-slapping:

I do not remember. Does anyone know if there are any mechanisms to make unpermanent Permanent Membership on the Security Council? I refer, of course, to the easing out of Russia from its position. I am guessing I know the answer, unfortunately.

In this respect there are two pathways I have seen discussed a lot of late :-

1) Russia is not the valid successor of USSR as a P5 nation, and the vote to ratify it as a successor has never taken place .... so it can be turfed out preremptorily;
2) All P5 nations should recuse themselves from matters in which they are co-belligerents (this is a Ts & Cs of UN participation technicality / never observed);

The legal counter to all of the above is :-

a) custom & practice;
b) might is right;
c) China is frit about the implications for itself;
d) likewise USA;

I'm not holding my breath. Whilst Russia holds significant nuclear weapons stocks and delivery systems I do not expect it to be kicked orf P5.

 

[bhzmark]

. The Russian Federation never signed the UN Charter but was seated as the successor state of the USSR.

Wouldn't it be a kick to see Russia balkanize, and the UN use that opportunity to redefine "Russia" to mean "Kyiv"

A great outcome would be for the USSR seat to rotate amongst Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, the stans, etc.

 

[madodel]

Ukraine Confirms Major Russian Attack in North-Eastern Lyman-Kupyansk Sector

The 100,000 number for Russia having amassed in the North was cited earlier.

 

[navguy12]

Earlier reports were they hit it in two places separated a fair ways apart. The other hit took out the other lane apparently. But I've not been able to find photos that I can be sure are of a second location so this is not confirmed. (Personally I don't know)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1680993220623233029

Traffic jams are going viral

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681005115044696064

Grain deal not looking good

Russia says decision not to extend Black Sea grain deal is final

No more talks planned, says official, despite Turkish leader expressing hope of progress at UN meeting

www.theguardian.com

Strangely, seeing the shot of Putin taking notes reminded me of:

 

[MC3OZ]

In this respect there are two pathways I have seen discussed a lot of late :-

1) Russia is not the valid successor of USSR as a P5 nation, and the vote to ratify it as a successor has never taken place .... so it can be turfed out preremptorily;
2) All P5 nations should recuse themselves from matters in which they are co-belligerents (this is a Ts & Cs of UN participation technicality / never observed);

The legal counter to all of the above is :-

a) custom & practice;
b) might is right;
c) China is frit about the implications for itself;
d) likewise USA;

I'm not holding my breath. Whilst Russia holds significant nuclear weapons stocks and delivery systems I do not expect it to be kicked orf P5.

I think we need to be realistic about what the UN can achieve.

It is probably far more effective to set up a completely new organisation from the ground up.

The historical balance of the security council doesn't fully represent who is important and powerful in the world today.

Countries like Turkey and India are on track to be more important than any remnant of the USSR, the UN veto was a compromise that always limits what the UN can achieve.

In the modern era, trade is the thing that unites the world and motivates countries to cooperate, and trade sanctions provide a means of enforcing a resolution that avoids armed conflict.

IMO the war in Ukraine just demonstrates the reality that the UN can never achieve much, and has passed its use-by date.

A global dispute mechanism based on trade, and backed by trade sanctions could achieve a lot more.

 

[wdolson]

As the USSR learned to its frustration at the beginning of the Korean War that in the UN, the Security Council - and uninterrupted presence therein - is the be-all and end-all of the United Nations. The General Assembly is....well, maybe a good analogy is the Graduate Student Council of any US university. With that, and following up on the one or two references above that Russia thus can thwart any UN-derived reparation or other knuckle-slapping:

I do not remember. Does anyone know if there are any mechanisms to make unpermanent Permanent Membership on the Security Council? I refer, of course, to the easing out of Russia from its position. I am guessing I know the answer, unfortunately.

Even though @petit_bateau asserts that there was never a vote for Russia to be the successor state to the USSR, it has de facto been the case. If Russia breaks up, then that is an opportunity to formally declare a successor state. It would be interesting to have Ukraine declared as the successor state.

@RobStark

More updates on that

Russia massing 100,000 troops for attack on Kharkiv

Senior military officials believe attack may be a diversionary tactic to draw Ukrainians away from the counter-offensive

www.telegraph.co.uk

The Russians launched the assault

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681312808116572163

It didn't go well. The intel said the Russians had 900 tanks, but I think there is a good chance the Russians set up tank decoys to trick satellite intelligence into thinking the attack force was much stronger than it actually was. The Russian attack today did not include that many vehicles.

Or distract from Belarus.

It's pretty much impossible to build up for a major assault and not be spotted by reconnaissance. Even in WW II it was extremely difficult. The D-Day invasion had a sophisticated decoy force to throw the Germans off about the actual target. With western satellite recon, it's well nigh impossible.

There is no indication that there is any build up at all on the Belarus border. The Russians are deluded if they think that attacking along the northern border would draw many forces away from the offensive in the south and east. The TDF guys are well dug in and armed all along the northern border. They are sufficient to at least slow down any Russian attack across the border. The Ukrainians have a mobile reserve assigned to the northern border to back up the TDF. Those guys would be there within a day to help.

The bigger the Russian build up on the border, the tougher it would be to disguise and the more reserves the Ukrainians would commit to defending the border.
--------------------------------------

Why the 3:1 ratio of Russian population to Ukraine's is not the greatest argument

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681411798652600338

 

[SmokyPeat]

Easy, start a new one, called "Not-a-UN, the one without Russia and the one without Veto powers"

Sounds good- just so long as it doesn't look like this :

 

[wdolson]

The Russians are looking to adapt spacecraft to carry bombs and drop aerial bombs on Ukraine from orbit.
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App

An extremely expensive way to deliver aerial bombs, even if they can get them to the ground without them burning up.

 

[Dreadnought]

The Russians are looking to adapt spacecraft to carry bombs and drop aerial bombs on Ukraine from orbit.
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App

An extremely expensive way to deliver aerial bombs, even if they can get them to the ground without them burning up.

This is utter nonsense. Is Russia entering the  Wunderwaffen stage of Nazi Germany already? A slightly better idea would be to use such orbital class rockets as a giant hypersonic missile and leverage the unspent fuel as explosive or increase the payload. Still, this would not change the fact that each rocket costs a sugarload of money. And how many can they build per year anyway?

 

[MC3OZ]

The Russians are looking to adapt spacecraft to carry bombs and drop aerial bombs on Ukraine from orbit

Any chance they might miss Ukraine and land in Russia by accident?

Or more likely, crash/explode on lift-off.

Surely it would be cheaper to just build more planes.

 

[unk45]

As the USSR learned to its frustration at the beginning of the Korean War that in the UN, the Security Council - and uninterrupted presence therein - is the be-all and end-all of the United Nations. The General Assembly is....well, maybe a good analogy is the Graduate Student Council of any US university. With that, and following up on the one or two references above that Russia thus can thwart any UN-derived reparation or other knuckle-slapping:

I do not remember. Does anyone know if there are any mechanisms to make unpermanent Permanent Membership on the Security Council? I refer, of course, to the easing out of Russia from its position. I am guessing I know the answer, unfortunately.

They had that chance in 1991 following USSR dissolution. Instead they gave it to the new Russia.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

The Russians are looking to adapt spacecraft to carry bombs and drop aerial bombs on Ukraine from orbit.
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App

An extremely expensive way to deliver aerial bombs, even if they can get them to the ground without them burning up.

In no way is that a serious proposal. It's just another money-siphoning attempt.

 

[petit_bateau]

They had that chance in 1991 following USSR dissolution. Instead they gave it to the new Russia.

The key point is that it was given to the RF without a vote. There is a lot of legal debate about this which has - unsurprisingly - started up again. It is worth reading all of the link below as it also covers the Taiwan/China case in detail. Personally I think a full Russia break up would be required for Russia to lose UN P5 status.

"International lawyers have questioned the legality of this and have debated whether the dissolution of the USSR should have dissolved its seat at the Security Council. This is what Ukraine is now arguing. The whole matter rested on whether Russia was the “Successor State” or a “Continuing State” under international law."

Ukraine invasion: should Russia lose its seat on the UN Security Council? | Feature from King's College London

www.kcl.ac.uk

As to wider UNSC reform, the easiest pathway seems to be P5 expansion rather than anything else - but that just gets more vetos round the table which means more opportunity for deadlock in the wider UN !

US says it cannot change ‘five permanent members’ of UN Security Council but can add new members

‘We have to make this Council more inclusive and more representative,’ US Ambassador to UN tells House hearing - Anadolu Ajansı

www.aa.com.tr

Reform of the United Nations Security Council - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The UN Security Council

The UN Security Council is the premier global body for maintaining international peace and security, but it faces steady calls for reform to better meet twenty-first-century challenges.

www.cfr.org

As to replacement of the UN with something better: I don't think that likely - it takes a full-on World War to create such opportunities. League Of Nations came out of WW1. Then the lessons from that were incorporated into UN after WW2 to the extent that the victors would allow. In the UN we have got what we ourselves put in place, including all the deliberate limitations. Things like GATT and WTO operate alongside UN as part of the set of post WW2 institutions (inc World Bank, IMF, etc). If you want to know why GATT>WTO has less teeth, then look no further than USA who chose not to ratify the original ITO treaty in 1950.

World Trade Organization - Wikipedia

International Trade Organization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

================================================

The UK declassification processes have released some semi-historical nuggets in the last few days. The one below is re UK - Ukraine in the approx 1999-2003 period. It doesn't contain any surprises at all for me at least. However it may be of interest to many of you in illustrating how the 'team' effort in the UK government operates in such areas, and that in turn gives you an insight into how the corresponding team was 20-years later able to contain the trainwreck stupidities of Johnson when he came to power as one of the Friends Of Putin brigade (prior to his subsequent conversion to "focus on a War In Ukraine - anything but concentrate on my utter stupdities as a Prime Minister").

Ukraine thought UK had ‘too rosy’ a view of Putin, Blair was told when PM

Advisers also told Blair in early 2000s that Kyiv thought Britain was not doing enough to support its push for EU membership

www.theguardian.com

 

[petit_bateau]

EU - Belarus

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681594526119387138

 

[nativewolf]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681600788907409409

Any news on this ?

 

[nativewolf]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681542362084810752

The reason for asking is the range. It's 230km so that is the outer limits of a Storm Shadow- assumed that you launch well within safe territory to minimize risk of the scarce airframes/pilots. So, it was a high value target...and it was still exploding later this morning. Considering needs on the front line it's interesting to be hitting targets so far into Crimea.

 

[unk45]

The key point is that it was given to the RF without a vote. There is a lot of legal debate about this which has - unsurprisingly - started up again. It is worth reading all of the link below as it also covers the Taiwan/China case in detail. Personally I think a full Russia break up would be required for Russia to lose UN P5 status.

"International lawyers have questioned the legality of this and have debated whether the dissolution of the USSR should have dissolved its seat at the Security Council. This is what Ukraine is now arguing. The whole matter rested on whether Russia was the “Successor State” or a “Continuing State” under international law."

Ukraine invasion: should Russia lose its seat on the UN Security Council? | Feature from King's College London

www.kcl.ac.uk

As to wider UNSC reform, the easiest pathway seems to be P5 expansion rather than anything else - but that just gets more vetos round the table which means more opportunity for deadlock in the wider UN !

US says it cannot change ‘five permanent members’ of UN Security Council but can add new members

‘We have to make this Council more inclusive and more representative,’ US Ambassador to UN tells House hearing - Anadolu Ajansı

www.aa.com.tr

Reform of the United Nations Security Council - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The UN Security Council

The UN Security Council is the premier global body for maintaining international peace and security, but it faces steady calls for reform to better meet twenty-first-century challenges.

www.cfr.org

As to replacement of the UN with something better: I don't think that likely - it takes a full-on World War to create such opportunities. League Of Nations came out of WW1. Then the lessons from that were incorporated into UN after WW2 to the extent that the victors would allow. In the UN we have got what we ourselves put in place, including all the deliberate limitations. Things like GATT and WTO operate alongside UN as part of the set of post WW2 institutions (inc World Bank, IMF, etc). If you want to know why GATT>WTO has less teeth, then look no further than USA who chose not to ratify the original ITO treaty in 1950.

World Trade Organization - Wikipedia

International Trade Organization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

================================================

The UK declassification processes have released some semi-historical nuggets in the last few days. The one below is re UK - Ukraine in the approx 1999-2003 period. It doesn't contain any surprises at all for me at least. However it may be of interest to many of you in illustrating how the 'team' effort in the UK government operates in such areas, and that in turn gives you an insight into how the corresponding team was 20-years later able to contain the trainwreck stupidities of Johnson when he came to power as one of the Friends Of Putin brigade (prior to his subsequent conversion to "focus on a War In Ukraine - anything but concentrate on my utter stupdities as a Prime Minister").

Ukraine thought UK had ‘too rosy’ a view of Putin, Blair was told when PM

Advisers also told Blair in early 2000s that Kyiv thought Britain was not doing enough to support its push for EU membership

www.theguardian.com

A colleague of mine was a UN staffer in ~1990-2000 who kept me more or less current on non-secret deliberations. IIRC at the time there was not really major dispute with Yeltsin welcomed almost universally. By the time Russia defaulted in 1998 there was serious debate and had been since 1993 Yeltsin attempt to dissolve Parliament and the Chechen War the next year. By that time the UN Security Council seat was not a big issue.

She told me that the continuing sense of disarray over the 1971 ROC/PRC change the non-political UN staffers regarded the Russia/USSR issue as "a bridge too far". After all the majority of UN members were more or less non-aligned.

Since that seemed pretty consistent with published commentaries during those years I believe that version of events.

FWIW, in 1978 I had my first formal visit to China, sponsored by the Bank of China since the Bank i had started in Yemen needed correspondent relations with its largest trading partner. The US side was thrilled, the Bank of China was happy. My new spouse and I were feted and housed impeccably. They even provided translators for Arabic, Portuguese and English, not being certain what we would need. In that environment everyone, almost, was ready to paper over Taiwan.

A dozen years later that was all repeated almost identically except that it was Russia so we had endless vodka varieties rather than maotai. OTOH, the inebriated toasts to eternal friendship were nearly identical.

So, since 2014 or so we're reaping the results of naive optimism and commercial greed. Surprise!!!
For my part I'm just honest enough to admit I never imagined how ephemeral that euphoria would be.
Anyone paying attention knew better. Years earlier I'd been through Iran and Lebanon, so I should not have had the slightest doubt. But Henry Kissinger was elated, who was I but to personally benefit.

When I consider the Ukraine situation I cannot but admit that naive self-centered Westerners assumed that once the USSR left Russia would be a liberal democracy just as Chine, once opening, would inevitably move in the same direction.

The war in Ukraine happened because the West ignored all the signs so did nothing. The benefits of hindsight.

 

[heltok]

Nice long video with action and soldiers explaining what happened:

 

[petit_bateau]

Re sanctions, reparations, frozen assets, etc:

The lawfulness of the UK sanctions regime set up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine faces its biggest legal test on Thursday when a Soviet-era oligarch and ally of Roman Abramovich seeks a court order to release his assets including two private jets.

The case being brought by Eugene Shvidler, a billionaire oil businessman, follows similar challenges by oligarchs now entering the courts in Europe where a separate but similar sanction regime operates.

At stake is billions of pounds worth of assets, some of which the west wants to siphon off to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Shvidler’s request for the release of his assets is the first case to reach the UK high court involving an individual. A number of other cases are waiting to be heard if he succeeds........

............ will argue that his involvement with the Russian state was as long as 20 years ago and the freezing of his assets cannot possibly meet the purpose of the legislation, which is to cease Russia’s efforts to destabilise Ukraine. In theory, his assets could remain frozen not just until the war is over but until Russia has paid reparations.

New provisions in the UK sanctions will allow individuals to apply for their frozen assets to pay reparations to Ukraine.

Hanratty said: “Obviously, the UK government cannot come out and say ‘if you pay reparations, then we’ll lift sanctions’. But I suspect it would help very strongly in challenging a designation if you can say ‘I’m not connected to the regime and some of the benefit I did make in the past is now handed over to Ukraine to support its rebuilding efforts’.”

Sanctions regime put to legal test in UK as oligarch seeks release of assets

Eugene Shvidler’s high court case could set precedent on delisting of sanctioned individuals

www.theguardian.com

 

[AudubonB]

“…as long as 20 years ago…” encompasses as recently as five minutes ago, too, so that lawyerly wording, by itself, exculpates nothing.
Mr. Shvidler’s oil billions: they came to him, exactly, how? Fell out of the sky?