Russian invasion of Ukraine

It is possible to slide away from defeat by claiming victory against more realistic goals. After all Saddam Hussein led Iraq into two disastrous wars – when he invaded Iran in 1980 and seized Kuwait a decade later. At the end of both, with nothing to show for all the consequential death and destruction, he nonetheless claimed victory because somehow, he had personally managed to survive in power. As Putin is forced to move away from his maximum aims will that minimum one also come to be his priority?

https://samf.substack.com/p/space-and-time?s=r

At the UN vote condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on March 2, 141 countries voted in favor, 4 against and 35 abstained. Those numbers are deceptive, however, because of which countries were in each camp. Though the motion to condemn Russia had an overwhelming majority, weighted by population the vote looked different. Of the 7.7 billion people represented by governments taking part in the vote, only 42 percent were from countries approving the motion condemning Russia. Governments representing 51 percent of the world’s population abstained.

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-92-so-like-us-africa-and?s=r

At the beginning of March, around 660,000 people had fled according to the
@UNHCR. EU humanitarian commissioner said eighteen million people will be affected.
@CGDev has estimated that the costs associated with hosting refugees could amount to $30 billion a year. These costs can be counted as aid under @OECDdev rules which, as it did in 2016 during the so-called European ‘migration crisis’, could cut into European aid to Africa, which amounted to $8.9 billion from the EU, $4.6 billion from Germany and $4 billion from France in 2020.

https://twitter.com/David_McNair/status/1499644389357936643