AW: Re: Umberto Eco - Ur Fascism

[Martin Dietze]

No, it certainly has not. Amongst my Ukrainian folks there's two rather
"popular” Interpretations:

1. Putin is a mafioso as we all know (see [1] for details). His main goal
is to die peacefully and get carried out of the Kremlin with feet first one
day. Otherwise he’d have to depend on a successor not to take the fortune
away from him that he has gathered over all these years or/and put him
behind bars. Hence the conflicts he uses for supporting his rule are all
“controlled”, i.e. he goes forward step by step, always ready to stop if
finding to have misinterpreted the other sides’ reaction and things could
get out of hand. Hence what he does along the Ukrainian border is primarily
threat and blackmail without the willingness (or even the need) to actually
attack.

2. Some people refer to rumours of Putin being critically ill and not
having a lot time left. In that case the equation could change, as he has
nothing to lose and probably wants to leave a mark before departing from
this world. In that case anything could happen. Since this concentrating
troops along the border, withdrawing them, concentrating them again etc. is
a pattern well-known from the Yom Kippur War [2], it could aim at the
Ukrainians getting less alert and simplifying the task when eventually
attacking. I personally don’t think that conquering all Ukraine would be
the target then (since a long and costly guerrilla war would be the likely
result), but taking Mariupol, Kharkiv and Dnipro may look easy to achieve
and sustainable while also badly damaging Ukraine’s economy and practically
eliminating their weapons industry.

What really will happen time will tell.

References:

   1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin's_Kleptocracy
   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War



On Mon, 3 Jan 2022 at 14:58, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, all that insight into Bandera’s historical “relevance” might be
> interesting to someone who cares about very old Ukrainian-Russian grudges,
> but does it have any REAL relevance to the fact that Putin wants to invade
> NOW?
>
> David Morris
>
> On Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 8:16 AM Martin Dietze <mdietze at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Now this is moving quite a bit away from Pynchon, but I cannot resist
>> replying anyway (dear moderators, if any, feel free to stop this if
>> necessary)….
>
>