Apparently, in one important sense this isn't true: they physically possessed the weapons, but not the capacity to do anything with them.
[I have no personal knowledge on this - just something I bumped into today, but it seems credible]
[EDIT: the point about non-upholding of protection agreements stands; I just wanted to clarify what "possess nuclear weapons" meant in this context]

The most interesting thing out of this is Russia's threat to pull out of New START in retaliation for US sanctions, as well as Biden's decision to cut off arms control talks. Pulling out all the stops on the US-Russia nuclear competition is dangerous enough already, but this will most likely kick off a renewed all-out three-way nuclear arms race, which is of course less strategically stable than the bilateral nuclear dynamic during the Cold War. China is already expanding its nuclear arsenal to parity, which if New START were still in effect, would've been 1500 deployed warheads (incidentally today the first silo field seems to have finished construction ahead of schedule). The US had hoped to rope China into its bilateral arms control agreements with Russia; well, now there'd be nothing left to rope into.

One major point I think is under-discussed is what this means for nuclear proliferation.

Interesting analysis from a Twitter thread. You may want to view the original, as I am only quoting the text and many of the Tweets use an external link for more context:

https://twitter.com/ProfTalmadge/status/1496837475901362180

Haven’t tweet much on Ukraine crisis for multiple reasons. But developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality I fear is coming. A few observations here on the nuclear & conventional dimensions.

Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable, signaling a willingness to turn to the country’s arsenal if the West interferes with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is about the clearest evidence I have ever seen for the Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. 

Deterrence theorists associated with the Nuclear Revolution often dismiss this idea, arguing that nuclear stalemate means both sides will avoid crises and conflicts out of the fear they could escalate. The result should be peace, stability, and less military competition. 

Yet Putin’s behavior suggests that revisionist actors are not so inhibited and may instead use their strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression, knowing their nuclear threats may deter outside intervention. 

Now of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking about why it hasn’t kept the peace in Eastern Europe.

China, in fact, is developing the same types of forces that Putin references in his remarks: not only a survivable second-strike capability, but also theater nuclear forces suited for limited strikes for coercive escalation. Not a coincidence. 

More broadly, as a student of military operations and foreign policy, it’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here either operationally or strategically, for reasons @jeffaedmonds and @KofmanMichael and others have identified. 

Yes, at a tactical level Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind to invaders, even strong ones. 8/ https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/1595.pdf

But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent after Soviet experiences with Warsaw Pact & Afghanistan, among others @dmedelstein

Russian invasion likely to provoke higher European defense spending, tighter NATO, deployment of NATO forces east, hostility with West. Ukraine was not headed for NATO membership any time soon, so a destabilizing invasion wasn’t necessary to forestall that perceived danger. 10/

At the strategic level, Russian invasion gives off big Schlieffen Plan energy. It is like committing suicide for fear of death, bringing about the very problems it is supposed to solve, and generating new ones like risks of inadvertent escalation. 11/11

It may not cause too great an impact. Everyone might want to have it. But at what cost? All Big Fives are roughly in the same trench in controlling the spread of nuclear weaponry. There are really very few countries that are in a delicate enough position to be able to develop them without facing dire consequences. Even then, they are only fission weapons. Thermal nuclear weapons are still Big Five exclusive. (I think India claim to have it, but the test yield is not conclusive)

Interestingly, only about a month before the current war, all Big Five made a joint statement on preventing nuclear war and avoiding arms races. 

Speaking from ignorance: this prediction failure seems (from my ignorant perspective) similar to forecasting failures in Brexit and in the Trump 2016 election, in that it’s a case where some force whose motives are unlike Western academia/elites was surprising to them/us. If so, the moral might be to study the perspectives, motives, and capabilities of forces outside the Western elite on their own terms / by cobbling together an inside view from primary sources, rather than looking via Western experts/media (though this is much harder).

To what extent are there people who visibly made good predictions here beforehand? It seems worth compiling them. I appreciate cmessinger’s comment [LW(p) · GW(p)].

Even the honest-to-god financial markets did badly on this prediction. The moment Russia started invading, MOEX and oil prices had wild shocks, as if something unexpected had happened, even though we already had abundant ahead-of-time warnings about their attack from U.S. intelligence. My suspicion is that everyone, including market analysts, expected Russia to simply annex the seperatist eastern terrority of Donbas. They expected the war to end quickly and with little bloodshed, and for the Ukrainian government to capitulate. The presumption was that they'd be fighting over a small separatist province, and it would have made sense - Putin gets what he wants, which is to look powerful, and he can come back again in 5-10 years for another piece.

Instead, Putin has chosen to do something insane - he is forcing his armed forces to attack and at least temporarily occupy the entirety of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lziz, and Odessa. These are centers of the Ukrainian resistance that nobody, not even a brainwashed Russian populace, could possibly believe are secretly interested in unification. Maybe he underestimated the response or maybe he doesn't care, but now western countries are thinking of kicking Russia out of their banking systems entirely, and the Ukrainian leadership has decided to face death at the hands of their oppressors instead of desert their country. There's going to be a total war - perhaps a quick one, but many Ukrainians and Russians will die. I wonder if Vladimir Putin actually anticipated this would be the consequences of his actions. It gestures suggestively to a God complex that might be undermining the decision making of Russia's governor and his coconspirators.

I think about several reasons:

1. Mistakes about the magnitude of the power centralization in Russia.

I don't know how it was perceived in other countries but in Russia there were many debates about how many powers belongs to Putin himself. Real process of decision-making was hidden and people had different hypotheses about it. Many people thought about Putin as an arbiter between oligarchs/other forces or as first among peers.

As far as I understand last week broadcast from Russian Security Council was very surprising for many people. Openly Putin practically humiliated some high officials (especially Chief of Intelligence Service).

2. Mistakes about Putin's motives.

I think a problem is a changing in Putin. In the beginnings of his rule Putin demonstrated that he is very pragmatic. He said words which sounds very reasonably. He very rare did something non-reversible. I think all missed a moment when this was changed.

3. I suppose people underestimate the magnitude of Russian intelligence service degradation.

I think in Russian defense agencies people were used to say things which their superiors wants to hear. I think Putin understands Ukrainians very inadequately because he read many reports which only confirm his point of view.

My baseline assumption for this is that everyone always does badly on these kinds of predictions. This frequently includes highly trained defense analysts with access to privileged information sources.

I suspect, at a gut level, that this is mostly because markets and crowds work on publicly available information and national security is pretty much the foremost subject for inside-view information being kept from the public.

Off the top of my head, maybe it's because Metaculus' presents medians, and the median user neither investigates the issue much, nor trusts those who do (Matt Y, Scott A) and just roughly follows base rates. I also feel there was some wishful thinking, and that to some extent, the fullness of the invasion was at least somewhat intrinsically surprising.

A second observation:

How is this prediction inconsistent with a combination of these two beliefs:

• The Russians are unlikely to invade, and in that case the probability of Russian troops in the capital is ~0
• In the counterfactual case where the Russians do invade, the probability of Russian troops in the capital is ~1

For example, Metaculus has a 97% chance of Russians in Kyiv, but a Russian invasion at all before 2023 is at 96%:

Current thoughts on Russian military objectives, based on comment threads here and my own general models...

• Multiple people mentioned that annexation is an unlikely objective for Putin.
• Putin could install a puppet government, and then leave. I expect that would be highly unstable; it would only be a matter of time until the Ukrainian populace overthrew a puppet government without a Russian occupation to back it.
• Putin could install a puppet government, and then set up a long-term occupation. This is the "Russia's Iraq/Afghanistan" scenario. Again, I doubt that it would be stable long-term, although with state media trying to make the war look good to the Russian populace it could remain popular for a while.
• Putin could dictate terms with the pre-existing Ukrainian government, then leave once a treaty is signed. At a minimum, that treaty would probably include abandoning claim to the predominantly-Russian territories of Ukraine, promising not to join Nato, and probably various other things, with an emphasis on symbolic victories for Russia. This is the most stable outcome I see at the moment, and is probably what I'd be aiming for if I were Putin right now.
• Putin might not have an exit strategy at all. This could be either stupidity or (more likely on my models) making a short-term/long-term tradeoff similar to the puppet government scenarios.

The general question of "is Putin accepting a long-term mess for a short-term win?" still seems very central to understanding and predicting the situation. If he's not, then treating with the current government is the only plausible exit strategy I currently see. I could certainly imagine the treaty-exit adding up to a very popular war, which I currently think is Putin's main priority here.

My working theory is that Putin could be worried about some kind of internal threat to himself and his power.

He's betting a lot on his image of strong, dangerous leader to keep afloat. However the Russian constant propaganda that keeps up that image was starting to be more and more known and ineffective. 

Europe also has been trying to get rid of Russian influence through gas for a while, and would likely have managed in a few more years. Then they'd be free to be less accepting of his anti-human rights antics.

Ukraine joining Nato would have made him look extremely weak, and it would have made it easier to make him look weak in the future.

Once his strong image faded he might have been worried of reforming forces within Russia to manage oust him out of office with an actual election and mass wide protests if the ball got rolling enough, or he might be worried about someone taking a more direct approach to eliminate him (he killed enough people to be extremely worried about being murdered, I think).

So this is his extreme move to deny weakness. Better to be seen as the tyrant who's willing to do anything if provoked, than the ex-strong leader who can be taken out of office.

You can read Putin's own words on the topic.

For what it's worth, I wrote a Twitter thread which attempted to piece together a partial theory.

Putin himself? His explicitly stated ambition is to reclaim all of the former USSR. Why should we not believe it? Ukraine is the first step. Why should we not expect more of the same?

Putin has also threatened "consequences greater than any you have faced in history" if the West intervenes. What can this mean but nuclear weapons?

If he goes after the Baltic states next, merely being members of NATO will not protect them. What will protect them is NATO actually going to war with Russia over them, despite Putin's threats.

Check Dugin's The Foundations of Geopolitics. I've posted some translated excerpts here on fb

Also: when it comes to world-modelling, you may disagree with Dugin on his view of geopolitics, but that's not really important for the explanation. It's enough that Putin's actions make sense in Putin's models. Given that the book has been highly predictive of Putin's foreign policy over the past 20 years, it seems that the simplest explanation is that Putin is at least partially thinking in those terms.  In Dugin's model of geopolitics, invasion is necessary and has long-term goals. 
 

This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia's foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia's strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states (the former Soviet republics) between them and their rivals. From that perspective, Ukraine may have been becoming too unpredictable as a buffer state recently, giving Russia an incentive to want to control the land directly.

I've been trying to think of this too. It seemed like Putin already had everything he could have wanted with a frozen conflict in Ukraine, preventing it from joining NATO. This is what I've come up with:

• Ukraine might have still been able to join the EU, which would mean an attack on Ukraine would activate the EU defensive alliance, which would in turn activate NATO. I'm not sure how realistic this was.
• Ukraine might have been admitted to NATO anyway, with the ongoing conflict. This seems unlikely.
• Ukraine might have been able to defeat the Russian army in a conventional war over just the DPR/LPR, likely in a blitz that would leave it without the breakaway republics. If Ukraine accepts the loss of Crimea, this would allow it to join NATO. Picture the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, but between Ukraine and Russia, with Ukraine using Western technology and drones. I find this somewhat more plausible, but it's not clear why Putin couldn't have simply recognized the DPR and LPR and stationed Russian soldiers there as a "tripwire" similar to NATO in the Baltics. 

I think the overarching reason is exactly what Putin says it is: having Ukraine join NATO is unacceptable for both the Russian national image and for Russian national security. Putin's issue in Ukraine has always been EU/NATO membership and the departure of Ukraine from the Russian sphere. 

I appreciate you registering your counterprediction on a public forum.

For what it's worth, I think this counter-prediction already seems almost certainly wrong.

Care to specify over what time horizon you expect(ed) it to fold?

↑ comment by Arcayer · 2022-02-28T12:53:32.066Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

No. I'm going to judge my prediction by the number of deaths, not days (or weeks, or months. Years would really mess with my idea of what's going on.)

Insignificant: Less than 20,000. If single battles in the American Civil War are larger than this entire conflict, then the sides must not have been fighting very hard.

Total War: I would normally say millions. I expect that the original prediction did not actually mean that? So, I'll say the other side was right if it's over a hundred thousand. More right than me at above 50,000. Of course, I'm also wrong if Russia surrenders.

 

There's a lot of fog of war right now. I think anyone who's changed their mind about the events in Ukraine based on new data is being silly. Hopefully we'll have real data, and not just war propaganda in the not too distant future.

Russia says it's winning easily, but is taking its time to avoid civilian casualties. Ukraine has a paradoxical stance where it's winning easily, but if Germany (or X) doesn't give it (Something) (Right Now) it'll cave instantly. There's pretty much no neutral observers.

I sort of expected more and clearer information. I think that was a mistake on my part. Ukraine and Russia are both incredibly untrustworthy, so I shouldn't have based that part of my expectations on typical wars.

In general I'd like for the facts to speak for themselves, and would like to avoid debating definitions too heavily? I'm displeased that I'm turning a simple and symmetric single sentence statement into several paragraphs of text, but think people are updating way too strongly on either the wrong evidence or on unreliable evidence that should be ignored.

Replies from: spkoc

↑ comment by spkoc · 2022-02-28T13:33:30.606Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

These numbers are absurd, in my opinion. 10s of thousands of military dead is massive numbers in a modern context. You cannot compare 1800s warfare to modern war, people literally lined up in a square and shot at each other until half of them were dead/injured back then. And due to crap med tech tons of injured didn't survive. Modern conflicts have MUCH MUCH lower death ratios.

America finished the conquest of Iraq with like 150 dead(granted Iraqi army folded). Over the course of the whole occupation(2003-2011) America lost around 4500 soldiers. If Russia loses like 1000 soldiers before taking over Ukraine that's absolutely brutal resistance.

Iraqi force's losses were much higher, but still not over 20k during the invasion. Keep in mind there WAS a lot of resistance. The invasion took like a month or something, so wasn't just a trivial walk through the country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

Yemeni civil war isn't even at 20k yet after 8 years, as far as I can tell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present)

I think 20k combined military civilian deaths in the next 2 weeks would be absolutely massive resistance and probably the bloodiest war in decades.

The real question to me is if the Ukrainians are holding all major cities by the end of this week. At that point substantial military aid from the EU will be steadily flowing in through the west and it becomes a lot less clear how Russia makes progress. Mass bombardment of cities... doesn't do anything if people are angry and stubborn enough to keep fighting. 

Replies from: Arcayer

↑ comment by Arcayer · 2022-02-28T15:18:05.625Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I can see arguments as to why some people would feel cheated at 20 thousand. I wouldn't agree. People have gotten too used to fake wars, and are too willing to call just about anything total warfare.

I don't think the modern warfare thing is enough to change anything. World War two was pretty deadly. Vietnam had millions of deaths.

I should be clear I was thinking all deaths caused by the war, on both sides, civilian and military. The question is how hard the Ukrainians will fight, not how effectively. My general perception is that Iraq is not generally considered to have fought hard for Saddam? I even based my 20,000 figure partially on Saddam.

In any case, the specific definition isn't that important. I propose that the casualties will be lower than the other side thinks, for reasons of their model being wrong in a way that becomes obvious when looking back on data that does not yet exist.

Yeah, that data point was extremely surprising to me. On the surface, it seems to imply at least one of three things:

• Putin severely mispredicted the short-to-medium-term economic impact of the invasion
• Investors are severely mispredicting the short-to-medium-term economic impact of the invasion
• Putin thinks the invasion is worthwhile (at least for himself) even if it results in the sort of short-to-medium-term economic trainwreck which knocks stocks down by 50%.

I'd have considered all three of these quite improbable beforehand.

On the other hand, it could just be a short-term liquidity phenomenon, e.g. there was a bunch of foreign money invested in Moscow's markets which had to exit due to Western sanctions (or expected to need to exit due to Western sanctions). If that's the main driver, then now's a good time to buy for anybody who has access to Moscow's financial markets.

MOEX appears to now be down only 20% from pre-invasion price level. Still significant, though much less so than 50%. This follows a common pattern that I've seen anecdotally about stock prices following bad news: that the price drops precipitously immediately following the news, and then mostly recovers shortly thereafter. I remember seeing this pattern in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, soon after it became mainstream to be concerned about the Coronavirus pandemic, and I think when Trump got elected. Not sure if this is somehow a real counterexample to the efficient market hypothesis, or if I'm overfitting or selectively remembering cases where the pattern holds.

Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons if NATO troops support the Ukrainian army

How should threats like that be evaluated, given that, (I'm guessing that nuking NATO troops would result in nuclear retaliation?) it would be... hard for Russia to benefit, causally, from initiating an exchange, and given that Putin lies quite frequently, and given that there aren't really any limits to what a nuclear state can get you to go along with if you just take them at their word whenever they threaten this sort of suicidal act; you have to draw a line somewhere, there has to be a limit, where you're willing to disbelieve. What's the limit?

I'm having a lot of difficulty seeing nukes as being are applicable or relevant to war, at least in wars between nuclear states, probably even in a war limited to Russia and Ukraine. What would Russia gain from nuking Ukraine? They damage their prize beyond any plausible savings this would impute for their infantry. So, how can this claim that they'd do it be substantiated?

Last I heard (the information could be outdated), the US has fewer nukes than Russia. This was a choice: There was no military advantage to having more. There is a sense in which the credible signalling of will and strength, could no further be waged, that frontier was saturated, the game of war had to leave it.

Responding to say that as of now, public opinion in Germany seems pretty certain that Russia is in the wrong.

The reliable news stations mostly agree that Putin's official reasons for invading are weak at best, but also that this is -- as harsh as it sounds -- not a pressing enough issue to seriously consider going to war over. Still, I note several things:

1. Gas is barely talked about at all on the news. I presume that this is because the government is trying to divert attention from the fact that if Russia restricts it, that'd be a catastrophe.
2. Some of the less trustworthy media (including the BILD, which is quite infamous for being loud, emotional, and anti-everything-the-government-does) have been virtue-signaling about how Germany needs to "take action" against Russia, ideally via the (actually in-very-poor-condition) military, and how that would be worth any economical consequences. Those people don't know a lot about economics or politics or wars, but they're loud and it's worrying.
3. Public opinion has been moderately anti-russian for some years. Favorable enough to keep doing business with Russia, but bad enough to be disgruntled about it.
4. Most people are apparently not (yet) aware how big of a deal this is, and much less of the consequences this war will (or might) have on Germany. This worries me a lot.

It might be relevant though that my social bubble involves mostly young, educated middle-class people, and also that I live in the northwest. I have no idea how things are in less privileged groups, or other regions. 

Generally, I believe that the biggest parts of the public are still in shock.

I myself am getting increasingly worried about the NATO deciding to directly involve itself in the conflict, both because I feel Germany would be hit HARD economically and on daily-life-basis (especially regarding energy supply and russian products) and well, because of the nuke threat.

He has said that he will keep on trying to recreate the Russian empire, which now includes several NATO states.

Where has he said this? How directly? 

I think it's extremely useful practice to follow momentous live events, try to figure out what's happening, and make live bets (which you can do for example by trading Russian/European stock indices and commodities). When the event of historic importance happens at your doorstep there will be even more FUD to deal with as you're looking for critical information to make decisions, and even more emotions to control.

I know this sounds kinda morbid, but I often ask myself the following question: what would I have done if I was a rich Jew in Vienna in 1936? This is my personal bar for my own rationality. I think it is quite likely that I will face at least one decision of this magnitude in my life, and my ability to be rational then will outweigh almost everything else I do. I know that life will only give me a few practice sessions for this event, like November 2016 and February 2020. I think it's quite worth taking a couple of days to immerse yourself in the news because it's hard to do right now.

If you live outside of Europe and Russia and you aren't otherwise involved with Ukraine then I think you can safely ignore the situation (unless it escalates into a WWIII-precursor, which is unlikely). If you live in Ukraine then you absolutely must pay attention to the situation.

I don't think it will directly effect me or anyone I know personally

This seems to be the prevailing opinion in the comment section here. And people seem pretty confident in it. It's not clear to me why this confidence is justified though. I'd love to hear more about why people feel confident.

(I'm not trying to imply that people shouldn't be confident. I suspect that people are perhaps moderately overconfident, but that is a relatively weak suspicion. I don't really know much about this stuff.)

I am not sure whether this algorithm was wrong, but it does sure seem like given the increased risk of nuclear war, this did relatively quickly develop into something that was worth paying attention to.

A lot of people brought up sanctions, and they could indeed influence European economy/politics.

I would be curious about what sanctions in particular are likely to be implemented, and what are their implications - a major economic setback/energy prices soaring could radicalize European politics perhaps?

My guess would be that overall the whole event increases support for conservative/nationalist/populist parties - for example, even though Hungary's populist government was trying to appear to be balancing "between the West and Russia" (thus now being in an uncomfortable situation), I think they can probably actually spin it around to their advantage. (Perhaps even more so, if they can fearmonger about refugees.)

I think the EU will have to impose heavy sanctions and deal with a refugee crisis. Given German dependence on Russian gas this could lead to a local/global recession. Hopefully, that's the extent of it.

I think it could have indirect effects on you and people you know personally because of sanctions against Russia and Russia's countermoves against those sanctions. That are the key informations to watch the next days and weeks.

The Taiwan point is very interesting, but I think China has a powerful strategic interest even if we ignore it.

Specifically it looks to me like the sanctions will drive Russia entirely into the Chinese financial sphere, and radically increase their dependency on commerce with China. If Russia's relationships with other countries are also subordinated to Chinese interests, and I strongly expect that they will be, it looks like China will rapidly dominate all of Asia in a way similar to how the US dominates North America.

There are also several specific things which will impact the China v. US balance of power. As an example, Russia already bought 70% of its semiconductors from China, but now with the sanctions this will have to be ~100% with much weaker bargaining power so China's growing semiconductor industry gains a captive market to sustain it. In tandem with China's virtual monopoly on rare earth mineral refinement, this likely means a net advantage in computation.

Kind of a dark thought, but: there's always a baby boom after a war, fertility shoots way up. Putin has tried to prop up the Russian birth rate for many years to no avail...

What does the birth rate have to do with war?

This war will be done fast and comparatively take a lot less casualties than any other war of countries that size.

I'm most interested in the question of NATO membership of Finland (GDP $270B vs. Ukraine's $150B, population 5M to Ukraine's 44M). The Finnish government has been neutral for a long time, while maintaining the option of NATO membership (brought up by the PM in January and discussed again today); the Russian government has at various points threatened that they would start WWIII over Finland joining NATO. 

There already exist security guarantees, and Finland has a capable military, such that I don't think a Russian invasion of Finland is advisable, and I don't think it's part of Russian revanchism, such that it seems unlikely that there would be an invasion even after invasions of Ukraine, Georgia, and so on. But the potential for escalation here seems pretty worrying to me (especially given the way that it might be in no one's interest).

I don't expect another military attack against a neigbouring country of Russia soon - it takes some time to consolidate power after an invasion (if that really is Russia's objective).

What I do think likely is international treaties between Russia and some non-NATO former Sowjet republics giving Russia additional rights, maybe military bases, etc. Because Russia's "bargaining position" towards its neigbours should have increased considerably.

Today's news.
Turkey abstained from voting on the suspension of Russia's rights in the Council of Europe.

Good points.

Although the point about Turkish drones being effective against Russian equipment I find misleading; drones are just effective against ground targets in general, doesn't matter if it's Russian or American made.

Also I wouldn't call the Mediterranean 'ocean'; to get to the Atlantic Russian ships still have to pass through the strait of Gibraltar, also controlled by NATO countries.

Well that didn't age well.

I'm inclined to agree on this. 

The official news here in Germany keep reporting that the government has announced/will announced 'substantial sanctions', but as of now, the proposed SWIFT-exclusion is met with resistance.

The oil and gas prices already skyrocketed over the past months, and the newly finished Nord Stream 2 (under the north sea, was planned to transport gas from Russia to Germany), was announced to be... delayed for "an unforeseeable amount of time". If gas supply over here is restricted any more, it will be an economical disaster, as a lot of the imported gas is used for industry and to generate power. 

As of now, I'm quite convinced that the EU -- but Germany especially -- literally can't afford any more severe actions against Russia as of now. 

Agreed. Afghanistan was an asymmetric war, which is to say asymmetrically in favor of the Taliban. If Afghan civilians refuse to cooperate with the Americans, not much happens. If they refuse to cooperate with the Taliban, they and their families may get tortured/killed.

Here, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution shares his thoughts about possible parallels with Afghanistan, but more with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan: Could Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan?

He doen't really answer this, but gives a couple of questions on which an answer could hinge:

1. Which state or states will be the frontline sponsor? [Pakistan in the case of Afghanistan]
2. Are they ready to take the heat from Russia? 
3. How much support will the United States and NATO provide? 
4. Will the insurgency spark a broader conflict, and can it be contained? 
5. Are Ukrainians prepared to pay the price?

Is there any particular reason to think that Putin is likely to try invading the Baltics? Let alone attempting to forcefully recreate the Warsaw pact with invading Poland/Czechia/Hungary?

I mean certainly, if Putin decides that WW3 is worth grabbing EU members back, it could happen. And there is always a tiny chance that he will think the West won't fight over the Baltics, while the West actually will -- but this seems to me to be a really low probability thing, and more importantly, what is happening in Ukraine tells us very little about whether that will happen.

To be clear: The Western governments told Putin, in every possible non-explicit and explicit way, that they would do nothing to physically try to stop him from taking Ukraine, but that they would attempt to harm his country through economic mechanisms. Putin did not do a Hitler like gamble of risking a world war, Putin knew with certainty that the only military force he would be fighting was Ukranian. 

This is not evidence that he is willing to risk nuclear war, or actually try invading NATO members in hopes that NATO doesn't defend them. He might be -- but your estimate on that should be roughly the same today as it was yesterday.

I'm not overly concerned with the news from this morning. In fact I expected them to raise the nuclear force readiness prior to or simultaneously to commencing the invasion, not now, which is expected going into a time of conflict/high tension from normal peacetime readiness. I had about a 5% chance this will escalate to a nuclear war going into it, and it's not much different now, certainly not above 10% (For context, my odds of escalation to full countervalue exchange in a US intervention in a Taiwan reunification campaign would be about 75%). Virtually all that probability is split between unfavorable developments dragging in NATO and accidents/miscalculation risk, which is elevated during tense times like this (something like, if the Russians had misinterpreted the attack submarine which entered their territorial waters last week as being a ballistic missile submarine sneaking up close to launch a first strike, or an early warning radar fluke/misidentification being taken seriously when it would've been dismissed during peacetime, either of which could've caused them to launch on warning).

Unintentional nuclear exchange will have no preceding signs, but unfavorable developments will, for example a NATO shootdown of a Russian plane or Russian fire straying over the border killing NATO troops which begins an escalation spiral. If we start seeing such incidents being reported, I would tell all my LW friends to get the fuck out of NATO cities they're living in immediately.

My first thought was: "All predictions are probabilistic, ridiculing people who guessed wrong is only going to discourage making clear predictions."

But then I looked at those predictions, and many of them were expressing high confidence and ridiculing those who disagreed, so I guess this is deserved. Otherwise we will have asymmetric incentives where making certain type of predictions will be socially punished, but making predictions in the opposite directions will be safe. (It also reminds me of some of my contacts on facebook, who are often very confident about the predictions, and when they turn out to be wrong, they just stop commenting on that topic for a while, and then continue predicting something else with the same confidence.)

Energy prices are already very high.

This could plausibly be because the war is already priced in. A lot of money is at stake, and I guess many players had good estimates about it. 

Good Judgement has been predicting a military conflict with more than 50% for some months now:

Russia attacking the rest of Ukraine may be a tactic to keep Ukraine from concentrating it's forces in the east, rather than an attempt to take significant territory.  It's still possible Russia will stop and consolidate gains after taking a chunk of the east (like in Georgia and Crimea).

Occupying Kiev is the kind of thing where cheap weapons (missiles) can destroy expensive weapons (tanks), and is probably very undesirable, depending on how many of those cheap weapons have gotten and will get to Ukrainians.  It might be possible to install a puppet government with minimal losses, though.

Russian troops on CNN 15 miles outside of Kyiv. 

https://twitter.com/iamsuffian/status/1496852857525465096

I agree, since the start of the rumblings, I had updated from (significant territorial gains to Dnieper and maybe Odessa region) to (integrating Luhansk and Donetsk with fighting in other parts of Eastern Ukraine). Putin got me there.

However, the initial reporting making it sound like an all-out invasion is happening is based largely on missile attacks, so it's possible that we're just seeing forward strikes and fighting could remain in the East (including Northern East). Kyiv is of course eventually on the radar in any situation. But "invading from Belarus" would be very different if it were into Volyn and Rivne vs. Chernihiv (BBC says Chernihiv).

I think this comment should be debated rather than downvoted.

This may be a part of the reason, but far from "the entire reason".

For example, you ignored all the bad experience Ukraine already had with Russia, which might have contributed to their desire to try something else for a change.

The other countries in the region decided to join NATO on their own (they were not invaded by USA, at least not literally). Any guess why? Looking at other nearby countries which are neither in NATO nor in EU, does it seem like their territories are getting somewhat smaller during the recent decades?

I am also curious, do you consider Western Europe to be "reshaped in American political and cultural image"? Like, sure they watch lots of Hollywood movies, but other than that, what specifically do you imagine would be different if USA isolated itself from the rest of the world? Because from my perspective, Western Europe seems to have enough independence and high quality of life (considering things like healthcare, perhaps even better quality of life than USA); and the people in Eastern Europe... well, dream about having the same.

You're forgetting that the situation might be mirrored on the other side. Sure the Ukrainian army is fighting bravely and patriotically now, but that doesn't negate years of corruption and dysfunction beforehand if that is the case.

This is the analysis I like the best so far. 

Published 29th of January, 3 weeks before the invasion: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJNtfyq3TDE

And followup, published 5th of March:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ4hvLqNfqo

I don't have any great recommendations, and I don't have any primary sources. But a few of the sources I have found myself coming back to are:

SpeakTheTruth - Two US vets with a youtube channel. The are not trying to be neutral in the conflict, but I've found their commentary on the strategic and tactical situation more informed and in-depth than most other sources. One of them speaks some Russian, and have previously visited Ukraine. I don't know or care about any of their other content or opinions.

James Acton - Has seemed like a generally sane commentator to me, but I don't know of him from before this conflict.

RT - Russia Today - Russian state sponsored news agency. Terrible as anyone's only source of news, but very interesting point of comparison. Some articles are clearly much more heavily biased than others. Overall the level of censorship is lower than I was expecting.  Sputnik is another example.

"The Russian government is spreading misinformation about US / NATO involvement" is a very different hypothesis from "The Russian government is mistaken about US / NATO involvement."

Germany has updated its position and a SWIFT ban is now in the works: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/politics/biden-ukraine-russia-swift/index.html

Just wildly speculating, but how about this:

First Putin conquers the whole Ukraine, or most of it. Then he agrees to leave most of it, (and only keep Crimea, Doneck, and some extra territory as a bonus) in return for having all sanctions lifted, plus a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO or EU, plus maybe some donation to Russian economy.

EDIT: Also, before Putin leaves Ukraine, all local people inconvenient for Russia will "accidentally" die.

Can Russia actually pacify the huge mountainous region in Western Ukraine, that borders Poland and Romania?

I think there's a potential plan here of 'establish Galicia-Volhynia* as a puppet' and 'incorporate eastern Ukraine', possibly including a Partition-esque movement of people in both directions. But this makes more sense if the Ukrainian population is 20-50% in favor of being Russian, and it looks like the number is actually closer to 10%? Besides Crimea and the breakaway regions Russia has recognized, it's not clear there's all that much that will be worth the trouble to govern under protest.

*IMO superior to calling it something like "Lvivian Ukraine" in the style of Vichy France. 

Thanks for the link. I found it well thought out and plausible, but it seems strongly based on the assumption that Russia will remain isolated from the global financial system for the next 5-20 year timeframe discussed in the article. Is that a reasonable assumption? Although Russia is a pariah now, once the hostilities have ended I would guess the sanctions will be lifted over time, since they are also expensive for the West to maintain.

Seems like this could use operationalization.

Came here to post something along these lines. One very extensive commentary with reasons for this is in https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1497993363076915204 (warning: long thread). Will summarize when I can get to laptop later tonight, or other people are welcome to do it.

What are the causes of your prediction?

The US is critically dependent on the production of microchips in Taiwan, there are only economic reasons. The United States has no economic interests in Ukraine.

a few people I know argue that much of this invasion is more the consequence of other nations' failures. Primarily, they focus on Ukraine's failure to respect the Minsk agreements, and NATO's expansion eastwards despite their implications/direct statements (not sure which one, I'm hearing different things) that they wouldn't. Any thoughts on the likelihood of Putin still invading Ukraine had those not happened?

My understanding is that many of these talking points are unfairly slanted in Russia's favor, and that the situation seems manufactured by the Russian government in order to justify an invasion. [For example, the breakaway republics to the east are in regions where opinion polls are not in favor of secession from the Ukraine, but fighting has been ongoing for years in part because of Russian support of the separatist groups.]

My sense of the situation is that, given Russia thinks it could win a war, what treaty could have been offered that would seem superior to them? [Especially given that part of the benefit of fighting the war is the practice for future wars.]

Is the United State's condemnation of this invasion hypocritical to many of their actions? I've heard the United States actions in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia brought up as points to support this.

The American Government says lots of hypocritical things about regime change and interfering with elections and so on; I think this is bad and wish they wouldn't do it.

1. Failure? Putin can't win hearts and minds, so NATO is to blame for not delivering those things to him on a silver platter?
2. Damn straight the US is being hypocritical. No one cares any more, years of Russian whataboutism-propaganda has seen to that.

I add that the precedent for Russia's actions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea was called the independence and international recognition of Kosovo.

Kind of. "Why can they, but we can't?"

Military installations and airports thruout Ukraine have been attacked.