Commenter Greg The Class Traitor asked about this on another thread, so I thought I would throw this Anders Puck Nielsen video up with a bit of context.
Basically Ukraine managed to hit (but not sink) some Russian warships in Sevastopol harbor with some waterborne drones, and Putin threw a hissy fit, declaring the Ukrainian grain export deal was off. Turkey promptly went “No it isn’t” and said exports would continue with Turkish flags on the grain ships in question, causing Russia to back down and rejoin the deal pretty much immediately.
Historically, there’s no love lost between Turkey and Russia. (Honestly, you could swap out any other of either of those two country’s neighbors in that sentence, and it would still be true.) The fact that there were ten different Russo-Turkish wars (plus the Crimean War and World War I) should give you an inkling of how deep and bitter that enmity extends. That’s one of the factors that made NATO such a useful ally against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Even today, Russia and Turkey are fighting a quasi-proxy war between Russian-backed Armenia and Turkish-backed Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and Russia is on the losing end there as well.
Let’s look at Russia’s backdown over the grain deal.
Takeaways:
“It looks like a diplomatic defeat in a stand-off with Turkey, and it shows that Russia is essentially unable to control the maritime domain in the Black Sea.”
“Russia was clearly very upset about the attack. It was a big deal in the Russian media, and they put a lot of effort into portraying it as a terrorist attack. And just to be clear, when there is a war going on, it is not terrorism to attack the opponent’s military.” This is clearly a “Duh!” point, but one worth spelling out given the vast swarms of pro-Russian bots who argue otherwise.
“The deal was made such that it had a duration of 120 days, so it was up for renewal in November…For quite a while is has seemed that Russia has been unhappy about the grain deal. I don’t think they had expected that it would be such a big success.”
“As I am recording this we are up to 477 shipments and more than 10 million tons of cargo. That’s a lot. I don’t think the Russians had expected Ukraine to be able to make a safe corridor that quickly.”
“If we remember how the war was going back in July, then Russia was still on the offensive. People were still talking about Russia closing the land corridor to Transnistria and maybe taking Odessa. So from a Russian perspective the idea might well have been that the deal would never work. Because it was going to take months for Ukraine to make a safe corridor, and before that time, Ukraine would have lost the access to the ports.”
“But what happened was that the grain deal did become a success. Ukraine has made a lot of money from exporting its agricultural products, and it has reduced the prices of food on the global markets.”
“What this grain does is that it reduces the prices on the global market, so that people in the third world can also afford to buy food. And then it helps the economy because it reduces inflation. But for Russia right now it is a point to have a big economic crisis in the West, and the Ukrainian economy is supposed to be terrible.”
“Turkey was not going to accept that the deal would fall on the ground. So they made it clear that the grain shipments were going to continue, and that they were going to provide the ships to do it, if necessary. And that gave Russia the challenge that if they withdrew from the deal, but it didn’t have any consequences, then it would be embarrassing. Because it would demonstrate that Russia is unable to control the events.”
“The Russian navy can’t actually operate with surface warships close to the Ukrainian coastline, because Ukraine has land based anti-ship missiles, so it would be really hard to interdict the grain traffic. And using long-distance air strikes or submarine attacks on UN cargo ships that are transporting grain to the world to avoid a food crisis…it would turn everybody against Russia. It’s just impossible to explain.”
“Maybe it could even lead to a military confrontation with Turkish warships that were protecting the shipments. So in other words, Erdogan called Putin’s bluff.”
“What this shows is basically two things. It shows that the relationship between Turkey and Russia, it now that Turkey that has the stronger position. It is now Erdogan that tells Putin how things will be. And then it shows that the Russian Black Sea Fleet can’t enforce a blockade on Ukrainian harbors. And if they can’t do that, then I will say that it is getting more and more difficult to see what the role of the Russian navy actually is in this war.”
Plus, if Russia had actually attacked Turkish ships, that would probably lead directly to a military conflict with NATO. And while I’m sure that before Russo-Ukrainian War, there were many Russian ultranationalists who loudly declared that Russia could win a war against NATO, Russian military performance has been so lousy that only the most hopelessly self-deluded could believe that now.
(By the way, my Internet was restored Friday. It turns out three people on my block were affected, so it was a narrowspread outage, evidently because the “traps” were too old to handle a recent network upgrade. I’ll try to do the LinkSwarm on Sunday, if I have time.)
More on background enmity between Turkey and Russia: according to Sean McMeekin’s The Russian Origins of the First World War, Russia’s major geo-strategic objective was the seizure of Constantinople and the sea passage between the Black Sea and the Med. And according to McMeekin, the Russians were getting close to launching the invasion when they were overtaken by the October Revolution.
This is a ridiculous piece of analysis. Russia never closed off grain exports, as their government has worked assiduously to keep the global south onside since the war started, including by trying to prevent food shortages. The only danger to shipping lanes came from Ukraine; they dropped so many mines in the Black Sea some of them drifted over into Turkish waters and posed a danger to Turkish shipping. Russia suspended the agreement, they didn’t reject it. There was never any question of submarine or air attacks on grain ships –that is ludicrous. Turkey and Russia have a complex history, but they have made an effort to mutually assist each other during this war. Turkey hosted the aborted negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which might have ended the war back in March if they hadn’t been torpedoed by the West. Russia signed contracts with Turkey to replace small manufactured items they no longer had access to after sanctions were imposed. Turkey is in position to become the new hub for Russian gas to Europe now that the Nordstream pipelines have been destroyed. Nobody is “bitch-slapping” anybody. What this war is really going to accomplish (besides crashing the European economy) is to push Russia closer to Turkey, China, and India, while diminishing the stature of the US. Globally, most governments don’t share the visceral anti-Russian reaction of the West; negative consequences from our diplomacy in this matter will linger for years.
@Judith, I think you are mistaking the American Left’s inane Russia hysteria, which was essentially an epiphenomenon of its hatred of Trump (any stick at hand, as it were) with real anti-Russia sentiment. Indeed, the Left accused some on the Right of being fanboys of Putin. And you must remember that for the transnationalist Left, there are no real enemies, just would-be friends and allies, if “we” would just stop being so beastly to them! In point of fact, Germany, which is the center of mass of Europe, is [still] eager to do business with Russia.
Your description of irrational hatred seems to me to be a projection of Russian attitudes into the West. The West has hoped to integrate Russia into its markets and cultural interchange, and, prior to the Ukraine war, this goal had largely been accomplished, though there has always been a persistent Russian paranoia that causes it to keep the West at arm’s length. But think about it: there is no ideological struggle between the West and Russia. The Soviet project of world Communist revolution comprehensively failed and therefore ideological contest is no fundamental obstacle to closer integration of Russia into the Western architecture.
It is in fact Russia that doesn’t want to continue down the road of integration.
1) Moscow’s self-conception as the Third Rome. In thus view, Russia has a special world-historical role and cannot pinion itself inside the Western order, as that would restrain its freedom of action necessary to vindicate its history.
2) Russian irredentism toward its peripheral states, an example of which we are seeing play out in real time in Ukraine.
3) The determination of Russian society (or at least a non-trivial portion thereof) self-consciously to reject the Western neoliberal consensus, which it has come to see as increasingly perverse, enervating, and destructive as the Western Leftist elite (the gentry laptop class) moves ever further down the road of “woke” revolution.
But in the main, I believe #2 is the stickiest wicket. Russia doesn’t want to normalize fully its relationship with the West, which would include becoming an EU member and even a NATO member itself (how’s that for a simple, Gordian Knot-cutting solution to its paranoia about the West seeking to encroach on it and take territory?), because to do so would preclude its reconquest of Soviet satellite nations.
[…] prostitution, pedophilia, and human trafficking, and Violence south of the border BattleSwarm: Turkey Bitchslaps Russia, Californians Hit The Gun Range, and LinkSwarm for November 7 Behind The Black: One of two solar […]
More on background enmity between Turkey and Russia: according to Sean McMeekin’s The Russian Origins of the First World War, Russia’s major geo-strategic objective was the seizure of Constantinople and the sea passage between the Black Sea and the Med. And according to McMeekin, the Russians were getting close to launching the invasion when they were overtaken by the October Revolution.
Woohoo!
Thank you!
What’s the point of being desperate for a warm water port, when you can’t do anything with it even when you have it? :-)
:… it is getting more and more difficult to see what the role of the Russian navy actually is in this war.”
To provide targets.
Our service was interrupted for a week because an installer down the block simply unplugged us to make room for a new subscriber.
This is a ridiculous piece of analysis. Russia never closed off grain exports, as their government has worked assiduously to keep the global south onside since the war started, including by trying to prevent food shortages. The only danger to shipping lanes came from Ukraine; they dropped so many mines in the Black Sea some of them drifted over into Turkish waters and posed a danger to Turkish shipping. Russia suspended the agreement, they didn’t reject it. There was never any question of submarine or air attacks on grain ships –that is ludicrous. Turkey and Russia have a complex history, but they have made an effort to mutually assist each other during this war. Turkey hosted the aborted negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which might have ended the war back in March if they hadn’t been torpedoed by the West. Russia signed contracts with Turkey to replace small manufactured items they no longer had access to after sanctions were imposed. Turkey is in position to become the new hub for Russian gas to Europe now that the Nordstream pipelines have been destroyed. Nobody is “bitch-slapping” anybody. What this war is really going to accomplish (besides crashing the European economy) is to push Russia closer to Turkey, China, and India, while diminishing the stature of the US. Globally, most governments don’t share the visceral anti-Russian reaction of the West; negative consequences from our diplomacy in this matter will linger for years.
@Judith, I think you are mistaking the American Left’s inane Russia hysteria, which was essentially an epiphenomenon of its hatred of Trump (any stick at hand, as it were) with real anti-Russia sentiment. Indeed, the Left accused some on the Right of being fanboys of Putin. And you must remember that for the transnationalist Left, there are no real enemies, just would-be friends and allies, if “we” would just stop being so beastly to them! In point of fact, Germany, which is the center of mass of Europe, is [still] eager to do business with Russia.
Your description of irrational hatred seems to me to be a projection of Russian attitudes into the West. The West has hoped to integrate Russia into its markets and cultural interchange, and, prior to the Ukraine war, this goal had largely been accomplished, though there has always been a persistent Russian paranoia that causes it to keep the West at arm’s length. But think about it: there is no ideological struggle between the West and Russia. The Soviet project of world Communist revolution comprehensively failed and therefore ideological contest is no fundamental obstacle to closer integration of Russia into the Western architecture.
It is in fact Russia that doesn’t want to continue down the road of integration.
1) Moscow’s self-conception as the Third Rome. In thus view, Russia has a special world-historical role and cannot pinion itself inside the Western order, as that would restrain its freedom of action necessary to vindicate its history.
2) Russian irredentism toward its peripheral states, an example of which we are seeing play out in real time in Ukraine.
3) The determination of Russian society (or at least a non-trivial portion thereof) self-consciously to reject the Western neoliberal consensus, which it has come to see as increasingly perverse, enervating, and destructive as the Western Leftist elite (the gentry laptop class) moves ever further down the road of “woke” revolution.
But in the main, I believe #2 is the stickiest wicket. Russia doesn’t want to normalize fully its relationship with the West, which would include becoming an EU member and even a NATO member itself (how’s that for a simple, Gordian Knot-cutting solution to its paranoia about the West seeking to encroach on it and take territory?), because to do so would preclude its reconquest of Soviet satellite nations.
[…] prostitution, pedophilia, and human trafficking, and Violence south of the border BattleSwarm: Turkey Bitchslaps Russia, Californians Hit The Gun Range, and LinkSwarm for November 7 Behind The Black: One of two solar […]