2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine/Legacy

 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine/Legacy (Low-level deep event)

Type	legal
Description	A list of long term political effects that have a significant chance of becoming permanent in the countries of participants or sponsors.

Russia's "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine has caused significant changes in the economic, military and political sphere worldwide. This page lists the changes thanks due to the SMO.

Geopolitical

In 2023, the governments of the region signed agreements letting the US Military build or gain access to almost 40 bases in the region. The expansion in Norway started in 2015 with "rotational" troops, expanding in 2022 to 4 bases with "unrestricted military access" (by 2024 up to a total of 12 pre-defined military facilities and areas under the so-called Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement). All the others were agreed upon in 2023; Sweden agreed to 17 bases, Finland to 15, Denmark to 3 (not including Greenland). In addtion, the Uk military built 1 base in Norway.

Preparation of a major land war in Europe?

Poland has ordered 1000 Korean K2 tanks in mid 2022, the majority of these to be built in Poland from 2026 on. These tanks are upgraded from the standard version, notable are the multiple armor and rocket defense packages. In addition Poland ordered 672 howitzers. Russia has increased the production of main battle tanks as well, possibly receiving 1000 or more in 2023 already. The Uralvagonzavod plant being the largest main battle tank manufacturer in the world.

At the same time the US is creating new facilities in and getting access to a significant number of military bases in the Nordics.

New Iron Curtain?

By May 2022 rumors started to circulated that Poland may want to annex parts of Ukraine.

Belt and Road Initiative

Full article: Belt and Road Initiative

The vicious circle that the western politicians represented by the European Council didn't want to cut off Russia from the worldwide banking systems partly because Russians owed their countries too much money, is a similar scenario that scholars have painted as a possible choke-hold in case China invaded Taiwan or Hong Kong with their lending to many Asian states.

De-Dollarization?

Full article: De-Dollarization

Russia would find other customers for its oil and gas if sanctions of NATO countries in this area take a hold, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said. This could lead to increased bypassing of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, probably involving an increase of (already existing) credit swaps between Russia and other nations such as China and BRICS. The world's reserve currency is the backbone of our global financial system which would be severely shaken if global demand for the US dollar decreases, US deficit spending limited and the practice of bilateral credit swaps be accepted more widely.

Military

Depletion of NATO munitions stock

US and NATO stockpiles have depleted strongly, to the point that it would not be possible to fight a major war or even fend of an attacker for more than a few days.

“It’s public now, directors of the U.S. CIA and Russian SVR recently discussed how to resolve the Ukraine. The Ukraine war ends soon enough, because the U.S. and its hegemonic bloc STRAIGHT UP RUN OUT OF AMMO by the first months of next year, IN THE VERY “BEST” CASE (for them.) That is, they’ll be able to supply the Ukraine minimally after that, but, NOT REMOTELY enough to keep Russia at bay.”
Jacob Dreizin (July 17, 2023) 

In March 2023 the Slovak government approved a plan to send it's own Russian made fighter jets (MiG-29) to Ukraine in exchange for US F-16s, leaving the country for a while without air defense (in the meantime receiving cover from Poland and the Czech Republic).

Dead NATO officers

Dmitry Polyanskiy, the Deputy Ambassador of Russia to the UN, tweeted that NATO was inventing stories for the deaths of high-level officers that died in Ukraine (see also Trevor Cadieu).

Unaccounted weapons

A report published at the beginning of 2024 found that the DoD has lost oversight on more than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles (Javelin, Stinger, AMRAAMs), night-vision goggles, one-way attack drones (Switchblades) and other sensitive equipment.

PMCs

The Wagner Group (as all other Russian PMCs) was ordered to be integrated into the Russian military in early 2023. Wagner was the only group making significant gains in 2023. The group - after an alleged strike on their base - invaded Rostov and attempted to drive to and eventually invade Moscow on the 23rd on June, only for leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to announce to suddenly halt was Putin called a "coup attempt". At the end of this 24 hours - Wagner's leadership left - allowedly - for Belarus. The 20 other PMCs were interestingly not under the scope of the corporate media on this day.

Several pundits, including CIA and DIA former officer Rebekah Koffler said "Putin 'orchestrated' the Wagner coup with Prigozhin as a 'classic false flag' to boost recruitment for the army and make West think he is weakened". University of Melbourne professor William Parlett argued Putin tried to lure generals and elite investors to join the "coup" to execute double agents and deep political operatives in Russia by filtering them out, perhaps to stall the war until NATO or the US would their aid.

Social effects

Depopulation?

Full article: Depopulation

"Zbigniew Brzezinski notoriously said that Russia cannot be an imperial power without Ukraine. I think he was wrong, but that's irrelevant; the foreign policy Blob in DC thinks this is Gospel truth. This is why they went all-in on making Ukraine the anti-Russia, starting with the Orange Revolution in 2004. This is why they installed Vladimir Zelensky and poured over $200 billion worth of weapons, ammo and cash into Project Ukraine in just the past 2.5 years. But what if, and hear me out, they also realized at some point that their original plan failed, and that Ukraine is on track to become either a client of Russia or be absorbed outright — and changed their priorities to ensure there won't be any Ukrainians. That way, if Russia takes the territory, at least it won't have the demographics?"

Depopulation would also create a very large exile Ukrainian community in all Western European countries. During the Cold War and beyond, emigre communities are often instrumentalized by the CIA, forming the backbone of a soft (and not so soft) power apparatus. Yasha Levine points out how "they inhabit everything from positions within the foreign policy structures of our government, to traditional media outlets and newspapers, to cleaned-up CIA fronts like Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, to privatized spook ops like the National Endowment for Democracy, to all sorts of oligarch funded non-profits and smaller regime change lobbies..." Several million exile Ukrainians will form a forever hard-line anti-Russian lobby group in most Western countries.

Human traffickers exploit desperation of Ukrainian refugees and their children - PBS Newshour - November 2022.

Sex trafficking

Refugee waves caused by the Russian invasion caused 8 million Ukrainians to flee, putting a strain on Ukraine's ability to get enough manpower. Several media outlets began to report human trafficking networks where girls and boys that fled were either kidnapped or bought to Mexico, Turkey or the UAE. Demand for Ukrainian women by was reported by European Commissioner Ylva Johansson to be sky-high.

A state department report reported in 2022 about several high profile cases that explicitly were closed without any conviction. According to the US government and their Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, several Ukrainian officials were abducting and selling children from Ukrainian orphanages, from a pool of at least 104000 children. Other "high-profile" cases according to the reports included cases being dropped by suspects that included members of the Kyiv City police counter-trafficking unit, three police officers, recruiters accused of trafficking Ukrainians into a drug-trafficking ring in Russia, and a teacher at a government-run boarding school for orphans in Kharkiv who attempted to sell one of her students, possibly indicating a VIPedophile network to be present.

Deportations

An exclusive interview with VICE News, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova denies illegally deporting or brainwashing thousands of Ukrainian children.

The US embassy in Kyiv cited the Ukrainian foreign ministry as claiming that 2,389 Ukrainian children had been illegally removed from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and taken to Russia. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman said 402,000 Ukrainians had been forcefully taken to Russia, including around 84,000 children. Russian authorities said that more than 384,000 people, including over 80,000 children, had been evacuated to Russia from Ukraine and from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk for their own secruity, which would not be a crime according to war laws.

Moscow has been accused of abducting and forcibly deporting more than 19,000 Ukrainian children. In what could amount to the most horrific war crimes committed to date, the Russian state is allegedly attempting to turn a generation of Ukrainian children into Russians, and not like other alleged war crimes, Russia admits they took the children, but for their own good, and have been doing it since 2014, which is not a crime according to the Geneva and Hague Conventions. Russia appeared to intent to absorb the Ukrainian children and transform the children from there into Russians permanently. - Vice News

According to Ukrainian witnesses, Russian forces have forcefully deported 6,000 Mariupol residents in order to use them as "hostages" and put more pressure on Ukraine. According to the Russian ministry of Defense the residents of Mariupol had a "voluntary choice" whether to evacuate to the Ukrainian- or Russian-controlled territory and that by 20 March about 60,000 Mariupol residents were "evacuated to Russia". Human Rights Watch has not been able to verify these accounts. Although people were denied at first to be abducted at all, 62 victims (44 men and 18 women) of enforced disappearance have been released in 2022 by Russian and Russian-affiliated armed groups..

Ukraine gambling addiction

On April 19, the Ukrainian president Zelensky decreed a ban on gambling in the Ukrainian Army. The regulation was actually approved following a citizens' initiative that gathered more than 26,000 signatures in March to demand a remedy to the growing gambling addiction among Ukrainian troops. Some servicemen would spend "all their money on games" and take out microloans, thus putting themselves and their families in a "debt hole." Other instances even mentioned incidents soldiers pawned "drones and thermal imagers, thereby harming not only themselves, but also their fellow citizens." Commander Stanislav Bunyatov called out the ruling, stating it was over-reported and mostly being done by the rear-units that had "nothing do to anyway".

Worldwide effects

The war was a catalyst for several political, economical and sociological events, and in others stimulated them. OECD warned for "spur inflationary pressures, sapping confidence and household purchasing power and increasing risks worldwide". As Kiev did not fall, Russian began terror bombing Ukrainian civilians, and tried to demoralize the populations of the countries supporting them by causing waves of refugees and economic recessions.

Media censorship

Full article: Media censorship

Russia Today's websites, in many areas around the world, since early/mid March 2022, were giving a 403 error after (supposedly successful) DDOS check. This is notable in light of the alleged Bucha massacre by Russian troops at the end of March 2022. The blocking of the websites through EU sanctions was forced on ISP's as well, possibly leading to a block of RT's content via deep-packet inspection for one or two months. RT remains DNS blocked thereafter.

The consolidation of the media has been further strengthened by the mass panic in reaction to the invasion causing more alternative media funded by countries such as Russia to be banned from accessing without a VPN. Euronews reported that the European Federation of Journalists (or EFJ) said it feared the effects of this spiral of censorship on freedom of expression in Europe, pointing out it is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest.

After 2 days, Google banned this page from appearing altogether in search requests, only to reverse that to only de-rank this page in Google results somewhere around March 2022.

EU Mass surveillance projects

Recessions caused by refusing to buy Russia's oil resulted in an increased presence of right wing anti immigration policies in the EU countries. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report in the fall which described the European Union Commission Intrusive surveillance program for migrants and asylum seekers. In which FRONTEX, better known as EU's border patrol was illegally to collecting detailed information about migrants and asylum seekers, such as "genetic and biometric data and DNA fingerprints, their religious beliefs and their sexual orientation. Moreover, the Euro-Med indicated that the program would criminalize innocent people, impede their right to seek asylum, facilitate the procedures for expulsion and return them to their countries, and consolidate the misperception linking asylum and terrorism".

UK Deep State faction banned

The Institute for Statecraft (IfS), formerly the Institute for Statecraft and Governance , is a UK deep state faction founded in 2006 as a limited company. After receiving UK charitable status in 2009, it has received millions of pounds from the UK FCO and commercial organisations. The group recruited powerful civil servants, journalists and politicians, led my deep state operatives and spooks to astroturf and organise narratives against Russia to turn Russia into a enemy image. After its first soft exposure, Daniel Lafayeedney - who was found in the underground London black site listed as HQ in 2018, reportedly "slammed the door on a journalist and politicians face, without saying anything". After a 2018 complete exposure with leaks, e-mails with plans to undermine democratic institutions and counter Russian political power worldwide, and threats of lawsuits by a member threatening Wikispooks itself (by claiming the group to be hoax), the IfS wiped everything on their site except the front page, with their members removing any mentioning in their resumés, and said to have "dissolved" itself and got "hacked" which resulted in "falsified content". On 20 March, 2023, the institute was declared an "undesirable organisation" in Russia, seemingly hinting the IfS to still exist. This came after a report by The Grayzone on leaked documents and e-mails that detailed a British intelligence plot to blow up the Kerch Bridge with the involvement of IfS's Chris Donnelly.

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