Monday musings
Gotland, Kazakhstan, China & the road to hell is paved with good intentions (Austria vaccine mandate)
It’s Monday again and as I was scrolling through old photos on my phone I came across this one, taken at one of my favourite places in Moscow, during times when I could just fly over for a weekend and no one was thinking about impending war with Ukraine or Sweden. Sweden?! I just can’t get over it.
My husband came home from a weekend away and since he doesn’t read my Twitter (“it doesn’t open for me” lol), asked me a simple question, “So, is Russia going to invade Ukraine or not?” to which I replied, honestly, I have no idea, but there is strange talk about Gotland which until two days ago I would not have been able to point out on a map (geography lessons in American schools are non-existent).
For the record, I think there is an almost zero chance of Russia invading Sweden, Finland, or any other “western” country. I really believe Ukraine is a personal passion project for Putin, and therefore a real risk. There are historical and other strategic reasons for wanting to grab a country you know the west will not put boots on the ground to defend. As for the Baltics? Well I can’t imagine a tougher integration project than trying to take back Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. So no, don’t think that will happen either.
At the moment if I had to bet on one scenario, it would be a combination of air and land so as to take Kyiv and Odessa and grab everything east of them. I can imagine a scenario in which Belarus sends in its army to help. I can imagine western Ukraine being left independent, with a new capital in Lviv, which after all, was once even part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I realise it’s completely ridiculous to come up with such fantasy scenarios, but that’s my best guess at the moment. As far as timing, that’s a trickier question. American experts have argued the ground is only frozen in February and March; Putin will go to China on February 4. Maybe it will coincide with that trip so he can look as if he had nothing to do with anything.
I think the Sweden story is purely a distraction. I found some very obvious 3-4 day old troll videos in Sweden on TikTok when I searched with the hashtag #ryssland, after seeing reports of Swedish kids alarmed their TikTok feeds were warning them about an impending Russian invasion. TikTok has a weird algorithm but if you know what you are doing, you can quite easily get into the for you page of every teenager in a region. So this, like the hack this week of Ukrainian government websites, feels very much like part of the Russian psychological plan to create fear.
Some smart minds to follow on Russia include Arkady Ostrovsky and Leonid Bershidskiy. Arkady actually watched Russian state TV last night and noted there wasn’t much on Ukraine at all.
Leonid argues airstrikes would be far more effective than an old-fashioned WWII style land invasion.
Finally, Ukraine is going through its own internal drama today, with former president Poroshenko flying back to Kyiv from Warsaw to face charges of high treason. Ukraine’s current leadership must also not suspect an invasion right this second or perhaps they would have delayed seeking what sure looks like political retribution until a calmer time.
Kazakhstan
A lot of smart people are trying to figure out how things will play out in Kazakhstan now that the violence appears to be over but the whereabouts of ageing former president Nazarbayev are still murky, as is the more important question, what will happen to all the wealth and assets his family members gained over the past 30 years. This smart piece by Shaun Walker looks at what might happen now:
I would also recommend this piece if you read Russian on what real estate and other assets are owned by Kazakhstan’s new president Tokayev’s family:
Covid in China
One of my predictions for 2022 was that China will struggle to maintain its zero covid strategy, both because of how contagious Omicron is, and with hosting the Winter Olympics.
I’m watching the news out of China closely now, as I think the world really underestimates the “supply chain” impact of what would happen should a lot of China end up sick all at once.
I’m sure the Chinese authorities are determined not to let that happen, but as local transmission of Omicron in Beijing is reported, I wonder how long this lock everything down strategy can go on for. This is also interesting data from China on falling birth rates and an ageing population.
Very briefly on Austria’s vaccine mandate
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or so they say. I believe the idea for a vaccine mandate was well intentioned, with a belief that the pandemic would be over once Austria vaccinated more than 90% of its population, before we had an immune-escape variant circulating as the dominant strain of covid.
Those who suggested a vaccine mandate argued for a carrot, to pay people, but as lawmakers do what they do, we ended up with only a stick, fines of €600 a pop for not getting vaccinated. There is no actual incentive to get vaccinated, other than you will avoid getting covid badly, which antivaxx people do not fear, because if they did, they would have already gotten vaccinated.
So now we have law that will be enforced by police at random traffic checks (this is freaking me out tbh sets off all my police state alarm bells) with so many exceptions every antivaxxer will find one. In particular, newspapers are already reporting on Omicron parties because of course having been infected over the past 180 days exempts you from having to get the shots. The exemption for pregnant women is downright dangerous and anti-science.
I still believe the covid bureaucracy and creep of the state into our daily lives in Austria will ultimately be far worse than the covid pandemic itself, because once you get all these little checks in place, good luck getting rid of them. Then you radicalise a portion of the population fed up with everything, who move to the far right not because they are natural neo-Nazis, but simply out of anger.
My 11yo got asked for vaccination papers while buying highlighters and glue at Libro this weekend. There is no scenario in my mind where this is normal.
So we’ll keep on gurgling 4x week with the kids in Vienna; my eldest is still really hoping he can catch Omicron before Friday so as to get out of the upcoming Latin exam, and I wish simply to wake up circa 2018.
Happy Monday, everyone. Thanks so much for reading.