Germany only supports “targeted partial SWIFT cutoff”. Not sure how this would resolve..

Good Judgment Open (GJO) gives [28% credence](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/2236) to extra-Donbass invasion before June. But superforecasters there only give [16% credence](https://twitter.com/wfrhatch/status/1488643025827995657?s=20&t=aEftNh4j2tqS9i7qiuMeyw) to the same question. Interesting that superforecasters are more bearish. GJO also gives [70% credence](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/2184-will-there-be-a-lethal-confrontation-between-the-national-military-forces-and-or-law-enforcement-of-russia-and-ukraine-resulting-in-at-least-three-fatalit...

@qumidium While I updated on specific annexation question on this evidence, resolution here explicitly excludes Transnistria

For the purpose of this question, the addition of troops to Transnistria will not trigger positive resolution as troops have been present in that region since before the beginning of the recent conflict in February 2022.

Russia has moved blood supplies and field hospitals to the border.

@casens The Georgia combat interrupted another China-hosted Olympics, which makes this concern more poignant.

A stronger constraint is Putin plans to attend opening ceremony Feb 4, very unlikely he would launch an attack while out of the country.

To my mind, the China tact argument (Feb 4-20) counterbalances the generalized mud argument (~Mar 1- Oct).

— edited by fewerlacunae

NATO General secretary Stoltenberg: Cyberattacks "can trigger Article 5.

Omicron antibody neutralization is very high, direct evidence that R0 is lower than Delta. https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/146607680594…

Another public figure prediction: Rubio claims that Armenia and Moldova are next. @christian just fyi

On March 9, Ukraine claimed that Russia has not ruled out sending 800 troops to Transnistria.

Dmitri Alperovitch says "Now that the invasion is slowly grounding into a stalemate, it makes sense that Kremlin would start focusing its attention on the West and thinking through retaliation options for sanctions. Cyber is absolutely one of those. Europe and US are in the crosshairs".

He was one of the first to correctly predict invasion, back in Nov.

@(jsddfgh) A hypothetical war would happen before March 2022, or after October 2022 b/c of generalized mud. The West is now sending military aid to Ukraine (British anti-tank weapons being most recent example). If Western buildup outpaces Russian buildup these next few weeks, that would incentivize Russia to resolve ambiguity more quickly. I haven't found evidence of this, but suspect it to be the case. So I am accordingly raising my probability here from 20 to 25%, and downgrading my estimate for 2022 Ukraine invasion down from 60 to 50%. But twelv...

Getting my bearings: - A [viz](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263772/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-russia/) on GDP by year. But other sources say 2021 Nominal GDP was 1.71t. In that case, an e.g., 7% drop in 2022 would mean 1.71*0.93 = 1.59t. - A [viz](https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#place=country%2FRUS&statsVar=GrowthRate_Amount_EconomicActivity_GrossDomesticProduction) on GDP percent change year over year. So "comparable to the 1990s" means [13-15%]. - A [viz](https://www.euromonitor.com/article/russias-resource-curse-oil-price-dependenc...

Two signals: Russian troops moving into Belarus, and quiet evacuation of Russian embassy.

I have changed my mind on both claims. 1. Generalized mud is not a hard constraint for Russian action. More a media narrative with WW2-era thinking. 2. Russian buildup is outpacing NATO buildup. From 30 to 55 BTGs very recently. Ukraine arguably doesn't have the training window to incorporate fancy systems. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-69-war-in-sight-russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwrzophpNJA https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/21/weapons-ukraine-russia-invasion-military/ These speak against my NATO accelerant hypothesis. My invas...

Adam Tooze persuasively argues that impact of sanctions will be relatively muted if Russia switches to a less conservative (Keynesian) policy. And also that Russian growth has stalled not from gas prices but their conservative/austerity policies.

I wonder what to make of the "political football" argument. It goes something like

SWIFT is politically popular but diplomatically toxic. Biden attributed SWIFT veto of Germany/Italy, but those countries don't want the political ramifications. So they'll keep shifting the SWIFT rationale until a politically suitable excuse is found.

I haven't seen any experts make this argument, but idk it struck me as plausible enough to downgrade my estimate 5%. Consilient with the expert narrative "SWIFT is red herring" seen from Adam Tooze writeup at least.

Russian SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin said Ukrainian preparations for war are in full swing and that all of its combat-ready units are concentrated on the border with the Donbas. He said there was a massive transfer of equipment and NATO SOF to Ukraine ([Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1491925996517441546?s=20&t=Si8U1Pm2ehos_cWtvqgE-A), [Russian site](https://www.mk.ru/politics/2022/02/10/glava-svr-sergey-naryshkin-razvedka-rabotaet-na-mir.html)). On both interpretations of truth value (truth or fabrication), this strikes me as a sign...

An [interesting argument](https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-76-strategy-of-tension) that long-term economic pressure might be a viable Russian alternative to invasion. Tooze also explains the Washington-Kyiv divergence on economic grounds: > The US and UK, for their own reasons, are staging this crisis as a classic war scare. By contrast, Ukraine’s President Zelensky has to foreground the reality of an agonizingly extended and ruinously costly confrontation with no clear beginning, middle or end. The former permits a relatively clean ending tha...

Resolution criteria,

The fatality must be caused by the immediate effects of the detonation, so a fatality caused by things like fallout, rioting, or climate effects will not count towards a positive resolution.

I wonder how your valid scenarios would be evaluated. Maybe TRUE for plane crash, FALSE for hospitals..?

@Jgalt Worth noting the White House vigorously denies this leak, claiming Biden didn’t speak of sacking & framed it as a “distinct possibility”.

Outside Donbas, Blinken indicates troops continue moving closer to border, and CNN reports intelligence that amphibious vessels & airplanes are being loaded now.