alt Hacker NewsMainstream narratives for the first year or two of the war were:
- Russia was a paper tiger and weak
- Ukraine was going to win against a corrupt/unmotivated Russian military so it should keep fighting
- Putin had made an error and he would get overthrown
- The Russian economy was going to collapse due to sanctions
- Russia oil pipelines would freeze and never come back online without western help (this was a Peter Zeihan favorite)
- Europe would come to Ukraine's defense
- Etc.
He threw cold water on every single one of those narratives (specifically) from the beginning, meanwhile western media was busy spinning false rah-rah propaganda narratives like "the ghost of Kiev" etc.
Basically he was correct that we should not have cheered on this war. If a settlement and concessions were reached much earlier it would have been better for Ukraine (they likely would have kept more territory) and we wouldn't have 1+ million casualties and EU economies like Germany death spiraling and turning far right due to cutting themselves off from Russian energy.
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Who were the mainstream voices saying this?
My layman definition is it’s the people writing in major newspapers, the people getting paid by CNN to sit in a half circle on their news analysis shows, etc.
Is Peter Zeihan “mainstream”?
The only time I remember anyone speculating that Russia was in trouble was the short lived Wagner Rebellion - because nothing like it had happened before. But that lasted … two days?
WTF? I remember the exact opposite. Everyone on social media and in the mainstream news said Ukraine was toast and the war would last a few months tops.
What? Everyone I know thought Russia would absolutely destroy Ukraine within days and take it over
The sentiment was the exact opposite of what you described.
And the problems Germany has currently are mostly unrelated to the war.