Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[villa4europe]

1 minute ago, magnkarl said:

Now that spring is coming, they can. They need to push for renewables, undo the closing of their nuclear plants and essentially cut gas use until the autumn to a minimum. It's doable, but it'll cost.

They can't, it's too slow a process still, they won't have met the demand by the winter and they'll be back at the Russians door begging to be let back in 

Its a massive rod for their own back that will take years to get rid of

[magnkarl]

Mayor, her family and 20+ other civilian residents found in new mass grave with signs of torture in the now liberated Motyzhyn.

Quote

A mass grave containing the bodies of at least 20 civilians including a mayor and her family has been uncovered near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in just the latest evidence of Russian war crimes. 

The pit was uncovered in woodland near the town of Motyzhyn, around 20 miles west of the city of Bucha where another mass grave has been found, and contains the bodies of local mayor Olga Sukhenko who was buried along with her husband and son, according to Ukraine's former ambassador to Austria Olexander Scherba.

Who's the nazi, Vlad?

Edited April 4, 2022 by magnkarl

[magnkarl]

I wonder what Merkel, Sarkozy, Macron et. all. now feel about the concessions they gave to Putin over the years that lead to this? The West has some proper soul searching to do. NATO\EU\Democracies around the world need to re-arm, exclude Russia from all markets, stop trade with anyone who gives Putin money and push the regimes in Belarus and Russia out of the door. 

Finland are due to vote for NATO membership in short order, that'll add even more impetus to NATO's high tech forces. We need to show Putin that he can't get away with this sort of 1930's genocide.

[magnkarl]

This war's Mussolini, big mouth - small man.

[Jareth]

Germans have nationalised Gazprom Germany, that won't go down well. 

[bickster]

28 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Germans have nationalised Gazprom Germany, that won't go down well. 

We'll be doing the same I think. I also don't think it's for any other reason other than to keep the gas actually flowing

[sne]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

We'll be doing the same I think. I also don't think it's for any other reason other than to keep the gas actually flowing

The spice must flow.

[foreveryoung]

Up £200m to £720m a day now, Europe are funding Putin's war through gas sales

[bickster]

1 hour ago, foreveryoung said:

Up £200m to £720m a day now, Europe are funding Putin's war through gas sales

I keep seeing this being said and I'm not sure it's actually true.

Putin's war was funded well in advance, it had to be. He can't just make new tanks or aircraft or even missiles it appears. Even if his tank factories could get the parts the Russian output of tanks from its factories was about 4 tanks a week pre-war. It take's months to build aircraft and years to build warships

He pays the soldiers in roubles and he can just print as many of them as he likes, he also doesn't have to pay them if they're dead, they aren't even paying dead soldiers families what they promised because it's not a war but a "special operation"

I'm not saying that we shouldn't stop buying his gas / oil, we obviously should, it's just the notion that it's funding his war I'm struggling with, I don't think turning off the fuel would make a blind bit of difference to what he's doing. He's already lost at least $10 Billion in tanks / APC / Aircraft destroyed or capture but they had a warchest of something like $350 billion. He'll run out of weaponry and people willing to fight before he runs out of money

What the money is doing is propping up the economy and that's why it should be stopped but people seem to think cutting the fuel link will directly affect the outcome of the war, it really will not have that direct effect. It will collapse the economy further but the war will still most likely continue

[ml1dch]

 

 

[Awol]

21 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

 

 

The economic scenarios aren’t even that bad, considering this an entirely self-inflicted Merkel mess on Germany’s part:

 

[PieFacE]

I've accidentally seen some horrific stuff today which has put me in a foul mood all day. This whole thing is such a tragic waste of life. It just seems mad that in 2022 this type of thing can happen to civilians and there's such a limited amount of methods to stop it due to the fear of nuclear war.

[Awol]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

What the money is doing is propping up the economy and that's why it should be stopped but people seem to think cutting the fuel link will directly affect the outcome of the war, it really will not have that direct effect. It will collapse the economy further but the war will still most likely continue

 

That war chest has been severely depleted because so much was on deposit with major foreign banks. Moscow didn’t expect the strength of the sanctions response. You’re right that it won’t change the immediate future but we are now transitioning into a longer attritional war in Ukraine, and there’s a growing acceptance that living next door to Putin’s regime isn’t a viable long term scenario for Europe. 

The two levers we have are to maximise damage to Russia’s economy, and to Russia’s army in Ukraine. Because he’s all in their now, there’s a strong alignment of security interests between the Ukrainian state and the EU/NATO axis. If the west can stop mucking around and settle on a shared policy goal (neutralising the Russian state as a conventional threat to the Euro-Atlantic area), the strategy of economic and military attrition is fairly straightforward to execute. 

[bickster]

15 minutes ago, Awol said:

Merkel

Finally put her head above the parapet today, not good.

I also found out a few other interesting "facts" about Merkel I never knew until today

I knew she was from the East but I didn't know that her father was the only person known to have defected from the West to the East. Most observers now accept he was a spy. Then there was Merkel herself, who was a group leader in the FDJ (essentially Hitler Youth for East German Communists). She was also close to her Professor, Hans-Jörg Osten both in the Academy and the FDJ which he was involved in organising. Osten it has been discovered was in the pay of the Stasi.

Merkel always played down any involvement in "communism" but in the only East German free elections before reunification she had a spectacular rise in German politics. She joined the Democratic Beginning Party (DA) and was straight away appointed Press Spokesperson of the party by its leader Wolfgang Schnur, who was again found out to be a former paid Stasi agent and was forced out of the party but she was already set and was elected to the East german parliament and was in the group of Party's in the winning coalition. Her Party (DA) then merged with the East German Christian Democrats who on reunification merged with their West German couterparts. She was already well on the way in politics, very quickly and thanks to at least two people who were later known to be in the pay of the Stasi

[bickster]

23 minutes ago, Awol said:

That war chest has been severely depleted because so much was on deposit with major foreign banks. Moscow didn’t expect the strength of the sanctions response. You’re right that it won’t change the immediate future but we are now transitioning into a longer attritional war in Ukraine, and there’s a growing acceptance that living next door to Putin’s regime isn’t a viable long term scenario for Europe. 

The two levers we have are to maximise damage to Russia’s economy, and to Russia’s army in Ukraine. Because he’s all in their now, there’s a strong alignment of security interests between the Ukrainian state and the EU/NATO axis. If the west can stop mucking around and settle on a shared policy goal (neutralising the Russian state as a conventional threat to the Euro-Atlantic area), the strategy of economic and military attrition is fairly straightforward to execute. 

Yes I'd agree with all of that, though I still think, the warchest is big enough to outlast his supply of weapons

I'm just saying that stopping the purchasing of gas and oil isn't going to directly affect the war as people seem to think

[LondonLax]

The EU has sent Russia 19 billion euros since the start of the war. 

There is also an interesting bit of discussion online about Russia’s pegging of the Rouble to gold and then demanding payment for resources in a gold backed Rouble. 

[KentVillan]

42 minutes ago, bickster said:

Finally put her head above the parapet today, not good.

I also found out a few other interesting "facts" about Merkel I never knew until today

I knew she was from the East but I didn't know that her father was the only person known to have defected from the West to the East. Most observers now accept he was a spy. Then there was Merkel herself, who was a group leader in the FDJ (essentially Hitler Youth for East German Communists). She was also close to her Professor, Hans-Jörg Osten both in the Academy and the FDJ which he was involved in organising. Osten it has been discovered was in the pay of the Stasi.

Merkel always played down any involvement in "communism" but in the only East German free elections before reunification she had a spectacular rise in German politics. She joined the Democratic Beginning Party (DA) and was straight away appointed Press Spokesperson of the party by its leader Wolfgang Schnur, who was again found out to be a former paid Stasi agent and was forced out of the party but she was already set and was elected to the East german parliament and was in the group of Party's in the winning coalition. Her Party (DA) then merged with the East German Christian Democrats who on reunification merged with their West German couterparts. She was already well on the way in politics, very quickly and thanks to at least two people who were later known to be in the pay of the Stasi

I suppose the context to that is that virtually everyone in East Germany had some kind of link to the Stasi. Think it’s easy to drift into conspiracy theory territory with Merkel, but she just made some big strategic mistakes that were politically expedient (and mostly quite popular with the electorate) at the time.

Eg the nuclear power shutdown was largely down to the need to stem vote losses to the Green Party (a much bigger political force in Germany), and that coinciding with Fukushima. It was just bad timing combined with demonisation of nuclear power by the Greens and the German left. Merkel herself was pro-nuclear, but sacrificed that belief to retain power.

Cynical and shortsighted, yes, but hard to see any pro-Russia angle there, since she had opposed such moves in the past.

Schroder, on the other hand, I think genuinely was bought off by the Russians, and is an utter lump of shit of a human being.

Edited April 4, 2022 by KentVillan

[magnkarl]

In military terms I think the genocidal units that will be redeployed from around Kyiv to the East will have some of the worst equipment that Russia has to offer. It’ll be 60-90’s tanks, old Kalashnikovs and rpgs. Russia can’t produce anything due to lacking parts, and they’ve lost a massive part of their operational modern weaponry.

[Delphinho123]

So what’s the end game now?

Redeploy and focus on the East? Then what? 

[Genie]

I guess moving to the East applies to both Russian attack and Ukrainian* defence.

*which is backed by far more advanced hardware than Russia have.

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Genie