Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[steeplejack]

How will Europe pay for it's gas if this happens?

A cheery recently retired "man in a brown woolly jumper" will drive a very heavily laden Ford Granada to the Narva / Ivangorod customs post once a week, armed to the teeth.

 

[Idris2002]

Is that an act though? Nixon tried that with ‘The Madman Theory’.

 

[TopCat]

Well if they don't pay they can't reasonably expect more gas.

 

[bimble]

Pitiful squirming:

 

[steeplejack]

It's still all optics / simulacra. He's recognised the ludicrous "People's Republics" but not yet taken them. Different people says different things about where the borders of said republics may be. It's a balancing act- to show the int community he's serious and doesn't give a fuck, and also to show the domestic audience he means business and to try and rally them behind the flag.

After his belligerent speech full of paranoid, historically illiterate far-right drivel on Monday evening, he has to be seen to be doing something. Taking DNR / LNR is realtively straightforward but the costs become very high indeed the moment he tries to take the others cities in those oblasts. You can see him trying to take Mariupol as the first girder in a sea bridge between Donetsk / Luhansk and the Crimea.

Maximise the chaos, maximise the division, appear to risk all whilst risking not all that much...I suspect even he doesn't know how this will end. Putin is an opportunist rather than a grand strategist.

 

[Aladdin]

IN case you have already got Aladdin on ignore cupid_stunt

Bit of crosswires IMO.

Yeah Aladdin is posting in good faith cupid. No games.

Don't leave the thread ffs.

Stoopid is cock waving ignore

I know. just a misunderstanding is all, I reckon.

It’s only a message board , don’t leave the thread

Don't leave the thread!

I'm relying on your posts and this thread to keep abreast of the situ in Ukraine tbh.

Thanks.

I'll keep reading.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow is ready to look for “diplomatic solutions” over Ukraine but stressed that the country’s interests were non-negotiable.

In a video address on Wednesday morning to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day, a public holiday in Russia, Agence France-Press cites Putin as saying:

"Our country is always open for direct and honest dialogue, for the search for diplomatic solutions to the most complex problems. The interests of Russia, the security of our citizens, are non-negotiable for us.”

LINK

Basically his demands are not negotiable, meet them or else, how very diplomatic.

 

[Sprocket.]

I wonder perhaps if these sanctions had been utilised when the Russians first moved into the Crimea it would have dampened the desire for invasion.
But then again, at that point the Tories were busy filling their coffers with Russian slush funds.

 

[MickiQ]

I don't think Putin has any great master plan, I think he's driven by his sense of grievance more than anything else. He's clearly as intellligent as he's ruthless and no doubt by now has figured out that a military response from the West is just not going to happen and that is the only real thing that could stop him.
I don't think he's all that worried about sanctions to be truthful, even if the Nord2 pipeline is not turned on, it's not going to be dismantled.
He may very well be thinking that after 2 or 3 years of sky high energy prices, Western Europe will be a lot more willing to just accept the reality on the ground in Eastern Ukraine and talk about buying his gas again.
Western Europeans are a lot less used to hardship than Russians we will probably crumble first.
As for the US, he has outlasted Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump it's a safe bet he will outlast Biden.

 

[Shechemite]

That’s some banner

 

[yield]

A senior US administration official said that Russia could be cut out of the international electronic payments system, Swift, in a future raft of sanctions.

“We are not taking Swift off the table. It will remain an option that we can deploy, depending on how Russia makes its next move,” the official said.

How will Europe pay for it's gas if this happens?

It depends on the degree of exclusion. Blanket exclusion will impact the populace worse than the wealthy obviously. Russia has its own payment system like BACS and think this is semi integrated with the Chinese one, but don’t regard this as confirmed. The big outward facing banks are still not included in the sanctions, only regional ones with a direct link to the occupied territories. Petrodollars are pretty important to Russia, exclusion isn’t thread of the world but is serious. swift is not a payment system but an instruction and messaging setup, you don’t strictly need it to move cash but it’s likely an unpleasant workaround

The hidden costs of cutting Russia off from SWIFT

America’s foes would rush to alternatives, hastening its financial decline

www.economist.com

Dec 18th 2021

Start with the impact on Russia. The no-SWIFT scenario is not new to Moscow. It has been bracing itself since 2014, when America first raised the idea of unplugging it from the network to punish it for invading Crimea (cooler heads eventually prevailed).

If Russia were excluded today, capital flight and a run on firms and banks reliant on foreign funding would ensue. But coping mechanisms would then kick in. Russian banks and their foreign partners would use other means of communication, such as telex, phone and email.

Transactions would migrate en masse to SPFS, a Russian alternative to SWIFT that is not nearly as ubiquitous and sophisticated, but still usable. As the payments infrastructure struggled at first to cope, Russia would suffer some disruption—but not disaster. Over time, investment in SPFS would make the system speedier.

 

[Artaxerxes]

That’s some banner

He's a dick but he should totally go for the arrest to highlight the farcical nature of our current legislation.

He doesn't appear to have a job so the crowdfunding will be a nice earner to.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Yep. I did read some stuff recently about some link into the Chinese system but not sure if this is public. The Russians have been dumping USD assets from their state holdings over the past year, so even a Cuba style block on Russia using USD would be kinda limited. And pretty much unenforceable

 

[gosub]

That’s some banner

Fair to say not a fan of the guy, but seriously- WTF terrorism? Magna Carta truely did die in vain

 

[teqniq]

Political policing so as not to offend the sensibilities of Johnson and the tory scum in general. Fucking pathetic.

 

[Pickman's model]

He's a dick but he should totally go for the arrest to highlight the farcical nature of our current legislation.

He doesn't appear to have a job so the crowdfunding will be a nice earner to.

go for the arrest for the compo down the line

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't think Putin has any great master plan, I think he's driven by his sense of grievance more than anything else. He's clearly as intellligent as he's ruthless and no doubt by now has figured out that a military response from the West is just not going to happen and that is the only real thing that could stop him.
I don't think he's all that worried about sanctions to be truthful, even if the Nord2 pipeline is not turned on, it's not going to be dismantled.
He may very well be thinking that after 2 or 3 years of sky high energy prices, Western Europe will be a lot more willing to just accept the reality on the ground in Eastern Ukraine and talk about buying his gas again.
Western Europeans are a lot less used to hardship than Russians we will probably crumble first.
As for the US, he has outlasted Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump it's a safe bet he will outlast Biden.

i think that by personalising this to putin you (and other people) are making a big mistake. this is something which obviously exercises many people in russia, and it's not like his ratings have taken a tumble because of the last eight years' adventure in ukraine. obviously you're right about the master plan, but i bet there's been what the americans call intelligence preparation of the battlefield, exploring the various military and economic moves ukraine, the americans, nato, us and the eu might put into place. it's probably only the british who don't make contingency plans before embarking on great projects.

 

[not-bono-ever]

We don’t need no stinking contingency plans

 

[Magnus McGinty]

We don’t need no Putin control

 

[ohmyliver]

Hey Jack Reacher leave those kids alone

 

[chilango]

All in all he's just another prick to be put up against the wall.

 

[cupid_stunt]

So, Russia has started evacuating all their diplomatic staff from all of their missions in Ukraine, and mounted another massive cyber attack on Ukraine's parliament, cabinet ministers, the ministry of foreign affairs and the security service.

Tick, tock.

 

[RainbowTown]

China's current position.....as of today, that is.

 

[dilute micro]

I'm sure the Russians know nothing about the DDOS.

 

[gosub]

China's current position.....as of today, that is.

well that might help Taiwan SAR and Tibet be formerly recognized by US a bit....sticky wicket for the Chinese

 

[gosub]

I'm sure the Russians know nothing about the DDOS.

In that case Ukrainian Parliament must of been overwhelmed by PM's of support

 

[LDC]

Hard to imagine it'll be more than a few days. Increased reports of more troops and materiel in position now.

 

[frogwoman]

Don't really have much to add except I'm really sad about this because I love Russia, having lived there for a year and I've spent some great times in Ukraine over 10 years ago now. I don't really know many Ukrainians but I've got friends in Russia and Moldova and i'm hugely sad about the whole situation. I'll try and put together a longer post later but I don't really understand why this is happening tbh

 

[frogwoman]

I honestly thought that this was mostly a media hype because of similar situations in the past that haven't really amounted to anything. It's terrifying tbh, I know it's way more complex than personalising it to one person (and I think that any russian leader would have done a lot of the same stuff tbh) but a huge aspect of this is that Putin has got to be out of control.

 

[cupid_stunt]

We know the US & UK suggested an imminent attack a week or so ago, but this feels different, what with Russia evacuating all their diplomatic staff today, satellite images of a big field hospital being set up on the Belarus border, and now reporting of loads of troops & kit on the move to even closer to the Ukraine border.

The Guardian can confirm that the warning of an imminent attack has gone out to Ukraine and allies and that the UK shared the US assessment.

Diplomats I have been talking to are aware the west has cried wolf once before, on 16 February, so there are caveats.

There was also a scare last night, when some intelligence suggested an all-out attack was about to happen but it turned out to be a false alarm.

The bottom line is there are large Russian formations on the move, so the assessment is that an onslaught could be unleashed at any time.