Is Ukraine about to have a war?
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Sad effects of Putins war, I hope they prevent it 
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Extraordinary exchange in German TV: respected CDU MP RKiesewetter, a retired army colonel, says he doesn’t believe that Olaf Scholz wants Ukraine to win the war.
Didnt WW2 and the Cold War start with Germany and Communist Powers trying absorb bordering countries?
Look at what Russia is doing now and would like to do to other countries too. That war has already started. The world would be better off with the bear declawed.
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It would appear that Russia has faulty electrics in a sunflower seed elevator, it burns well.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
So the current disaster is not solely due to Putin's paranoia, but also to his desire to end an anti Russian pogrom at his border. He grossly overreached and is now suffering the consequences.
The end state desired by the Ukraine government is full control of its post USSR land, presumably free to continue ethnic cleansing of their Russian inhabitants. While understandable given the situation, why would Scholz want to support that?
It is bad enough for Germany to have a wrecked Ukraine and a crippled Russia to look forward to. Abetting an ongoing civil war simply deepens the hatreds and makes recovery impossible.
It would appear that Russia has faulty electrics in a sunflower seed elevator, it burns well.
https://mobile.twitter.com/aprilsparkles1/status/1528429118219399168?cxt=HHwWgMCl_euLibYqAAAA
https://mobile.twitter.com/aprilsparkles1/status/1528429118219399168?cxt=HHwWgMCl_euLibYqAAAA
Anything that further tightens the supply will spike prices even more beyond their current record highs.
Rising food prices is not good.
With $40B, you can do a lot in a war, so, yeah, certainly realistic.
The worrying thing is, that Russia is gaining ground in the Donbas, very slowly, though micro step, by micro step, with progress. Until the whole of Luhansk/Donetsk has been occupied and Russia "integrates" these areas administratively in Russia, making this whole area out of recover reach, out of fear for the Nukes.
So, the implementation of the $40B needs to come fast, very fast. Oh, and please roll-up Russia too, otherwise, we have another encounter in 10 years.
The worrying thing is, that Russia is gaining ground in the Donbas, very slowly, though micro step, by micro step, with progress. Until the whole of Luhansk/Donetsk has been occupied and Russia "integrates" these areas administratively in Russia, making this whole area out of recover reach, out of fear for the Nukes.
So, the implementation of the $40B needs to come fast, very fast. Oh, and please roll-up Russia too, otherwise, we have another encounter in 10 years.
No reason why he would, imho.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
Regarding Minsk accords the main obstacle was that Putin would never allow free elections in LNR and DNR under OSCE supervision. The leadership of self proclaimed republics were FSB/GRU/SVR "siloviki" sent by Kremlin backed up by little green men. Kyiv would be crazy to negotiate with this representation and that was the main reason why Minsk process halted.
When I speak to refugees in my country we talk in Russian and they deny that their language would be prosecuted in any way by Kyiv.
It is rather Russia which attempted to strip identity from Ukrainians for quite a while.
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The bad thing about "wrong hands", is that the lighter stuff will end up in the criminal circuit, after the conflict ends. We saw that happening at a large scale, after the Yugoslavia break-up, some decades ago.
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No reason why he would, imho.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
So the current disaster is not solely due to Putin's paranoia, but also to his desire to end an anti Russian pogrom at his border. He grossly overreached and is now suffering the consequences.
The end state desired by the Ukraine government is full control of its post USSR land, presumably free to continue ethnic cleansing of their Russian inhabitants. While understandable given the situation, why would Scholz want to support that?
It is bad enough for Germany to have a wrecked Ukraine and a crippled Russia to look forward to. Abetting an ongoing civil war simply deepens the hatreds and makes recovery impossible.
The Ukraine government chose to launch its army against its Russian speaking minority who were trying to retain their historic rights. This initial civil war stemmed from the Kiev government 's abrogation of these rights after the Maidan revolution. Germany tried hard to avert this war, with the Minsk accords. Their implementation was blocked by the Ukraine, not by the Russians.
So the current disaster is not solely due to Putin's paranoia, but also to his desire to end an anti Russian pogrom at his border. He grossly overreached and is now suffering the consequences.
The end state desired by the Ukraine government is full control of its post USSR land, presumably free to continue ethnic cleansing of their Russian inhabitants. While understandable given the situation, why would Scholz want to support that?
It is bad enough for Germany to have a wrecked Ukraine and a crippled Russia to look forward to. Abetting an ongoing civil war simply deepens the hatreds and makes recovery impossible.
Let's be realistic. Ukraine as a country and Ukraine people were (and are) on the transition from a rough Slavic culture/history to a more Western type of society, with respect for the human being (and a lot of other things), (remember the looting of the MH17 passenger belongings ?). And the Russian minority in Ukraine certainly wasn't in a favorable position in the original Ukraine Slavic culture, though, this is still no reason for another country to start a war to annex the country. Especially, when the invading country shows the rough Slavic culture into the extreme and is literally destroying every civilian item they come across, just to destroy.
So, yeah, apart from the natural gas dependency, the SDP/Scholz handling is difficult to comprehend.
Putin seems to have studied and learned all the useful strategies of the Reich, and the justification for their actual subsequent use was established back when anything that helped the cause of Communism could be called ‘good’.
Germany is conscious that it has recent history with Russia, unlike the rest of Europe. consequently they had a political consensus to deal with Russia as a friendly country after the Soviet Union collapsed.
I don't think that has changed, despite the current Ukraine conflict. Russia will still be there after this war is over, so Germany is engaged in damage control for now.
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I don't think that has changed, despite the current Ukraine conflict. Russia will still be there after this war is over, so Germany is engaged in damage control for now.
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(1) Germany's "renewable tunnel vision" and consequent shedding of coal and nuclear capacity has them in a bind. They are now reliant solely on gas (principally sourced from RU) as a backbone for their grid to mitigate the intermittency of renewables. The cost of the transition means that electricity prices in Germany are already amongst the highest in Europe and that has caused significant social tension; the term "energy poverty" was coined in Germany. If/when Russian supply tapers down, that social tension will ramp-up dramatically, and when Germans look across their borders to NL, France, Italy, Austria etc... coping better with the gas shortfall, they will invariably vent said anger on their government at the next elections.
(2) The German economic model is disproportionately reliant on its high-performing industrial core. Turns out that industrial core is addicted to cheap gas: accounting for 36% of overall national consumption, of which 11% are used as a direct input into chemical production and can likely not be substituted at all (unlike electricity and heating use-cases). Limited - and more expensive - future gas supply is going to ultimately force structural changes to its economic model with the economic pain / uncertainty that comes along with that.
Personally I feel that its pragmatism around these two issues that is driving the (in)decision making in Berlin, as the countries political and economic future is strongly coupled with the outcome of the Ukrainian situation.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Brilliant thread, full of interesting nuggets….
Original thread with all its links
Roll-up…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...165527552.html
Original thread with all its links
Roll-up…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...165527552.html
Mechanically, you are correct. One could argue that the split off of territories and the reparation payments after WW I contributed significantly (many 'average' Germans were massively unhappy about this and it was thereby easy for Hitler and his Gangsters to grab the masses by playing the hurt National pride) to the NAZI's taking power in the early 30's thereby paving the way to WW II. So, indeed there are arguments for and against trying to chop Russia into pieces. No arguments can be made about the need to militarily (and economically) bleed Russia to a state where they themselves can't come to stupid ideas regarding conquering neighbouring Countries. This is a 'Must'. If not the question is only: When will be treir next try?!
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Brilliant thread, full of interesting nuggets….
Original thread with all its links
Roll-up…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...165527552.html
Original thread with all its links
Roll-up…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...165527552.html
new weapons for UAV's
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This has to be cheaper in the long run, because if we all didn't, we would then need to bolster our troops in Europe and the Far East and start on ramping up our military capability with the costs involved therein, far better to spend an outlay now and break the back of the Russian conventional forces thuse thwarting their ambitions for a couple of decades.
As I said before, any aid is often spent on providing weapons to Ukraine, that means American jobs and American revenue, the USA is not buying foreign weapons per se, but home grown weaponary and buying them in the USA to provide to Ukraine, they are in effect pumping those funds back into the USA economy. The cynic in me would also say it also allows the USA and the rest of NATO to remove life critical items from their stocks and replenish with fresh items.
As I said before, any aid is often spent on providing weapons to Ukraine, that means American jobs and American revenue, the USA is not buying foreign weapons per se, but home grown weaponary and buying them in the USA to provide to Ukraine, they are in effect pumping those funds back into the USA economy. The cynic in me would also say it also allows the USA and the rest of NATO to remove life critical items from their stocks and replenish with fresh items.
This has to be cheaper in the long run, because if we all didn't, we would then need to bolster our troops in Europe and the Far East and start on ramping up our military capability with the costs involved therein, far better to spend an outlay now and break the back of the Russian conventional forces thuse thwarting their ambitions for a couple of decades.
As I said before, any aid is often spent on providing weapons to Ukraine, that means American jobs and American revenue, the USA is not buying foreign weapons per se, but home grown weaponary and buying them in the USA to provide to Ukraine, they are in effect pumping those funds back into the USA economy. The cynic in me would also say it also allows the USA and the rest of NATO to remove life critical items from their stocks and replenish with fresh items.
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Verified by photographic evidence, losses so far
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (74, of which destroyed: 40, captured: 34)
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/0...ukrainian.html
reported by the site as a single days losses for Russian forces, and remember, these are only the ones that have been verified by photographic evidence.
Ukraine - 1069, of which: destroyed: 502, damaged: 25, abandoned: 35, captured: 507
of whichUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (23, of which destroyed: 19, captured: 4)
Russia - 3798, of which: destroyed: 2120, damaged: 75, abandoned: 292, captured: 1311
of whichUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (74, of which destroyed: 40, captured: 34)
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/0...ukrainian.html
reported by the site as a single days losses for Russian forces, and remember, these are only the ones that have been verified by photographic evidence.