I've seen indications that there are also Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side. These are the guys who can't stand Kadyrov and his henchmen, so it's quite personal for them to say the least.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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even "Russian economic retaliation" is a two way street. They benefit from western financial interactions.
Europe and the West are finally realising over the last few hours that personal economic risk is something that must be accepted to make sanctions work.
This could get uglier, much uglier, unless putin steps back now and turn back.
If he escalates ... dear lord... corona, pandemic, and now this
Economic around the world will tank
If he escalates ... dear lord... corona, pandemic, and now this
Economic around the world will tank
Yep, agreed. Something that stuck with me was that only some banks are being removed from SWIFT, or am I reading it wrong?
Would make absolutely sense considering how much energy the world needs from Russia.
You can’t just turn the rap off, if you’re drinking from it too.
There’s not going to plan and there’s having a poor plan and being ill prepared. It seems Putin has been badly advised and/or severely underestimated the UA.
I'm curious to know if the international community will be monitoring India and EAU to make sure they're not brokering deals for Russian fuel. During the Iraq war there were reports that Ankara, Turkey and Dubia were dealing in black market fuel. Hoping lessons were learned and safeguards are in the works.
What I have gathered over the last 24 is that Putin has bitten off more than he can chew due to the following...
Ukranian defiance is much stronger than expected, the lack of support from China, the economic sanctions imposed from the west and also the fact that his military isn't as well organised or equipped (running out of fuel etc) as he would like everyone to believe.
He is going to lose this fight however the more desperate he gets the more dangerous he becomes, in my opinion.
Ukranian defiance is much stronger than expected, the lack of support from China, the economic sanctions imposed from the west and also the fact that his military isn't as well organised or equipped (running out of fuel etc) as he would like everyone to believe.
He is going to lose this fight however the more desperate he gets the more dangerous he becomes, in my opinion.
That's the concern. What the West needs to do is weaken him and box him in like what Old Man Bush did with Saddam. Not cripple him, just handicap him.
Part of the tragedy on the Russian side is many parents didn't know much about where their kids were, and whether they were even alive or not.
Russia are still very likely to take Ukraine....whether there is a Russian economy when that happens is now the story. All credit to Ukraine, not for one second diminishing their absolutely valiant and heroic ongoing resistance. Everyone said pre-invasion that the biggest win for Ukraine is to make this EXTREMELY bloody. Now it's up to Europe and the West to make the Russian economy collapse whilst continuing to support the Ukrainian resistance.
China were never going to get themselves pigeonholed into this. China are China. It would be a massive misstep to think that China are swinging to one way or another - they’re playing three d chess.
I highly doubt that mate. Forgotten your man’s name but he’s Ostrovsky or something, he did an investigative piece where he went looking for those ‘green men’ in Crimea. Well he found a lot of them through VK. They weren’t GRU, or anything special, just fecking kids whom ended up posting shit on social media.
It is a certainty. Not taking Ukraine whilst being completely shut off from global economy - Putin would rather take a makarov to his brain. Ukraine will fall. It’s just a question of what will happen after that.
I think it is likely that Putin has changed quite a bit in recent years but believing his own propaganda and further surrounding himself with yes men isn't the same as going stark staring raving mad.
As a result it seems that taking Ukraine wasn't as easy as he hoped. He also might well have underestimated the severity of sanctions.
What we don't know is how he is going to react to events. It would be great if he was overthrown but who knows if that is possible or likely?
As a result it seems that taking Ukraine wasn't as easy as he hoped. He also might well have underestimated the severity of sanctions.
What we don't know is how he is going to react to events. It would be great if he was overthrown but who knows if that is possible or likely?
An interesting corollary to this is that only 87 nations backed the condemnation of Russia at the general assembly vote. If you look at the map, it's basically Europe (as you'd expect), North America (again, expected), Brazil (slightly unexpected, but a wildcard), and Japan/South Korea (expected) and Australia (expected). The middle east, most of Africa, and basically all of Asia did not condemn the action. He's absolutely isolated from the Western world, but the Eastern world and the global south are working from a different playbook (economically, it will be the ME/China/India/etc that matter, and they might not matter enough to dent the sheer volume of sanctions the US/EU are able to leverage almost unilaterally when acting as one).
https://www.axios.com/un-security-c...sia-98ff868e-6ee4-412e-b643-36e30061adb1.html
I've read that 30% of the Russian economy is based on its sale of gas to Europe which is still going ahead. If that stops, and it will be a very tough sell to European countries, you wonder what might happen. Also, apparently US/EU sanctions divide so that 75% of the sanctions levied are directly American and only 25% stem from European action (consequence of American GDP but also of America as financial centre of the world and status of the dollar).
The Russian government will have to answer a lot of questions at the end of this, no matter the outcome. The feeling of disgruntlement towards the Kremlin can only be exacerbated.
China and the West have a common ground -- they want global stability so that its great for economic growth and visibility for global investment. What Putin has done is completely the opposite of what the West wants and as well as China (post Pandemic recovery.)
The harder the sanctions are on Russia, the more leverage China has on Russia in the medium term. Russia could be an NK to China but on a large scale.
Its defo 3D chess they are playing. They just need to be subtle and essentially keep quiet.
The Russians can't be in any denial about China's self interest, though. Their state broadcaster has condemned the US (Taiwan-based issues) but the Chinese state itself is remaining very quiet so a bit of both.
Do they? I mean from everything that I’ve read, China would want Russia to crash and burn and become their vassal state - totally reliant on them.
I don’t think this crisis will impact China in anything other than a positive way.
This is such a mess.
https://fortune.com/2022/02/24/russia-stockmarket-crash/
Russia’s rout on Thursday is the fifth-worst plunge in equity market history in local currency terms as investors sold the nation’s assets following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The benchmark MOEX Russia Index closed 33% lower in Moscow, erasing $189 billion in shareholder wealth, as Western leaders vowed to step up penalties on Russia after military forces entered Ukraine. That’s the fifth most brutal one-day selloff among 90 global equity indexes analyzed by Bloomberg.
======
What will happen to the Russian stock market on Monday?
My guess is that Putin successfully exterminated the Russian Stock market!
Russia’s rout on Thursday is the fifth-worst plunge in equity market history in local currency terms as investors sold the nation’s assets following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The benchmark MOEX Russia Index closed 33% lower in Moscow, erasing $189 billion in shareholder wealth, as Western leaders vowed to step up penalties on Russia after military forces entered Ukraine. That’s the fifth most brutal one-day selloff among 90 global equity indexes analyzed by Bloomberg.
======
What will happen to the Russian stock market on Monday?
My guess is that Putin successfully exterminated the Russian Stock market!
Her sign says, “War with Ukraine is Russia’s disgrace.”
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I feel bad for lots of the young conscripts who don't want to be there.
It's time for some SNL humor to lighten the mood.
After 3+ days of watching the news, some sound like this
After 3+ days of watching the news, some sound like this
On Twitter, #StandWithRussia is one of the top trending hashtags.
It's mostly fake accounts but almost entirely nonsense
It's mostly fake accounts but almost entirely nonsense
Woke up, was able to sleep just for few hours. The cnut is not getting Kyiv by Monday. He is not winning this war. The blow on his economy has costed dearly already. Monday will be tragic for Russian population. Ukranian forces are losing ground, but there is no way they capitulate. Putin will hopefully be sane enough to sit at the table to talk. And if there is any remote chance of him using the nukes, make no mistake, the coalition have taken that into account and are much better prepared for this than the cnut.
I wish I knew more about what the Russian army is capable of, but surely they could just level Kiev and move the capital to Donbas is they wanted to?
Perhaps seeing Putin trying to win with minimal collateral damage as he's trying to sell this to his own people as not being a war of conquest. There's been several warning that Russia might create a game provocation to escalate, since it wouldn't fit the current narrative of freeing the people from Nazis.
https://rumble.com/vvrd3t-the-war-in-ukraine.html
A pretty cogent summary of US-Russian relations over the past ten or twenty years by Greenwald (personally, haven't paid much attention to him for a long time, but he makes many good points here, even though there's a few points I think he's myopic on, nonetheless worth the watch).
A pretty cogent summary of US-Russian relations over the past ten or twenty years by Greenwald (personally, haven't paid much attention to him for a long time, but he makes many good points here, even though there's a few points I think he's myopic on, nonetheless worth the watch).
You are right. Let me add that Putin probably did not anticipate that Biden will tell everyone that Russia is going to invade. The following is from December 11, 2021.
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden...rible-price-if-it-invades-ukraine-2021-12-11/
For two full months everyone was pleading with him not to invade. And warning about consequences. This was very public and many countries were involved. Putin decided to ignore them all and go into war alone.
Before that, perhaps Putin was planning to create some kind of provocation inside Ukraine, so that he could say that he is not the aggressor, that he is going to defend Russian lives or that he is a liberator. But those plans failed.
Pretty interesting insight
There goes Chinese neutrality
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