Russian invasion of Ukraine

[KrayZ33]

your country is one of the main funders of the russian war machine. How much gas have you brought while the Russians commit atrocities?

We need a visa ban for french and german citizens across the eu.

Aren't you from Greece or Greek or something?

Some people should really look in the mirror first and realize how dependent they are themselves. Just because a country relies on it more than the other doesn't really change that.
Isn't for example Greece washing russian oil for europe and earning lots of money from it?

[Iphie]

I would be nice to see Russia routed but lets not cheer to early.

Oh, I agree, I was just harking back to February when russia attempted a Blitzkrieg. The events are going quickly right now so it was a bit tongue in cheek.

[Poopymonster]

So russia claims that Ukraine deployed psychic commando that is hypnotising and indoctrinating russians into burning cars in moscov. I guess its full out Red Alert now - Be on with Yuri.

Seem a bit more krazy than that. Better send in Ivan Popovich.

[zealo]

Aren't you from Greece or Greek or something?

Some people should really look in the mirror first and realize how dependent they are themselves. Just because a country relies on it more than the other doesn't really change that.
Isn't for example Greece washing russian oil for europe and earning lots of money from it?

I strongly believe that guy is British.

[jonnysensible]

I strongly believe that guy is British.

wot the fok did u just call me seal clubber

[Combatbutler]

If there is an irrational actor, the response should not be appeasement. Rather the response should be to weigh the potential actions of that actor and mitigate them ahead of time. While Ostpolitik may have been reasonable when it was convinced, it should have been set aside and replaced with a policy of economic disengagement after the summer of 2008 and not simply considered dead but any of its proponents should have been internationally ridiculed after 2014 (looking at Merkel). Any who claim pragmatism in Europe's and primarily Germany's foreign policy regarding Russia after the Russian-Georgian twelve day war of 2008 should be derided as anything but rational. There are three ways to see it. Romanticism born of a constructivist approach, with many European policy makers in frequent contact with Russian counterparts and thus believing they had an understanding (which has easily been proven grossly false), heedless greed where short term costs were valued inordinately against strategic uncertainty or lastly and most glaringly, rampant corruption with many high ranking european politicians having their hands on the Russian pie.

The US is the last actor who can be blamed. Not even the US under Trump should be blamed (if anything, it should have rang alarm bells and forced disengagement from Russia, not just derision of Trump). The US made its disappointment with European dependency on Russian energy clear at every possible level. Opponents just dismissed all concerns as US being entirely interested in selling LNG to Europe as if geopolitics were a settled matter. The last 15 years have proven nothing more than how little the current generation of European politicians are, only concerned with serving the short term gains of their corporate masters and how blatantly unequal to the circumstances given to them to handle.

So if you are looking to blame someone other than Russia in part for what happened in Ukraine, don't blame NATO. Blame Europe.

All the while the US is heavily dependent on Russian uranium, to sustain their power plants and has not sanctioned the import of it. So as usual blame all the major players.

[Nymrohd]

All the while the US is heavily dependent on Russian uranium, to sustain their power plants and has not sanctioned the import of it. So as usual blame all the major players.

Would the US lose more than half its energy production if they halted purchase of Russian uranium? Cause several european countries would if they stopped buying Russian oil and gas?

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Aren't you from Greece or Greek or something?

Some people should really look in the mirror first and realize how dependent they are themselves. Just because a country relies on it more than the other doesn't really change that.
Isn't for example Greece washing russian oil for europe and earning lots of money from it?

Wait what, we are? First time I'm hearing this.

[Combatbutler]

Would the US lose more than half its energy production if they halted purchase of Russian uranium? Cause several european countries would if they stopped buying Russian oil and gas?

As I said it is too much of a problem they won't sanction its import. There float several numbers around of at least half their nuclear powerplants being dependent on it.

So it is a big issue.

Wait what, we are? First time I'm hearing this.

https://www.dailysabah.com/business/...r-rages-report
https://shippingwatch.com/carriers/T...le14047513.ece
https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...ws-2022-05-19/
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...gh-Greece.html

India is pretty much doing the same

[XDurionX]

Wait what, we are? First time I'm hearing this.

It's true, though.

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirts...sland-100.html [German source, translation with DeepL]

ZDFheute
How Russia circumvents the EU's oil embargo ZDFheute Logo



Sanctions come to nothing : How Russia circumvents the EU's oil embargo
by Arndt Ginzel and Christian Rohde

Date:
17.08.2022 16:45 Uhr

The EU wants to prevent Putin from continuing to sell oil to fill his war chest. But Russian tankers are simply pumping their cargo around - a search for clues in Greece.
A view through a telescope of two tankers at sea

The ZDF editorial frontal shows how Russian oil deals continue despite sanctions.

Feature length:
9 min
Date:
16.08.2022

We are in Greece because something strange is happening at the southernmost tip of the European continent. Since spring, coastal residents have been spotting Russian oil tankers in the Laconian Gulf. Fishermen tell us that there has never been anything like this before.

What the tankers want in their fishing area, the fishermen can only guess.

There were three tankers 17, 18 miles out, exchanging petrol, oil or whatever. One was giving or taking.

Costas Roubakos, Greek fisherman

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU wants to prevent Putin from continuing to sell oil to fill his war chest. Brussels has therefore decided on sanctions.

From December onwards, no more oil from Russia may be imported into the EU by sea. The aim is to weaken Putin, but will it work? We want to find out on the spot.
Ship to Ship - Pumping Oil on the Open Sea

For weeks we followed the routes of Russian oil tankers via internet trackers. The data research brought a surprising result.

Especially in the Laconian Gulf outside Greek territorial waters, there has been a conspicuous number of oil tankers moored for weeks. According to the route tracker, many of the ships come from Russian Black Sea ports.

They first sail through the Bosporus and then along the Greek coast. What the trackers also reveal: Two tankers regularly lie next to each other for hours. That is more than unusual.

Analysts at Lloyd, the largest ship insurer, assume that the Russians are carrying out so-called STS operations off the Greek coast to conceal the origin of the sanctioned oil.

STS stands for ship-to-ship transfer - oil is transferred from one tanker to another on the high seas. A way to circumvent sanctions.
Greek companies provide the logistics

What we have only been able to see on screens so far, we want to check out at sea and hire a skipper. When he finds out what we are up to, he shows us tug boats from a Greek company in the harbour.

They drive equipment like big black fenders to the tankers. They look like big black balloons and protect the sides of the tankers when they lie next to each other. Our skipper claims he has been on such STS operations himself. "Russian tankers, all Russians," he says in response to our question about STS transfers.

He shows us photos of Russian tankers, supposedly transferring oil. But on our first trip out into the Laconian Gulf, we cannot film the pumping of oil.
The Greek government is allegedly helpless

The fact that off the Greek coast Russian tankers are transferring oil to other ships in order to sell it - past sanctions around the world - also concerns Greek members of parliament.

We have an appointment with Stavros Arachovitis, the former Minister of Agriculture. Immediately after the start of the Ukraine war, he says, large tankers entered the Laconian Gulf for the first time.

The problem is that no country can check what is happening outside the six miles: Where the oil comes from and where it goes.

Stavros Arachovitis, former Greek Minister of Agriculture
Greece has deliberately softened EU sanctions plans

The Greek government recently said it could do nothing about the pumping of oil on the high seas. The truth is that the Greek government softened EU sanctions against Russia during negotiations.

Originally, Brussels wanted to block the oil trade with Russia completely. Ships owned by Europeans would no longer be allowed to transport Russian oil. But the shipping nation prevailed that it did not come to that. And so, according to the NGO "Global Wittnes", tankers owned by Greek shipowners continue to transport Russian oil around the globe.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, speaks to journalists at a meeting of EU heads of state and government in Brussels.

At their special summit, the EU states put together the sixth sanctions package against Russia. For the time being, only Russian oil deliveries via sea routes are to be stopped.


Confrontation with the megaphone

A few days later, we go out again in the hope of documenting with our camera how Russian tankers are pumping oil in order to circumvent sanctions. We have chartered a faster boat and thus have the chance to

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[KrayZ33]

I strongly believe that guy is British.

Oh nevermind then, I thought I saw his avatar a few years back arguing for grexit, but not as an "outsider"...more like a Greek living in "exile".
You know, like the German-Turks voting in Turkey.

The guy I'm talking about had a real rage boner for Merkel.

Wait what, we are? First time I'm hearing this.

Well, what can I say, a lot of shit is happening. Doesn't change the fact that the correct way to do this shit is to just "honestly" (and that's the important part) change it whenever and whereever it's possible. I wouldn't expect the shipping companies, who have a large lobby in Greece and used it to lobby to delay EU sanctions as well to stop like a week after the invasion.
It's the same thing with gas in Germany... can't expect a country in which most households run with it to just stop importing gas, especially when Gazprom emptied the storages (the largest in EU) it had responsibility over to historical low levels right before shit hit the fan.

[Combatbutler]

Oh nevermind then, I thought I saw his avatar a few years back arguing for grexit, but not as an "outsider"...more like a Greek living in "exile".
You know, like the German-Turks voting in Turkey.

The guy I'm talking about had a real rage boner for Merkel.

I believe that guy got permabanned eventually, though I bet he would have had a field day with this.

Building too much of a reliance on Russia was too great a risk.

[Breccia]

That's the thing, Putin expected Ukraine to fold

Putin sidelines his own Defense Minister.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu may have been “side-lined within the Russian leadership” more than six months into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

“Russian officers and soldiers with first-hand experience of the war probably routinely ridicule Shoigu for his ineffectual and out-of-touch leadership as Russian progress has stalled,” the ministry said in an update.

The move is likely “due to the problems Russia is facing” in the war with Ukraine, British officials noted.

Shoigu, who has a background in construction and at the Ministry of Emergency Situations, “has likely long struggled to overcome his reputation as lacking substantive military experience.”

He went missing from public eye for nearly two weeks at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin had punished him for his start-of-war strategy.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence cited “recent independent Russian media reports” as its source for the new intelligence.

I trust James Bond to have up-to-date accurate intel.

Be careful on the sidelines, Sergei. I hear there's a lot of open windows there.

[Nymrohd]

It's the same thing with gas in Germany... can't expect a country in which most households run with it to just stop importing gas, especially when Gazprom emptied the storages (the largest in EU) it had responsibility over to historical low levels right before shit hit the fan.

Oh we certainly cannot expect things to change now. We can still see apportion blame though. I wouldn't really place blame in my country's foreign policy mostly because we don't really matter.

[Combatbutler]

Oh we certainly cannot expect things to change now. We can still see apportion blame though. I wouldn't really place blame in my country's foreign policy mostly because we don't really matter.

That is the problem if you deal with people, who can become problematic very fast, which unfortunately is quite a big chunk of the world, who either want to beat down a minority in their nation, are pretty much practicing colonialism etc.

Russia unfortunately is just the obvious tip of the iceberg.

[KrayZ33]

Oh we certainly cannot expect things to change now. We can still see apportion blame though. I wouldn't really place blame in my country's foreign policy mostly because we don't really matter.

Eh... you are part of EU and you are voting for and against sanctions like everyone else. And when your "country" does shit like the one next to you or the other side of the pond, it really doesn't matter if your economic/political power is shit or not. How do you blame someone for something when you do the same things.

[zealo]

wot the fok did u just call me seal clubber

Eh, id say my hunch was close enough if you're Irish, European part of the anglosphere at any rate.

[Iphie]

Putin sidelines his own Defense Minister.



I trust James Bond to have up-to-date accurate intel.

Be careful on the sidelines, Sergei. I hear there's a lot of open windows there.

If putin takes over then that's not necessarily going to improve their fortunes. I mean the man was a mid level KGB Toadie who had studied law, not a military genius.

[Breccia]

If putin takes over then that's not necessarily going to improve their fortunes.

Putin will find someone to replace Sergei's lifeless corpse. He needs someone to blame when his dreams of reforming the CCCP turn out to be impossible in the 21st goddam century.

I don't see Putin taking over in any useful fashion. With or without fatal cancer.

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Ukraine is reporting they have broken through the first line of Russian defences in Kherson.

Ukraine launches counteroffensive to retake Russian-occupied Kherson

The announcement followed reports of Ukrainian artillery strikes on Russian positions in Kherson Oblast, and unconfirmed claims from Ukrainian officials that Russia's "first line of defense" near Kherson had been breached.

Two senior U.S. officials told CNN's Jim Scuitto that Ukraine is targeting Russian weapons systems, command and control centers and ammunition depots in preparation for advances in southern Ukraine.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted, "Kherson is [Ukraine]. Our Kherson is ahead."

The launch of the offensive comes as inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head to Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine for an urgent examination of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which has been damaged by shelling.

"Oh my God, why would you stand in front of the fucking barrel, Captain Morgan is trying to win a war, get out of the way you moron"

Russia took large swaths of southern Ukraine in the opening days of the war, advancing north from occupied Crimea. Even as Russian forces were repulsed from Kyiv and bogged down in the east, they solidified their hold on Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

In Kherson, Russia installed a puppet government, restricted the internet, mandated the use of the ruble and started issuing Russian passports. The White House has warned that Russia could announce a sham referendum there in the coming days as a precursor to annexing the territory into Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia has redeployed thousands of troops from the east — where a Russian offensive has stalled — to defend against the anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south.

Ukraine has been using longer-range rocket systems provided by the U.S. to strike Russian ammunition depots. Meanwhile, a series of unexplained explosions on Russian military facilities in Crimea — a critical hub for Moscow's operations in the south — have hinted at Ukraine's ability to strike far behind the front lines.

[Corvus]

The Ukrainian authorities are asking bloggers and other online types to go completely dark on the Kherson operation, for opsec reasons. Perfectly understandable, given a single photo was all it took for the Wagnerite HQ to get smashed.

Some stuff has come out, mostly from the Russia side, including the Gherkin doing his best doomposting. The Ukrainians are having success at a number of locations according to Russian sources. The Russians were hit hard by heavy Ukrainian artillery fire, including HIMARS targeting the frontline for the first time. One of the main targets was apparently a separatist unit that got hit hard and was driven back - they were meant to be supported by a VDV unit as well, but they also ran.

It'll probably be a little while before actually confirmation of what is going on comes out.

Oh, and Belogrod was hit again leading to the locals trying to flee at midnight via train to Moscow.

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And someone seems to have been given their marching orders - far-right Austrian activist Martin Sellner of the Identitarian movement has occupied the Nordstream 2 terminal and demanding it immediate re-opening and a referendum on the energy and sanctions policy of the Federal Republic.

Hrm, Germany having problems with an Austrian born far-right politician, whose names ends in -er.

[Edge-]

Oh, and Belogrod was hit again leading to the locals trying to flee at midnight via train to Moscow.

Is this the "find out" portion of "Fuck around and find out"?

Because this seems like the "find out" portion. Almost like Russia just assumed that the west wouldn't provide any assistance to Ukraine in any way, shape, or form and consequently they never had anything to worry about in their 3-day special operation as it enters its 7th month.