Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Specialka]

Different countries operate differently for a lot of reasons.

If they would actually be without support, warm clothes, and food, they would be routed across entire line. You cannot operate for a month without food and clothes.

And their line largely held and even advanced until they retreated.

You can when you pillaged civilian along the way like the barbarian russian are

[Shalcker]

Btw, French Gendarmes have arrived to help investigate the Russian war crimes.

Good, i'm all for proper investigations rather then media mud-slinging.

Btw, there are persistent rumors that some important French elements reside in remaining Mariupol defenders and that is why there were so many helicopters shot down trying to evacuate them. Some linked it with Macron firing his chief of military intelligence, and hope for surprise big enough to upset second round of elections.

Very unlikely, obviously.

[jonnysensible]

@Shalcker who is Ritter

[Flarelaine]

Btw, French Gendarmes have arrived to help investigate the Russian war crimes.

This thread does not tend to bring a smile.

French Gendarmes, though... I kinda grew up on those movies.

[Shalcker]

You can when you pillaged civilian along the way like the barbarian russian are

If it works to keep unit able to continue fighting then it works.

They wouldn't be able to pillage ammo the same way however.

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@Shackler who is Ritter

You already named him, there aren't that many Ritters with this particular theory (among many other theories mentioned).

[jonnysensible]

You already named him, there aren't that many Ritters with this particular theory (among many other theories mentioned).

I'm not being funny but you shouldn't be getting your information from a random pedophile who writes op-eds for Russian today (the only outlet that will openly employ a pedophile as long as he tows the editorial line).

Where did you come across scott ritter? Grayzone? RT?

[Iphie]

This thread does not tend to bring a smile.

French Gendarmes, though... I kinda grew up on those movies.

Louis de Funès and Le Gendarme de St. Tropez, I loved those as a kid.

[Specialka]

This thread does not tend to bring a smile.

French Gendarmes, though... I kinda grew up on those movies.

I can assure you that they are nothing alike the movies

[Rasulis]

China's lockdown of 23 cities & almost 200M of its citizens had a major impact on global oil demand.

Both Brent & WTI are below $100 per barrel. Brent lost all of its Ukraine war gain.

Officially, Russian ESPO is around $72 per barrel. Unofficially, Russian oil producers are seeing offers as low as $30 per barrel.

[Shalcker]

-video skipped-

What exactly are you trying to prove by linking this? That's just "events as they happened", not "what Russia actually planned".

How do you cope with wood and sunflower oil shortages/price increases btw in Germany? And 20-50% price hikes in supermarkets last week?

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I'm not being funny but you shouldn't be getting your information from a random pedophile who writes op-eds for Russian today (the only outlet that will openly employ a pedophile as long as he tows the editorial line).

His background as USSR/Iraq US arms control inspector is quite solid; certainly better then for many others proposing military theories.

I don't see how any convictions invalidate his years of service in US military. He himself also reiterates not taking everything he says as a gospel and thinking for yourself - it's just a theory, and it can be wrong.

And why would "writing op-eds for RT" be net negative for me?

Where did you come across scott ritter? Grayzone? RT?

The Duran was probably first time i've actually seen him rather then just had his twitter thread linked; I like their style of presentation more.

Anti-Trump Republicans like him are interesting.

[Breccia]

Yeah...three days...any day now? Going on three months...
Maybe within 3 years from now?

What Russia is trying to go with, laughable as it is, is that being humiliated for 3, 6, 12 months by having your shit pushed in by what you thought was an easy target is worth it, if what's left of your army eventually wins.

I believe the term for this is "submissive".

There is no salvaging Russia's military performance at this point. The fact that they've lost so many troops, vehicles, generals and morale would not be undone if they magically conquered the country in the next five minutes. No hypothetical future victory erases the war crimes what's left of their troops committed by bombing civilians and raping widows. No parade they might throw May 9 will have more views than TechnoHouse door. And even if they take a city or two, the fact that they pulled back from other cities to do it speaks almost as loud as "Russian warship, go fuck yourself". Almost.

Russia wanted the world to take them seriously as a superpower. They have objectively failed. They can't even pay their credit card bill anymore. Everything they say from here on out is a variant of "But you have to understand--" like, somehow, there's a valid excuse they're losing against a country one-third their size with a military budget one-tenth their size, without NATO or Finland getting involved.

Now, who's been a naughty little third-world country? *cracks whip*

Bend over.

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Unofficially, Russian oil producers are seeing offers as low as $30 per barrel.

While trying to find this, I found this.

The EMEA Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee (CDDC), whose members include some of the world's biggest investment banks, said on Monday it had decided a "failure to pay" credit event has occurred on Swiss franc loan participation notes linked to state-owned Russian Railways.

Putin can't even make the trains run on time.

[Gigantique]

As a professional lurker I have to say it's funny how Shillcker just cannot innovate. It spews nonsense with either no source or a source so dubious you'd expect it to claim the sky is purple, gets ridiculed, ignores the rebuttals that annihilate its claims, then gets banned for something somewhere.

And the cycle repeats. Kudos to all of you that keep hammering it with rebuttals tho, making sure new readers aren't fooled.

And yes, calling Shillboi 'it' is deliberate, at this point it's either a bot or just a soulless husk, nobody can be that unable to read a room and see how little their impact does.

That's my 2022 post over with, see you next year!

[Shalcker]

Time to hit that economic bookmark!

Ah yes the fabled May. The time of wonders and miracles when russia will celebrate a great victory. Ukraine will drop dead , the west will implode and the rouble will go back to the moon faster than a gme squeeze.
Looking forward to chuckle at some more of your attempts to cope with reality when may hits.

A-a-a-and... rouble actually already hit pre-invasion level and even went below it. Yep, looks like direction is "to the moon".

Strengthened so much CBR had to call emergency meeting to drop rates by 3% (from 20% to 17%) and ease up capital controls.

Will probably have to do more rate drops/capital control weakening soon as exporter revenues roll in, "gas-for-roubles" payments drop on MICEX, and inflation stays below worst projections.

I wouldn't be surprised if EU inflation will outpace Russian; continued months of worsening trade deficit due to energy prices certainly don't look good for EU economies.

[Breccia]

In other news, probably directly related to Russia's upcoming voluntary default, the ruble fell. Again.



Remember, the ruble is not just volatile but volatile garbage. Lenders are not accepting rubles in exchange for Russia's euro and dollar bonds, because they're worthless. And their value has yet to recover to pre-invasion status.

[Mihalik]

sip

I see you're back from raping women, murdering pregnant women, filling mass graves with tortured civilians to shill some more bullshit.

Your faith in the power of your oil is... vastly misplaced.

[Breccia]

Your faith in the power of your oil is... vastly misplaced.

I don't understand why anyone would have faith in $30/barrel oil that even China won't buy. China with their enormously high standards and all.

[Mihalik]

Remember, the ruble is not just volatile but volatile garbage. Lenders are not accepting rubles in exchange for Russia's euro and dollar bonds, because they're worthless. And their value has yet to recover to pre-invasion status.

It's also artificially propped up beyond belief.

Were it actually freely traded, it would be worth somewhere between zero and nothing.

[XDurionX]

Strengthened so much CBR had to call emergency meeting to drop rates by 3% (from 20% to 17%) and ease up capital controls.

It's almost as if 17% is still incredibly high.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/poli...ph-rub.en.html

lel

[Breccia]

It's also artificially propped up beyond belief.

Indeed. Remember that time Ivanka Trump bid on her own auction? This is the same deplorable idea. Anyone can make up a price by selling an item to themselves. The fact that nobody else is buying, that's the real lesson here.

What you're describing is in this Fortune article from 2 days ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Russian "manipulation" was the main cause of the ruble's recent rebound after the Russian government restricted its citizens from transferring money abroad.

"People are being prevented from unloading rubles. That's artificially propping up the value. That's not sustainable. So I think you're going to see that change," Blinken said, adding that he is working every day to tighten sanctions and close loopholes that have allowed the ruble to appreciate.

From raising its benchmark interest rate to forcing exporters to swap 80% of their foreign currency revenues for rubles, Russia's central bank has done everything it can to prop up the rubles' value since the Ukraine invasion began, but it's more than just manipulation that's supporting the currency's value.

So yeah, it's easier to say "people aren't dumping rubles" when you just flat out refuse to let that happen. That we knew. This is new.

On March 25, Russia also began buying gold from banks at a fixed price of 5,000 rubles (roughly $61) per 1 gram.

Mihailov said the move effectively created a gold-based exchange rate of 81 rubles to $1 and helped to support the currency for a time. To his knowledge, the move also represented the first time a nation's currency has been expressed in "gold parity" since Switzerland decided to end a similar policy in 1999.

"I think the link between the ruble and gold is intended to transfer strength and credibility from gold, which is a symbol of stability," Mihailov said. "People still have this nostalgia to the gold standard…they perceive money as being tied down to gold, so it can't inflate."

Mihailov noted that the problem for Russia, if it enacts "gold parity," is that it will also be forced to exchange rubles for gold at the 5,000 rubles per 1 gram price. If it does that, it could end up in a difficult situation where investors rush to withdraw gold from the central bank, leading to extreme destabilization in the country's financial system.

Perhaps because of this, Russia reneged on its move to buy gold at a fixed rate on Thursday, citing a "significant change in market conditions."

Yep, Russia is desperate to stabilize the ruble, but doing so has put them in an intentionally weaker position. One similar to the bonds thing, people asking for their money back and Russia saying "we can't afford to do that". Except it'll be Russians getting screwed, since foreigners both can't and won't use the Russian central bank.

Let's pretend that, for example, the value of the ruble were to drop 10%. That's easy to imagine, it dropped 5% today. By tying the exchange rates, Russian can go to the bank with 5,000 lower-value rubles and demand to buy the gold. Which means Russia loses all their gold, and at 10% lower than their current value. Obviously, nobody expects Russia to honor these obligations -- they've already proven willing to flat-out change the rules to be in their favor.

Finally, in response to Western sanctions, Russia has imposed restrictions on the movement of funds to "unfriendly" countries, banned the sale of Russian stocks by foreign investors, and prevented citizens from exchanging rubles for foreign currencies.

These strict capital controls have left experts feeling skeptical about currency markets' ability to effectively price the ruble, especially because there is no longer significant foreign exchange trading volume.

"It's a completely artificial level and so very little credence should be given to it," Cristian Maggio, the head of portfolio strategy at Toronto Dominion Bank in London, told Bloomberg on Thursday. "Almost no one can trade the ruble and those who really do, they trade at very different levels than what the screens report."

Russian capital controls have led trading volumes to plummet to their lowest level in over a decade, Bloomberg reported.

Aaron Schwartzbaum, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan Philadelphia-based think tank, pointed to the rapid drop in trading volumes for the ruble in a tweet last week arguing, "the ruble to dollar rate is not a reliable indicator of how sanctions are impacting Russia."

It's a garbage currency. Nobody wants it -- because of exactly what we've seen and you've described. Russia will just cheat again. But as listed above, they can't cheat forever. Exports are drying up (can't even sell $30 oil to China), EUrope is already finding ways to cut down on gas, their gold is finite, and they're about to take a hit to their credit rating so they can't borrow anything.

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Hey, when was the last time we checked on MOEX?



Ouch. Not great. Down 10% this week alone.

[Ripster42]

Hey, when was the last time we checked on MOEX?

The fortune article you linked said:

Finally, in response to Western sanctions, Russia has imposed restrictions on the movement of funds to "unfriendly" countries, banned the sale of Russian stocks by foreign investors, and prevented citizens from exchanging rubles for foreign currencies.

The stock sale ban was supposed to end on the first, according to their initial announcement. I didn't see any news about that actually occurring or not though, and that article is claiming the opposite, so I'm curious what's really going on. According to moex's history, it certainly doesn't seem like anything happened on the first like you'd have seen if they relaxed those restrictions, but I'm not an expert.