Russian invasion of Ukraine

[wunksta]

If u want stop Russia just dont use Nord Stream. They will go bankrupt. it's the only way for peace in Europe.

It would also cripple many other economies I think.

[jonnysensible]

So, the questions we have are:
1. Is it recognition or also incorporation (if asked)?
2. In what borders? The current ones or the original regional ones? Reminder that most of those are held by Ukraine when they were pushing rebels to Russian border, before Russia intervened aka the northern wind.

IF we are talking about regional borders, then yes, war is almost guaranteed. Possibly Ukraine will be given time period to remove their forces - which Kiev obviously won't do and we know what happens after that.

3. Will Putin approve the recognition? 99.99% yes.

he was advised to recognize Donetsk and Lugansk republics on their pre-2014 borders. Just looking at some population stats :

Slovyansk - 111,084
Mariupol - 446,103
Kramatorsk - 157,175

gonna be hell if they make it look like gronzy

[Shalcker]

In the meantime RTS index has fallen 20% in the last hour. Sanctions are not even in force and Russian economy is already going down the shitter.

Today was the most obvious short opportunity ever. And US isn't even trading!

SBER diving down by ~18%, ROSN by ~19%.

Stock market isn't economy though.

[Jessicka]

Well according to the BBC, Putin's lapdogs who refused to release a report on Russian interference in UK politics have now claimed to have "intelligence" that the invasion has already begun. There's your pretext and they didn't even need a false flag attack.

Decide the pandemic is over, and start a war. That'll keep Johnson going for another week at least.

[XDurionX]

Well according to the BBC, Putin's lapdogs who refused to release a report on Russian interference in UK politics have now claimed to have "intelligence" that the invasion has already begun. There's your pretext and they didn't even need a false flag attack.

Decide the pandemic is over, and start a war. That'll keep Johnson going for another week at least.

Russian operatives have been active in Donbas for years, this is just semantics, really.

[Easo]

If u want stop Russia just dont use Nord Stream. They will go bankrupt. it's the only way for peace in Europe.

You do realize that no one has received any cash from Nord Stream 2 because it is not working yet, yes? Existing pipes won't be closed...

he was advised to recognize Donetsk and Lugansk republics on their pre-2014 borders. Just looking at some population stats :

Slovyansk - 111,084
Mariupol - 446,103
Kramatorsk - 157,175

gonna be hell if they make it look like gronzy

Unlikely. imho war will be far more mobile. I am going to be honest - likelihood of pockets like in Ilovaisk and Debaltseve and collapse of central command due to air and missile strikes, followed by mass confusion and surrender of units still actually capable of fighting due to WTF is the actual situation.

Today was the most obvious short opportunity ever. And US isn't even trading!

SBER diving down by ~18%, ROSN by ~19%.

Stock market isn't economy though.

No one sane believes the average Russian is not going to feel the economic pain. Stop, please.

[Jessicka]

Russian operatives have been active in Donbas for years, this is just semantics, really.

Yeah, declaring that is usually regarded as a diplomatic faux pas; besides we also have troops there. Also, it's pretty clear the Tories are pretty desperate for a war given all the recent bad press and tanking economy, even those not on Putin's payroll.

[Azadina]

If u want stop Russia just dont use Nord Stream. They will go bankrupt. it's the only way for peace in Europe.

Nah, what European nations need to do, is focus effort from all the green hippie climate stuff (all of which I personally support, and wish all nations as whole would jump into), and divert it into military spending. The reality is that there's a damn hostile nation right next door, one that's constant and immediate danger; needing to be contained one way or another. Climate stuff can wait until those backwards hostiles have a change of heart.

[wunksta]

If someone is stupid like German "hey let's turn off our nuclear plants and buy gas from Russia" then yes...

Germany gets around 40% of their gas from Russia so if they stopped, it would hurt a lot of people in Germany. That's a difficult choice for German leadership. We should've been diversifying energy and not relying on Russia or China but here we are.

[DarkAmbient]

Well according to the BBC, Putin's lapdogs who refused to release a report on Russian interference in UK politics have now claimed to have "intelligence" that the invasion has already begun. There's your pretext and they didn't even need a false flag attack.

Decide the pandemic is over, and start a war. That'll keep Johnson going for another week at least.

Not quite. They said the invasion plan has begun, i.e. Russia is doing the things it would be expected to do in the run-up to an invasion. I'll assume you were being tongue in cheek about Boris starting a war, as obviously he's doing no such thing.

[wunksta]

Nah, what European nations need to do, is focus effort from all the green hippie climate stuff (all of which I personally support, and wish all nations as whole would jump into), and divert it into military spending. The reality is that there's a damn hostile nation right next door, one that's constant and immediate danger; needing to be contained one way or another. Climate stuff can wait until those backwards hostiles have a change of heart.

NATO already spends 12 times more on military than Russia.

[Azadina]

NATO already spends 12 times more on military than Russia.

Mostly due to US. Many European nations have completely laughable militaries. That means individual nations need to ramp the hell up their military gearing.

[Jessicka]

Not quite. They said the invasion plan has begun, i.e. Russia is doing the things it would be expected to do in the run-up to an invasion. I'll assume you were being tongue in cheek about Boris starting a war, as obviously he's doing no such thing.

Johnson's government has been antagonistic towards Russia from day one, and they've not been diplomatic about it; remember weirdly having a BBC crew on a warship when they crossed into contested waters and "surprisingly" got buzzed by Russian warplanes?, and sudden coverage of Russian aircraft on routine patrols 'a bit too close to our airspace' in spite of it being a more than weekly event for years? It feels like theatrics at this point, we've been building this propaganda campaign up over the past couple of years, and now suddenly there's a war on? And yet, same government that refused to release a report on Russian influence and finance in UK politics, same government that worked so hard, and continues to work to destabilise the EU? Makes you wonder what side they're on. Feel like we're the perfect fucking patsy for it.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Mostly due to US. Many European nations have completely laughable militaries. That means individual nations need to ramp the hell up their military gearing.

Not to mention that most NATO countries switched to professional armies, which incur a lot if not most of the budget being swallowed by personnel costs. Combine that with higher salaries, and similarly comparatively more expensive hardware, a PPP adjusted comparison would most likely show Russia being one steadily modernizing.

[Gaidax]

Will just grab Donbass and be done with it, seems like this will be the thing in the end.

[jonnysensible]

Where are u living? Can we grab something from your country? Just a little. After 5 - 8 yeras another piece. Ok?

isnt he from isreal, stealing other peoples land is no big deal there.

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He’s from Israel. They love taking shit from Palestinians every few weeks, let alone years.

ayyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Gaidax]

Where are u living? Can we grab something from your country? Just a little. After 5 - 8 yeras another piece. Ok?

Not my fault that Ukraine gave up their nukes in 94' over bunch of promises and a laughable bit of $$ like pepegas and did not do shit about building up defense forces since 97 when I left it.

Born there, lived there, glad not part of it anymore for good 25 years and counting. It's now merely paying the bill for decades of mismanagement, fuckups and incompetence.

[Jessicka]

Mostly due to US. Many European nations have completely laughable militaries. That means individual nations need to ramp the hell up their military gearing.

They're laughable in terms of logistics and force projection, if they want to compare to America's world policing ambitions. They however exist to fight a ground war with Russia, which is NATO's purpose, which is a rather smaller goal.

[Shalcker]

Mostly due to US. Many European nations have completely laughable militaries. That means individual nations need to ramp the hell up their military gearing.

Mostly due to US purposefully torpedoing independent European initiatives ("Why would you need them? We'll always defend you if necessary!") and channeling everything into NATO - which they then enlarged to gain more entirely dependent voices there from East Europe after Iraq.

See MIT Open Access: "Land rush: American grand strategy, NATO enlargement, and European fragmentation"

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s US administrations pursued three ambitious policies: they expanded NATO, but also its geographic scope, and they ensured that no alternative European security architectures could compete with NATO. Through interviews with US officials, the article shows a preoccupation with instability in Europe and elsewhere, an institutional predisposition to maintaining the centrality of NATO, and a lack of constraints on US policies by Russia or Europe. In the end, these contradictory policies diluted European strategic cohesion and overburdened European militaries, while expanding the commitments inherent to the Alliance

NATO enlargement also ended up undermining European security, for reasons related to how enlargement was implemented. Enlargement was one of several concurrent foreign policy initiatives that the United States pursued in order to capitalize on the advantageous position it found itself in. US officials were not only impatient to fill the security vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe; they also considered NATO the instrument to spread stability to adjacent regions. To accomplish these goals, the United States pushed its European allies to transform their militaries toward lighter, expeditionary forces for operations outside the treaty area. In turn, Europeans offered several alternative security architectures to improve their crisis response ...
Yet, though US officials considered the European Union to be a complementary tool for bringing stability to Central and Eastern Europe through economic and institutional means, they were adamant that NATO remained the central organization to provide security in Europe. In short, the United States simultaneously pursued (1) NATO enlargement and (2) the expansion of the geographic scope of NATO’s missions, while it also (3) prevented the establishment of serious European institutional alternatives for any of NATO’s missions, let alone NATO as an institution.

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No one sane believes the average Russian is not going to feel the economic pain. Stop, please.

Watching Russian Security Council meeting it was basically "However we resolve Ukrainian crisis - without resolving it nothing will ever get better, but it eventually might once we do".

Got to avoid short-term thinking.

Lots of buying opportunities ahead! GazProm is still going to issue greatly increased dividends due to gas price spike - spike that can easily go on for several years if Europe escalates.

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Where are u living? Can we grab something from your country? Just a little. After 5 - 8 yeras another piece. Ok?

They did grab Golan Heights and still holding them, so they got experience with that.

[Gaidax]

NATO does its job, after all one thing for Russia is to pound some non-NATO states and see NATO not commit (and why would they?), but would be whole another game to actually tussle with NATO member.

Unless Russia goes full Nazi and blitzes half the Europe - Europe is secure with NATO. And Russia does not really have the capacity to do this kind of thing anyway.