Russian invasion of Ukraine

[YUPPIE]

And he will do it within a year, because 2024 is elections and that is a huge risk for him, because faking results can go only so far before people actually are on the streets with pitchforks in hands.

what? Russia is still a democracy? I didn't even know they still had elections.

[Iphie]

what? Russia is still a democracy? I didn't even know they still had elections.

Of course they're not a democracy, but they like to pretend, and putin is vulnerable he's old, he's losing and there's more and more evidence he's not exactly healthy. He won't survive another year in office the way it is going. If he puts up a successor he has a good chance of just fading away, if he does not sooner rather than later he will be removed. Prigozhin is already circling, but his failure at Bakhmut is not making him happy, Soledar is nice but peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Shoigu and Gerasimov are there to oppose Priggy, but they do have their own agendas as well.

[Kallisto]

what? Russia is still a democracy? I didn't even know they still had elections.

The Russian Federation has not been a democracy since 1993 when Yeltsin had tanks shooting at parliament. Since then it's been a one man show, first Yeltsin then Putin. Even dictatorships have elections, just they're never free and always if you vote "wrong" you get a case of not being around anymore.

[Fuiking]

It's a variety of things. The extremely warm winter so far also contributes, giving more time to ramp up alternatives.

Increased storage capacity, more LNG terminals, more South to North pipelines for North African African suppliers, keeping or re-opening old coal plants in, increased energy efficiency, increased domestic production where available etc.

It's not just 1 thing. Current natural gas prices are around pre war levels.

I have not seen those prices translate in lower energy prices in the Netherlands.. then again we are talking about the most greediest country in the world.

[Slirith]

Oh god, it's back

[YUPPIE]

Of course they're not a democracy, but they like to pretend, and putin is vulnerable he's old, he's losing and there's more and more evidence he's not exactly healthy. He won't survive another year in office the way it is going. If he puts up a successor he has a good chance of just fading away, if he does not sooner rather than later he will be removed. Prigozhin is already circling, but his failure at Bakhmut is not making him happy, Soledar is nice but peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Shoigu and Gerasimov are there to oppose Priggy, but they do have their own agendas as well.

are you genuinely implying there are people that can threaten Putin like that? As we've seen from at least 2022 to 2023, he kills anyone that even inconveniences him. He also does this in the most brutal way possible to intimidate the possibility of insubordination.

I definitely think he's completely in charge, and thus, the most accountable.

[zorkuus]

Hope he squeals like a pig!

He already did. But what does that do?

[Iliena]

He already did. But what does that do?

Reporting the war crimes and mistreatment he witnessed.

[zorkuus]

Reporting the war crimes and mistreatment he witnessed.

Errrrr... yes, and what then? Everyone already knows about plenty of warcrimes. What will be the consequences for these new revelations? Nothing, just like before? Exactly.

[XDurionX]

I wouldn't know about that. The Qatar minister today acknowledged Russia, stating while it's bad now, the world will inevitably "forgive and forget" and do business again - citing past atrocities as an example.

First stop to forgiveness would be to cease committing those atrocities.

[zealo]

what? Russia is still a democracy? I didn't even know they still had elections.

Like many autocracies, they like to pretend to give the people a voice even when the actual results themselves are rigged to all hell.

[Gaidax]

what? Russia is still a democracy? I didn't even know they still had elections.

You don't know anything, do you?

Yes they hold presidential elections and despite doctored numbers it's a very sensitive time for them. Previously when Putin turned out a strong show in elections, it was not beyond the realm of believable - he had a genuine peoples' support.

But now he won't be able to ride out on the horse with something like 70% vote without triggering mass protests which will be a major issue for the regime. Russians are not exactly happy with him at the moment.

[Gabriel]

First stop to forgiveness would be to cease committing those atrocities.

Fuck that. As long as the russian federation as a state exist, there should be precisely zero(0) effort to ever forgive anything.

[KrayZ33]

It always amazes me to hear how long it takes to get tanks, that are already built, ready for war or to be shipped, same with ammunition.

It's so hard to imagine that Rheinmetall needs like a year to get less than 100 Leopard tanks ready, even though they are in their stock right now. (Rheinmetall said so themselves)
300.000 shots worth of Gepard ammunition will takes 2 years as well. Sure, they won't send everything at once and will ship several lots over these 2 years, but still.
It's just weird to me.

This might be silly to hear but even though I'm aware that these things cost a lot of money and are quite complex and all of that, before this war, I always assumed that it would be no problem to build several (like 2-3) of these tanks from scratch each day (if needed and money isn't the problem) and when there is more than 1 factory involved. Even more when they are already built and just need to be modernized or be made battle-ready.

[zealo]

It always amazes me to hear how long it takes to get tanks, that are already built, ready for war or to be shipped, same with ammunition.

It's so hard to imagine that Rheinmetall needs like a year to get less than 100 Leopard tanks ready, even though they are in their stock right now. (Rheinmetall said so themselves)
300.000 shots worth of Gepard ammunition will takes 2 years as well. Sure, they won't send everything at once and will ship several lots over these 2 years, but still.
It's just weird to me.

This might be silly to hear but even though I'm aware that these things cost a lot of money and are quite complex and all of that, before this war, I always assumed that it would be no problem to build several (like 2-3) of these tanks from scratch each day (if needed and money isn't the problem) and when there is more than 1 factory involved. Even more when they are already built and just need to be modernized or be made battle-ready.

That's just the state of things when a country's economy is operating within peacetime boundaries, which a lot of Europe still is, a pressing need to scale up ammunition production even then aside.

Lets take a hypothetical and say Germany were mobilizing for industrial scale war as a nation as a direct combatant, it wouldn't just be the likes of Rheinmetall building vehicles for the military, but the production lines of the likes of BMW, Audi, Volkswagen etc would shift to producing war material at the direction of the state contracting them for supplying military needs, severely curtailing production for meeting civilian demands at the same time.

[Gabriel]

It always amazes me to hear how long it takes to get tanks, that are already built, ready for war or to be shipped, same with ammunition.

It's so hard to imagine that Rheinmetall needs like a year to get less than 100 Leopard tanks ready, even though they are in their stock right now. (Rheinmetall said so themselves)
300.000 shots worth of Gepard ammunition will takes 2 years as well. Sure, they won't send everything at once and will ship several lots over these 2 years, but still.
It's just weird to me.

This might be silly to hear but even though I'm aware that these things cost a lot of money and are quite complex and all of that, before this war, I always assumed that it would be no problem to build several (like 2-3) of these tanks from scratch each day (if needed and money isn't the problem) and when there is more than 1 factory involved. Even more when they are already built and just need to be modernized or be made battle-ready.

Its almost like Germany is dragging its feet on purpose like the bitch it is.

[Elder Millennial]

I have not seen those prices translate in lower energy prices in the Netherlands.. then again we are talking about the most greediest country in the world.

The prices of the wholesale energy market and retail energy prices don't really go hand in hand. The advantage of low wholesale prices right now is that power companies are refilling their storage capacity the second it's tapped and they are signing favorable contracts for shipments that are due in weeks and months.

During the worst price hikes last year, most Europeans were in fact either underpaying for the energy they were using or the power companies were still losing profits even if they were making their consumers pay the costs.

The issue is that in the EU retail energy price hikes are actually capped and at the same time retailers are expected to have rainy day funds to cover any losses. The prices are adjusted every couple of months.

The risk here for suppliers is that they might have to operate at a loss for a time, meanwhile the risk for the consumers is that they might overpay for a time.

Right now, consumers are still overpaying as the prices haven't been adjusted yet and they are still paying the high rates that were set when wholesale prices were at their peak.

This is why a few months ago windfall taxes were being discussed, as seemingly while energy companies have lost money for months, they more than made up for it when wholesale prices started coming down again. So they ended up making bank on the whole thing.

If wholesale energy prices stay where they are for another month or two, expect your power bills to come down during the next adjustment cycle.

Frankly, the EU needs to rethink the energy pricing model. This will be a costly and painful process, but the current model while it's really good at absorbing large shocks for the short term is really shit for a systemically unstable market.

And the energy market will stay unstable for years to come.

Of course the Germans and some other northern European countries like the Netherlands are absolutely allergic to systemic reform, no matter how obvious the problems are.

It seems like they still expect the market to magically stabilize itself...despite of everything imaginable pointing at the opposite.

- - - Updated - - -

It always amazes me to hear how long it takes to get tanks, that are already built, ready for war or to be shipped, same with ammunition.

It's so hard to imagine that Rheinmetall needs like a year to get less than 100 Leopard tanks ready, even though they are in their stock right now. (Rheinmetall said so themselves)
300.000 shots worth of Gepard ammunition will takes 2 years as well. Sure, they won't send everything at once and will ship several lots over these 2 years, but still.
It's just weird to me.

This might be silly to hear but even though I'm aware that these things cost a lot of money and are quite complex and all of that, before this war, I always assumed that it would be no problem to build several (like 2-3) of these tanks from scratch each day (if needed and money isn't the problem) and when there is more than 1 factory involved. Even more when they are already built and just need to be modernized or be made battle-ready.

The German government is absolutely notorious for it's terminally inefficient, wasteful and painfully slow buerocracy when it comes to anything government contracting related and it's exponentially worse when it comes to anything defense related.

The German defense industry's primary contractor is not Germany, it's a mostly export geared sector. This stuff would have to be acquired via the traditional German governmental contracting routes.

Remember that 100billion euros +raise to 2% of GDP in defense spending that the government allocated back in March?

You know how much of it have they spent yet?

Fuckall. It's all stuck in committees, review boards, law suits (defense contractors suing each other for the tenders), ethics boards (the Germans are still debating the philosophy and morality of armed drones...it's literally delusional).

I'm sure they did some tinkering here and there, probably fixed up some units that were literally unfit for combat to combat readiness etc, but in reality they just put a big pile of money in the middle of the room then they sat on it and keep sitting on it.

Even their plans for renewable energy production are stuck in a limbo because some some shithead environmentalists whinge and whine about how the views (literally the fucking views) will be ruined by windfarms along the North Sea coast, and they have been litigating that in courts for 2 years.

The Germans are capable of phenomenal efficiency, when they want to. See how they got the certification and construction of an LNG terminal done in a matter of months when it would normally take something like 3 to 5 years.

[Shibito]

What is distinct is that if you look at Denmark, when they surrendered to Germany they actually got treated relatively decently. The Danish mortality rate in WW2 was one of the lower ones for involved countries. Since the Germans were never intending genocide on Denmark, they could offer 'You surrender and be treated well, or you fight us, lose, and you don't get treated well'.

The Russians can't offer something similar. They're already murdering the men, raping the women, and kidnapping the children in Ukraine. There isn't a 'You let us genocide your entire population or else' because there isn't a worse 'else' to hold over them. If the Ukrainians surrender, they die horrifically, and they know it.

Got worse in Norway, the city im born and raised called Bodø, in northern Norway. Was bombed to the ground everything leveled except the brewery cause germans wanted beer

[Lahis]

Its almost like Germany is dragging its feet on purpose like the bitch it is.

Won't help that their new defence minister is a Putinist.

[Iliena]

Errrrr... yes, and what then? Everyone already knows about plenty of warcrimes. What will be the consequences for these new revelations? Nothing, just like before? Exactly.

Well if you bothered to read the link he says he has proof, as far as I know he is the first combatant from the Russian side to come forward with any and I'm sure the UN War Crimes Commission will want to speak to him. This is an opportunity to weaken Russian political standing further, especially with those who are on the fence about Ukraine and could lead to more support for them.