Russian invasion of Ukraine

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, TxRover said:

Well, to be honest, if the Jerries held Kent, the Isle of Wight, Devon and most of Cornwall, and the French and US wandered in with a proposal to call a ceasefire and let the Jerries keep the Isle of Wight if they gave back the rest, how excited would No. 10 be?

Very, probably, not so much the Reich Chancellery..

[Todd_is_God]

51 minutes ago, TxRover said:

Well, to be honest, if the Jerries held Kent, the Isle of Wight, Devon and most of Cornwall, and the French and US wandered in with a proposal to call a ceasefire and let the Jerries keep the Isle of Wight if they gave back the rest, how excited would No. 10 be?

Ukraine cannot afford this war on their own. Western financial support should be delivered only on the basis that a resolution is being continually saught.

If the Ukranian position is to not budge from taking back everything, including Crimea, then that's entirely their call. But I do not agree that their cause in that respect is something that the people in France / the UK must support and/or endure.

The views of Macron and Johnson regarding that are complete nonsense, as evidenced by the public reaction to them. If the "You just need to pay more because Ukrainians are dying " is the route LT want's to go down, then they will be absolutely obliterated at the next GE. Labour floated the idea of a price cap freeze and it was insanely popular, and built upon further by the energy companies themselves. If the Tories do not now go down the route of something similar they have no chance in 2024.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Todd_is_God

[Billy Jean King]

The question isn't really the point I was making mind. It's just such an odd thing for people to applaud and for her to then smile about.

You just need to mention resettling Trident to somewhere like Barrow or Plymouth to see the same performing seals moan like hell about the prospect of WMDs being on their own doorstep. Absolutely bizarre behaviour but not in the least surprising.

[HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows]

45 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

1 hour ago, Todd_is_God said:

The question isn't really the point I was making mind. It's just such an odd thing for people to applaud and for her to then smile about.

You just need to mention resettling Trident to somewhere like Barrow or Plymouth to see the same performing seals moan like hell about the prospect of WMDs being on their own doorstep. Absolutely bizarre behaviour but not in the least surprising.

Serios question but does it really matter if things go tits up? What's the choices, melted in a nuclear cloud or falling to bits over the next few weeks as the country go's Mad Max?

[ICTChris]

4 hours ago, jagfox said:

There will probably be another decree going into how the numbers will be achieved shortly haha Not a general mobilisation so probably a mix of recruitment and maybe extending period of national service? 

The difficulty is that if they conscript more guys then they need to train them and then equipment and personnel who would do that training aren’t available because they are in Ukraine and in many cases have been taken out in the war. They also need to ensure that there are officers to lead these units and they’ve taken heavy losses among officers.

Recruiting contractors reduces the need for training - a lot of contractors are recruited from the conscripts or from people who have previously served in the military. Currently Russia is recruiting guys to go and fight by paying pretty good salaries, some contingent on deploying to Ukraine. You then have guys who are probably more combat ready and don’t need shown which end of a gun goes bang.

The problem with this is that these guys are professionals, they can simply resign. This has happened in a number of units and there isn’t much that the Russian command can do about it. Some places have put a ‘wall of shame’ outside barracks with photographs of soldiers who have quit, although I’d take the scorn of babuskas over being blown up in Ukraine.

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

It's also completely unworkable. Who is going to regulate a price cap on the likes of Saudi or Iranian LNG into Europe? It's sure as hell not going to be the likes of Germany, and the US aren't going to put their foot down and call for a price cap as it would impact their own exports.
Russia will, ultimately, not profit in the long run from spiralling prices as European countries source their gas from elsewhere.

Separating electricity from gas for wholesale pricing is probably the best possible route.

[strichener]

18 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

They may have frozen consumer prices, but by fully nationalising EDF the French Government will be absorbing all of the astromical losses this entails. This will need to be repaid at some point.

The same losses that will need to be absorbed and later repaid if / when the price cap is frozen here.

The solution to this is to unpeg electricity costs from the price of gas, instead charging end users for electricity at the cost to produce it depending on energy source.

This is both possible and miles away from implementing a global price cap on the wholesale gas market. I also believe this will happen at some point next year.

What "astronomical costs".  The price to produce nuclear power is not rising, it is the wholesale market price.  EDF are not suffering astronomical losses, they just aren't making astronomical profits*.

 

Except in countries where they are, like the UK.

Edited August 26, 2022 by strichener

[Todd_is_God]

9 minutes ago, strichener said:

What "astronomical costs".  The price to produce nuclear power is not rising, it is the wholesale market price.  EDF are not suffering astronomical losses, they just aren't making astronomical profits*.

A fair point RE: France.

It doesn't change my point about here, though.

[jagfox]

 

[Newbornbairn]

Ukrainian Resistance targeting collaborators 

 

[ICTChris]

A Russian mercenary carrying out a performance using the skull of a dead Ukrainian soldier.

[\spoiler]

[ICTChris]

The guy with the skull is called Igor Mangushev. He founded a PMC during the initial invasion of the Donbas. It was closely linked to the FSB and became involved in organised crime, carrying out extortion and theft until they clearly picked on the wrong person and were prosecuted. Mangushev wasn’t prosecuted and is clearly still involved in the war.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

The slow Russian advance of the past few months finally seems to have ground to a standstill in the Donbas. Despite all the recent propaganda claims the Ukrainians apparently do still hold part of Pisky.

The EU has taken the economically painful steps needed to make it through the winter if Putin turns off the gas which he likely wouldn't be able to sustain because he needs that revenue to keep his state apparatus afloat.

There are reasons why the Ukrainians are sounding bullish about their future prospects because the $40 billion worth of lend lease weaponry hasn't even started arriving yet.

Edited August 28, 2022 by LongTimeLurker

[jagfox]

 

[Detournement]

Unlike Ukranians who respawn. 

[ICTChris]

There was some chat about Kazakhstan on here a while back, I saw this thread about Kazakh-Russian relations.

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by ICTChris

[Newbornbairn]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent

 

 

[ICTChris]

Ukrainians weaponising animals as part of the hybrid war.  

 

 

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Newbornbairn said:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent

 

 

The mistake of this analysis is to treat that world view of being a Eurasian power on a par with any other as specifically or primarily Putin's. It isn't. It's (for the most part) a run of the mill Russian belief that will inform the majority of Putin's successors even if the autocratic regime collapsed and the liberal fringe movements somehow gained power instead. 

Quote

He has also usurped Ukraine’s history and appropriated some of its most prominent figures. In November 2016, for example, right outside the Kremlin gates, Putin erected a statue of Vladimir the Great, the tenth-century grand prince of the principality of Kyiv. In Putin’s version of history, Grand Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity on behalf of all of ancient Rus in 988, making him the holy saint of Orthodox Christianity and a Russian, not a Ukrainian, Figure. The conversion means that there is no Ukrainian nation separate from Russia. The grand prince belongs to Moscow, not to Kyiv.

This is a stack of nonsense, because it is not a case of Putin revising some established fact. The Russian Orthodox Church has claimed St Vladimir as a Russian patron for literally a thousand years. It's no different to Scotland claiming Columba or Ninian as patron saints for its entire conversion to Christianity, or Cuthbert for the English. None of them were actually national figures because the current ideas of nationhood are the product of modern society, not the medieval world in which they lived. 

The figure of Vladimir is central to the foundation myths of both Russia and Ukraine, and has been contested long before Putin was in a position of power. Of course, Vladimir was neither Russian nor Ukrainian in any meaningful sense of the terms today (and he literally couldn't have identified himself as 'Ukrainian'). 

That Putin promotes the Muscovite view over Kiev's is not some innovation, nor is it revisionism of History. It is just an entirely predictable stance that almost any Russian statesman in the President's office would support as well. 

Edited August 29, 2022 by vikingTON

[Newbornbairn]

57 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Ukrainians weaponising animals as part of the hybrid war.  

 

 

Been using animals for a while -

 

Quote

 

A goat has wounded multiple Russian soldiers after it set off a boobytrap of grenades.

The animal triggered tripwires set up by Vladimir Putin's forces setting off a series of explosions which injured the invading soldiers.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/goat-wounds-russian-soldiers-after-27310103

 

There's also video doing the rounds of a Russian Aberdeen fan shagging a sheep.