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How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

From reporting the ultra nationalist Russian Orthodox leader friend of Putin was pissed because the Russian church lost money when Ukraine gained independence.

Russia is the same old kind of dictatorship 'monarchy'.

After communist suppression the Russian church came back amd established a power base.

The Russian church as it has always been is probalyy part of te kleptocracy.
 
Another Russian millionaire decides to fall out of a hotel window:

Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov dies in Indian hotel fall​


According to the report by the Indian police, Pavel Antov may have been drinking a lot of alcohol on Sunday before the fall. A friend, Vladimir Budanov, had died on Friday of a stroke, according to the Russian consul in Kolkata, so Antov must have been depressed. According the consul, the Indian police did not see a "criminal element in these tragic events". It is true that Antov had appeared to criticize the Ukraine war in a message on his WhatsApp account that an attack in Kiev that killed a man and wounded his wife and daughter. The message read "It's extremely difficult to call all this anything but terror." Antov subsequently deleted the message and claimed somebody else had posted it. He declared his loyalty to Putin, affirmed his support for the "special military operation in Ukraine", and called himself a "patriot of my country". So that surely cleared up that misunderstanding, and this suicide was not like all those other suicides by very rich Russians who may have inadvertently criticized the war. No Russian should feel alarmed or intimidated by this "tragic event". :shrug:
 
I know Jayjay will be around directly to stick a pin in my balloon but I still enjoy reading these articles.

Russia Losing Thousands of Soldiers As Bakhmut Plan Collapses: Ukraine

"Bakhmut is a limited breakthrough but having lost several fights, Russia has to show strength somewhere,"
Click to expand...

Another article is a video of Russian soldiers surrendering to UAF.

I know I'm probably hoping against hope but the more I see Putinistas getting their deserved rewards the better I sleep at night.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
I know Jayjay will be around directly to stick a pin in my balloon but I still enjoy reading these articles.

Russia Losing Thousands of Soldiers As Bakhmut Plan Collapses: Ukraine

"Bakhmut is a limited breakthrough but having lost several fights, Russia has to show strength somewhere,"
Click to expand...

Another article is a video of Russian soldiers surrendering to UAF.

I know I'm probably hoping against hope but the more I see Putinistas getting their deserved rewards the better I sleep at night.
Click to expand...

I think that Jayjay has been very cautious about letting such stories encourage us to think that Ukraine is winning, especially if the source is obviously biased for one side and against the other. If the video of Russians surrendering was in any way faked, it was intended to create a false impression. So, if we are hearing news that we want to hear about the way the war is going, we should be even more skeptical of it than we are of the bad news we hear. I tend to treat Ukrainian sources as a little more reliable than Russian ones, but it has been easier to disprove the Russian side of the propaganda war. More people are willing to spend their time and energy in disproving the Russian claims. Not so much for Ukrainian claims.
 
I appreciate Jayiay’s cautious interpretation of these things - and at the same time, I am hoping so much for success for Ukraine that I feel good when I read them, too. Even though I’m subsequently reminded to not be unrealistically optimistic.
 
Copernicus said:
T.G.G. Moogly said:
I know Jayjay will be around directly to stick a pin in my balloon but I still enjoy reading these articles.

Russia Losing Thousands of Soldiers As Bakhmut Plan Collapses: Ukraine

"Bakhmut is a limited breakthrough but having lost several fights, Russia has to show strength somewhere,"
Click to expand...

Another article is a video of Russian soldiers surrendering to UAF.

I know I'm probably hoping against hope but the more I see Putinistas getting their deserved rewards the better I sleep at night.
Click to expand...

I think that Jayjay has been very cautious about letting such stories encourage us to think that Ukraine is winning, especially if the source is obviously biased for one side and against the other. If the video of Russians surrendering was in any way faked, it was intended to create a false impression. So, if we are hearing news that we want to hear about the way the war is going, we should be even more skeptical of it than we are of the bad news we hear. I tend to treat Ukrainian sources as a little more reliable than Russian ones, but it has been easier to disprove the Russian side of the propaganda war. More people are willing to spend their time and energy in disproving the Russian claims. Not so much for Ukrainian claims.
Click to expand...
Indeed. The fog of war can be used to craft many stories. And for many of the same reasons, the balance of power can swiftly change.
 
Copernicus said:
T.G.G. Moogly said:
I know Jayjay will be around directly to stick a pin in my balloon but I still enjoy reading these articles.

Russia Losing Thousands of Soldiers As Bakhmut Plan Collapses: Ukraine

"Bakhmut is a limited breakthrough but having lost several fights, Russia has to show strength somewhere,"
Click to expand...

Another article is a video of Russian soldiers surrendering to UAF.

I know I'm probably hoping against hope but the more I see Putinistas getting their deserved rewards the better I sleep at night.
Click to expand...

I think that Jayjay has been very cautious about letting such stories encourage us to think that Ukraine is winning, especially if the source is obviously biased for one side and against the other. If the video of Russians surrendering was in any way faked, it was intended to create a false impression. So, if we are hearing news that we want to hear about the way the war is going, we should be even more skeptical of it than we are of the bad news we hear. I tend to treat Ukrainian sources as a little more reliable than Russian ones, but it has been easier to disprove the Russian side of the propaganda war. More people are willing to spend their time and energy in disproving the Russian claims. Not so much for Ukrainian claims.
Click to expand...
Tactical information available to civilians (this town is currently under attack; that village has been, or is about to be, liberated; this civilian target has been shelled or bombed) is so unreliable that it would be foolish to believe any of it - it could be true, false, redacted, or added to, to give whatever impression the people who originated it want to project.

Strategic information is less unreliable. The approximate location of the front lines is fairly amenable to fact-checking, particularly at a remove of a few days. If there's multiple reports that one side or the other was pushed back in a particular area last week and has been unable to regain the lost ground, it's likely not completely foolish to consider it plausible.

I recall a comment by a German civilian after WWII, who said that he knew the war was going badly, because every week the glorious victories over the Communists were reported as taking place in towns that were closer to Berlin.
 
Putin Turns on Oligarchs to Shore Up Russian Economic, Battlefield Woes

Russia’s new attempt at taxing its richest citizens comes at a time of renewed economic urgency for Putin. The ruble is in near freefall, and reports have emerged that Russian banks are refusing to allow their customers to withdraw money.
Click to expand...

I guess the truth of the situation is that misery loves company. Maybe it's better to ante up more money for the boss than to fall out a window, down stairs, from a boat or be shot.
 
Only the latest in  2022 Russian businessmen mystery deaths

Ukraine war: Five ways conflict could go in 2023 - BBC News - 'Russia's spring offensive will be key' - 'Ukraine will win back its land' - 'There is no end in sight' - 'No other outcome except Russian defeat' - 'Expect more of the same'

The first one, about the Ukrainian forces,
Around Kreminna and Svatove they are very close to a big breakthrough that would throw Russian forces 40 miles back to the next natural defensive line, close to where their invasion effectively began in February.
Click to expand...
 
Ukraine and Russia Battle for a Gateway City in the East - The New York Times - "Recapturing Kreminna, in eastern Ukraine, would be a step further in Ukraine’s campaign to retake major cities that Russia seized after it invaded."

Ukraine says forces closer to recapturing key eastern city of Kreminna | Ukraine | The Guardian - "Luhansk city could be step towards launching offensives on Russian-held Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk"
The regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said fighters in part of the city controlled by Russian command were forced to retreat to Rubizhne, a town a few miles to the south-east, as a result of Ukrainian military pressure.

“The Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defence will fall,” Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. “The Russian occupation troops managed to build a very powerful defence in a month, even a little more. They are bringing there a huge amount of reserves and equipment. They are constantly renewing their forces.”
Click to expand...
 
I always giggle when barbos makes some wild accusation like zombies are real or Zelensky is on drugs - but I've got to say the former President of Russia has got barbos beat on batshit crazy claims.

A sample of Dmitry Medvedev's predictions of 2023;







The start of this insanity can be found here.
 
This is just too juicy to resist.
Dmitry Medvedev on Twitter: "On the New Year’s Eve, everybody’s into making predictions
Many come up with futuristic hypotheses, as if competing to single out the wildest, and even the most absurd ones.
Here’s our humble contribution.
What can happen in 2023:" / Twitter
1. Oil price will rise to $150 a barrel, and gas price will top $5.000 per 1.000 cubic meters

Oil almost got there half a year ago: Crude Oil Price, Oil, Energy, Petroleum, Oil Price, WTI & Brent Oil, Oil Price Charts and Oil Price Forecast

For natural gas, it's 5.28 USD/MMBtu for Dec 20 2022 and it went up to twice that half a year ago - Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price 1 MMBtu (1 million British thermal units) = 26.8 cubic meters of natgas, giving $0.197 per cubic meter. I don't now how he gets $5/m^3. Though $0.5/m^3 is possible.

I think that this crazy jumping of price is a reason for investment in renewable energy, a reason that nobody seems want to talk about -- over timescales of months and years, weather is usually much more predictable.
 
2. The UK will rejoin the EU

I wouldn't be surprised if the UK eventually tries to rejoin the EU, but it might not happen right away. The UK might become like Norway and Switzerland, effectively a non-voting member of that body.

3. The EU will collapse after the UK’s return; Euro will drop out of use as the former EU currency

I doubt that the UK's return would make it collapse unless it was already very fragile. The future of the Euro is another story, but I can't say much about that. It may well be that the EU may continue with some of its members pulling out of the Euro, but I'm not willing to speculate about that.

4. Poland and Hungary will occupy western regions of the formerly existing Ukraine

DM seems to be projecting Russian irredentism in Ukraine onto Poland and Hungary.

Poland extended into W Ukraine between WWI and WWII, and as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of some centuries back, it extended into all but the easternmost and southermost parts of Ukraine. But I don't know of any present-day desire to rebuild the PLC in that form.
 
5. The Fourth Reich will be created, encompassing the territory of Germany and its satellites, i.e., Poland, the Baltic states, Czechia, Slovakia, the Kiev Republic, and other outcasts

The Kiev Republic???

I've yet to see any evidence of such German irredentism. Germany hasn't even been trying to get back East Prussia. After WWII, Russia and Poland expelled all the ethnic Germans there and divided it in two, with Russia renaming Königsberg Kaliningrad. Germany hasn't been trying to get back Silesia and Pomerania either, the former German territories just east of its eastern present border and now parts of Poland. Also not trying to reunite with Austria either, let alone with the former Austro-Hungarian empire.

Such efforts would likely provoke bad memories of Germany's irredentism in the late 1930's, I'm sure.

There is even a joke about this state of affairs: the rest of Europe wanted a pacifist Germany, and now it's getting one.
 
6. War will break out between France and the Fourth Reich. Europe will be divided, Poland repartitioned in the process

What would they fight over?

7. Northern Ireland will separate from the UK and join the Republic of Ireland

Plausible, even if not right away. But there are still plenty of pro-British Northern Irelanders.

8. Civil war will break out in the US, California. and Texas becoming independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form an allied state. Elon Musk’ll win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War’s end, will have been given to the GOP

Except that the US is not the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, and DM does not seem to have a good picture of US regional divisions. It's doubtful that either CA or TX would secede from whatever regional bloc that they were in, and it's also doubtful that TX would join Mexico -- TX gringos would be very pissed.
 
9. All the largest stock markets and financial activity will leave the US and Europe and move to Asia

Why might that be?

10. The Bretton Woods system of monetary management will collapse, leading to the IMF and World Bank crash. Euro and Dollar will stop circulating as the global reserve currencies. Digital fiat currencies will be actively used instead

That would require a big economic slump on the part of the US and the EU.
 
lpetrich said:
10. The Bretton Woods system of monetary management will collapse, leading to the IMF and World Bank crash. Euro and Dollar will stop circulating as the global reserve currencies. Digital fiat currencies will be actively used instead
Click to expand...
At least the drunk got one prediction right... 52 years late. :ROFLMAO:
 
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