Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
You are absolutely delighted he's threatened us with nukes, aren't you?
"See, we shouldn't poke the bear"
Are you clinically insane?
Nobody can possibly be "absolutely delighted" to be threatened with nukes, unless they know nothing about nuclear war.
I have never used the "poke the bear" analogy.
I have merely insisted that there is a Russian minority in Ukraine, and they have rights.
And I have also insisted that many ordinary Russians do not support Putin's dubious historico-philosophical fantasies.
BiB - you seem to be assuming that they are welcoming the invasion. One of our own posters with a personal interest poured cold water on that idea this morning.
I don't make any such assumption.
Almost every Russian I know has said the invasion is wrong.
That does not alter the fact that there is a Russian minority in the country of Ukraine. You can be Russian and not support the invasion.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
One must be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the present.
Actually it was Qui-Gonn Jinn who said that and he was wrong, but only in the extent - some cost in the present is justifiable, even potentially significant cost, but the present concerns cannot simply be ignored either, not when they are so vital.
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
Man, an excuser of Putin and I just thought you were an apologist for Andrew RT Davies.
Should also mention because it isn't being mentioned enough elsewhere that the Russian central bank have appealed for calm after so many people tried to get their money out of ATMs.
"Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinskiy has been talking about the prospect of talks with Russian officials planned to take place close to the border with Belarus, Reuters reports. It has the following lines so far:
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”. He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
I see the Immunologists on here have become Generals
Yes, people need to not over assume their own ability to assess these matters, but as a general point there's nothign wrong with people seeking to discuss and debate matters of imminology or conflict, so long as they seek out relevant info and can acknowledge their own shortcomings.
The implications of such blanket comments is that no one could ever say anything beyond the areas they are expert in, and even that doesn't work when so much is still contested.
The bloke Sky News have hired to do the military analysis.....lets just say he does a great job of scaring the shit out of everybody....next slide please...yes well if Russia want they can deploy this....that will take out a city block...next slide please....a step up from that this, 5 of these will take out a city....next slide please....and after that....these can take out the cities anywhere in the Western world...next slide....no that's all we have time for, thank you.
This is no time for a lightweight like truss as FS.
Needs to be replaced with Hunt(?) or someone else with gravitas and experience (May?) ASAP
yes ,much as I like her and perhaps share her more laissez faire views on things I do think she made a silly and not needed comment on saying brits could join up to fight in Ukraine. Perhaps not a big mistake but one that shows she is not a cool head which is needed at this time. Boris needs to get rid of anyone who is not competent in a key position with this issue -forget optics , forget diversity , forget friendship , this is bigger
We’ve now had 72 (seventy-two) VI polls in a row with LAB in the lead. A remarkable series.
Statistics being what they are, you’d have expected at least one blip in such a long series?
You certainly wouldn’t expect that if the lead is large.
I am expecting some big, big Conservative VI leads. Circumstances are currently Johnson's friend.
They are not. See header. This helps him look good on telly for a bit but 1. The parallel with another narcissistic leader determined to hang on at all costs is increasingly embarrassing 2. We are screwing up on a number of fronts eg visas for Ukrainians 3. His relationship with sleazy Russian money will come under the microscope 4. Partygate has not gone away. If our attention to Russia remains at this level of intensity for another 2 weeks it will be because of events which mean we will all be little heaps of radioactive ash by Easter anyway.
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
Man, an excuser of Putin and I just thought you were an apologist for Andrew RT Davies.
Well, 'RT' has discovered a silver lining
Further sanctions may well be needed, and I add my voice to calls for UEFA to strip Russia of the privilege of hosting the Champions League final.
I appreciate that lots of planning goes into this event, but there are plenty of venues experienced in hosting it, including the Principality Stadium, so changing the venue should be relatively straightforward
For now, but they will be back. SKS is rightly using the situation to impose a little discipline of ultra left MPs, getting them to withdraw their signing of STW petition/letter attacking NATO.
The tactic of one ultra left MP has been to suddenly start describing the Russians as 'ultra right wing' as cover for not giving our enemies comfort for the moment. Though the absolute Spartist Laura Pidcock is yet to tweet any support for Ukraine or opposition to Russia since the invasion. TBF most of the ultra left have given themselves a little shelter from the storm with Corbyn like affirmations of peacenikery.
Full support for our enemies and full hostility to our allies will resume in due course.
Not really.The left is instinctively critical of NATO, because it was seen as part of the US concept of the world, but it's a long time since they were supportive of Putin's Russia, with its far-right mates from Trump to Bolsanaro - I suspect you're so accustomed to thinking that Nato-sceptical means pro-Russian that you've not noticed. What *has* changed is that the left has started to see the point of NATO. When John McDonnell told our CLP meeting last week that he favoured sending NATO reinforcements to countries bordering Russia, that was something I don't think you'd have heard in the past.
Curiously, a side-effect of Putin's aggression has been to heal some of the division between the centre and left. I have lots of left-wing friends, but I've not heard one criticise Starmer for giving full support for British aid to Ukraine. In fact I'm a bit unusual in not favouring banning RT.
"Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinskiy has been talking about the prospect of talks with Russian officials planned to take place close to the border with Belarus, Reuters reports. It has the following lines so far:
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”. He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
Thus far he does not seem a fool. He and his country are prepared to fight, which is essential to get the other side talking, but if a way can be had to acceptably limit damage it seems he would try. It would be interesting how well he can bring his country with him if that path does prove viable.
The bloke Sky News have hired to do the military analysis.....lets just say he does a great job of scaring the shit out of everybody....next slide please...yes well if Russia want they can deploy this....that will take out a city block...next slide please....a step up from that this, 5 of these will take out a city....next slide please....and after that....these can take out the cities anywhere in the Western world...next slide....no that's all we have time for, thank you.
Is it Chris Parry? He is awesome, one of the best
It was General Sir Richard Barrons today with the clicker.
I know they have had Chris Parry on as well.
It begs the question why they have got two proper experts on to talk about the confliction, but we had to put with unqualified people doing the "info board" during COVID.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Perhaps you should stick to commenting on Washington politics?
Putin, in his mind, found Russia weak, diminished, and held in contempt.
Since then, he has annexed Crimea and turned Belarus into a client state.
So far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent him from dismembering Ukraine and permanently taking over the East part of the country, thus adding it to Crimea and Belarus.
The West will huff and puff but can't do much about it. Sure, Russia will endure economic hardship but Putin won't much care about that. Anyway, Russians have put up with far worse.
When he goes, Russia will be strong, enlarged and feared.
As I say, contrarian.
PS. Anyone taking reassurance from the way the invasion is going, bear this in mind. Russian campaigns always go horribly wrong. Their troops (and civilians) go through the meatgrinder. But Mother Russia endures. PPS. Putin I suspect looks at himself as a linear descendant of previous Russian leaders. He sees himself in the line of Stalin, Alexander I, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great. Autocrats all, who couldn't give a fig for human suffering. He's not interested in being the natural successor to Gorbachev, Kerensky and Nicholas II.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
This is no time for a lightweight like truss as FS.
Needs to be replaced with Hunt(?) or someone else with gravitas and experience (May?) ASAP
yes ,much as I like her and perhaps share her more laissez faire views on things I do think she made a silly and not needed comment on saying brits could join up to fight in Ukraine. Perhaps not a big mistake but one that shows she is not a cool head which is needed at this time. Boris needs to get rid of anyone who is not competent in a key position with this issue -forget optics , forget diversity , forget friendship , this is bigger
I worry about the fact that random ministers are allowed to freerange on the morning interview rounds. OK in normal times but sometimes spokesmen need to speak with confidence of being fully briefed.
I don't know if I am supremely overjoyed that Germany is going to be spending a lot more on its military.
I would be happy for the UK to spend more, if we do so primarily on sea power. That's where success lies for us. Always has been, always will be. We should support our allies by Naval means, not getting bogged down in continental conflicts.
For the past 100 years the go to approach for land battles was the tank yet they can now be destroyed by a single $20,000 missile.
The idea that the sea is any better off in the 21st century May be equally false.
Yes. Look what’s happening to Russian armour against ‘cheap’ Turkish drones. How long can big lumbering ships remain relevant? They are just tanks at sea
AI, cyberwarfare, robot soldiers, drones of all sizes, hypersonic missiles - that’s the future.
And intelligence. One of the ‘heartening’ aspects of this awful nightmare is that US/UK intel has been bang on
I recall reading somewhere that towards the end of the (First) Cold War the US Navy refused to participate in wargaming all-out conventional war scenarios as they consistently resulted in the entire American (and everyone else’s) surface fleet being sunk within the first couple of days.
Similarly a few years back the Americans held an exercise in the Gulf simulating war with Iran where a US Marine Corps general was assigned as “red” commander and used known Revolutionary Guard tactics to “swarm” warships and take them out. The US Navy promptly suspended the exercise and demanded it be restarted with the USMC tactics disallowed.
That's not what happened at Millennium Challenge 2002. Lt Gen Van Riper simulated the sinking of a CVN with a mass cruise misslie attack that oversaturated the CSG's AD capacity.
That has somehow mutated into in the Internet truism that you can sink carriers with a 'swarm' of pedalos.
In the real world nobody has damaged a carrier in combat since 1945. The end of the age of the carriers will come as it did for battleships but not yet and not soon.
Don’t carriers need lots of other ships protecting them though? So you are not just committing to cost of each carrier, but to growing size of navy to protect the carrier?
Yes. A USN CSG has the CVN, 8 or 9 squadrons of aircraft in the CVW, 2 x Tico CG, 3 x Arleigh Burke DDG, 2 x Virginia SSN. Also an oiler and solid support ships though these are USNS not USN.
That's why carriers are a poor choice for the RN at its current size. To deploy a CSG we need just about every escort vessel that float plus (a lot) of help from allies. It's a grotesquely imbalanced force structure that has been driven primarily by reasons of national prestige rather than a matching of defence capabilities to strategic needs.
Thank you 👍🏻
From a very non-expert standpoint I never saw the point of our 2 big carriers. I was in favour of giving one of them to the EU to sweeten the Brexit deal. Let it be their white elephant - nothing the EU loves more than a white elephant. I am in favour of smaller helicopter/vertical take off carriers, but that's probably a terrible solecism too.
Helicopter carriers like the Japanese Izumo class would have been a great fit for the RN.
The French defence establishment like your idea. Their latest wheeze for reducing the cost of the CdG replacement (PANG) is to build a second one for the EU. German/Dutch/Belgian crew with Italian/Spanish air wing.
I think the original intended destination of those carriers was the EU defence force - its the only way they made sense to me. So interested to hear what you say, and not surprised it's happening, and yes, I do think the EU/France would have been tickled pink to get one of the carriers 'free' and would probably have been a lot kinder to our exporters and people with ham sandwiches in their cabins in return.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Being too open to Russian money and not a fan of 'woke' matters does not equal regarding or in effect treating Putin as a spiritual leader. That's too direct a connection.
A very good move the world needs peace...we need a good negotiated settlement fair to both sides and that recognises russias concerns
Fuck off. Your boy has just escalated to nuclear war.
We give nothing to the maniac.
I think that's hyperbole...we may not like putin but he is trying to defend russias interests....
Which reside inside the Russian borders. Illigal war aggression against a state that voluntarily disbanded its nuclear weapons, invasion and murder are protecting Russian interests in what way?
I think putin saw war as a last resort...
He was absolutely backed into a corner by Ukraine doing... doing... doing... ummm... nothing at all.
Anyway, looks like I was wrong a couple of days ago when I doubted that the Ukrainians would be able to resist the invaders for long. Russian military might turns out to be not so mighty after all.
Sometimes it is wonderful being proved wrong.
It's hard to tell at this point whether it's more a case of the Russian's being weaker, or of the Ukrainian's being stronger, than expected.
Both, of course. Zelensky's inspirational leadership has been a big factor. But I think the biggest surprise has been poor execution by the Russians.
For me the biggest surprise is how poor their propaganda has been. They don't even seem to have agreed a consistent line at home, let alone abroad.
If their efforts here on PB are anything to go by their Propaganda Department is the pits!
If you want to believed whilst spreading lies on a uk political blog, why on earth would you start by choosing the name Johnson.....
He skimped a bit on his preparatory research, and thought the name PJohnson would be nicely inconspicuous.
Surely yours truly is NOT alone, in thinking "PJohnson" is a Putinist bot?
"I speak from a deep knowledge of history and human nature...my concern is humanity as a whole"
Take your knowledge and concern . . . and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.
Oh, we all know it. It’s been obvious for a while. We’re keeping him going for three reasons:
1: He provides the opportunity to publicly shoot down Putinist lies (and thus achieve the opposite of what he wants. Much like his boss, really) 2: Keeping him occupied here with zero benefit to him or his employers means less opportunity to peddle lies elsewhere. 3: It’s fun to wind him up.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
If it is to go in, someone needs to build Germany a Plan B.
Putin is meeting defense minister Shoigu and chief of general staff Gerasimov in the Kremlin.
He says western sanctions are "illegitimate" and has ordered to place Russia's deterrence – i.e. nuclear – forces on "a special regime of duty," per @tass_agency
Putin: "Western countries aren't only taking unfriendly economic actions against our country, but leaders of major Nato countries are making aggressive statements about our country. So I order to move Russia's deterrence forces to a special regime of duty."
One way or another, he will make sure that he won't lose this war. Lets hope the oligarchs strike, the war is not good for them either.
Nuclear war it is, then
I forget, where do we hide? Under the kitchen table? In a doorway?
Trident is great when it’s being pointed at other people. Not so great when the nuclear warheads are being pointed at you.
Having Trident available - and known to be available to the other side - is actually quite a relief when nuclear weapons are pointed at you.
After all, it's not as though not having them is any protection. The generals on the other side knowing that launching anything at you will sign their own death warrant is not ideal, but at least makes them think very hard before obeying.
I'm not sure I agree with this actually. Us having Trident doesn't make me feel safer in this situation and if the Russian equivalent were used on us I'd gain no comfort from the thought of the quid pro quo whether I lived to see it or not. Neither imo does it tilt the balance of power in our favour.
The nuclear deterrent - because of the consequences for both target and shooter - cannot be used by anybody other than a madman and every rational person knows this. It's therefore of value only *to* a madman.
Which begs the obvious question. Is Putin mad? And if he is, to what extent can he make decisions alone? Is his power personal and untrammeled or is it more (as with Trump when he was POTUS) that there are people around him who'd be willing and able to "manage" or in extremis neutralize him? This is what I really wish we knew.
Well, to gain an idea of the other way of doing it: all we have to do is assure Putin that if he fires his nukes, we will, under no circumstances, fire back. Even if he rains nuclear fire on London and all of the UK - we won't do anything and will merely accept it.
Personally, I don't think that would help.
The reason that it's of value as a deterrent is that it is a second strike system. Which means that we would use it if we were already attacked. And we would therefore have nothing left to lose.
Game theory came into existence because of the implications of this. We don't threaten to use it unless they use theirs first. At which point, it's no longer the actions of a madman to use it. Because what would we have lost? We'd already have incurred the loss.
And they - their entire command chain down to the people who actually have to turn the keys - would know that the retaliatory strike would be coming if they went ahead.
It may not be sufficient to deter. But its absence would certainly not have any prospect of deterrence.
It fails game theory for me because a rational actor won't use it even if a mad one had used it first. There's nothing gained from that. It's just more loss. And a rational actor certainly won't use it preemptively. It therefore has utility only to the madman. In the hands of a madman it carries genuine threat and can be used as leverage. It's one-sided in this respect. This applies to all weapons to an extent, of course, but with the nuclear WMD it's especially so. Of great value to a lunatic, or somebody believed to be, of little value to everyone else - eg this situation here now (possibly).
Though Kinabalu's theory fails an interesting test: No madman has used it yet, including the N Korea regime, and the longer time goes on without use the less plausible is the theory, and the more plausible is the possibility that people other than madmen having it deters madmen and others too.
Well there's - I hope! - much time still to flow in human affairs. And we have a situation right now that might provide some evidence either way. Anyway I'm not happy with ascribing to it the oooph of Theory. Was mainly trying to explain why imo nuclear WMDs don't have the deterrent value (either to the individual holder or in aggregate across all holders) that many feel they do.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Being too open to Russian money and not a fan of 'woke' matters does not equal regarding or in effect treating Putin as a spiritual leader. That's too direct a connection.
"Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinskiy has been talking about the prospect of talks with Russian officials planned to take place close to the border with Belarus, Reuters reports. It has the following lines so far:
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”. He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
Thus far he does not seem a fool. He and his country are prepared to fight, which is essential to get the other side talking, but if a way can be had to acceptably limit damage it seems he would try. It would be interesting how well he can bring his country with him if that path does prove viable.
I suspect that a lot of the Western assistance is at least being partly conditional of him entertaining vaguely reasonable terms for ending this (even if things go so well that he is in a strong position to push for more). Whilst supporting him and Ukraine strongly there can be no doubt that ultimately we want this to finish asap.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
Perhaps the endgame here is Russia in NATO. To protect against… China
If we get through all this in one piece then I don't think anyone else in Europe, save for Putin's puppets, is going to want to have anything to do with Russia for at least the next decade, let alone trying to build a constructive relationship with them. Who would make the stupid mistake of trusting them? The best we can hope for is that they kill Putin and replace him with a more stable bastard, who can learn to concentrate on beating his own people up rather than picking fights with the rest of us.
Liz has surpassed herself in flagmanship. A true pass the sick bag moment
There’s so much I find nauseating about this photograph, the expression, the camera angle, the misplaced confidence, the audacity to pretend the U.K is offering full support when there is no legal route for #Ukraine refugees, and we’re paying for it.
In all the bleak and depressing news our son and daughter in law and their two children called round this afternoon and announced that no three is due on the 1st September
Total surprise but wonderful news and our 5th grandchild
Putin has just put the Russian nuclear deterrent on 'special alert'.
Partygate is obviously irrelevant now, indeed whether Sunak or Boris or Hunt or Truss or indeed Starmer is PM is relatively irrelevant too for the time being. As indeed is Covid post vaccination.
What matters is containing Putin and ensuring he does not go beyond Ukraine without doing anything to provoke him. Plus seeing if there is an internal coup to replace him
Unfitness for office because of inherent qualities and capabilities do not become irrelevant in a crisis, they become more relevant. Obviously MPs will disagree, but it will still come up later. Or should.
Whoever is UK PM is largely irrelevant at the moment now Corbyn is out of the picture.
What matters is the collective NATO response to Putin and whoever of Johnson, Sunak, Hunt or Truss or Starmer is PM would largely do the same thing on that anyway
It isn't policy differences beteen potential PMs we need to focus on, it's having a rational adult at the helm vs a narcissistic pig determined to cling to office at all lengths conceivable.
Putting it another way, we are being shown two versions of leadership, Putin's and Zelensky's, and we have the opportunity to put the question to ourselves: which does Pig Dog more closely resemble?
Neither Zelensky's fight to the death or Putin's threatening all his neighbours are the ideal leaderships at the moment
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
A lot of uninformed bullshit flying about right now.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
As @NickPalmer pointed out earlier rt.com is surprisingly informative and not entirely biased. I had not for instance seen this rather important story elsewhere
Putin has just put the Russian nuclear deterrent on 'special alert'.
Partygate is obviously irrelevant now, indeed whether Sunak or Boris or Hunt or Truss or indeed Starmer is PM is relatively irrelevant too for the time being. As indeed is Covid post vaccination.
What matters is containing Putin and ensuring he does not go beyond Ukraine without doing anything to provoke him. Plus seeing if there is an internal coup to replace him
Unfitness for office because of inherent qualities and capabilities do not become irrelevant in a crisis, they become more relevant. Obviously MPs will disagree, but it will still come up later. Or should.
Whoever is UK PM is largely irrelevant at the moment now Corbyn is out of the picture.
What matters is the collective NATO response to Putin and whoever of Johnson, Sunak, Hunt or Truss or Starmer is PM would largely do the same thing on that anyway
It isn't policy differences beteen potential PMs we need to focus on, it's having a rational adult at the helm vs a narcissistic pig determined to cling to office at all lengths conceivable.
Putting it another way, we are being shown two versions of leadership, Putin's and Zelensky's, and we have the opportunity to put the question to ourselves: which does Pig Dog more closely resemble?
Neither Zelensky's fight to the death or Putin's threatening all his neighbours are the ideal leaderships at the moment
What else do you think Zelensky should be doing?
Going back to having a laugh would be nice.....
His comedy career is done after this
If he survives this outside prison, he will never need to pay for a drink again.
He is showing the world what leadership and patriotism really look like.
Astute to be open for peace talks too. Give the Russian army an excuse to climb down.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
What’s the cost of the ruble dropping 10% against the US$ in the past week?
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
You are absolutely delighted he's threatened us with nukes, aren't you?
"See, we shouldn't poke the bear"
Are you clinically insane?
Nobody can possibly be "absolutely delighted" to be threatened with nukes, unless they know nothing about nuclear war.
I have never used the "poke the bear" analogy.
I have merely insisted that there is a Russian minority in Ukraine, and they have rights.
And I have also insisted that many ordinary Russians do not support Putin's dubious historico-philosophical fantasies.
Hold on, who in Ukraine is saying that the Russian minority doesn't have rights? Are they unable to live freely in Ukraine? I've never heard of a case where Russian speakers in Ukraine were stripped of their rights.
You're mindlessly repeating Putin propaganda by suggesting that Russian speakers in Ukraine were treated as some kind of second class citizens.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
What’s the cost of the ruble dropping 10% against the US$ in the past week?
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
Then the green lobby need to be sidelined.
I agree but it is unlikely. They are very well funded and influential.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Perhaps you should stick to commenting on Washington politics?
Don't be be like that! We all comment on other countries' politics all the time. Not as important as the Bristol South Town Council by-election, true, but still vaguely interesting, and SSI's US perspective is as interesting as anyone's.
"Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinskiy has been talking about the prospect of talks with Russian officials planned to take place close to the border with Belarus, Reuters reports. It has the following lines so far:
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”. He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
Thus far he does not seem a fool. He and his country are prepared to fight, which is essential to get the other side talking, but if a way can be had to acceptably limit damage it seems he would try. It would be interesting how well he can bring his country with him if that path does prove viable.
I suspect that a lot of the Western assistance is at least being partly conditional of him entertaining vaguely reasonable terms for ending this (even if things go so well that he is in a strong position to push for more). Whilst supporting him and Ukraine strongly there can be no doubt that ultimately we want this to finish asap.
Here's the problem. What would a decent settlement look like. Anything more that Putin began with could be treated by the Kremlin as a win. Anyway we've played our big financial card so let's see how it pans out.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
What’s the cost of the ruble dropping 10% against the US$ in the past week?
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
"Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinskiy has been talking about the prospect of talks with Russian officials planned to take place close to the border with Belarus, Reuters reports. It has the following lines so far:
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”. He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
Thus far he does not seem a fool. He and his country are prepared to fight, which is essential to get the other side talking, but if a way can be had to acceptably limit damage it seems he would try. It would be interesting how well he can bring his country with him if that path does prove viable.
I suspect that a lot of the Western assistance is at least being partly conditional of him entertaining vaguely reasonable terms for ending this (even if things go so well that he is in a strong position to push for more). Whilst supporting him and Ukraine strongly there can be no doubt that ultimately we want this to finish asap.
Here's the problem. What would a decent settlement look like. Anything more that Putin began with could be treated by the Kremlin as a win. Anyway we've played our big financial card so let's see how it pans out.
Not if there were new kinds of guarantees about reduced direct Russian involvement alongside being out of NATO, to be policed by large external actors.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Perhaps you should stick to commenting on Washington politics?
Don't be be like that! We all comment on other countries' politics all the time. Not as important as the Bristol South Town Council by-election, true, but still vaguely interesting, and SSI's US perspective is as interesting as anyone's.
The perspective isn’t interesting when it is totally wrong.
Should also mention because it isn't being mentioned enough elsewhere that the Russian central bank have appealed for calm after so many people tried to get their money out of ATMs.
The full banking crisis starts tomorrow though, when people can't their money out of branches....
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
I think Putin has twigged he is not merely fighting Ukraine. As that penny drops, it is a tad more dangerous.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
What’s the cost of the ruble dropping 10% against the US$ in the past week?
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
Only 10%?
That seems optimistic.
I think they spent the first $200bn of their war chest to prop up the Rouble on Thursday.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I don't know where that sum comes from. War is expensive, but not that expensive, at least in direct terms. Possibly the knock on effect for the economy would be.
Yea. That figure is whiffy.
Dunno - what is the cost of the military kit he has allegedly lost so far? Although that is a sunk cost.
What’s the cost of the ruble dropping 10% against the US$ in the past week?
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Perhaps you should stick to commenting on Washington politics?
Don't be be like that! We all comment on other countries' politics all the time. Not as important as the Bristol South Town Council by-election, true, but still vaguely interesting, and SSI's US perspective is as interesting as anyone's.
The perspective isn’t interesting when it is totally wrong.
Like their US GOP comrades assembled at CPAC, UK Tories would rather rave about dangers of Woke than wake up to the Putinist threat abroad AND at home.
Thus bending over backwards giving aid and comfort to their spiritual leader - Vladimir Putin.
Side note - keep your eye on Hungary, where Viktor Orban is clearly hoping to get some goodies out of the deal now going down. Including (I'm guessing) "autonomy" for Sub (or Trans) Carpathia, part of which has ethnic-Hungarian majority.
Perhaps you should stick to commenting on Washington politics?
Don't be be like that! We all comment on other countries' politics all the time. Not as important as the Bristol South Town Council by-election, true, but still vaguely interesting, and SSI's US perspective is as interesting as anyone's.
The perspective isn’t interesting when it is totally wrong.
Greens have got Bristol South Town in the bag. Betting tip.
Edit. Oops. I’ve managed to do one of them double yoke posts myself. Dare I start deleting bits of it?
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
If it is to go in, someone needs to build Germany a Plan B.
So...
The world energy markets are wonderfully and curiously interconnected. (And this is one of those times I wish I was still a money manager!)
So, right now (despite pretty low demand), European natural prices are spiking as everyone rushes to make sure that storage facilities are filled to the brim. This has in turn meant that US natural gas prices are rising as it now makes more sense to send incremental gas to LNG liquification plants in the US for export.
This means that in the US, coal is beginning to look like better value for electricity production. Powder River Basin coal has gone from about $12/ton to more than $30, as gas is diverted abroad.
Putin's invasion is therefore saving the US coal industry as another unintended consequence.
The bottleneck right now is LNG shipping capacity. The US (and Australia) could happily burn more coal for electrical generation, and therefore export more gas. Without Bloomberg, I don't know what LNG day rates are right now, but I'd be very surprised if they were less than $200,000 (against only $25-30,000 last summer).
The growing crisis requires a mature, level headed adult to lead our country, whereas the Tories have lumbered us with a spoiled, entitled child.
What would you have done differently and why?
Not made Truss Foreign Sec Not made the Afghan evacuation the farce it was Not responded to Elwood in that disgraceful manner in the header Not ennobled a parcel of tory-sponsoring oligarchs Not been a spoiled, entitled child
the fact that he hasn't actually publicly shat himself in the less-than-a-week since the actual invasion is not the complete vindication you seem to suggest. Russia does its homework: their takedown of truss after her farcical Moscow visit proved that they study her and us in depth. Knowing what sort of a man johnson is will have emboldened Putin.
Carl Bildt @carlbildt In the one country after the other what was unthinkable yesterday becomes necessary today. 🇸🇪 now announces sending also 5.000 AT4 antitank weapons to 🇺🇦. That’s substantial. It’s an effective weapon highly regarded by also the US Army. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1497983633365286914
Should also mention because it isn't being mentioned enough elsewhere that the Russian central bank have appealed for calm after so many people tried to get their money out of ATMs.
The full banking crisis starts tomorrow though, when people can't their money out of branches....
Yup. China will turn the screws and extract its demands, too. Settle this down or no help.
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
Not sure about that last point. One strategic problem Russia has always had is that it is basically two cities, Moscow and StP. Russia would have to take out a dozen Western Cities to achieve equivalence.
Incidentally, isn't there a major problem with the idea of Russia nuking Kyiv in that it would certainly damage Belarus and parts of Russia too?
Carl Bildt @carlbildt In the one country after the other what was unthinkable yesterday becomes necessary today. 🇸🇪 now announces sending also 5.000 AT4 antitank weapons to 🇺🇦. That’s substantial. It’s an effective weapon highly regarded by also the US Army. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1497983633365286914
At this rate Ukraine is going to be the most well equipped army in Europe. (Admittedly this is Sweden but) I do wonder a bit about whether there becomes a point whereby the distinction about NATO involvement or not is determined by boots on the ground is purely academic. And how that changes things (it probably explains Putin’s action today)
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
It would depend on the target. If the targets are in Ukraine, I would *not* respond with nukes. I would get a worldwide moratorium on Russia and everything Russian. Make them a pariah state (more so than at the moment).
Sadly, we may need to respond with nukes if the targets were anywhere outside Ukraine.
What worries me is if Russia used chemical or biological weapons. They have the capability, and we don't. Our only response is nuclear.
Carl Bildt @carlbildt In the one country after the other what was unthinkable yesterday becomes necessary today. 🇸🇪 now announces sending also 5.000 AT4 antitank weapons to 🇺🇦. That’s substantial. It’s an effective weapon highly regarded by also the US Army. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1497983633365286914
At this rate Ukraine is going to be the most well equipped army in Europe. (Admittedly this is Sweden but) I do wonder a bit about whether there becomes a point whereby the distinction about NATO involvement or not is determined by boots on the ground is purely academic. And how that changes things (it probably explains Putin’s action today)
If the distinction is less than Ukraine might more easily concede not to seek to join NATO, but presumably would make it less a concession to Russian eyes. And the wish to join the EU would remain.
Germany has shown the way today with a bold (though belated) u-turn on defence and foreign policy. In Britain can we now have, tomorrow, a proper energy/security policy and a big expansion of the defence budget? Living in a different era now.
This will be difficult for the current Prime Minister and will involve difficult conversations with Mrs Johnson, his father and some of Boris's biggest supporters. So be it. This is not a David Attenborough doc. Energy supply will have to be secured, quickly.
Also going to require a lot of the media pundits to do some serious rewriting of their positions. Boris continuously criticised for not even going anywhere near far enough on the eco-stuff.
We need to double down on the eco stuff. The less reliance on gas the better.
We need to be energy secure - in surplus if possible. If that comes from good renewables, so much the better. But if it comes from fuels which dare not speak their name, we just have to live with it for the time being.
Agreed, but the green lobby won’t allow it. High gas prices are desirable to ensure moving away from gas. They don’t care about the effect on people. Renewables are the desired end game but we don’t want to impoverish people getting there.
It seems a very good reason for preserving some oil/gas fields, or opening up a new one or two.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
When the war is costing £20b a day that won’t go far
I spotted that number, and I don't believe it.
Brief envelope calculation of part of the cost.
200k of armed forces personnel at Ukraine's borders, or invading. Russia GPD per pop = 10k USD.
Multiply up, remembering that GDP is double the amount paid to a professional Russian soldier, which is around £6k a year, and that many of these are conscripts, so the GDP figure accounts for a big chunk of the overheads, gives a number of 200k*6k=1200 million per month, or 40 million per day for soldiers' wages.
Fine there is the kit and the missiles (200 so far?) and the planes shot down etc.
But 20 billion £ or $ a day is BS when soldiers' wages are $0.04 billion per day.
I think this number was from an Estonian Minister, and the rest of his report was credible.
In Roubles 20 billion is still $250 million or so or 0.25 billion $, which is a more credible.
There are Russians all over Hampstead with their noses pressed up against the windows of the local Estate Agents. Foxtons have put a 10% premium on all property with an NW3 postcode.
I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
I think you are a little high with that estimate.
Russian natural gas exports (total) are 6.5% of $400bn - or $25bn/year*. And their gas is exported through three major pipelines, half a dozen minor ones, and two LNG plants (Sakhalin-2 and Yamal).
Nordstream 1 is a big pipe, sending about 40BCM of gas a year, but it is smaller than the pipeline that runs through Ukraine (a 65BCM pipe).
Total exports of natural gas to non-former USSR countries are about 185BCM a year, so Nordstream 1 is probably more like $1bn every six weeks.
* That's the 2019 number. As gas contracts are mostly oil price linked, the number is probably a bit higher today, but almost certainly not more than $40bn.
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
Agreed Leon russias concerns should have been listened to more before they invaded Ukraine...
That is perhaps true. I have argued as much here (to great unpopularity).
But .... it needs to be said clearly that there is no rational justification for this war.
Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a huge military operation are wrong.
The situation in the Donbass did need sorting, but not by a massive escalation of the conflict.
The war is unfair and frankly senseless.
It needs stopping before it gets completely out of hand.
We need to put pressure on both sides to talk and accept some sensible compromise.
That your second to fifth paragraphs are true is why the first sentence was wrong and thus unpopular. It supposes something could have been done to mollify Putin, yet his explanations for action argue against that being possible.
When the concerns expressed and demands made were not all rational (Ukraine is not a real country, NATO expanded 25 years ago and that means my aggression now makes sense...) there is not really a means to meet those expressing them halfway. An irrational concern cannot be sensibly addressed.
Ukraine is the weaker party and absent a lengthy guerilla war probably cannot expect to get out of this without conceding something it would rather not, so may find that the lesser evil to choose. But any such concession would not make the demands and concerns as set out in great detail by Putin as part of absurd historical grievances any more reasonable.
The sensible thing to do now is get the disputed areas (Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk) demilitarised and under UN peacekeeping forces ... and hold a plebiscite.
Which is what I have been saying all along.
It might well happen. But Putin can make anywhere he likes a 'disputed' area, hence his dimissal of Ukraine as even a thing and its rulers drug dealing nazis, by moving in troops.
You seem to think I am supporting Putin in his wilder ravings. I am not.
I am trying to point out a resolution of a situation that now seems even more incredibly dangerous than it was a few days ago.
You are absolutely delighted he's threatened us with nukes, aren't you?
"See, we shouldn't poke the bear"
Are you clinically insane?
Nobody can possibly be "absolutely delighted" to be threatened with nukes, unless they know nothing about nuclear war.
I have never used the "poke the bear" analogy.
I have merely insisted that there is a Russian minority in Ukraine, and they have rights.
And I have also insisted that many ordinary Russians do not support Putin's dubious historico-philosophical fantasies.
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
It would depend on the target. If the targets are in Ukraine, I would *not* respond with nukes. I would get a worldwide moratorium on Russia and everything Russian. Make them a pariah state (more so than at the moment).
Sadly, we may need to respond with nukes if the targets were anywhere outside Ukraine.
What worries me is if Russia used chemical or biological weapons. They have the capability, and we don't. Our only response is nuclear.
How much damage can chemical/biological weapons cause though? Obviously loads of deaths, but not the end of civilisation.
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
Not sure about that last point. One strategic problem Russia has always had is that it is basically two cities, Moscow and StP. Russia would have to take out a dozen Western Cities to achieve equivalence.
Incidentally, isn't there a major problem with the idea of Russia nuking Kyiv in that it would certainly damage Belarus and parts of Russia too?
I just don't think NATO would needlessly target civilians whatever happened.
Of course, it needs to claim it might because that might be the only deterrent that could stop Russia from doing the same to ours.
If you were Zelenskyy right now, would you go to the Belarus border for a meeting right now? Highly risky
As mentioned yesterday, President Big Hat is due to commit forces over the next 48-72 hours and that has been confirmed by the Ukrainians this afternoon, who said they had reports of Belarus forces prepping. This might be an important addition because it potentially enables the opening of a new front, if the Belarus military can fight.
Yep it's not just the nuclear threat, we are right on the verge of a huge escalation dragging in other countries.
The western world, probably the whole world, stands right now on the edge of a precipice.
The best hope is that Russian generals see sense and remove the madman. We need to incentivise them to do so.
Yes. This feels awfully dangerous now. We are one or two geopolitical missteps from a massive war across eastern Europe. And a couple more errors from actual nuclear conflict
When it comes nuclear war will be quick - Hopefully governments in the west are toning down their (understandable) reaction so far and offering Putin a way out .Its sad but Ukraine holding out has made the world a more dangerous place. Escalation here can go exponentially within a couple of hours
Not another one!
No-one on this forum has experienced the horrors of war. Iam a man of peace and want a solution hence we must listen to russias concerns before disaster engulfs the west
O man of peace; Could you just remind us what was the Russian concern which will be solved for them by an ultra violent invasion of a UN recognised non NATO sovereign country bigger than France?
Invasion was sadly a last resort...Putin felt he wasn't listened to and got angry and lashed out
My best case of NATO's response in the case of Putin using nuclear weapons is that it would be launch targeted Trident strikes on all Russian military and nuclear launch facilities to cripple its capability to fight, and would try and destroy Putin personally.
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
It would depend on the target. If the targets are in Ukraine, I would *not* respond with nukes. I would get a worldwide moratorium on Russia and everything Russian. Make them a pariah state (more so than at the moment).
Sadly, we may need to respond with nukes if the targets were anywhere outside Ukraine.
What worries me is if Russia used chemical or biological weapons. They have the capability, and we don't. Our only response is nuclear.
How much damage can chemical/biological weapons cause though? Obviously loads of deaths, but not the end of civilisation.
TimT's an expert on this sort of thing, but some biological weapons (proposed only, hopefully, or if developed long got rid of) were extremely nasty.
And we don't have a response. AIUI, until either Clinton or Obama, the official US response was to use nukes.
Comments
Almost every Russian I know has said the invasion is wrong.
That does not alter the fact that there is a Russian minority in the country of Ukraine. You can be Russian and not support the invasion.
Actually it was Qui-Gonn Jinn who said that and he was wrong, but only in the extent - some cost in the present is justifiable, even potentially significant cost, but the present concerns cannot simply be ignored either, not when they are so vital.
Zelinskiy said talks with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko were “very substantive”.
He said he doesn’t want troops to move from Belarus to Ukraine and Lukashenko assured him of this
Zelinskiy said we all need to act pragmatically to achieve our goal and he said Ukraine’s goal was territorial integrity."
Interesting. Zelenskiy is sounding very cool-headed, balanced and sober here.
Maybe we're not all going to be frazzled after all !
"I speak from a deep knowledge of history and human nature...my concern is humanity as a whole"
Take your knowledge and concern . . . and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.
The implications of such blanket comments is that no one could ever say anything beyond the areas they are expert in, and even that doesn't work when so much is still contested.
Further sanctions may well be needed, and I add my voice to calls for UEFA to strip Russia of the privilege of hosting the Champions League final.
I appreciate that lots of planning goes into this event, but there are plenty of venues experienced in hosting it, including the Principality Stadium, so changing the venue should be relatively straightforward
Curiously, a side-effect of Putin's aggression has been to heal some of the division between the centre and left. I have lots of left-wing friends, but I've not heard one criticise Starmer for giving full support for British aid to Ukraine. In fact I'm a bit unusual in not favouring banning RT.
I know they have had Chris Parry on as well.
It begs the question why they have got two proper experts on to talk about the confliction, but we had to put with unqualified people doing the "info board" during COVID.
Putin, in his mind, found Russia weak, diminished, and held in contempt.
Since then, he has annexed Crimea and turned Belarus into a client state.
So far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent him from dismembering Ukraine and permanently taking over the East part of the country, thus adding it to Crimea and Belarus.
The West will huff and puff but can't do much about it. Sure, Russia will endure economic hardship but Putin won't much care about that. Anyway, Russians have put up with far worse.
When he goes, Russia will be strong, enlarged and feared.
As I say, contrarian.
PS. Anyone taking reassurance from the way the invasion is going, bear this in mind. Russian campaigns always go horribly wrong. Their troops (and civilians) go through the meatgrinder. But Mother Russia endures.
PPS. Putin I suspect looks at himself as a linear descendant of previous Russian leaders. He sees himself in the line of Stalin, Alexander I, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great. Autocrats all, who couldn't give a fig for human suffering. He's not interested in being the natural successor to Gorbachev, Kerensky and Nicholas II.
The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries,
will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war.
We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe. https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1497973706831929348/photo/1
We’re keeping him going for three reasons:
1: He provides the opportunity to publicly shoot down Putinist lies (and thus achieve the opposite of what he wants. Much like his boss, really)
2: Keeping him occupied here with zero benefit to him or his employers means less opportunity to peddle lies elsewhere.
3: It’s fun to wind him up.
'Excuses' available include helping Germany out of the hole it has currently dug for itself.
It is very notable though seldom mentioned that Energy Supplies have been left out of the EU sanctions package, like silk scarves from Milan. I make it that Nordstream 1 is worth about a billion a week to Russia.
If it is to go in, someone needs to build Germany a Plan B.
There’s so much I find nauseating about this photograph, the expression, the camera angle, the misplaced confidence, the audacity to pretend the U.K is offering full support when there is no legal route for #Ukraine refugees, and we’re paying for it.
It’s sickening.
@trussliz
https://mobile.twitter.com/skiologist/status/1497833211249848322
https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1497976940849946638
Total surprise but wonderful news and our 5th grandchild
Like Salmond.
A lot of uninformed bullshit flying about right now.
Zelensky is a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.
https://twitter.com/WendyRogersAZ/status/1497924876480483333 [AZ State Senator]
Poor old Viktor and his mates in Trumpland.
Belarus’ Lukashenko warns of WWIII
https://www.rt.com/russia/550766-belarus-war-russia-sanctions/
A spirited exchange between a Russian ship & a Georgian maintenance ship.
- You Russian?
- Yes.
- We refuse you refueling.
- Who speaks?
- Assistant captain from Georgia. “Russian ship, go fuck yourself”
- But we run on fumes.
- Ok, then row, fucking invaders!
- BP to exit its 20% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft
- BP chief executive Bernard Looney to resign from board of Rosneft with immediate effect
- https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1497980539483172872
He is showing the world what leadership and patriotism really look like.
Astute to be open for peace talks too. Give the Russian army an excuse to climb down.
What’s the cost of it dropping 10% more tomorrow, as the ATMs in Moscow run out of cash and credit cards stop working?
Marcel Dirsus
@marceldirsus
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: You should follow @RALee85 and @KofmanMichael to understand what’s happening in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1497980909991211017
You're mindlessly repeating Putin propaganda by suggesting that Russian speakers in Ukraine were treated as some kind of second class citizens.
That seems optimistic.
https://antigonejournal.com/2022/02/ukraine-island-of-heroes/
I think this is yet another mistake by the EU. I hope we don't make it.
To be fair to her she realised halfway through she’d screwed up and started to back peddle
It wouldn't look to irradiate and destroy its major cities, although there would undoubtedly be major collateral damage.
How much you want - shall we say 1,000 roubles?
Edit. Oops. I’ve managed to do one of them double yoke posts myself. Dare I start deleting bits of it?
The world energy markets are wonderfully and curiously interconnected. (And this is one of those times I wish I was still a money manager!)
So, right now (despite pretty low demand), European natural prices are spiking as everyone rushes to make sure that storage facilities are filled to the brim. This has in turn meant that US natural gas prices are rising as it now makes more sense to send incremental gas to LNG liquification plants in the US for export.
This means that in the US, coal is beginning to look like better value for electricity production. Powder River Basin coal has gone from about $12/ton to more than $30, as gas is diverted abroad.
Putin's invasion is therefore saving the US coal industry as another unintended consequence.
The bottleneck right now is LNG shipping capacity. The US (and Australia) could happily burn more coal for electrical generation, and therefore export more gas. Without Bloomberg, I don't know what LNG day rates are right now, but I'd be very surprised if they were less than $200,000 (against only $25-30,000 last summer).
Golar LNG. You heard it here first.
Not made the Afghan evacuation the farce it was
Not responded to Elwood in that disgraceful manner in the header
Not ennobled a parcel of tory-sponsoring oligarchs
Not been a spoiled, entitled child
the fact that he hasn't actually publicly shat himself in the less-than-a-week since the actual invasion is not the complete vindication you seem to suggest. Russia does its homework: their takedown of truss after her farcical Moscow visit proved that they study her and us in depth. Knowing what sort of a man johnson is will have emboldened Putin.
Carl Bildt
@carlbildt
In the one country after the other what was unthinkable yesterday becomes necessary today. 🇸🇪 now announces sending also 5.000 AT4 antitank weapons to 🇺🇦. That’s substantial. It’s an effective weapon highly regarded by also the US Army.
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1497983633365286914
“That’s just one way the truth of the situation is slowly leaking into Russia despite state media control.” https://abcn.ws/3soXace
https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1497956985094000644?s=20
Incidentally, isn't there a major problem with the idea of Russia nuking Kyiv in that it would certainly damage Belarus and parts of Russia too?
Informal rate in Moscow is 100, at the few remaining open money changers.
Sadly, we may need to respond with nukes if the targets were anywhere outside Ukraine.
What worries me is if Russia used chemical or biological weapons. They have the capability, and we don't. Our only response is nuclear.
Brief envelope calculation of part of the cost.
200k of armed forces personnel at Ukraine's borders, or invading. Russia GPD per pop = 10k USD.
Multiply up, remembering that GDP is double the amount paid to a professional Russian soldier, which is around £6k a year, and that many of these are conscripts, so the GDP figure accounts for a big chunk of the overheads, gives a number of 200k*6k=1200 million per month, or 40 million per day for soldiers' wages.
Fine there is the kit and the missiles (200 so far?) and the planes shot down etc.
But 20 billion £ or $ a day is BS when soldiers' wages are $0.04 billion per day.
I think this number was from an Estonian Minister, and the rest of his report was credible.
In Roubles 20 billion is still $250 million or so or 0.25 billion $, which is a more credible.
There are Russians all over Hampstead with their noses pressed up against the windows of the local Estate Agents. Foxtons have put a 10% premium on all property with an NW3 postcode.
Russian natural gas exports (total) are 6.5% of $400bn - or $25bn/year*. And their gas is exported through three major pipelines, half a dozen minor ones, and two LNG plants (Sakhalin-2 and Yamal).
Nordstream 1 is a big pipe, sending about 40BCM of gas a year, but it is smaller than the pipeline that runs through Ukraine (a 65BCM pipe).
Total exports of natural gas to non-former USSR countries are about 185BCM a year, so Nordstream 1 is probably more like $1bn every six weeks.
* That's the 2019 number. As gas contracts are mostly oil price linked, the number is probably a bit higher today, but almost certainly not more than $40bn.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-threatens-denmark-with-nuclear-weapons-if-it-tries-to-join-nato-defence-shield-10125529.html
Sweden to send Ukraine cash, helmets and anti-tank weapons.
Will Putin consider this to be military assistance? If so, this may be the last you’ll ever hear from this particular troublesome Jock.
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1497985987506544642
Or being refueled by US tankers?
Of course, it needs to claim it might because that might be the only deterrent that could stop Russia from doing the same to ours.
Sweden will not be joining NATO.
Not sure it’s her decision to make. She’ll probably be out of office in September.
As mentioned yesterday, President Big Hat is due to commit forces over the next 48-72 hours and that has been confirmed by the Ukrainians this afternoon, who said they had reports of Belarus forces prepping. This might be an important addition because it potentially enables the opening of a new front, if the Belarus military can fight.
And we don't have a response. AIUI, until either Clinton or Obama, the official US response was to use nukes.