I've never thought NATO even wants Ukraine to join, not whilst there are territorial conflicts in it which is why Russian invasion to prevent it was pointless, not least since it increases all non-direct support from NATO anyway.
But even if that means a promise not to join NATO is technically a concession Ukraine might decide to make, the following is a hard sell:
If you are in NATO Russia probably won't invade your country because of the mutual defence clause If you are not in NATO Russia will invade your country with impunity if it wishes to (notably, they have advanced multiple non-Nato ambition reasons on this occasion) Accordingly, you must never seek to join NATO.
I mean, seeing what happens when you are not in NATO only makes it seem more desirable to seek it.
The rational plan for Putin would have been to make being best buddies with Russia the *easiest* win for Ukraine.
Bit like the rational idea of what the Chinese should when Fat Boy in North Korea finally fucks up. Offer the united Korea
- 500 Billion, interest free, perpetual loan to rebuild. - Guarantee the United Korea's borders. - One condition. United Korea will be neutral, and host no military bases/forces from *any* nation.
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
On the first flight outside Russia and a very small list of fellow travelling states the planes will be impounded. They will just rot, which Russia knows, it is a financial harm to the west.
Can the manufacturers brick them using an over-the-air software update?
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Dozhd, Russia’s only independent television channel, will stop broadcasting after Thursday, its chief executive, Natalia Sindeyeva, said on the air. Combined with Thursday’s shutting down of the Echo of Moscow radio station, major independent broadcast media outlets have now all but ceased operating inside Russia. Russian lawmakers on Friday will take up a bill to make “fakes” about the war in Ukraine — which the Kremlin says is not a war — punishable by as much as 15 years in prison.
NY Time blog
Seems Putin is making RU a total one man dictatorship with all discussion closed off and just public lies allowed. Everything else - you are off to prison. Shows levels of desperation,
But, incidentally GOP voters, this is what happens in the end when you build a state on lies and smothering reality.
If they're taking these channels off air, how is it that they're letting the bbc in via the internet?
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
I know planes are leased. But do you actually ever return them? Or is it merely a payment mechanism to spread the cost over the lifespan of the plane?
They are frequently returned as airlines adjust fleet size and replace older planes with newer ones. One of the reasons that most “Russian” aircraft are registered outside Russia is no one trusts Russian regulators and having them registered in Russia would make them worthless on the second hand market - so no doubt it’s a condition of their lease.
I don't think he was including the offensive denazifying stuff, TBF.
@YBarddCwsc might actually have a case, if that proposal were to include NATO membership for Ukraine. Otherwise, as an offer it is, as pointed out, worthless.
I think unfortunately NATO membership won't be accepted by Russia.
But, there should be a way to guarantee Ukraine's territory without Ukraine formally joining NATO.
In the former option, if Russia attacked Ukraine again, NATO would rush to defend. In the latter option, if Russia attacked Ukraine again, NATO would rush to defend. In many ways, these seem rather similar. I guess the difference is that if Russia attacked Estonia, Ukraine would be required to rush to Estonia’s side only in the latter.
I don't think he was including the offensive denazifying stuff, TBF.
@YBarddCwsc might actually have a case, if that proposal were to include NATO membership for Ukraine. Otherwise, as an offer it is, as pointed out, worthless.
I think unfortunately NATO membership won't be accepted by Russia.
But, there should be a way to guarantee Ukraine's territory without Ukraine formally joining NATO.
After their larger neighbour just invaded them and threatened nuclear response on anyone that intervened ?
There is no such way with the current Russian regime. As it has made exceptionally clear.
A friend from Moscow is racing toward the border with the Baltics, has been driving all night—no plane tickets left. "We're trying to get there before the president's address to the nation," friend says, referring to widespread rumors that Putin is about to declare martial law.
"Stop texting me," friend asks, "I'm trying to clean out my phone. They're searching everyone's phone at the border. I'll write to you once I'm on the other side."
Makes me think, the people leaving Russia now, by plain, car or any other means, will be the best of Russia, brightest, most educated, most creative in both arts and science most 'liberal' in outlook. like the Jews that fled Germany in the 1930s. I hope they are given sanctuary, and I'm confidant they will make whoever they end up even better, than it already is.
Rob Lee @RALee85 · 3m Another problem with Russia's goals in Ukraine is that Ukraine's infrastructure and industry is being destroyed. Where will the reconstruction funds come from? Russia's economy is in crisis, and, an insurgency will be even more likely if Ukrainians can't find jobs.
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Does Aroflot have 500 plains? maybe just seems a bit high
It wouldn’t just be Aeroflot. They’re suggesting it would be done by the government and would impact up to 515 planes.
Some of those planes may be quite small, but does anybody what to estimate how much money we are talking about here?
I’ll have a go. Warning, very random numbers follow.
Current Aeroflot fleet, according to Wiki.
I’ll split these out, into the current generation of planes, and the last generation.
They have 15 current generation planes, 163 last-generation planes, and and 10 Sukhois, about which I know little.
Of the 163, there’s 22 Boeing 777-300ER planes. These might be worth $200m or $20m each, depending on year of manufacture, hours and cycles. Some are 20 years old, and some 2 years old.
Most plane leases are for 10 or 15 years, after which the airline either buys the plane or hands it back to the bank. Older planes can be worth almost nothing bar the price of the engines.
Think of old cars, there’s thousands of £5-10k Mercedes S-Class cars in Auto Trader. They are that cheap because they are old, but were expensive and complicated when new, and are going to be relatively expensive to maintain going forwards.
The 15 latest gen planes, I’d give them an average value of $120m, so $1.8bn for those.
The older planes, it’s more difficult to say. Those that are on lease, might be on old leases due to expire, and many of them might be owned by the airline with maintenance done as required.
Ballpark speculation for the fleet, $3-5bn. That’s actually not huge money, in the context of plane leasing, but there will be banks and insurers exposed to it.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I expect Labour to hold Birmingham Erdington with a small swing from the Tories, otherwise little change.
The seat was 63% Leave so Tory voters there should like Boris more than the average Tory voter, so the Tory vote should hold up OK.
May not be a good night for the LDs though in this strong Leave constituency. Even in 2019 the Brexit Party beat the LDs for 3rd and the Liberals will be at risk of coming 5th or even 6th behind RefUK, Nellist and the Greens
Dozhd, Russia’s only independent television channel, will stop broadcasting after Thursday, its chief executive, Natalia Sindeyeva, said on the air. Combined with Thursday’s shutting down of the Echo of Moscow radio station, major independent broadcast media outlets have now all but ceased operating inside Russia. Russian lawmakers on Friday will take up a bill to make “fakes” about the war in Ukraine — which the Kremlin says is not a war — punishable by as much as 15 years in prison.
NY Time blog
Seems Putin is making RU a total one man dictatorship with all discussion closed off and just public lies allowed. Everything else - you are off to prison. Shows levels of desperation,
But, incidentally GOP voters, this is what happens in the end when you build a state on lies and smothering reality.
There was a good Storyville (one of the jewels in the BBC crown afaiac) on BBC4 on Dozhd last night.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
On the first flight outside Russia and a very small list of fellow travelling states the planes will be impounded. They will just rot, which Russia knows, it is a financial harm to the west.
Can the manufacturers brick them using an over-the-air software update?
No, definitely not.
Would you want planes that can have their software updated remotely?
They do have loads of telemetry going *from* the plane though. They’ll struggle to hide it from the lease company.
Brings to mind this recent piece of chin-stroke from Lozza Fox.
It’s depressing to realise that once you know someone’s views on Covid, you can predict with a high degree of accuracy their views on pretty much everything else. Humanity has become just two warring tribes now. Nuance is the collateral damage of the social media age.
How about that eh? - "Nuance is the collateral damage of the social media age".
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
On the first flight outside Russia and a very small list of fellow travelling states the planes will be impounded. They will just rot, which Russia knows, it is a financial harm to the west.
Can the manufacturers brick them using an over-the-air software update?
No, definitely not.
Would you want planes that can have their software updated remotely?
They do have loads of telemetry going *from* the plane though. They’ll struggle to hide it from the lease company.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Bad news - Putin seems to have spoken to Macron today. That means he's still fundamentally in place and with authority, at least to any symbolic extent.
Maybe he was asking Macron about asylum options? ;-)
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
If you 'demilitarise' what stops a later Russian coup?
I think there would have to be safeguards for Ukraine's democracy-- maybe immediate admission to the EU for the Ukraine? (Not really for us to say, as we are no longer in the EU, I agree).
So, then, Ukraine ends up with almost all of its present territory, and in the EU asap.
And Russia ends up with Crimea (which Ukraine has no real claim to) and two depressed post-industrial territories.
I think Ukraine would then have got a good deal, actually.
Sadly, what I think is going to happen is Ukraine is going to be partitioned. And population movements will entrench the de facto boundary.
So we should, in fact, by saying "thank you, Mr Putin!"
And what about accession processes and criteria? What about the veto each EU country has on admitting new members? I guess this is why Putin has such long tables, because the sheer number of people you'd need to have sitting around a table to thrash out your "deal" is boggling. I'm trying to stay polite and not say what I really think of your scheme, because I really don't want to put people off thinking creatively, but I'm certain you haven't put a second of thought into the practicalities. Your plan is... psychedelic.
Let"s see how this ends up.
But, if Ukraine gets partitioned, and there are many years of instability & war, then Ukraine will be far worse off.
Do the Palestinians deserve to be living in a tiny portion of the territory that they formerly occupied? No.
Northern Cyprus is 1/3 of the island of Cyprus. Before the invasion of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots were ~ 18 per cent of the population. Were Turkish Cypriots entitled to 33 per cent of the island? No.
The boundary that is drawn by war will probably be worse for Ukraine.
If you don't like my solution, come up with a better one (which obviously has to have some concessions to both sides).
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
I know planes are leased. But do you actually ever return them? Or is it merely a payment mechanism to spread the cost over the lifespan of the plane?
Yes, they get returned.
What happens to them? Are they at the end of lifespan at that point?
Depends on the airline.
Singapore Air for example usually rotates out aircraft in under a decade - these aircraft go on to either subsidiaries or second tier airlines. For example this ex-SQ 777 is currently flying for Rossiya
I expect Labour to hold Birmingham Erdington with a small swing from the Tories, otherwise little change.
The seat was 63% Leave so Tory voters there should like Boris more than the average Tory voter, so the Tory vote should hold up OK.
May not be a good night for the LDs though in this strong Leave constituency. Even in 2019 the Brexit Party beat the LDs for 3rd and the Liberals will be at risk of coming 5th or even 6th behind RefUK, Nellist and the Greens
The other analogy that comes to me is the British in the American Revolution. The Brits could win battles but kept on losing the war. As soon as they conquered a place and pacified it, they tried to move on and lost control again. Charlotte was known as the Hornets Nest because of the way the enemy kept on emerging out of nowhere. Ultimately the Brits struggled to maintain the war effort because the British populace felt the colonists were their kin, while the Americans considered themselves their own nation.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I don't know.
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Most likely the pros and cons of AV v FPTP
Then if any time left pineapple on pizza and Radiohead good or bad.
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I don't know.
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
Simultaneously annexing Crimea while accusing the West of violating the agreement to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity sounds like something Lavrov would say.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I don't know.
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
yes.
it is described as a "political" (non-treaty, non-binding) guarantee. Problem is a binding guarantee by US/UK would be seen as NATO by the back door.
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
On the first flight outside Russia and a very small list of fellow travelling states the planes will be impounded. They will just rot, which Russia knows, it is a financial harm to the west.
Can the manufacturers brick them using an over-the-air software update?
No, definitely not.
Would you want planes that can have their software updated remotely?
They do have loads of telemetry going *from* the plane though. They’ll struggle to hide it from the lease company.
Good. I’m happy about that.
Rolls Royce get all sorts of data from every engine, real time, usually via Inmarsat I think. They use it to plan maintenance, both scheduled and unscheduled. It is part of the service.
I'm not sure I'd fancy flying in a plane without the required maintenance...
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Most likely the pros and cons of AV v FPTP
I suspect Putin's take was akin to that of Gerald Ford (as a talking head in Futurama):
"Frankly I've never felt voting to be all that essential to the process"
It looks like some people are following OGH in on the Erdington Tories but there is resistance. 10s being taken but replaced on Betfair. Thin market though.
I expect Labour to hold Birmingham Erdington with a small swing from the Tories, otherwise little change.
The seat was 63% Leave so Tory voters there should like Boris more than the average Tory voter, so the Tory vote should hold up OK.
May not be a good night for the LDs though in this strong Leave constituency. Even in 2019 the Brexit Party beat the LDs for 3rd and the Liberals will be at risk of coming 5th or even 6th behind RefUK, Nellist and the Greens
#Ukraine Parliament sits in person today to vote essential defence and security laws.A quick and tense session.We sing the national anthem in unity as we begin our session in the most targeted building in all of Ukraine. #LoveUkraine https://twitter.com/lesiavasylenko/status/1499390921573556232/video/1
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I don’t know about that, I always thought the Baltic States were credible…….
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Does Aroflot have 500 plains? maybe just seems a bit high
It wouldn’t just be Aeroflot. They’re suggesting it would be done by the government and would impact up to 515 planes.
Some of those planes may be quite small, but does anybody what to estimate how much money we are talking about here?
I’ll have a go. Warning, very random numbers follow.
Current Aeroflot fleet, according to Wiki.
I’ll split these out, into the current generation of planes, and the last generation.
They have 15 current generation planes, 163 last-generation planes, and and 10 Sukhois, about which I know little.
Of the 163, there’s 22 Boeing 777-300ER planes. These might be worth $200m or $20m each, depending on year of manufacture, hours and cycles. Some are 20 years old, and some 2 years old.
Most plane leases are for 10 or 15 years, after which the airline either buys the plane or hands it back to the bank. Older planes can be worth almost nothing bar the price of the engines.
Think of old cars, there’s thousands of £5-10k Mercedes S-Class cars in Auto Trader. They are that cheap because they are old, but were expensive and complicated when new, and are going to be relatively expensive to maintain going forwards.
The 15 latest gen planes, I’d give them an average value of $120m, so $1.8bn for those.
The older planes, it’s more difficult to say. Those that are on lease, might be on old leases due to expire, and many of them might be owned by the airline with maintenance done as required.
Ballpark speculation for the fleet, $3-5bn. That’s actually not huge money, in the context of plane leasing, but there will be banks and insurers exposed to it.
I expect Labour to hold Birmingham Erdington with a small swing from the Tories, otherwise little change.
The seat was 63% Leave so Tory voters there should like Boris more than the average Tory voter, so the Tory vote should hold up OK.
May not be a good night for the LDs though in this strong Leave constituency. Even in 2019 the Brexit Party beat the LDs for 3rd and the Liberals will be at risk of coming 5th or even 6th behind RefUK, Nellist and the Greens
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Trying to like on the brighter side, still no sign of Putin on screen since Monday it is now, I think, and some definite challenges or amendments to his rhetoric from Lavrov.
I just want to say how depressing all this is, and Putin's threats leave one in despair
We need to stay the course and help Ukraine militarily without actually entering Ukraine, but also turn Russia into a North Korea (that in itself is a horrible thought) unless it rids itself of Putin and his fellow war criminals
I know we speculate re GE 24 but to me I really cannot imagine what we will be facing by then, and I have no idea what GE24 will bring, but the cast iron certainty is that it will not be an environment that any government will have faced since WW11
I expect many people in the mornings just want to pull the blanket over their head and wish we could revert to a calmer, gentler, kinder and less nationalistic world (I know I do)
Ragıp Soylu @ragipsoylu · 5m BREAKING — Putin aiming to seize 'whole' of Ukraine: Macron aide after Putin call — AFP
===
No chance Vlad. Maybe he doesn't know how big it is?
Vlad goes for broke... if in doubt, double down.
It would be very stupid to assume any sort of bluff on the part of Putin these days, but let's *hope* he's doing a good cop bad cop with Lavrov.
@PedderSophie It was Putin who called Macron today, according to the Elysée. The call lasted an hour and a half. Macron told Putin: "you are lying to yourself". "There was nothing that Putin said that reassured us", a source in the presidency said. France is preparing for the worst
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I don’t know about that, I always thought the Baltic States were credible…….
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I don't know.
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
Simultaneously annexing Crimea while accusing the West of violating the agreement to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity sounds like something Lavrov would say.
I've always thought Lavrov (and this is NOT a moral judgement in his favour) to be very clever.
When reading Bernard Cornwall's non-fiction book on Waterloo there was an amusing part on letters/reports on conditions, with the newer troops moaning, while veterans from the Peninsula War were basically going 'You think this is bad? Try sleeping uncovered in the Pyrenees after a day's march and no rations'.
"Reports from the Mayor of Bucha that fighting is ongoing between the city and Vorzel."
Seems like there is a genuine attempt to break out west from Kyiv to prevent any encirclement. Over the past day or so the Ukranians have pushed the Russians out of the occupied part of Irpin, Bucha, and are now going west.
Bad news - Putin seems to have spoken to Macron today. That means he's still fundamentally in place and with authority, at least to any symbolic extent.
Maybe he was asking Macron about asylum options? ;-)
He'll have referred him to British to see if Elba still available.
(1) Crimea (2) The Eastern provinces that were de facto independent (3) Demilitirization
Is a good one. But it seems reasonable - wouldn't you agree - that the party that demilitirizes is the one with the recent history of invading its neighbours. Unlike with the Ukraine in 1994, I would suggest it is allowed to keep its nuclear weapons, but that it loses its offensive military capability, but retains an internal security force of some kind
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Does Aroflot have 500 plains? maybe just seems a bit high
It wouldn’t just be Aeroflot. They’re suggesting it would be done by the government and would impact up to 515 planes.
Some of those planes may be quite small, but does anybody what to estimate how much money we are talking about here?
I’ll have a go. Warning, very random numbers follow.
Current Aeroflot fleet, according to Wiki.
I’ll split these out, into the current generation of planes, and the last generation.
They have 15 current generation planes, 163 last-generation planes, and and 10 Sukhois, about which I know little.
Of the 163, there’s 22 Boeing 777-300ER planes. These might be worth $200m or $20m each, depending on year of manufacture, hours and cycles. Some are 20 years old, and some 2 years old.
Most plane leases are for 10 or 15 years, after which the airline either buys the plane or hands it back to the bank. Older planes can be worth almost nothing bar the price of the engines.
Think of old cars, there’s thousands of £5-10k Mercedes S-Class cars in Auto Trader. They are that cheap because they are old, but were expensive and complicated when new, and are going to be relatively expensive to maintain going forwards.
The 15 latest gen planes, I’d give them an average value of $120m, so $1.8bn for those.
The older planes, it’s more difficult to say. Those that are on lease, might be on old leases due to expire, and many of them might be owned by the airline with maintenance done as required.
Ballpark speculation for the fleet, $3-5bn. That’s actually not huge money, in the context of plane leasing, but there will be banks and insurers exposed to it.
Thanks for bracing it down like that,
There will be a lot of public information about age and delivery date of each airframe online, alongside public statements from the airline and leasing companies, from which more detailed statistics could be compiled.
But it’s been a long week, and it’s now wine o’clock. I think two bottles each might be about right for this evening.
I don't think he was including the offensive denazifying stuff, TBF.
@YBarddCwsc might actually have a case, if that proposal were to include NATO membership for Ukraine. Otherwise, as an offer it is, as pointed out, worthless.
I think unfortunately NATO membership won't be accepted by Russia.
But, there should be a way to guarantee Ukraine's territory without Ukraine formally joining NATO.
There was: the Budapest Memorandum. Until Russia decided it wanted to start stealing chunks.
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I don’t know about that, I always thought the Baltic States were credible…….
The Baltics are not Russian and not even Slavic.
Yeah, but what "Putin regards as the Russian world" does not equal "the Russian world". I am pretty certain he would take the Baltics back in a heartbeat if the could.
When reading Bernard Cornwall's non-fiction book on Waterloo there was an amusing part on letters/reports on conditions, with the newer troops moaning, while veterans from the Peninsula War were basically going 'You think this is bad? Try sleeping uncovered in the Pyrenees after a day's march and no rations'.
No soldier is truly happy unless he is giving it some nagga fucking nagga or complaining.
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I don’t know about that, I always thought the Baltic States were credible…….
The Baltics are not Russian and not even Slavic.
I’m well aware - it was a dig at Putin and what he “regards as the Russian world” as opposed to what the reality based community do.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
If you 'demilitarise' what stops a later Russian coup?
I think there would have to be safeguards for Ukraine's democracy-- maybe immediate admission to the EU for the Ukraine? (Not really for us to say, as we are no longer in the EU, I agree).
So, then, Ukraine ends up with almost all of its present territory, and in the EU asap.
And Russia ends up with Crimea (which Ukraine has no real claim to) and two depressed post-industrial territories.
I think Ukraine would then have got a good deal, actually.
Sadly, what I think is going to happen is Ukraine is going to be partitioned. And population movements will entrench the de facto boundary.
So we should, in fact, by saying "thank you, Mr Putin!"
And what about accession processes and criteria? What about the veto each EU country has on admitting new members? I guess this is why Putin has such long tables, because the sheer number of people you'd need to have sitting around a table to thrash out your "deal" is boggling. I'm trying to stay polite and not say what I really think of your scheme, because I really don't want to put people off thinking creatively, but I'm certain you haven't put a second of thought into the practicalities. Your plan is... psychedelic.
Let"s see how this ends up.
But, if Ukraine gets partitioned, and there are many years of instability & war, then Ukraine will be far worse off.
Do the Palestinians deserve to be living in a tiny portion of the territory that they formerly occupied? No.
Northern Cyprus is 1/3 of the island of Cyprus. Before the invasion of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots were ~ 18 per cent of the population. Were Turkish Cypriots entitled to 33 per cent of the island? No.
The boundary that is drawn by war will probably be worse for Ukraine.
If you don't like my solution, come up with a better one (which obviously has to have some concessions to both sides).
Make Russia bleed until it withdraws back to the 2021 lines of control. Wait for Putin to die and then open talks with his successor about renormalising relations.
Right, so ... let it bleed.
This does depend on when Putin dies, and who his successor is. Only then does the bleeding stop.
But if Putin is reasonably long-lived and chooses his successor, then your proposal might actually end up maximising the sum total of human misery (Ukrainian & Russian) .
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Well, thats a few more leasing companies, banks and insurers, vowing never to do business with Russia again.
Watch out for smuggled plane parts appearing with the dodgy Chinese fakes in Africa over time.
On the first flight outside Russia and a very small list of fellow travelling states the planes will be impounded. They will just rot, which Russia knows, it is a financial harm to the west.
Can the manufacturers brick them using an over-the-air software update?
No, definitely not.
Would you want planes that can have their software updated remotely?
They do have loads of telemetry going *from* the plane though. They’ll struggle to hide it from the lease company.
Good. I’m happy about that.
Rolls Royce get all sorts of data from every engine, real time, usually via Inmarsat I think. They use it to plan maintenance, both scheduled and unscheduled. It is part of the service.
I'm not sure I'd fancy flying in a plane without the required maintenance...
This kind of data is also becoming increasing valuable for outside organisations e.g. I didn't realise until recently that John Deer Combine harvester real time data that operators see e.g. yield percentages, all get sent at the same time to John Deer HQ, who package that data and sell to market makers. They know how the harvest is looking before the produce has even been picked up from farms.
Given the performance of the Russian military to date, perhaps we should ask the Ukrainians whether they intend to stop at the Russian/Ukrainian border or continue into Russia to denazify it!
In all seriousness, if the Putin regime collapses, the Ukrainian state could be the only credible political institution left standing in what Putin regards as the Russian world.
I don’t know about that, I always thought the Baltic States were credible…….
The Baltics are not Russian and not even Slavic.
Yeah, but what "Putin regards as the Russian world" does not equal "the Russian world". I am pretty certain he would take the Baltics back in a heartbeat if the could.
The Baltic states are of course credible but I meant the core slavic states of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
If you 'demilitarise' what stops a later Russian coup?
I think there would have to be safeguards for Ukraine's democracy-- maybe immediate admission to the EU for the Ukraine? (Not really for us to say, as we are no longer in the EU, I agree).
So, then, Ukraine ends up with almost all of its present territory, and in the EU asap.
And Russia ends up with Crimea (which Ukraine has no real claim to) and two depressed post-industrial territories.
I think Ukraine would then have got a good deal, actually.
Sadly, what I think is going to happen is Ukraine is going to be partitioned. And population movements will entrench the de facto boundary.
So we should, in fact, by saying "thank you, Mr Putin!"
And what about accession processes and criteria? What about the veto each EU country has on admitting new members? I guess this is why Putin has such long tables, because the sheer number of people you'd need to have sitting around a table to thrash out your "deal" is boggling. I'm trying to stay polite and not say what I really think of your scheme, because I really don't want to put people off thinking creatively, but I'm certain you haven't put a second of thought into the practicalities. Your plan is... psychedelic.
Let"s see how this ends up.
But, if Ukraine gets partitioned, and there are many years of instability & war, then Ukraine will be far worse off.
Do the Palestinians deserve to be living in a tiny portion of the territory that they formerly occupied? No.
Northern Cyprus is 1/3 of the island of Cyprus. Before the invasion of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots were ~ 18 per cent of the population. Were Turkish Cypriots entitled to 33 per cent of the island? No.
The boundary that is drawn by war will probably be worse for Ukraine.
If you don't like my solution, come up with a better one (which obviously has to have some concessions to both sides).
Make Russia bleed until it withdraws back to the 2021 lines of control. Wait for Putin to die and then open talks with his successor about renormalising relations.
At this point I don't see why 2021 should be the lines of control. Once Russia withdraws back to the three occupied areas, then Putin will be humiliated and Russia unraveling. We should then just keep sanctions in place until Russia withdraws to 2014 borders. Whoever replaces Putin won't be so attached to keeping Ukrainian lands. Crimea can get special autonomy from the Ukrainian central government.
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
Does Aroflot have 500 plains? maybe just seems a bit high
It wouldn’t just be Aeroflot. They’re suggesting it would be done by the government and would impact up to 515 planes.
Some of those planes may be quite small, but does anybody what to estimate how much money we are talking about here?
I’ll have a go. Warning, very random numbers follow.
Current Aeroflot fleet, according to Wiki.
I’ll split these out, into the current generation of planes, and the last generation.
They have 15 current generation planes, 163 last-generation planes, and and 10 Sukhois, about which I know little.
Of the 163, there’s 22 Boeing 777-300ER planes. These might be worth $200m or $20m each, depending on year of manufacture, hours and cycles. Some are 20 years old, and some 2 years old.
Most plane leases are for 10 or 15 years, after which the airline either buys the plane or hands it back to the bank. Older planes can be worth almost nothing bar the price of the engines.
Think of old cars, there’s thousands of £5-10k Mercedes S-Class cars in Auto Trader. They are that cheap because they are old, but were expensive and complicated when new, and are going to be relatively expensive to maintain going forwards.
The 15 latest gen planes, I’d give them an average value of $120m, so $1.8bn for those.
The older planes, it’s more difficult to say. Those that are on lease, might be on old leases due to expire, and many of them might be owned by the airline with maintenance done as required.
Ballpark speculation for the fleet, $3-5bn. That’s actually not huge money, in the context of plane leasing, but there will be banks and insurers exposed to it.
Thanks for bracing it down like that,
There will be a lot of public information about age and delivery date of each airframe online, alongside public statements from the airline and leasing companies, from which more detailed statistics could be compiled.
But it’s been a long week, and it’s now wine o’clock. I think two bottles each might be about right for this evening.
I had a look. Currently flying are basically entirely Aeroflot's fleet from 0.9 to 9 years in age, which I think makes them current gen.
They are leased, where data is available, from different people - Aero Capital Solutions, ICBC Aviation Leasing, BOC Aviation, and SMBC Aviation Capital for example.
Some of them are Chinese, which is interesting, no?
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
IIUC the previous calls involved long lectures involving a lot of revisionist history, Putin's got really into it
This happens to old men in Japan as well, once they get too old for sport.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
"deNazify" - hmmm. So the guys who are into "blood and soil nationalism" and have actual Nazi tattoos want what, exactly?
"demilitarise" - this is simpler. They want Ukraine to get rid of all the weapons with which they have been making Russia look bad.
1. deNazify ... smells like Russian bullshit for consumption by the population at home.
2. de-militarize ... if this means Ukraine not joining NATO, but territorial integrity is guaranteed by everyone, that is fine by me. Russia accepts if Ukraine is invaded, the West will then intervene.
3. Well, of course, I repeatedly argued for a plebiscite, & Ukraine did have plenty of time to organise one. And I was repeatedly told on pb.com it was "too difficult" to organise a plebiscite, so we are now facing problems many orders of magnitude more difficult. Sadly, In times of war, the boundary is drawn by guns, not polls.
Russia gets Luhansk/Donetsk ... and any Russian living in the rest of the Ukraine who feels that they really have to live under the Russian flag is relocated there.
Isn't #2 the status quo ante? Britain, America, France (?) and Russia agreed to act as security guarantors for Ukraine, which was and is outside of NATO, in exchange for the nukes?
I don't know.
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
yes.
it is described as a "political" (non-treaty, non-binding) guarantee. Problem is a binding guarantee by US/UK would be seen as NATO by the back door.
The fundamental problem is that in Russian Greater Nationalist World, Ukraine should be part of Russia. At the very least, an utterly subservient neighbour living on the gratitude of Mother Russia.
A Ukraine with borders guaranteed by outsiders would be the exact problem that Putin went to war to deal with.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Putin determinedly holds to the view that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
We may as well accept it, there are no good outcomes to this that don't involve the overthorw of Putin. It may take months or years but the West should keep up the economic pressure on Russia until it happens.
No 'deal' that sees Ukrain giving up part of its territory should be brooked whist Putin is still in charge imo - and 'guarantee' he offers about Ukraine's future will be worthless.
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Putin thinks that if he can just explain Lenin's mistake on the nationalities policy one more time, Macron will understand why the war is right...
I'm always fascinated at being told how long leaders spoke for on the phone. Apparently Macron and Putin spoke for 90 minutes. Even assuming some delays for translations, what on earth did they spend all that time talking about?
Putin determinedly holds to the view that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
😦 does that mean it wont show Dr Who? I havn’t finished off Tom Baker years yet .
I really hope that doesn't stop the flow of BBC content going to Britbox. It's just getting into the place where it has enough back catalogue stuff to satisfy a crusty old TV obsessive like me.
"Russia's negotiating position - according to the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov - is that:
- Ukraine must "demilitarise" and "deNazify" - Crimea - Ukraine's southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 - is recognised by Kyiv as part of Russia - Two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic are formally recognised." (Source: BBC)
I'd say Ukraine could give up Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk in return for Russia relinquishing all further territorial claims in Ukraine and for Russia accepting Ukraine can join the EU in due course.
Crimea has a Russian majority. Luhansk/Donetsk I really don't know -- but if they can get an acknowledgment that the rest of the Ukraine is not Russian, then it is surely worth it (cf Karelia & Finland).
The danger now is a de facto boundary is established by war that is actually much worse for Ukraine. Once population movements start (cf Northern Cyprus, Palestine), they can be very difficult to undo.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine (minus Crimea & Luhansk/Donetsk) would then need formal guarantees from the international community.
I expect my solution is hugely unpopular on pb,com -- but the Palestinians by repeatedly asking for almost everything have ended up with almost nothing.
If you 'demilitarise' what stops a later Russian coup?
I think there would have to be safeguards for Ukraine's democracy-- maybe immediate admission to the EU for the Ukraine? (Not really for us to say, as we are no longer in the EU, I agree).
So, then, Ukraine ends up with almost all of its present territory, and in the EU asap.
And Russia ends up with Crimea (which Ukraine has no real claim to) and two depressed post-industrial territories.
I think Ukraine would then have got a good deal, actually.
Sadly, what I think is going to happen is Ukraine is going to be partitioned. And population movements will entrench the de facto boundary.
So we should, in fact, by saying "thank you, Mr Putin!"
And what about accession processes and criteria? What about the veto each EU country has on admitting new members? I guess this is why Putin has such long tables, because the sheer number of people you'd need to have sitting around a table to thrash out your "deal" is boggling. I'm trying to stay polite and not say what I really think of your scheme, because I really don't want to put people off thinking creatively, but I'm certain you haven't put a second of thought into the practicalities. Your plan is... psychedelic.
Let"s see how this ends up.
But, if Ukraine gets partitioned, and there are many years of instability & war, then Ukraine will be far worse off.
Do the Palestinians deserve to be living in a tiny portion of the territory that they formerly occupied? No.
Northern Cyprus is 1/3 of the island of Cyprus. Before the invasion of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots were ~ 18 per cent of the population. Were Turkish Cypriots entitled to 33 per cent of the island? No.
The boundary that is drawn by war will probably be worse for Ukraine.
If you don't like my solution, come up with a better one (which obviously has to have some concessions to both sides).
Make Russia bleed until it withdraws back to the 2021 lines of control. Wait for Putin to die and then open talks with his successor about renormalising relations.
Right, so ... let it bleed.
This does depend on when Putin dies, and who his successor is. Only then does the bleeding stop.
But if Putin is reasonably long-lived and chooses his successor, then your proposal might actually end up maximising the sum total of human misery (Ukrainian & Russian) .
You're asking a democratic government to trust a war criminal who is currently committing crimes against them. Without security guarantees, and that means NATO, how does that work ?
The bishops themselves are still supporting Putin, but is this an indication that opposition is still there?
There's been a lot of stuff like this, from academics, artists and even a few semi-regime figures , too. It must surely also connect to why people like Lavrov have felt emboldened to push back a bit on his rhetoric this week, aswell.
Maybe he thinks martial law is the answer, even though his position is already slightly weakened.
😦 does that mean it wont show Dr Who? I havn’t finished off Tom Baker years yet .
I really hope that doesn't stop the flow of BBC content going to Britbox. It's just getting into the place where it has enough back catalogue stuff to satisfy a crusty old TV obsessive like me.
It says in the write up that BBC have agreed a content deal, but as we see with Netflix and content providers, circumstances can change.
(1) Crimea (2) The Eastern provinces that were de facto independent (3) Demilitirization
Is a good one. But it seems reasonable - wouldn't you agree - that the party that demilitirizes is the one with the recent history of invading its neighbours. Unlike with the Ukraine in 1994, I would suggest it is allowed to keep its nuclear weapons, but that it loses its offensive military capability, but retains an internal security force of some kind
Reasonable?
Would it not be wonderful if Russia loses its offensive military capability? Absolutely, yes.
If you can negotiate it .... great.
I was trying to make a suggestion that is reasonably practical and gave both sides rationale & incentive to stop the fighting.
When reading Bernard Cornwall's non-fiction book on Waterloo there was an amusing part on letters/reports on conditions, with the newer troops moaning, while veterans from the Peninsula War were basically going 'You think this is bad? Try sleeping uncovered in the Pyrenees after a day's march and no rations'.
Sounds like a Yorkshireman from four yourkshiremans sketch. 🙂 “Pyrenees? pah wish I had a mountain to sleep on. You should try it down a hole, in the dark with an owl.
Talking of Yorkshireman Dad wrote history of battle of Waterloo as though it was a cricket match. First of all they have pitch inspection and agree to delay the start. The French win the toss and insert the allies, who get off to a bad start with the bat, but star Prussian all rounder turns up late and makes a big score, also returns the best bowling figures. Or something like that off top of me head.
According to a source in Aeroflot, #Russia will not return airplanes leased from European companies (more than 500). Trust in protection of property rights will disappear. Who will ever send any machinery to Russia again?
@maxseddon Russian MPs – including Andrei Lugovoi, of Litvinenko poisoning fame – are introducing a bill to send anyone arrested protesting the war in Ukraine to "perform military service on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics"
Bad news - Putin seems to have spoken to Macron today. That means he's still fundamentally in place and with authority, at least to any symbolic extent.
Maybe he was asking Macron about asylum options? ;-)
He'll have referred him to British to see if Elba still available.
(1) Crimea (2) The Eastern provinces that were de facto independent (3) Demilitirization
Is a good one. But it seems reasonable - wouldn't you agree - that the party that demilitirizes is the one with the recent history of invading its neighbours. Unlike with the Ukraine in 1994, I would suggest it is allowed to keep its nuclear weapons, but that it loses its offensive military capability, but retains an internal security force of some kind
Reasonable?
Would it not be wonderful if Russia loses its offensive military capability? Absolutely, yes.
If you can negotiate it .... great.
I was trying to make a suggestion that is reasonably practical and gave both sides rationale & incentive to stop the fighting.
“Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow remains committed to a list of specified weapons that can never be deployed on Ukrainian territory.” I think we agree trade that bit Lavrov demands and signal very clearly to Russia we are more than happy to trade that - Is it not exactly the same thing already the position of many NATO countries without nearly as much sensitivity attached to it?
(1) Crimea (2) The Eastern provinces that were de facto independent (3) Demilitirization
Is a good one. But it seems reasonable - wouldn't you agree - that the party that demilitirizes is the one with the recent history of invading its neighbours. Unlike with the Ukraine in 1994, I would suggest it is allowed to keep its nuclear weapons, but that it loses its offensive military capability, but retains an internal security force of some kind
Reasonable?
Would it not be wonderful if Russia loses its offensive military capability? Absolutely, yes.
If you can negotiate it .... great.
I was trying to make a suggestion that is reasonably practical and gave both sides rationale & incentive to stop the fighting.
Except it gives that to only one side. From Ukraine's POV, the only incentive is a temporary cessation of the violence against them.
I am shocked that the EU are saying this, shocked I tell you.
Getting deep scepticism from senior lawyers that the Pannick amendment -as was accepted in 2018 - is the reason for UK's slower sanctions than EU has been able to implement. Under EU law the same basic requirements apply. Many emphasising there should be no difference in speed.
Berlin has approved a shipment of 2,700 Soviet-era "Strela" missiles to Ukraine, according to government sources cited by news agencies. The weapons would come out of the depots once overseen by Soviet-controlled East Germany
I wonder how many actually work / aren't rusted to bits?
@maxseddon Russian MPs – including Andrei Lugovoi, of Litvinenko poisoning fame – are introducing a bill to send anyone arrested protesting the war in Ukraine to "perform military service on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics"
It would be interesting to know how official Chinese state media are reporting this war. Are they leaning sympathetically to one side or the other, or are they enacting strict neutrality (and how do you do that in such a one-sided war?)
I don't think this is going to play well for the tories. Putin is pulverising Ukraine and we're doing nothing to stop it. We haven't even touched dirty Russian money.
It's a pathetic response.
We should stand up to the bullies and drive them out of Ukraine even if that risks a nuclear war.
That would be nice. The trouble is that at a moral level the existence of mutually assured destruction not only changes the textbooks for generals about how to fight, it changes entirely the landscape of what constitutes a just war. To wage a just war (both secular and religious traditions are onto this) one of the features has to be proportion, risk, the chance of winning, of doing more good than harm and so on.
So in 1939 we went into war with Germany, after Poland, having weighed up the prospects. It may well have been a balanced decision, with arguments on both sides.
Now imagine that in 1939 Germany held the power to destroy in 24 hours the entire of western Europe and North America and we had no way of stopping it.
What would we have decided?
That's what our leaders face now. God help them.
Hitler was so close to getting nukes first. It is a truly terrifying concept and counter-factual, and of course the basis for The Man in the High Castle. A world where Hitler wins and rules the planet
The difference between that idea, and what we face now, is that both sides - many sides - have nukes. A Mexican stand off
He was no-where near. If the attempted reactor in Bavaria had a bit more heavy water, it would have run away and achieved the world's first melt down. The German scientists on the project were out of their depth
That's interesting - any decent site with more info, please?
Pictures of the re-creation (there's a museum there now)
As to the likely result of running it - see "Hitler's Nuclear Weapons" by Geoffrey Brooks. There was no control system. If it had gone critical, it would have run away in seconds, killing the operators with radiation and escalating to... fun...
Comments
Bit like the rational idea of what the Chinese should when Fat Boy in North Korea finally fucks up. Offer the united Korea
- 500 Billion, interest free, perpetual loan to rebuild.
- Guarantee the United Korea's borders.
- One condition. United Korea will be neutral, and host no military bases/forces from *any* nation.
@kiraincongress for @HJS_Org asking for a no-fly zone over Ukraine: https://twitter.com/HJS_Org/status/1499385381057409030/video/1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/millions-of-russians-turn-to-bbc-news
@ragipsoylu
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5m
BREAKING — Putin aiming to seize 'whole' of Ukraine: Macron aide after Putin call — AFP
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No chance Vlad. Maybe he doesn't know how big it is?
There is no such way with the current Russian regime. As it has made exceptionally clear.
Makes me think, the people leaving Russia now, by plain, car or any other means, will be the best of Russia, brightest, most educated, most creative in both arts and science most 'liberal' in outlook. like the Jews that fled Germany in the 1930s. I hope they are given sanctuary, and I'm confidant they will make whoever they end up even better, than it already is.
@RALee85
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3m
Another problem with Russia's goals in Ukraine is that Ukraine's infrastructure and industry is being destroyed. Where will the reconstruction funds come from? Russia's economy is in crisis, and, an insurgency will be even more likely if Ukrainians can't find jobs.
Current Aeroflot fleet, according to Wiki.
I’ll split these out, into the current generation of planes, and the last generation.
They have 15 current generation planes, 163 last-generation planes, and and 10 Sukhois, about which I know little.
Of the 163, there’s 22 Boeing 777-300ER planes. These might be worth $200m or $20m each, depending on year of manufacture, hours and cycles. Some are 20 years old, and some 2 years old.
Most plane leases are for 10 or 15 years, after which the airline either buys the plane or hands it back to the bank. Older planes can be worth almost nothing bar the price of the engines.
Think of old cars, there’s thousands of £5-10k Mercedes S-Class cars in Auto Trader. They are that cheap because they are old, but were expensive and complicated when new, and are going to be relatively expensive to maintain going forwards.
The 15 latest gen planes, I’d give them an average value of $120m, so $1.8bn for those.
The older planes, it’s more difficult to say. Those that are on lease, might be on old leases due to expire, and many of them might be owned by the airline with maintenance done as required.
Ballpark speculation for the fleet, $3-5bn. That’s actually not huge money, in the context of plane leasing, but there will be banks and insurers exposed to it.
The seat was 63% Leave so Tory voters there should like Boris more than the average Tory voter, so the Tory vote should hold up OK.
May not be a good night for the LDs though in this strong Leave constituency. Even in 2019 the Brexit Party beat the LDs for 3rd and the Liberals will be at risk of coming 5th or even 6th behind RefUK, Nellist and the Greens
Would you want planes that can have their software updated remotely?
They do have loads of telemetry going *from* the plane though. They’ll struggle to hide it from the lease company.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of #Ukraine: we are now moving from the defense mode to the counteroffensive mode
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499345566253436931
But, if Ukraine gets partitioned, and there are many years of instability & war, then Ukraine will be far worse off.
Do the Palestinians deserve to be living in a tiny portion of the territory that they formerly occupied? No.
Northern Cyprus is 1/3 of the island of Cyprus. Before the invasion of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots were ~ 18 per cent of the population. Were Turkish Cypriots entitled to 33 per cent of the island? No.
The boundary that is drawn by war will probably be worse for Ukraine.
If you don't like my solution, come up with a better one (which obviously has to have some concessions to both sides).
Singapore Air for example usually rotates out aircraft in under a decade - these aircraft go on to either subsidiaries or second tier airlines. For example this ex-SQ 777 is currently flying for Rossiya
https://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b777-28516.htm
Airfleets.net gives you aircraft history - take this Azur Air 757 as an example:
https://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b757-26268.htm
https://twitter.com/Anoosh_C/status/1499367800556642308?s=20&t=Q9_MhgO6x7m0y7ZOAI7c7A
But if so, aren't all countries (Britain, America, France & Russia) in violation of the agreement.
Then if any time left pineapple on pizza and Radiohead good or bad.
They’re just normal humans like us on PB.
it is described as a "political" (non-treaty, non-binding) guarantee. Problem is a binding guarantee by US/UK would be seen as NATO by the back door.
I'm not sure I'd fancy flying in a plane without the required maintenance...
"Frankly I've never felt voting to be all that essential to the process"
Boris has cut the Labour lead to just 3% in the latest RedfieldWilton poll.
Boris also ties Starmer as preferred PM while Starmer now leads Sunak as preferred PMs.
On those numbers, zero chance of Tory MPs removing Johnson
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1498364904180523010?s=20&t=ZmpoKza2hnyLN_qx78uShQ
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1498357496976654337?s=20&t=ZmpoKza2hnyLN_qx78uShQ
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1498342246038523910?s=20&t=3WusPXooUxqawDJrfnWa1Q
We need to stay the course and help Ukraine militarily without actually entering Ukraine, but also turn Russia into a North Korea (that in itself is a horrible thought) unless it rids itself of Putin and his fellow war criminals
I know we speculate re GE 24 but to me I really cannot imagine what we will be facing by then, and I have no idea what GE24 will bring, but the cast iron certainty is that it will not be an environment that any government will have faced since WW11
I expect many people in the mornings just want to pull the blanket over their head and wish we could revert to a calmer, gentler, kinder and less nationalistic world (I know I do)
It was Putin who called Macron today, according to the Elysée. The call lasted an hour and a half. Macron told Putin: "you are lying to yourself". "There was nothing that Putin said that reassured us", a source in the presidency said. France is preparing for the worst
https://twitter.com/PedderSophie/status/1499391351829397506
"Reports from the Mayor of Bucha that fighting is ongoing between the city and Vorzel."
Seems like there is a genuine attempt to break out west from Kyiv to prevent any encirclement. Over the past day or so the Ukranians have pushed the Russians out of the occupied part of Irpin, Bucha, and are now going west.
Your suggestion of:
(1) Crimea
(2) The Eastern provinces that were de facto independent
(3) Demilitirization
Is a good one. But it seems reasonable - wouldn't you agree - that the party that demilitirizes is the one with the recent history of invading its neighbours. Unlike with the Ukraine in 1994, I would suggest it is allowed to keep its nuclear weapons, but that it loses its offensive military capability, but retains an internal security force of some kind
Reasonable?
But it’s been a long week, and it’s now wine o’clock. I think two bottles each might be about right for this evening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0
This does depend on when Putin dies, and who his successor is. Only then does the bleeding stop.
But if Putin is reasonably long-lived and chooses his successor, then your proposal might actually end up maximising the sum total of human misery (Ukrainian & Russian) .
They are leased, where data is available, from different people - Aero Capital Solutions, ICBC Aviation Leasing, BOC Aviation, and SMBC Aviation Capital for example.
Some of them are Chinese, which is interesting, no?
This happens to old men in Japan as well, once they get too old for sport.
A Ukraine with borders guaranteed by outsiders would be the exact problem that Putin went to war to deal with.
He's clearly gone ga-ga....
No 'deal' that sees Ukrain giving up part of its territory should be brooked whist Putin is still in charge imo - and 'guarantee' he offers about Ukraine's future will be worthless.
176 Clerics in the Russian Orthodox church have sing a letter opposing the war:
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-orthodox-clerics-stop-war-ukrane/31730667.html
and according to the Vatican that's now up to 233
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2022-03/russian-orthodox-priests-no-call-for-peace-should-be-rejected.html
The bishops themselves are still supporting Putin, but is this an indication that opposition is still there?
Without security guarantees, and that means NATO, how does that work ?
Maybe he thinks martial law is the answer, even though his position is already slightly weakened.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/03/eu-urges-uk-to-act-faster-before-russian-assets-are-spirited-away
If you can negotiate it .... great.
I was trying to make a suggestion that is reasonably practical and gave both sides rationale & incentive to stop the fighting.
Talking of Yorkshireman Dad wrote history of battle of Waterloo as though it was a cricket match. First of all they have pitch inspection and agree to delay the start. The French win the toss and insert the allies, who get off to a bad start with the bat, but star Prussian all rounder turns up late and makes a big score, also returns the best bowling figures. Or something like that off top of me head.
EDIT - see this point has been made already
@maxseddon
Russian MPs – including Andrei Lugovoi, of Litvinenko poisoning fame – are introducing a bill to send anyone arrested protesting the war in Ukraine to "perform military service on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics"
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1499400893111832588
St Helena it is then.
I think we agree trade that bit Lavrov demands and signal very clearly to Russia we are more than happy to trade that - Is it not exactly the same thing already the position of many NATO countries without nearly as much sensitivity attached to it?
From Ukraine's POV, the only incentive is a temporary cessation of the violence against them.
Getting deep scepticism from senior lawyers that the Pannick amendment -as was accepted in 2018 - is the reason for UK's slower sanctions than EU has been able to implement. Under EU law the same basic requirements apply. Many emphasising there should be no difference in speed.
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1499401810276077570
I wonder how many actually work / aren't rusted to bits?
Putin is deranged. Which means this really could end in nukes
Ukraine calls on all nations to suspend Russia from participating at the @wto
Says it has withdrawn all @wto benefits to Russia, citing the WTO's Art. 21 national security exemption.
Letter 👇
https://twitter.com/bbaschuk/status/1499311899300802564?
I really liked Genesis of the Daleks.