Sgt Joch

it would not surprise me if there is an agreement along those lines. Zelensky has already signaled that he is open to concessions, not something you do if you are clearly winning. The war seems to be at a stalemate, so any ceasefire agreement will probably leave the situation close to what it was pre-war.

That strikes me more as a propaganda move or to put pressure on the Ukrainians, it will be weeks at least before they show up on the front lines and there should be a ceasefire agreement by then.

well if you read the debate which admittedly was spread out over several pages at the speed this thread is going, it was about what Russia would get if it went forward with the seizure of foreign assets, it is more than empty stores/MacDonald's, but includes substantial financial assets. It won't prevent the economic shocks which are coming, but will partly compensate for the Russian cash which has been seized by US/EU.

well its not just that sanctions will not be lifted, if you look at what happened with funds seized from Iran and Afghanistan, the U.S. will probably seize a large part of the frozen assets of the Russian central bank and turn them over to Ukraine to rebuild so a big chunk of that money will never go back to Russia.

That is right no one was saying that and that was not the point of the debate I was having with Kraze.

well it is not a question of IF they will do it, they are already doing it. Russia started freezing assets as soon as western sanctions were announced.

Not sure why I have to give everyone a course in economics, western companies have huge investments in Russia, both financial and in major natural resources sites. This article alone lists roughly U.S. $400 billion in liquid assets currently trapped in Russia which includes U.S. $120 billion that Russian companies owed to western banks and another U.S. $80 billion in corporate bonds owed to foreign investors https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/stranded-assets-how-many-billions-are-stuck-russia-2022-03-03/ It is hard to get a handle on total western investment in Russia since much of it is hidden but it could easily top U.S. $1 trillion. This should not be a surprise to anyone, the world economy is intertwined, there are Russian assets in the west that can be seized and western assets in Russia which can be seized. That is the nature of economic warfare. I am not saying western sanctions won't hurt Russia, but we can't expect there won't be blowback in the west.

I was referring to the WH announcement. UK threatened to seize 1.5 billion pound of London real estate, but UK nationals/companies apparently own 18 billion euros of real estate in Moscow alone, not hard to do the math. What Russia will likely do is freeze all those assets and then try to exchange them for dollars/euros frozen in the West.

Expected, but a bit silly. Everyone knew that if US/EU seized Russian assets in the West, Russia would retaliate by seizing U.S./EU assets in Russia and based on publicly available data, Russia could compensate most of its financial losses that way.

China is not Russia, its economy is too masive to de-stabilise without seriously impacting the world economy. U.S. also tends to turn a blind eye when it comes to China. For example, China has been importing millions of barrels of Oil from Iran even though they are hit by sanctions, but the U.S. is ignoring it. China has also been smart when it comes to sanction busting, it is playing a double game. Officially, it is against U.S. sanctions since it does not want to be dictated to by the U.S., but un-officially, its major Banks and companies are following US/EU sanctions against Russia. What China typically does is designate just a few companies to break sanctions, that way if they are hit by U.S. legal proceedings, it does not have a big impact on the Chinese economy.

China will help itself, but in other ways. Russia has been turning its exports more and more towards China and that will only accelerate after the war, no matter how it turns out. Russia has natural resources and China wants natural resources. However, it will become increasingly evident that Russia is the junior partner in this relationship.

re: China I personally don't think we can draw that many parallel with the current crisis. Despite the rhetoric, I doubt China has serious plans to invade Taiwan. 1. Taiwan has been independent for 70 years; 2. Taiwan has few natural resources. China is resource poor and a major aim of its foreign policy for the past 20 years has been to develop access to more natural resources; 3. The Chinese leadership is more risk adverse than Russia. Xi Jinping does not rule China, the Communist Party rules China. Xi does not have the same freedom of action that Putin has. One wrong move, like an invasion of Taiwan that does not work and he would be out. What China wants to do, it is already doing, namely gaining control of the South China Seas and its natural resources.

Only if the US and/or Ukraine have anything to hide.

not sure what you are referring to here exactly. No mainstream conservative paid any attention to any of this until Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State, said this under oath to Senator Rubio this week: which of course raised a lot of questions, such as: 1. exactly what are those labs researching? (seems to have been partially answered here). 2. why is the U.S. "concerned" that Russia may have access to the research material? If, as I understand from the answers here, these are just garden variety research lab, why would there be any "concern"? presumably, this would all be research material that Russian scientists would be aware of. There are still a lot of unanswered questions here. Nothing wrong with the Press asking questions and trying to get to the bottom of this. Maybe there is nothing to it, but just blowing it off as "Russian propaganda", like Kirby and Psaki did is not going to wash.

Sure, might work… What happens if Russia then decides to launch missiles against against NATO air bases in Eastern Europe or uses its submarines to sink U.S. aircraft carriers close to Russia? Once you start shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots, you have no idea where this will end up.

I don’t know where you see apathy. The west is reacting forcefully as it has in the past to similar crises. I just think it is important not to panic and take drastic actions that can lead to WW3 and nuclear holocaust. The West dealt with many similar crises in the past: Tibet 1950, Hungary 1956, Cuba 1962, Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979, Kuwait 1990, Yugoslavia 1990s, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Isis 2010. The Cold War playbook has worked before and will work here again.

well the average citizen has very little interest in the outside world. The global order as set up in 1945 works on the whole. Yes, you have bad actors, Putin is just the latest one, but the UN and the global community usually finds a way of containing them and eventually dealing with them. Every new generation thinks they are re-discovering fire for the 1st time. I finally got around to reading McCullough's biography of Harry S. Truman. He was President in peacetime, but if you look at the crises he had to deal with: Greek civil war, European collapse, Berlin airlift, Communist coups in Eastern Europe, Russia getting the Atomic Bomb, Chinese civil war, China going communist, Korean War, etc. the world was a more dangerous place back then, but we managed to get to today without blowing up the world.

well nothing has really changed, there have been wars going on each and every year since 1945 which resulted in millions of deaths. since 2001, U.S. Drone and air strikes may have killed as many as 48,000 civilians: US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds | Global development | The Guardian Just in 2022 you have wars ongoing in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Suadan, South Sudan, Congo, etc.. There are 82 million refugees or internally displaced persons worldwide. There is nothing special about this war in terms of human suffering that we have not seen before. The only difference now is that this war is getting massive media attention.

The reason why the EU is so dependent on Russian natural gas and has not made a serious effort to change that is based on a bunch of factors, none of which is easily solved: 1. EU has been increasing its use of natural gas for years since it is considered a "cleaner energy" compared to coal of which the EU has plentiful supplies. Obviously switching back to coal fired plants is a non starter for environmental reasons. 2. Natural Gas is used mostly in industrial production/electricity generation. Residential heating accounts for only a small part of use so just switching off Russian Gas imports would have huge economic impacts; 3. Even if the decision was made to switch, there is no readily available alternative supply. The only other source would be Liquified Natural Gas ("LNG"), but that raises a whole bunch of other issues: 3.1 LNG has to be transported by ships, so you need specialized LNG carriers. You also need specialized LNG terminals both at the export port and the import port in Europe. All of these take a long time to build and a long lead time; 3.2 The EU does not have enough LNG terminals to handle all the LNG that would be required. Last data I saw showed that capacity was at 40% of potential demand. The EU has been planning to add LNG terminals, but you run into the issue that all projects are opposed by environmental groups, i.e. "not in my backyard", so all are stalled at the planning stage; 3.3 even if the port capacity issue is solved, the question is where would the gas come from? The only potential suppliers are USA and Qatar and all of their LNG exports are already accounted for in long term contracts, mostly to Asia where LNG is sold at premium prices. Asia has also been building lots of new LNG import terminals since demand there is taking off as well; 3.4 one way to partially solve the issue would be for the USA to increase natural gas production from shale and build additional LNG export terminals on the East coast/Gulf of Mexico, both ideas which have been discussed, but both are opposed by U.S. environmental groups. So there you have it. Everyone knows the issues, but solving the problem would require politicians to take unpopular decisions, so it is easier to just delay and keep buying Russian Gas.

Not surprising, I saw another estimate on twitter of roughly 68% In the initial phase of a war, a majority of citizens generally support their own government. That may change if the war lasts months and turns decisively against RussIa. Implication of course is that the western hope that Putin may be overthrown in a few days or weeks is just wishful thinking.

Without getting into the weeds on this, targeting civilian buildings in and of itself, is not a violation of the law of war, context matters. deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. targeting civilian buildings occupied by enemy military units or accidentally hitting civilian buildings while targeting enemy units is not. Amnesty International always takes an extreme view of this, they also accused U.S./UK/NATO of war crimes for doing similar acts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They could...but 6-12 months down the road the EU would have a major financial sinkhole which could be 3x to 5x worse than Greece ever was...

EU candidate status is just the first part. Turkey received candidate status in 1999... Steve alluded to it, but a lot of work needs to be done. Ukraine's businesses generally cannot compete against EU businesses and the level of government corruption is still too high by EU standard to name just 2 problems. Despite having 8 years of pro-western govts, these problems have only been partially addressed. In its current state, full EU membership would mean a lot of UKR companies would go bankrupt and the EU having to pour Billions of Euros in to prop up the economy and Govt. If Ukraine puts in the effort, you might see full membership in 5-10 years.

Ukraine and EU signed a bunch of agreements back in 2014 and after regarding potential membership. What has been holding it up is the fact that Ukraine is nowhere near to meeting any of the membership criterias.

Those countries are part of NATO and at that point, we will have no choice. Ukraine is not part of NATO.