poesel

There is certainly fear of bad PR (even if unspoken). But not in the direction of the tanks not performing, but political PR. When (not if) the first Leo gets destroyed and falls into Russian hands, the Russian PR machine will run the pictures in all gory detail 24/7 for at least a week.
'First German tanks gets destroyed in Russia since WWII' plus pictures of dead Ukrainian tankers = bad PR.
Or even the other way round: 'German tanks again kill Russians - Nazis helping Nazis'. They can probably run that first.
That is the price to pay for delivering Leos to Ukraine and even if it may sound petty to us here, for others it's not. And it's not only the Russian PR - Scholz would also get the backlash from inner German actors. That is not something he can fend off easily. He wouldn't also gain much politically from the delivery, as his supporters mostly don't support the delivery either.
OTOH, if it's an 'European' tank (even of German manufacture) - now we have a different story. Silly, but works like that.

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

It seems I have lost my bet that the Russian Federation would dissolve by the end of the year. But obviously I meant the Chinese New Year. So Russia has another 3 weeks to fall apart.
Come on, you can do it!

Happy New Year for all!
This night instead fireworks we had bright light&acoustic performance "Shakheds attack". 32 drones attacked Kyiv. Projectors beams, flashes in the dark sky, thunders of explosions and flaming debrises. On background of this hundreds of shouts from the windows "Putin khuilo!", "Glory to Ukraine!" and national anthem singing. All 32 drones were shot down (NASAMS participated too), fragments of one slightly damaged one infrastructure object. Recently more 13 Shakheds were shot down in other regions of Ukraine
PS. During the day attack Russia launched at least 6-8 Iskanders. Most of them on Mykolaiv. But one or even two missiles reportedly were intercepted - one Iskander was shot down over Kyiv and probably one in Mykolaiv.   
 

As one proponent of western tanks to Ukraine, I'm not wedded to the idea that a M1 or Leopard must be sent, I am wedded to the idea that the West must continue escalation of aid to Ukraine, what form it takes does not matter as long as Ukraine benefits from it.
Bradley and Marders IFVs, fantastic. ATACMS, fantastic. More artillery? Good. Does not matter what is sent, only illustrating to Putin that Western resolve is firm and ironclad and that he should pursue peace and withdrawal now than risk complete collapse later. Clearly Russia does not believe in western resolve, nor in Ukraine's ability to hold, Western tanks are a symbol therefore of the West's commitment to Ukraine that it will do what it takes to ensure Ukrainian victory.
The west is boiling the frog, presumably to prevent Russian panic and escalation. Meanwhile Ukraine suffers, and a slowly boiling frog believes all is well, it must merely wait and the heat will die down. Yet more Ukrainians (and Russians) die.
If another mobilization is begun as predicted by Ukraine, it only indicates Russia is doubling down in the belief that victory or at least short term stalemate is possible and Russia will prevail.
Bradleys and Marders would be a good response.
I think boiling the frog, basically giving Putin escalation dominance is a good strategy, but that must be coupled with Western willingness to escalate. Luckily Bradleys and Patriot systems are a well worthwhile escalation.
 

That is an excellent idea and initiative! The only way to get Germany to send tanks is if everyone does it. Get a few countries to publicly state that they would send Leos if Germany allows it. Then the **** hits the fan in German inner politics, as this is the excuse by Scholz not to send them. The pro-tankers in the coalition will be all for it, and I can't see a way out of it.
 
Easy answer: money.
Or a bit more explicit: lesser availability with continuing demand led to higher prices, which made it economical to use sources that previous were too expensive.

There is certainly fear of bad PR (even if unspoken). But not in the direction of the tanks not performing, but political PR. When (not if) the first Leo gets destroyed and falls into Russian hands, the Russian PR machine will run the pictures in all gory detail 24/7 for at least a week.
'First German tanks gets destroyed in Russia since WWII' plus pictures of dead Ukrainian tankers = bad PR.
Or even the other way round: 'German tanks again kill Russians - Nazis helping Nazis'. They can probably run that first.
That is the price to pay for delivering Leos to Ukraine and even if it may sound petty to us here, for others it's not. And it's not only the Russian PR - Scholz would also get the backlash from inner German actors. That is not something he can fend off easily. He wouldn't also gain much politically from the delivery, as his supporters mostly don't support the delivery either.
OTOH, if it's an 'European' tank (even of German manufacture) - now we have a different story. Silly, but works like that.

but.. your explanation doesn't allow continued bashing of Germans 😉 

Great post though. Although I suspect the yeast infection will keep lingering and show it's head again in a few pages.
Anyway, happy new year all around the globe, wish Ukraine can finish (win) the war at terms acceptable to Ukraine in 2023!

FWIW, National Review is fully pro-Ukraine. Buckley was always a firm Atlanticist and the neocons who run the shop there today are pretty much the same.
No idea why Buchanan isolationism has so completely taken over at TAC. They were never entirely in the tank for Trump, so I'd need to put it partly down to kneejerk Biden bashing.
****
As for outsized advisory fees and subsidies for rebuilding, it all really comes down to what we spent a page discussing above about Afghanistan.
1.  Unlike Russia, the Ukies are not sitting on any massive exportable resource besides grain, so the question is, how do they make money for themselves and for their investors as part of postwar Europe?  Since living well is the best revenge, always.
2. As I've said before, I personally believe in a maquiladora theory; Ukraine's role is to  become a manufacturing base for Europe, offering highly skilled labour at rates comparable to India or Vietnam which will  rise over time to Thai or Malay middle income status. Over time, the lower skill factories can start creeping into Russian oblasts (Chinese gonna be there already).
3.  So those subsidies that have the isolationists so riled up, will be really about (re)building the required supporting civil infra.  That's stuff BlackRock knows how to do (and yes, make crazy profits off). 
4. Notice the Chinese won't be able to undercut the EPC contractor market here although face it, there's a lot of essential OEM kit only they make in bulk.
5. That is FANTASTIC news for contractors, at least in countries who Did The Right Thing (gives sideye to the Germans and Koreans).  Good times to be a Scandinavian firm, for example.
6. Sure, a nice slice will vanish into the pockets of well-connected local subcontractors and 'law firms' (connected to politicians), that happens everywhere.  But unlike A'stan, it also won't stop the growth story from happening. 
6.  Only the threat of another Russian invasion will stop that which is why the Russian army must be defeated, and know it's defeated.
7.  The key marker for that - for all the risks that entails - is Russia losing Crimea and Sevastopol. They are forfeit in any case, owing to Russia's actions, although some foreign supervision could be allowed ("UNFUK") to safeguard civil rights (no ethnic cleansing). UKR could even consent to demilitarisation of Sebastopol (an easy sop).
FWIW

You mean in the same way that the M1 was shown to be a worthless POS in Iraq? That would certainly explain why the DOD is so reluctant to supply them to Ukraine.

Yeah, 'old' is relative. But then the Gepards in Ukraine are the 1A2 models, which are 'digital'. I guess the original models looked more like in the video above.
 
 
 

a lot of answers have been given. but add one more to the list: an actual 24% drop in EU gas demand. 
https://www.ft.com/content/0ab21afc-d034-4279-8ce1-4469d0ce8489
everywhere i come i see thermostates at 19 degrees, sofas shoved away from the radiatior, radiator foil, vents under the radiatior. Also industry takes its share, esp in gass-rich sectors like flower-farming, vegetable greenhouses, and heavy industry.

As far as during ATO UKR tank-expert Andriy Tarasenko (btvt LJ) wrote: "If Morozov /designer of T-64/ and Venediktov /designer of T-72/ knew their tanks will fight each other in the war between Russia and Ukraine, they would hug and shot themselves"

That interface looks so old, it is no wonder nobody dared to touch the software and translate it. Luckily, German is such an easy language to understand.
As a side note: I wonder what the designers of this thing in the 70s would think, if someone had told them that their machine will be used by ex-Soviet soldiers (*) to shoot down Iranian aircraft started by Russian soldiers.
(*) you now what I mean...

That interface looks so old, it is no wonder nobody dared to touch the software and translate it. Luckily, German is such an easy language to understand.
As a side note: I wonder what the designers of this thing in the 70s would think, if someone had told them that their machine will be used by ex-Soviet soldiers (*) to shoot down Iranian aircraft started by Russian soldiers.
(*) you now what I mean...

That interface looks so old, it is no wonder nobody dared to touch the software and translate it. Luckily, German is such an easy language to understand.
As a side note: I wonder what the designers of this thing in the 70s would think, if someone had told them that their machine will be used by ex-Soviet soldiers (*) to shoot down Iranian aircraft started by Russian soldiers.
(*) you now what I mean...

knocking down a Shahed with AAA Gepard

I mean ... on the surface the things - the system elements - described sound more than plausible. If anything it's weird that the Russians didn't have them in place already. It almost reads like someone recently read Palazzo's 1991 article on the CBSO and just changed some of the jargon to make it relevant to 2022 rather than 1917. By that I mean that the CB system described sounds decades out of date.
Theres also a bit of cake-ism going on. The Ukrainians are woefully outgunned and starved for ammunition AND they have resources to waste pointlessly blowing up bits of Donetsk? Huh?
That just doesn't pass the sniff test for me. An underdog that is successful in any conflict doesnt get there by wasting resources. Also I get the very strong impression that - if anything - the Ukrainians are drowning in the firehose flood of real time intel. I expect they have more viable targets than they know what to do with, and their target prioritisation matrices are getting applied constantly. There's no point wasting rounds on housing in a city they expect to control soon enough when there are viable military targets galore. 
Or, you know, just not shooting for a bit. Masking batterys and conserving ammo is not "waste" when it's done with intent and to serve another end.
There's also an somewhat naive acceptance of Russian propaganda as being credible and reliable. I'd be tempted to call that charming if I thought it were done in good faith.
So, overall? I'd say it was wishful thinking in terms of its read on what the Ukrainians are up to, and very mutton-dressed-as-lamb in terms of its read of what the Russians are doing.

That is an excellent idea and initiative! The only way to get Germany to send tanks is if everyone does it. Get a few countries to publicly state that they would send Leos if Germany allows it. Then the **** hits the fan in German inner politics, as this is the excuse by Scholz not to send them. The pro-tankers in the coalition will be all for it, and I can't see a way out of it.
 
Easy answer: money.
Or a bit more explicit: lesser availability with continuing demand led to higher prices, which made it economical to use sources that previous were too expensive.