How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

Good elenchos these last few pages on the nature of demos vs. oligarchs vs. tyrants.

I would foray into my Thucydides or Xenophon for some astringent comments from the Peloponnesian Wars had I more time.

[Aragorn2002]

No matter what happens Russia has many ways left to make life difficult for the West. Putin may indeed not be the master chess player we deemed him to be, but he won't walk away from the board.

[Grigb]

New Murz rant

Quote

Stakhanov today
At night, a Ukrainian drone flew over Stakhanov for a couple of hours.
People listen-listen, listen-listen, listen-listen... They call the military - "Eh, do you hear the Ukrainian drone? Does it bother you? Can you try to knock it down?"

What did the Ukrainian drone do at night over Stakhanov? The Ukrainian drone was looking for where columns of trucks with ammunition were driving through the empty city (due to curfew). Of course [drone] found it. The rest is obvious. [HIMARS] arrived there closer to morning, and this is how Stakhanov looks this afternoon.

Continuation, closer, with a swearing and the sound of an exploding ammo.

"We cracks these "Bayraktars" like nuts." (c)

Girkin about the same strike

Quote

And I don't comment myself, and I turned off comments for the rest.
In "consolation" I can add that I was informed from Stakhanov: it detonated "not like last time, but only for two hours."

 

[Beleg85]

18 minutes ago, Grigb said:

And I don't comment myself, and I turned off comments for the rest.
In "consolation" I can add that I was informed from Stakhanov: it detonated "not like last time, but only for two hours."

This is genuinly funny. I started to imagine Girkin as Arthur Fleck from "The Joker"...

 

It seems Dmitry Rogozin left his position as chief of space agency. Probably unconnected to war, though.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Beleg85

[Grigb]

19 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

This is genuinly funny. I started to imagine Girkin as Arthur Fleck from "The Joker"...

 

It seems Dmitry Rogozin left his position as chief of space agency. Probably unconnected to war, though.

It feels like they are doing it for the sake of doing something. I am waiting for any useful analysis because so far it does not make much sense.

[FancyCat]

Russian Imperialism and Colonialism, with all the baggage of the Soviet and Tsar era paranoid about invasion. One way I would like think of it, and compare it to, is sorta, the French control of Algeria, and the attempt by France to turn it into a integral part of France, vs simply a colonial part of its Empire, which we all know failed, yet France's government still holds views that veers quite opposed to reflection on its colonialism and imperialism. 

In contrast Russia and Ukraine are way more tied together but its honestly not too surprising that Russia seeks to control Ukraine, only that it was full scale invasion, but probably just some big Russian arrogance? Rumors indicate that the Ukrainians who Russia proposed as puppets had falsely stated Ukraine would tip over easily. 

Zelensky, Russian propaganda is quite crude, i wonder, if some of that has to reflect upon what the Russian government thinks of the resistance of the Ukrainian government? 

 

 

 

[Aragorn2002]

3 hours ago, Grigb said:

It is the same brutalization of soldiers and as result brutality as a norm. But we talked about absolutely horrible tortures and for that the answer is what I said - fear. Fear drown in vodka. 

 

No. I do not know him. But his assessment is so sober and impartial because he is a scientist: Candidate of Biological Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Author of more than 30 scientific articles.

He is Centrist. He is neither Nationalist nor Liberal. This is the guy to read/talk when you want to go outside the bubble but do not want to waste time with real Nats. It is just he talks mostly about civilian staff I found less useful for this threat.

The situation is very scarry. And it will be even more scary. This is RU war. And RU war is ugly. 

Russians are Russians. A snake will bite you. What more is there to say?

[Huba]

Steel rain time!

 

[Grigb]

6 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

In contrast Russia and Ukraine are way more tied together but its honestly not too surprising that Russia seeks to control Ukraine, only that it was full scale invasion, but probably just some big Russian arrogance? Rumors indicate that the Ukrainians who Russia proposed as puppets had falsely stated Ukraine would tip over easily. 

It is not just RU puppets. It is RU themselves who are easily misled. For RU Zelensky is clown for whom nobody would fight. Also, RU believes (or rather believed) that if UKR people are openly criticizing Zelensky it means he lost any authority over UKR. RU puppets just played along RU fantasies for more money.

[LongLeftFlank]

8 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Russians are Russians. A snake will bite you. What more is there to say?

Nasty bit of sophistry there.

[Aragorn2002]

9 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Nasty bit of sophistry there.

But so much better than half baked excuses and misplaced philosophy. 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Aragorn2002
No personal attack necessary

[Grigb]

51 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

This is genuinly funny. I started to imagine Girkin as Arthur Fleck from "The Joker"...

I am watching now video of Girkin discussing with Naval "Girkin' (Klimov) current RU issue with HIMARS. The very first thing Naval "Girkin" declares - Current strategic situation of this conflict shows that US lost to China.

[Bearstronaut]

1 minute ago, Grigb said:

I am watching now video of Girkin discussing with Naval "Girkin' (Klimov) current RU issue with HIMARS. The very first thing Naval "Girkin" declares - Current strategic situation of this conflict shows that US lost to China.

Lol how’s that?

[FancyCat]

German public remains in support of Ukraine. That and the continued Russian terror attacks will only make it easier for NATO to supply more weapons to Ukraine. I expect that the American limit on attacks on Russian territory with American provided equipment will start to falter as this keeps up. 

 

 

[billbindc]

9 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

Lol how’s that?

Seriously, this is a dog's breakfast for China. NATO is entirely united. Taiwan has come to realize that invasion is far more than theoretical and a successful defense is quite possible. The entire US military establishment is reorienting to peer on peer warfare at a far faster pace than the Pentagon could have dreamed of (they got an extra $58 billion for projects they didn't ask for in the current budget). China's Asian opponents are solidifying into a quasi-Nato-ish alliance and any possibility of Russia forcefully distracting the US from Taiwan's defense has evaporated. 

And all of this has happened 4-5 years before China might have been capable of pulling it off in an unchanged environment. Now...not so much: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-state-dept-approves-potential-sale-air-defense-support-taiwan-pentagon-2022-04-05/

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

The Russians have already been seen rebuilding in their newly occupied areas. It's not offshore drilling rigs just yet, but since Russia is now economically closer to China I can absolutely see them receiving technical support from them somewhere down the line. 

The idea that this land is valueless to the Russians is laughable. They now deny Europe easy access to gas. As I said previously, the price will now be driven up. Maybe not substantially, but every bit counts. In general here in America corporations would go nuts for a 3% financial gain. 

I believe the purpose is to deny the West gas, not to supply the Russians even more. What do they need the surplus gas for? 

Economics is definitely not why this war was started. It was because Putin wanting to be remembered. I totally agree with this. 

However, if the Russians find steady buyers for their gas (Like India and China) then it's a win for them in some small way. That gas will pay for the losses in Ukraine and mucg much more. 

To disregard the gas part of this is nonsense, especially with the supply being cut, and European nations vowing to stop using Russian energy and food. It's obvious the Russians rely heavily on these two businesses. Coincidence? 

I'm no professional but I have been reading for a long time here. 

 

Not sold.

Deny cheap gas?  Europe had cheap gas...they were buying it from Russia.  Ukrainian gas was not (nor is not) competitive.  Unless someone can point to a natural gas competition crisis, with Ukraine ready to hit the big red button to undercut Russian supply (was there a Nordstream U we don't know about?), then an immediate conventional invasion to stop it from happening makes zero sense.

3% financial gain.  It is an enormous leap to go from an additional 1T m3 of natural gas and a 3% profit.  Sure it has worth but what happens when it costs more to access and sell than the value of the gas in the ground...and for Russia that is exactly what is happening.  You disagree...lets do math:

Ukraine has roughly 1T cubic meters of natural gas (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-gas-proved-reserves).  Its dollar value in the ground is currently 160 Euro per MWh (https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas) which translates to roughly 160$ USD per 95 cubic meters (https://www.calculat.org/en/energy-fuel/gas-consumption.html. I rounded up from 94.79). 

So in the EU the value of the reserves in Ukraine equate to roughly 1.6T dollars...oh my what a big number...must be why Russia invaded...but:

The cost to Ukraine is already over a third of that number: https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/05/04/russias-invasion-has-cost-ukraine-up-to-600-billion-study-suggests/?sh=152876fd2dda  and that article was from May.  So what?  War is just about the most costly business humans can undertake.  But what is the cost to Russia?

So up front costs estimates are in the $900M per day range (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383) which add up to (by day 142) to roughly $128B, and this thing is not over yet.  But wait we are not done yet.  The damage to the Russian economy over time is significant (https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/adding-up-the-global-costs-of-putins-war/).  With an 11% GDP shrinkage as forecasted that is another 166B in losses...and those sanctions along with EU gas weaning is going to last for years.

So let's just add up the cost to Russia of a single year of this thing: $900M per day for 365 days = $328B.  An 11% GDP shrinkage is roughly equal to another $166B (Russian GDP is at 1.47T annually), which takes us to a grand total of about $494B...in the first year; and the gas is still in the freakin ground.  How much to get it out? How much to sell it around sanctions.  I am no economist, and am sure I am missing stuff...this war is going to quickly cost more than the Ukrainian gas is worth.

Russia is sitting on approx $59T dollars with of gas right now, as it was on Feb 23rd - which they are now going to have to sell at less and less favorable conditions.  The upfront cost, opportunity cost and position costs of getting Ukrainian gas out of the ground is going to leave them upside down on the whole venture in a very short time.

Like most of these theories this is a Rube Goldberg strategy...extremely convoluted, expensive and illogical.  

Military action to grab "land, precious land!" is one of the worst ways to go about thing.  Military action to pull another country into ones economic orbit makes a lot more sense, so perhaps it was the Ukrainian markets that Russia coveted?  But wait...Ukraine was already one of their best customers (https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/2018/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by-country#:~:text=Ukraine trade balance%2C exports and imports by country&text=In 2018%2C Ukraine major trading,%2C Germany%2C Belarus and Poland.)

So 1) Russia did not need Ukrainian gas in any meaningful way before this war, 2) The impact to the Russian economy, even if they had done a "clean war", outstrips any profits from that gas fairly quickly, 3) the other strategic costs that hit Russian bottom line also far outweigh any resource gains, and 4) Grabbing gas one does not need while cutting off ones customer base on many level is not a reasonable strategy either.

I think we can put the "resource theory" on the shelf next to "black bioweapon sites".  Now, like a lot of other bovine scatology the Kremlin puts out, it may be how it was sold to some people but it does not add up. 

[Grigb]

9 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

Lol how’s that?

I am fast forwarding this madness while eating pierogi. But looks like the war is part of global conflict US-China. US lost economically and politically to China but still can win technologically through the conventional war. So, US initiated RU-UKR war to get new cannon fodder from UKR and RU. That is why US wants a regime change in RU - to force it to fight China.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

"Washington and its NATO partners more and more often resort in international relations to the policy of blackmail and crude pressure. They try to impudently force their will on other countries and nations. Imperialist bigwigs put forward adventurist doctrines of either a "limited" nuclear war or a war with the use of only conventional, non-nuclear weapons."

Great Putin quote, right? Actually...that's from Yuri Andropov in the early 1980's.

It's tempting to look at Russian history in long form or at the numbers but that often leads to pretty tendentious ideas about "national character' (don't get me started on the supposed Chinese penchant for long term planning). I would argue it's better to look at the formative experiences of the current political elite in Russia. For the most part they were part of the nomenklatura and security services at a time of rapidly declining Russian power and were led by profoundly paranoid people like Andropov. This was intertwined with an approach to the economic underpinnings of national power that vies with the Khmer Rouge and China's Great Leap Forward for hapless ineptitude. *That* is the school they learned statecraft in. If you want to find 'reasons' you need look no further than the fact that Putin and his clique simply didn't see any other options...going as far back as the early 2000's when a pivot to modernity and out of the paranoid security state model would have been a fairly obvious transition.

That is really interesting and I agree there has to be a deep underlying cultural issue here as well.  However, Andropov did not pull the trigger, yet Putin did.  

Further, and we covered this before, why now?  Ukraine was not poised for entry into either the EU or NATO.  A NATO application, if it happened at all, would have taken a decade and likely would have been slow rolled for the exact reasons we are seeing here - "You know fellas, letting Ukraine into NATO is going to cause problems with our gas:.  Where is the crisis?  If it was in the collective heads of the elites who actually run things, what was it?  Any other options "for what?"  What was the forcing function?

I mean if this was the Baltics back in 2002, it would make total sense but Ukraine in 2022 was not poised to do anything as far as I can tell...so why throw the red dice?

[Grigb]

Girkin stated that the recent strike at 20 Motor Rifle Division destroyed whole command. 106 airborne division HQ at Brynka got hit but Division commander was not present. 

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, Grigb said:

I am fast forwarding this madness while eating pierogi

Oh man, it has been years since I have had real pierogi...was in Poland.

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

Oh man, it has been years since I have had real pierogi...was in Poland.

I cannot live without them. It is either that or Borsh. What is funny - my family has no connection to Poland or Ukraine. My family's original roots are from somewhere in Karelia (during 1917 my grand-grand father escaped deeper into RU territory from local communists). 

[Bearstronaut]

15 minutes ago, Grigb said:

I am fast forwarding this madness while eating pierogi. But looks like the war is part of global conflict US-China. US lost economically and politically to China but still can win technologically through the conventional war. So, US initiated RU-UKR war to get new cannon fodder from UKR and RU. That is why US wants a regime change in RU - to force it to fight China.

So… they’re saying that Russia is a vassal state of China and fighting a proxy war on their behalf? Interesting flex by the Russian ultranationalists.

[Harmon Rabb]

52 minutes ago, Huba said:

Steel rain time!

 

Nice!

I saw photos of Ukrainian servicemen training to use M270s a few weeks ago in the United Kingdom. 

Happy to see this equipment finally arriving in Ukraine. Soon it will be M270 o'clock

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

So… they’re saying that Russia is a vassal state of China and fighting a proxy war on their behalf? Interesting flex by the Russian ultranationalists.

If Iran would supply the "gamechanger" drones, this whole thing could be spin as it's proxy war against the US - even funnier

Edited July 15, 2022 by Huba

[Grigb]

3 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

So… they’re saying that Russia is a vassal state of China and fighting a proxy war on their behalf? Interesting flex by the Russian ultranationalists.

Not a vassal state but like an ally or something like this.