Amount of idiot in one post is too much, please do not reproduce.

This post was edited by Lvivz on Sep 3 2022 06:38pm

So fresh russian cannon fodder has begun appearing on Ukrainian fronts, russian convicts have a chance to earn their freedom for taking part in illegal invasion, but of course only thing they will get is fertilization.

Imo shouldn't even allow such characters to surrender, as their value is nothing, cannot even trade for Ukrainian PoWs as their life is worthless and meaningless... 2nd army in the world ready to take anyone into their ranks now





This post was edited by Lvivz on Sep 3 2022 07:01pm

Bayraktars continue destroying russians in Kherson region, same Bayraktars russians destroyed 20x over. Erdongan laughing his ass off at the midget in Kremlin, who just gave him free reign in Syria and Azerb (Turkish ally) in Karabakh







This post was edited by Lvivz on Sep 3 2022 07:05pm

For perspective: Germany alone is consuming more oil and natural gas per year than the entire continent of Africa with is population of 1.4 billion people. Now add France and the UK and Italy and Spain and Poland and the Netherlands and so on and on, and you get an idea for how large the European market is. There simply exists no other market of this size or purchasing power which could replace Europe as the sales market for Russia's commodities.



This approach only goes so far. If Russia reduces its gas supplies to 40% of the pre-war level, but gas prices triple, they make a profit. If they cut supplies down to 20%, but gas prices quintuple, they still break even. But once they cut off the gas tap entirely, like they just did with NS1, significant losses to their budget are inevitable. Also note that closing the gas tap is a card Putin can only play once. And, last but not least: once the gas tap is closed, there is no more thing holding the West back from going all-out with sanctions and arms sales to Ukraine. We're reaching the point where Russia has exhausted all its leverage. We'll have to wait and see how this winter goes in Europe, but if they can cope, Russia is beyond fucked.

But it doesn't matter, because oil is fungible, and limited by something literally called a 'cartel' (OPEC+). It's not like Europe and the West say "we aren't buying any more Russian oil, so hey Saudi ramp up production to cover us". Well, they can, but Saudi and the rest of OPEC have already stated they will keep global production similar.

Further, as I've already shown you, Russian oil and gas that goes to China and India is still actually being sold to Europe! This is a fact! Europe cannot get off of Russian oil because the nature of this market makes it impossible in the short term. Maybe, in the future, given enough time to build out nuclear and maybe some renewables, but that takes literally decades.



Several problems here. First off, don't be so sure there's no going back. A lot of people are predicting Europe's economy is going to scream once reserves run out, especially if the winter this year is cold. That sort of situation tends to open people's minds up to skipping past a few of the stages of grief and get right to 'bargaining'.

Second, What other sanctions are there, exactly? The nuclear option (which I didn't think the West would be stupid enough to do, back in February) was to eject Russia from SWIFT, and that's already been done. Like I'm literally asking, what new sanctions are you suggesting will be imposed, I'm genuinely curious what you mean.

Third, please read the article from RUSI that I linked earlier. Perhaps you missed it, I added it to an edit after seeing your edit. The USA, for example, is scraping weapons from *active units* in their own military to send Ukraine. This war, as the RUSI report shows, has laid bare that the West simply does not have the industrial capacity to keep sending more arms to Ukraine. Of course more will trickle in, maybe some new platforms not yet sent there. But this isn't a bottomless well of support. There are hard production limits imposed by the same hollowing out of the Western industrial sector that leads to all the memes about everything being made in China.

As for reaching the point where Russia has no more leverage? Sorry, but I again disagree. Russia doesn't just sell oil and gas, but titanium, neon, steel, food and fertilizers. For example, remember all the kerfuffle about Russia not allowing exports of grain from Odessa (it was actually the Ukrainians refusing to demine the harbors there, knowing that Western media would cover for them)? Well, that grain didn't go to Africa, it went to the West, largely as livestock feed.

So maybe Russia decides it's time for Westerners to eat less meat?

Or maybe it decides it's time for the West to go a few years without building planes while you reconstruct your own titanium and aluminum industries.

Or maybe it's time for the West to learn about hugelkultur and dry composting your own feces into a backyard garden because it wants to keep it's fertilizers to a Friends Only situation.

I think you don't understand that these sanctions have so far been almost entirely one-way. Oil and Gas is one area where Russia has kicked back, but there are many more things it can do.

Also, there are a myriad other avenues Russia could pursue on an asymmetric front. They get blamed for interfering in Western elections all the time, but evidence of that is pretty scarce. What if they actually decide to give that a shot?

What if they decide to attempt to form a minerals cartel across Asia and Africa, like an OPEC for cobalt and neodymium?

Like, the options are endless. For most of our entire lives it's only been America playing that game.

I'll believe it when I see it. The Saudis are the leaders of OPEC and a US ally, it's far from unthinkable that they could be swayed. Also, production of shale oil and gas in NA could be ramped up again if needed. Hell, even Europe could decide to start fracking if prices don't come down again by next summer.


Of course the world as a whole can't do without Russian oil. But Russia is forced to sell it to China and India at a heavy discount. The current chaos/reshuffling on the global energy markets is driving prices up, which has compensated for the discounts so far, but once global prices come down, Russia will feel the sting.




It's not clear if reserves will truly run out. At the moment, it's considered unlikely by most people who know what they're talking about. Russia being relegated to a position where they have to pray for a cold winter so that their weaponization of gas supplies sticks is kinda sad to see.


Key Russian banks were exempt from the SWIFT ban, particularly the Gazprombank which was left out so that the West could continue to carry out its payments for Russian gas. Almost all insurers and owners of oil tankers are sitting in the West; if they refuse to cover any ships carrying Russian oil, their supplies to China/India will become a lot more risky and expensive. If the West wants to go even further, they can bar any Western-based shipping companies from transporting Russian commodities. Visas for Russians could be stopped entirely. Russian citizens hold far more assets in the West than the other way round, we could freeze a lot more of them. And of course we could send far more modern and powerful equipment to Ukraine. Battle tanks, modern jets and whatnot. Production of comparatively low tech products like artillery ammunition can be ramped up, it just takes some time.



Why would anyone fully turn on the party which still represents over 50% of global GDP to side with Russia, which is an economic minnow and which has just proven to be an unreliable partner?

Also, in case you haven't noticed: a lot of the governments in commidty-rich African countries are already allies of the West and implicitly rely on Western backing to stay in power. For example, any time there is political unrest brewing in the Central African Republic, French special forces immediately intervene and nip it in the bud to make sure that the major Uranium supplier for their nuclear-based energy grid stays stable.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 3 2022 11:19pm

Perhaps, but we also saw Biden get snubbed and then rejected by KSM, even after Biden rather pathetically backtracked on all his tough talk about the dissection of CIA asset Jamal Khashoggi.




That's a possibility in the future, sure. Right now, businesses in the UK are getting energy bills almost exactly ten times higher than they were last year, something being seen across West Europe.



So weird to believe that 'Russia is weaponizing energy', like dude we sanctioned them then started cutting all kinds of exemptions on the grounds of "this hurts us too much". Live by the sword die by the sword, how about you assign the blame where it belongs?



K, now Nordstream 1 is offline, so Russia did your "full throttle" sanctions for you.



Indian insurers have already started insuring Russian ships, that happened in like May? June?

Just as with SWIFT, all this sort of stuff does is force alternatives to develop. There was nothing irreplaceable about SWIFT, people used it because everyone else used it. Now, people are using SWIFT and the Russian SFPS and the Chinese CIPS. Enrollment in the latter two are skyrocketing. In 5 years, Swift will be a mere player among many rather than a near-monopoly.



And below:



You should try to understand the incredible tension between these two statements.

America and the West have already shown with Venezuela and then Afghanistan and now Russia that any assets held in the West are unsafe. They are only "owned" insofar as the highly unstable and rather rapidly deteriorating quality of Western 'democracies' allow them to be owned, and increasingly the West is seizing these assets on the flimsiest of grounds. We're now in the situation where the US is opening lines of communication to Maduro to get oil out of Venezuela, while at the same time continuing to recognize Guaido as the "legitimate" president and letting him sit as the defendant on court cases in the US that are awarding endless damages to American companies, to be paid by the Venezuelan government. Afghans are boiling grass during a famine because America stole all their money on the way out of losing the war. Private Russian citizens, even critics of Putin, are having their money siezed.

And everyone is noticing. China is dumping treasuries at a high pace. India is paying for oil in Rupees, buying S-400s, souring on The Quad and insuring Russian tankers.

These sanctions options are double-edged to the extreme. It's legitimately hard to tell if they would hurt Russia more than they would hurt the trust-based institutions that are the whole point of being hegemonic. It's not a hegemony if you have to spend all your time and effort putting out fires.

Oh and also you can't just give Ukraine these systems because they aren't trained on them. MBTs are significantly harder to operate than MLRS, in terms of learning curve.



AFRICOM's headquarters is in Germany because no African country would accede to hosting it.

Very funny to talk about France in Africa given the events of the past year. They are despised.

Edit:

Forgot to expound on this about, because it bugs me: "Why would anyone fully turn on the party which still represents over 50% of global GDP to side with Russia, which is an economic minnow and which has just proven to be an unreliable partner?"

Two issues here.

First, is how GDP is used as a measure of an economy. There are huge issues with this, and the very resilience of the Russian economy and it's impact on the rest of the world attests to that.

Consider that it costs about $1.50 USD to overnight a 2lb parcel from Shenzhen to Urumqi. The cost for the same parcel shipped from New York to Los Angeles is what? $50 or more? Both those numbers get added to GDP.

There's also a problem with the overvaluing of the service sector and relative undervaluing of actually productive sectors. Sure, Western countries have enormous GDPs, but you can't fuel your factories with shares of Uber and Doordash.

Second, how wild is it to say Russia is untrustworthy in the context of it's opponents? Russia has a stellar record of honoring it's contracts, it was Western sanctions that started this calamity with Gasprom. And everything else already mentioned with the seizures of assets of Washington's enemies? That is far more untrustworthy than anything Russia did.

And consider issues like the JCPOA. Major deal, everyone was on board, and yet America immediately scuttled the deal (under Obama, actually, the US was not in compliance with the JCPOA for even a single day), then cancelled it under Trump. It can't really be overstated, and doesn't need to be so much outside the Western media sphere, that the USA is fundamentally incapable of honouring agreements. It simply doesn't have the ability to honour them given their wildly fluctuating internal dynamics.

A deal signed with Russia, or China, or Iran is very likely to be followed. With America? Depends if the next administration wants it.

And this doesn't just apply to the Global South. Europe got fucked hard by America destroying the JCPOA. They lost billions in investments. Right now, today, the big hold up in renewed JCPOA negotiations is that the US is objecting to Iran closing all potential loopholes that allow America to interfere in third-party deals ie impose sanctions on European companies doing business in Iran if America leaves the deal again when Trump is re-elected.

So no, Russia is not untrustworthy. The West and in particular the Anglo states are.

This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Sep 4 2022 12:25am

Assymetry is the key word. Yes Russia can't replace the EU market, not with China, not with western gas infrastructure to an eastern buyer let alone on that scale. But who is getting hurt more? Look to Prague. Russia can set up a vastly disproportionate lose:lose. The EU is already in crisis

The EU is already setting up alternate sources and has their reserves filled. Meanwhile the Russian economy is in shambles as long as you aren't taking your news specifically from Russian propaganda.