I've read a lot of history throughout my life. Especially military history. Nobody in the history of warfare has ever built up like Putin has and not fully intended to use it. But there are elements within the Russian government who are against the invasion and have been feeding the US with information, including the entire invasion plan that the US has shared with NATO allies.
Putin 100% intends to take over Ukraine and make it part of Russia. The US has had trainers on the ground in the Ukraine teaching them how to fight like the Taliban. The US and NATO allies have also been shipping large numbers of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.
The Ukrainians have some experience with guerilla warfare. They tied down many German divisions in WW II with partisan activity for 4 years.
Putin thought the NATO alliance was broken thanks to his guy inside the White House. He also thought Biden was old and weak. He didn't anticipate that the US was going to rally NATO and push back as hard as they are. Rumor has it that the FSB in Russia is very against the war and the oligarchs probably aren't happy either.
The move into the Donbas was just positioning his units for the full scale assault on the rest of the country.
A lot of things have gone wrong for Putin. NATO's unity is one of them, but the Ukraine has also had a warm winter and now COVID is ripping through the ranks of Russian troops. A story came out a few hours ago that Monday saw over 40,000 new cases of COVID among Russian troops.
The weather is a critical factor for any war in western Russia or Ukraine. The land there is very flat with heavy clay soil. It gets very muddy in the fall, then freezes during the hard Russian winters, and turns into an even bigger mess in the spring. This year they didn't have a hard frost.
The troops in Belarus were targeted for a quick capture of Kyev, but they have to pass through one of the largest swamps in the world, the Pripet Marshes. The Marshes served the partisans well in WW II. They are impassible for heavy equipment except in the dead of winter and this year the marshes didn't freeze. The invasion arm from Belarus will be stuck to a number of roads through the marshes, which the Ukrainians almost certainly have pre-registered (anti-tank units set up hidden and waiting).
With the resistance within Russia's government, if Putin does start a war, especially if it starts going badly, there could be a palace coup and see Putin replaced with someone who is more acceptable to the oligarchs.
Putin has wanted ot put the USSR back together again since he took power. He's brought Belarus into his orbit and had Ukraine in his orbit with a puppet until the people of Ukraine ran the guy out and elected presidents more westward focused.
But the Russian people are less interested in seeing the band put back together. The US has a split in outlook between those old enough to remember the USSR and those who don't. You can see it in people's reaction to the world "socialist". People born before about 1980, they think of the old USSR when they hear the term. People younger think of Scandinavia and Bernie Sanders.
Russia has a similar split. The world of the Russian people changed a lot after the USSR broke up. The middle class there vacation in Europe and know Europe and its culture far better than their parents did. They get western goods and are more western than older generations (they aren't fully western in their values, but more western in their thinking than previous generations). Navalny's support has mostly been among people born after 1980.
When Putin came to power his base was the large number of people who remembered the "good old days" of Stalin when Russia was feared by the rest of the world and they felt the loss of the Cold War. But that generation is dying out and being replaced by people who have seen the benefits of a more open society with access to the west.
To the soldiers poised to invade Ukraine, it's more like US soldiers being asked to invade Canada. Very few Americans have any serious problems with Canada. At worst Americans are ambivalent and quite a few like Canada.
Russia also doesn't have an army large enough to hold Ukraine if the Ukrainians don't give up. In the last 120 years there has been a rule of thumb that an occupation force needs to have a ratio of about 20 soldiers for every 1000 people occupied. In that time only one occupation with a ratio smaller than that succeeded (Japan after WW II), all others devolved into insurgency warfare. The US just went through that in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To subdue Ukraine would take 800,000 troops and the Russians have about 150,000. They have the firepower to drive the Ukrainian army from the field, but not to put down an insurgency. The Russians don't really have enough young people to pull it off. Ukraine has a population of 40 million and Russia about 145 million. There are times nothing replaces boots on the ground and there just aren't enough boots.
As far as impact on Tesla or the US, the damage from a war in Ukraine probably won't be that huge, but we will see some problems and changes. The US has promised Europe that it will replace lost Russian natural gas with more LNG exports if sanctions cut off Russia's gas to Europe. That will likely mean already high NG prices (due to exports) will go higher.
On the other hand oil prices will likely drop. The US has used the price of oil as a weapon since the 1980s. When the US wants to punish Russia, it gets the oil exporters we have formed alliances with to turn on the spigots and flood the market with oil. When Russia is more or less behaving and the US wants to hurt China, the price of oil goes up.
The price of oil was high until 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and suddenly it crashed because the US turned on the sanction engine. Russia's economy took a big hit from that. The US did the same thing in the last days of the USSR and in an interview in the 90s the last Soviet foreign minister said the low price of oil was a factor in collapsing the country.
As pointed out above Russia does provide some raw materials, but I think we'll either crank up mining output in other places or have to live with supply shortages. The sanctions planned on Russia are severe and Putin is in a shaky position at home. He could be looking at a forced retirement (one way or another) and then the Russians will be working to play nice with the west to get the sanctions lifted ASAP. They'll blame it all on the "last guy" and promise to behave.
The way attitudes are shifting in Russia, a new leader would likely be far less interested in expanding Russian territory and more interested in integrating Russia fully into the world economy. Russia could be in a similar position to Australia: in control of a large continent with lots of mineral wealth that could be tapped and sold to China. The Chinese are looking for new business partners now that things are getting frosty with Australia.
As far as the war goes China has made it clear they are very much staying on the sidelines. They probably are not all that comfortable with an aggressive neighbor and would welcome a neighbor more interested in doing business than expanding territory. Tapping the mineral wealth of Siberia would also be a good deal for China, all they need to do is build a few rail lines to move the supplies into China on the cheap. And those same rail lines can be used to flood the Russian market with finished goods. Win-win for China.
If Russia sticks with Putin and doesn't pull off a palace coup, the war in Ukraine will probably be brutal and both sides will take big losses. Russia won't be able to hold the country and will eventually be driven out.
The good intelligence the US has been getting about the Russian plans tells me that probably more than one person very high up in the Kremlin is feeding intelligence to the west because they are trying to stop Putin. That shows that the war is already unpopular in Russia and a war with Ukraine will probably be short with Putin removed. If large elements of the army rebels against orders to attack Ukraine it could lead to a civil war, though I think a short and sweet coup is more likely.
Short term the stock markets around the world will probably crash, a good time to be cash strong. But it will be short lived. When traders realize that it isn't WW III, they will rebound fairly quickly. I see something like some flash crashes of the past where stocks take a dive and come roaring back within a week or two. Short term moves in the markets are always emotional, long term trends are more based on the fundamentals. Learn to read the emotion of the market and you can profit when the lemmings all jump off the cliff.
Putin 100% intends to take over Ukraine and make it part of Russia. The US has had trainers on the ground in the Ukraine teaching them how to fight like the Taliban. The US and NATO allies have also been shipping large numbers of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.
The Ukrainians have some experience with guerilla warfare. They tied down many German divisions in WW II with partisan activity for 4 years.
Putin thought the NATO alliance was broken thanks to his guy inside the White House. He also thought Biden was old and weak. He didn't anticipate that the US was going to rally NATO and push back as hard as they are. Rumor has it that the FSB in Russia is very against the war and the oligarchs probably aren't happy either.
The move into the Donbas was just positioning his units for the full scale assault on the rest of the country.
A lot of things have gone wrong for Putin. NATO's unity is one of them, but the Ukraine has also had a warm winter and now COVID is ripping through the ranks of Russian troops. A story came out a few hours ago that Monday saw over 40,000 new cases of COVID among Russian troops.
The weather is a critical factor for any war in western Russia or Ukraine. The land there is very flat with heavy clay soil. It gets very muddy in the fall, then freezes during the hard Russian winters, and turns into an even bigger mess in the spring. This year they didn't have a hard frost.
The troops in Belarus were targeted for a quick capture of Kyev, but they have to pass through one of the largest swamps in the world, the Pripet Marshes. The Marshes served the partisans well in WW II. They are impassible for heavy equipment except in the dead of winter and this year the marshes didn't freeze. The invasion arm from Belarus will be stuck to a number of roads through the marshes, which the Ukrainians almost certainly have pre-registered (anti-tank units set up hidden and waiting).
With the resistance within Russia's government, if Putin does start a war, especially if it starts going badly, there could be a palace coup and see Putin replaced with someone who is more acceptable to the oligarchs.
Putin has wanted ot put the USSR back together again since he took power. He's brought Belarus into his orbit and had Ukraine in his orbit with a puppet until the people of Ukraine ran the guy out and elected presidents more westward focused.
But the Russian people are less interested in seeing the band put back together. The US has a split in outlook between those old enough to remember the USSR and those who don't. You can see it in people's reaction to the world "socialist". People born before about 1980, they think of the old USSR when they hear the term. People younger think of Scandinavia and Bernie Sanders.
Russia has a similar split. The world of the Russian people changed a lot after the USSR broke up. The middle class there vacation in Europe and know Europe and its culture far better than their parents did. They get western goods and are more western than older generations (they aren't fully western in their values, but more western in their thinking than previous generations). Navalny's support has mostly been among people born after 1980.
When Putin came to power his base was the large number of people who remembered the "good old days" of Stalin when Russia was feared by the rest of the world and they felt the loss of the Cold War. But that generation is dying out and being replaced by people who have seen the benefits of a more open society with access to the west.
To the soldiers poised to invade Ukraine, it's more like US soldiers being asked to invade Canada. Very few Americans have any serious problems with Canada. At worst Americans are ambivalent and quite a few like Canada.
Russia also doesn't have an army large enough to hold Ukraine if the Ukrainians don't give up. In the last 120 years there has been a rule of thumb that an occupation force needs to have a ratio of about 20 soldiers for every 1000 people occupied. In that time only one occupation with a ratio smaller than that succeeded (Japan after WW II), all others devolved into insurgency warfare. The US just went through that in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To subdue Ukraine would take 800,000 troops and the Russians have about 150,000. They have the firepower to drive the Ukrainian army from the field, but not to put down an insurgency. The Russians don't really have enough young people to pull it off. Ukraine has a population of 40 million and Russia about 145 million. There are times nothing replaces boots on the ground and there just aren't enough boots.
As far as impact on Tesla or the US, the damage from a war in Ukraine probably won't be that huge, but we will see some problems and changes. The US has promised Europe that it will replace lost Russian natural gas with more LNG exports if sanctions cut off Russia's gas to Europe. That will likely mean already high NG prices (due to exports) will go higher.
On the other hand oil prices will likely drop. The US has used the price of oil as a weapon since the 1980s. When the US wants to punish Russia, it gets the oil exporters we have formed alliances with to turn on the spigots and flood the market with oil. When Russia is more or less behaving and the US wants to hurt China, the price of oil goes up.
The price of oil was high until 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and suddenly it crashed because the US turned on the sanction engine. Russia's economy took a big hit from that. The US did the same thing in the last days of the USSR and in an interview in the 90s the last Soviet foreign minister said the low price of oil was a factor in collapsing the country.
As pointed out above Russia does provide some raw materials, but I think we'll either crank up mining output in other places or have to live with supply shortages. The sanctions planned on Russia are severe and Putin is in a shaky position at home. He could be looking at a forced retirement (one way or another) and then the Russians will be working to play nice with the west to get the sanctions lifted ASAP. They'll blame it all on the "last guy" and promise to behave.
The way attitudes are shifting in Russia, a new leader would likely be far less interested in expanding Russian territory and more interested in integrating Russia fully into the world economy. Russia could be in a similar position to Australia: in control of a large continent with lots of mineral wealth that could be tapped and sold to China. The Chinese are looking for new business partners now that things are getting frosty with Australia.
As far as the war goes China has made it clear they are very much staying on the sidelines. They probably are not all that comfortable with an aggressive neighbor and would welcome a neighbor more interested in doing business than expanding territory. Tapping the mineral wealth of Siberia would also be a good deal for China, all they need to do is build a few rail lines to move the supplies into China on the cheap. And those same rail lines can be used to flood the Russian market with finished goods. Win-win for China.
If Russia sticks with Putin and doesn't pull off a palace coup, the war in Ukraine will probably be brutal and both sides will take big losses. Russia won't be able to hold the country and will eventually be driven out.
The good intelligence the US has been getting about the Russian plans tells me that probably more than one person very high up in the Kremlin is feeding intelligence to the west because they are trying to stop Putin. That shows that the war is already unpopular in Russia and a war with Ukraine will probably be short with Putin removed. If large elements of the army rebels against orders to attack Ukraine it could lead to a civil war, though I think a short and sweet coup is more likely.
Short term the stock markets around the world will probably crash, a good time to be cash strong. But it will be short lived. When traders realize that it isn't WW III, they will rebound fairly quickly. I see something like some flash crashes of the past where stocks take a dive and come roaring back within a week or two. Short term moves in the markets are always emotional, long term trends are more based on the fundamentals. Learn to read the emotion of the market and you can profit when the lemmings all jump off the cliff.
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