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Russia/Ukraine conflict

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Can someone explain why its seems some western countries are dragging their feet? Namely France, Austria, and Germany?

Have there been personal threats to the people making decisions or something more convoluted?


My take, 4 things:

1) and this is just sad, but they want this to be long and drawn out, in order to deplete Russia's forces as much as possible. And possibly Ukraine's for that matter. Europe doesn't want to see a strong Ukraine, no matter how politically aligned they are with the rest of the EU.

2) politicians are a**holes in general. They don't care about anyone but themselves, and unless it directly benefits them (political power, etc.), they will by nature drag their feet.

3) Europe in general is extremely "litigious" - everyone feels they MUST have their say about something and be heard before the group can move forward as a whole. This causes as "mass paralysis" and really is an Achilles heel of the group.

4) Germany in particular appears to have their balls in a vice by Putin with respect to natural gas. They have been solely focused on maintaining their position as Europe's #1 economic power that they have become increasingly dependent upon Russian natural gas over the past 20 years, to the point that they are TERRIFIED of Russia turning off the taps, like it did with Poland. This would be utter disaster for their economy, so they are trying to walk a tightrope, and by doing so Putin has a degree of control over them.



Personally, I think the US should say "F--K it" and start mass shipments of M1A1/2 Abrams tanks and MLRS systems to Ukraine. Not dozen, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of these, with all the ammo we can muster. No more of this half-measure BS. If Russia is not going to back down, we equip Ukraine with the ability to utterly defeat Russia and make it so Russia will never threaten Ukraine or anyone else in the area, ever again.
 
Can someone explain why its seems some western countries are dragging their feet? Namely France, Austria, and Germany?

Have there been personal threats to the people making decisions or something more convoluted?

Until UK send Challenger and USA send Abrams there is no cover for other 'control' countries to approve the corresponding equivalents. (Or aircraft, or other stuff, whatever). In many countries not only is there 20 years of Putin propaganda to overcome, but also the prior 70 years of cold War propaganda from both East and west to overcome. Some of that is extremely deeply "baked in" to culture, psyche, education, constitutions, and structures. Recall firstly that the German constitution was written by the Allies to make effective decision making in Germany almost impossible. Recall secondly that NATO was devised by US and UK to "keep the French in, the Russians out, and the Germans down" and you begin to appreciate how deeply divided and paralysed many of these countries find themselves. This is not to excuse it, just to seek to explain it relatively objectively at a systemic level without making accusations about individual people and individual political parties.

(I'm quite capable of that as well, and I'm not happy with the situation, nor even my own country's errors in the origins of this).

Personally I want UK to be sending Challenger, more MLRS, and a load of the tranche 1 Typhoon. I don't expect to see that.
 
My take, 4 things:

1) and this is just sad, but they want this to be long and drawn out, in order to deplete Russia's forces as much as possible. And possibly Ukraine's for that matter. Europe doesn't want to see a strong Ukraine, no matter how politically aligned they are with the rest of the EU.

Ukraine's strength seems to be solely dependent on foreign aid - to me, the only thing in question is Russia's strength and endurance. Why would they want a stronger Russia? OR do they want Russia to fall on its own sword, that by ruining Ukraine they will be under sanctions forever with no way out?
 
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3) Europe in general is extremely "litigious" - everyone feels they MUST have their say about something and be heard before the group can move forward as a whole. This causes as "mass paralysis" and really is an Achilles heel of the group.

The people seem all railed up enough for support of Ukraine. Germany is much controlled by "organizations", though, as was evident in the case of Giga Berlin, and nautral gas is needed for casting, maybe that's where the Achille's heel lies.
 
These seem popular... So for those of you who are interested but haven't subscribed to his channel...


For some reason YouTube doesn't like me. I can log in, but not subscribe to anything. I've been checking in every few days to see if there was a new one, so thanks for posting this.

Can someone explain why its seems some western countries are dragging their feet? Namely France, Austria, and Germany?

Have there been personal threats to the people making decisions or something more convoluted?


I think there are a number of factors. Someone posted a link a few days ago to an article about someone in Germany's defense ministry who is a Putin ally.

Germany is also trying to keep their gas supply going until they can replace it with other sources. At the start of the war they started work on two new LNG ports in the north to import gas from the US and other places. When they have a secure gas supply, they will probably shut down Nord Stream 1, but until then they are dependent on Russian gas.

Germany has also announced they are fully rearming and going to spend 100 billion Euros a year doing it. This was after they promised a lot of equipment to Ukraine. I suspect they are looking at their rearmament plans and rethinking their generosity because they need a lot of that for themselves now.

Ultimately it's still a bit of a mystery why they are dragging their feet.

There are a bunch of PzH 2000 that the Ukrainians have trained on and the Germans have modified to work with the Ukrainian's GIS network but have not been delivered yet, though that may happen soon. The Ukrainians just finished training in the last week. They announced today that the 100 Marders being modified are nearing completion.

The Germans can fall into the trap of letting the perfect be an enemy of the "good enough". Despite needing the Tiger I badly, they kept tinkering with the design as it went down the production line. By the time they switched over to the Tiger II, they had only completed about 500 tanks in almost three years of production.

The Russians accepted completely shoddy construction to get tanks to the battlefield quickly. The US accepted production line errors and had large post production quality repair shops to keep production humming along. The Sherman was vastly inferior to just about everything the Germans had including the later model Panzer IVs, but the US and its allies had such vastly large fleets of spares and with tanks built for crew survivability, they were able to replace lost tanks within hours and keep going.

My father's cousin was a Sherman commander and had quite a few shot out from under him.

Some of Germany's slow pace might be partially due to their perfectionism to get everything perfect. Maybe.
 
Ukraine's strength seems to be solely dependent on foreign aid - to me, the only thing in question is Russia's strength and endurance. Why would they want a stronger Russia? OR do they want Russia to fall on its own sword, that by ruining Ukraine they will be under sanctions forever with no way out?

The later. They want a perpetually weekend Russia that will never be in a position to threaten neighbors again. A negotiated settlement allows Russia to take their men and gear back home, and re-strengthen. Conversely, a conflict that is too long allows Russia to strengthen internal production of materials and recruitment of men, so that is problematic as well. But slowing support and drawing out the conflict to a good degree forces Russia to keep tossing men and equipment into the "meat grinder" and overall weakening them.

I don't see sanctions being relaxed for a decade . . . if not longer.
 
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Can someone explain why its seems some western countries are dragging their feet? Namely France, Austria, and Germany?

Have there been personal threats to the people making decisions or something more convoluted?

History just repeats itself
Macron=Vichy like puppet
Sholtz=1939 Germany in which Russia is my “friend“
Austria=Bloomberg explains this very well: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

flippant answer but reality is that it’s a combination of Country self-interest, Russian money influencing political and business class, weak leadership
 
The later. They want a perpetually weekend Russia that will never be in a position to threaten neighbors again. A negotiated settlement allows Russia to take their men and gear back home, and re-strengthen. Conversely, a conflict that is too long allows Russia to strengthen internal production of materials and recruitment of men, so that is problematic as well. But slowing support and drawing out the conflict to a good degree forces Russia to keep tossing men and equipment into the "meat grinder" and overall weakening them.

I don't see sanctions being relaxed for a decade . . . if not longer.

The sanctions may be there on Russia for a long time. Their easy oil and gas market in Europe is gone for good. They will find customers in other parts of the world, but they will need to do some retooling of their infrastructure to get their fossil fuels to market better.

I've seen some things lately on Russian culture and how they have been preparing for this throughout Putin's time in office.

First this from Kamil Galeev
Thread by @kamilkazani on Thread Reader App

Dmitry Galkovsky is sort of the Russian Alex Jones (American "out there" muck raker), but he has had more traction in mainstream Russian culture than Jones has in the US. He has a wacky theory that all history between 1400 and 1648 is fiction and that Protestantism existed first and Catholicism was an attempt to supplant Protestantism. It's competing with the flat Earthers for nuttiness, but he's popular in Russia.

Serej Sumlenny has another angle on the same theme
Thread by @sumlenny on Thread Reader App

From this latter piece I see a fallen empire living in the past. Different empires through history have had this reflecting on a past that is now lost and a sense of "we were once great" with a longing to be great again, even though that ship has sailed.

There is a sense in the popular media memes in Russia that they can become great again by picking a fight with the west. It's loony but that is what the government is peddling.

This is popular among the population who remember the USSR. The last decade of the USSR was probably the best decade for the average Russian ever. The 90s was a very different experience in the west and in Russia. The west had a pretty good decade with a lot of optimism about the future, while Russia had a bleak time trying to come to terms with the loss of their empire.

Another theme in Sumlenny's article is Russian popular literature keeps coming back to the theme of Russians humiliating the west and western leaders. There is a strong sense of humiliation about the 90s among those who lived through it. They want to turn the tables and heap that shame on the US and or UK.

George HW Bush had a plan like the Marshall Plan to bring Russia into the rest of the world, but he couldn't get it through Congress. It would have cost the US some money, but we wouldn't be here now if he had managed to pull it off.

Instead Russia was left to its own devices and all the Soviet enterprises got taken over by essentially the Russian mafia and the people got some table scraps, but not much else.
 
Can someone explain why its seems some western countries are dragging their feet? Namely France, Austria, and Germany?

Have there been personal threats to the people making decisions or something more convoluted?


In addition to the reasons given by the others, a big factor is, unfortunately, rampant corruption at the highest level, especially in Germany and Austria. The top people, from the prime ministers to key decision makers have been bought - probably a combination of already paid out cash in the last 10-20 years, with promises of lots more cash in the future if things stay the same. Schroeder is just an extreme example - the definition of a traitor.
 
How the Ukrainians are dealing with the artillery shortage. It's not a perfect solution, but they are doing what other armies have done when they have run low on artillery ammo: use tanks as SP artillery. They don't have the range or the elevation, but elevation can be helped by running the tank up on a berm.
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
 
People wring their hands about how much the Russians are making from continuing to sell fossil fuels. According to this they are making about 930 million Euros a day selling fossil fuels. However the estimated financial cost is $900 million a day to continue to fight the war.


Russia spending an estimated $900 million a day on Ukraine war

Both numbers may be off a bit, and I know one is in Euros and the other is in USD, but the two currencies are about 4.5% different right now and it's obvious Russia is financially under a lot of strain.

In normal times Russia uses the money from fossil fuel sales to both line oligarch's pockets, plus keep the entire economy afloat. The financial costs of the war would be putting a massive strain on the economy even if there were no sanctions. They have spent almost twice their annual defense budget in the last few months conducting the war.
 
People wring their hands about how much the Russians are making from continuing to sell fossil fuels. According to this they are making about 930 million Euros a day selling fossil fuels. However the estimated financial cost is $900 million a day to continue to fight the war.


Russia spending an estimated $900 million a day on Ukraine war

Both numbers may be off a bit, and I know one is in Euros and the other is in USD, but the two currencies are about 4.5% different right now and it's obvious Russia is financially under a lot of strain.

In normal times Russia uses the money from fossil fuel sales to both line oligarch's pockets, plus keep the entire economy afloat. The financial costs of the war would be putting a massive strain on the economy even if there were no sanctions. They have spent almost twice their annual defense budget in the last few months conducting the war.
Think about how challenged Ru would be if the EU (cough Germany, France in particular) weren't continuing to subsidize Putin's war!

Another take from the Telegraph: Germany paid Russia over €12 billion for fossil fuels in first 100 days of Ukraine war
Excerpt from Lauri Myllyvirta, a CREA analyst: "Since most of these are spot purchases rather than long-term contracts, Mr Myllyvirta said, France is consciously deciding to use Russian energy in the wake of Moscow's invasion".

Article says that Germany has cut a bit post war start whereby China, India, the United Arab Emirates and France have all increased their buy post-war. Shame on those 4 countries, particularly India and France!
 
Think about how challenged Ru would be if the EU (cough Germany, France in particular) weren't continuing to subsidize Putin's war!

Another take from the Telegraph: Germany paid Russia over €12 billion for fossil fuels in first 100 days of Ukraine war
Excerpt from Lauri Myllyvirta, a CREA analyst: "Since most of these are spot purchases rather than long-term contracts, Mr Myllyvirta said, France is consciously deciding to use Russian energy in the wake of Moscow's invasion".

Article says that Germany has cut a bit post war start whereby China, India, the United Arab Emirates and France have all increased their buy post-war. Shame on those 4 countries, particularly India and France!
It doesn't matter if Germany and France "stop buying from Russia" and simply buy from someone else like Saudi Arabia instead. Those Suadi barrels don't magically appear out of thin air. They were intended for someone else, like China. Does China say "dang, the Saudis are sending us fewer barrels, guess we'll just do without"? Of course not, they just buy from Russia.

The only thing this shell game does is lengthen and disrupt supply lines. Instead of sending tankers on a 4 day journey to France Russia sends them on a 34 day journey to China. The market goes 30 extra days without that oil. And they need 8x as many ships, further disrupting supply chains. Oil prices skyrocket and Russia makes twice as much money selling 10% less oil. Great job, politicians!

The way to stop funding Putin's war is for the west to institute wartime rationing and cut net consumption 15% (about 5m bpd). But western politicians would rather posture and pay lip service to the concept of "hurting Putin" than take this very unpopular step that would actually cripple him. In the end, they're helping Putin more than hurting him. But the politicians only care about appearances, not results.
 
It doesn't matter if Germany and France "stop buying from Russia" and simply buy from someone else like Saudi Arabia instead. Those Suadi barrels don't magically appear out of thin air. They were intended for someone else, like China. Does China say "dang, the Saudis are sending us fewer barrels, guess we'll just do without"? Of course not, they just buy from Russia.

The only thing this shell game does is lengthen and disrupt supply lines. Instead of sending tankers on a 4 day journey to France Russia sends them on a 34 day journey to China. The market goes 30 extra days without that oil. And they need 8x as many ships, further disrupting supply chains. Oil prices skyrocket and Russia makes twice as much money selling 10% less oil. Great job, politicians!

The way to stop funding Putin's war is for the west to institute wartime rationing and cut net consumption 15% (about 5m bpd). But western politicians would rather posture and pay lip service to the concept of "hurting Putin" than take this very unpopular step that would actually cripple him. In the end, they're helping Putin more than hurting him. But the politicians only care about appearances, not results.
Want to screw Putin, buy an electric car. This is about the only forum I can post that without getting blowback. I've actually seen a post on Facebook suggesting that high gas prices are a plot to sell EVs. People are nuts.
 
The way to stop funding Putin's war is for the west to institute wartime rationing and cut net consumption 15% (about 5m bpd). But western politicians would rather posture and pay lip service to the concept of "hurting Putin" than take this very unpopular step that would actually cripple him. In the end, they're helping Putin more than hurting him. But the politicians only care about appearances, not results.
Any perceived supply shortage isn't the issue, so there's no need to cut consumption. OPEC+ is just having a real real easy time playing the swing producer right now, that's what needs to be reigned in.

Trickling the SPR into US commercial supplies was a great move and is having an impact, the US just needs to be willing to take it as far as necessary and illustrate that quite clearly to the market. Up to and including a US export ban.

Think of what Dick Cheney would do if he were stuck with this problem. I am NOT a fan, but he would have this resolved inside of 30 days. Lean on the US producers to bring supply back to where it was pre-covid or face his wrath. Problem solved.

Send a similar message to Saudi Arabia. We require no imports from SA ever again, all economic and moderate geopolitical threats to them should be on the table. They're literally doing the same to us as we speak.
 
It doesn't matter if Germany and France "stop buying from Russia" and simply buy from someone else like Saudi Arabia instead. Those Suadi barrels don't magically appear out of thin air. They were intended for someone else, like China. Does China say "dang, the Saudis are sending us fewer barrels, guess we'll just do without"? Of course not, they just buy from Russia.

The only thing this shell game does is lengthen and disrupt supply lines. Instead of sending tankers on a 4 day journey to France Russia sends them on a 34 day journey to China. The market goes 30 extra days without that oil. And they need 8x as many ships, further disrupting supply chains. Oil prices skyrocket and Russia makes twice as much money selling 10% less oil. Great job, politicians!

The way to stop funding Putin's war is for the west to institute wartime rationing and cut net consumption 15% (about 5m bpd). But western politicians would rather posture and pay lip service to the concept of "hurting Putin" than take this very unpopular step that would actually cripple him. In the end, they're helping Putin more than hurting him. But the politicians only care about appearances, not results.

I posted those two articles to show that Russia is not really making bank on selling oil right now. Their economy has taken many hits and the war is a massive drain on their treasury. What they are making from oil is just barely paying for the war leaving virtually nothing to cover the things the oil revenue usually covers.

I do agree that we need to be doing more to make Russian oil unnecessary. Though I disagree about rationing. The economies in the west are already shaky and rationing would make it much worse. We want the western countries to continue to be able to provide as much assistance to Ukraine as possible and that gets much tougher if economies crash.

I know getting off oil is the long term goal and I support it, but austerity measures now will likely just tick off the public who are already reeling from the last few years.

Want to screw Putin, buy an electric car. This is about the only forum I can post that without getting blowback. I've actually seen a post on Facebook suggesting that high gas prices are a plot to sell EVs. People are nuts.

Somebody on Nextdoor was ranting about it costing $156 to fill their pickup at the local gas station and was blaming the US administration. I replied saying that if they wanted to blame any politician, it was Vladimir Putin, not any US politicians. I also made the point that unless they wanted to let a dictator get away with invading their neighbor for no reason, they should either suck it up or buy electric and pointed out that my car cost a bit more than 2 cents a mile in 2016 and still costs that today.

There were a number of people who were not very receptive, but had someone ask me how much an EV costs. I hadn't looked in a while, but Teslas have gone up quite a bit in the last 6 months.

Any perceived supply shortage isn't the issue, so there's no need to cut consumption. OPEC+ is just having a real real easy time playing the swing producer right now, that's what needs to be reigned in.

Trickling the SPR into US commercial supplies was a great move and is having an impact, the US just needs to be willing to take it as far as necessary and illustrate that quite clearly to the market. Up to and including a US export ban.

Think of what Dick Cheney would do if he were stuck with this problem. I am NOT a fan, but he would have this resolved inside of 30 days. Lean on the US producers to bring supply back to where it was pre-covid or face his wrath. Problem solved.

Send a similar message to Saudi Arabia. We require no imports from SA ever again, all economic and moderate geopolitical threats to them should be on the table. They're literally doing the same to us as we speak.

According to this little info piece, the oil companies are blaming Wall Street for not ramping up US production. Though I think trying to hurt the Democrats in the Midterms is a factor too.

Biden should invoke the Defense Protection Act to force oil companies to get domestic wells going again. That's the sort of thing the Act is intended for.
 
It doesn't matter if Germany and France "stop buying from Russia" and simply buy from someone else like Saudi Arabia instead. Those Suadi barrels don't magically appear out of thin air. They were intended for someone else, like China. Does China say "dang, the Saudis are sending us fewer barrels, guess we'll just do without"? Of course not, they just buy from Russia.

The only thing this shell game does is lengthen and disrupt supply lines. Instead of sending tankers on a 4 day journey to France Russia sends them on a 34 day journey to China. The market goes 30 extra days without that oil. And they need 8x as many ships, further disrupting supply chains. Oil prices skyrocket and Russia makes twice as much money selling 10% less oil. Great job, politicians!

The way to stop funding Putin's war is for the west to institute wartime rationing and cut net consumption 15% (about 5m bpd). But western politicians would rather posture and pay lip service to the concept of "hurting Putin" than take this very unpopular step that would actually cripple him. In the end, they're helping Putin more than hurting him. But the politicians only care about appearances, not results.
“the politicians only care about appearances, not results.”

agreed. The Political class in America has clearly failed its constituents.

With stock markets now in Bear territory and odds of a recession looming we definitely will not see Biden call for cutting consumption (particularly with Nov elections looming closer).

ukraine is screwed.