421–430 of 470 posts
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I would guess because Russia has shown itself to be a bad actor over and over? They kill/imprison people just for being gay. Imagine what they do to dissidents and those who don't "go with the Russian flow". Dealing with Russia of today is dealing with the devil.
This seems like a caricature and not at all honest.
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No, certainly not. First of all, Germany does care about the Ukraine. Both on a political level as on a social one. Many Germany have friendships with people from Ukraine. I myself have several in my wider social circle. There is also the European perspective. The cornerstone of European piece policy has been the integrity of state borders. This is now violated, so this is of very grave concern. Putin himself stated…
“the Ukraine” It is just Ukraine, no “the” required nor preferred.
Or go campaign for a while for the French to drop the article from "Le Danemark", or something equally useful.
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> Russia is also a European democracy. Surprise Nasty surprises seem to happen to people who credibly oppose Putin. Without free press and free speech, elections don't mean much.
> Nasty surprises seem to happen to people who credibly oppose Putin I believe, they just don't have/don't want to spend money on showing a real election circus, like in US. Russia is a poor country and making people believe that a cross in a white form means something if you are not a billionaire and can't get billionaires to support you with money, costs a lot. You have "free press" and "free speech" in the interne…
That is not remotely pulling the plug. This is "thinking about it" again. They already stopped accreditation a few weeks ago, otherwise it would already transport gas as the pipeline is already filled. They just say that they have officially stopped the process which they more or less already did. I think in a year it might come online again if the news cycle is on another topic. Overall it will be much more expensiv…
I think the one that will profit most is China, being the remaining trade partner in a much similar way when most of the world imposed sanctions against north Korea. At the same time this will reduce the impact on prices, since as long China is connected to the global economy then the global supply will still increase when they buy from Russia. There will be costs associated with transportation for EU, be that from C…
If nothing else, is anyone keeping a very sharp eye out for what's going on around Taiwan or in the South China Sea, now that everyone's attention is on the Russian Kim's Ukrainian adventure?
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Very true, but as with the Iraq war, the guilty are easily found and support for a war quickly comes from the righteous®. Russia actually does have an argument for protecting former Russians in some countries. These are people that suddenly lost their nationality with the collapse of the soviet union and don't want to relieve it in favor of the new countries. That puts them in a situation where they are not allowed t…
> These are people that suddenly lost their nationality No, these people are occupants. They should either deported or jailed. Letting them stay is a democracy glitch that now terrorists like Putin is exploiting.
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Which countries? Higher prices for gas will rise prices for everything, food including.
I meant all European democracies I think, temporarily[1] until we get this mess sorted. [1]: In the long run oil and gas prices should probably increase until solar and nuclear power become very profitable.
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> Russia and China are still in the 50-100 years ago mentality and will ruthlessly enforce having buffer states between major powers. And having "50-100 year ago mentality" doesn't mean "unintelligent" either, it means "no bs wokeness" and "meticulously calculating", which is a crucially important skill in modern day global politics, perhaps even more important than 50 years ago.
Yes, emphatically this. I didn't state so explicitly, but honestly the west are the ones being completely foolish here.
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And this helps to prevent Ukraine and other such eastern companies from having political pressure since instability there or intent to close the pipes to deprive Russia of revenue can just be sidestepped
If you meant that since Russia has pipelines to China and also through the Ukraine, I think you might want to look at their capacity and current usage. Even if Russia had as much pipeline capacity to China as it has towards Europe, simply switching its exports isn't possible like that. Diverting 20% of Russian exports from Europe would require increasing Chinese usage by 100%. Doable, I'm sure, given the time to buil…
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>Personally, I don't really see a way out of this. China is going to be more powerful than Nato. This is still playing out, and I'm extremely sceptical of this take. China has a lot of domestic problems to deal with and a lack of allies due to their geo-politiking. Then you have India waiting in the wings, ready to be to China, what China was to America. Keeping in mind, we are all nuclear powers.
China has their pants on. India doesn't. They won't for a decade at the very least. China has 40% more population than Nato. Their culture is naturally harder to copy because of their extremely difficult language and tightened boarders. They work laughbly longer hours than we do in the west due to the 996 system. They're smart, make no bones about it. They're vicious when it comes to espionage and IP theft. They solv…
The fact is that China currently doesn't have an orbit. It doesn't have NATO, anything resembling the CT/TTP (the absence of the US is one of the major policy failures of the Trump presidency) or NAFTA. Belt and Road has developed the reputation of being completely exploitative, and a way to offload surplus construction capacity in China.
This ties in with the current problems we see in China, where the construction sector is far too large and not sustainable.
My point about nuclear is that China is very limited in where is can project its power.
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Because Poland let the long term contracts run out and also got cheered up for this by the US to not depend on Russia, Poland is the one who buys on the spot market. The German companies buy from Gazprom under the umbrella of the cheap long term contracts and now are selling to Poland. The German companies order from Netherlands way much more then in previous years (almost double), because of long term contracts, tha…
I think Poland expected more support for such a decision but they basically just cut their own flesh with that. Ironically the relationship between Russia and Poland is worse than between Germany and Russia. Post-war politics seem to have a larger impact.
On completely unrelated note is that our (Polish) current government is beyond stupid, voided long-term contracts during a period of cheaper gas prices, and is now forced to buy at spot prices for more than it saved on the long-term contract (also lots of political capital being involved between govt and opposition).