71–80 of 156 posts
I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking. If others are interested, this video has a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
Gas and oil is all they have to trade and they have a lot of it.
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That's been my argument to friends and family this week. If an extra dollar per gallon is what it takes for fewer Ukrainian children to die then that's what it takes.
That's good, but also: · We should put extra dollars not to buy goods from Israel, so fewer Palestinian children die · We should put extra dollars not to buy goods from the US, so fewer Syrian children die · We should put extra dollars not to buy goods from the UAE, so fewer Yemeni children die · ... I'm afraid I don't have so much money.
When you can get cheap goods from somewhere, then you can buy more. We outsourced and promoted cheap products for the benifit of Wallstreet and busniess at the expense of our future wages and global human rights.
I am quite afraid of Russia shutting off the gas and oil supply. I hope Europe doesn't give up on sanctions then, at least not right away. Betting on Russia needing the income more than we need the resources. Power will go out completely around here and partially in many other regions, but we can live through that. Having solar (plus wind and batteries) is a major boon, and this would undoubtedly drive demand through…
can solar run 24/7 factories?? it's not that simple guys
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Gas and oil is all they have to trade and they have a lot of it.
If only they used the profits to build a great economy with more to offer. They have no shortage capable and even brilliant people, but they've got a management problem at the national level.
This is Proxy war with US/Nato to get a trade deal in exchange for balancing China with military power (last card they've got). France and Germany were OK with this - cheap resources, you can move pouting factories to Siberia, production would be more competitive than Chinese.
US and rest were not happy about this.
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More convinced that the only thing stopping wars will be energy abundance not reliant on fossil fuels. Countries will still fight over natural resources, but probably less
There's an argument here that this war is a step in the transition from wars over "oil" (read: energy supply) to wars over water. There's a little bit of both here, and it's made the war difficult for outsiders to read.
Freshwater is typically the object of hypothetical water wars, and in this case Russia wants warm (salt) water for naval power projection.
This is probably more of a coastline/harbour war.
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Funny thing is that something like half of Russian gas goes through Ukraine and some more is just across the border in Belarus. AFAIK that hasn't stopped. Just goes to show you the complexity of international relations. Map: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/ It's a bit misleading since it doesn't show Nordstream 1 which runs under the Baltic sea to Germany. EDIT: Here's a better map. The above is o…
Makes you wonder if one side or the other will “accidentally” damage those pipelines. Like obviously they can’t overtly do it but you know, stuff gets damaged every day in combat zones… it would certainly immensely hurt Russia’s strategic position to have their gas exports cut off.
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I don't mean just the cost of energy but also potential blackouts. But as you say, it's a price worth paying.
There will be no blackout due to gas issues. Power generation from gas is not a problem. Heat generation from gas could become one though. Luckily Germany will likely mandate a switch to electricity driven heatpumps for all buildings soon.
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> Putin’s and his inner circle’s plan was that it will take 1-4 days to take Kiev and two weeks to take most of Ukraine. This is being said a lot these days, but I haven't seen any proof of it. I'm not saying that proofs don't exist nor that it's wrong, just that I've been reading it everywhere, and haven't seen evidence. So I'd be happy if someone reading this could point out to some clues
It's been leaked from UK intelligence and yesterday Russian war plans were captured that said essentially the same thing: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/03/2/7327539/
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Funny thing is that something like half of Russian gas goes through Ukraine and some more is just across the border in Belarus. AFAIK that hasn't stopped. Just goes to show you the complexity of international relations. Map: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/ It's a bit misleading since it doesn't show Nordstream 1 which runs under the Baltic sea to Germany. EDIT: Here's a better map. The above is o…
Makes you wonder if one side or the other will “accidentally” damage those pipelines. Like obviously they can’t overtly do it but you know, stuff gets damaged every day in combat zones… it would certainly immensely hurt Russia’s strategic position to have their gas exports cut off.