Incalculable.
Stalin’s atrocities don’t get enough attention.
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I suspect that at this moment there are those that think he was on the right track.
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At least Putin does.
Meanwhile, Putin needs some of that high quality, state-of-the-art North Korean ammunition.
Someone needs to PhotoShop Putin into the “This is Fine” meme.
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Zelensky will make an address later today on the counteroffensive, including an update from around Kharkiv.
If Putin has to get artillery rounds from N.K., will he need artillery tubes next? Those things wear out and the artillery barrage is pretty much the only tactic the Russian military can do.
While Russia is spending significant $$ on their war effort in Ukraine, they are seeing two net positives: 1) surging investment into their military industrial complex (as discussed here a few months ago) and 2) massive upticks in energy revenues, despite the overall reductions in export volumes. Fossil fuel export revenues are significantly up to €158bn vs. the prior year with €43bn of that directly attributed to the global price increases associated with the war.
As regional and superpowers have long understood, limited, structured war remains a significant net positive revenue producer if done right.
Here’s the report from the Finnish CREA: https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/financing-putins-war-fossil-fuel-exports-from-russia-in-the-first-six-months-of-the-invasion-of-ukraine/
Those energy revenue gains are a finite thing, though, right? Europe is going cold turkey on Russian oil & gas. While other countries will be interested in these resources as the European demand wanes, there is not the infrastructure to export it to such potential customers currently, and that’s expensive to set up. A single LNG tanker, for example, costs about $1 billion, and that’s before you build the liquefaction and regassification facilities at either end. It’s also incredibly high-end technology, with catastrophic results if you get it wrong.
Further, expanding economies that did not have land line infrastructure basically skipped that step and went straight to cell phones. Similarly, markets like China and India are all-in on building cheap EVs (like $7,000 cheap) that are being snapped up by a population looking for personal mobility. If emerging economies skip ICE and go straight to battery-electric technology, Russia will have a very limited market for its one resource.
Russia is a huge country with a tiny, uneducated population. If you take away energy revenues, they will have nothing.
All energy revenues via fossil fuel are a finite thing. This smacks of a cash grab. The time scales involved for all parties are within that fossil fuel window. This is evidenced by the negotiated agreements between Russia and China (+ some African countries). Ink the deal, let the secondary issues like engery transport work themselves out. Those details are not the concern of iconoclast oligarchs looking to cash in for the last 33% of their lives and make a historical name for themselves.
Only a fool (not suggesting you here) would think the revenue increases are going into the Federal Revenue Department of the Russian Federation. These oligarchs could care less about the impacts of their actions on the people. Heck, they are sending the known sons and daughters of the homeland to die on the soil of a neighbor every day to further their personal interests. Unknown future people “having nothing” is of no concern to them since their close, personal inner circles will be set for generations.
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The crazy thing about the oligarchs is that they’re not immune to hospital windows. For all their wealth and power, they’re as disposable as a kid from the steppes.
So far they’re sending the non-Russian minorities from the East to die not Moscow’s sons.
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Hmmmm, that would be a significant departure from their initial incursions in 2014.
I’ll have to look around for a similar analysis of the current invasion.
I’m sure that Putin felt that statement (the quote in that graphic) was accurate, because in his mind Donbas is part of Russia, not Ukraine.
Just one article talking about it.
Some people are claiming it’s intentional ethnocide but of course Buryatia, Tuva, Dagestan, and similar places used to be indepedent republics. Look for continued opposition to this war from those areas. Those are the splintering points.
Those used to be independent, but not republics. And they have been part of Russia since about the time of the original Crimean War (complete with the Light Brigade).
Well technically the Tuvan Republic was indepedent until 1944 albeit only being recognized by Mongolia and the Soviet Union but I get your point. However, memories in that part of the world are often much longer than what Americans are used to and the ethnic Russians have not exactly treated them well. They’ve been kept poor and uneducated and now they’re dying in large numbers in a place they can’t find on the map. Sounds familiar huh?
You win the understatement of the world award!
On the “what you are reading” topic in the other thread, you should try “Hero of Our Times” (Герой нашего времени) by Lermontov. A period view.
I’ve read excerpts from that book and the descriptions of the Caucus regions were really interesting considering the age of the book.
The Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces and regular army have heroically held Russian advances to a standstill for some time now. These forces have been getting the hell shelled out of them for months. All of this was to give time for Ukraine to fully mobilize and more importantly train with the trainloads of new equipment coming in from NATO countries. NATO forces would train for much more than a year before getting anywhere near a battlefield, but Ukraine has had to condense this considerably.
Now, the trainloads of Blue and Gold Whoopass have been deployed to great effect. There has been a significant breakthrough north of Izium with some significant towns and territory being captured. It’s even possible Izium will be encircled in a few days, although that would be astonishing.
A General in the Kherson area was captured wearing a lieutenant’s uniform heading east.
Trump’s boyfriend is getting beat up.
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Saw some intercepted calls of Russian soldiers who are very well aware they are now dealing with NATO equipped and trained soldiers and they are frightened.
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