tthew
Free Member
I’d have thought western funding would have been enough to keep their economy going.I don’t remember any reports of other countries donating cash, I thought it was mainly military hardware and other, more social requirements?
20 billion doesn’t sound much, they must be absolutely haemorrhaging cash these last 6 months. Hmm, answering my own question, it’ll probably cover interest payments.
I'm guessing there's some kinda separation between miltary and government funding really, some of the funding has been earmarked for the government I think though. Pre-war the Ukrainian government spending was about £60/70 billion a year. I wouldn't imagine it's needing any less than that these days. So yeah, £20 billion sounds like a bit of a band aid.
It would be my biggest criticism of western help tbh. Financially I don't think it's been nearly enough. If the goal is to push Russia out. It's needs something more in the hundreds of billions, potentially a lot more to be committed to Ukraine. Would be intersting to see an overview of totals sent.
Cant speak for its accuracy but there is of course a wiki page
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
If it is the case that neither side has the capability of conducting a significant offensive till spring next year, (as some of the posts above indicate) then I guess we're looking at an actual cold war rather than a metaphorical one.
The coming winter will see the conflict fought via the thermostats of Western living rooms.
Putin knows the West is soft so he's going to freeze us into some sort of submission one way or the other.
As Napoleon and Hitler found out, the Russians are rather adept at using winter weather to their advantage. Putin's strategy for the next 6 months will be to sit and wait, watching Western Europe freezing it's nuts off whilst squabbling amongst ourselves.
Putin’s strategy for the next 6 months will be to sit and wait, watching Western Europe freezing it’s nuts off whilst squabbling amongst ourselves.
That's assuming his army can just stay in the field during that time, despite on-going (and likely increasing) harassment by Ukrainian forces. Whilst support from some Western European countries might fracture a bit when winter fuel shortages really bite I can't see US (or UK) military aid being suspended and forcing the Ukrainians to cease operations until the Spring. If Putin think's he's got a morale problem in his army now he's not seen anything compared with when his troops start freezing to death as their supply lines are strategically cut.
Cheers Piemonster.
If Putin think’s he’s got a morale problem in his army now he’s not seen anything compared with when his troops start freezing to death as their supply lines are strategically cut.
Exactly.
I can’t see US (or UK) military aid being suspended
They continued to support the Mujahideen throughout the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which took about 10 years, so there is a precedent there
and the likelihood of alternate energy supplies will kick in as im sure its not Russian gas or nothing....
I can’t see US (or UK) military aid being suspended
Add in Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Australia, Canada, South Korea etc. Germany and France will face domestic pressure but even they may not fold.
and the likelihood of alternate energy supplies will kick in as im sure its not Russian gas or nothing….
And to think, at one point during lockdown, the price of oil went negative...
Now everyone is gagging for fossil fuel goodness all over again, whatever the price.
shermer75
Free Member
I can’t see US (or UK) military aid being suspendedThey continued to support the Mujahideen throughout the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which took about 10 years, so there is a precedent there
I don't think there's a doubt that support will continue. Operations won't shut down over the winter either, but you can imagine progress will be slow for either side as the weather comes in.
Ive been pretty sure for a while this is going to take a long time. Just a wild guess admittedly, either side could see a sudden collapse, although only one has somewhere to collapse to.
Iirc Ukraine is expected to take a 40% drop to GDP this year.
Edit, IMF going with -35%
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/UKR
This article is worth reading.
https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1554803532104011776
I don’t think there’s a doubt that support will continue
I hope so, although if looney balls Trump gets in next election who knows what he'll do. Probably something along the lines of supplying arms to Russia, invading Ukraine and sticking his dick in the mashed potato
There’s a big difference between the Kherson Region, and Kherson city. The city itself is the other side of the river to the main Russian forces and their supply chain.
Russians might be moving kit into the region, but their grip on the city itself is weak.
I hope so, although if looney balls Trump gets in next election who knows what he’ll do. Probably something along the lines of supplying arms to Russia, invading Ukraine and sticking his dick in the mashed potato
Maybe Putin is in it for the long haul & calculates that he only needs to wait until Trump is back
This article is a good illustration of the effect of sanctions.
https://twitter.com/ThaneGustafson/status/1554583403974070272
Indeed, and they are there because we need gas. So the Russians, unlike the North Koreans, have us over a barrel (so to speak)
They do, but only in the short term. Unfortunately that will take Europe into winter and their gas storage isn't full after the July Nord Stream 1 maintenance and consequent shutdown so all bets are off.
Russia is playing games by refusing to take their turbine back from Germany saying that it's subject to sanctions (it isn't) and continue to pump gas at a reduced rate. Since when did Russia worry about international anything?
Chancellor Scholz in the meantime is left fuming about the actions of former chancellors and fellow members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in getting so tightly into bed with Russia. Not that he can criticise, he was Vice-Chancellor to Angela Merkel 🙂
If Europe can get through winter the longer-term prospects for Russia aren't so rosy. Their only other major pipeline is into China who leveraged them into a lower price for gas than Europe was paying following sanctions over Crimea in 2014.
There are lots of chickens coming home to roost for politicians in Europe and the biggest is their abject failure to address global warming
Frances Fukuyama may be something of a trigger towards some of the forums more ... ideology driven posters.
Background here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama
For which I offer no guarantees of accuracy. I dont know much beyond the usual headline "Frances once said...." and has been attributed with helping the rise of...
There are lots of chickens coming home to roost for politicians in Europe and the biggest is their abject failure to address global warming
This is one of the few things I have any optimism about, in that there is an increased chance the strategic threat of energy dependence may result in more sustainable energy sources.
Not that much optimistic admittedly
This article is a good illustration of the effect of sanctions.
Interesting- and yet according to Simon Jenkins of the Guardian, Western sanctions are ineffective
They do, but only in the short term.
Yeah, we'll be fine in a decade or so when those new nuclear stations that Johnson promised us kick in (alongside the new hospitals). Meanwhile the only short(ish) term alternative, onshore wind, is notably absent from the planning.
It'll be interesting to learn about what the supposedly competent German government ends up being able to do about this and how Germans respond.
Yeah, we’ll be fine in a decade or so when those new nuclear stations that Johnson promised us kick in (alongside the new hospitals). Meanwhile the only short(ish) term alternative, onshore wind, is notably absent from the planning.
Its less what 'we' do that matters in this case (I think anyway) and more what the EU does.
Theyve been chucking some big numbers around (210 billion euro iirc), and some bold targets to reduce Russian imports.
Exactly how realistic it is I dont know. It could be as much a political statement to Putin for all I can tell.
The official press release suggests energy efficiency being the easiest and quickest option https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3131
Again, if its being honest, I see that as a rare good thing.
Yeah, we’ll be fine in a decade or so when those new nuclear stations that Johnson promised us kick in
Power/energy/climate-change has been way more complicated than it needs to be. Politicians world-wide needed to talk less about it and just get on with it.
Tony Blair's government kicked the nuclear can down the road. In 2008 the SNP under Alex Salmond said no new nuclear for Scotland.
David Cameron's government got contracts signed in 2011 as one of their first jobs, unfortunately we'd lost our nuclear expertise by then and it's meant negotiations with French and Chinese companies
The EU decided that nuclear and gas were green options before the invasion of Ukraine and agreed the detail last month. Ignoring construction, nuclear is CO2-free but gas!?
Nuclear doesn't sit easily with me because of disposal problems, but we don't have many options just now. Politicians!
Nuclear doesn’t sit easily with me because of disposal problems
Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem not an engineering one. After a few 100 years the total radioactivity in the waste is less than in the original Uranium before it was dug up. If it's packaged (encapsulated or vitrified) and underground then even if things go wrong the actual hazard to the public from radioactivity would be way less than lots of other pollution that's considered acceptable. The potentially unsafe thing is leaving it in surface stores (vulnerable to war) because the green lobby has hyped up the hazards and blocked underground disposal.
The official press release suggests energy efficiency being the easiest and quickest option https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3131
/a>Again, if its being honest, I see that as a rare good thing.
Agreed. I wonder when we'll see a UK policy like that?
And Hinkley's been such a series of bad decisions that it's sucked up the budget and is going to further sour public and political will for more nucler. Funny that most of the modern nuclear disasters are financial ones.
Agreed. I wonder when we’ll see a UK policy like that?
Unfortunately it's taken a war to point out the error of their ways, one that our politicians have the luxury of saying, "We only get 6% from Russia". The population in the meantime have the luxury of paying for it
UK buildings just don't lend themselves to efficiency and insulation which needs to change. An extra 6" of loft insulation paid for out of a green levy doesn't do it, we should have been designing efficiency in since the 1960s and updating the Building Regs as techniques improved to include space for ground source heat, etc
Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem not an engineering one
Didn't know that, thanks
Not that much optimistic admittedly
European businesses started converting to run coal months ago, Michelin being one
Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem not an engineering one
Didn’t know that, thanks
As usual Tom Scott has made a video about it:
Ironically low-river levels in Germany and France are causing power generation problems. In Germany they can't move enough coal on the Rhine for Uniper's Staudinger coal power plant and in France they can't get enough water to sufficiently cool their plants on the Rhone and Garonne leading to reduced outputs
Maybe start an energy crisis thread 🤷♂️
ISW assessment on the change of initiative shifting to Ukraine
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-4
Theres a piece in the Guardian alleging a pattern of operations by the Ukrainian military putting civilians at risk.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/04/ukraine-civilians-army-bases-amnesty-russia-war
There is also a counter from the national head of Amnesty in Ukraine criticising the report.
However, the head of Amnesty Ukraine’s office, Oksana Pokalchuk, wrote on Facebook that her operation disagreed with the report. She said they were cut out of the pre-publication process when they complained that the report was based on incomplete evidence compiled by foreign colleagues.
It does have a whiff of "I can be righteous as im thousands of miles away and not at war" to it. Maybe thats just the way the Guardian are presenting it and im reading it.
It does have a whiff of “I can be righteous as im thousands of miles away and not at war” to it. Maybe thats just the way the Guardian are presenting it and im reading it.
No, that's basically what Amnesty said in their statement. An odd thing to say, considering their silence on e.g. Russia bombing shelters full of kids, train stations full of evacuees, and executing and torturing innocent civilians in the towns and villages they have conquered.
General points - the RF Armed Forces have made their "move", the Armed Forces of Ukraine - still not. The collapse of the enemy's defense near Donetsk did not happen for more than a week of the offensive. And it will be possible to talk about it only after the fall of Avdiivka (which has not yet been included and which is also far from being blocked). In the conditions of an acute shortage of manpower in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Armed Forces of the LDNR, the adopted tactics of "squeezing out" with massive artillery support is the only possible and relatively effective one, since it allows "saving losses." But the offensive near Donetsk does not lead us out of the strategic impasse in which our front is after the failure of the "NOR" and the failure to defeat the enemy during the second ("concrete") stage of the operation, even with the most successful development of events.
I expect an early attempt to launch an offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Kherson or Zaporozhye fronts, or on both at the same time.
That Strelkov guy suggesting a Ukrainian offensive may be imminent. Still not sure what to make of this guy whether is just posting dis-information or is straight up just disgruntled with the Russian actions.
Also just posted this.
About an hour ago, the Armed Forces of Ukraine again launched a missile attack on the Antonovsky bridge in Kherson. The bridge is closed to traffic.
Hopefully something materialises.
An odd thing to say, considering their silence on e.g
They have several reports around Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine. Its just those havent had the press.
That Strelkov guy
The quote is from 4chan? I don't know where is affiliation lies but he describes Ukraine as "the enemy" so I assume he's supporting Russia.
He is allegedly a former DNR commander turn mil blogger and is openly pro Russian
At the same time, occasionally openly critical of Russia, but only really of military issues.
Looks like a variant if this https://wartranslated.com/igor-girkin-ukraine-frontline-update-on-5-august-from-the-russian-side/
Greybeard
Free Member
That Strelkov guyThe quote is from 4chan?
Directly from his telegram channel. Just translated it directly and posted it here.
piemonster
Free Member
He is allegedly a former DNR commander turn mil blogger and is openly pro RussianAt the same time, occasionally openly critical of Russia, but only really of military issues.
Looks like a variant if this https://wartranslated.com/igor-girkin-ukraine-frontline-update-on-5-august-from-the-russian-side//blockquote >
Yeah he's absolutely pro-Russian, extreme right end of the Russian spectrum. I just often wonder why he's allowed to be so openly critical, he seems to hate Shoigu with a passion, calls him the Plywood Marshall all the time. He wants a full war and mobilisation declared on Ukraine. That ISW quite often take him at face value in their assessments.
Amnesty really screwed the dog with their report. Trying to argue nuance in the face of Russian trolls is unbelievably stupid.
https://twitter.com/ichbinilya/status/1555646138602201092
There's a political exchange going on around who shelled who close to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant; only six reactors to worry about 🙁
The front line stretches roughly from here to Kherson and Russia is heavily reinforcing the south using forces from the Donbas and from Russia into Crimea
After all of the activity on bridges Russia is clearly anticipating a big counter-attack
Interesting interview with a Russian sociologist.
https://jacobin.com/2022/07/russia-ukraine-war-media-public-apolitical-vladimir-putin
