Ukraine Conflict - Der Weg zurück

[ComradeYellow]

Dark red : supports Russia

Light red : didn't condemn Russia

Neon blue : condemned Russia without retaliatory measures

Dark green : condemned Russia with retaliatory measures

THERE IS A WORLD OUTSIDE THE "WHITE" ZONE.

Edited March 2, 2022 by ComradeYellow

[Lexx]

26 minutes ago, ComradeYellow said:

THERE IS A WORLD OUTSIDE THE "WHITE" ZONE.

Nah, I think you're lying.

[ComradeYellow]

The International Community inc.

[Malcador]

https://www.newsweek.com/college-backtracks-banning-teaching-dostoevsky-russian-1684080

[Darkpriest]

Interesting points for consideration

Economic:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/zoltan-pozsar-warns-russian-sanctions-threaten-dollars-reserve-status

Political:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/china-told-russia-delay-ukraine-invasion-until-after-olympics-us-officials

Edited March 2, 2022 by Darkpriest

[kanisatha]

If the quote from Lavrov that the Russian government recognizes Zelenskiy as the legitimate government of Ukraine is confirmed, that is HUGE. You cannot underestimate the importance of this, given Putin's and Lavrov's many recent statements to the contrary. It is possible this is on account of some reports that the Ukrainians recently thwarted an assassination attempt on Zelenskiy by the Chechens based on being tipped off by agents in the FSB who stated they did not want any part of "this bloody war." Putin and company may be now facing trouble at home, something I have predicted as a real possibility. If you watch that clip from Russian state TV in which Putin orders Shoigu to raise the alert of his nuclear forces, you can clearly see shock and concern on Shoigu's face. And this is Shoigu, next only to Putin and Lavrov in his ultra-nationalistic fervor. And even some of Putin's oligarch buddies have now come forward to publicly state they oppose the war.

And that the war is going poorly for the Russians and that they are facing massive logistics problems (especially with fuel and food) is now becomming more and more confirmed on the basis of intercepted cellphone calls and texts being sent by Russian troops back home to their family/girlfriends.

Last but by no means least, today in the UN General Assembly, an extremely harshly worded resolution condemning Russia's "unjustified" and "unprovoked" invasion, affirming Ukraine's borders and territorial integrity, and demanding an immediate ceasefire and Russian withdrawal, was approved with 141 countries voting yes and only 4 countries voting no with Russia: Belarus, Syria, North Korea, and Eritrea. Eritrea can be excused, because recent events in their neighborhood where only the Russians helped them in a very difficult situation means they're simply repaying that debt. Almost all the 35 countries that abstained nevertheless addressed the Assembly and stated very clearly they agreed with the resolution but were abstaining only for "diplomatic" reasons. Even China abstained, and subsequently released a statement affirming all UN Charter principles on sovereignty and territorial integrity, that they believe events in Ukraine are going in the "wrong direction," and fighting should stop and be replaced by diplomacy. So in truth, Russia's only "allies" in the whole world right now are Belarus, Syria, and North Korea. Even states like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and their CSTO allies refused to support them.

Putin's isolation (in every way) is very real. Whether that works out well or badly for us all is to be determined.

Edited March 3, 2022 by kanisatha

[kanisatha]

As for what kind of compromise deal we could expect both sides to accept, I do believe Zelenskiy will accept two things Putin wants: foreswearing NATO membership, and redrawing Ukraine's borders to give the Crimea and at least parts of Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia (as that will actually make Ukraine a more politically stable and socially unified state). He may also be willing to accept some language on Ukraine not deploying certain types of arms, though that "list" (as Lavrov puts it) would have to be very short.

But the real question is what will Putin be willing to give Ukraine in return? And no, simply saying "we give the Ukrainians back the rest of their country" is not going to cut it at all. The Russians will have to agree to legally binding language, affirmed by a UNSC resolution, accepting Ukraine's sovereignty and borders. They will have to pay reparations, not only for this war but also for the territory (and everything on that territory) that they take from Ukraine. And they will have to accept that other than NATO, Ukraine is free to pursue membership in any grouping it wishes. The EU today accepted Ukraine's application for membership, and even suggested that an accelerated timetable could be considered. Russia will have to accept that Ukraine will join the West, and will not be in Russia's orbit ever again.

[Gorth]

35 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

As for what kind of compromise deal we could expect both sides to accept, I do believe Zelenskiy will accept two things Putin wants: foreswearing NATO membership, and redrawing Ukraine's borders to give the Crimea and at least parts of Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia (as that will actually make Ukraine a more politically stable and socially unified state). He may also be willing to accept some language on Ukraine not deploying certain types of arms, though that "list" (as Lavrov puts it) would have to be very short.

But the real question is what will Putin be willing to give Ukraine in return? And no, simply saying "we give the Ukrainians back the rest of their country" is not going to cut it at all. The Russians will have to agree to legally binding language, affirmed by a UNSC resolution, accepting Ukraine's sovereignty and borders. They will have to pay reparations, not only for this war but also for the territory (and everything on that territory) that they take from Ukraine. And they will have to accept that other than NATO, Ukraine is free to pursue membership in any grouping it wishes. The EU today accepted Ukraine's application for membership, and even suggested that an accelerated timetable could be considered. Russia will have to accept that Ukraine will join the West, and will not be in Russia's orbit ever again.

While the price is high, you could argue that such an outcome is giving Putin exactly what he wanted and then ask, why did that have to take a bloody war?

As for reparations, I (jokingly) suggested before the war, as compensation Russia could provide Ukraine with all the LPG they need for the next 100 years or so (probably less as hopefully renewable energy sources will have replaced fossil fuel before the end of such a period).

Mind you, that was just a pragmatic solution. Ukraine gets rid of a headache (all the Russians living on the wrong side of a "border" that should never have existed where those places to begin with, but the west being the west etc. perfectly happy to recognize the Ukrainian invasion of the independent Crimean S.S.R in 1991 and accept Ukraine imposing direct control of an occupied country, similar to China's invasion of Tibet in the 50's). Now there is the added cost in both human lives and material.

 

Edit: That was a rhetorical question, as I do know the answer. Nationalist pride getting in the way of sensible solutions.

[Zoraptor]

51 minutes ago, Gorth said:

While the price is high, you could argue that such an outcome is giving Putin exactly what he wanted and then ask, why did that have to take a bloody war?

Yeah exactly. Why not just agree to it a month, a year or 8 years ago? Would have saved a whole lot of deaths. And he's still going to have massive problems getting it past the people who would have probably outright murdered him if he tried who now think Ukraine is not just doing better than expected, but actually winning.

Quote

As for reparations, I (jokingly) suggested before the war, as compensation Russia could provide Ukraine with all the LPG they need for the next 100 years or so (probably less as hopefully renewable energy sources will have replaced fossil fuel before the end of such a period).

I'd presume Ukraine would want something they weren't already getting, at least. A lot of the supply issues for Europe was Russia deciding only to pump the contracted amounts in at their end, and it mysteriously disappearing somewhere mysterious that no one knows where- it's a mystery, maybe it was aliens?- when it arrived at the other side of Ukraine.

In a more pedantic objection: Russia only has ~80 years of proven reserves.

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, Gorth said:

While the price is high, you could argue that such an outcome is giving Putin exactly what he wanted and then ask, why did that have to take a bloody war?

Not quite. Putin was demanding a lot more, not only from the Ukrainians (effectively the Ukrainians being a vassel state just like Belarus) but also those demands of NATO. And then furthermore, his demands were things he wanted without anything he would be giving the Ukrainians (other than "allowing" them to exist). What I wrote about as things I could see Zelenskiy accepting were all based on Putin accepting certain other things. Those things were never there in any of the pre-war dicussions. So no, this is a fundamentally different outcome from anything pre-war, and is based on precisely the view that Putin no longer can dictate anything unilaterally vis-a-vis Ukraine.

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

Not quite. Putin was demanding a lot more, not only from the Ukrainians (effectively the Ukrainians being a vassel state just like Belarus) but also those demands of NATO. And then furthermore, his demands were things he wanted without anything he would be giving the Ukrainians (other than "allowing" them to exist). What I wrote about as things I could see Zelenskiy accepting were all based on Putin accepting certain other things. Those things were never there in any of the pre-war dicussions. So no, this is a fundamentally different outcome from anything pre-war, and is based on precisely the view that Putin no longer can dictate anything unilaterally vis-a-vis Ukraine.

I couldn't find any easily accessible list of demands of Ukraine other than honour the Minsk accord (which Zelenskiy effectively declared they were not going to implement after all) and don't join Nato.

But The Guardians seems to have a decent list of demands made of Nato (including not accepting Ukraine as a member) and to pull Nato troops (I assume this refers to "foreign" troops in the countries in question, the countries would still remain Nato members) back. Lastly, that the US honours the INF treaty, which they unilaterally abandoned in 2018.

Did I miss anything significant?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato

 

[rjshae]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

But The Guardians seems to have a decent list of demands made of Nato (including not accepting Ukraine as a member) and to pull Nato troops (I assume this refers to "foreign" troops in the countries in question, the countries would still remain Nato members) back. Lastly, that the US honours the INF treaty, which they unilaterally abandoned in 2018.

Did I miss anything significant?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato

I'm pretty sure that's just propaganda to justify his actions. The West would never agree to a withdrawal from Poland, and Putin knows it. Also, NATO does have partner nations, so the Ukraine could link to NATO that way even if they don't join for expediency reasons.

[Lexx]

5 hours ago, kanisatha said:

As for what kind of compromise deal we could expect both sides to accept, I do believe Zelenskiy will accept two things Putin wants: foreswearing NATO membership, and redrawing Ukraine's borders to give the Crimea and at least parts of Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia (as that will actually make Ukraine a more politically stable and socially unified state). He may also be willing to accept some language on Ukraine not deploying certain types of arms, though that "list" (as Lavrov puts it) would have to be very short.

But the real question is what will Putin be willing to give Ukraine in return? And no, simply saying "we give the Ukrainians back the rest of their country" is not going to cut it at all. The Russians will have to agree to legally binding language, affirmed by a UNSC resolution, accepting Ukraine's sovereignty and borders. They will have to pay reparations, not only for this war but also for the territory (and everything on that territory) that they take from Ukraine. And they will have to accept that other than NATO, Ukraine is free to pursue membership in any grouping it wishes. The EU today accepted Ukraine's application for membership, and even suggested that an accelerated timetable could be considered. Russia will have to accept that Ukraine will join the West, and will not be in Russia's orbit ever again.

Do you really think ukraine would want to give all the new found natural gas sources to russia? That suddenly makes the country a lot less attractive to our western rich boys, imo.

[Darkpriest]

First official victims of Oil spiking to 118 USD

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/citi-stopped-out-oil-short-double-digit-loss-td-sees-oil-spiking-145

 

Expect much more turmoil, should this continue at this pace. 

 

Not to mention price of food spiking, example

Wheat at 1130 while 3 weeks ago it was at 730... Start calculating. 

To put this into perspective, the highest ever price was in the middle of the crisis in 2008 and it was at around 1200, that led to a lot of political turmoil, especially in the middle east. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Darkpriest

[Elerond]

51 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

First official victims of Oil spiking to 118 USD

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/citi-stopped-out-oil-short-double-digit-loss-td-sees-oil-spiking-145

 

"Citigroup analysts predicted last month that Brent oil prices would fall 18% to 20% by the second half of the year, and established a short position on December Brent futures, recommending that investors sell Brent at $82.39 a barrel. They wrote that they had “high confidence” in the trade. The stop loss on the trade was $92, a level that it crossed on Wednesday as Brent futures soared to new highs. The trade lost 11.5%."

https://www.barrons.com/articles/prominent-oil-bear-throws-in-the-towel-others-are-ramping-up-short-bets-51646247617

Failure to read world situation and making gamble investments has habit to bite people asses 

[Darkpriest]

Yeah, 2008 also started with some people betting on the wrong thing... 

[Elerond]

This will cause massive impact on Russian trade. Maersk dominates Baltic Sea shipping and containers

https://www.reuters.com/business/worlds-biggest-container-lines-suspend-shipping-russia-2022-03-01/

 

[Elerond]

17 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

Yeah, 2008 also started with some people betting on the wrong thing... 

But root cause is not oil price pike, but than big investment banks are allowed to do massive gambles with funds they don't own

Edited March 3, 2022 by Elerond

[Darkpriest]

18 minutes ago, Elerond said:

But root cause is not oil price pike, but than big investment banks are allowed to do massive gambles with funds they don't own

Aha, and the trigger that turned initial valuations upside down was? 

There sure are no overvalued assets and excessive leverage now, right? 

Have a read through, while not entirely spot on, a lot of it is. It's an older article. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shades-2008-oil-decouples-everything

[Elerond]

23 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

Aha, and the trigger that turned initial valuations upside down was? 

There sure are no overvalued assets and excessive leverage now, right? 

Have a read through, while not entirely spot on, a lot of it is. It's an older article. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shades-2008-oil-decouples-everything

Long running energy crisis in Europe that become worse because of war start by Russia even though war has not yet impacted oil or gas production in Russia or deliveries to Europe, but markets see hard times in future, which caused problems to Citigroup because its analysts saw possibility for gamble and were hoping scenario where crisis is solved by OPEC increasing its production and Nord Stream 2 getting green light. There is high change that their gamble would have caused them big losses even without Russian invasion to Ukraine.

So what enabled Citigroup to do such high risk gamble on markets? 

[Darkpriest]

You are looking at the snippet and missing a lot of things

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/global-markets-wrapup-1-pix-2022-03-03/

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/commodities-aluminium-hits-record-top-oil-wheat-multi-year-highs-supply-woes-2022-03-03/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-03/european-gas-rally-continues-with-focus-on-sanctions-on-russia

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/russia-s-war-in-ukraine-disrupts-global-fertilizer-trade-increasing-food-costs

And this is in the environment of already highest inflation in 40yrs, near 0 rates of FED and ECB, ongoing QE (although FED is ending it in March), trillions more on balance sheets of central banks, and highest soverign debt in history in Western Economies. At the same time you still have very high valuations of assets, even with the recent 15-20% drop from ATH. 

If the conflict does not end soon, and we have no view for some sort of normaliztion, 2008 will look like a childs play... Especially if they will target Russian Oil and Gas directly. 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Darkpriest

[xzar_monty]

8 hours ago, kanisatha said:

And this is Shoigu, next only to Putin and Lavrov in his ultra-nationalistic fervor.

A minor point but interesting nonetheless: Shoigu is not an ethnic Russian. One look at his personal palace will bring this fact home to anyone with eyes to see.

This somehow appears to parallel the confusing fact that the recent immigration crisis has given voice to some very strong anti-immigrant people in my country, and it's fascinating to note that many of these people do NOT represent the ethnic majority of my country, i.e. they are the equivalents of immigrants themselves.

Some material for psychologists right here.

[Elerond]

43 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

 

If the conflict does not end soon, and we have no view for some sort of normaliztion, 2008 will look like a childs play... Especially if they will target Russian Oil and Gas directly. 

 

There is no prospect that conflict will end any time soon

Russia already has started to use oil and gas directly as counter to western sanctions, so no worries, they will be eventually be targeted with current course

Edited March 3, 2022 by Elerond

[xzar_monty]

12 minutes ago, Elerond said:

There is no prospect that conflict will end any time soon

It is possible, for example, that Putin's inner circle will lose morale and intervene in some capacity. I agree that this is not a probable scenario, at least not now, but it is also not impossible. So saying that "There is no prospect" is going a bit too far, in my view.

[Darkpriest]

Seems Iran might get their deal in the process

Decision makers defending not crossing 120USD a barrel. 

It touched 119.78 intraday during EU open

Now after Iran rumor that within 72h the deal will be signed, Oil dropped to 112

Edited March 3, 2022 by Darkpriest