Panto_Villan

If an energy crisis is such a great way for energy suppliers to make money, how come it forced so many out of business? And are the energy price caps not set by an independent body here? Also, the EU is hooking Ukraine up to its grid because they don’t want the only way it can get electricity / gas to be from the country it’s at war with. It’ll just reduce wholesale prices there to the European level, which are the same as here. The UK is already hooked up the EU grid and uses very little Russian gas (less than 5%) but the price of Russian gas going up raises the price of the gas we buy too because again we’re part of the European market and has is expensive right now. The only way legislation on prices would work is if you lowered prices through law and then put a major tax on UK oil/gas producers benefitting from high prices like BP and Shell. That’s certainly a feasible course of action. But that’s got very little to do with privatisation, as Shell for example was always privately owned. The average profit margin for the energy suppliers (not oil majors) was 1% in 2009 and is 4% now. It’s hardly insane profit margins even if you think privatisation brings absolutely zero benefits. Temporarily removing VAT on energy bills would do more for households than nationalising them and giving their profits back to citizens.

Heh, that’s probably true enough these days. But if we assume unprincipled culture war demagoguery is the new orthodox right wing stance then I don’t think you can count Hitchens as one. Farage sits somewhere between the two, part demagogue and part genuine conservative imo.

Carlson's not an orthodox right winger surely? He's basically a full-on Trumper seemingly intent on discrediting everything the Republicans used to hold dear about 15 years ago.

A bunch of the defence analysts I follow on Twitter seem to think this guy knows what he's talking about, and he's written a series of tweets summarising the war so far and where he thinks it will go. It's an interesting read, and unfortunately a lot less optimistic than the current narrative that a lot of people seem to be buying into.

Yeah, it was discussed a few pages back. It’s the openly neo-Nazi regiment being openly neo-Nazi, but it does seem weird the national guard as a whole thought it was a good idea to tweet about it. The good news is they’re probably significantly increasing the chances of getting killed on the battlefield because they’re filling their guns with f***** lard.

Maybe we should ask Ukraine if they fancy a bigger navy?

I don’t understand why you think the EU response was rapid or cohesive due to the UK not being present if the UK got to the same place (significant economic sanctions, arming Ukraine) faster, though? Why would we be slowing down them getting to our position? The UK is usually pretty accommodating to Russian money and influence but the position seems to have shifted since an invasion of Ukraine became a realistic possibility. Germany has done the same thing, but it took them a few weeks longer to get there. It’s odd you recognise it in one country but not the other.

I certainly hope we don’t see it either, but honestly the only way I think we’ll avoid it is if what we’re seeing now is just some warnings to Zelensky while ceasefire negotiations are ongoing. If Russia is willing to accept token concessions in order to get out of a war where they’re in over their heads (I.e. Ukraine pledges not to join NATO for 20 years or whatever) then we might see a peaceful end to the war. I’m not sure Putin would be willing to offer that though, so I think the war will continue. And I think if there’s no chance of peace (and the West having nowhere else to go with financial sanctions) the Russians will start to act much more ruthlessly. I really hope I’m wrong.

I don’t think this is a particularly good reflection of reality. The UK has been one of the leading countries pushing for the expulsion of Russia from SWIFT (initially resisted by the EU due to Germany, Italy, Hungary and Cyprus) and we were supporting Ukraine with numerous anti-tank weapons well before it became cool, which has proved extremely relevant. Germany actually blocked other countries like Estonia from sending Ukraine weapons. Similarly it seems really weird to praise Germany for upping their military budget to 2% of GDP while we’ve been at 2% for a while. The UK does have a lot of problems with laundering Russian money but you definitely seem to be trying to fit events to your pre-existing narrative here. Brexit and Boris can still be a bad thing without having to talk down the contribution the UK has made.

I know I said I’d leave you alone but reading this sort of thing is so painful I have to make an exception: The M72 LAW isn’t high tech version of the Javelin at all, it’a a smaller and lighter missile launcher with a smaller warhead and much less range than the Javelin. It’s not even a guided projectile, let alone a top-attack weapon. It’s just the modern equivalent of a WW2 bazooka. Where do you get your information from?

Although Putin could certainly inflict horrific damage on Ukraine, it is worth considering the size of the place when you make these comparisons. I’m not one of those people who casually dismisses the Russian forces as a joke (and who are likely to look increasingly misguided if those war continues for several more weeks), but it’ll take an awful lot of very bulky rockets to flatten multiple large cities. Grozny was only one city, and not a particularly large one at that. I think we’ll probably see a few selected cities of strategic importance get smashed to pieces with huge loss of life, but I don’t think it’s a tactic that can be used everywhere.

They’re never going to win unless they stop trying to minimise civilian casualties, so unfortunately I think we can expect a lot more of this. Honestly the real shock is that it took so long for them to revert to their normal tactics.

China is probably learning an awful lot by watching this. Not all good from our point of view - they’ll be making sure they aren’t as vulnerable to sanctions going forwards now they’ve seen the Russian central bank getting sanctioned - but I imagine more than a few generals might be checking their assumptions when it comes to an invasion of Taiwan.

They’re being sent old MiG-29s (which their pilots know how to fly) by Poland and Bulgaria who are in the process of phasing them out for F16s.

Yeah, I'm not trying to smear the Ukrainians as a whole here. But as @Davkaus points out, it's a bit concerning that the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian national guard (of which the Azov batallion is part) thinks its a good idea to tweet that stuff. You're right that it seems odd given the geographic spread between Mauripol (which is where the Azov guys are meant to be stationed I believe) and where the Chechens are near Kiev. Not quite sure what that's about.

I'm certainly not one to throw around accusations of facism lightly, but it says they are fighters of the Azov battalion who are well-known far right nationalists and neo-Nazis. Just google them.

Apparently it is 16% dollars, 32% Euros, 22% in gold and 13% Chinese Yuan. But counterintuitively what currency or commodity it is held in doesn't really matter that much. Basically the sanctions (US, EU, UK) say that if you trade with a sanctioned party then you'll be heavily fined or cut off from the financial systems of the US, UK and EU. Understandably no multinational firm will choose to trade with the Russian central bank under those circumstances. The issue that the Russians are facing is that most of their reserves are held either fully abroad, or in the Russian branches of multinational banks. For example - if they've decided that they want to hold $50bn in gold in a secure Swiss bank vault rather than having to physically store several thousand gold bars somewhere in Russia, that Swiss bank now has to confiscate that gold or they themselves will be cut off from the financial system. It doesn't matter that the Russians don't want to trade in dollars or hold dollars in that bank, what matters is whether the Swiss bank ever wants to be able to use dollars again.

Agreed on both counts. I was just wondering if maybe the Twitter account was being run by representatives of the Azov regiment or something; they're a proper Ukrainian national guard unit these days because I think all the various militias that sprung up in 2014 got folded into the armed forces afterwards.

Those Azov guys are the actual Ukrainian neo-nazis, right? I wouldn't be overly fussed if they fought the Chechens to the death and nobody won.

Oh, and on top of all the of the weapon systems being given Ukraine, apparently Bulgaria / Slovakia / Poland are going to be providing them combat aircraft. I sorta feel like we're getting into full-blown proxy war status here though.

So I was reading an article the Economist posted today on the most recent round of sanctions that include the Russian banks being cut off from SWIFT and it said, actually, while the SWIFT stuff was getting all the headlines there was something far larger in the sanctions package flying under the radar. That thing is the sanctions targeting the Russian central bank. That big war chest of $630bn that the Russians have built up? There's a good chance the majority of it is tied up in Western institutions that will obey the sanctions and freeze those accounts (I suspect it's particularly relevant here here that Switzerland has said it will comply with US / EU sanctions). With a much more limited war chest the Russian central bank will find it much harder to prop up the ruble against devaluation. It'll be interesting tomorrow to see what damage is wrought on the Russian economy, because sanctioning a nation's central bank is the financial equivalent of dropping a H-bomb on them.

There’s a mix of genuine stuff, accidental propaganda and total shite out there. Some of the “propaganda” is totally true. The old lady with the sunflower seeds is just a great moment they were lucky to catch on camera. Zelensky not fleeing Kiev is legit bravery and must be great for morale. Some of the stuff is likely incorrect due to the fog of war. The Snake Island guys told a warship to eff off and then the Ukrainians lost contact with them, so I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume they were killed even if they actually surrendered. Other stuff likely has a grain of truth to it but needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The Ukrainians are likely overstating the casualties they have inflicted on the Russians, and the Russians are likely underestimating how many they have taken, etc. And then there’s stuff that seems to have no basis in fact whatsoever, and exists purely to let people confirm existing biases. Ghost of Kiev. The story about all the Chechen tanks and their general being killed. Quite possibly the story about the guy sacrificing himself to blow up the bridge. There’s a narrative developing that the Ukrainians have got this in the bag, but none of the serious defence analysts I’ve been following seem to be on board with that. However most of them have noted that the Russians seem to be sticking with tactics that aren’t working particularly well so far, which doesn’t bode well for them if it continues.

I think we already spend the 2% of GDP on our military, which is the NATO target. Germany has been a massive laggard in that respect for a long time (there’s a reason why Britain and France are the two main military players in Europe) and this announcement is just bringing them up to that 2% target. So I doubt it changes the equation for us too much.

Yeah, and it's worth remembering that Trump was literally impeached for fraudulently witholding $400m of military aid to Ukraine in the hopes of getting Zelensky to make up dirt on Biden's son for him. Crazy.

The thing I really don’t get about the whole affair is that Putin clearly didn’t want anything realistic from the negotiations - so why spend so long posturing and threatening to invade? If he’d just built up loads of troops in a two week period under the guise of exercises and then launched a “surprise” attack, the Ukrainians would have had less time to prepare and receive arms shipments, and NATO would have had less time to forge consensus on sanctions etc. He might have split his opponents at least a bit. Instead he played it the worst way possible. If you’re definitely going to invade a country, don’t warn them in advance and give them months to prepare. The mind boggles.