Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[alfred russel]

Our perspective is Saddam vs. Kuwait, but I think the russian perspective is the USSR vs. Prague 1968.

[Legbiter]

Is there any way for the Europeans to get around this outside of boycotting them?

Putin has ordered to make Europe pay for gas in rubles – potentially a big boost to the currency.

"The collective West has killed all trust in their currencies," he says – $ and € are "compromised" by sanctions on Russia's central bank reserves.

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1506617939629334541


No it seems Europe will have to go cold turkey on Russian gas after all. This is somewhat bad for the Ukrainians too as they'll presumably no longer be paid their transit fees by...Russia.  We'll need to cover the lost revenue. Worth every penny though.

[crazy canuck]

But never throughout the cold war was the "helping" side so open and transparent about giving aid.

The Cuba missile crisis is one such example.

But this is not a proxy of the West fighting the Russians.  Characterizing it that way buys into the Russian propaganda.  In fact the main reason Russia thought it could win this war is because Ukraine is not in a Western military alliance. 

[mongers]

You all kid, but really we're as close to WWIII as we were during the Cuban crisis.

OK, maybe I need to resurrect that thread of mine:

https://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,16504.0.html

[Duque de Bragança]

This could have gone to the (Association) football thread but Russia has just announced they apply to be host for the (UEFA) EURO 2028 or 2032 championship. 
Bold move, the upkeep of stadia build for the World Cup in 2018 is expensive, even without graft, but that's laughable, at best, right now with the war.

Will probably be rejected by the UEFA soon, if it is not already the case.

[Legbiter]

Finnish customs has placed a total of 21 yachts under a transfer ban on grounds of suspicion that they are owned by oligarchs or other individuals falling within the sanctions regime of the EU, Sami Rakshit, the head of the enforcement department at Finnish Customs, confirmed to YLE on Monday.

Helsinki Times.

Where has Abramovich scurried off to? 

[Berkut]

But never throughout the cold war was the "helping" side so open and transparent about giving aid.

The Cuba missile crisis is one such example.

But this is not a proxy of the West fighting the Russians.  Characterizing it that way buys into the Russian propaganda.  In fact the main reason Russia thought it could win this war is because Ukraine is not in a Western military alliance. 

CC is right.

This is not a cold war repeat at all. 

This is a war of aggression, and the question the rules based world order is being asked to answer is whether or not we should go back to the "norm" of human history where it's just part of the way the world works that countries on a regular basis simply invade their neighbours and take them over.

I think there has been a pretty overwhelming answer to that, and not just from Western Liberal countries. I think most of the world recognizes that nobody wants to go back to that model. It really did suck.

[Sheilbh]

I don' necessarily think we're going to have a nuclear exchange, but I can see how we may be the closest risk to having one.

Throughout the cold war there were numerous examples of proxy wars - where one nuclear power was involved in a war, and the other side would covertly supply the enemy.  This was the pattern from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

But never throughout the cold war was the "helping" side so open and transparent about giving aid.

Yeah - although the other lesson from the Cold War is that proxy wars can get pretty hot and not come near to triggering anything more serious. As was the case in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

I think it seems to me that we're just back to the general level of nuclear threat of the Cold War in general. For all the talk Peskov re-stated what Russia's always said in public documents about their nuclear stance - there was nothing new about that comment on CNN despite people getting excited by it (and I think the Kremlin had a point when they said exactly that and pointed to all of the previous times the Kremlin have said the same thing). Similarly Russia increased their nuclear position from the lowest to the second lowest. My understanding, practically, is what that means is that nukes could now be used (including by accident).

I don't think we're anywhere near the risk of the Cuban missile crisis, or even basically the entire 1950s and 1980s.

[celedhring]

Is there any way for the Europeans to get around this outside of boycotting them?

Putin has ordered to make Europe pay for gas in rubles – potentially a big boost to the currency.

"The collective West has killed all trust in their currencies," he says – $ and € are "compromised" by sanctions on Russia's central bank reserves.

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1506617939629334541


No it seems Europe will have to go cold turkey on Russian gas after all. This is somewhat bad for the Ukrainians too as they'll presumably no longer be paid their transit fees by...Russia.  We'll need to cover the lost revenue. Worth every penny though.

One of the guys I work with is an expert on this kind of thing. In his opinion it will not change much (there could be a short term jolt to the ruble, though, just by people playing the market). His reasoning is that Russia was probably already selling the euros/dollars they were getting to shore up the ruble, and they are probably doing this to prevent the risk of losing access to the funds (which were probably being held by a foreign bank), by forcing its payment to a ruble-denominated account in Russia. Essentially get the Germans to do what they were already doing.

[Maladict]

This is normal.

Trump: I would threaten Russia with nuclear submarines if still president

'We're a greater nuclear power,' former president who previously praised Putin as 'smart' tells Fox Business
Donald Trump speaks at CPAC in Orlando, Florida, in February.

Wed 23 Mar 2022 15.47 GMT
Last modified on Wed 23 Mar 2022 16.08 GMT

If Donald Trump were still president, he told Fox Business on Monday, he would threaten Russia with nuclear submarines.

Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, who is therefore dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's status as a nuclear-armed power has shaped the US response, particularly in Biden's reluctance to take steps, such as a Nato-implemented no-fly zone over Ukraine, that might lead to direct armed confrontation with Russia.

Such caution cuts little ice with Trump.

"I listened to him constantly using the N-word, that's the N-word, and he's constantly using it: the nuclear word," Trump told Fox Business on Monday.

In US usage, the "N-word" typically refers to a racist epithet for Black people.

"We say, 'Oh, he's a nuclear power,'" Trump said. "But we're a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, the most powerful machines ever built ...

"You should say, 'Look, if you mention that word one more time, we're going to send them over and we'll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast. You can't let this tragedy continue. You can't let these, these thousands of people die."

Hundreds of thousands of people would die in any nuclear exchange with Russia.

Trump has already said Biden should threaten Russia with nuclear attack. He has also said the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 jets and "bomb the shit out of Russia", and then "say, 'China did it, we didn't do it, China did it,' and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch".

He has also praised Putin as "smart" and declined invitations to call him "evil", stoking speculation about relations between the two men and particularly what was agreed when they met in private in Helsinki in 2018.

Trump has also condemned Putin's war in Ukraine as a crime against humanity. Biden has called Putin a war criminal.

When Trump was in power, in 2018, he announced that the US would withdraw from a cold war nuclear weapons treaty which kept US and Russian nuclear weapons out of Europe. It duly did so. New Start, an Obama-era nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia, remains in place.

Analysts have warned that Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Russian leader has put his nuclear arsenal on high alert.

In office, Trump also demonstrated a cavalier attitude to diplomacy regarding North Korea, another nuclear power.

Though he courted the dictator in Pyongyang, Trump also told Kim Jong-un he had a "much bigger and more powerful" nuclear button and would answer any threats "with fire and fury like the world has never seen".

He also asked the rapper Kid Rock and rocker Ted Nugent what he should do about North Korea.

Writing for the Guardian this month, the former US labor secretary Robert Reich said he like many had thought nuclear powers would "never risk war against each other because of the certainty of mutually assured destruction".

"I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable," Reich wrote. "I fear I was wrong."

[The Brain]

Sweden is sending another 5,000 AT4s to Ukraine. So 10,000 in total. And also mine clearing equipment.

[Legbiter]

Sweden is sending another 5,000 AT4s to Ukraine. So 10,000 in total. And also mine clearing equipment.

I hope the Central European NATO countries are emptying their warehouses of old Warsaw Pact material and sending it to Ukraine.

[Barrister]

Sweden is sending another 5,000 AT4s to Ukraine. So 10,000 in total. And also mine clearing equipment.

I hope the Central European NATO countries are emptying their warehouses of old Warsaw Pact material and sending it to Ukraine.

It makes sense for more complicated materials like SAMs, aircraft and the like.  Maybe also firearms just for interoperability.

But for simpler things like man portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, it makes more sense to send the best.

[Berkut]

Sweden is sending another 5,000 AT4s to Ukraine. So 10,000 in total. And also mine clearing equipment.

I hope the Central European NATO countries are emptying their warehouses of old Warsaw Pact material and sending it to Ukraine.

There is some delicious irony in that, isn't there?

[Duque de Bragança]

Sweden is sending another 5,000 AT4s to Ukraine. So 10,000 in total. And also mine clearing equipment.

I hope the Central European NATO countries are emptying their warehouses of old Warsaw Pact material and sending it to Ukraine.

Goes for Germany as well, if there is still some Volksarmee leftovers.