Ukraine

[RE]

OK, Ukraine shuts gas pipelines from Mother Russia to Slovakia and Slovakia retaliates by cutting off electricity to Ukraine.  How does Zelinsky get out of this that the Slovaks "opened a new front" in the war?  HE fucking started it by turning off the gas!  Yeesh.  Of course then he can rebut saying Vlad started it by invading, and Vlad can say he started by persecuting ethnic Russians in Donbass.

What REALLY started is the fact Ukraine is a main transit hub for Ruskie energy and a strategic parcel of land to put military bases with missile pointed at the guys on the other side of the border.  In the post-WWII order Ukraine was on the Ruskie side of the line, and with the fall of the Soviet Union the heirs Nazis who collaborated with Hitler have aligned themselves with the NATO fascists, which Putin logically sees as a threat.  At the very least it holds Ukraine economically hostage to NATO interests.

Anyhow, as we all know, all this conflict, be it in MENA with Syria And Israel or Ukraine and Russia, or the trade war with the Chines or the possession of Greenland and Panama, is all about ENERGY, its ownership and transit rights and who derives the profit from it.  The fight will continue on until the infrastructure necessary to extract and transfer the energy has been destroyed by one side or the other in the battle for the possession of it, like 3 starving dogs fighting over the last scrap of meat.

You can't fix stupid.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/28/zelenskyy-accuses-slovakia-of-opening-second-energy-front-against-ukraine

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[RE]

OK, the war in Ukraine has been ongoing for a few years now, which means there definitely are a lot of dead people as a result, on both sides.  But I am having just a little trouble believing these numbers dished out by MI5 (Brit Intelligence) as the Ruskie Death Count:

"According to UK intelligence, Russia's financial incentives for recruits almost certainly aim to ensure sufficient replenishment for its losses, which continue to grow. As of now, they amount to over 760,000 killed and wounded, averaging 1,523 casualties per day in November 2024."

Really?  3/4 of a MILLION dead on the Ruskie side?  Averaging 1500 deaths a day?  When you consider the total population of Mother Russia is only 144M people, half of them are women and probably no more than 30% are men between the ages of 18-40, there probably aren't more than 20M men to draft as cannon fodder.  The total size of the Ruskie military is 1.4M people, and I'm pretty sure half of them haven't been killed and replaced since they invaded Ukraine in 2022.

This sounds suspiciously like the estimates of dead Vietcong during the Vietnam War, which were grossly inflated and used to pop up on the nightly news.  Yhese figures are meant to demoralize the enemy as well as convince the public their side is wildly successful and winning the war.

You also have to consider that most of this war is being fought on the Ukraine side of the border with Ruskies attacking Ukie positions with tanks and missiles as they moved in to the Donbass and laid siege to Kiev.  That means in the process of losing 750K of their own soldiers, they won so they must have killed close to the same number of Ukie soldiers and civilians.  Given the large number of refugees who have left, are there really that many around to kill every day?

So anyhow, while I think this number is definitely exagerrated the conflict has been pretty bloody so there definitely are a large REAL number of casualties.  For argument's sake, let's put the number at 300K. Can you imagine the outrage here in the FSoA if we had 300K dead soldiers over the last couple of years?  Are Russians really that much different that they would be OK with this and not be protesting the war more actively?

All in all, this just stinks of propaganda, and I'd be interested in what the real numbers look like.  Not that we'll ever see them, of course.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/moscow-finds-another-way-to-replenish-troops-1735559671.html

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[monsta666]

I also think the figures are likely overoptimistic but there is one thing that gives me pause for thought and that is the recent development in Syria. Assad and his regime was propped up in large part due to Russia and Hezbollah. Now we know Hezbollah has been weakened significantly due to its skirmishes with Israel but I feel Assad's downfall has also come about due to the decline of Russian forces in the country.

Let us not forget Syria was one of the few places in the Middle East that was pro Russia and for Russia to lose this territory means their influence in the Middle East has weakened significantly. This is all the more problematic when you think the balance of power has shifted in favour to the US. Putin would not have liked to give Syria easily and the fact that it has gone lends credence to the idea that the Russian military has significantly weakened since the war in Ukraine started. To me this could well be the case they have cannibalized the periphery in order to maintain the core.

In addition, you also hear stories that Russia is boosting its numbers by hiring North Korean to the front line. If that is the case then that is another indicator they are running a bit low in reserves. Finally there is also the recent downing of that civilian plane. Blunders like that don't tend to happen when you got a lot in of spare capacity. I suppose you could chalk the final point to mere incompetence but it could also be a sign of a stretched military that lacks sufficient oversight to make the right decisions. 

[RE]

Not easy to find a decent review of how the economics of energy trading are being affected from FSoA MSM sources, at least not unless you have paid subscription prices to folks like Bloomberg and the WSJ.  Just about all tthe major players have paywalls so all you usually can do is make educated guesses.  However, I did turn  up this one from the Sri Lanka Guardian which gives enough information to see how the money part of this is playing out.

The Big Winner in this are the FSoA exporters of LNG, which is substituting for the NG formerly piped in from Mother Russia, so obviouslythe FSoA Goobermint is happy about this and isn't going to try to negotiate a settlement of the dispute.  Big Losers are the landlocked countries of central Europe, particularly Hungary, Austria and Slovakia.  These places are looking at a huge jump in the cost of electricity that could as much as triple the cost they were paying for the Ruskie gas.  Also losing to alesser degree are the rest of the Euro countries who will see prices jump upwards by around 30%.

This will hit Germany very hard since both the automotive and steel industries are very sensitive to energy costs, plus they have factories in the hardest hit countries as well.  As we know from the political news, the Krauts are already in economicdifficulty and their goobermint is in turmoil after the PM lost a vote of No-Confidence and new elections are being held.

As for Mother Russia, it's hard to say how much it will affect them since the amount of gas they pushed through that pipeline is only a fraction of their total exports, and they were selling it very cheap.  They may be able toshift around their logistics and make virtual tradeoffs, using this gas themselves and selling other gas they currently transit from the east to China.  Probably they will lose some revenue, but since this will drive up prices everywhere for NG, they'll make back the money lost in other markets.

Now, the higher costs to the consumers will exacerbate the recession in Europe, which will reduce overall consumption and put a downward pressure back on the prices.  This will lead to greater volatility in the energy market and at some point there could be supply disruptions, though for right now most of these countries have known this was coming and they have inventory stored up. So supply disruptions if they occur are still probably months away.

Disruptions to electricity in Ukraine are probably not months away, but will probably start shortly after the gas gets turned off.  The war has compromised some of the Ukies own power generation facilities, and the holes are currently being filled by juice generated in Slovakia.  If the Slovaks flip off the switch, lights will go out in Kiev.  The only reason they have power at all is since Putin figures he'll eventually win, he doesn't want to full on demolish the power plants, he'd have to rebuild them later.  So disruptions are achieved more by taking out power transfer substations in a strategic manner.

Given all the political confusion in Europe, I wouldn't be surprised if Putin makes a big push in the next couple of months.  It would seem like a good time to test the resolve of NATO, particularly since His Trumpness isn't real motivated to provide mlitary aid without extracting some big concessions.  It will be impossible for France or Germany to do much of anything with both Parliaments in lockup.  Just gotta wait & see.

http://slguardian.org/winners-and-losers-as-russia-halts-gas-transit-through-ukraine/

[RE]

Definitely the fact Vlad is employing NK Mercs in Ukraine lends credence to the likelihood of a shortage of warm bodied Ruskies to send to the front lines in Ukraine.  Also the reports that he is offering debt forgiveness up to $100K for anyone who will volunteer to go fight.

It does pose an interesting question if the Ruskie military is that depleted.  Recent articles have also indicated that the FSoA military is not meeting recruitment goals and is short of soldiers.  What if this shortage of cannon fodder is true across the board in al the world's military powers?  This means  basically they are too short staffed to do invasions!

This scenario actually sorta makes sense, if you look at the military as just another employer looking for low paid workers.  There's a shortage of workers in almost every low wage type of job, and they're all competing for the same pool of workers.  At a certain point, you can't keep restaffing the military without taking away essential workers from the local economies.  So unless a country fully mobilizes for War and starts drafting soldiers, they can't run a full scale military operation that includes occupation of another country.  This could be the problem facing Putin.

Very interesting situation.

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[K-Dog]

The NK military is in a small area where they have not been doing well.  It is a chance for NK to try out their military.  I would not read a lot into it.  Putin has support.  Russia is shredding Ukraine as was predicted from the start.  The NK contribution is like the contribution of a single Russian city and I am sure NK is learning from the experience.

Ukrainians condemn US call to lower conscription age amid Russia's war

Washington suggested teenagers join the war as Ukraine demanded more aid, signalling a rift between allies. 

A young man attends military training conducted by volunteers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, amid Russia's full-scale invasion, in the Lviv region

Kyiv, Ukraine – Vladislav thinks lowering the conscription age in Ukraine from 25 to 18 is a "bad idea".  His military service is a sad yet telling example.  The fair-haired, gaunt 20-year-old volunteered to join the Ukrainian army two years ago – and suffered a heavy contusion near the eastern city of Kupiansk.  "It was scary, scary, scary," Vladislav told Al Jazeera in central Kyiv, as he dragged on a cigarette.  "I've seen a lot. I've got problems with my head," he said as if apologizing for his reluctance to talk about his combat experience.  Vladislav is awaiting a medical assessment that would either have him demobilized – or dispatched back to the front line in the southeastern Donbass region, where the out-manned and outgunned Ukrainian forces slowly lose ground to Russian invaders.

Meanwhile bankers continue to make bank.

[RE]

The NK military is in a small area where they have not been doing well.  It is a chance for NK to try out their military.

They are practicing how to get killed.  Unfortunately, you can only practice this once.

RE