Russian invasion of Ukraine

[BringBackSwales]

Fuck me looks like I’m going to have to increase my eBay bid to £2 now :-(

Lol bid a quid and we can share it

 

[Roy Munson]

Its come early. It doesn't normally happen till mid March . The Russians clearly expected it to be all over in a week.
Probably the one benefit in global warming.

Come on now, fella. You know that's just a myth invented by Russian asset Greta to distract the West.

 

[crazyg]

you're a complete 'putin' ?

Hijo de Putin?

 

[Chippy_boy]

China already own half the world. They're not going to make a choice to reduce the value of what they own by half.

EU GDP? 15.59 trillion USD
US GDP? 22 trillion - roughly

GDP of Russia? $1.7 trillion

(Incidentally, Italy is $2.1 trillion)

Since GDP is a pretty good proxy for spending power, i.e. how much money China can get off us, why on EARTH would they want to side with Russia? Surely China hold the key to this crisis. I am convinced if we get China fully on board, bending Putin's ear directly, this nightmare can end.

 

[Gremlin]

To speed it up Germany would have to shut down half its economy so they can stop importing Russian gas. I know I'm sat in the UK saying this but I think it's a price worth paying. They will be better off in the long run as will everyone else.

They don't need to shut down their economy, they just need to start importing vast quantities from elsewhere - probably via LNG tankers. It's going to see a vast hike in LNG prices and there will be a load of pain for the ordinary folks in Western Europe (think your energy bills are high now, just wait). However, I agree it's a price worth paying and with clever targetted government support, we can ease that pain and our economies are far larger than Russia's so we can deal with it far better. On the flip side Russia's last major earner of foreign currency would have disappeared and they will be looking at hyperinflation.

 

[BringBackSwales]

To speed it up Germany would have to shut down half its economy so they can stop importing Russian gas. I know I'm sat in the UK saying this but I think it's a price worth paying. They will be better off in the long run as will everyone else.

Their own minister of economy said last week they could do it (use existing reserves, buy gas and coal from elsewhere) but it’s clearly too expensive. How they can do that when thousands of Ukrainians are dying is sickening

 

[splinter]

Come on now, fella. You know that's just a myth invented by Russian asset Greta to distract the West.

Where is greta these days, she still on one

 

[west didsblue]

They don't need to shut down their economy, they just need to start importing vast quantities from elsewhere - probably via LNG tankers. It's going to see a vast hike in LNG prices and there will be a load of pain for the ordinary folks in Western Europe (think your energy bills are high now, just wait). However, I agree it's a price worth paying and with clever targetted government support, we can ease that pain and our economies are far larger than Russia's so we can deal with it far better. On the flip side Russia's last major earner of foreign currency would have disappeared and they will be looking at hyperinflation.

I assume it would take a finite amount of time to get the infrastructure in place to import that amount of LNG and I'm sure they're working on that now so it would be a relatively short sharp hit to their economy until that infrastructure was up and running but I think it's something they should do now rather than wait for the infrastructure to be fully operational.

 

[Gabriel]

I want this to be the case, but to use the American phrase regarding the economy there's Wall Street and Main Street. Damage to oligarchs I see more as a political move than an economic one.These robber barons got rich off Putin and they effectively acted as his support group, hurt them and that support evaporates.

But economic sanctions have such a poor record. This might not be a great analogy, but the Royal Navy blockaded Germany in the First World War, no goods came in to the country via the North Sea and the Channel for over four years, a nation with a population of 67 million in 1914. Yet it took those four years to bring Germany to her knees.

Economic sanctions are not a blockade, people will be inconvenienced but they won't starve. I do so want these economic sanctions to work, but if Putin can spin this as the evil west punishing mother Russia for trying to save fellow Russians under the boot of Ukrainian Nazis, it might work in his favour.

Difficult to gauge the zeitgeist in Russia, I suspect, but I don't know, that these sanctions are more about undercutting Putin's support base than anything else, to "inconvenience" powerful people in Russia, to motivate them, old time Chicago gangster style, to pull the plug on the man who's bad for business.

Unlike WW1 or even WW2, the level of integration today is simply incomparable. We are so dependent on others for things that it will not take long for Russians to feel the effects, all self-inflicted.

 

[Gremlin]

Their own minister of economy said last week they could do it (use existing reserves, buy gas and coal from elsewhere) but it’s clearly too expensive. How they can do that when thousands of Ukrainians are dying is sickening

The quicker they realise that this is an existential battle for Western liberal democracy and we need to be prepared to take the pain that entails, the better.