LaxPower Back-Up Stick

NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:38 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 12:40 amCalm down. I read your entire post.
I was not arguing with you (although I don't know the practicality of your idea).
Russia has a lot of territory but they don't need to defend it all. Right now, they just need to control Ukraine's airspace. They can bring in as many mobile S-400's as they need from around the country to ring Ukraine. We don't have a bunch of low cost drones to give Ukraine to use as clay pigeons to get Russia to expend all their S-400 rounds.

That's the fun part. They do have to defend it all.

Finland, Estonia, Lativa, Königsberg, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Syria, the Stans, Mongolia, China, Japan, USA, Canada, and, well, anyone who wants to test things via the Arctic.

Drones are cheap and fast to produce, everything on up from cheap chinese crap to multi-million (& more) fun stuff is in the air on many sides. Easy to make a relatively cheap drone look expensive to a radar system.

You're still thinking slow and old vs. fast and agile production-wise. Literally a few days of modifications means hundreds of thousands of dollars to more in a missile lost to relatively nothing.

People are literally sweeping aside anti-tank mines. It's a whole new ball-game in non-guerilla warfare. Russia is getting pantsed.

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:48 am

NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:38 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 12:40 amCalm down. I read your entire post.
I was not arguing with you (although I don't know the practicality of your idea).
Russia has a lot of territory but they don't need to defend it all. Right now, they just need to control Ukraine's airspace. They can bring in as many mobile S-400's as they need from around the country to ring Ukraine. We don't have a bunch of low cost drones to give Ukraine to use as clay pigeons to get Russia to expend all their S-400 rounds.

That's the fun part. They do have to defend it all.

Finland, Estonia, Lativa, Königsberg, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Syria, the Stans, Mongolia, China, Japan, USA, Canada, and, well, anyone who wants to test things via the Arctic.

Drones are cheap and fast to produce, everything on up from cheap chinese crap to multi-million (& more) fun stuff is in the air on many sides. Easy to make a relatively cheap drone look expensive to a radar system.

You're still thinking slow and old vs. fast and agile production-wise. Literally a few days of modifications means hundreds of thousands of dollars to more in a missile lost to relatively nothing.

People are literally sweeping aside anti-tank mines. It's a whole new ball-game in non-guerilla warfare. Russia is getting pantsed.

Right now, Russia is only at war with Ukraine. They are not under threat anywhere else. No one is threatening to invade. They have brought in Army divisions from Siberia to fight in Ukraine. This war is being fought with what is on hand, what the Ukrainians can use & what we can get to them.

NATO is structured to defend against an attack from Russia, not to defend Ukraine or to invade Russia.

NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:54 am Drones are cheap and fast to produce, everything on up from cheap chinese crap to multi-million (& more) fun stuff is in the air on many sides. Easy to make a relatively cheap drone look expensive to a radar system.

You're still thinking slow and old vs. fast and agile production-wise. Literally a few days of modifications means hundreds of thousands of dollars to more in a missile lost to relatively nothing.

People are literally sweeping aside anti-tank mines. It's a whole new ball-game in non-guerilla warfare. Russia is getting pantsed.

NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:54 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:48 am

NattyBohChamps04 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:38 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 12:40 amCalm down. I read your entire post.
I was not arguing with you (although I don't know the practicality of your idea).
Russia has a lot of territory but they don't need to defend it all. Right now, they just need to control Ukraine's airspace. They can bring in as many mobile S-400's as they need from around the country to ring Ukraine. We don't have a bunch of low cost drones to give Ukraine to use as clay pigeons to get Russia to expend all their S-400 rounds.

That's the fun part. They do have to defend it all.

Finland, Estonia, Lativa, Königsberg, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Syria, the Stans, Mongolia, China, Japan, USA, Canada, and, well, anyone who wants to test things via the Arctic.

Drones are cheap and fast to produce, everything on up from cheap chinese crap to multi-million (& more) fun stuff is in the air on many sides. Easy to make a relatively cheap drone look expensive to a radar system.

You're still thinking slow and old vs. fast and agile production-wise. Literally a few days of modifications means hundreds of thousands of dollars to more in a missile lost to relatively nothing.

People are literally sweeping aside anti-tank mines. It's a whole new ball-game in non-guerilla warfare. Russia is getting pantsed.

Right now, Russia is only at war with Ukraine. They are not under threat anywhere else. No one is threatening to invade. They have brought in Army divisions from Siberia to fight in Ukraine. This war is being fought with what is on hand, what the Ukrainians can use & what we can get to them.

NATO is structured to defend against an attack from Russia, not to defend Ukraine or to invade Russia.

Come on man. When in the last 200 years have we concentrated our forces in one theater?

We are regularly tested on multiple fronts. Russia is as well. No one is threatening to invade us yet we have a wide variety of forces spread throughout the US and the globe. As recently as when we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time for example. Simple stuff.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-qu ... 1649160666

Ukraine Quietly Receives Tanks From Czech Republic to Support War Effort
Move marks the first time a foreign country has provided tanks to Ukraine

The Czech Republic has been sending old Soviet-designed tanks into Ukraine, providing badly needed heavy weapons to outgunned Ukrainian troops that are battling a much better-equipped Russian invasion force.

The efforts, described by three Czech and Slovak officials, mark the first time a foreign country has provided tanks to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Feb. 24. In a potentially even more important development, both the Czech Republic and neighboring Slovakia, which shares a border with Ukraine, are considering opening their military industrial installations to repair and refit damaged Ukrainian military equipment.

Ukraine has captured 176 Russian tanks, 34 self-propelled artillery pieces, 116 armored fighting vehicles, 149 infantry fighting vehicles, 23 multiple-rocket launchers, and 45 armored personnel carriers, according to Oryx, an open-source intelligence blog that only counts visual evidence of equipment capture. Many, if not most, of these pieces—as well as a large number of Ukraine’s own tanks and fighting vehicles—would need to be repaired before use.

Russia’s campaign of missile strikes across Ukraine has targeted in particular the country’s defense industry, destroying facilities where such repairs and refitting could take place—something that makes the Czech and Slovak cooperation particularly valuable.

Western governments initially expected Kyiv to fall within a few days, and equipped the Ukrainian military mostly with shoulder-fired missiles such as NLAW, Javelin and Stinger that could be used by small insurgent units. The Ukrainian military, however, has managed to prevail over Russian forces around Kyiv in a large-scale conventional war, using long-range artillery, tanks and aircraft. It is now trying to stop Russia from advancing in the eastern Donbas region and to reclaim Russian-occupied areas in the south of the country—missions that President Volodymyr Zelensky has said would be impossible without a steady supply of heavy weapons.

A donor’s conference of some 35 nations, convened by the U.K. in London last week, agreed to supply Ukraine with long-range artillery, antiaircraft systems and infantry fighting vehicles, but stopped short of endorsing the transfer of tanks.

So far, the Czech Republic has sent slightly more than a dozen modernized, Soviet-designed T-72M tanks, said Czech defense ministry officials. The Central European country has also sent howitzer artillery pieces and BMP-1 amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, officials said.

These weapons supplies were funded by the Czech government, and private Czech donors who have chipped in to a government-backed crowdsourced fundraising campaign to arm Ukraine. Officials on NATO’s eastern flank generally worry that Western weapons and ammunition supply fall far short of what Ukraine needs considering the intensity of the war. In one day, Ukraine uses about as much weaponry as it receives in a week, a senior Polish official said.

NATO countries are looking to supply additional and more-advanced weapons systems, such as air-defense systems and U.S. Javelin antitank weapons, the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday. He said allies are already supplying Kyiv with fuel, ammunition, helmets, protective gear and medical supplies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expects Russian troops to make a big push in Ukraine’s southeast in coming weeks and wants to quickly resupply Kyiv’s troops, Mr. Stoltenberg said.

Central European governments, with the notable exception of Hungary, are broadly eager to help rearm Ukraine, but some officials are nervous about depleting their own stockpiles of weapons and ammunition.

Several of those governments are turning to the Biden administration for assurances that the U.S. will help replace equipment they are donating to Ukraine. Czech supplies were reduced in 2014, when back to back explosions destroyed two warehouses holding more than 150 tons of ammunition. The government later blamed the blast on two agents from Russia’s military intelligence service.

“Much more, several times more, can be done if we join forces with other allies,” said Czech Deputy Defense Minister Tomáš Kopečný.

Slovenia, avowedly supportive of Kyiv, has been sending available military equipment to Ukraine from the beginning of the Russian aggression, its Prime Minister Janez Jansa told the Journal, to a point where it has run through its own stockpiles.

“If France, Germany or U.S. sent the same share per capita, Ukraine is already liberated,” he said. “Unfortunately, our reserves are depleted and now we try to replace equipment…with new delivery from U.S.,” he said. “Unfortunately, all procedures were slow, but [have] accelerated somehow after Bucha massacre.”

Moscow has warned that it considers arms shipments legitimate targets. So far, however, it hasn’t been able to choke off the daily military shipments to Ukraine from Poland, Romania or Slovakia. Russia’s air force, so far, also hasn’t demonstrated the capacity to disrupt military convoys between the border and front-line staging areas.

Poland, the staging ground for most of the weaponry going into Ukraine, also has a large collection of T-72 tanks, and is expecting a fresh delivery of 250 American Abrams tanks. Asked if Warsaw would provide the Soviet-designed tanks, Jakub Kumoch, the head of the International Policy Bureau in President Andrzej Duda’s office said, “Every conversation regarding whatever support for Ukraine is a conversation taking place between Poland and its closest allies, taking into account the needs of Ukraine and taking into account the aspiration to end as quickly as possible the war.”

One road has been effectively closed off to NATO weapon shipments, however: the route through Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban was re-elected Sunday after vowing to block NATO from using his country to transport weapons to Ukraine.

Australia said this week it is flying Bushmaster armored vehicles to Europe for delivery to Ukraine, with the first four already painted in Ukrainian colors.

Beyond tanks, Central European governments, including the Czech Republic, are weighing the risks of letting Ukraine bring war-damaged equipment into their countries for repairs. Slovakia, which has no tanks available to give, has discussed the issue, a senior Slovak official said.

Those deliberations are part of a realization that Russia’s war with Ukraine could drag on for months if not longer—and that, in a war of attrition, Russia’s overwhelming advantage in equipment could tilt the scales in Moscow’s favor.

“If the war is going to get longer and longer, the war equipment that is being damaged needs to get serviced,” said a Czech defense ministry official. “Ukrainian repair houses are 100% busy, and they are asking other nearby allies to help them with repairs.”

CU88 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:34 pm Taxi driver in Rome:

"The Russians say they have to invade Ukraine because it used to belong to them. Excuse me, but then Italy would have to invade most of Europe."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukr ... _lead_pos8

Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About Energy and Natural Resources
The West can deny Russia access to markets while building up the trans-Atlantic oil and gas trade.

Much of the current analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine accepts at face value Moscow’s stated premises for the invasion. Vladimir Putin claimed from the beginning that his special military action was a determined attempt to reunite the old Russo-Ukrainian territorial and ethnic communities under his rule. Some in the West have even bought into his gripe that years of North American Treaty Organization expansion threatened Russian territorial integrity.

The prevailing narrative now is that Mr. Putin has foolishly overreached: The Ukrainians fought harder than he expected and his forces have bogged down due to poor command structures and lack of basic operational controls. He has had to learn the hard way about information asymmetries because no one tells a dictator the whole truth. The West, according to the narrative, needs to provide him with a peace process: Ukraine guarantees it won’t try to join NATO and Moscow absorbs Donetsk and Luhansk—as well as what’s left of Mariupol—into Mother Russia.

This is dangerous thinking. Mr. Putin’s purposes are multifaceted, and he is adaptive. There is more than one way to dominate Ukraine. Under cover of the wider conflict, Mr. Putin is taking full control of Ukraine’s vast, extremely valuable energy assets and intends to integrate them into the Russian supply chain on which Europe now depends. China and India will eventually depend upon it too.

There are four reasons to think this war is, or will default to, an energy heist. The first is Russian national interest. Taking Ukraine’s energy would give Mr. Putin the second-largest natural-gas reserves in Europe, worth more than $1 trillion at today’s prices. It would give him oil and condensate worth as much as $400 billion, and most of Ukraine’s coal—the sixth-largest reserve base in the world. Additionally, he would consolidate an extraordinary strategic geopolitical advantage with ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, putting Russia at the center of global energy supply to the vast European and Asian markets for the foreseeable future.

The second reason to think this war is a resource grab is Mr. Putin’s tactical focus. Russian troops are now concentrated in the parts of Ukraine that hold 90% of its energy resources. They have seized the Donbas and control Luhansk and Donetsk. They are embedded along the Black Sea coast and focusing extreme pressure on Mariupol. If the fighting stopped now, Mr. Putin would control all of Ukraine’s offshore oil, its critical ports on the Azov Sea, the Kerch Strait, 80% of the Black Sea coastline, and all critical energy-processing and shipping infrastructure.

The third reason is the treatment of Mariupol. If Mr. Putin’s core objective were the reunification of ethnic Russians, then pounding into dust the country’s largest urban center of pro-Russian Ukrainians would be an odd way to manage that reunification. If this is about control of Ukraine’s energy, however, that city is the essential land bridge to his Crimean assets and the critical port from which to ship resources from Donetsk and Luhansk.

Finally, he’s done this before. Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 gave him Sevastopol and Ukraine’s exceptionally rich Black Sea assets—a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He passed these assets to Gazprom and declared an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, defended by the Russian navy.

Sadly, Mr. Putin learned from Crimea that the West protests, then forgets. Despite the imposition of sanctions, European Union imports of Russian energy, enhanced by the annexed assets, continued unabated. Europe is now paying Russia more than $100 billion a year, and is on track to import 90% of the energy it consumes by 2030.

Europe is so dependent on Russian gas partly because of climate considerations. Any serious commitment to reducing global emissions from coal requires natural gas. The U.S. has led the world in this regard, reducing emissions by more than 800 million tons while promoting economic growth by displacing thermal coal with gas to power the electrical grid. Coal burns at almost twice the carbon intensity of gas per unit of energy, so retrofitting European grids for gas significantly reduces emissions and provides baseload power that renewables can’t. But while the U.S. produced gas domestically, Europe off-shored its gas supply to Russia and banned domestic fracking and other energy production. The result was dependency.

Despotic regimes control most of the world’s energy via state companies. The democratic West relies on private companies operating in free markets, which have driven most of the innovation in cleaner fuels, carbon capture, nuclear and hydrogen. As NATO reorients itself, member states should pursue trade deals connecting the vast supply and technological innovations of the U.S. and Canada to Europe. The best way to beat this particular thief is to steal back his market.

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:43 pm

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukr ... _lead_pos8

Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About Energy and Natural Resources
The West can deny Russia access to markets while building up the trans-Atlantic oil and gas trade.

Much of the current analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine accepts at face value Moscow’s stated premises for the invasion. Vladimir Putin claimed from the beginning that his special military action was a determined attempt to reunite the old Russo-Ukrainian territorial and ethnic communities under his rule. Some in the West have even bought into his gripe that years of North American Treaty Organization expansion threatened Russian territorial integrity.

The prevailing narrative now is that Mr. Putin has foolishly overreached: The Ukrainians fought harder than he expected and his forces have bogged down due to poor command structures and lack of basic operational controls. He has had to learn the hard way about information asymmetries because no one tells a dictator the whole truth. The West, according to the narrative, needs to provide him with a peace process: Ukraine guarantees it won’t try to join NATO and Moscow absorbs Donetsk and Luhansk—as well as what’s left of Mariupol—into Mother Russia.

This is dangerous thinking. Mr. Putin’s purposes are multifaceted, and he is adaptive. There is more than one way to dominate Ukraine. Under cover of the wider conflict, Mr. Putin is taking full control of Ukraine’s vast, extremely valuable energy assets and intends to integrate them into the Russian supply chain on which Europe now depends. China and India will eventually depend upon it too.

There are four reasons to think this war is, or will default to, an energy heist. The first is Russian national interest. Taking Ukraine’s energy would give Mr. Putin the second-largest natural-gas reserves in Europe, worth more than $1 trillion at today’s prices. It would give him oil and condensate worth as much as $400 billion, and most of Ukraine’s coal—the sixth-largest reserve base in the world. Additionally, he would consolidate an extraordinary strategic geopolitical advantage with ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, putting Russia at the center of global energy supply to the vast European and Asian markets for the foreseeable future.

The second reason to think this war is a resource grab is Mr. Putin’s tactical focus. Russian troops are now concentrated in the parts of Ukraine that hold 90% of its energy resources. They have seized the Donbas and control Luhansk and Donetsk. They are embedded along the Black Sea coast and focusing extreme pressure on Mariupol. If the fighting stopped now, Mr. Putin would control all of Ukraine’s offshore oil, its critical ports on the Azov Sea, the Kerch Strait, 80% of the Black Sea coastline, and all critical energy-processing and shipping infrastructure.

The third reason is the treatment of Mariupol. If Mr. Putin’s core objective were the reunification of ethnic Russians, then pounding into dust the country’s largest urban center of pro-Russian Ukrainians would be an odd way to manage that reunification. If this is about control of Ukraine’s energy, however, that city is the essential land bridge to his Crimean assets and the critical port from which to ship resources from Donetsk and Luhansk.

Finally, he’s done this before. Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 gave him Sevastopol and Ukraine’s exceptionally rich Black Sea assets—a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He passed these assets to Gazprom and declared an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, defended by the Russian navy.

Sadly, Mr. Putin learned from Crimea that the West protests, then forgets. Despite the imposition of sanctions, European Union imports of Russian energy, enhanced by the annexed assets, continued unabated. Europe is now paying Russia more than $100 billion a year, and is on track to import 90% of the energy it consumes by 2030.

Europe is so dependent on Russian gas partly because of climate considerations. Any serious commitment to reducing global emissions from coal requires natural gas. The U.S. has led the world in this regard, reducing emissions by more than 800 million tons while promoting economic growth by displacing thermal coal with gas to power the electrical grid. Coal burns at almost twice the carbon intensity of gas per unit of energy, so retrofitting European grids for gas significantly reduces emissions and provides baseload power that renewables can’t. But while the U.S. produced gas domestically, Europe off-shored its gas supply to Russia and banned domestic fracking and other energy production. The result was dependency.

Despotic regimes control most of the world’s energy via state companies. The democratic West relies on private companies operating in free markets, which have driven most of the innovation in cleaner fuels, carbon capture, nuclear and hydrogen. As NATO reorients itself, member states should pursue trade deals connecting the vast supply and technological innovations of the U.S. and Canada to Europe. The best way to beat this particular thief is to steal back his market.

Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:51 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:43 pm

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukr ... _lead_pos8

Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About Energy and Natural Resources
The West can deny Russia access to markets while building up the trans-Atlantic oil and gas trade.

Much of the current analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine accepts at face value Moscow’s stated premises for the invasion. Vladimir Putin claimed from the beginning that his special military action was a determined attempt to reunite the old Russo-Ukrainian territorial and ethnic communities under his rule. Some in the West have even bought into his gripe that years of North American Treaty Organization expansion threatened Russian territorial integrity.

The prevailing narrative now is that Mr. Putin has foolishly overreached: The Ukrainians fought harder than he expected and his forces have bogged down due to poor command structures and lack of basic operational controls. He has had to learn the hard way about information asymmetries because no one tells a dictator the whole truth. The West, according to the narrative, needs to provide him with a peace process: Ukraine guarantees it won’t try to join NATO and Moscow absorbs Donetsk and Luhansk—as well as what’s left of Mariupol—into Mother Russia.

This is dangerous thinking. Mr. Putin’s purposes are multifaceted, and he is adaptive. There is more than one way to dominate Ukraine. Under cover of the wider conflict, Mr. Putin is taking full control of Ukraine’s vast, extremely valuable energy assets and intends to integrate them into the Russian supply chain on which Europe now depends. China and India will eventually depend upon it too.

There are four reasons to think this war is, or will default to, an energy heist. The first is Russian national interest. Taking Ukraine’s energy would give Mr. Putin the second-largest natural-gas reserves in Europe, worth more than $1 trillion at today’s prices. It would give him oil and condensate worth as much as $400 billion, and most of Ukraine’s coal—the sixth-largest reserve base in the world. Additionally, he would consolidate an extraordinary strategic geopolitical advantage with ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, putting Russia at the center of global energy supply to the vast European and Asian markets for the foreseeable future.

The second reason to think this war is a resource grab is Mr. Putin’s tactical focus. Russian troops are now concentrated in the parts of Ukraine that hold 90% of its energy resources. They have seized the Donbas and control Luhansk and Donetsk. They are embedded along the Black Sea coast and focusing extreme pressure on Mariupol. If the fighting stopped now, Mr. Putin would control all of Ukraine’s offshore oil, its critical ports on the Azov Sea, the Kerch Strait, 80% of the Black Sea coastline, and all critical energy-processing and shipping infrastructure.

The third reason is the treatment of Mariupol. If Mr. Putin’s core objective were the reunification of ethnic Russians, then pounding into dust the country’s largest urban center of pro-Russian Ukrainians would be an odd way to manage that reunification. If this is about control of Ukraine’s energy, however, that city is the essential land bridge to his Crimean assets and the critical port from which to ship resources from Donetsk and Luhansk.

Finally, he’s done this before. Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 gave him Sevastopol and Ukraine’s exceptionally rich Black Sea assets—a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He passed these assets to Gazprom and declared an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, defended by the Russian navy.

Sadly, Mr. Putin learned from Crimea that the West protests, then forgets. Despite the imposition of sanctions, European Union imports of Russian energy, enhanced by the annexed assets, continued unabated. Europe is now paying Russia more than $100 billion a year, and is on track to import 90% of the energy it consumes by 2030.

Europe is so dependent on Russian gas partly because of climate considerations. Any serious commitment to reducing global emissions from coal requires natural gas. The U.S. has led the world in this regard, reducing emissions by more than 800 million tons while promoting economic growth by displacing thermal coal with gas to power the electrical grid. Coal burns at almost twice the carbon intensity of gas per unit of energy, so retrofitting European grids for gas significantly reduces emissions and provides baseload power that renewables can’t. But while the U.S. produced gas domestically, Europe off-shored its gas supply to Russia and banned domestic fracking and other energy production. The result was dependency.

Despotic regimes control most of the world’s energy via state companies. The democratic West relies on private companies operating in free markets, which have driven most of the innovation in cleaner fuels, carbon capture, nuclear and hydrogen. As NATO reorients itself, member states should pursue trade deals connecting the vast supply and technological innovations of the U.S. and Canada to Europe. The best way to beat this particular thief is to steal back his market.

So it’s not because The Ukraine is Russian?

CU88 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 6:46 pm

Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:51 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:43 pm

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukr ... _lead_pos8

Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About Energy and Natural Resources
The West can deny Russia access to markets while building up the trans-Atlantic oil and gas trade.

Much of the current analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine accepts at face value Moscow’s stated premises for the invasion. Vladimir Putin claimed from the beginning that his special military action was a determined attempt to reunite the old Russo-Ukrainian territorial and ethnic communities under his rule. Some in the West have even bought into his gripe that years of North American Treaty Organization expansion threatened Russian territorial integrity.

The prevailing narrative now is that Mr. Putin has foolishly overreached: The Ukrainians fought harder than he expected and his forces have bogged down due to poor command structures and lack of basic operational controls. He has had to learn the hard way about information asymmetries because no one tells a dictator the whole truth. The West, according to the narrative, needs to provide him with a peace process: Ukraine guarantees it won’t try to join NATO and Moscow absorbs Donetsk and Luhansk—as well as what’s left of Mariupol—into Mother Russia.

This is dangerous thinking. Mr. Putin’s purposes are multifaceted, and he is adaptive. There is more than one way to dominate Ukraine. Under cover of the wider conflict, Mr. Putin is taking full control of Ukraine’s vast, extremely valuable energy assets and intends to integrate them into the Russian supply chain on which Europe now depends. China and India will eventually depend upon it too.

There are four reasons to think this war is, or will default to, an energy heist. The first is Russian national interest. Taking Ukraine’s energy would give Mr. Putin the second-largest natural-gas reserves in Europe, worth more than $1 trillion at today’s prices. It would give him oil and condensate worth as much as $400 billion, and most of Ukraine’s coal—the sixth-largest reserve base in the world. Additionally, he would consolidate an extraordinary strategic geopolitical advantage with ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, putting Russia at the center of global energy supply to the vast European and Asian markets for the foreseeable future.

The second reason to think this war is a resource grab is Mr. Putin’s tactical focus. Russian troops are now concentrated in the parts of Ukraine that hold 90% of its energy resources. They have seized the Donbas and control Luhansk and Donetsk. They are embedded along the Black Sea coast and focusing extreme pressure on Mariupol. If the fighting stopped now, Mr. Putin would control all of Ukraine’s offshore oil, its critical ports on the Azov Sea, the Kerch Strait, 80% of the Black Sea coastline, and all critical energy-processing and shipping infrastructure.

The third reason is the treatment of Mariupol. If Mr. Putin’s core objective were the reunification of ethnic Russians, then pounding into dust the country’s largest urban center of pro-Russian Ukrainians would be an odd way to manage that reunification. If this is about control of Ukraine’s energy, however, that city is the essential land bridge to his Crimean assets and the critical port from which to ship resources from Donetsk and Luhansk.

Finally, he’s done this before. Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 gave him Sevastopol and Ukraine’s exceptionally rich Black Sea assets—a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He passed these assets to Gazprom and declared an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, defended by the Russian navy.

Sadly, Mr. Putin learned from Crimea that the West protests, then forgets. Despite the imposition of sanctions, European Union imports of Russian energy, enhanced by the annexed assets, continued unabated. Europe is now paying Russia more than $100 billion a year, and is on track to import 90% of the energy it consumes by 2030.

Europe is so dependent on Russian gas partly because of climate considerations. Any serious commitment to reducing global emissions from coal requires natural gas. The U.S. has led the world in this regard, reducing emissions by more than 800 million tons while promoting economic growth by displacing thermal coal with gas to power the electrical grid. Coal burns at almost twice the carbon intensity of gas per unit of energy, so retrofitting European grids for gas significantly reduces emissions and provides baseload power that renewables can’t. But while the U.S. produced gas domestically, Europe off-shored its gas supply to Russia and banned domestic fracking and other energy production. The result was dependency.

Despotic regimes control most of the world’s energy via state companies. The democratic West relies on private companies operating in free markets, which have driven most of the innovation in cleaner fuels, carbon capture, nuclear and hydrogen. As NATO reorients itself, member states should pursue trade deals connecting the vast supply and technological innovations of the U.S. and Canada to Europe. The best way to beat this particular thief is to steal back his market.

So it’s not because The Ukraine is Russian?

Wait, I too thought that any Old Soviet could tell us that it was part of Russia for all of modern history & that ethnic Ukrainians were Russian during that time. They did not stand up for themselves before, so they get what is coming to them now.

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 10:20 pm Apparently the Russians believe that history, ...at least 83% of them do.
It only took 3 decades for the Ukrainians to discover their nationalism, defend themselves & not sell out to their corrupt oligarchs.
Now they are telling us that their deaths are our fault for not giving them more & better weapons sooner.
The EUros offered them a path to peace via Minsk but they refused to negotiate. War is the failure of diplomacy.
Where was their courage & nationalism in 2014 when the Russians rolled into Crimea & Donbas unopposed ?
They had 3 decades to qualify for EU & NATO membetrship, they blew it. The Baltics did it in 23 years.
Still think NATO expansion has nothing to do with this ? Putin warned us.

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 10:56 pm ...how many Migs, tanks & S-300's did that NATO support resolution guarantee ?

Let's re-invent NATO during the opening phase of the biggest war in Europe since WW II

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... o-support/
It calls on President Biden to:

“Adopt a new Strategic Concept for NATO that is clear about its support for shared democratic values and committed to enhancing NATO’s capacity to strengthen democratic institutions within NATO member, partner, and aspirant countries.”
“Use the voice and vote of the United States to establish a Center for Democratic Resilience within NATO headquarters.”

...how about seeing if NATO can help Ukraine survive.