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Shady Ray

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Everything posted by Shady Ray

  1. Exactly. And that port was specifically mentioned by Putin as one "that the US was using to establish capabilities for a NATO assault on Russia" a few days ago. At least two of the four he singled out have now been attacked:
  2. Romanian Ministry of Defense saying a Ukrainian SU-27 has made an emergency landing at its facility in Bacau. If Russian jets pursue in a situation like that, that's where shit gets real fuckin' dicey. https://www.mapn.ro/cpresa/17283_avion-militar-ucrainean,-interceptat-si-aterizat-la-bacau
  3. From what I am reading, the Ochakiv seaport between Odessa and Kherson at the mouth of the Dnieper estuary has been destroyed by Russian strikes and is currently burning. That port had been the focus of a lot of US investment to beef up Ukrainian defenses. If true, there is a lot of psychological messaging there, for sure. I don't think anyone was preparing for that to be hit in the first wave of attacks.
  4. Not sure if this has already been posted, as I skipped some to get caught up this morning, so apologies if it has, but Russia's BMPT-72 units had been spotted on the way to Ukraine, which would indicate that are preparing for some pretty grizzly urban fighting. I am not a military dude, but from what I have read, this was created out of the difficulties that they had fighting in Grozny. That is a really, really bad sign.
  5. This stunned me. Going into Galicia is fucking insane. In a million years I would have never thought that area would have been targeted. And one thing that has been clear as can be in all of our back and forths on these various Russia threads, is that in addition to being really fucking informed, you are a good dude with a genuine emotional investment in this part of the world that is being abused by Russia. I know you have people close to you currently in Ukraine, and in addition to the Ukrainian people at large during this time, I’ll be sure to throw an extra prayer for your people specifically today. And yeah yeah yeah…get a room…I know.
  6. It's still early here, so coverage is just now catching up, but I will give you a sneak preview of the German reaction:
  7. Of course that is not in his plans...and that's why both Brisket and I said "worst case scenario." I don't have kids, but I imagine if I did I would at least take note that things in Europe can spin out of control as history has shown us, and what the facts are on the ground tonight are not necessarily what they are two weeks, two months, 6 months down the road. No one is saying Germany is going to be invaded, but if mobilizations of larger NATO forces occur and fighting spills out into NATO members, Berlin becomes a target and Brisket's kid lives in Berlin. I don't think a father prepping his teen-aged kid living temporarily in Berlin for worst case scenarios means that he thinks an invasion of Berlin is likely. Just means he is a logical, rational father.
  8. Not to be melodramatic, and I know its a weird thing to offer an internet stranger with a Baerbock kink on a college football board, but if God forbid shit did get dicey in a "worst case scenario" type situation, there's a safe place in Bavaria should anyone/anyone's family ever need it. We've got a weekend place in the far south of Bavaria that has plenty of room to ride things out in the worst case, and Texans should ultimately look out for other Texans in times of stress.
  9. Thanks for correcting there. Didn't realize that. Posrep. Was relying on the below and didn't dig down that deep. Curious what Daimler's 2021 numbers are. Annual report comes out tomorrow so we won't have to wait long.
  10. Exactly. Germany's dependency on Russian gas will send the country into a painful recession at the very least...quite possibly worse; heavy sanctions on China would send Germany into complete meltdown. The Government simply could not feasibly do anything to damage trade relationships with China. I mentioned it upthread, but the Chinese market is absolutely king when it comes to German automobiles, heavy machinery, and electronic goods. There simply is no comparison to any other market. And not only is the volume of vehicles that China buys far and away above any other export market, the TYPES of vehicles they buy are the high-end, top of the line BMWs, Mercedes, etc. The exports to the US are generally mid-range and lower-end models. When you add how dependent German heavy-equipment manufacturers are on selling their products into China, any significant step at keeping German goods from that market would be devastating. And as you said, we don't even need to get into the dependency on imports to generate those goods. All the way around, China is where Germany has its economic future staked. The US is still the number one export market, but that is quickly changing. This was published from the Bundesamt for Statistics last week: Press Release: "China was Germany’s most important trading partner in 2021 for the sixth year in a row" https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/02/PE22_068_51.html
  11. Pretty tough to talk tough when even the Germans are laughing at what a pussy you are. From the top story in the Handelsblatt (German equivalent of the WSJ) British sanctions against Russian oligarchs are 'joke' According to an expert, the sanctions imposed by Great Britain against several Russian oligarchs for escalating the Ukraine conflict are not effective. The three Putin allies targeted by the British government are not very active in Great Britain, said Elisabeth Schimpfössl, who researches the influence of rich Russians in the United Kingdom at the London School of Economics. "That's a joke. This signals to the oligarchs here that nothing is happening and that the lobbying of the last few days has been successful," says Schimpfössl in conversation with the German Press Agency. https://www.handelsblatt.com/dpa/konjunktur/wirtschaft-handel-und-finanzen-expertin-britische-sanktionen-gegen-russische-oligarchen-sind-witz/28095022.html And from the RND:
  12. Sorry. Yeah, it is. It was an insane move. I mean, I am all for environmental protection, but this is a bit much given Germany's tenuous position re, ya know, keeping our lights on. And no /CR re Greenpeace.
  13. Well, Annalena just this month installed the head of Greenpeace as a verrrry senior official within her Foreign Ministry. I guess some people would say that's pretty fuckin' smart, pal. Because if anyone knows how to run the climate policy for the fourth biggest economy in the world, its Greenpeace. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/09/germany-appoints-jennifer-morgan-ex-greenpeace-chief-climate-envoy
  14. There really is no solution. And Annalena Baerbock is now pushing to phase out the remaining coal plants now that the government has had its way with nuclear. Apparently we are going to fuel the 4th largest economy on the planet with bratwurst-infused unicorn farts and Oktoberfest piss. Germany already got a nasty note from the Dutch that they were tapped out and that they wouldn't be increasing supply. And their voters are pissed at Germany for the increased demand due to claims that the Groningen field is causing earthquakes: Der Spiegel Dutch economic affairs minister, Stef Blok, has expressed concern about Germany’s large appetite for natural gas sourced from the Netherlands’ northern Groningen province, where its continued exploitation has recently resulted in hundreds of small earthquakes, Claus Hecking reports for Der Spiegel. The Dutch government had planned to stop gas production at the Groningen field due to the continued quakes, but the site is now set to about twice as much as expected in the 2021/22 financial year due in part to high demand from Germany gas. Blok has nevertheless written a letter to his German counterpart, climate and economy minister Robert Habeck, complaining about the significantly higher demand registered by German customers for low-calorie gas from its neighbour country. In a statement to the House of Representatives in the Hague, Blok explained that he told Habeck he was “seriously worried about this development,” adding that he asked his German counterpart to check what measures Germany can take to limit its gas consumption “to a minimum." Due to the ongoing energy price crisis in Europe, Germany's utilities will likely have to order 1.1 billion cubic metres more of gas from the Netherlands this year than originally planned, according to the article https://www.politico.eu/article/the-netherlands-earthshaking-gas-deal-with-germany/ https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/netherlands-concerned-about-effects-high-german-gas-demand-domestic-reserves
  15. SPD starting to trot out voices to spin like mad in the German-language media that this is not the cancellation of NS2, but is simply an administrative act to reassess now that thing have changed on the ground and how it can impact supply. This can certainly be gleaned from Scholz's statement, but there are definitely efforts being made by underlings to stress this "temporary nature". Politicians are gonna politician, no matter where they are. I tend to agree with 956 that this will be much harder to bring back into current political debate at the moment though. If things cool down, which is unlikely, and prices become unbearable, though, it leaves the door wide open for SPD to u-turn (or for the next administration). Also, just released interview in Focus with widely read and very influential academic/analyst, Thomas Jäger, where he addresses this and much more: Edit: Note how he brings Iran into it as a critical element for relief...Israel not going to like that.
  16. The fallout will not play out as though people people love the pipeline or are sympathetic to Russia, but rather in the form of fury over fuel costs, increased price of goods, and the economic impact to German exports. And so it will essentially be blamed completely on the Greens, as they are seen as the architects of all things stupid on German energy policy. A realistic view would be to put them all in the dock for mismanaging energy, but the Greens are the ones seen as injecting into the debate and pressuring for stupid decisions at every turn. You can already see Green co-leader Robert Habeck starting to appear concerned about this. His presser today re heating costs was like a dead man walking. What people who don't follow German politics don't understand is that the SPD weren't truly "chosen" by the masses. The CDU put an absolute fucking clown in to run as Merkel's heir...a little guy named Armin Laschet, who squandered a 25% polling lead in a few months. When the floods hit the north in the summer, he essentially showed no compassion and was seen laughing on TV when the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was giving a somber speech over the losses from the floods. So Laschet immediately pissed away what was left of the CDU's equity, and then just kept fucking up, pushing his numbers lower. Laschet was chosen to be Merkel's replacement in April, and then he "laughed" in late June...look at the corresponding trend line of the CDU when this squirelly fella was chosen, and then again when the floods hit in the summer: So that said, Scholz basically backed into office in a completely weak state...even with Laschet's regardedness, Scholz only eeked out a 1% win. He literally was in third place as late as August for a September election, and he only won because the Germans were aghast at the idea of Annalena Baerbock leading the country. So he's going to collapse based on his weakness alone, and the Greens will based on energy costs and their various knock-on effects. Re supply, the infrastructure for LNG is not there. Germany doesn't have the terminals and we won't have them for years...so at this point the shortfall in energy is literally being appoached with a hope and a prayer. The entire infrastructure is built around Russian fuel and if this thing escalates even more, and Russia cuts off the other pipelines, we are only going to be saved the worst of it due to the time of year and the current mild winter. But the less-existential issues are still going to be huge. I am not one to believe you can tell public opinion based on internet comments, because quite simply, you can't. But I have subscriptions to basically all the big news sites, and even behind the paywalls, where trolls and bots tend not to dwell, the comments today have been almost exclusively against the move. I can't tell you how many variants of "Great, so we freeze for the Ukrainians" or "And Olaf will stay warm in the Chancellery regardless" or "Of course, the Americans finally get their wish of a dead pipeline." Germans don't demonstrate and they don't speak publicly about politics very much, so we won't know until State elections start occurring, but there is a real risk that some people take this out by moving to the extremes. If Putin engages in pure butchery over there, that will lessen this sentiment. But if not, it is going to resurface in the form of anger over costs.
  17. Yeah, CDU won't do that. Coalition is already failing due to other issues, specifically Covid management, and there would be no benefit for them to do anything to risk anything at the moment. My guess would be that CDU chair Merz will give general support to Scholz given the events of last night, while having his subordinates continue to blast him as being indecisive to date, and will wait until their numbers continue to dip before doing anything to trigger new elections. It is too soon for them to pursue snap elections. The Free Democrats (the wobbly third wheel in the current coaltion) would need to be part of that as well, as once new elections occur, if Free Dems can hold their losses to a minimum, they would likely just switch over to the CDU-led government. Either way, Germans tend to expect a certain degree of decorum when decisions like this are made, so for the time being the discourse will remain polite. It will be worth observing if the SPD base starts to shift to Die Linke in the polls or if the right-wing of the CDU/CSU start to peel off to the far-right AfD. They already started this afternoon prepping us for major gas hikes, which have already been out of control, so I would expect some bleeding to occur to the fringes.
  18. There are already commentators saying, "yeah, we will see if this sticks once the winter comes back" (we have had a really mild one). I think his repeated caveat "for the time being" is perhaps giving the impression that its less than firm. But I don't buy that at this stage...for Scholz to even step this far means, as 956 said, that he understands that things are about to get really ugly over there and he is saving his political ass from being behind the curve. It is going to wreck our export competitiveness though, which is huge here given how dependent Germany is on exports. And now the question domestically has already turned to whether NS1 is going to be turned off on the Russian end, along with the trans-Ukrainian lines. Domestically, Putin hadn't been seen as using gas as a weapon against Germany yet. If he has taken into calculation that if NS2 goes, so does all of it, then we are fucked. Prolly fucked either way, but that would double fuck us. But surely this going to reopen the nuclear debate...shutting down the 3 remaining nuclear plants in December when things are this precarious would be complete insanity.
  19. Absolutely stunned that he went this far. Currently stuck on calls for the next couple of hours but my phone has absolutely exploded over the last 10 minutes. I don't think anyone expected this.
  20. Crimean annexation was under the Turchynov caretakership, but yeah, those salami slices are getting way bigger. Scholz to speak in 20 minutes...worth noting that Friedrich Merz, opposition leader of the CDU, has come out this AM really hard calling for Germany to exercise harsh measures, which is a noteworthy step. He is the one that essentially took SWIFT off the table unilaterally within Germany by saying it would be like a nuclear bomb re German interests. We will see if that conviction is purely politics or means something. But his firm language this morning will put some pressure on Scholz for sure.
  21. For the record, I totally agree with you here. The question is whether Petro Poroshenko will have the restrained perspective to refrain from rabble rousing at home over "the weak man Zelensky", which has been his primary attack line. He has waived his own willingness to fight in the Donbass in 2015 around as proof of his authenticity as "the real Russian fighter", and I imagine he will start attacking Zelensky on the grounds of "it was one thing to agree to a de-escalation of hostilities when it was rebel Ukrainians, but this weak Zelensky is just standing aside allowing a foreign army to set up shop. He's letting us be carved up without so much as a shot fired." Lot's of political hay to make here for a morally bankrupt man like Petro.
  22. This is going to create a really, really fucking precarious situation for Zelensky at home. If he doesn't stand up militarily, he will feel incredible pressure from political opponents internally. As we discussed upthread in what now seems like years ago, Ukraine's domestic, pro-Western opposition leaders have by no means unified around him. If anything, they have only increased the political heat to demonstrate armed resistance through the military in case of this exact situation. And outside of the internal political calculations of their leadership, the Ukrainians have been understandably trying to build up a narrative of the population as a collective resistance force, fighting for the unity of Ukraine at home, so the public is primed for resistance. But it is hard to expect that type of dedication if you aren't willing to send in the military to fight, as well. So, if he doesn't react militarily here, he will lose massive amounts of support. But if he does send in the military to the breakaways, he risks giving the Russians the pretext that they want to expand the battlefield far beyond the self-proclaimed borders of Luhansk and Donetsk, which Ukraine has no chance of winning. Despite all the chattering class speculation on the efficacy of Ukraine's military wrt to its state in 2014, they still would have no chance if the full force of Russian military power was exerted upon them. And that would extend the Ukrainian territorial losses far beyond just the areas that have been outside of Kiev's control for 7 years now. So that's a huge psychological risk to the country when all the dust settles. In Putin's message last night, he had some parts that were clearly meant for the populations familiar with Soviet history/narratives - so basically the Ukrainians and Russians - about showing the Ukrainian government true "de-communization", which was accompanied by Putin's standard drivel about Ukraine being a product of Lenin blah blah. To me, in context of Ukrainian history, that was meant to essentially threaten the area east of the Dnieper. Either way, Zelensky is in a tough spot and one can't help but feel for him.
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