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Posted
7 hours ago, choripan said:

Just finished my layover in AMS. One leg down!

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And, yes, I'll be volunteering during the daytime, but I've heard that Kyiv nights can get cold and I'll need to keep warm. 😂

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Lena looks flexible.

Posted
1 hour ago, Parliament said:

And a reminder that an entire generation of men grew up watching stuff like this.  Seems the anti-Soviet indoctrination did not stick for all of us.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out.

Leave the West behind.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out.

Leave the West behind.

The boy is currently entangled with a German/Georgian girl.  On the one hand, he says they are too different, and it just won't work out, so they aren't going to see each other anymore.  On the other hand, she is a stunning Eastern European brunette, and he cannot stay away, and keeps coming back to her.

I get it dude, I get it.  That region has a lot to offer.

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Posted (edited)
54 minutes ago, utee94 said:

Need better pictures but right now I think I'm #TeamAnna.  

Dude this is a buffet. You put it all on your plate. And mix when classy and appropriate. 

Edited by Pato del Muerto
Slava Ukraina
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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, choripan said:

FWIW y'all, i don't want to spam up this thread if you're not down, so LMK if i should start a thread in food and travel or something.

 


@bolverk beat me to it. I second his post. 

Edited by B00M
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Posted

@Hook1997

My best guess is given how great all the financial news had been and the fantastic response of other action in early office our leader needed a win/distraction. He tried he standard bully tactic both with Putin and Zelensky. Figured one would cave cause bullies gonna bully. Didn't factor in Putin might be more of a narcissistic sociopath than himself nor caving would in essence destroy the Ukraine.

Had to come up with something to create positive news and MAYBE, I hope, (its a dangerous thing) that he's come to the realization you can't bully a narcissistic sociopathic dictator into something he doesn't want to do.

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Posted

I'm curious what the terms are.

 

I could see the current administration barely fulfilling (if at all) their side of the agreement and then placing the blame elsewhere and burning it all down.

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Posted
9 hours ago, Hook1997 said:

Maybe the administration opens the aid spigot back up since they have skin in the game now, or not, who knows.  

They'll open it up until he reads something on truthsocial criticizing him or Musk whines. It's the nature of the beast, but at least this should get some stuff that was being held up flowing again.

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Posted
8 hours ago, vtaenz said:

I'm curious what the terms are.

 

I could see the current administration barely fulfilling (if at all) their side of the agreement and then placing the blame elsewhere and burning it all down.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/ukraine-mineral-deal-us-trump.html

 

What’s in the deal?
The mineral deal will create a U.S.-controlled investment fund that would receive revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources, according to a copy of the agreement made public on Thursday.

It appears that Ukraine managed to get some of what it wanted, but not everything.

The Trump administration had said in March that it wanted Ukraine to repay assistance given during the war with its mineral wealth — which would have financially hurt Ukraine for generations. The idea of treating that aid as debt was removed in the final deal. And the deal appears to specifically keep the door open for Ukraine to eventually join the European Union.

There was no mention of a U.S. security guarantee in the text of the nine-page deal that Ukraine’s government published on Thursday.

Kyiv and Washington will jointly manage the fund, which will be financed with revenues from new projects in critical minerals, oil and gas — not from projects that are already operating.

Although the agreement does not treat past aid to Ukraine as debt that the country needs to repay, it does say that future military aid, including weapons and training, will be treated as a U.S. contribution to the fund — meaning that Ukraine will need to match future aid with resource wealth.

The agreement does not change the management of Ukraine’s state-owned energy companies. All natural resources will still be considered Ukraine’s property.

In addition, the agreement says that the United States and Ukraine want to ensure that countries “that have acted adversely to Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine” once peace is reached — in other words, Russia.

Ukraine’s parliament still has to ratify the agreement, which will probably happen in the next two weeks, lawmakers said on Thursday.

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Posted
5 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

https://www.nytimes.com/article/ukraine-mineral-deal-us-trump.html

 

What’s in the deal?
The mineral deal will create a U.S.-controlled investment fund that would receive revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources, according to a copy of the agreement made public on Thursday.

It appears that Ukraine managed to get some of what it wanted, but not everything.

The Trump administration had said in March that it wanted Ukraine to repay assistance given during the war with its mineral wealth — which would have financially hurt Ukraine for generations. The idea of treating that aid as debt was removed in the final deal. And the deal appears to specifically keep the door open for Ukraine to eventually join the European Union.

There was no mention of a U.S. security guarantee in the text of the nine-page deal that Ukraine’s government published on Thursday.

Kyiv and Washington will jointly manage the fund, which will be financed with revenues from new projects in critical minerals, oil and gas — not from projects that are already operating.

Although the agreement does not treat past aid to Ukraine as debt that the country needs to repay, it does say that future military aid, including weapons and training, will be treated as a U.S. contribution to the fund — meaning that Ukraine will need to match future aid with resource wealth.

The agreement does not change the management of Ukraine’s state-owned energy companies. All natural resources will still be considered Ukraine’s property.

In addition, the agreement says that the United States and Ukraine want to ensure that countries “that have acted adversely to Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine” once peace is reached — in other words, Russia.

Ukraine’s parliament still has to ratify the agreement, which will probably happen in the next two weeks, lawmakers said on Thursday.

It seems that including future indebtedness to the US for more aid would be highly discouraged with this deal (duh!), which certainly incentivizes Ukraine to seek military hardware from elsewhere (double duh!).

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Posted

Another article.  At risk of wish casting, this looks very positive.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-tables-have-turned-and-putin-s-russia-is-now-in-dire-trouble/ar-AA1DZsgR?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=8adb5a1091c84303b609b802c96b5441&ei=17

Quote

The tables have turned: it is suddenly Vladimir Putin who is in trouble, trying to hold together an exhausted war economy as the price of Urals crude crashes to $56 a barrel – from $77 in mid-January – and as the global economic downturn tips the whole commodity complex into a cascading bear market. The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia has fallen 30pc over two months.

Quote

Ukraine will be able to purchase US weapons on a quasi “lend-lease” basis. The first $50m tranche of military support was approved last night.

The debt clock starts ticking from today, wiping the slate clean on the $120bn in total American aid since the war began, most of which was spent on production within the US or consisted of semi-obsolete inventory due to be scrapped.

Quote

Republican senator and Trump golf partner Lindsey Graham is going for the jugular. He may soon have a veto-proof 67 votes in the Senate for legislation that imposes 500pc punitive tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy or strategic minerals, if the Kremlin “refuses to negotiate a peace agreement, violates a peace agreement or invades Ukraine again in the future”.

Article goes into sunshine pumping from there, but so what.  This is a very good thing.

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Posted

The ultimate terms of the deal don't matter.  And in simplest terms, here's why:

Horizon in which Ukraine needs significant military aid: right now, and for perhaps another (hopefully no more than) couple of years.

Horizon in which the US would be repaid by mineral extraction: 5 years out, at the earliest, for any meaningful result.

Ukraine gets what it wants now (or a good bit of what it wants).  What the US wants is well off into the future.  Meaning that Ukraine could back out, ask to alter it, etc....or a future, less assholish US regime wouldn't hold Ukraine to all the terms of a deal made under tremendous duress.  

As a negotiator, I'd recommend Ukraine take a deal like this one at least 9 outta 10 times.

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Posted
4 hours ago, Parliament said:

Another article.  At risk of wish casting, this looks very positive.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-tables-have-turned-and-putin-s-russia-is-now-in-dire-trouble/ar-AA1DZsgR?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=8adb5a1091c84303b609b802c96b5441&ei=17

Article goes into sunshine pumping from there, but so what.  This is a very good thing.

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If Ladybug can pull off what it says in that article, I'll take back every bad thing I ever said about him.  And that's a lotta taking.  

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Posted
5 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Short term flings with East Slavic women on the biological clock is the “surfing Mavericks” of situationships. Exhilarating, best in the world if things go right, maybe you die if they don’t. Trust me.

Hunger Games Odds GIF

Balkan Ugly Bomb.

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Posted
34 minutes ago, miguelito said:

So Russia invades Ukraine.

We get a mineral deal out of it.

 

Thanks, Vlad! Maybe he can invade Greenland Oklahoma next.

 

1234

Looks to me like mostly O&G first.  Our President is hung up on lowering gas prices (despite the negative impacts to US producers.)  This gets that with the ancillary benefit of harming Russian oil revenue (because of lower prices.)  Again, I don't wanna stan for this guy, but the deal has merit.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

That is not the balkan way. Stabby and ugly.

 

Listen to @956 Worldwide. He went to Grad school.

 

Fair.  I did my Plan II thesis on key differences between the Baltics and the Balkans at the end of the Cold War.  One thing I skipped over, that I am now grasping, is that I'd rather end up with a Baltic gal.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

One thing I skipped over, that I am now grasping, is that I'd rather end up with a Baltic gal.

I wish they all could be Baltic girls ♫

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Posted
4 minutes ago, RPM said:

I wish they all could be Baltic girls ♫

Tried to stalk her when I was in Tallinn....

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My wife just rolled her eyes.  Oh ye of little faith.  Beautiful, smart, doesn't take any shit from Russians?  Sign.  Me.  UP.

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Posted
51 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Thanks, Vlad! Maybe he can invade Greenland next.

Invade Canada, then we annex it as our 51st state in order to protect it, then ????, then Profit

 

Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Tried to stalk her when I was in Tallinn....

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My wife just rolled her eyes.  Oh ye of little faith.  Beautiful, smart, doesn't take any shit from Russians?  Sign.  Me.  UP.

Dude, you are smart and dumb. Baltic's and Balkans are not the same fucking place.

I bet you think all of Latin America likes Selena.

 

 

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Posted (edited)
1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

Baltic's and Balkans are not the same fucking place.

Yes.

I know.

That's why my thesis was a comparative piece.

Of two different regions.

However, it did not delve into the merits of gals from either place.  Perhaps my thesis was lacking in necessary analysis.  I'll make a note for future revisions.

Edited by Brisketexan
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes.

I know.

That's why my thesis was a comparative piece.

Of two different regions.

However, it did not delve into the merits of gals from either place.  Perhaps my thesis was lacking in necessary analysis.  I'll make a note for future revisions.

Do you?

I think you should consult AI and post your findings in the right thread.

Posted
59 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

If Ladybug can pull off what it says in that article, I'll take back every bad thing I ever said about him.  And that's a lotta taking.  

Your instincts are correct. This is mostly wishcasting and we are not going to see anything approaching a coherent approach to Ukraine anytime soon, let alone a pivot to real support. 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, choripan said:

I've trained well on tóxicas, my man. And I've seen the destruction my grandmas (one Ukrainian, one Polish) and mom (Ukrainian) can do. 

Ask me whether I have both kidneys in a couple weeks, though.

Off to bed now, though, y'all. We meet early tomorrow and have a long day of work in Demydiv

  Hide contents

Some bonus pics: me practicing my slavic smile on my balcony (independence monument in background, holler!); St. Michael's; St. Andrew's this evening with "FREEDOM" in front of it (really cool/petty display of burnt out orc military equipment behind it)

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Super awesome, and thank you for doing it!

(St. Andrew’s is the first pic and St. Michael’s has the freedom sign though.  But you can mix them up and let your dates correct you.)

Posted

Ambassador Brink’s temp replacement is on deck. It will be interesting to see how long her stewardship lasts and if the admin taps a career ambassador or dips into the political well.  It is an unenviable job with lots of visibility and few chances to satisfy either the Ukrainians or DJT.

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Posted
1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Ambassador Brink’s temp replacement is on deck. It will be interesting to see how long her stewardship lasts and if the admin taps a career ambassador or dips into the political well.  It is an unenviable job with lots of visibility and few chances to satisfy either the Ukrainians or DJT.

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Surly slippin'.  She rubs the lotion on its skin...

Ambassador Julie D. Fisher

US Ambassador Julie D. Fisher named ...

Posted
25 minutes ago, Parliament said:

So he picks a woman who isn't a political hack loaded up with botox and plastic?  Is this another win?

She looks capable?

Be still my beating heart!

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Posted (edited)

 

The tables have turned, and Putin’s Russia is now in dire trouble
Story by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have together pulled off a remarkable feat of high statecraft. They may have averted a strategic debacle of the first order in Ukraine, and with it irreparable damage to the credibility of the West.

The long-fraught US-Ukraine minerals deal signed in Washington – actually a shale gas deal – is a radically different document from Donald Trump’s original demand for $350bn (£262bn) of war debt “reparations” and the US colonial takeover of the country’s infrastructure.

The full story behind Trump’s Damascene conversion will emerge over time, but Ukrainian officials say the British and French leaders played a critical role in steering the US president away from his pro-Kremlin infatuation, as did Boris Johnson. It was this patient whispering that paved the way for the Trump-Zelensky tête-à-tête on the marble floors of St Peter’s in Rome.

Jonathan Powell, Downing Street’s unflappable national security adviser, will deserve his knighthood when the time comes, and something more than bachelor grade if this is indeed the turning point after weeks of diplomatic calamities.

The tables have turned: it is suddenly Vladimir Putin who is in trouble, trying to hold together an exhausted war economy as the price of Urals crude crashes to $56 a barrel – from $77 in mid-January – and as the global economic downturn tips the whole commodity complex into a cascading bear market. The spot price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia has fallen 30pc over two months.


It comes as China tries to charm Europe, urgently seeking to preempt any EU moves to raise its own barriers against a diversionary flood of Chinese exports shut out of America. Xi Jinping may have to dial down his “no-limits friendship” with Putin – and reduce his covert help for Russia’s war – if he wants a serious hearing.

The minerals accord remains a bitter pill for Kyiv to swallow, but at least it is plausibly compatible with the Ukrainian constitution and does not obstruct EU membership. Deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko says Ukraine retains full ownership of “all resources on our territory”.

Ukraine will be able to purchase US weapons on a quasi “lend-lease” basis. The first $50m tranche of military support was approved last night.

The debt clock starts ticking from today, wiping the slate clean on the $120bn in total American aid since the war began, most of which was spent on production within the US or consisted of semi-obsolete inventory due to be scrapped.

Neither side will have a controlling vote over the investment fund. The US pledges to help Ukraine mobilise capital via the Development Finance Corporation, the geopolitical arm of the US treasury and commerce departments.

This opens the way for serious investment in the shale gas resources of the Yuzivska field. As I reported earlier this month, an internal study by Ukrainian experts concluded that the carbon ratio, porosity and thickness match the best US shale basins in the Marcellus and Permian.

“We could replace half the lost Russian gas exports to Europe,” said Andríy Kóbolyev, ex-head of Ukraine’s energy giant Naftogaz. If so, Russia can kiss goodbye to its European gas market forever. Ukrainian pipeline gas and American LNG will suffice.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, warned Putin that the deal committed Washington to “a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine”.

One never knows quite whom to believe when the Trump administration speaks, but the Kremlin has clearly overplayed its hand, miscalculating how far it could push its maximalist demands and how long it could keep stringing along a prickly and impatient US president.

Republican senator and Trump golf partner Lindsey Graham is going for the jugular. He may soon have a veto-proof 67 votes in the Senate for legislation that imposes 500pc punitive tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy or strategic minerals, if the Kremlin “refuses to negotiate a peace agreement, violates a peace agreement or invades Ukraine again in the future”.

Russia’s “hot Keynesian” war machine is now in the same state of exhaustion as the imperial German war machine in 1917. Germany had been able to preserve something close to a normal civilian economy over the early years of the First World War but the Allied blockade, chronic shortages, lack of manpower and money eventually forced the military to take over the whole productive apparatus. That too failed, and ultimately incubated Weimar hyperinflation.

Russia has depleted the liquid and usable reserves of its rainy-day fund. Military spending almost certainly exceeds 10pc of GDP in one way or another and it is being funded off-books by coercing the banks into lending some $250bn to defence contractors, storing up a crisis for the banking system.

Is that what Anton Siluanov, Russia’s finance minister, was referring to this week when he advised Russians to read Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls and Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, the first about fraudulent finance, the second about crippling debts? He has already introduced a string of new taxes this year. He is now drawing up fresh emergency measures.

The trade-off between guns and butter can be postponed no longer. Serious austerity is coming for the first time since Putin launched his fateful misadventure.

Russia is no longer the proverbial “petrol station masquerading as a country” but it still relies on raw material exports to fund a quarter of the budget. Oil exports fund the war. Kirill Bakhtin, from BCS, says tighter US and UK sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet – Biden’s parting shot – have pushed the discount on Urals crude to around $15.

That lowers the de facto market value of Russian crude exports to $45. Another big drop from here, which may well happen as Saudi Arabia keeps adding barrels to an oversupplied market, would make it extremely hard for Russia to keep prosecuting the war beyond the summer.

The latest Russian offensive has largely petered out, at terrible human cost. Russia is not close to conquering the four oblasts so presumptuously annexed. “The movements on the map are tiny, and have nothing of strategic value. Ukraine is big enough to trade space for time,” said a Western military expert on the ground.

“The Ukrainians can’t take back lost territory, but they’re not going to get rolled over either. This has come down to a war of economic attrition. It’s what’s happening in the Russian rear that decides this.”

Trump may change his mind again. The mineral deal does not give Ukraine a bankable security guarantee. Europe is fractious and weary.

But the balance of probability is that Vladimir Putin will now fail to turn Ukraine into a castrated vassal state along the lines of Belarus.

He may keep the land he already holds and win legal recognition of Crimea, at least from Washington. But if the far-Right ultranationalist hawks in Russia compel him to hold out for total victory, he may not even keep that.

Edited by Bevo
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Posted

 

Not sure if the above works. It's from my same balcony. Putin's bitchass sent some stuff that set off the air alert sirens at 4:30 and now I've been awake for an hour. Figured I'd throw my pistons on with a few mins left in the game and they blew it. Fuck you, Putin, I could have just woken up and checked the score!

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Posted

I have mixed feelings on this, obviously it’s super shitty and ahistorical to not recognize that we fought the Japanese and the war didn’t end in May. On the other hand marking May 8 (not May 9)) and saying we were the most important will make the Russian big fucking mad. Especially if we rename it overall Victory Day. 
 

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