Troll post deleted, unfortunately subsequent comments on it too.
One can have this thread, in the spirit of Hangar Talk, but EuroGA won’t be a platform for Kremlin type stuff. The alternative is no discussion at all, which is what most forums have done.
Are they WW2 tanks? I thought they’re T-72s?
Indeed; not quite WW2 but 50 years old and same technology.
That tank still won’t be of much use after that compartment got blown off 
The Ukrainians are posting loads of pics of dead Russian soldiers, with their name badges and various looted jewellery, passports and currencies on top of them. The army is not much of an army; it’s a lot of kids, and among them a load of drunks, vandals, thieves, and rapists. For so many years, the West was scared of that lot, but really it was set up for the Red Square parade, not for fighting in places other than Syria and other easy targets.
Quite sad. Farm kids, picked to be well away from Moscow, so less chance of having friends on the internet.
And now another warning
Kaspersky deny this possibility.
It seems Putin is playing hardball about wanting gas to be paid for in roubles. Obviously this has no contractual basis and the comments about customers not fulfilling their obligations if they don’t pay in roubles are BS, but there are very few rules to the game now.
For the moment western countries are standing firm. I expect Germany at least, and possibly some others, to either fold or find some fudge.
If we call his bluff and let him turn the tap off it’ll be massive.
But he can’t afford it either. Russia will be bankrupt in about ten seconds if he turns off the gas. It’s total bluff, and everyone knows it. Which isn’t to say it won’t work…
johnh wrote:
But he can’t afford it either. Russia will be bankrupt in about ten seconds if he turns off the gas. It’s total bluff, and everyone knows it. Which isn’t to say it won’t work…
He is already working to get money from the Chinese and others where he can still deliver oil and gas. It is just a further escalation in the economic war. Mind, let him switch off the gas to Germany and Europe. So maybe some countries will see in what predicament they have maneuvered themselves when they stopped using nuclear power for energy because of a unrelated accident in Japan. Get those plants back online and show Putin the finger. Until then, use the reserves they have and then stop using the gas plants. They are a nuissance anyway in terms of climate protection e.t.c.
One wonders what drove Merkel to allow Russia to become dominant of European energy. And we do know what drove her predecessor, who should be stripped of his German citizenship and shipped off to either jail or Moscow.
It pretty much looks like the iron curtain will come down much more severe than it ever did, at least in economic terms. So much the more, Europe should finally grow up and get self sufficient, not make themselves dependent on China, Russia and who not else all the time.
johnh wrote:
Which isn’t to say it won’t work…
The exchange rate between Euro and Rouble bettered a lot through this. In fact, it is practically the same as before the war started.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Get those plants back online and show Putin the finger.
Maybe it’s different in Switzerland but the last time I checked nuclear power plants weren’t producing natural gas. It took Germany 50 years to arrive at the current situation where a large number of households rely on natural gas for heating. It’s now being slowly phased out in favor of heat pumps but this is not done within a week. Also, industrial consumers play a big part in natural gas consumption. But it is pretty daft to generate heat for making bricks by driving a large electrical current through a resistor. The alternative would be oil which also seldomly comes from a country with a stable democracy. I believe most private consumers have already gotten the message (from their bank account at least) and would switch to other means of generating heat if they could. I predict a steep increase in solar panel prices.
UdoR wrote:
The exchange rate between Euro and Rouble bettered a lot through this. In fact, it is practically the same as before the war started.
From what I could read, that’s only true because virtually nobody is trading in it. But I’ve no expertise in that area, so it’s just what I read in the media.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
One wonders what drove Merkel to allow Russia to become dominant of European energy.
In fairness to her, I think she did it with good intensions. I think she believed that in doing so she was also making Russia dependant on the EU. In many ways she succeeded. If Germany and Austria didn’t buy so much gas from Russia, then we’d have little or no economic leverage over it now. In many ways, she achieved what she wanted to….an interdependence. She probably thought it would keep Russia from getting out of line. Her only mistake was not having a contingency plan.
johnh wrote:
Russia will be bankrupt in about ten seconds if he turns off the gas.
Is that true? I’m not saying it’s not, but rather asking a question. The reason for the question, is that l heard on a radio interview today, that Germany claims that they aren’t financing the war because their payment for gas are going to a blocked account, so Russia can’t access any of the funds that they transfer. If that is true, then Russia wouldn’t be in any worse of a position if it stopped sending the gas.
Maybe this is just the motivation that Europe needs to quickly (and expensively) transition to renewable fuels. It would get energy security and removes dependence from anyone else. It could then levy a carbon tax on imports from outside the EU on goods that were produced using fossil fuels (thus helping encourage other countries to transition faster too).
Regarding nuclear, one clear issue with this is that in a war situation, they are very easy and very dangerous targets. If Russia wasn’t downstream of Ukraine, I’m not sure that we wouldn’t have had an accident by now.
Back in the 70’s I did some work in Russia. Officially you could only exchange hard currency for roubles at banks and other official places within Russia. But we were always being approached in the streets, hotels and bars to exchange foreign currency for roubles at as much as 10 times the rate of official channels.
I would not be at all surprised if such things are now going on, on a huge scale and that certain people will be getting oil and gas at a fraction of its actual cost. Putin will be happy that he got one over on the west, despite the Russian treasury taking in a tenth of the income for oil and gas than they did before the war.
The Russian people will be happy because they will get rid of useless roubles in exchange for a hard currency.
The middle men will be happy because when they sell on this oil and gas to European countries, they will sell at spot price yet pay only a fraction of what they would normally pay for oil and gas.
And the European governments will be happy because they can tell their voters that they are not buying oil and gas from Russia and paying in roubles.
