…another Blackhawk going in, same place.
When I read the statements by Ursula von der Leyen this morning, I can’t help be think I’m reading fake news.
In a series of tweets early on Friday morning, Ms von der Leyen said the sanctions show “how united the EU is”.
To me it shows anything but! They (we) failed to agree the sanctions that would really hurt, because Germany, Italy and some others wouldn’t agree to them.
“Second, we target the energy sector, a key economic area which especially benefits the Russian state. Our export ban will hit the oil sector by making it impossible for Russia to upgrade its refineries.
Why target oil exports and not gas? Surely stopping all gas exports is the way to go. From the little bit of research I did yesterday, gas exports account for almost 20% of Russian GDP. All Russian gas is sold to Europe & Turkey, with Western Europe and Turkey accounting for 78% of it, and Eastern Europe 12%. This is where we can hurt Russia. But stopping them upgrading their oil refineries??!! I’m sure Putin is shaking in his boots at that one.
I heard yesterday that in fact Europe is now buying more gas from Russia than a few weeks ago! This is because contracts with Gasprom have a fixed price but variable quantity. The contracts allow countries to purchase on the spot market too. So when the spot market goes up (which it has done as a result of the build up in the past week) countries stop buying on the sport market and buy more on the Gasprom (Russian) contracts!
Yes there will be pain for those of us in Europe, but with the benefit of hindsight, who amoung us would not have been willing to take that pain to stop Hitler in his tracks at the beginning of his campaign?
“Third: we ban the sale of aircrafts and equipment to Russian airlines.
Again, I’m sure Putin regrets his actions when he reads this!!! (Not)
“Fourth, we are limiting Russia’s access to crucial technology, such as semiconductors or cutting-edge software.
Maybe this has some effect, but it will take many years to have such an effect. In the mean time China will be doing the manufacturing anyway, and copying the designs where the Russians will get it.
“Finally: visas. Diplomats and related groups and business people will no longer have privileged access to the European Union.
Pffts. No longer have “privileged access” or no longer have “access”? That’s a big difference. How many this time? Any of them big well known household names? Any of them who haven’t already been sanctioned? Any that this will have come as a surprise to? Any who can make any difference? Does this list include Putin himself? (No it doesn’t).
If we want to be taken seriously, then we need to take the difficult decisions. If we aren’t willing to get involved militarily then we have to be serious about sanctions.
Implement the removal of Russia from the Swift payment system and cripple their external trade.
Seize the assets of those oligarchs and sell them off so that there is no hope of them recovering them.
Seize any assets belonging to Putin. Surely this is obvious. Why would they take assets from some of his friends but not him!???!!
Expel Russia from G20.
Remove Russia’s veto from the UN Security council.
Stop importing any gas/oil/coal from Russia and source other supplies. Yes, I know this won’t be easy, but we has enough emergency reserves for a few months while we sort this out. By then it will be summer and the worst of our heating needs will be over buying more time.
Expel ALL diplomats from Russian embassies all across Europe & USA. Close those embassies and close down the Russia intelligence that apparently operates from them.
Cut Russia off from any internet access to the west.
Do everything possible to isolate Russia from the rest of the world. Turn it into North Korea in terms of access.
If we want to be taken seriously, we need to act seriously.
At present I see nothing that has been done that will cause Russia to “raise an eyebrow” or rethink what they are doing. Everything we’ve done is on the lower end of what they expected.
She added: “These events mark the beginning of a new era. Putin is trying to subjugate a friendly European country. He is trying to redraw the map of Europe by force. He must and he will fail.”
The “will fail” part seems like fake news to me. Not because we can’t stop him, but because we’re not willing to take the hard decisions necessary. We’re not willing to suffer the pain that we need to take to stop him.
It’s interesting that the Americans seem willing to implement tougher sanctions but we aren’t, even though it’s on our doorstop (They want to ban Russia from Swift payments).
As painful as it might be now to do some of these things, taking your pain early is usually the best strategy to minimise the pain. Delaying it, usually just allows the problem to grow and requires more pain to solve it in the end.
LeSving wrote:
It works because someone believes (with 100% certainty) that someone else is willing to push the button. Yet everyone are 100% sure they themselves will never ever push the button (not fist anyway).
No one believes either with 100% certainty. We know for a fact that at least once only chance prevented a Soviet button push and the number of incidents on the USA side is so large that it may easily have come to a button push from that side, too.
Besides, the US has shown that the willingness certainly is real,
If that was true, it would invalidate your 100% claim, wouldn’t it. But it isn’t true because at the time no one except the USA had nukes so there was no risk for retaliation.
This from a colleague..and someone has to clean up the mess..Vladimir Putin??
I found myself in Ukraine in February 2014, and responded to what I saw by adopting my assumptions as fact. But the longer I stayed – until April 2016, the realities of Ukraine began to emerge as I talked to Ukrainians who had expert knowledge of its history, economics and society. As that happened, my assumptions proved to be wrong. What emerged in their place was a picture of a failed state, created over more than a century by self-interested outsiders: Russia, Austria, Poland, the U.K, and the U.S. While I respect Konstantin’s views, he’s clearly assuming there are immutable “Western values.” I would argue he’s not looking at that question with clear eyes. The U.S. is not the same place where I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. The values of that time, family, friends, faith, and freedom of choice and opportunity have been eroded and replaced with an ideology that foreign to me, authoritarian, secular, and a regulated society that doesn’t permit choice and dictates opportunity. It also have become thoroughly corrupt, which is the source of its decline. I now live in the “eye of the storm” in Moldova, and choose to remain because the values here are much closer to my own, and I’ve learned to respect the people behind them.
RobertL18C wrote:
@BeechBaby I hadn’t realised you had fallen hook line and sinker for these tropes.
Please do not be so silly…obsecro non tam inepta
We know for a fact that at least once only chance prevented a Soviet button push and the number of incidents on the USA side is so large that it may easily have come to a button push from that side, too.
If one reads technical material about the history of nukes, one finds that these incidents are hugely overplayed in the media, in terms of the risk of a nuclear explosion.
And because setting one off could trigger a nuclear war, the safeguards on them are nowadays very good. IMHO it is no accident that nothing has actually gone off since 1945.
Lots of heavy metal in the air
dublinpilot wrote:
Remove Russia’s veto from the UN Security council.
You can’t without dismantling UNSC and (potentially) UN itself. The world WILL split into East-West, as China will see it as an attack on it’s interests as well…
Cutting off SWIFT will affect the people that send money to their relatives in Russia but not the organisations Putin cares about (that much was already discussed).
Cutting off Internet will make it impossible for us to know what is happenning there and will affect mostly the people that are against that invasion anyway and cut off the comms between those that left and their relatives.
@dublinpilot, in the end you are missing a biggest point – do you really think he gives a f£%k anymore? Most over there think that he is in some sort of self-destruction mode.
Will destroying Russian economy help to stop it? Not at alll. It will starve millions over there, nothing else. It does not affect him at all.
HE DOES NOT CARE.
Why do you feel the need to emphasise the same quote in a dead language?
Chinese President issues statement in full support of Vladimir Putin..
gallois wrote:
Why do you feel the need to emphasise the same quote in a dead language?
That my friend is for you to find out… 
arj1 wrote:
@dublinpilot, in the end you are missing a biggest point – do you really think he gives a f£%k anymore?
I do. I’ve always thought that Putin met the medical definition of a psychopath. Not someone who is “crazy” as we tend to think of psychopaths in our culture, but rather someone who is cold, unemotional, calculating and sees every decision in terms of “what does it do for me”.
I think Putin cares a lot about himself, and is carefully making his decisions. He’s not seen anything from the west that he wasn’t anticipating. But if he sees something that really does hurt him, he’ll take that into his calculations and decide what the best course of action is from there. I think he’s always calculating and cold.
