Investment impact of Russia Ukraine crisis

Just like Epstein, these oligarchs won’t hang themselves.

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I don’t even know what their narrative is, nor it’s fertilizing properties. I presumed it to be a flimsy excuse, probably made up of whole cloth, just like his incursion when President Obama was in the White House.

Thanks for the response. I can understand why you may not be able to quantify “remotely widespread” or “meaningful context”.

To answer your question, I don’t think Russia can justify the invasion into Ukraine, unless they can provide evidence that Ukrainian Nazis (on non-Nazi’s for that matter) were either attacking Russia, or an attack was imminent. I’ve seen no evidence of either, and believe as mentioned previously, that it’s bunk.

My biggest issue with Ukraine (regardless of Nazi connections, or non-connections) is that the leader commandeered all free media. I expect that there is a corporate-speak excuse, but that is frequently a tactic of dictators. I don’t like dictators, which is also why I don’t like Putin, XiJinping, Fatboy, Fidel’s brother (or whoever is their current dictator), Iran’s dictator of the moment, etc.

Considering how well Ukraine has managed the story, I was surprised that they didn’t think how “taking over the media” would look.

At least they didn’t blame Ukrainians or Nazis. :smile:

Speak no evil, read no evil, shut up and hate Russia.

With censorship relating to the Ukraine war there is no argument that it’s being done to help the people. There is no case to be made that letting people say wrong things about this war kills Ukrainians, Americans, or anyone else. There is no case to be made that disputing claims about Russian war crimes will damage America’s democratic processes. It’s just, “Well we can’t have people saying wrong things about a war, can we?”

Once “journalists” accepted that their most important job is not to tell the truth but to keep people from thinking bad thoughts about the status quo political system, it was inevitable that they’d start enthusiastically cheerleading for more internet censorship. They see it as their duty, which is why now the leading proponents of online censorship are corporate media reporters.

Striking at the heart of Russian support

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is terrible and without justification. The United Kingdom’s Lawn Tennis Association came up with a dramatic plan to end the war. It banned Vladimir Putin and his generals from playing at Wimbledon, as well as the grass court circuit preceding the venerable grand slam event.

Oops, no. Tennis officials actually said Russian and Belarusian tennis players serving in the military, currently rampaging across Ukraine and committing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians, won’t be able to participate. That punishment is widely seen as more draconian than a war crimes trial.

Wait, no again! In fact, the British said that Russians who have neither participated in nor endorsed Moscow’s attack will be prohibited from competing. As a result, men’s world number two Daniil Medvedev will lose an opportunity to win another grand slam tournament. Women’s number 15 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will sacrifice a chance to break into the game’s top ranks. Unfortunate, perhaps, but necessary to bring the Russian war machine to a halt!

Military commentary.

claims of note

  • Russia tried to push to Kiev early in hopes the government would collapse or concede, but that failed
  • now they are more methodically taking territory and defeating the Ukrainian forces in the East, and seem to be planning to take those regions permanently as part of Russia.
  • railroad and bridge strikes guarantee the US military equipment will be unable to reach relevant battlefields in the East and is mostly a “feel good” measure
  • it is now illegal for Ukrainians to post online damage from Russian strikes (don’t want the world to know how bad things are going)
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Bump

Defense stocks love the war. Ron Paul comments -

One group of special interests profiting massively on the war is the US military-industrial complex. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently told a meeting of shareholders that, “Everything that ‘s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DOD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business.”

He wasn’t lying. Raytheon, along with Lockheed Martin and countless other weapons manufacturers are enjoying a windfall they have not seen in years. The US has committed more than three billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine. They call it aid, but it is actually corporate welfare: Washington sending billions to arms manufacturers for weapons sent overseas.

By many accounts these shipments of weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile (jointly manufactured by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) are getting blown up as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. This doesn’t bother Raytheon at all. The more weapons blown up by Russia in Ukraine, the more new orders come from the Pentagon.

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European nat gas much higher today. Poland not paying in rubles, not getting natural gas. Guess they weren’t bluffing.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1518973691018854402

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/european-gas-prices-rise-amid-crimped-flows-colder-weather

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Lest we forget:

"Beware the military industrial complex"

President and General Dwight David Eisenhower, 1961

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Guess this guy saw the writing on the wall and bailed from his senior Gazprom position before he ended up like his boss. Calls it a murder, which seems pretty obvious.

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Gas in rubles or no gas, after Poland shutting off more countries.

  • BULGARIAN ENERGY MINISTER SAYS GAZPROM HAS HALTED INFLOWS OF NATURAL GAS TO BULGARIA
  • GERMANY MUST PREPARE “INTENSIVELY” FOR GAS SHORTAGES, SAYS ENBW
  • RUSSIA WILL CUT OFF GAS TO OTHER BUYERS WHO DON’T PAY RUBLES
  • KREMLIN SAYS BUYERS OF RUSSIAN ENERGY WERE NOTIFIED WELL IN ADVANCE OF NEW PAYMENT TERMS

Still short german stocks (EWG etf)

  • GERMAN GOVERNMENT CUTS 2022 GDP FORECAST TO 2.2% FROM 3.6%
  • GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTER SAYS WE MUST BE READY TO PAY THE PRICE OF HIGHER INFLATION AND SLOWER GROWTH FOR SUPPORTING UKRAINE
  • HABECK: RUSSIAN GAS HALT WOULD TRIGGER GERMAN RECESSION
  • HABECK: GERMAN ECONOMY WOULD SHRINK 5% IF RUSSIA HALTED GAS

European gas prices rose by 20% on Wednesday

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All that. Yet several years ago Europeans made sport of Trump’s call for independence from Russian natural gas and more cooperation with and reliance upon the USA in this regard.

So what sort of reaction does this very high level of prescience elicit today, in the wake of so much disruption?:

Total silence.

Talk about unwillingness to acknowledge, or even admit, when you are wrong! This takes the cake.

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Rule of Law

  • BLINKEN SAYS DOJ REVIEWING IF FROZEN RUSSIAN FUNDS CAN BE SEIZED

meanwhile, Putin calling it war and he’s probably not wrong.

My guess is that when fighting a brutal force that’s at least 10x bigger and stronger, keeping up morale is hugely important. They only want Ukraine-positive stories in their media. They only show Russian losses, not Ukrainian. And who really knows, perhaps this is what saved them from being gobbled up in the first few days or weeks of the invasion and what eventually forced Russia to retreat from the north and northeast.

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A lot of what he says makes sense, except a few HUGE conclusions he made at the end. He claimed that taking the south of Ukraine was never a military goal, but since the West raised the stakes and froze their assets, they might as well. This seems a highly suspect conclusion from a supposed expert. I had absolutely zero doubts from the very beginning that their goal was to take territory. All their other stated goals like “de-nazification” were just excuses and utter bullshit.

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I think he was making the distinction between breaking the eastern regions off of Ukraine and recognizing them as independent states with favorable governments and actually being officially incorporated into Russia. Perhaps a minor difference in practice.

My guess is that when fighting a brutal force that’s at least 10x bigger and stronger, keeping up morale is hugely important. They only want Ukraine-positive stories in their media. They only show Russian losses, not Ukrainian.

More than force of numbers being an issue (since Russia went in with a much, much smaller numerical advantage than you’re suggesting) – while Russian equipment has shown itself to be in shambles, their misinformation and propaganda operations are top tier, especially when dealing with linguistically similar populations that may not be able to easily read most western news sources.

Maintaining a will-to-fight is certainly critical in this type of conflict.

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I think he was making the distinction between breaking the eastern regions off of Ukraine and recognizing them as independent states with favorable governments and actually being officially incorporated into Russia. Perhaps a minor difference in practice.

If they couldn’t get a favorable regime change and avoid total-war, a la Belarus, land-locking Ukraine and obtaining the stretch from the Donbas to Transnistria was always understood to be a potential major goal, from well before the current broad conflict broke out.

Possibly not broadly discussed in the news at the outset, but definitely something that analysts understood well before Russia was embarrassed in the attempt to employ a decapitation strategy.

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Except if he paid attention to the rhetoric, where Putin described Ukraine as a state created by Russia and being an extension of Russia, there’d be little doubt about their intentions. There was even a video circulating of Putin grilling one of his pawn “advisors” (or maybe members of parliament or defense ministers, I dunno) about how to handle DNR and LNR. The guy was completely flustered and basically gave it away by saying he agrees that they should be made part of Russia. Putin said that’s not what we’re talking about, we’re talking about recognizing them as independent (or something like that), and the guy said something like “yes we should do that”.

I heard on the news today that now other politicians of the Russian government started talking about absorbing those regions into Russia.