Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Torie]

I'm staying skeptical until there's visual evidence.

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1671934617480314898?s=20

If true, would not be the first breach of one of those Putin constructed red lines? One wonders if the first of those lines is substantially breached, how effective Russia would be in reinforcing the interior red lines behind.

[Torie]

Given that our resident financial guru is apparently busy, I thought I would take up the slack. Into my inbox popped the following from Bloomberg.

Russia Covers Up Key Budget Spending Data as War Swells Deficit

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-22/russia-covers-up-key-budget-spending-data-as-war-swells-deficit?cmpid=BBD062323_politics&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=230623&utm_campaign=bop#xj4y7vzkg

There is a chart (that I am not going to copy and paste for copyright reasons), that shows that while last year Russia was running small surpluses, the red ink this year is now enough for Putin to deem it not suitable for publication. A deficit of 3 trillion rubles (35 billion US) a month is real money. Apparently Saudi Arabia cutting back oil production is but a fart in a windstorm. Tough luck that.

Which will happen first, the West runs out of patience with the Ukraine War and decides to give Putin a pound or two of flesh, or Putin runs out of money to finance the war? No Putin, Xi is not going to lend you any, and no, nobody is interested in using the Ruble as a reserve currency. I guess Putin could cut off pension payments to help finance the war, and cause all those aged patriotic Russians beg for food to support the continued destruction of Ukraine. The oligarchs probably already have most of their money secreted abroad.

[Torie]

Everyone knows that Trump subservient to Putin.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin in waiting on the 2024 US Presidental election to see if Russia would pull out of Ukraine.

Thinking that the PRC is a bigger threat to the USA than Russia is not subservient to Putin.  It is logical and most likely correct.  I prefer the USA not to try to target any one Great Power but play them all off against each other but if the USA had to target any one power the logical choice is PRC and not Russia.

The above paragraph has a text that was written as if Putin's Russia had not launched a genocidal invasion of Ukraine in order to wipe it off the map.

[Torie]

Everyone knows that Trump subservient to Putin.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin in waiting on the 2024 US Presidental election to see if Russia would pull out of Ukraine.

Thinking that the PRC is a bigger threat to the USA than Russia is not subservient to Putin.  It is logical and most likely correct.  I prefer the USA not to try to target any one Great Power but play them all off against each other but if the USA had to target any one power the logical choice is PRC and not Russia.

The above paragraph has a text that was written as if Putin's Russia had not launched a genocidal invasion of Ukraine in order to wipe it off the map.

China is a middle income nation of 1.4 billion people. Russia is a middle-income nation of 140 million people. You ask me which nation has more potential to hurt US interests.

Yes, but US foreign policy should not be all about which country is the greatest threat to it long term. The US has received the memo about de-risking vis a vis China in any event, which should indeed be a top priority.

[Torie]

Everyone knows that Trump subservient to Putin.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin in waiting on the 2024 US Presidental election to see if Russia would pull out of Ukraine.

Thinking that the PRC is a bigger threat to the USA than Russia is not subservient to Putin.  It is logical and most likely correct.  I prefer the USA not to try to target any one Great Power but play them all off against each other but if the USA had to target any one power the logical choice is PRC and not Russia.

China alone is much less of a threat than China and Russia together.

This sounds familiar

1812: Napoleon: I am going to after my secondary enemy (Russia) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

1941 Hiter: I am going to after my secondary enemy (USSR) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

Both ended badly.

USSR was allied to Nazi Germany

You are just twisting history to fit your narrative.

I watched some documentary the other day which claimed that Stalin was going to invade Germany, so that is why Hitler gave up on the UK to beat Stalin to the punch while Stalin was in disarray. In short, the claim that Hitler had the option to leave the division the spoils along between Russia and Germany, so that he could attend to his knitting elsewhere, was not an option.

Quite a shocker to me if true. It serves some further fact checking.

[Torie]

Everyone knows that Trump subservient to Putin.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin in waiting on the 2024 US Presidental election to see if Russia would pull out of Ukraine.

Thinking that the PRC is a bigger threat to the USA than Russia is not subservient to Putin.  It is logical and most likely correct.  I prefer the USA not to try to target any one Great Power but play them all off against each other but if the USA had to target any one power the logical choice is PRC and not Russia.

China alone is much less of a threat than China and Russia together.

This sounds familiar

1812: Napoleon: I am going to after my secondary enemy (Russia) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

1941 Hiter: I am going to after my secondary enemy (USSR) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

Both ended badly.

USSR was allied to Nazi Germany

You are just twisting history to fit your narrative.

I watched some documentary the other day which claimed that Stalin was going to invade Germany, so that is why Hitler gave up on the UK to beat Stalin to the punch while Stalin was in disarray. In short, the claim that Hitler had the option to leave the division the spoils along between Russia and Germany, so that he could attend to his knitting elsewhere, was not an option.

Quite a shocker to me if true. It serves some further fact checking.

Molotov-Rippentrop is frequently badly misunderstood.

It had two parties:
Nazi Germany which was clearly not going to get any wins from the future WAllies
Soviets who had interest in putting more space between Moscow and Leningrad and the Soviet border

Both were pursuing a mutually beneficial policy considering recent memory. (Russia barely two decades ago had been invaded by Germany to disastrous effect)

Stalin, in regards to his foreign policy, was above all a man of immense caution and very calculated plays and Soviet Union first, whatever served that goal. That offering his assistance to an anti-Nazi front had failed to do anything for the latter meant he felt forced to deal with the Nazis directly, and in a way that would give him more room to operate if things went south.
We ought not to fixate on Molotov-Ribbentrop. We ought to ask ourselves instead why efforts to stop Hitler before that point failed.

I don't disagree with your post, but it has nothing to do with the content of mine, and if Stalin really did plan on invading Germany before Hitler beat him to the punch, Stalin was anything but a cautious man in this instance.

[Torie]

Everyone knows that Trump subservient to Putin.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin in waiting on the 2024 US Presidental election to see if Russia would pull out of Ukraine.

Thinking that the PRC is a bigger threat to the USA than Russia is not subservient to Putin.  It is logical and most likely correct.  I prefer the USA not to try to target any one Great Power but play them all off against each other but if the USA had to target any one power the logical choice is PRC and not Russia.

China alone is much less of a threat than China and Russia together.

This sounds familiar

1812: Napoleon: I am going to after my secondary enemy (Russia) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

1941 Hiter: I am going to after my secondary enemy (USSR) to knock them off so they cannot help my main enemy (UK)  when I go after them

Both ended badly.

USSR was allied to Nazi Germany

You are just twisting history to fit your narrative.

I watched some documentary the other day which claimed that Stalin was going to invade Germany, so that is why Hitler gave up on the UK to beat Stalin to the punch while Stalin was in disarray. In short, the claim that Hitler had the option to leave the division the spoils along between Russia and Germany, so that he could attend to his knitting elsewhere, was not an option.

Quite a shocker to me if true. It serves some further fact checking.

Molotov-Rippentrop is frequently badly misunderstood.

It had two parties:
Nazi Germany which was clearly not going to get any wins from the future WAllies
Soviets who had interest in putting more space between Moscow and Leningrad and the Soviet border

Both were pursuing a mutually beneficial policy considering recent memory. (Russia barely two decades ago had been invaded by Germany to disastrous effect)

Stalin, in regards to his foreign policy, was above all a man of immense caution and very calculated plays and Soviet Union first, whatever served that goal. That offering his assistance to an anti-Nazi front had failed to do anything for the latter meant he felt forced to deal with the Nazis directly, and in a way that would give him more room to operate if things went south.
We ought not to fixate on Molotov-Ribbentrop. We ought to ask ourselves instead why efforts to stop Hitler before that point failed.

I don't disagree with your post, but it has nothing to do with the content of mine, and if Stalin really did plan on invading Germany before Hitler beat him to the punch, Stalin was anything but a cautious man in this instance.

Would a preemptive invasion to protect the Motherland not count as a "very calculated play"?

OK, you win. The best defense is a robust offense. Anyway, my point was not to debate the merits of Stalin's intentions, but merely to note that I was unaware of it, and that my impression that Hitler had the option to focus merely on the West without worrying about his back, was errant (if Stalin's intent was in fact true).

[Torie]

Meanwhile back in Bakhmut from a WAPO update of an hour ago:

Ukraine’s 35th Marine Brigade and 36th Mechanized Brigade are preparing an assault near Bakhmut, the Ukrainian city where the Wagner Group lost at least 10,000 fighters, according to Russian defense officials. Ukraine is taking advantage of Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s claimed advances into Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday. The Washington Post could not immediately verify the assertions.

[Torie]

France 24 says the the Wagner timing was based on the Rostov Russian troops nursing hangovers on an early Saturday morning. Seems logical.

[Torie]

Ukrainian forces recaptured territory in the country’s east that had been held by Russia since 2014, according to Kyiv’s military. Valeriy Shershen, a military spokesman in the Donetsk region, said “several positions” near Krasnohorivka in the Donetsk region had been reclaimed, Ukrinform, a state-funded news agency, reported.

[Torie]

Recruitment banners for the Wagner mercenary group were seen being taken down from billboards on Saturday.

Efforts to create roadblocks have started to emerge from regions between Moscow and southern Russia to prevent Wagner mercenaries from entering the capital city. In Lipetsk region, authorities were seen making the M4 highway unusable by digging out an improvised moat.

[Torie]

The revolution proved to be but a cameo appearance. We may now return to regular programming. The new NYT headline:

Russia-Ukraine WarRussian Paramilitary Chief Says His Forces Will Turn Around

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, made the announcement minutes after the leader of Belarus announced successful talks with the Wagner boss.

[Torie]

"President Vladimir V. Putin hasn’t been seen publicly since his video address on Saturday morning, in which he accused the mutinying Wagner fighters of committing treason and stabbing Russia in the back."

I read the above just now in the NYT, and my brain instantly day dreamed, oh, there was an undisclosed term to the deal. Putin needed to disappear.

[Torie]

OK, now that the soap opera featuring the twin thugs with the same mindset but different sartorial presentations is over, what impact if any might the exit from the stage and his "army" of expendable jail birds under his direction have on the war? Who will fill the void for the meat grinder?

I ask, because the press has not addresses this particular query of my brain.

[Torie]

Hopefully Ukraine Intelligence is wrong on this...


https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1673025433380573189?s=20

To provide a bit more context, the somewhat odd couple of Lindsay Graham and Richard Blumenthal are pushing the Biden administration to consider an attack on that plant by Russia to be an attack on NATO to the extent it releases bad air into NATO real estate. That does not make a whole lot of sense given that the way the planet rotates on its axis creates westerly prevailing winds away from western and central Europe. So the toxic rays most probably would poison those to the east, including some in mother Russia.

[Torie]

The NYT wonders where Prigozhin is, and noted the charges against him are still pending.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/26/world/russia-ukraine-news#prigozhin-russia-criminal-case-belarus

[Torie]

On the other hand:

Did Prigozhin Just Get Disappeared by Duplicitous Putin?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-yevgeny-prigozhin-just-get-disappeared-by-duplicitous-putin?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=230626-Digest%20AM&utm_term=F%20List%20Daily%20Beast%20Newsletter%20AM

I suppose there could be Wagner without Prigozhin. Somebody is spinning like a top.

[Torie]

Whereabouts unknown, but he's making noise again:

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”.

[Torie]

Woody might be well advised to close his real estate office in Bakhmut.

The aim of the offensive towards Bakhmut appears less to enter the city than to surround it. “We can now hit any point in the city and on the approaches…we are working to cut off their logistics,” says Denys Yaroslavksy, a special-forces officer fighting to the north of Bakhmut. Serhiy Cherevaty, a military spokesman, confirmed that a number of brigades advanced around Bakhmut by around 2km on the day of Mr Prigozhin’s mutiny.

And just what specifically should Ukraine be doing that it isn’t given what it has? Too bad there is not some percussion bomb that would detonated all the land mines at once within a mile radius or something. It is annoying to have people aka "Western advisors" bitching at you that your people are not dying at a fast enough rate. These Western advisors should be outed. Would US troops go into the meat grinder without air superiority? I thought not. But the American people per the latest poll are patient. Russia will not be able to afford this war forever. They are going to run out of money.

its initial attacks against well-defended Russian positions, including minefields, have exposed its troops’ limited training. They have taken heavy casualties, according to people familiar with the details.

Ukrainian commanders want to protect their depleted forces; Western advisers retort that a lack of shock and momentum will cost more lives in the longer term. A Ukrainian military-intelligence source complains that the country is moving as fast as it can, given the tools at its disposal. “Let me put this as diplomatically as I can,” he says. “Certain partners are telling us to go forward and fight violently, but they also take their time delivering the hardware and weapons we need.”



https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/06/28/can-ukraine-capitalise-on-chaos-in-russia

[Torie]

Hey Bloomberg, the issue with Wagner is what its demise does psychologically to the efficacy of Putin's war machine and the support thereof, and to the West's resolve to put Putin back in his cage, and not that it was the equivalent of what the RAF Spitfire pilots (never has so much been done by so few) did for the UK in 1940.

It is really almost literally true now. Red avatar postings are the bearers of good news, and blue and yellow ones bad. But thanks for sharing anyway J. Did you read my post about ballooning Russian deficits by the way? That in the end imo is the key to victory. Putin needs to run out of money to finance his death machine.

[Torie]

No, wrong chart, and comparing US and RU deficit percentages as a percentage of GDP is an errant apples to oranges exercise (as you yourself alluded to). Here is the link to examine the right one, and Russia's feeling the need to cover it up now. Enjoy.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=469771.msg9112170#msg9112170

But yes, the West should be doing more to BK Russia more quickly. In that regard, more forays into Russia by land and air to destroy military assets should be encouraged, including factories that produce the ordinance.

[Torie]

No, wrong chart, and comparing US and RU deficit percentages as a percentage of GDP is an errant apples to oranges exercise (as you yourself alluded to). Here is the link to examine the right one, and Russia's feeling the need to cover it up now. Enjoy.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=469771.msg9112170#msg9112170

But yes, the West should be doing more to BK Russia more quickly. In that regard, more forays into Russia by land and air to destroy military assets should be encouraged, including factories that produce the ordinance.

They are actually pretty consistent.  From the article

The federal budget deficit meanwhile reached 3.41 trillion rubles ($41 billion) in the first five months of 2023, narrowing slightly in May but still exceeding the full-year plan by almost a fifth.

By my calculation, a 3.41 trillion RUB deficit would work out to around 1.9% of 2023 GDP.  If so just extrapolate that to all of 2023, it works out to 4.8% of GDP which is higher than the current Bloomberg estimate of 3.5% but not disastrously so and still below the USA deficit of 5.7% of GDP.  And if Russia's deficit ends up being higher it will just translate into higher inflation which so far seems fairly under control from a MoM point of view.

Unlike the US, with its ability to borrow, and having the reserve currency, Russia can't borrow (nobody will lend to it), and when it runs out of cash, the war stops or it stops paying pensions, etc. Follow the cash. Surely you know all of this. When Putin runs out of cash the whole system collapses like a cheap suit. The draft exempt elites in St. Pete and Moscow will not tolerate their standards of living being cratered to boot.

Addendum: I wonder without Western maintenance assistance and exploration how much the cost to Russia of pumping out the oil and gas is going up. When it gets close to the market price, that source of cash is gone. I am still pissed that the Dems were and are so hostile to creating huge oil reserves, that can flood the market when the need arises. Idiots.

[Torie]

Unlike the US, with its ability to borrow, and having the reserve currency, Russia can't borrow (nobody will lend to it), and when it runs out of cash, the war stops or it stops paying pensions, etc. Follow the cash. Surely you know all of this. When Putin runs out of cash the whole system collapses like a cheap suit. The draft exempt elites in St. Pete and Moscow will not tolerate their standards of living being cratered to boot.

Ergo my point on Russia's current account surplus which represent it ability to claim resources overall to make up its deficit even within the context RUB not being a reserve currency.

2016     1.9
2017     2.0
2018     7.0
2019     3.9
2020     2.4
2021     6.7
2022   10.2
2023     4.6
2024     3.6
 

Most deficit driven crises always manifest itself in current account deficits.  Japan has a massive debt/deficit which is even worse than USA but can manage it mostly due to its current account position.

Current accounts will not finance a war. Sure, Russia is still getting cash from its fossil fuel sales, and nobody is selling much to it these days other than Iran and its drones. The key number to look at is Putin's cash horde, which he is masking now. But it's dropping, and dropping even faster in real inflation adjusted terms, just like the market price of oil, which will be under pressure as a worldwide recession of some magnitude sets in. Squeeze baby squeeze.

[Torie]

Current accounts will not finance a war. Sure, Russia is still getting cash from its fossil fuel sales, and nobody is selling much to it these days other than Iran and its drones. The key number to look at is Putin's cash horde, which he is masking now. But it's dropping, and dropping even faster in real inflation adjusted terms, just like the market price of oil, which will be under pressure as a worldwide recession of some magnitude sets in. Squeeze baby squeeze.

Chart of recent total Russian imports by quarter.  There was a big fall in 2022 but has now clearly running at a rate well higher than 2021 levels.  Total 2023 total Russian imports are expected to rise by 6.1% as per current Bloomberg estimates.

Perhaps this may help wean you off you fixation with current accounts. Did the US finance WWII off its current accounts?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/economy/russia-no-money-deripaska/index.html

[Torie]

The US should buy them and give them to Ukraine, or build them itself.