BP is probably just getting ahead of the game. The value of this investment is likely to be predicted to plummet and need to be written off anyway. The EU will need to dramatically reduce energy dependence on Russia after this. There will no popular support and the long term strategic implications make it untenable.
More like as britain takes russian assets via sanctions, the russians will offset it by taking british assets. So all british assets in russia/ukraine are already lost just like all russian assets in britain are lost.
This is just something their PR team put together to get some good publicity. Like paying media to rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill". Like branding their company as a green eco-friendly after said BP oil spill. Still one of the largest oil companies in the world, but they are green eco-friendly.
>This is just something their PR team put together to get some good publicity. Like paying media to rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill".
Source? I did some rudimentary checking and what you're describing seems like revisionist history and/or conspiracy to me. I checked the news section from wikipedia on that date[1], and it's referred to as "Explosion on Deepwater Horizon drilling rig", with no references to BP (in the title, there are references in the body). The linked sources also do the same. The same lack of BP reference also applies to NPR which had stories from the AP[2] as well as new orleans public radio[3]. Maybe BP bribed all of them, but that seems hard to believe. Looking at the wikipedia page and/or news articles, you can find a less sinister explanation for why it wasn't called the BP oil spill: the drilling rig was owned and operated by Transocean, not BP.
The oil rig was owned by Transocean, but leased by BP.
"In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In April 2016, BP agreed to pay $20.8 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in United States history."
> The oil rig was owned by Transocean, but leased by BP.
Right, but "leased" in this context is closer to "leasing" a taxi than "leasing" a car. Transocean was described as the operator in news reports as well as on wikipedia. Also, most staff on the rig were not BP:
"A total of 126 workers were aboard. Seventy-nine were Transocean workers, six were BP employees and 41 were contracted."
>"In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In April 2016, BP agreed to pay $20.8 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in United States history."
I'm not disputing BP's involvement/responsibility, just that it's at least somewhat justifiable to call it the "deepwater horizon oil spill" rather than the "bp oil spill", especially as the story was developing.
Also, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents, it seems pretty common to call energy accidents based on the plant/ship name, rather than the company name. For instance, we refer to "Three Mile Island accident", not the "EnergySolutions (the operator) nuclear disaster". The Exxon Valdez oil spil was a notable exception, but that's because the oil tanker was literally named "Exxon Valdez".
I think you're missing the point. That fragment being present in the wikipedia article just means... wikipedia recognizes that some people also refer to the incident as the "BP oil spill". I have no problem with people wanting it to call it the "BP oil spill". It might even be the correct term. After all, in the final judgement BP was found 67% responsible. What I do have a problem with is the parent post's accusation that BP paid "media" to 'rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill"' for "good publicity" reasons. That's not supported by the evidence because news coverage referred to it as "Deepwater oil spill" and not "BP oil spill" from day 1, and that it's pretty common to not mention the company name in energy related accidents (see my other comment).
Would it be "conspiring" or simply public relations? I ask because when you say "conspire" you could be alluding to it being unlikely that an oil company would have PR people on staff to "massage" their public image. I think we can all agree this sort of PR is pretty common, whether or not it happened in this case.
Oh I see. I didn’t notice that claim, and I agree with you. Imagine thinking that you “bribe” media. You just become a stakeholder or advertiser and exert pressure!
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
>Why does HN care so much about BPs image that they must clear it of any potential bribery claims?
You see nothing wrong with uncritically accepting any accusation of corporate wrongdoing? Is the truth not important to you?
> "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Hmm, this seems to support my claims, since shilling isn't allowed.
> You see nothing wrong with uncritically accepting any accusation of corporate wrongdoing? Is the truth not important to you?
Going from not caring about BP's image to not caring about the truth is a pretty far jump wouldn't you say? Most people would not care so much about a corporation's image to defend it as much as it's being defended here, unless they have some obligation to or other connection to said corporation.
It definitely can't be just a PR move, because no company allows PR to throw away a $25B business, the management has to decide first and PR just spins the decision. Just imagine the board room discussion! Hey what happened to that 25 billion, oh PR thought it would be a good look for us if we lost it! Thumbs up!!
That's not how sanctions work. They aren't seizures, the assets just can't be moved. Long term sanctions (like Iran and North Korea) might feel like seizures, but technically if they were ever lifted the assets have to be returned.
Banks of course can pad their balance sheets with this stuff, so I guess that side is seized.
So, this is a bit confusing. Yes you're right that sanctions are just orders not to do business with certain companies, but one thing that Britain has up its sleeve is that ingeniously it spent the last decade luring Russian business men into buying expensive property and asssets in London under the clearly false pretense that they were safe from reprisal since they paid millions to the tory party (to be clear, I'm not slandering anyone, because they weren't corrupt as fuck, they were simply laying a trap) and now that we have them right where we want them we can use unexplained wealth orders to seize those assets - for example, expensive london flats, or the entirity of Chelsea football club, or Lord Lebedev's (good strong british name) Lordship (which definitely wasn't also bestowed upon him by the british government). Unexplained wealth orders basically say "Prove you got the money legitimately or this is ours now" - which is brilliant because we know they didn't get the money legitimately, because no one innocent pays millions of pounds to the tory party to protect themselves if they're innocent. Ipso facto, our corruption, literally a good thing.
Edit: Oh unless we actually are corrupt, and we don't actually carry out the unexplained wealth orders. Notably, the British government hasn't carried out any.
There's definetly talk of seizures but as you said I don't know what it means in real world. Maybe they use the word but it's long term sanctions on some assets instead.
Just anecdotal, I knew the name "Deepwater Horizon", but was very aware that BP was the responsible party. There was a lot of discussion of not buying gas from BP stations for a while afterwards and it became a common subject again when they started rebranding and painting their stations green.
Dunno what happened behind the scenes with the naming, but I'd say most people in my area associated it strongly with BP and am pretty confident that BP was implicated on the NPR radio station I listened to.
Good for them. The Italian government fought tooth and nail to get an exception for luxury goods in the EU's Russia sanctions package. So clearly Gucci and Prada are not interested in getting ahead of the game. [0]
Gucci and Prada are clearly strategic resources that must have their exports blocked asap. Doing so hurts Russian oligarchs more than anything - it makes their wives and daughters (and mistresses) unhappy, and they the oligarchs will not be allowewed to rest until imports are restored....
> The EU will need to dramatically reduce energy dependence on Russia after this
This has been clear for quite some time now, but Germany chose to move in the opposite direction by shutting down its nuclear plants. As long as Russian energy remains cheap, I expect that that Central Europeans will continue to vote with their wallets after the current crisis blows over.
That's an impressive vote of confidence that the war won't spread beyond Ukraine: an LNG terminal is really not at all the kind of thing you want to have around in a war.
A major use for Russian gas in Germany is heating. Nuclear power doesn't really help with that. The second important use is in peaker plants that go online when there is no wind. Nuclear doesn't really help with that either.
Sure heat pumps are the future. But it will take decades to replace existing heating systems with heat pumps. We still install hundreds of brand new gas heaters every day in Germany.
It may exist somewhere (especially in France, if I'm not mistaken), but it doesn't exist in all of our (I'm European) houses. Good thing that spring is coming but I don't see our houses getting converted to electric heating till next winter comes. Or maybe the hope is that Putin will fall by then or that a nuclear winter will make all these concerns obsolete, anyway.
Shutting down nuclear power plants affects electricity, if memory serves well Russian gas is used mainly for heating. The USSR delivered said gas reliably all the time during the Cold War. And Germany built a LPG terminal at the North Sea for US fracking gas. Guess why the current and last US administration was so oppossed to North Stream 2?
The reason Germany so heavily relies on gas for heating is the relative cost of LPG vs electricity for heating. If electricity were cheap and plentiful, new builds and renovations would be using heat pumps. Because of Germany's insistence on closing nuclear plants, electricity is not cheap and plentiful.
Given their recent about-face on several key positions, I am hopeful that they revisit their position on nuclear. Renewables should of course be prioritised, but until mass storage becomes realistic, reliable electricity generation needs to be available. Now that it is clear that Russia cannot be trusted as a reliable source of cheap energy, I hope Germany takes energy independence much more seriously.
Even before we closed down our nuclear plants, Germans heated mainly with gas. Electric heating was a thing for a while, it was basically phased out over 30 years ago. The other alternative is oil. Replacing for 80+ million people is a gargantuan task. One you don't start unless there are issues with gas, and there were none so far. Not even now I'd say, except pricing.
>Even before we closed down our nuclear plants, Germans heated mainly with gas.
Because electricity was not cheap and plentiful. There are three plants still in operation in Germany, with 10 having closed in the last decade. France has 56 currently in operation, with more planned. This is not a problem which occurred overnight for Germany. They've been focusing on LPG for heating for decades. They made the wrong call; in large part because of the polling for German citizens. Most are against nuclear electricity generation.
So minus ten nuclear plants in ten years vs. gas heating since the 60s (?). Guess what migjt be the real reason. And even France is more and more getting of electrocity for direct heating. Heat pumps are rather new tech in the context of this discussion.
All I track is EROEI / LCOE of alt energy in the US. Is Russia able to undercut solar/wind economics in eastern europe?
The economics for migrating from Russian sources is already there. You're already losing money with coal plants, and natural gas will soon be more expensive to keep running than replace. Storage/level generation is a secondary concern, but as stated the extant nuke plants coudl do that.
It isn't able to undercut it, no, but it's able to supply the energy now, while transitioning to wind and solar is going to take about 8 years, maybe longer in places like Estonia.
100% will probably never arrive, but >50% renewable is about six years away. Denmark's almost there now, but their transport system is still almost all fossil fuel.
For long-haul land shipping, the simple solutions are electric trains or Fischer–Tropsch-powered diesel trucks. Maybe methanol-powered trucks or CNG-powered trucks can beat those (not LNG obviously!) but it's going to be an uphill battle.
For short-distance delivery, battery-powered electric trucks probably work fine—battery-powered forklifts have been common inside factories since well into the previous millennium, EVs' regenerative braking dramatically improves energy efficiency in city driving, the high peak power density and rapid slew rate that was such a selling point for the Tesla Roadster is another big plus over diesel, and if necessary fleet organizations can swap batteries daily in ways that would be unacceptably risky for Teamster OOs who could get stuck with a dud battery.
For fast shipping, Fischer–Tropsch Jet A-1.
Sea shipping is a somewhat tougher problem; obviously it's feasible to do with 99% renewable energy, as it was for all of human history until 250 years ago, but today's depreciation rates, geographical specialization and long multinational supply chains, and JIT practices strongly incentivize the much higher power densities of modern shipping. And the cost premium for Fischer–Tropsch diesel over modern bunker fuel is much larger than what truckers and diesel locomotives face.
Fortunately, though very dirty, sea shipping is a tiny fraction of the overall energy mix.
Fischer-Tropsch with which kind of carbon/hydrogen sources? Hydrogen from electrolysis?
Fischer-Tropsch diesel would allow continued use of existing trucks until their EOL.
> ... Maybe methanol-powered trucks or CNG-powered trucks ...
My guess is that it'll be the liquid (or liquefied; not hydrogen though) fuel that is most universally applicable (different regions of the world with different temperatures, different uses in industries) that will prevail.
Might even be Ammonia because it doesn't require a carbon source to be synthesized.
> For short-distance delivery, battery-powered electric trucks probably work fine ...
I kind of see the point that for short distances BEV have a strong position. But on the other hand my reasoning for that to be somewhat temporary would be: in the long rong, there needs to be some liquid fuel that gets used for long distance. As soon as this liquid fuel becomes cheap enough to be competitive, it will have a huge advantage over BEV that might then chew off even the short distance applications of BEV.
If some liquid fuel were to become cheap enough then it'd be dramatically more flexible to refuel than BEV. Just fill up the tank, it's quick and simple tech. No need to structure your day that's busy (managing work and private life) around charging a vehicle. Also compared to maintaining the charching infrastructure and balancing the load of an electric grid, it's soo much less complex because liquid fuels come with robust load buffering built in.
I don’t get why’re being downvoted. Without doubt a series of governments were looped in on this decision - naively assuming one or several did not initiate it in the first place - to ensure alignment on current matters and there is no chance BP did not take the opportunity to ensure alignment on future matters.
Ukraine is fighting with the open support of pretty much every advanced military in the developed world. They've got armed drones from Turkey, Javelins from the US/UK, the freaking EU of all organizations is saying they'll send them fighter jets. Even Germany is sending weapons.
Combine that with the apparent intense Ukrainian morale and Russian military incompetence/lack of will, Ukraine winning is not entirely out of the question. Even if they lose they seem fully prepared to commit to an insurgency, which given said international support and direct borders with NATO would be the best equipped insurgency in history.
Never mind the potential effects of the sanctions, which are truly massive in scope.
Ukraine could very well be the rock that breaks Russia's teeth.
I think we underestimate how much this matters to Russia. They might indeed feel there is an existential threat to them (the elites, not Russia the country), if they let the countries on their periphery join EU/NATO, and become democracies, what guarantees do they have that it won't happen in Russia, and that a day of reckoning won't come for them for looting the motherland?
And given the relative weakness demonstrated by the west in recent history (such as abandoning Afghanistan) they might judge that in the end, the rest of world won't have the stomach for any costly intervention.
Sending the weapons to Ukraine amounts to little, in the face of overwhelming Russian military advantage. Given the likely goal of establishing pro-Russian government in Ukraine, and the long history of association, Russian forces are being rather "gentle" compared to what they demonstrated elsewhere, but if it comes to it... Ukraine cannot win without real support (as in boots on the ground) from the west, and nobody wants to contemplate that.
> Sending the weapons to Ukraine amounts to little, in the face of overwhelming Russian military advantage.
The difference in number of troops isn't as important as it seems numerically if the Russian morale and training is as low as it seems it might be based on reports on western media (which could be iffy).
The difference in equipment isn't as important if it can't make it into Ukraine. Here's where anti-air and anti-tank weapons make a big difference. So far, it seems like Russia hasn't been able to take control of airfields, and anti-air weapons help contest air superiority. Russia also seems to have trouble with supply lines, anti-tank weapons work against tanks as well as armored transport vehicles.
Urkaine has an easier job here, repelling an occupation is easier than waging one. If they keep high morale and continue to have access to effective weaponry, this is going to be costly for Russia's military. (As it was for Russia and the US in Afghanistan)
Perhaps Russia is playing soft, and will turn up the heat, but perhaps they miscalculated with regard to what they could achieve.
Did sending weapons to Afghanistan amount to little, in the face of the overwhelming Russian military advantage? And Ukraine is a lot closer (physically and culturally), and the support a lot more open, than Afghanistan.
As for the Russian Oliagarchs, if their concern was eventual revolution in Russia it looks like they may have just brought that day closer rather than pushed it out. They clearly weren't expecting a response of this magnitude, the question is when they choose to cut their losses.
I don't think Ukraine will win a normal war against Russia, but will have to shift to more guerrilla warfare soon. But on the other hand, is Putin willing to occupy, likely for years, the second largest country of Europe with a population of 44 million to keep the established pro-Russian government actually in power? So far, it doesn't look like Ukrainians would just accept a puppet president, even if all the mayor cities would have been taken.
I have been thinking along the same lines. Who would actually want to run this pro Russia puppet regime? How many Ukrainians would recognize it as their government? Will the rest of the world ever want to do business with such a regime?
Northern Cyprus has been in a limbo since the 1970s.
For me the only somewhat rational explanation is, that the Kremlin did indeed expect the take over to be faster than the west can agree on their reaction. Like the Taliban taking back Afghanistan with little to now resistance and the president sitting on the first plane out. I can believe that them calling it a military special operation instead of war wasn't just propaganda, but what they thought it was going to be. I'm pretty certain if the war would have been already over, before sanctions were agreed upon, they would have been much tamer. And while yes, everyone would be mad at Putin it wouldn't take too long for things to go back to business as usual. But due to the Ukrainians fighting like hell for their country, I don't really see what "winning" for Putin would look like at this point, even if he takes over all of Ukraine.
I think that's also a key point of difference between the Afghanistan takeover by the Taliban, and the Ukrainian invasion. Afghanistan was an internal struggle, and an Afghan wasn't really enthusiastic about killing a fellow Afghan, even if he was a Taliban member. Hence why that was a relatively bloodless coup. On the other hand, the Russian army is essentially looked upon by Ukrainians as a modern reincarnation of the Soviet army, rather than as Slavic brothers in hands. The fact that Putin may have chosen to overlook this glaringly obvious difference between the two conflicts makes me wonder how flawed his on-the-ground intelligence must be. The irony, considering his KGB background.
Not sure what your point is. The Iraq invasion was 19 years ago, and the US still haven't withdrawn all their troops. Is Putin willing to have parts of his army occupy Ukraine for a timespan such as this?
Ukraine was a threat to their natural gas sales not their existence. Russia already went after most of their off shore oil reserves, and made several companies pull out of internal development.
RF military advantage is not overwhelming. RF sent 150k Russians against 280k Ukrainians with years of experience of war + volunteers. RF has more planes, but Ukraine has better air defense. RF has more tanks, but Ukraine has more anti-tank weapons.
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are already NATO members (since 2004 - smack in the middle of Putin's first stint as president of Russia).
Georgia, like Ukraine was (as at the beginning of the invasion) formally recognised as aspiring to membership. Are we then to assume that 'Georgia is next'?
With respect to Afghanistan - its worth a reminder that the Americans were not the first to abandon Afghanistan [0].
But I agree that nobody wants to contemplate "real support"/boots-on-the-ground for Ukraine. But that is precisely what the west via NATO will have to do. The outcome of the current war is as much an existential threat to NATO (and to a lesser extent the EU) as it is to Putin's leadership.
- holding out long enough, if it depleets Russia of resources ( aided with sanctions)
- internal protests in Russia ( considering huge amount of relatives on both sides), that goes out of control - I don't know if this is realistic though. But I think the relative factor between those countries ( family members) can outwit the propaganda factor
Those Ukranians are though as hell though. I'm sure we are seeing a more 'positive' side of them ( if that's possible in a war), but they aren't backing down. Uttermost respect for their president too. He seems to have a deep understanding of how he can reach the world.
There's the third option, which is that the Russian elites simply murder Putin and use his corpse to blame Russia's problems on, not unlike Stalin and the post-Stalin denunciations.
I am going to be shocked if it doesn't come out that Poland didn't at least send some consultants in to discuss guerilla tactics.
My friend in college was a son of Polish dissidents. He didn't like to talk about it in too much depth but I got some impressions, and it sounds like his granddad was one of those people in the movie they made recently about the Polish resistance hiding in the woods during the Cold War.
Count on quite some NATO boots on the ground. Consultants, advisors, observers, US Special Forces (propably wearing Ukrainian uniforms and speaking perfectly Russian and Ukrainian), observation hardware (what better occasion to gather real life data of Russian hardware and doctrinecan there be...). After all, the timing of the attack might have been a surprise, that the attack will come was almost certain for years.
> the freaking EU of all organizations is saying they'll send them fighter jets
For clarity, and despite Macron's urgings, the EU doesn't yet have an air force it can send anywhere.
It does have the Common Security and Defence Policy[0]:
"The CSDP involves the deployment of military or civilian missions to preserve peace, prevent conflict and strengthen international security in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter. Military missions are carried out by EU forces established with secondments from the member states' armed forces"
They appear to have said [1] they'll supply (finance + deliver) aircraft (which presumably the Ukrainians have the expertise to operate, per [2]). They have not said they'll send in an air force (operated by non-Ukrainians), which as you point out, they don't yet have.
There are remaining MiG operators in Central and Eastern Europe. These planes have been converted to use NATO armament and they're being phased out anyway. Ukrainian pilots are already accustomed to using them. The EU could use resilience funds to buy F16, F35 or Saab Gripens for the former MiG operators. Some of these are already F16 or Saab Gripen operators.
Ukraine has no access to the air at this point anyways. I don't see this as plausible. No airports are secured, and Russia dominates the airspace right now. Even if NATO sends planes, how will they be transported there? And how will they establish a base of operations?
Depending on the model of Mig, they could operate from a hastily constructed dirt air strip. US-made fighters not so much. Not sure about Gripens.
I can't speak to the state of Russian air superiority at the moment, it could be that there are gaps/The Ukrainian air force hasn't been destroyed yet.
But even if as an idea it doesn't work out, the fact that the "peace project" organization, whose members visibly wept over the UK leaving, is coordinating the delivery of military hardware to a non-member for use in an active conflict should speak volumes about the level of support Ukraine is getting.
My guess is they'll initially sortie from Romania, maintaining IFF silence for plausible deniability, while a coordinated strike with man-and-vehicle portable SAMs retakes enough airspace in the western part of the country to support further operations.
You're proposing military aircraft owned by an EU member state should launch from their airfields in EU, sneak over the border and land in Ukraine, refuel and (re-)arm - and perhaps get a quick paint job too and have the aviation equivalent of their serial numbers filed off - then start attacking Russian forces in Ukraine, and our plan would be basically to hope that the enemy with apparently complete air superiority plus satellite capability might not notice?
I'm firmly anti-war; that plan sounds like a great way to drag the EU and/or NATO straight into this one.
I'm not familiar with Putin's speech. Do you seriously think that an insurgency is a good thing? The US military industrial complex is notorious for profiting off proxy conflicts. And we have never truly supported the revolutions that we push. Soros referenced the Hungarian revolution against the Russian occupation of 1954. In that revolution, we promised support over propaganda airwaves, then sat back and did nothing as countless Hungarians disappeared into the House of Terror with no material support. This time, Zelensky is arming untrained civilians, which will only inevitably result in an escalation.
The propaganda that's coming out is really what made me start to question the Ukrainian leadership though. Ukrainian deserters being presented as Russian spies, a Ukrainian anti air missile striking a building in Kiev being presented as a Russian missile, the "Russian" tank running over a car- when it was a Ukrainian tank accident, the surrender at Snake island being presented as a martyrdom, the list is growing by the hour it seems. What I have not seen yet is an American style invasion plan where infrastructure is thoroughly bombed with the intent to pour billions of dollars into rebuilding "democracy"- that ends up really just being a way to pad people's pockets.
I don't like Putin, and I don't like most of the Western leadership pushing for conflict escalation. I don't believe the leaders of either side actually represent their people. I'm trying to objectively analyze this from the perspective of what ends up happening to the regular people of Ukraine. Am I just an unwitting recipient of Russian propaganda? If so- instead of flippantly dismissing my perspective- care to elucidate what I have wrong?
What will happen is basically what's happening now, regardless of the occupation status or any supposed "victory" conditions defined by Russia. Arms and ammunition will flow into Ukraine via its western border, and wounded and dead Russians will flow out via its eastern border.
The only two ways Russia can stop this process are by executing a full retreat or using nuclear weapons. Failing either of those, Russia will run out of soldiers before the rest of us run out of arms and ammunition. They will not -- cannot -- be allowed to win, and the rest of the civilized world will make certain that they don't.
Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe with a patriotic motivated population (and military/reco support from the 1st world) against de-motivated, de-moralised enemy. I predict mass protests in Russia in the next months, overthrowing of the dictator, and a new government. Also a regime change in Belarus as a bonus.
And many Americans are heading to the nearest Ukrainian embassy to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. I’m heading over tomorrow to interview to join the fight.
America is the greatest force for freedom in the world and I’m putting my money where my mouth is.
Other than I wouldn't call the Russian Army, or Russia, demoralized or unmotivated it's hard to tell how this will end. Even a quick, conventional, victory wouldn'tean much. Iraq and Afghanistan told us that much.
Right... The US and NATO couldn't conquer Afghanistan (or Russia 20 years prior)... Afghanistan had virtually no army, no allies, and was one of the poorest countries in the world.
But Russia is going to conquer Ukraine, which is substantially larger, has a bigger population, a more heavily armed population, and - arguably - the world's 4th best military?? Plus Ukraine has full support from the entire advanced world beside Brazil, India, and China. And Russia has the support of only Belarus - which has a military budget smaller than the military aid the US has sent Ukraine in the last 2 weeks...
This is an unwinnable war.
Leave it to the Soviet Union to bankrupt themselves...
When USSR fell in late 1991, yes, Ukraine did have 4th largest military in the world, and 3rd largest nuclear arsenal. But that is such a long time ago. Just look at what happened in 2014 when Crimea got annexed.
Afghanistan is also very different story than Ukraine. First there is the question of logistics. 75% of the terrain is mountainous and 50% of the country has elevation greater than 6500 ft [1]. This makes it quite the challenge for any would be invaders. Compare that to Ukraine where only 5% of the country is [2], and is also a lot closer to Russian center of power.
I do hope that with what support Ukraine is getting will enable them to give bloody enough nose to Russians that they decide it's not worth it. But given the thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons, I fear things will get worse, not better. And before someone says that Mr. Putin is not crazy enough to escalate that far, most people thought he wouldn't actually attack in the first place, and threatening with nuclear weapons can only be seen as an act of weakness, coming out of desperation, and desperate people do desperate things.
Crimea was 7, 8 years ago. Ukraine, and their allies, had quite sometime to prepare. Maybe NATO was pre-occupied with other things for a while, Ukraine certainly was not. Don't forget, Ukraine and Russia share a lot of military history, equipment, training and doctrine. Those enemies know each other very well.
Either that or the bet is that it collapses from within. After the soviet union collapsed, russia took over all soviet countries debts upon itself, effectively paying war reparations. Could be similar now. If there is a coup or some dramatic change it would pay some sort of penalties for the current war.
This benefits the US who want ship liquid gas into Europe, the US already sanctioned Germany over NordStream2 but short term this will also reduce CO2 and pollution which goes back to my post on heading for a population collapse by 2040
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30488972) yet the global population is predicted to peak by 2100 so things are being done.
UK Pension funds will be hit as they tend to invest in the "blue chip" stocks so alot of people planning on retiring might be drawn back into the workforce against their will.
The extraction of oil and gas in Siberia is far from environmentally friendly but we don't care because it is far away.
Europe prefers to externalise it's pollution.
The financially correct way to do it would be to wait for it to plummet first before writing it off. So no, you don't want to get "ahead of the game" in the accounting sense.
but it has already happened. show me (or them) a bidder. no one in their right mind would buy a russian asset after what happened a few hours ago and likely what will happen in retaliation.
The lower the asset drops, the more you can write off when you do it. So it’s best to wait until the asset is the lowest that you think it will go. Of course you could mistime it
That makes absolutely zero sense. Whatever you lose in the end is what you will lose. You can lose many billions this quarter and more billions next quarter.
The article doesn't say exactly how BP is going to extricate itself, but if they are just "writing it off", doesn't that mean the value is essentially $0? They will have a tax deduction equal to the cost basis of the stake.
If it's a total write-off, then yes, it means the value is zero. But you can also write off a less-than-total loss. For example if my stock drops from $10 to $5, I can write off $5 in losses (assuming I sell at the lower value). In that example it didn't drop to zero.
So it depends if they're talking about a total write-off, or a write-off.
I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that in everyday parlance, "write-off" often means a complete 100% loss (for example, my car was totaled, and it's a write-off). But in accounting, it does not.
Looks like they weren't ahead of the game after all when the market opens and they're not allowed to sell i.e. they've been expropriated. Waiting for the weekend to pass in the hopes in blows over will have been a costly gambit, that stake is (was) worth a third of their market cap.
I agree they're probably getting ahead of the game, but in case they aren't just getting ahead of the game it is a move to be applauded. And really if it is them getting ahead of the game I don't think there's any 'just' to it, lots of companies would be hesitant at this stage to make the move, most managers don't have the vision to get ahead of the game - only, at best, to be where the game is currently at.
As such I have to respect them whether they are doing it as a game playing move, or a moral move.
Less, if Russia resolves its governmental intemperance first.
The events of the last few days make it at least plausible that Putin's days are numbered. If so, that's very bad in terms of absolute apocalyptic risk, but probably a good thing as measured by expected outcome. The chances of getting a stable democracy in the next decade might be, I dunno, 40% or greater (and those of dying in a nuclear fireball surely under 1%, right?). So as geopolitics it's probably a mistake, but as investment decisionmaking I think it makes sense.
>Russia resolves its governmental intemperance first
i see the history of the last 30+ years as clear indication that Russian society is progressively becoming less and less able to manage large issues. As result i think there is high probability that Russia will breakup after that catastrophe of Ukraine war similar to USSR after Afghanistan (the key to such breakup isn't external forces, instead it is clear disillusionment with existing power). For example, the Far East in particular has no good connection to Russia (and Putin was basically trying to buy them up by sending money which will definitely become problematic once the war related bills, like compensation to Ukraine, start to hit the treasure) while say getting high-speed rail Vladivostok-Dalyan/Bejing would include it into the Pacific ring of the future boom of economic development.
China is already buying off ex Soviet satellites like Kyrgystan and Mongolia. Kazahstan is also economically dependent on China. If Japan is given any reason to rearm itself to the teeth again (like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan) and Russia breaks up, they'll almost certainly retake Sakhalin and Kurlil islands back. The rest will probably all become China satellites, except maybe for South Korea.
I'm hoping that Russia actually attacking Ukraine against the strong wishes of the world will cause a similar desire to reign in China and protect Taiwan and other small country democracies. Strategic ambiguity didn't work in Ukraine and it won't work in Taiwan either. Eventually China will attack. So let's get over our fear there and just sign a mutual defense treaty. Ideally we form a NATO of the Pacific with SK, Japan, Australia, NZ, and many other small countries. It would drive China bat shit insane with anger, but they are just going to do what they want eventually unless we get together and stop them.
Russia has basically never had a democratic government, perhaps except during the 90s. There is no tradition of it. It’s current form of government is more like the fiefdoms of Tsarist Russia: the Tsar giveth and the Tsar giveth away.
Russian may want democracy (though do we know that they do?), but there’s more than just Putin in the way.
I mean, there was no tradition of democracy in Korea or China, but South Korea and Taiwan transitioned reasonably successfully to democracy in the 80s and 90s respectively. It has been done.
For that matter, a number of Soviet successor states are successfully functioning democracies.
Not sure about South Korea, but Taiwan's democracy is kind of a joke. Since the end of the WW2, the grand total of the number of parties holding power is...two - DPP and KMT.
There are no differences between them in foreign affairs. Both favor wage suppression policies. Both favor currency manipulation to suppress consumption in order to help exporters. None of them is doing anything about the worst housing crisis in the world, leading to a demographic suicide of the country - fertility rate is below 1.3 for 20 years and counting. In many way, it's a choice between Pepsi and Coca-cola
Agree, the above comment (2 above) was inaccurate, extremely misleading. Taiwan is absolutely a free and open democratic country as is Korea. It's pretty inconceivable that someone who is not a democratic or republic candidate would be elected president in the US or win congress. Korea has at least been successful at convicting previous leaders when they were taking bribes or doing other illegal stuff, including the leader of Samsung. The US could do a lot better there.
Before the KMT lost power I think it was reasonable to see Taiwan as a one party state, but no longer. You are a little ambiguous in the "two countries" do things, but I guess you mean Korea and Taiwan. Yeah, both countries are not paradises that have solved all issues, but they keep improving their freedom, industrial bases, and living standards for the average person. Is that true for the us - we should aspire to do that. Instead we have people arguing on school boards whether books that dare to discuss slavery or jim crow laws should be discussed at all. We aren't clearly moving to be a better society with that kind of stuff.
Eh... my statement was deliberately ambivalent. I don't know anything about Taiwan politics, but the US brand of Democracy, specifically the 2-party system with first-past-the-post elections, is driving the citizenry towards a civil war while the oligarchy enriches themselves while otherwise maintaining the status quo.
But would this faction be as terrorist as they are without extensive Russian effort to ensure that they are? I'm skeptical.
Given that this is hardly unique to the US, I think Russia is reaping the whirlwind: they've been up to this sort of thing pretty much everywhere. This is not the WWIII. They have been waging the WWIII already, this whole time, in relatively novel ways, with a lot of success… until now.
And it's been the kind of success that is short-sighted: got their way again and again at the cost of building enormous hostility, which is now rebounding upon them. Russia made this bed and all of this is not that much of a surprise, really.
While I agree with thinking of the Russian influence campaign as just that, a hostile influence campaign, given the cultural distance and surprisingly small reach of identified Russian networks I think that the Republican Party's descent can't really be explained as Russian meddling.
The Republican Party has been the safe harbor for christian and white supremacists beginning with Reagan and the moral majority. The love of violence, "I got mine" attitudes, gleeful wastefulness, etc have been American ills long before ~2010s era Russian misinfo campaigns.
Also, speaking as an American who has had their worldview impacted by living in Europe for a while, it is beyond pathetic for liberal Americans to tell the world "Don't worry we aren't crazy! The Russians made us do the bad stuff!". As the richest country in the world, we have to take accountability.
It's not like Russia forced them, they at least took money and free PR support. Now it has created a monster than cannot be controlled.
I think more seriously the US is a limited democracy because neither party really works for the people. They both work for the donors, one just a lot more and transparent than the other.
The potential has been there to go way out crazy in the Republican party for a long time, remember Pat Buchanan? He was a legit threat, but didn't have the crazy wacko charisma that Trump has, that dictator tough guy thing down that appeals to so many conservatives apparently. The thing I suspect Russia did do was take advantage of facebook and q-anon type stuff.
>Absolutely and Americans are waking up to this fact now with a terrorist faction taking power in the Republican party.
They're terrorists because they don't want to give the government absolute power? You're doing the same thing Republicans did to Middle Eastern countries in past decades, abuse the shit out of them then call them terrorists when they try to defend themselves.
South Korea and Taiwan currently have more functional democracies than the United States does. The Economist's Democracy Index classifies Taiwan and South Korea as full democracies, while the US is a flawed democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Taiwan, I don’t really know about now, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an overnight adoption of democracy in the 1940s. It took time, a small few generations, to get to that point.
It might be similar in Russia, though I’d imagine the heavily entrenched establishment, with massive reliance on various police forces, lends itself less to rapid democratisation-though you never know.
It was a long and hard road toward democracy for the Taiwanese and it is both (a) very impressive and commendable on their part and (b) a definitive refutation to the "Asian values" nonsense that the CPC likes to use to justify autocracy.
Both Taiwan and South Korea were brutal dictatorships until late 70s or early 80s. Now they are real democracies as much as anyone is.
My personal opinion, South Korea deserves a big asterisk. They had a president that was trapped in a cult, and the large conglomerates still decide a lot.
Taiwan is #11 on the list, that is higher than the US and UK (obviously), and one spot ahead of Switzerland. If Taiwan was in Europe it would still be among the most democratic countries.
Sure it has flaws, but so does almost every country on the list. Heck, I'm Norwegian and Norway is #1 but I think it still has flaws. My main beef is some technicality called sperregrense, basically if your party is less than 4% it will get less representation than it deserves. This quite often decides the coalition in charge depending on which parties ends up at 3.9 or 4.0.
I think you're giving too much and too little credit here. Martial law only ended on the island on July 15, 1987 with opposition parties being officially outlawed up until 1991. There's a lot still to be done.
I mean, you could say that of quite a lot of two-party states. I'm not claiming that it's a particularly shining example of democracy, or anything, but it's clearly a democracy.
Well, you could say that for sure it can be done, because we didn't really have democracies before 1776, excluding some super short and unstable versions, and democracies with universal suffrage are even newer, after about 1900.
According to the Democracy Index, ~75 countries are full or flawed democracies, so 75 countries made the leap.
Most strong democracies were born through a very long and drawn out process of democratisation. UK Houses of Parliament date back to 13th century; of course at that point there was no democracy, but a tradition of open debate on government is very old.
In fact in the UK it’s probably hard to pinpoint where real monarchy ended and democracy started. The monarch had less and less power over time, and an increasingly wide circle of privileged voters held more and more power.
Many struggling democracies had to make that leap much more quickly and often the failures of democracy are to do with the cultural remains of the previous systems.
> In fact in the UK it’s probably hard to pinpoint where real monarchy ended and democracy started.
I would put it more or less around Oliver Cromwell's tenure, even though the monarchy enjoyed some resurgence in power after the monarchy was restored it was short lived and the threat of parliament removing an unruly monarch, as they had done fairly decisively, became a real constraint on their power.
The struggles around that were also significant inspirations to French and American revolutions that followed.
Russia in the 90s wasn't a true democracy either. US press liked to depict Yeltsin as a democrat because he was weak and subservient, but his methods of power were deeply autocratic. Yeltsin ordered artillery shelling of the parliament in 1993, killing 140 people. Had elections in 1996 been fair, they'd highly likely mean the return of the Communist Party to power, so he rigged them in all sorts of grotesque ways (naturally, western leaders praised him for it). As his incompetence grew more and more untenable, he threw the hot potato to Putin and resigned
This is largely accurate - and it's also worth mentioning that 90s Russia was an absolute hell-hole.
Whether people approve or disapprove of Putin, a lot of them remember what life was like before he became Tsar-for-life, and it isn't something that most of them want to tangle with again.
And that proved to be one of the most disastrous decades in Russian history (I think only surpassed by the 1940s that saw them getting invaded by Hitler), so democracy doesn't have too much solid ground to stand on when it comes to Russia.
> The events of the last few days make it at least plausible that Putin's days are numbered.
Citation needed. I believe Putin enjoys a very strong approval in Russia and I have never read or see anything that could disprove it (except from self styled experts that are notoriously clueless about everything).
For a comparison there were just hundreds of protestors in Moscow on a 12 millions pop. This is nothing.
I visited quite a few Russian blogs with the help of a translation plugin, I didn't see anything looking like they disapprove, on the contrary most of them ask why it took 8 years.
They are a couple of years old, but that things would have changed for the better in Russia does not sound likely, all reports are talking of the opposite.
There are also many reports about systematic rape in Russian prisons. Committed by inmates who are forced by the guards in exchange for less inhuman treatment.
Search for Nawalny's reports how is being treated if you still have not enough. Of course he gets carefully selected treatment because they know that the international press is reporting. But still it's a country where not only the leader is a brutal criminal.
Yes! Nobody can just claim such terrible acts from a state that openly murders political opponents and currently is carrying out an invasion of a peaceful country.
> Nothing stoping Russians from starting sabotage operations internally in protest.
A lot is stopping most people.
First you need somewhat objective information what is happening. A vast majority of the population does not have that. All independent voices have silenced, except if you are a political activist and know what to search for.
Then you need to take significant risk to commit crimes. As a small saboteur they won't have Novichok for you, but Russian prisons are very close to systematic
torture. Especially for prisoners with a political background.
According to independent Levada polls over 90% of the population approved Putins politics after the occupation of Crimea in 2014.
Last August "only" 61% approved his politics, mainly because of the masses getting poorer and large failure to fight the pandemic.
While 61% would be a good figure for most Western politicians, it was obviously a worrying trend for Putin. So he changed the agenda from a domestic one to a war. In January while he was still threatening support had indeed gone up to 69%.
Whether it is possible to get and publish any trustworthy polls in the current situation I don't know. After all the words attack and war are censored in Russian media, protesting against the war is illegal. They only have a special operation...
Indeed, how could there possibly be a citation for the possibility that his days are numbered? Demanding a citation for a future event does not make sense.
Yes when it's outlandish from the known reality. I don't need citation for "there are people in Russia that don't like Putin" but I need one when "his days are numbered".
I (try to) look at the world like it is, not like I want it to be. Thinking that Putin days are numbered (be it by the people or his security apparatus) is delusional. If it is not, then back it up with something, I have no problem correcting my views when confronted with good data.
The value of their investment will be known when they find a buyer...
I don't see too many organizations interested at the moment. Chinese would be the most likely candidates but they may also be wary and stay away for the time being. Or they can pretty much give their shares away to the Russian government or sell them to some Russian organization at a massive discount.
> We could just wear heated clothes and take the bus. That's not apocalyptic.
Energy is everything. We effectively convert hydrocarbons to calories. We ship everything with hydrocarbons. Real costs for every good and service will blow up alongside preexisting inflation. Food shortages aren’t just an inconvenience.
Societies don’t do well when these kinds of shocks happen. It’s not enough to contextualization it against the third world. When you’ve had it good and you don’t have it good anymore, that means chaos.
Close to 4% of natural gas is used for cooking and heating water - which the EU could easily replace with electric using a subsidy (well worth it regardless).
The EU consumed ~379B cubic feet of natural gas in 2021. Shutting down just the German nuclear reactors is the equivalent of ~14B cubic feet = ~4% of natural gas consumption for the entire EU.
> There will no popular support and the long term strategic implications make it untenable
People just want cheap prices for gas, oil... We don't care too much about what happens in Ukraine, we just want to pay our bills. Nobody is going to be cold or hungry just to harm Russia. Capitalism wouldn't exist otherwise, and capitalism is just what the EU is about.
I think you're not getting the full picture.
A dictator with thousands of nukes has gone rogue, saying and doing crazy things, eg. is unpredictable.
Capitalism works in peaceful times, it stops when tanks are rolling by.
The only thing I remember, is that the only time nuclear weapons were used, it was not Russia nor the USSR. To me it doesn't look unpredictable at all: Ukraine has long been warned that joining NATO poses a threat to Russia and that they should remain neutral. Yet they decided to continue to provoke Russia (just for the interest of the US) and now they get what they were looking for.
Russia said don't join Nato or we'll destroy you, Ukraine. And then Russia attacks Ukraine anyway. So what would be different if Georgia, Ukraine, and the other smaller democratic survivors of the USSR join NATO? Russia will still want to attack them.
Edit - one more thing, Russia said it threatens us if NATO is right next door to us in Ukraine. So Russia wants to take over Ukraine, and they'll be right next door to NATO in Poland. They were already right next door to NATO.
> Russia said don't join Nato or we'll destroy you, Ukraine. And then Russia attacks Ukraine anyway
They wanted some guarantee that Ukraine would remain a neutral country, and the response they got was that Ukraine was going to join NATO. Even more, NATO's secretary general said not only Ukraine can join NATO, but also, NATO's presence in eastern Europe was to be strengthened. If that was meant to avoid a military conflict, I think they were very wrong.
RF is aggressor in Ukraine since 2014, but RF cannot win over Ukraine, thus RF has constant fear of losing the war with Ukraine, so they are so sensitive to any military or political help to Ukraine. Yes, RF wants for their target to be alone, while Ukraine don't want to be at 1:1 war with a much larger opponent.
Independent countries joining defensive pacts is their internal business. Putin wants what he thinks is Russia's god ordained sphere of influence(imperialism), and what's more considers Ukraine as Russia's to rule(imperialism). Everything that was said, and different things were said to different audiences, were just distractions/post-decision excuses. It has nothing to do with defense, and everything to do with imperialism, and generations of indoctrination in it. Baltic states(already in NATO) are as close to Moscow as Harkiv. And defense wise Russia will be much weaker in the decades to come with an isolated economy. Putin wants a poor desperate and isolated North Korea like country, he doesn't want a prosperous Russia -- prosperity is not too compatible with authoritarianism.
People like to post this, but Dugin is mostly irrelevant in Russia, and I doubt he had any influence on Putin's decision making. Putin's imperialism is of his own biographical origins.
RF invaded into Ukraine, so if Ukraine will join NATO, then Ukraine will leverage that and RF will be kicked out from Crimea and Donbass. This is THE problem for RF.
How can a country that doesn't control its own territory, and has some ongoing struggles, join NATO in the first place? It's against the rules. Also, why would Russia be kicked out from Crimea and Dombass? Inhabitants from those places want to be independent from Ukraine, the same way Ukraine wanted to be independent from the USSR 30 years ago. And they should not be prevented from that.
> How can a country that doesn’t control its own territory, and has some ongoing struggles, join NATO in the first place? It’s against the rules.
No, its not. Its against standards outside of the Washington Treaty that some member countries have suggested for membership, specifically to justify delaying the membership process for Ukraine and Georgia.
The present invasion seems to have shifted EU/NATO opinion among governments against Russia and toward Ukraine (and other states under Russian threat), perhaps most significantly in the places that have been most friendly to Russia and reluctant to support the countries they are threatening (Orbán’s Hungary, for instance), so that non-rule excuse may or may not continue to be operative.
After USSR was abolished, why NATO was not abolished ? The main aim of NATO is to demolish Russia and divide it in dozens of small countries depending on USA for their survival. Second aim is to control Europe by USA. There is not one single European country which can stand up to USA. Asia is divided because of China, the worse expansionist country the world has seen, Africa is busy in tribal wars, South America is kept poor by USA and indulge in overthrowing governments which are not lackeys of USA. UK, a Pakistani colony, is using Muslims in India for further partition, this time it is hijab insurgency. In 1947, it was Jinnah, this time it is Owaisi, an Iranian migrant. Wpnder when Hindus will wake up.
Only way to dramatically reduce energy is for EU not to have babies and higher mortality rate. As long as they have more "new" people, and each accord with EU lifestyle, you need energy...lots of it. Every form of energy has their cost and limits. Oil or gas is the most accessible. Everything else will need to massively conversion. Fusion is just too far off. Nuclear you need to build a lot of plant which just provide more easy target for bombing. Solar, you need plenty of batteries as well with large land....butvthen very dependent on China cheap solar. Wind and sea waves are very limited as well. For example nuclear, electric vehicle, electric airbus, electric tankers, and so on. And also a lot of people tend to forget (most are babies, children or even teen and not born yet) Soviet at its height of power requires very little money from the west. They still can bomb EU and America back then to kingdom high. Today Russia is significantly richer with China the world factory backing. EU need to rethink its cold war NATO alliance. Just go read up during naughties, Putin try his best to join EU community. But then Obama pissed on him because refusal to kill children and women in Libya and Syria. The irony is EU people think highly of themselves by reacting a lot to Ukraine while celebrating the destruction of Libya and Syria. The correct respond is not need jerk sanctions but reseting of NATO. If you always treat people as shit, you cannot expect they treat you back like Jesus.
Ukraine crisis is only because of the swollen head of the Americans as they were expanding NATO ignoring earlier promises ..As the only super power, they underestimated the Russia..If we blame Putin, for this invasion, Americans should answer for invasions on Iraq, Sudan, Yeman, Afganistan and many others ...
