Of course it has a lot do do with supplying Germany with LNG. But it’s about being able to create another Berlin “Airlift”. If they don’t have the ports set up then they’re in for a nasty surprise.
That’s an absurd comment that I suppose is a fitting follow-on to your earlier pronouncement that Ukraine “deserve[s] to be invaded”. which is not only absurd but outright offensive.
Ukraine has been under Russian domination for a long time, but it’s absolutely false to suggest that most Ukranians feel ties to Russia. The Ukranians that I know have strong feelings for their homeland and regard the Russians from the periods of occupation as savages and thugs. Some still have ancestral memories of the Great Famine of 1932-33, entirely caused by Stalin and imposed in part as punishment for independent-minded Ukrainians who wanted to run their own farms instead of participating in Stalin’s collectives. The famine killed some 3.9 million Ukranians – about 13% of the population at the time – in one of the richest farmlands in the Soviet empire.
And now these people who you claim “deserve to be invaded”, who have migrated to Western countries, are pressing their governments to do more to help their homeland against yet another Russian threat …
Berlin airlift? Not quite. The German Gas network is interconnected with others that are connected to LNG ports.
What the constraints are, I am not sure. There has been a lot of work looking at supplying gas from other parts of Europe back to the countries dependent on Russian gas.
I expect there is a map and a strategy that considers these options. There are also electricity interconnects. Capacity is one issue, the other is cost.
The US LNG is becoming a major strategic asset. All that fracking seems to have paid off. Not very environmentally friendly but a strong card to play in face offs like this.
You can bet the politicians know exactly what the options are. The public just get the sound bites.
This is a total misrepresentation. Ukrainians were forcibly relocated (when not ethnically cleansed) by the Russians several times, including during WWII. And while it’s true that Russian colonists have infested the eastern part of Ukraine (after, you know, getting rid of ethnic Ukrainians), the western half is made up of a majority ethnically Ukrainian peoples who aren’t all that fond of Russians, nor look back on their experience under the Russian boot with particular glad feelings and good thoughts.
Yeah, they probably do understand the folks who cleansed them and oppressed them better than, say, some guys posting on the internet…especially those trying to say that Russia is Ukraine’s is ‘their own country’.
Gee, I wonder why that might be?? Could it be because those are mainly ethnic Russian majority regions that have the direct assistance of Russia and have been fighting with the Ukrainians for years now…except the part that was annexed illegally by Russia of course??
I think you are misinterpreting WHY many Ukrainians are ‘meh’ about what’s going on, even assuming that’s true (I’ve seen reports where quite a few Ukrainian civilians have been requesting at least rudimentary training in defending themselves…not exactly ‘meh’ to me). Basically, I see it more as fatalistic…sort of like how the average Taiwanese downplays the Chinese invasion threat. It’s a defense mechanism. It’s not because they really think that Russia is ‘their own country’ and that there isn’t a threat, it’s more than there is little they can do and they HOPE that Russia will just go away and leave them in peace. Their political leaders are obviously trying to downplay things in the media and are probably hoping that a conciliatory line will help them with Moscow and perhaps prevent them from striking…and if it doesn’t work, they are setting things up so that it won’t be their fault, but Moscow’s, as they were downplaying the risk. The key point there is…Ukraine isn’t telling countries to stop sending them all of that military aid and equipment. If they REALLY thought this wasn’t a thing then they would do that, since that’s one of the major sore points with Russia. They also aren’t telling Russia ‘you know what, we really don’t want to be in NATO after all because we don’t see any sort of threat’…again, something that if they did it would lower the risk of an invasion substantially.
Do you have evidence Ukrainians think this way?
I like the old folk idiom “whistling past the graveyard”.
FWIW, I sometimes see Ukraine’s official and press requests for the West to stop playing up the danger of invasion somewhat like an abused spouse asking a friend who wants to intervene to not do it, because “it won’t help and it’ll only make things worse”.
“It’ll only make him mad.”
Trump or the Trump administration? Those are two wildly different things.
Do you have a cite?
So, let’s say Putin decides in the next upcoming weeks to withdraw the forces and go home. Is there any political cost in doing so? He might look a little weak, but the political blowback he could have faced for launching a super-costly war would have been worse.
I think your average Russian tries to have no opinion on what the government does.
If the US intelligence is correct that Russia is planning to fake a Ukrainian invasion, as a pretext to go into Ukraine, it also pays for Ukraine to seem peaceful and content, and not crazy and aggressive.
He will look weak unless he can find a way to play this off as part of his master plan. That said, I think the political fallout for Putin et al will be less than if they pull the trigger on an invasion, and hopefully, he’s smart enough to see that.
Of course, Russia has recently doubled down wrt their ‘alliance’ with China, coming out in full support of the One China Policy(tm…arr) as well as Taiwan being part of China since ancient times probably with an eye to getting Chinese support on whatever they plan to do in Ukraine.
Basically, there is no downside to Ukrainian officials saying this stuff. It’s not changing how countries supporting them are acting (i.e. military aid is still pouring in, as well as probably intelligence data and all sorts of other stuff). It makes them seem like they are as non-aggressive as they can be and further puts the onus of whatever happens squarely on the Russian’s.
As I said, if they really felt that the west and the US were over-reacting, they would be telling them to stop sending them the military aid they obviously don’t need and telling both the west and Russia that they really, really don’t want to be in NATO. In fact, if they just did those two things it would probably preclude a Russian invasion since these are core things that Russia wants. Do that and maybe hint at closer ties to Moscow and this crisis is over.
This is very true, but I’m not sure of the significance in this context.
If as a practical matter, the Trump administration was willing to take a harder line on Russia re the Nord Stream 2 pipeline than the Biden administration regardless of Trump’s personal inclinations, then from Putin’s perspective, the notion that Trump himself might be personally sympathetic to him would be of limited utility, and would not be a reason for him to have invaded under Trump vs waiting for Biden.
IIRC, Trump signed sanctions on Nord Stream II…and was criticized by both Germany (and France, again IIRC) as well as Russia. Not sure why people think that Trump didn’t do anything against Russia. It’s easy enough to look up what he really did or didn’t do after all.
ETA: Did a quick Google search…here is a CNN article from 2019 talking about it:
President Donald Trump has signed a law that will impose sanctions on any firm that helps Russia’s state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish a pipeline into the European Union.
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President Trump has said the 1,225km (760-mile) pipeline, owned by Russia’s Gazprom, could turn Germany into a “hostage of Russia”.
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The Trump administration fears the pipeline will tighten Russia’s grip over Europe’s energy supply and reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
What a really weird, aggressive response… and misunderstanding everything I was saying too.
I pointed out that the Ukrainians have a deep knowledge of Russia, and deep grievances against Russia. So it seems ridiculous for outsiders to dismiss their opinions so lightly and contemptuously.
Getting back to a reasonable discussion, the NYT has a good article on the subject, supporting what I said in other posts earlier:
Europeans and Ukrainians are skeptical of a major Russian invasion in Ukraine not because they have a more benign view of Mr. Putin than their American counterparts. On the contrary, it’s because they see him as more malicious.
I’m curious about what you meant by this part, then:
What does ‘their own country’ mean to you in the context of my ‘really weird, aggressive response’? I was going to apologize as I do have trouble sometimes grasping others’ points, but re-reading your response, especially what I quoted…still do not see it as misunderstanding everything you said. C’est la vie.
But by all means, get back to a ‘reasonable discussion’. Your link is behind a paywall or subscription btw. Maybe you could quote some of the relevant parts? Or not, I can get the gist from the headlines and I don’t disagree.
i.e. They understand Russia + they understand Ukraine (their own country) + they understand the current situation between Russia and Ukraine… better than outsiders.
Perhaps you thought I was saying that Russia was their own country? Absolutely not, but perhaps I could have phrased that sentence better.
I was trying to make the point that they are the last people to underestimate Russian aggression, because they have so much experience of it.
I thought you were saying that Ukraine is part of Russia and that Ukrainians are Russians. That’s what it seemed to mean to me, and, yeah, I kind of took exception to that as this is one of Russia’s main talking points for why they took Crimea and should take all of Ukraine back into the motherland. Sorry if that’s not what you meant. I agree…no one should dismiss what the Ukrainians think, and yeah, they do have a ton of experience both with the old USSR and just Russian’s in general. I think that they aren’t nearly as blase about all of this or ‘meh’ as some seem to think. I was watching a report earlier today from a team of reporters in Ukraine and they were saying that on the surface it looks like everything is business as usual, but below the surface, there is a lot of concern, tension, and fear as to what will happen next.
True enough.
Yes, I think you’re right that the Ukrainians are feeling a lot of tension.
They have a gut feeling for how Russia thinks and acts, and they think that Putin is bluffing and playing a far more devious game… but you can never be sure, and they don’t trust him an inch.
What Ukraine does not want is an escalation of threats and counter-threats that might push Russia further and further towards war. They want the situation to cool down, and everybody to take a step back and reach a negotiated solution.