The Champions League final will no longer be held in St. Petersburg this year.
When even an organization as hopelessly corrupt as UEFA doesn’t want to be associated with you, you done fucked up.
In other news, there’s a non-zero chance that Louis CK winds up in a gulag.
The British have now banned Russian aircraft. The Russians have done the same. I am not aware of any other nation doing the same.
No unions I have heard of are refusing to handle Russian cargos.
Good luck flying the Far Eastern routes
A few folks have mentioned LNG. The limiting factors there are the terminals to liquefy and gasify at either end. Per EIA, the US went from planning import terminals a decade ago to having 11.6 Bcf/d peak export capacity last year (13.9 planned by the end of this year). And that gas is, for the most part, spoken for.
Per rando Wikipedia articles, Yamal has a capacity of 3.3 Bcf/d, and the Ukraine system can pass through about 17.
It takes years to build a new train
I hate to say it, but earlier this morning the Fox News website was actually providing better coverage of the conflict than CNN. You just had to avoid the moronic comments (as always) which could mostly be summarized as “it’s all Biden’s fault”. Now, however, the Biden-bashing has made its way into the main news articles. It was only a matter of time – they just can’t help it.
When the Russians install a bullshit puppet government… I mean, we can never, ever, ever recognize it, right?
We haven’t seemed to have any problem with Belarus. I realize that wasn’t Russian-installed, but it might as well have been.
I would say it depends on how it goes down. If Ukraine surrenders quickly, and as part of that surrender the Ukrainian government submits to Moscow, then we probably would recognize it eventually. If Ukraine goes down hard, if Russia is brutal, if they basically slaughter the Ukrainian government and then install a completely different puppet state, then we probably would resist recognizing it. It will also hinge on how any Ukrainian government acts once they are in charge. There is going to be a lot of resentment and anger, so how will whatever government is in power in Ukraine handle that going forward?
I’m not sure that the west recognizing it or not is going to be any sort of major stumbling block, since whatever happens, it will be firmly in the Russian sphere, trading with the Russian federation and so mainly isolated from the west and western influence. Think Belarus.
I don’t go on Fox, but BBC’s reporting seems fairly good as far as it goes. They have some decent maps of what is known and they are making the distinction between what is known and what is speculated. CNNs reporting doesn’t seem that great.
I’m following a number of YouTube channels of people reporting from Ukraine or who are more military-oriented for most of what I’m getting at this point.
Is Russia winning this war inevitable? (It seems to me, but maybe I’m underestimating Ukraine’s capabilities)
If Russia winning and taking over is inevitable, what are the strategic pros and cons of
- Continuing to fight the Russians
vs - Surrendering
Obviously #2 is not something countries can do lightly. Related: has any country surrendered when the odds were heavily stacked against them?
Depends. Russia’s victory is inevitable unless the price it costs Russia is sufficient to cause them to stop. That’s the thing. Consider. US victory in Afghanistan was inevitable. Simply, we were overwhelmingly superior in every category and way. Yet, in the end, the price was more than we were willing to pay to keep holding on and trying to put in or prop up a stable government.
Russia could be in a similar position here, depending on how hard the Ukrainians fight and how much they cost the Russians to take them. Which gets into your questions:
The pros to continuing to fight are that if they can inflict sufficient losses on Russia, Russia will almost certainly stop and try and negotiate. While this would almost certainly entail the loss of some (more) Ukrainian territory to Russia, it might avert a total collapse and the entire nation becoming a Russian puppet state.
The cons are that more Ukrainians will die, and the economic costs will continue to go up the longer Russia continues to bomb the crap out of them and send troops, planes and missiles into Ukraine.
Lots of countries surrendered in this circumstance. Think France, WWII after the Germans broke through and ran to the coast. There was really no point in the French continuing to fight with their armies cut off in the north and the Germans astride their routes back.
I don’t know what would be the best course for Ukraine, as I’m not Ukrainian. It depends…is being a Russian puppet state better than fighting and perhaps dying to try and keep that from happening, knowing that even if you fight and die it might not be enough? That Putin could just suck it up and be willing to have a lot of his folks die so he can have his invasion and resources and money he will reap from a successful invasion? No idea. It’s a hard thing, either way, with no good options or easy solutions.
What I’m wondering is what Poland and other NATO countries will do when Ukrainian military units try to flee across their borders.
I’m curious how many Javelins the US still has in stock (an answer that no doubt the general public wouldn’t know.) Now would be a good time to send them all to Ukraine and tell the missile manufacturer to start cranking them as fast as possible for the foreseeable future.
Also curious how the Javelin performed against the metal-cage armor that many Russian tanks were wearing on the top of their turrets.
Re: insurgency - excuse my ignorance, but I’m assuming there is a great difference between Ukraine and - say - Afghanistan. In Afghanistan a large portion of the population was heavily armed, living outside of the major cities, and willing to engage in endless hostilities for ideological reasons. Whereas my impression is that far more of Ukraine is cosmopolitan, dependent on services and such.
I think a better example of nations surrendering to overwhelming force would be Denmark and Norway in WWII, specially Denmark.
For those looking for good, frequently updated reporting, NYT website has amazing coverage in their live updates section. It’s updates very frequently - 12 times in the last hour. Just keep scrolling down.
Sadly, it wants me to subscribe to get into the article.
Didn’t think of that. Sorry.
As noted, France surrendered to Germany during WWII, as did some other European nations.
Japan surrendered after getting nuked twice but that’s probably not the option anyone wants to use this time around…
They might be willing to let the Ukrainians pass their borders… but not the Russians. That is one way this mess could escalate.