[AgentR11]

I'd be careful about sourcing any emotional argument concerning Russia / China from a Japanese news agency such as Nikkei. You probably couldn't pick a less objective source.

Not that its a bad topic to consider, but its rather unrealistic. Especially as commercial lease arrangements are easier to work with than armed conflict with the country you want to act as your fossil fuel guarantor.

I do expect a lot more Chinese agribusiness in Russia's far East, but they'll pay a fee, isolate themselves in their own little company worlds, and contribute as an exporting business from Russia to China; much as they do currently. Russians in the area will grumble about not being employed by them, but also grumble about insane labor conditions the Chinese firms and employees agree to...

If Xi wants to stoke some nationalism... the target will either by the South China Sea (with Russian cooperation, most likely); or this little chunk of India/China up in the mountains that is absolutely worthless for anything other than stoking degenerate hostilities.

As a wild hair, I've often wondered what would happen if Russia arranged a grand trade, Russia, Japan, China, India. I think they could make it happen if they were so inclined, but it'd definitely be a wild leap. Russia cedes Southern Kurils to Japan, some undeveloped Amur territory to China, China cedes that Indian desolate spot to India, India sends cash/gold to Russia, Japan signs peace treaty and guarantees future transit for Russian ships through the Kurils. (it freezes hard further North... less effects of Climate change in future). Russia gains wealth, and harmony in BRICS, for some land they have no intention of seriously developing.

I think neither mine, nor Nikkei's proposed future have any remote chance of occurrence, but its fun to spitball.

Xi doing something overt in the SCS in the next decade or so, that seems like a winner to me, considering the resources he's already devoted in that region.

[theluckycountry]

If Xi wants to stoke some nationalism... the target will either by the South China Sea (with Russian cooperation, most likely); or this little chunk of India/China up in the mountains that is absolutely worthless for anything other than stoking degenerate hostilities.

I would have said Taiwan myself. All those rich capitalist chinese down there would be a natural cause of angst for the mainland population. Just kick it off with a false flag operation. A bunch of missiles fired from somewhere in Taiwan at chinese ships in the straight. Always works for the Americans.

[theluckycountry]

Looks like the lights will be out in the ukraine soon. What a disaster!

Russia is striking Ukrainian power plants with alarming intensity. The destruction is Massive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Kr47Y5pPs

[jato0072]

Of all of the Youtubers, Willy OAM offers the best, most balanced analysis IMHO. I watch his videos almost every day.

https://www.youtube.com/@willyOAM

He admits his titles are clickbait. Ignore the titles, the actual video content is well done.

[careinke]

Of all of the Youtubers, Willy OAM offers the best, most balanced analysis IMHO. I watch his videos almost every day.

https://www.youtube.com/@willyOAM

He admits his titles are clickbait. Ignore the titles, the actual video content is well done.

Thanks for the link, I am now subscribed to his channel. He seems to be less of a propagandist than Newfies source, which I also watch.


Peace

[Newfie]

Carinke,

Are they not ALL propagandists?

There are perhaps a very few.

Preston Stewart comes to mind.

[theluckycountry]

Thanks for the link, I am now subscribed to his channel.

You would I watched one, a total load of crap. "The most decisive elements of the war? little toy drones and unmanned boats", ukrainian of course. The artillery and rocket barrages that have decimated the ukrainian forces count for nothing, don't get a mention. Typical western propaganda. If you believed that you'd think the ukraine would be storming the gates of Moscow.

[theluckycountry]

Meanwhile in the ukraine...

Ukrainian Men Paying Disabled Women To Marry Them To Avoid Frontlines

An investigation by Ukrainian outlet NGL Media found that fighting age men are exploiting a loophole in the country’s martial law that allows them to skip military service.

If they have a disabled dependant, they are able to apply for a deferral from military duty as well as being allowed to cross the border, at which point many are fleeing for good.

https://modernity.news/2024/04/06/ukrai ... es-report/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that lowers the country’s age of conscription by two years to make up for troop shortfalls. https://modernity.news/2024/04/04/ukrai ... hortfalls/

[AgentR11]

UA forces snuck into Kaliningrad and sabotaged a missile corvette in port there. Fire inside destroyed all its goodies, its probably a total loss. Completely irrelevant to the battle field lines in UA, yet they seem to get a lot of public mileage out of such attacks.

[Newfie]

Maybe irrelevant to the battle lines but not the war.

Ukraine is fighting Russia, all of Russia, everywhere.

Kaliningrad is an isolated bit of Russia, a war trophy. It will remind people that the Russians removed the entire population and repopulated with Russians.

It will make Russian news, dent Putins rhetoric, make him look weak. Make people ask “What is he doing?”

It will make Russia divert energy, resources, defensive equipment away from the front.


It will encourage minorities in Russia’s hinterlands to use this opportunity to strike the Moscow Masters while they are distracted.

It is brilliant.

[ralfy]

Another meaning for "proxy war".

[AgentR11]

I hope its brilliant, but I think its ridiculous... We'll see if the lines start moving East.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Meanwhile in the ukraine...

Ukrainian Men Paying Disabled Women To Marry Them To Avoid Frontlines

An investigation by Ukrainian outlet NGL Media found that fighting age men are exploiting a loophole in the country’s martial law that allows them to skip military service.

If they have a disabled dependant, they are able to apply for a deferral from military duty as well as being allowed to cross the border, at which point many are fleeing for good.

https://modernity.news/2024/04/06/ukrai ... es-report/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that lowers the country’s age of conscription by two years to make up for troop shortfalls. https://modernity.news/2024/04/04/ukrai ... hortfalls/

Lots of these men are now in Poland and other EU nations.
In Poland most are working, in Germany not necessarily (language barrier)
They are NOT coming back to Ukraine, and if attempts are made to force them, they can easily become dangerous.
Zelensky is running out of soldiers.
He will soon need to lower conscription age to 18 and then get defeated or further lower conscription age to 12 and still get defeated.
Mutiny is getting rampant out there and many military units are poorly manageable because soldiers are refusing orders and becoming a threat to commanders if pushed.
So either NATO forces will move in (and start WW III) or Russia get complete victory.
But American stand is clear - no more military aid to Ukraine due to Republican rebellion in Congress.
Then very likely Trump will come to power and sell Ukraine entirely.
The truth is that America (and West in general) lacks resources and trained soldiers to fight with Russia (and there are those nukes out there...).
Also America understand that any hot war with Russia means another war with China as well.
Global balance of power have changed.

[mousepad]

But American stand is clear - no more military aid to Ukraine due to Republican rebellion in Congress.

I hope you're right. Forcing lazy entitled europeans to take care of their own shitshow is well overdue.
Why doesn't europe arm imported mohummeds with ak47 and sandals and send them to help ukraine?

[Newfie]

EU,

I don't not know, perhaps you are right. I do believe the power balance is changing. But I think it is far too early to make firm predictions.

I find the political siituation in the USA very disturbing. I do not want either Trump or Biden and am gobsmacked that we are in this position. If Trump wins I will blame the Democrats for not putting up a reasonable candidate.

Too big a part of me suspects this is OBamas doing.

[AgentR11]

Has anyone considered the very real possibility that Trump could be in prison when Jan'2025 roles around, but the House(R) and the SC(R) confirm his election anyway.

SC could issue a habeus corpus thing and swear him in right then and there.

Does he then pardon himself or something???

[yellowcanoe]

What amazes me is that two years into this war Western countries have made so little progress at increasing munitions production. One of the reasons why Germany lost WW1 was that the allied forces had a much larger supply of artillery shells than they did. The allied forces fighting Germany in WW2 were also much better supplied with munitions. We're told that the Russians are firing five artillery shells for each Ukrainian shell and that it is expected in the near future to increase to 10 shells per Ukrainian one.

If WW3 were to start we'd have to hope that we win it really fast because we simply do not have the munition stocks and production to keep fighting for any significant amount of time.

[EnergyUnlimited]

EU,
I don't not know, perhaps you are right. I do believe the power balance is changing. But I think it is far too early to make firm predictions.

Details of outcomes cannot be predicted with any accuracy but an overall trend is not that difficult to work out.
It was not wise to push Ukraine to war if industrial base and financial resources necessary to sustain such war are not there or there is no willingness to deploy them.
But again, we (Poles) were quite comparably pushed by Brits to war with Germans which resulted in WW II and that didn't end up well for us, even if Germans lost at the end.
Situation with Ukraine is more hopeless because all indications are that Russians are going to win.

I find the political siituation in the USA very disturbing. I do not want either Trump or Biden and am gobsmacked that we are in this position. If Trump wins I will blame the Democrats for not putting up a reasonable candidate.

Too big a part of me suspects this is OBamas doing.

Political situation on the West is disturbing, wherever you look.
For me it is a logical consequence of something I call cretinization of West.
It begun long time ago, perhaps 30 years ago or so, but seeds of it were sown much earlier - under common denominator of progressivism.
Perhaps Western elites wanted to breed obedient, stupid consumers meant to feed corporate wealth but they got completely mindless mobs of cretins good for nothing and this trend have spread to elites themselves.
Such societies are not capable to face adversities and as time pass they are bound to fail and decay.
Current sad situation of Biden/Trump choice is explicitly showing that.
Choice between visibly demented old man and narcissistic psychopath, increasingly demented as well...

Of course from logical/rational perspective there are FAR better candidates for POTUS office.
But they are NOT promoted, precisely because hardly anyone would vote for them.
Demented mobs love demented leaders and they would not vote for anyone else, what Dems and Reps perhaps understand.

So Putin and Mr Xi have rather easy job.
Increasingly looking like walkover.

[EnergyUnlimited]

What amazes me is that two years into this war Western countries have made so little progress at increasing munitions production. One of the reasons why Germany lost WW1 was that the allied forces had a much larger supply of artillery shells than they did. The allied forces fighting Germany in WW2 were also much better supplied with munitions. We're told that the Russians are firing five artillery shells for each Ukrainian shell and that it is expected in the near future to increase to 10 shells per Ukrainian one.

If WW3 were to start we'd have to hope that we win it really fast because we simply do not have the munition stocks and production to keep fighting for any significant amount of time.

Safety and environmental rules are making it impossible to scale up munitions production efficiently.
You know, nitric acid is toxic, RDX very toxic and explosive and sulfuric acid can cause horrible burns (and nitric acid too!), all extremely dangerous etc.
But they are so dangerous only in demented Western public and bureaucratic minds because every Russian or Chinese knows that these are trivial chemicals and trained person can operate process in more or less cowboy fashion.
And if per few millions of shells something have exploded they will replace few souls lost and repair/replace damaged installation - and carry on regardless.
But on West it is impossible and even worse - producing these chemicals in quantity has a huge carbon footprint!
That is why $10 in Russia will buy as much explosives as $50-80 in America or Europe.
On the top of it heavy industry and chemical industry is mostly gone to China and elsewhere, so means to achieve it are missing.
On the top of it finances are in ruin by mindless budgetary policies run during last 40 years.

It is unlikely for West to win WWIII.
It will rather be lost or it will go nuclear and you will get a draw.

[yellowcanoe]

Safety and environmental rules are making it impossible to scale up munitions production efficiently.

Yes, a friend of mine is a chemist in the regulatory branch of Health Canada so I've certainly heard stories about illogical environmental/health concerns.

The biggest problem we have with military production is that there is absolutely no incentive for private sector suppliers to keep extra production capacity in place. If they stop receiving orders or don't expect new orders until well into the future the production line will be shutdown and dismantled. Munitions production capacity is reduced to the level required to replace stock that has been used for training purposes with little spare capacity to handle an actual war.

At the start of the war in Ukraine the US shipped their stock of Stinger hand held surface to air missiles to Ukraine. There was no way to replace that stock of missiles because the production line had been long since shutdown. It was also impossible to restart production because many of the components were no longer being manufactured. So basically, to resume production would require designing and testing a new missile that utilized components available now and building a new production facility.