Putin’s blackmail attempt against Europe has failed.
15 thoughts on “Russia”
Mr. Sonnenfeld uses a lot of absolutes like ‘never again’ in his analysis of this situation. Never is a long time.
Saved by a mild winter rather than forethought or rational planning for the coming years. Will they have enough coal for next winter? Will companies that closed due to high energy prices reopen?
Luck has bought them time but will they use that time to their advantage? My bet is on a mixed bag as the Progressive Marxists are still in charge and they want less industry, comfort, and electricity generation.
Oops that wasn’t meant as a reply to Art.
Never is a long time. But it’s also a perfectly reasonable word to use anent dozens of vanished imperia of yore. No one worries about the future actions of Scythia, Parthia or Carthage because they’re all gone and aren’t coming back.
The same will soon be true of Russia. Putin’s latest quixotic war to attempt restoration of Russia’s Soviet-era defensible perimeter is serving only to accelerate Russia’s already longstanding and pell-mell demographic collapse. With next to no young people left in the first place, Putin has now scrupled to send the male half of this mingy cohort to Ukraine to die. That will leave the female half without the ability to make any significant number of new babies – not that they were doing much of a job of that even before the Russo-Ukraine War.
Between death in Ukraine and those fleeing conscription, Russia, perhaps by as soon as next year, will have essentially no young people left except the lame, the halt and the otherwise militarily unfit. That will leave it with a population almost entirely beyond reproductive age. Russia, at that point, passes beyond consequential continued existence as a going concern – a hospice state which, given unimpressive Russian life expectancies, will be mostly depopulated by mid-century.
No one is going to miss them when they’re gone.
Rand finds a new Deep State Neocon clown to promote.
Shallow Minded Reader remains Shallow Minded.
The tell once again is that you label with a weak ad hominem rather than argue in good faith. Seriously, we’ve had almost a year of your garbage: empty accusations, ad hominems, ridiculous conspiracy theories, and you have yet to back any of it.
As a challenge here, I’ll note that at times you, SMR demanded that we keep track of who predicted what in order to determine who was right in the end. Do you have a single prediction made on Transterrestrial that came true?
In the above link, this was in reply to a August 14 story speculating on whether Kherson would fall to the Ukrainians “soon”. The Russians evacuated on November 9, almost three months later. That might not have been as soon as the story implied it would be, but it was soon as military operations go. Turns out your bluster was for nought.
Amazing mix of mild winter and a flickering sanity light appears to have saved the old empire. Don’t think we can count on it for the long term.
Heh – the big story here: Man that believes communism works makes epic fail while running economy, film at 11.
But without Russia, where will we get our cars, TVs, stereos, smart phones, computers, kitchen gadgets, furniture, appliances, heavy trucks, commercial airliners, and cruise ships?
South Korea?
Whether blackmail was the intention or not, Putin has severely damaged Euro economies by forcing countries to switch to much more expensive LNG imports and oil imports instead of what had previously been piped in at lower cost.
Meanwhile, idiotic Euro leaders are still earmarking billions for the greentard switch to net zero.
(By the way I live in Spain, where energy prices have skyrocketed.)
Winter is not over, yet.
But was Europe, saved by global warming?
What’s the deal with Germany and especially that dude with the Scandinavian-sounding name?
Didn’t this leader of France once say, “If you are going to send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine, then send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine.”
Why all of this dithering about, “We will send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine, but the US also has to send Abrams tanks as part of the arrangement”? And then, “Oh, gee, I guess we need to keep the Leopard II tanks for our own defense needs (against the French and British? Against Poland? Against their own people driving down the Autobahn, Mad Max style with crossbows attached to a Mercedes panel truck?) followed by “It is nothing to do with whether America is sending Abrams tanks, but America should just go ahead and do what it wants to do.”
Is this Charlie Foxtrot the result of dithering Germans? Or is it the Biden Administration getting “over its skiis” (again) by not coordinating with the Germans as to whether they want to give their best tanks or people in the Administration were engaged in wishful thinking that they would?
Mr. Sonnenfeld uses a lot of absolutes like ‘never again’ in his analysis of this situation. Never is a long time.
Saved by a mild winter rather than forethought or rational planning for the coming years. Will they have enough coal for next winter? Will companies that closed due to high energy prices reopen?
Luck has bought them time but will they use that time to their advantage? My bet is on a mixed bag as the Progressive Marxists are still in charge and they want less industry, comfort, and electricity generation.
Oops that wasn’t meant as a reply to Art.
Never is a long time. But it’s also a perfectly reasonable word to use anent dozens of vanished imperia of yore. No one worries about the future actions of Scythia, Parthia or Carthage because they’re all gone and aren’t coming back.
The same will soon be true of Russia. Putin’s latest quixotic war to attempt restoration of Russia’s Soviet-era defensible perimeter is serving only to accelerate Russia’s already longstanding and pell-mell demographic collapse. With next to no young people left in the first place, Putin has now scrupled to send the male half of this mingy cohort to Ukraine to die. That will leave the female half without the ability to make any significant number of new babies – not that they were doing much of a job of that even before the Russo-Ukraine War.
Between death in Ukraine and those fleeing conscription, Russia, perhaps by as soon as next year, will have essentially no young people left except the lame, the halt and the otherwise militarily unfit. That will leave it with a population almost entirely beyond reproductive age. Russia, at that point, passes beyond consequential continued existence as a going concern – a hospice state which, given unimpressive Russian life expectancies, will be mostly depopulated by mid-century.
No one is going to miss them when they’re gone.
Rand finds a new Deep State Neocon clown to promote.
Shallow Minded Reader remains Shallow Minded.
The tell once again is that you label with a weak ad hominem rather than argue in good faith. Seriously, we’ve had almost a year of your garbage: empty accusations, ad hominems, ridiculous conspiracy theories, and you have yet to back any of it.
As a challenge here, I’ll note that at times you, SMR demanded that we keep track of who predicted what in order to determine who was right in the end. Do you have a single prediction made on Transterrestrial that came true?
In the above link, this was in reply to a August 14 story speculating on whether Kherson would fall to the Ukrainians “soon”. The Russians evacuated on November 9, almost three months later. That might not have been as soon as the story implied it would be, but it was soon as military operations go. Turns out your bluster was for nought.
Amazing mix of mild winter and a flickering sanity light appears to have saved the old empire. Don’t think we can count on it for the long term.
Heh – the big story here: Man that believes communism works makes epic fail while running economy, film at 11.
But without Russia, where will we get our cars, TVs, stereos, smart phones, computers, kitchen gadgets, furniture, appliances, heavy trucks, commercial airliners, and cruise ships?
South Korea?
Whether blackmail was the intention or not, Putin has severely damaged Euro economies by forcing countries to switch to much more expensive LNG imports and oil imports instead of what had previously been piped in at lower cost.
Meanwhile, idiotic Euro leaders are still earmarking billions for the greentard switch to net zero.
(By the way I live in Spain, where energy prices have skyrocketed.)
Winter is not over, yet.
But was Europe, saved by global warming?
What’s the deal with Germany and especially that dude with the Scandinavian-sounding name?
Didn’t this leader of France once say, “If you are going to send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine, then send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine.”
Why all of this dithering about, “We will send Leopard II tanks to Ukraine, but the US also has to send Abrams tanks as part of the arrangement”? And then, “Oh, gee, I guess we need to keep the Leopard II tanks for our own defense needs (against the French and British? Against Poland? Against their own people driving down the Autobahn, Mad Max style with crossbows attached to a Mercedes panel truck?) followed by “It is nothing to do with whether America is sending Abrams tanks, but America should just go ahead and do what it wants to do.”
Is this Charlie Foxtrot the result of dithering Germans? Or is it the Biden Administration getting “over its skiis” (again) by not coordinating with the Germans as to whether they want to give their best tanks or people in the Administration were engaged in wishful thinking that they would?