The Russia vs Ukraine show

[AdamSkillin]

I said it seemed like you had implied a thing. You clarified that such wasn't what you meant. I believe you. I'm not sure where you're reading anything else into what I said.

And yet when I've asked why you keep typing at me about this, you've doubled down and again tried to make a counter argument to something I have not said while literally mis-quoting me.

I call that trolling.

You asked me why I interpreted you as implying x and I explained how I came to read your initial comment the way I read it. Really completely befuddled about the resulting twist in your knickers.

[quikky]

I said it seemed like you had implied a thing. You clarified that such wasn't what you meant. I believe you. I'm not sure where you're reading anything else into what I said.

And yet when I've asked why you keep typing at me about this, you've doubled down and again tried to make a counter argument to something I have not said while literally mis-quoting me.

I call that trolling.

You asked me why I interpreted you as implying x and I explained how I came to read your initial comment the way I read it. Really completely befuddled about the resulting twist in your knickers.

No twisting of the knickers has occurred, just calling things as I see it.

[AdamSkillin]

No twisting of the knickers has occurred, just calling things as I see it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Hanley]

No twisting of the knickers has occurred, just calling things as I see it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cmon, Skillz, fuck this banter. When you gonna get treasonous?

[cole]

A. Military aid is the key issue.
B. Military aid is the only issue.

Which of the two was my point? Which of the two have you made your argument against?

If you want to argue against what Trump or "the Right" are saying, be my guest. Just don't pretend that's what I am saying.

It's like some of you guys go on the internet to argue about a certain point, and when the point is not actually made, you pretend like it is and argue against it anyways.

Boo fucking hoo. I responded to your post. I didn't put words in your mouth. I'm not responding to anything but your post to me.

Go find a safe place to keep moving your goal posts and play victim somewhere else.

Lol, typical aurelius.

i like the @quikky vs @aurelius matchup . unbelievable stamina from both sides

[mikeylikey]

No twisting of the knickers has occurred, just calling things as I see it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cmon, Skillz, fuck this banter. When you gonna get treasonous?

"If you have ever wondered what you would have done had you lived in 1930s Germany... you are doing it now."

[quikky]

A. Military aid is the key issue.
B. Military aid is the only issue.

Which of the two was my point? Which of the two have you made your argument against?

If you want to argue against what Trump or "the Right" are saying, be my guest. Just don't pretend that's what I am saying.

It's like some of you guys go on the internet to argue about a certain point, and when the point is not actually made, you pretend like it is and argue against it anyways.

Boo fucking hoo. I responded to your post. I didn't put words in your mouth. I'm not responding to anything but your post to me.

Go find a safe place to keep moving your goal posts and play victim somewhere else.

Lol, typical aurelius.

i like the @quikky vs @aurelius matchup . unbelievable stamina from both sides

Thanks bro, I've been doing a lot more conditioning lately.

[aurelius]

i like the @quikky vs @aurelius matchup . unbelievable stamina from both sides

That's what she said.

[5hout]

Has anyone come across an estimate or attempted estimate of the cost (to the west) of sanctions?

I remember at the beginning of all this being told prices of like, wheat(?) would go up, and that Europeans heating bills would go up, and it was a joint sacrifice we should all bear in the interest of Democracy. Less interested in the rightness of that justification than if anybody has tried to tally all that up.


*I realize any such estimate is going to be fraught with the biases and agenda of the preparer thereof. But, gotta start somewhere.

I've not seen an estimate, but I'll throw this into the ring: EU still buys a ton of Russian gas, they just label it LNG (various sources). As you know this makes it "k".

https://energiedashboard.admin.ch/gas/import-europa

https://jamestown.org/program/european- ... %20percent.

Oleh Savytskyi, the Campaigns Manager at Razom We Stand, a Ukrainian grassroots movement calling for a total and permanent embargo on Russian fossil fuels and an immediate end to all investment into Russian oil and gas companies, highlighted some key ways Russia continues to export LNG amid sanctions. Savytskyi has pointed out that Russia’s LNG exports are enabled by, among others, the fact that Russia’s key LNG producer, Novatek, operates via Switzerland- and Singapore-based subsidiaries that secure its ability to operate internationally. Thus, in 2024, Russia gained more profit by exporting LNG than pipeline gas sales. Due to no systemic and coordinated international sanctions being introduced against Novatek and its subsidiaries, the company managed to not only export LNG but also import critical equipment powering its key projects, such as the Arctic LNG-2 project. Given that Russia-originating LNG is less expensive than U.S.-produced, the price difference is not the only factor in Russia’s growing LNG export to the European Union.

With all due respect to the most fervent slava ukraini's, EU's hypocrisy on this makes it very hard to take their rhetoric as anything but rhetoric to make the masses happy. My gut (somewhat borne out by the above/other reading over the years) is that by and large they took a little cod liver oil on this (but not enough to hurt) and otherwise just shuffled payments around to meet theirs needs. Keep in mind one of their needs is various Paris/IPCC goals.

Note that since Russia is basically a giant basket of minerals and oil run by completely lunatics screwing horses/the people, sanctioning them where you cut off all the things they sell (except for their high profit items like LNG) is... something. It's not like we stopped trading with the UK and don't have access to fine cheeses and ales or France for sparking bullshitchampagne.

IDK, on a lot of levels it just feels like this is bread and circuses for the people who spend all day listening to the chattering classes (I stretched that metaphor a bit, but I think you know who I mean).

[AdamSkillin]

Yet another one for several of you to file under the heading of "Stuff the guy does just because he's stupid/mean/saving us money/whatever and definitely not an indicator that he's working with/for the other side:"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/p ... -ios-share

[Philbert]

Yet another one for several of you to file under the heading of "Stuff the guy does just because he's stupid/mean/saving us money/whatever and definitely not an indicator that he's working with/for the other side:"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/p ... -ios-share

How is this still a topic of investigation, other than as an exercise in self licking icecream? Is there actually any question anywhere about who is responsible? It's not like in a civilian court of law, where you need to go on gathering evidence after you know whodunit so your conviction doesn't get thrown out, once you know you either do something about it, or pretend the victim provoked it and don't.

[AdamSkillin]

Yet another one for several of you to file under the heading of "Stuff the guy does just because he's stupid/mean/saving us money/whatever and definitely not an indicator that he's working with/for the other side:"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/p ... -ios-share

How is this still a topic of investigation, other than as an exercise in self licking icecream? Is there actually any question anywhere about who is responsible? It's not like in a civilian court of law, where you need to go on gathering evidence after you know whodunit so your conviction doesn't get thrown out, once you know you either do something about it, or pretend the victim provoked it and don't.

Sounds like it's trying to identify all of the individuals, (rather than the nations) responsible. Obviously we all know who the ringleader/boss of the operation is (except for the co-Presidents, Vice Vice President James Donald Bowman Hamel Vance, Pete Hegseth, and maybe Liddle Marco). You know, so if and when they hopefully hold something in the vein of the Nuremberg trials, and due to "I was just following orders" not being a valid defense.

[aurelius]

So basically after all of the US caused drama: Russia has agreed to nothing after jerking the US around for a month and the US is still supplying intel and weapons to UKR.

It's like this international diplomacy stuff is hard. And making deals with the Kremlin is a fool's errand. If only someone had known this...

[AdamSkillin]

So basically after all of the US caused drama: Russia has agreed to nothing after jerking the US around for a month and the US is still supplying intel and weapons to UKR.

It's like this international diplomacy stuff is hard. And making deals with the Kremlin is a fool's errand. If only someone had known this...

This guy at the National Review (liberal dirtrag something something) hasn't yet come around to my view on the situation, but I feel like he's going to get there:

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... ing-trump/

[aurelius]

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... ing-trump/

My exact sentiments:

I would love to report that Donald Trump, whose name is on the cover of The Art of the Deal, worked out some ingenious win-win arrangement that ended the war and preserved an independent and free Ukraine, or even that he had negotiated a temporary respite from the fighting, so each side could tend to their wounded and build up their defenses.

But that is not the case. Putin played Trump like a fiddle, offering him platitudes and the mirage of a small concession, which Trump rushed to announce to the world as a great diplomatic breakthrough. Now Trump looks like a sucker, a man easily fooled by promises.

What’s Trump going to do, admit he got duped? Turn against Putin? Send new kinds of weapons to the Ukrainians to show Putin there are serious consequences for jerking him around?

I’d love to see it, but Trump’s record in recent months suggests he will double down on punishing the Ukrainians and look for more concessions to make to Putin.

[AdamSkillin]

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... ing-trump/

My exact sentiments: [Original quote]

Here's how I'd edit it to express mine:
I would love to report that Donald Trump, whose name is on the cover of The Art of the Deal, worked out some ingenious win-win arrangement that ended the war and preserved an independent and free Ukraine, or even that he had negotiated a temporary respite from the fighting, so each side could tend to their wounded and build up their defenses.

But that is not the case. Putin played Trump like a fiddle, ostensibly offering him platitudes and the mirage of a small concession, which Trump rushed to announce to the world as a great diplomatic breakthrough. Now Trump looks like a sucker, a man easily fooled by promises.

What’s Trump going to do, admit he got duped? Turn against Putin? Send new kinds of weapons to the Ukrainians to show Putin there are serious consequences for jerking him around?

I’d love to see it, but Trump’s record in recent months suggests he will double down on punishing the Ukrainians and look for more concessions to make to Putin because evidence continues to mount that suggests he's more than a mere useful idiot, but that he's actively working on behalf of Putin

but...

[quikky]

Trump talked to Putin, there was a minor ceasefire agreement regarding energy infrastructure. More talks are supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia shortly regarding a furthering of the ceasefire.

Why are there conclusions being made when the talks are still clearly ongoing and this is just the initial part of it? Way too early to tell what the final outcome is.

[AdamSkillin]

Trump talked to Putin, there was a minor ceasefire agreement regarding energy infrastructure[edit: which Russia immediately violated]. More talks are supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia shortly regarding a furthering of the ceasefire.

Why are there conclusions being made when the talks are still clearly ongoing and this is just the initial part of it? Way too early to tell what the final outcome is.

Aside from the campaign promises about ending the war in the first 24 hours in office (or first 24 hours after election results came in depending on which lie we're talking about)? Because you can assess the way a game is going before the final buzzer sounds? (second March Madness-based analogy today. How many more you think I got in me?)

[hector]

Trump talked to Putin, there was a minor ceasefire agreement regarding energy infrastructure. More talks are supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia shortly regarding a furthering of the ceasefire.

Why are there conclusions being made when the talks are still clearly ongoing and this is just the initial part of it? Way too early to tell what the final outcome is.

Yep.
And recent developments make it weirder and harder to guess.
Besides the European nations continuing to purchase gas and financially support Russia, you have Russia requesting that the US not provide arms to Ukraine during the ceasefire. But, of course, Russia manufactures their own munitions and will rearm during the ceasefire.

There were NATO members upset that Ukraine has abandoned so much equipment for Russia to take and reverse engineer. And, even recently, you have the Russian troops continuing to sabotage their own equipment so they won’t have to advance.

Conscripted soldiers in a war of attrition. Terrible and difficult to predict.

[mikeylikey]

Aside from the campaign promises about ending the war in the first 24 hours in office (or first 24 hours after election results came in depending on which lie we're talking about