Shady Ray

We first started watching right after HBO’s Chernobyl series, when we went to YouTube to watch other stuff about it. I think that he got really lucky that his Chernobyl videos were blessed by YouTube’s Omnipotent Algorithm at the perfect time and then was just a matter of the quality of his content driving the growth.

Oh, don't worry...you'll see a body of work if you keep watching.

Olaf straight wildin'. German chancellor turned down Biden invite to discuss Ukraine crisis - Der Spiegel BERLIN, Jan 21 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz turned down an invite at short notice from U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss the Ukraine crisis, German magazine Der Spiegel said on Friday. Scholz did not accept the invitation due to a full schedule, including a trip to Madrid, as well as the desire to show that he was present as Germany grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Der Spiegel. A government spokesman declined to comment on the report. Both sides hoped now to organize a meeting by mid-February. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-chancellor-turned-down-biden-invite-discuss-ukraine-crisis-der-spiegel-2022-01-21/

You are very well-read on this. He told me he was spared the fate of those poor SOBs at Plattling due his employment with the Army. But I will say that our decision there was obviously something that he was disappointed with, which I know our own side struggled with significantly. I honestly have never once thought about the possibility of your last point until your post. From a physique/mental aptitude/street-wise/resourcefulness/social intelligence perspective, he was unlike anyone I have ever met and would have certainly fit the bill of someone who could have been valuable in anti-Soviet operations. Interesting thought.

The funny thing is that those ancestry sites are ground zero for problems here. I was told from the get-go, "don't you even think about logging any family shit - anonymous or not - on one of those Ancestry sites." Germans are reallllllll opposed to that type of open-source, public record keeping for relatives from that era. Way too many skeletons in everyone's closets...

You know what...I have done ungodly hours of research on this shit, reading the German articles and getting help with the Russian archives that aren't translated, and I have never once even thought about looking at how this was covered in the US media at the time. Thanks a lot for this.

Well, I guess it is Friday, and apparently some of y'all find this stuff interesting, so I figured what the hell, I will just go straight to the best that I got. Wife's mother is not even close to the most interesting story. Wife's mother's father is. Spoilered for those who don't care, and it is a bit off topic. TLDR: Between the years 1941-1948, wife’s maternal grandfather was a Red Army conscript, a German POW, a Wehrmacht soldier, a US POW, and a US Army employee. And he was the baddest motherfucker that I have ever met.

I hadn't heard that. Really interesting. I honestly didn't realize that the Czech's still had concerns that that land would even possibly revert. And yeah, it runs really deep. I knew the maternal grandmother before she died and the significance and trauma of the expulsion was regularly a topic of the old lady's rants. Particularly during the Eurovision Song Contest when the Czech's came on...every year she would curse the Czechs, flip the channel until their song was over, and then flip it back and enjoy the rest of the show. Laughed my ass off every time given how serious bidness this apparently was to a 95 year old woman. But yeah, it was always as though it had happened yesterday, which I guess is understandable given how it set off 4 years of displaced hell. They knew they would never get the land back that they left, but they damn sure felt it was still theirs...but them's the breaks when you end up on the wrong side of that particular war.

No problem. To be honest, even after 15 years as a member of a very tight-knit German family (I see my in-laws almost every day and I would put my father-in-law as one of my closest friends), it still wouldn't be seen as appropriate for me to ask about the family's position on National Socialism during the Third Reich. And I was told very early on by my wife that it is not proper form to pry, so it took me years to even start getting access to bits and pieces of the history from my mother in law. She doesn't speak English very well, so it wasn't until I had built up my German to fluency where we could develop enough equity to talk freely about this stuff...within limits of course. But over time, with the drip of info, there are enough signs there to ascertain if you are halfway informed. So, yeah, mother-in-law's maternal side was down for the cause, as were most Sudetendeutsch. Plus, I have a ton of the family records, including the Ariernachweisen ("Aryan Records"), which are still valid forms of ID here, which is a bit bizarre to have sitting in your basement, but you can put things together pretty quickly once govt docs start coming into play. Certain types of documents were mandatory...certain things were voluntarily obtained.

Yeah, and the length of time that it was completely fubar'd in the following years was long enough to completely scar the next generation. Both of my inlaws were born in the immediate post-war years. Father-in-law in Munich to a single mother, mother-in-law in a displaced persons camp which I will leave out so as not to get too specific to Sudetendeutsch refugees. Both grew up here. I asked them one night over dinner, "So, did you remember the post-war rubble and destruction in Munich?" They said, "of course". So I then asked, "So when would you say the rubble was completely gone?" And in perfect unision..."1964". I don't know if it was some commemorative event or something, but it was as factual as can be. 19 years of absorption of the sins of your parents, visible every day of your life. Heavy shit.

Yeah, it is really weird. And it is unavoidable but they still try. It takes a looong time to get them to talk about it, and unless you have essentially "gone native", they won't talk about it to non-Germans. But it is always in the air. Somewhat related...of all the spots in this town to get Chinese food, my wife's favorite place is way out in Dachau not far from where her Oma lived. Dachau is not just the camp, but also a very pleasant little town outside of Munich. So about twice a year she says, come on...let's go out to Dachau and get crispy duck. So off we go, 25 minutes out there, take a left at the gates to the Camp, one block down...pick up the takeout order, and back home for dinner. Fucking bizarre.

That is a good point. The post-Trump bounce definitely changed things.

Yeah, it is definitely not the most rational approach, but with respect to German experiences/approaches to Russia, it isnt based on any form of pure logic...there is also a huge, huge element of collective, national, mind-fucking trauma that occurred at the hands of the Russians, and that has stuck in the national attitude. Your average German’s right eye will start twitching at even the mention of another war with Russia. The Red Army truly fucked up this country’s psyche something fierce and that has been passed down intensely, particularly in the German version of the Boomers and Gen X. The Germans fucked around and found out on the battlefield, and their old men who didn’t fight were beaten or killed and many of their mothers were raped by Russians, and that shit stuck. Big time. So, just as the trauma of the Eastern Front and subsequent Soviet occupation of those Central and Eastern European countries forms their justifiable geopolitical stances towards Russia, respectively, the ass-whipping annihilation that the Russians put on the Germans at every level of society forms much of the German position now with respect to fighting/engaging in “the East” now. I see it all the time within my wife's family. Just two days ago we were at the local cemetery with my in-laws for the monthly tending to family graves, as is customary here. Walking through the cemetery, I can count at least two dozen “Missing in Stalingrad/Missing in Ostfront” gravestones, including one in my wife’s family (Stalingrad). Shit is everywhere, particularly in certain cemeteries in Munich proper. The death dates between 1943-1947 are insanely disproportionate. Another example from my own experience… there are family photos taken in what looks to be about 1957-59, given my mother-in-law’s age in the photo. They are candid shots around a beer bench at my wife’s family land in Southern Bavaria, with a few from the house where my in-laws live now, and there is a man there dressed nicely but oddly positioned just far enough from the group to indicate he was somewhat involved in the goings on, but weirdly separate with a blank expression on his face. It is this way in every photo of this guy, on multiple different occasions over the years. Just this dude…nice-looking, well-dressed, physically removed from the group and blank-faced…1000 yard stare type shit. So after years of coming across this picture at various times, I finally asked my mother-in-law what the story was with this guy, and she just said, “Oh, he was my uncle that fled with my mother and aunts from the Sudetenland during the expulsion. He was the only of the brothers who survived and he never snapped out of it. He died in the early 70s, he lived with us until I was 22, but he was always somewhere between shellshocked and scared. I never really knew him because he was never really “there” upstairs." She "never really knew him", yet she saw him every day...ate dinner with him all the time...celebrated holidays, birthdays, and life events...but he was "never really there." So the impact of a Russian ass-whipping isn't abstract like it is to us. So, the point is, reminders are everywhere…and not reminders in the form of memorials or public statements or vigils or lapel pins, but in the form of family members with 1000 yard stares at the dinner table, gravestones for missing uncles in family cemeteries, warnings from mothers to daughters to avoid Russian males on the street corners, stories from Opa about his cold feet wrapped in newspaper shoes, buried in the snows of the Great Steppe for what felt like an eternity. Yeah, that shit leaves an impact. In short, this was highly personal trauma that wasn’t able to be “dealt with” in a natural, collective way, IMO, and due to the collective guilt, was expected to be pushed down and managed privately. So they became experts at burying their heads in the sand. Drives me crazy, but God they have perfected it. I could write a book on how fucked up the situation with the post-war children was. They took the process of national atonement very, very seriously and they scrambled the fuck out of a generation of young minds in the process. And by “dealt with” I mean in the way that the victims of German and Soviet aggression were able to. The Czechs or the Poles or the Balts, for example, were able to rely on each through their collective victimizations and re-build together, forging a new chapter of resilience in their long existing national identity, which, of course, contains an element of a collective national outlook on security matters/positioning. The post-war Germans didn’t do that. They worked through the post-war trauma in a highly individualized and repressed manner, primarily through shame in their parents, fear of it happening again and internal guilt (albeit self inflicted by the actions of their parents and grandparents, of course). They didn’t have a moment during their national reckoning where they collectively (through their leaders) defined a constructive, newfound role for Germany on the international stage independent of avoiding a repeat of their past sins and trauma…and, as such, their foreign policy ethos is comprised of guilt, trauma, and the fear of experiencing it again…but certainly not any element of leadership or assertiveness abroad. So it is basically a wealthy, wealthy country with little idea of how to finally act comfortably in a role of leadership when hard power is required. And to be clear, in no way do I mean this as a justification for their feeble foreign policy positions, but I do think it comes down to much more than just a desire for cheap energy. But, to be sure, that plays a huge part as well.

Yeah, definitely. Merkel's intention to get off nuclear was a kneejerk to Fukushima and it is seen by traditional center lefties/center right/free marketeers as a foolish political stunt driven by shortsighted political winds of the day. German society is weird on that front though...they don't see it as a colossal fuck up in the sense that Germany is now more reliant on Russia with the removal of nuclear, but rather that it is forcing us to now go to France for nuclear energy or Poland's coal plants because there will be shortfall in energy since the renewables aren't keeping up with demand. The Germans do not like poorly made plans that result in shortfalls. So, the shortfall is the problem...but the fact that the failure of the plan resulted in greater dependence on Russia is not particularly objectionable to them. You also have to remember, while in the US it is the MAGA, nationalist elements that value what they see in Russia, in Germany, that same perspective is held by the elites, as well. There is an element of highbrowedness tinged with their common history there. There is a very strong historical familiarity with Russia/Russians here and there is a deep, deep mistrust of the US, particularly after Iraq (no CR, but just saying that it has proven to be an irreparable mistake here re American actions given the benefit of the doubt as being altruistic or "good"). At the risk of being a shot messenger, to the Germans, the aggression that the Russians have shown has a tangible, understandable nexus to the Russian position...namely, geographic borders. They might not be "in the right", but their actions are "understandable" and predictable. The Americans, on the other hand, are widely seen as completely wild and unpredictable, stirring up mischief in lands that have no perceived connection to our logical interests outside of pure economic empire. So, what an American would dismiss as Russian propaganda...namely things like America being an empire bent on global hegemony with Europe as its pawns falls on very, very fertile ground here. It is completely acceptable to openly question whether American interest in this thing extends to anything beyond economic benefit in the form of a new gas market. It certainly isn't seen SOLELY Putin wanting to annex Ukraine. It will be seen as a mixture of fault by each side, which makes it much easier on the national psyche when it comes to deciding not to punish them. That and the fact that many Germans genuinely despise Ukraine itself. And that should be a huge concern at present. In the event Russia does stage a false flag as has been reported, there will be no shortage of the population here that will completely believe that the Ukrainians were seeking to draw the West into a conflict or that they were pushed to start something by the US...or more likely to the German eye, the weakening Brits who are seen as desperately needing a resurgent NATO to solidify any leverage they still have on the Continent. Here is a Pew poll from a couple of years ago...note that this is long after the whole Georgia, Crimea, Donbass stuff. The Americans completely misunderstand the German view of the US. Sure the US is seen as a priority, but not nearly as strongly as one might expect:

This is exactly right. The Brits served as a capable counterweight to the respective tendencies/"European Union worldview" of the Germans, French and Italians in Brussels. But even outside of the Ukraine issue, the past year has shown so many signs of the EU recalibrating to a much, much more "Western Continental European" Envisioned-style organization than it was when the Brits had their weighty heft within the organization. The EU is basically shifting to the truest, highest, purest form of its inevitable impotent clusterfuckery. I was in Brussels last month and I was talking with a longtime contact who is involved in the regulatory aspect of my industry in the EU Commission. We were talking about this exact thing wrt the impact of Brexit within the EU and he made the statement that what we are seeing on so many levels throughout EU regulatory practice and policy is the "attempted vomitous expulsion of Anglospheric legacies from common European policy". The Brits truly were the US proxy in Brussels to some degree and their removal has opened to door to a complete overhaul. This extends from highly visible areas like international relations and defense policy, all the way down the line through the technocratic elements that don't make headlines like ag, medicine and - as you so rightly mentioned on another post - the usage of cohesion funds to force unpopular measures on the net-recipients of EU largesse, which is going to be much, much more common now that the Central/East Europeans don't have a powerful ally like the UK in Brussels. You don't take migrants? Funds slashed. You overhaul your internal affairs in a way we don't like? Funds slashed. You set up social policy in a way that is seen as discriminatory? Funds slashed. The French and Germans have been waiting for the day they can wield this pressure freely, and they are much freer to do that with the Brits and Merkel gone. And on a related note, this entire Ukraine deal is playing out at precisely the same time as the Germans are preparing to take on a joint effort by the French and Italians to wrest control of EU fiscal policy from the vise-like grip of the Germans. In an under-appreciated development late last year, Macron and Draghi (Italian PM and ex-head of the European Central Bank) met and signed the Quirinal Treaty in Rome. This represents a coordinated attempt by France and Italy to overhaul financial rules within the EU with an eye towards the French wet dream of Germany underwriting other member state debt. This is the third rail of German politics. The Germans absolutely will not budge on this. The idea of Eurobonds where debt to a member state is issued "jointly"/underwritten by "other members" of the EU (cough, Germany and the northern, fiscally sound members, cough) is a recipe for pure chaos, but the French and Italians would love nothing more than this. But even this left-leaning German government put Free Democrat Christian Lindner in as German Finance Minister, who is known for his absolutist position on No Eurobonds now...no Eurobonds tomorrow...no Eurobonds forever! And there is a time constraint here...the current German government is weak and doesn't have its sea legs yet after 16 years of "Mama Merkel". But the CDU, which is truly the dominant party in German politics outside of this recent post-merkel anomaly, just voted in Friedrich Merz as its leader, and if the current Govt falls, Merz will be the next chancellor. Merz is Germany's Darth Vader. He will go after the French and Italian plans on fiscal reform with a flamethrower and will throw all kinds of German financial pressure around. This is the only chance the French and Italians have to make this move, so if this situation in Ukraine causes the coalition to fall apart, then their opportunity is over. Merz will kill fiscal policy reform on day one if he is elected. So without detracting too far from the original topic, there are major territorial pissings going on within the big players in the EU at the moment due to Brexit and this Ukraine deal cannot be separated/seen independently from those. They are all part of the machinations of Brussels and they are all being played off of one another at the moment. The likely outcome (albeit probably years down the road knowing the EU) of all of this is that the Germans will cede leadership to the French on a common EU foreign/defense policy, while retaining primacy in fiscal policy for the EU block.

What a clusterfuck: EU uncertain over trigger for sanctions if Russia acts against Ukraine Some member states remain wary of responding to ‘hybrid’ attacks such as cyber warfare ... The EU, alongside the US and UK, has warned that Russia will face sanctions entailing “massive consequences and severe costs” in the event of an attack on Ukraine. They want to deter a feared assault sparked by the deployment of more than 100,000 troops close to the country’s border. But EU countries do not agree on what scale of attack would trigger a response. Some argue that so-called hybrid attacks — such as deploying cyber weapons or a “false flag” operation sparking a response — may not meet the threshold, according to four officials involved in the discussions. Official said informal talks last week hosted by France made clear the divergence. “There was no agreement at all on what aggression means, and very big differences between states,” said a person involved in the talks. “Some want all kinds of hybrid actions to be included, others aren’t far away from only full invasion [being enough to trigger sanctions].” ... Officials from some member states, particularly eastern and northern countries geographically closer to Russia, worry that without a defined trigger for sanctions bigger countries such as France or Germany would in effect take a political decision on whether the bloc should respond to any steps taken by Moscow. That has raised concerns that moves short of a full invasion, such as the use of proxy fighters or intentional sabotage inside Ukraine used as a pretext for Russian intervention — as the US warned last week was being planned by Moscow — could be overlooked by some EU states reluctant to impose sanctions. “Defining what ‘when something happens’ means is right now the biggest question,” a second person told the Financial Times. “We don’t have a system for automatic application of sanctions . . . As it stands right now, it will depend on the political mood.” https://www.ft.com/content/dedf5460-f4ff-4580-abfd-eedc0cb43372

Good reference map from the BBC considering the recent reported troop movement into Belarus.

Exactly. There is a geopolitical magnet between Berlin and Moscow that simply is not going to be severed outside of extraordinary and/or external events, and geographic areas in between are always going to be seen as collateral issues by the respective federal governments. Germany needs access to Russian resources, Russia needs (or at least really wants) access to the German market. Same as it ever was. I am always hesitant to put much credence in anecdotal experiences, but wife and I were out on Thursday night with a group of friends/friends-of-friends. All between 35-45 years of age. The mix consisted of relatively high-level corporate types and a couple of successful local Munich business-owners. At least half had lived/worked in the US or UK, all were involved in international professional services work of some type, and were generally the prototypes of standard issue Atlanticist/pro-EU stock. Traditional "Ostpolitik" Social Dem voters, Merkel Christian Democrats, Youngish urbanite Free Democrats, etc. Of course, this situation came up over the course of the night, as the entire energy situation is front and center of every news show and national periodical, and to a person the consensus was "fuck any involvement in this and the Ukrainians better not siphon fuel destined for us this year like they always do." Even I, a man married to one of these people and thus well-versed in how cold and indifferent Germans can be, was surprised. Absolutely no appetite to intervene here whatsoever and the SPD has only gained points since it started digging in defense of NS2. I genuinely expected this sentiment from the voting base at large, but I figured that the most highly educated/professional types would be nuanced over it. Nope. Not a sliver of daylight between corporate types that I know and German manual laborers from the former DDR...only difference is the language in which the sentiment is communicated. Same goes for weapons supplies to Ukraine, which even the Green Party Foreign Minister shot down in her presser in Kiev with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister on Monday. None of these people would say this out loud, but in the privacy of other Germans, they don't give a single fuck. https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/germany-continues-blocking-arms-exports-to-ukraine-due-to-new-foreign-peace-policy/ One of the public broadcasters, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, ran a flippant piece last week advising the Germans how to prepare for the possible power outages ("embrace the romance of candlelight"/ "use it as a time for good family bonding" type of shit) and holllllly shit did the top blow after that piece ran. Full on outrage in the press that we are even having to discuss this possibility. Opposition political figures from across the spectrum, the Left Party, the AfD and the Christian Dems just blasted the existing government for the risk (which was quite rich coming from the CDU given that they have been in power for the last 16 years, but whatever, politics is politics). But the noteworthy element of the protestations was that there wasn't any criticism of the overall dependency on Russia to power German homes and German Industry...that was just treated as a given and as natural as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. Rather, it was about even being in the situation where the German government would risk energy shortages over this AND it was about the Greens alternative energy plans and the folly of moving off of Russian supply so aggessively. Mark my words...if we get rolling power outages here this winter, the existing coalition will not survive. The public will be completely unforgiving of Berlin, as in their minds, 45% tax rates better equal a damn good energy supply. The political wiggle room for Scholz here is effectively zero and the govt desperately wants to avoid having to decide whether to bow to US pressure vs risk energy failure, because they'll go with the energy supply every time in order to save their asses politically.

The West's underestimation of Russia's military and economic situation - at least in public discourse- has been atrocious. It has been oversimplified, at best, and otherwise entirely inaccurate. Their military cannot project like ours, but it is built for this exact conflict and it is as prepared as anyone on planet when it comes to this situation. And they are much more structually prepared for the coming sanctions economically than people want to acknowledge. Foreign Affairs had a really, really good article by some experts on this a couple of months back. Outside of a few blog posts by experts in academia, this is the only time I recall seeing an honest and open deep dive into the actual economic, military and societal state of Russia. Long as fuck, but really good and worth the read, IMO. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2021-10-19/myth-russian-decline It is behind the Foreign Affairs paywall, so here's the full article:

Yep. And Germany denying use of its airspace for the deliveries for all three of the UK flights so far. This has the potential to become a hugely divisive issue within Europe that very well may spill out into the public arena. Germany is completely digging its heels in over this and I don't think any amount of pressure from the US or the EU is going to change it. People will aim their criticism at Germany, but France and Italy are quietly in favor of this position, as well. On a related note...looks like the Germans officially killed the threat to cut off Russia from SWIFT. The Bloomberg piece is much less straighforward than the local German Handelsblatt piece, which says in no uncertain terms that the removal from SWIFT is off the table for the Germans and that no sanctions will be approved by Germany that restrict the ability of Germany to buy Russian oil and gas: Translation of the main piece in the Handelsblatt: Bloomberg paywall, full article quoted below: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-17/u-s-eu-drop-idea-of-removing-russia-from-swift-paper-reports

A big event that the Kremlin will absolutely be following will occur tomorrow when Ukrainian ex-president/opposition leader/chocolate kingpin/oligarch Petro Poroshenko returns to Ukraine from his “month abroad” in Poland and Brussels, just prior to which he was charged with treason/crimes against the Ukrainian state as a result of a deal made for coal with the Donbas separatists under his administration. The increasingly unpopular current president, Vlodomyr Zelensky, is politically desperate at the moment and his justice ministry filed treason charges against Poroshenko for the coal deal and then froze the assets of three national TV stations formerly owned by Poroshenko (he is an oligarch in his own right). That brings to the total amount of TV stations Zelensky has seized/shut down over the past year to 7…some of them Russian-linked, some pro-western but anti-Zelensky, the latter of which are much more problematic to the Europeans and their expectations of a free press in potential EU aspirants. American, Western and East European senior officials have been very clear that they do not appreciate this move by Zelensky and that they view it as completely regarded to play domestic political games at the moment, thus turning the two largest anti-Russian/pro-Western parties in Ukrainian politics against each other at a moment when the Russia issue is so critical (Zelensky is polling in the low 20s, down from the low 50s this time last year; Poroshenko in the mid-high teens as of last polls). Yes, Poroshenko is corrupt, but he is a leading Ukrainian politician, so that goes without saying. However, he certainly is not pro-Russian and, in fact, he is absolutely despised in Moscow due to his hardline anti-Russian positions during his term. The Russians were openly applauding this move by Zelensky, in fact, calling Poroshenko "America's guy in Kiev". Poroshenko led Ukraine during the most intense periods of war with the separatists before losing overwhelmingly to Zelensky a couple years back. The US State Department has also said they do not like what Zelensky is doing here at all. But Zelensky has fucked himself here. If he follows through and arrests Poroshenko tomorrow, its going to be a major misstep and is going to bring even more attention to the Europeans of the continuous corruption and dysfunction of the Ukrainian government. And this one can’t be laid at Russia’s feet. It plays directly into the widely-held European perception of Ukrainian Banana Republicanism, which is an awful look given the international circumstances at the moment. However, if he doesn’t arrest him after indicting him for such a serious charge as treason/collusion with Russia after saying that his government would do so, Zelensky will look very weak (which is an oft-leveled criticism of him) and he will have a very wealthy, very powerful ex-president who badly wants the presidency back traveling the country, blasting Zelensky as weak and making a mockery of the charges. Poroshenko even said on record from Warsaw that he isn't concerned about being arrested, as Zelensky doesn't have the "courage, forces or will" to follow through with an arrest. This is not the image that Ukrainian's expect in a leader at the moment and it is a PR disaster of Zelensky’s own making. Plus, Poroshenko has widely disseminated his flight itinerary to his supporters all over social media and is flying back with a slew of international reporters tomorrow on a commercial flight basically daring Zelensky to follow through with the arrest. So whatever happens is going to be widely covered here, with neither result looking particularly appealing. And if that wasn't bad enough, to make matters worse, his return is coinciding to the hour with German Foreign Minister Baerbock's arrival in Kiev for her own round of meetings, so all the Western media will be on the ground watching this potential shitshow unfold. From Politico Europe: https://www.politico.eu/article/poroshenko-fight-treason-charges-russia-ukraine/

Thanks for this. I am curious about the timing of this publication in the grand scheme of the intra-European developments this week. I imagine that the Russians have always planned on the US backing the Ukrainians in such a manner, given that it is to some degree our standard M.O., and so IMO this is probably something that is more meant for domestic consumption. We have trained/funneled weapons to one side or the other (or both, in some circumstances) of almost every major conflict around the world during the past few decades, so I would be surprised if the Russians were approaching any action in Ukraine with any ideas that a Ukraine invasion would be any exception to this long-standing strategy. On the other hand, I think the West is struggling to present anything meaningful in the way of deterrence right now. Unity is critical here, and unfortunately we are wildly disunited. The Germans have now made it all but official that they will not be killing NS2 under any circumstances, with now the German Defense Minister explicitly stating on Thursday that the territorial issue in Ukraine should be completely de-linked from projects like NS2 "that have no connection to the conflict." That makes almost the entirety of the federal government who have now said no-go on killing NS2, with the exception of Environmental Minister Robert Habeck and Brisket's Sidepiece, who have been essentially castrated on the issue. The Germans also came out last week and said to the Ukrainian ambassador here, "yeah, we aren't unblocking weapons shipments to you all" after the Ukrainians came to Germany and said that Germany has the "same moral obligation towards Ukraine that it does to Israel," which went over here like a lead balloon, specifically of the Hindenburg variety. Additionally, the idea of putting crippling sanctions on Gazprom or cutting Russia off from SWIFT seem to have also lost a lot of steam, with even US agencies advising that the economic blowback of doing this would not just massively impact Europe, but could even risk the economic recovery in the US. Causing a disruption of 40% of European gas supply by depriving Europe of the ability to pay for its imported energy from Russia is a massive, massive gamble in a global economy that is as interlinked as ours. Then they floated that the SWIFT cut-off might only apply to larger state banks in Russia, but that is a hollow threat. If Russian large banks are cut off from SWIFT, I estimate Russia themselves will take the step of voluntarily unplugging the medium and smaller ones as part of retaliatory measures. If Russia has to tie into the alternative SPFS "SWIFT Alternative" that they have set up with China and India for the larger Russian banks, they will tie in their entire banking sector, resulting in a dire situation in Europe, and potentially encouraging the rapid increase in non-dollarized deals by big players in Asia, which the US doesn't want to see happen. That would be a major own-goal. So now, we seem to be talking about sanctioning senior Russian officials like Putin and Lavrov...which is a far, far cry from what was originally being touted as possible options, and the Americans are openly upset with the Europeans about the Europeans reluctance to get on the same page on even these sanctions. This article is a very generous and deferential reading by Bloomberg...big western members of the EU haven't just "raised questions about the impact of the penalties"...they are well aware of the "anwers to those questions" and it is much more likely that at least France, Italy and Germany have rather said explicitly that they aren't going to do them. So, with all of that coming out over the last week, what else do we really have but to publicly pledge to support Ukranian resistance? It signals a solid US commitment to Ukraine and aligns with the domestic expectations of the US electorate. Our options here are not nearly as widespread as we may think with respect to economic sanctions.

Just editing my post way after the fact here to clarify that I was talking about the Ukrainian air power not being up to task vs. the Separatist air defenses. Didn't mean they weren't up to fighting them in the conventional sense, in which they obviously held their own.

Honest question, as I am somewhat removed from the general US political "horserace" discourse and try to avoid it until I absolutely have to, but are there actual rumblings that Carlson might throw his hat in for 2024?

Yeah, that makes sense. If this thing goes hot, they are going to rain down absolute carnage from the sky on Ukrainian positions destroying any form of airpower that the Ukrainians have left. Apparently, current situation is even worse for Ukraine than back in 2014, which was by no means up to the task of fighting the Separatists, much less the Russians. Good article in Forbes on this yesterday. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/01/10/if-russia-invades-ukraine-its-front-line-air-defenses-will-be-the-most-dangerous-in-the-world/?sh=2df3601249a1