Ukraine Invaded by the Russians - April to August 2022

jdsmith · June 6, 2022, 4:34pm

I’ll raise you.

TT · June 7, 2022, 1:40am

Putin continues winning through genius. The destruction of tanks so far in Ukraine was a clever way to manufacture an excuse to get rid of these old tanks. Why pay for storage of old weapons when you can use them to soak up expensive modern weapons? And at the cheap cost of Russian soldiers, who are easy for him to replace!

Ancient Russian T-62 Tanks Spotted Wearing Cage Armor In Ukraine

slawa · June 7, 2022, 1:45am

Those Russians stole the idea from Taiwanese cage armored windows! How dare they!
Those are essential to keep the occupants inside when there is an unexpected fire.

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Charlie_Jack · June 7, 2022, 2:35am

This YouTube video, apparently originating from a Journal de 20 heures (20h) news program, seems to show the transferred French CAESAR 155mm self-propelled howitzers in combat operations in Donbas. The video contains images of corpses, and is therefore not suitable for viewing at work, or by children or other potentially vulnerable persons.

Additionally, Poland has transferred KRAB self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine.

The below appears to contain a listing of artillery-type weaponry which has been sent to Ukraine from various sources:

KHHville · June 7, 2022, 3:43am

Everything appears to be normal in Europe. Nothing to see. Move on.

chilifries · June 7, 2022, 4:23am

Russian criminals got their feelings hurt a bit, it seems.

Charlie_Jack · June 7, 2022, 5:01am

From the Facebook page of Serhiy Haidai, Governor of Luhansk:

Gain · June 7, 2022, 5:22am

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1533800802657124352

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russias-may-auto-sales-down-835-year-year-says-aeb-2022-06-06/

Isn’t the Russian economy doing amazing

More than 30k cars were sold in May in Taiwan and that’s a bad month. Russia has 140 million people. But, you know, sanctions are hurting the West more

Charlie_Jack · June 7, 2022, 5:50am

Either things have changed very rapidly or the situation is merely unclear:

–NHK World-Japan News, Monday, June 6, 12:08 p.m. (UTC)

The Washington Post has two different articles by different authors, bearing something close to the same date and time, and which say roughly the same thing about the situation in Severodonetsk. Things are already confusing enough, so I’ll just use one of the articles.

–Karoun Demirjian and Julian Duplain, “Ukraine’s position has ‘worsened’ in fight for Severodonetsk,” Washington Post, June 6, 2022 at 7:43 p.m. EDT (11:43 p.m. UTC), updated June 6, 2022 at 10:17 p.m. EDT (June 7, 2:17 a.m. UTC)

hansioux · June 7, 2022, 6:01am

Can’t believe I only realized now that most old apartment buildings in Taiwan are missile proof.

Brianjones · June 7, 2022, 6:09am

Nobody is saying its normal, there’s a major war going on at borders of the EU and its effects are obvious to everybody. Inflation now is even worse than the 1970s.

Not sure what your point is are you denigrating them for preparing ahead?

What is your point exactly?
You could end up doing the same one day in Taiwan.

Mick · June 7, 2022, 6:29am

this guys channel seems to have good reporting with sources on the ground. He had an earlier video where he described what was going on in Severodonetsk as a bit of going back and forth but updates that with todays video, more ascribing the Ukrainian counter offensive as news intended to boost morale.

Charlie_Jack · June 7, 2022, 7:17am

Since reading your post, I’ve been giving him a listen. But I feel obliged to note that it seems that Mr. Mercouris has on occasion in the past been–to borrow a euphemism from Rudyard Kipling–economical with the truth.

That having been noted, I’m no saint myself, and I’m not saying that his opinion about the current situation in the war is not correct. For all I know, things could very well turn out to be in harmony with his assessment of the matter.

Anyway, I’m gonna go back and listen to him some more. It’s good to hear more than one view.

KHHville · June 7, 2022, 8:26am

Welcome back to IP, we missed yah.

Brianjones · June 7, 2022, 8:27am

I didn’t

QuaSaShao · June 7, 2022, 8:40am

That’s what I’m talking about . . .

Charlie_Jack · June 7, 2022, 8:59am

He certainly has a lot to say about finance/economics and the food supply (from around 7:38 to around 15:26 on the video you posted–please don’t be surprised if there are errors–maybe even big ones–in my transcription):

But the main subject of my video today is going to be a video–a, a–rather an interview that Russian President Putin gave to Rossiya Television,^{1? or 2? or 3? or some other outfit?} in which he discussed the food crisis. And he wanted to go out of his way to say that as far as he’s concerned, the food crisis is not his responsibility and not Russia’s responsibility. Now, he says that–he makes some very interesting general observations about the general economic situation in the world; about the food situation in, uh–around the world, and about the energy crisis. And as one might expect, he’s putting the blame entirely for everything that’s going wrong on Western leaders. And having said that, I do think he makes some interesting points, and as it’s very difficult to now reach or read, um, interviews that Putin gives, I’m going to actually read out what i consider to be the relevant extracts.

So this is what, uh, Putin says about the general food situation, and how it’s come about about, and, um, and about the economic situation as well. And from this point on I’m going to be quoting his exact words. He says–and this is starting with the global food market–he says the following:

First, the situation with the global food market did not become worse yesterday, or even with the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Donbas in Ukraine. The situation took a downturn in February 2020 during the efforts to counter the pandemic, when the global economy was down and had to be revived. The financial and economic authorities in the United States found nothing better than to allocate large amounts of money to support the population and certain businesses and economic sectors. We, generally, in Russia, did almost the same thing, but I assure you that we were much more accurate, and the results are obvious. We did this selectively and got the desired results without affecting macroeconomic indicators, including excessive inflation growth.

The situation was quite different in the United States. The money supply in the United States grew by 5.9 trillion dollars in less than two years, from February 2020 to the end of 2021. Unprecedented productivity of the money-printing machines, the total cash supply grew by 38.6 percent. Apparently the financial authorities believed the dollar was a global reserve currency, and it would spread as usual, as it did in previous years, would dissolve in the global economy, and the United States would not even feel it. But that did not happen–not this time. As a matter of fact, decent people–and there are such people in the United States–the Secretary of the Treasury recently said they made a mistake. So it was a mistake made by the United States financial and economic authorities. It has nothing to do with us, or with our actions in Ukraine. It is totally unrelated. And that was the first step, and a big one towards the current unfavorable food market situation: because in the first place, food prices immediately went up. They grew. This is the first reason.

The second reason, with the European countries’ short-sighted policies, and above all, the European Commission’s policy in regard to energy. We see what is going there. Personally I believe that many political players in the United States and Europe have been taking advantage of people’s natural concerns about the climate, climate change, and they began to promote this green agenda, including in the energy sector. It seems fine, except for the unqualified and groundless recommendations about what needs to be done in the energy sector. The capabilities of alternative types of energy are overestimated–solar, wind, any other types, hydrogen power–there are good prospects for the future, probably, but not today. They cannot be produced in the required amount, with required quality, and acceptable prices.

And at the same time, they began to belittle the importance of conventional types of energy, and above all, hydrocarbons. What was the result of this? Banks stopped issuing loans, because they were under pressure. Insurance companies stopped insuring deals. Local authorities stopped allocating plots of land for expanding production, reduced the construction of special transports, including pipelines. All this led to a shortage of investment in the world energy sector, and price hikes as a result. The wind was not as expected during the past year, winter dragged on, and prices instantly soared. On top of that, the Europeans did not listen to our persistent requests to preserve long-term contracts for the delivery of natural gas to European countries. They started to wind them down. Many are still valid that [or but] they started winding them down. This had a negative effect on the European energy market, the prices went up. Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this.

But as soon as gas prices started going up, fertilizer prices followed suit, because gas is used to produce some of these fertilizers. Everything is interconnected. As soon as fertilizer prices started growing, many businesses, including those in European countries, became unprofitable, and started shutting down altogether. The amount of fertilizer in the world market took a dive, and prices soared dramatically, much to the surprise of many European politicians. However, we warned them about this, and this is not linked to Russia’s military operation in Donbas in any way. This has nothing to do with it. But when we launched our operation, our so-called European and American partners started taking steps that aggravated the situation in both the food and fertilizer production. But Russia accounts for 25 percent of the world fertilizer market, as to potash fertilizers. Alexander Lukashenko told me this, but we should double-check it, of course, although I think it’s true. When it comes to potash fertilizers, Russia and Belarus acquired [sic] for 45 percent of the world market.

The crop yield depends on the quality of fertilizer put into the soil. As soon as it became clear that our fertilizers would not be in the world market, prices instantly soared on both fertilizers and food products, because if there are no fertilizers, it is impossible to produce the required amount of food. One thing leads to another, and Russia has nothing to do with this.

The video wasn’t finished, and I’m not sure the Putin quote was finished, but as you can see, if those words really are Putin’s, then Putin really has something to say on a number of subjects.

tempogain · June 7, 2022, 9:05am

The Ukrainians have a long history of insurgent warfare. That history coincides with times when it wasn’t a country and it was always a losing battle ultimately.

QuaSaShao · June 7, 2022, 9:45am

The difference is a pipeline of state of the art weaponry, intelligence, medicine, and food from the West.

jdsmith · June 7, 2022, 9:59am

Why not just have Kissinger back in the Cabinet if he’s going to be calling the shots.

And this. How could they support Russia, and Putin? Are they Nazis?

https://archive.ph/pfUEs

European companies have almost doubled their shipments of Russian oil since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, despite desperate efforts by EU leaders to squeeze the Kremlin war machine by blocking Russia’s exports from global markets.

Campaigners said EU-based shipping firms had made a “mockery” of plans to sanction Russia, and warned that a partial oil embargo announced this week would do little to hurt Mr Putin or shorten the war.

The damning assessment came as exclusive new analysis, seen by The Independent , showed the extent to which shipping firms based in Greece, Cyprus and Malta had ramped up their transport of Russian oil around the world in recent weeks, taking advantage of big jumps in rates for tanker cargos.

The shipments have swelled Mr Putin’s coffers by billions of dollars in oil revenue, providing vital funds for Russia’s brutal war, the figures show.

Defund this “war.”