Join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks: Subscribe today for as little as $7/month
Already have an account? log in
Meanwhile, In Ukraine News…
Ukraine invaded Russia the other day which is -- you know -- funny.
That's not to say the war's funny. War's never funny. Rather, war's hell. But it's funny that two and a half years into Vladimir Putin's invasion, he's now being invaded himself. As of mid-week, Ukraine occupied some two-dozen Russian villages in the Kursk region, where more than 100,000 people lived, however briefly, under Ukrainian military rule.
The surprise attack found Volodymyr Zelensky's army capturing around 500 square
1- I support Ukraine in all aspects and wish we’d be more vigorous in helping them… Both parties seemed (10 days ago) to reach exhaustion, which meant a breakthrough could have happened on either side and turn fairly massive quickly. I’m very impressed with what the Ukrainians were able to achieve in Kursk but I’d have thought it safer to try and push along the border, to turn Russian lines in Ukraine. Here, invading and occupying Russian territory is technically a genuine casus belli for the use of nukes. Still, ’till a nuclear strike hit Ukraine, I’m goddam happy for them bloodying Putin’s nose like that.
2- I read on X (yeah, I know) that China acknowledged one of his ship was responsible for the damage on the pipeline but argued it was an accident. It didn’t make sense but do we have a firm debunking of that ‘news’?
3- Trump losing his mind is fucking hilarious. I hope he keeps melting down in public. I loved Jon Steward’s point. The Republicans are mad we switched our old man. To be even handed, we’ll allow them to swap their old man too… 🙂
I was certainly wrong about Nordstream. My heuristic, a consequence of repeated occurences of Kreml’s behavior, is that the Kreml lies whenever it perceives an advantage in doing so. My expectations were set to that end, but it turns out Occam’s Razor is all that was needed in this case.
The official Ukrainian story so far about the reasons for the invasion of Kursk (and Belgorod) is to institute a buffer zone against Russian bombings (plainly: terrorism) in the border areas. The conquest is certainly also a bag of bargaining chips if it can be held until the war is ended; the reasoning that Russia has occupied a lot of Ukrainian soil, and hence a compromise is needed that lets Putin walk away with some of it, is prevalent in Western circles, completely unreasonable as it is, and also ignorant to the fact rewarding a fascist dictator approaching Hitler’s calibre of violence for his conquest would be a grave long term Western policy error.
A key strategic advantage is the ability of the Ukrainians to better shape the battlefield to their liking and strengths on this new front. The heavy armor received from the West has not exactly excelled at trench drone warfare. The slow grinding mammoth offensive of the Russians in the eastern theatre has effectivly tied down the weaker opposing forces’ options, even though as it was unclear whether the huge Russian losses it takes could be sustained. Finally, a Ukrainian morale boost was sorely needed with support for Zelensky and keeping on fighting dwindling the last year.
Complete aside: today it seems that I can’t copy or spellcheck my own comment text prior to hitting the post button… weird.
It’s funny seeing all the “Let’s Go Brandon” merch rendered pointless.
Anyway, Russia is a federation of a lot of regions that aren’t particularly loyal to Putin’s regime or even the “governing” ethnic Russians. It’d be a real shame if Russia’s military got spread so thin that some of those regions decided they’d like to do their own thing. Or worse, maybe China decides that some of the fresh water resources in southeastern Russia need to be ‘secured.’ Just for safe keeping.