[ninjatalli]

This is a terrific AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit by Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, currently based out of Ukraine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/c...orter_who_has/



Some of his eye-opening reports are also mentioned in the AMA link

- brutal shelling of Ukrainian civilians
- how Ukrainian special forces held off Russian forces
- two-day battle of Voznesensk
- Children paying the price of the war

[lifeinpune]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I predicted this back on March 6th with reasons.

That was prophetic. The Russians seem to be deliberately embarking on a late mover advantage strategy. Looks like they wanted the US to reveal its hand on economic warfare and then respond. I think Russia will not trade its resources in Dollars anymore regardless of how the Ukraine dispute evolves. The only question is about their frozen assets in the US. Its not a trivial amount.

[aim120]

Originally Posted by JithinR

Oh and where exactly are you getting all these reports of Ukrainian defense forces murdering their citizens (knew that the Azov guys were despicable human beings already through twitter but didn't know this problem was more widespread)? Can you link some of them so that we can also read some Russian propaganda once in a while.

Tired of my daily diet of western propaganda.

Telegram channels. If you want russian updates check this
Intel Slava Z. Its in English. Some times the images or video posted may be of corpses from battle.

https://t.me/intelslava

As far as the videos of ukraine armed forces war crimes like torture and civilians being killed its all there in twitter and youtube itself and its not that hard to find. It may be deleted quickly. I only read the comments of the video and never actually watch the videos.

I had posted a twitter link few pages back. Its guaranteed some one would have posted there in one of the twitter replies.

Also check this https://southfront.org/

[Captain Slow]

What angers me is why no one wants to talk about the war in Iraq! How many innocent lives were lost there! Not a single country opened their mouths then.

Check out this documentary by DW NEWS -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r352AVvQRHs&t=12s

[download2live]

Originally Posted by lifeinpune

I think Russia will not trade its resources in Dollars anymore regardless of how the Ukraine dispute evolves. The only question is about their frozen assets in the US. Its not a trivial amount.

US goes to war with countries which refuse to bow before USD. And Biden already has shown his real intentions of wanting Putin to go. I somehow do not see sanctions getting rolled back anytime soon. Or Ukraine allowed to make peace with Russia.

And the big question: Will Russia turn tap off at the end of the month if payments are not made in dollars? EU is saying as per agreements they will not pay in Rubles. Who blinks first?

[Gansan]

Originally Posted by download2live

? EU is saying as per agreements they will not pay in Rubles. Who blinks first?

Who is going to enforce the agreement and where? It is war time and all bets are off. Was freezing of Russian money in European banks a part of agreement anywhere? Russia will treat that as an act of war.

[turbo_delight]

Originally Posted by download2live

US goes to war with countries which refuse to bow before USD. And Biden already has shown his real intentions of wanting Putin to go.

And the big question: Will Russia turn tap off at the end of the month if payments are not made in dollars? EU is saying as per agreements they will not pay in Rubles. Who blinks first?

To answer point 1: Whatever intention US has, it does not have real military guts. It can show military power to only non-nuclear countries. See North Korea. America does not even want to talk about ICMB test.
On the economic sanctions : Had dollar not been universally traded, no countries would be worried about US economic sanctions also.

To answer point 2 : it's simple maths. Per day war cost is around 1 billion. Germany per day imports gas of around 200 million euros. All these approximate numbers I heard in wion. So, now out of 200 million, let's say Russia is making profit of 50%. So, Russia profit per day is 100 million. Even if it switches off German supply for 10 days, his "not profit" is that of equivalent "loss" of 1 day worth of war spend.

It's an option worth trying.

If Europe does not pay in rubles, their supply would be stopped. Their people will be directly impacted. Their economy will be directly impacted.

If Europe chooses to pay in rubles, the petrodollar system will be challenged. US economy will get impacted.

So, US has to force/convince EU to not pay in rubles.
And EU has to convince US to allow them to pay in rubles.

So, Russia has to just wait and watch. War with Ukraine is only a facade. The real war will happen when the tap closes. And that's from tomorrow.

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by download2live

EU is saying as per agreements they will not pay in Rubles. Who blinks first?

As there is no concrete news yet as how the Rubles payment will be made, I feel both parties will test it out till tomorrow mostly. This could be another Russian trap for the West.

Russia is not a democracy and Putin can do what he feels like and he will not back out and bring embarrassment for himself and his country.

EU on the other hand thinks it a bluff or at least are selling that story in the media to not create panic.

All Russia needs to do is switch off the gas for a few hours and EU will come begging to the negotiating table. Looking at what Ukraine is going through a wise person knows it is always a better deal to accept Russia’s demand then go back to them hoping for a better deal the second time around. Russia on the other hand will benefit if the taps are switched off as then they can renegotiate their contracts and can command what they want. At the moment Putin has said pay us in Rubles and we will honour the quantity agreed and at the rate agreed. Non payment means contract is void and they renegotiate the rates as price of energy has doubled in recent times and the contracts in place are on old rates.

This gas issue will push EU and US further apart and can break the EU altogether as some baltic countries want a total energy sanction on Russia but giants like Germany can’t even think of that scenario.

If Germany cannot negotiate a solution tomorrow then there will be protests on the streets as businesses and citizens will suffer and being a democracy the only way they can stop it is by doing what Canada did who punished the people conducting the peaceful truck protests and the citizens who funded them by calling them terrorists and freezing their bank accounts.

Russia knows payment in rubles is not possible unless sanctions are taken off and US controls the SWIFT system and won’t allow it. Also under sanctions they can’t buy or sell gold from international market, but have started buying gold in their domestic market at a fixed price.



So, can russia price the Gas in rubles and ask buyers to pay 1gm of physical gold for every 5,000 rubles? Since it is physical gold it doesn’t need to go through the SWIFT system for payments and also the price of gold has been kept much cheaper than the current prevailing international rates. Just a thought.

I had said earlier that Russia is a commodities giant and world will pay a higher price for sanctioning them. They have started off with Gas, which will be followed if successful with Oil, Coal and Uranium. Uranium will be a interesting one as US imports a good amount from Russia for generating electricity from
their nuclear power plants.

[vishnurp99]

Originally Posted by JithinR

Especially now that Putin has got his buddy Yevgeny Prigozhin (known as Putin's cook) the owner of Wagner (or Liga or whatever they call themselves these days) mercenary group to send in 1000 additional troops into Ukraine.

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-w...s-mod-12577183

Think of these guys as the Russian equivalent of the Blackwater group.

According to various media reports, Blackwater and it's successor organizations are already active in Ukraine. Just google for Ukraine + blackwater and you will see what I am talking about. Both of these groups specialise in covert assassinations. So it will be a painful time for Ukraine and all of Europe. Americans are probably safe because of the Atlantic.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/arti...mmander-claims

On another note, I don't think it will be easy for Putin to turn off the gas to European countries. The gas willl need to be stored somewhere and I don't think they have the storage capacity to keep all of this gas.

[Foxbat]

What the Russians were saying all along, first they blocked all Russian new sources and then finally report the truth themselves :

Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...sia-civilians/

[turbo_delight]

Ruble vs Usd : Ruble gaining its losses after 24th March.

Somebody started buying Ruble after 24th. For sure Germany. Other countries might also by buying.

[JithinR]

Originally Posted by turbo_delight

To answer point 1: Whatever intention US has, it does not have real military guts. It can show military power to only non-nuclear countries. See North Korea. America does not even want to talk about ICMB test.

It's not just the US that doesn't want to confront nuclear powered adversaries. Even the great Soviet Union when it was part of the Warsaw Pact had a plan called "7 days to Rhine" which essentially fleshed out a simulated war strategy that would be activated incase NATO used tactical nukes against them.

The plan involved Russian launching it's own tactical nukes in response and then marching across the nuclear wasteland () to capture NATO allied territory till the Rhine river in 7 days. Land that would eventually be used as a bargaining chip with NATO during peace talks.

Interestingly the plan mentioned bombing countries that didn't have nuclear weapons of their own to retaliate to Russian attacks.

[deetee]

Ruble is trading at 83.38 to USD. With these kind of news flowing in, we can expect dollar to weaken further.


As members predicted, these sanctions may gradually erode the petrodollar. But I am afraid, these changes are not going to be smooth as Uncle Sam will try all his might to protect dollar dominance.

[thanixravindran]

Originally Posted by SnS_12

Russia knows payment in rubles is not possible unless sanctions are taken off and US controls the SWIFT system and won’t allow it. Also under sanctions they can’t buy or sell gold from international market, but have started buying gold in their domestic market at a fixed price.

So, can russia price the Gas in rubles and ask buyers to pay 1gm of physical gold for every 5,000 rubles? Since it is physical gold it doesn’t need to go through the SWIFT system for payments and also the price of gold has been kept much cheaper than the current prevailing international rates. Just a thought.

SnS_12 - I thought Russian trade is settled in Euros with Europe including oil and gas. Is it not the case? I got that the oil/gas will be based on USD price and needs SWIFT system through which payment is made but the real transactions happen in Euros and then it will be converted to USD for other trade by Russia. Is it correct?

But I read Europe has its own payment/settlement system called TARGET for trade in Euro which is based on SWIFT. If Russia is looking for Rubles as payment, how will the settlement be done? Will it be in that Russian equivalent system to SWIFT?

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

If Russia is looking for Rubles as payment, how will the settlement be done? Will it be in that Russian equivalent system to SWIFT?

Currently the EU pays for gas mostly in Euro followed by USD and a small % in Sterling. The contracts have a fixed price for gas and the currency in which it will be paid at.

In the current scenario the western payment system allows for Energy payments which includes Oil, gas, coal, uranium. These payments get directly deposited in the currency denominated bank accounts of companies supplying it in Russia. But now Russia wants the money to be deposited in the ruble accounts and not Euro or USD accounts as was the case earlier. So, these countries now have to arrange/buy rubles but why will Russian central banks sell the EU Rubles against Euro or USD as they can’t use this currency to buy anything useful because of sanctions.

Finally countries will only deal in alternate payment system from SWIFT unless they want to bypass the sanctions as one could transfer rubles even through SWIFT before the sanctions came into play. So unless a company/country is wiring money to Russia for something that is included on the sanctions list then the banks will not process it.

Originally Posted by deetee

As members predicted, these sanctions may gradually erode the petrodollar. But I am afraid, these changes are not going to be smooth as Uncle Sam will try all his might to protect dollar dominance.

Just the fact that countries are thinking/planning to do this is enough to lower the global confidence in the US$. All that uncle Sam can do is threaten them with sanctions or bribe them with weapons or US$. Not sure people will fancy holding US$ going forward.