IanGould

  Close to two thirds of Russia's oil refining capacity is off line. Production has fallen from around 7 million to around 3.3 million bpd. The refiners are saying that's because of problems exporting refined oil due to sanctions and payment problems etc. BUT, Russia's peace-time petrol consumption is around 3.6 million barrels per day. That's in peace time - when they aren't trying to supply a massive ground offensive in Ukraine. They may be able to get some petrol from Kakazhstan or other friendly states but I doubt it's enough to make up the deficit. This leads to a theory about the limited use of Russian airpower - they don't have enough avgas to support their entire fleet. Russian oil refineries like other Russian industries depend heavily on imported components even in peace time. This is why stuff like Shell withdrawing from Russia is significant. News report on Russian refineries idling capacity https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia...

 "Ukraine killed 14,000 civilians in Donbas" Well, no. Approximately 14,000 people died in Donbas as a result of the war there initiated by Putin.  But that included just under 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers and jut under 6,000 Russian and separatist troops. The 3,000 civilian deaths incude those killed by Russian forces. Not included are any deaths due to exposure or lack of medical care among the 1.5 million refugees who fled Donbas to unoccupied Ukraine  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas

  Why the US isn't going to cease to be the world's primary reserve currency any time soon and why if it does the Euro would likely replace it. The US dollar represents more than 50% of official foreign reserves around the world. The Euro represents around 15%. The Yuan (AKA the Renminbi) represents around 2.5%. The British Pound represents about double that and both the Australian and Canadian dollar aren't far behind the Yuan. https://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A4

  The Gulf monarchies are contemptible in many ways but at least they're trying to make some provision for a post-oil future. The Emiratis and Qataris are investing in a services economy as exemplified by companies like Etihad Air and Al Jazeera. The Saudis are investing in solar energy and in science and technology. The King Abdullah City of Science and Technology is emerging as a word-class research centre. Russia has done virtually nothing like that. What money wasn't simply stolen and sent abroad was spent on a military machine that is now collapsing in Ukraine. Much of the money that was sent abroad will likely end up being confiscated and used to rebuild Ukraine. None of this benefits the Russian people who, as the oil money runs out, will face increasing difficulty in developing an alternative economic base. Think about the entirely deserved reputation the Gulf elites earned over decades for extravagance and waste. Now think about the fact that Putin and his accomplices...

 Semi-random Notes on Ukraine  1. If the attempt to take Hostomel airport and fly additional forces in had succeeded those predictions of a rapid Ukrainian collapse might have been correct. 2. That convoy that sat on the road outside Kiev for abut two week was a resupply convoy - lots of trucks, minimal tanks and artillery. It was supposed to link up with and resupply the forces landing at Hostomel. The reason the Ukrainians made minimal attempts to attack it was that it effectively blocked the highway, denying it to other Russian units. By now, the food and fuel they were supposed to be delivering has probably been exhausted feeding the convoy itself. Admittedly that still leaves ammo, spare parts etc. 3. The key difference between Putin's regime and, say, Kruschchev's is that the Politburo had the power to remove Kruschchev and they'd all risen to the top based, at least in part, on their own ability. I hate to keep using the H-word, but Putin is more like Hitler in that...

  Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist. He spent most of the 1930's opposing Polish rule in western Ukraine. In 1941, when Germany invaded Ukraine he issued a Ukrainian Declaration of Independence which was heavily promoted in German propaganda. By 1942, Germany controlled most of Ukraine and consequently wanted Bandera to rescind his Declaration of Independence and support direct German rule. When he refused to do, Germany sent him to concentration camp where he spent the next two years. In 1944, faced with the imminent loss of Ukraine, the Nazis freed him and sent to Ukraine to organize resistance to reincorporation into the Soviet Union. In 2009 Yushkovych the outgoing pro-Russian President declared Bandera a "Hero of Ukraine". A subsequent pro-independence anti-Russian government revoked that title. A later attempt to restore that title was rejected in 2019 by the Ukrainian Rada after Zelenskkyy's party took control of the Rada. That's the essential tr...

  This is the insignia of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It's what's on the army fatigues President Zelenskyy wears, which idiots keep misrepresenting as a Nazi Iron Cross. While he never served in the military, Zelenskyy is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Ukraine and as such is entitled to wear it. The design was adopted a decade ago, well before Zelenskyy was elected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emblem_of_the_Ukrainian_Armed_Forces.svg

  In 2014, the population of the areas of the Donbas later occupied by Russia was just under four million. When Russia invaded, approximately 1.6 million people fled to unoccupied Ukraine. That's according to the International Organization for Migration. https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/situation_reports/file/IOM-Ukraine-IDP-Assistance-Report-November-2015.pdf Several hundred thousand more people from Donbas fled to Russia or to third countries. Now, according to the Russian government, the population of the occupied regions of Donbas is ... just under four million. https://www.dsnews.ua/static/longread/donbas-eng/demography-of-ordlo.html#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20those%20calculations%20are%20presented%20in%20the%20table.&text=According%20to%20the%20above%20data,which%20are%20now%20under%20occupation . How is that possible? Did the people who left return? No. Russia paid people from Russia to move to the region. So when you hear "Ukraine is attacking i...

 Why I think sanctions are likely to stay on Russia for a extended period. Well first, Biden just called Putin a war criminal and Ukrainian officials are talking about wanting him sent to The Hague for trial. Other western leaders are being somewhat more circumspect but I think there's a growing consensus that as long as Putin remains in power and in possession of nuclear weapons he's a threat. (Side note: lots of British and American politicians cosied up with German in the 1930's. Once war came, those same politicians were among the most vociferous in condemning Germany in order to deflect any suspicion of collaboration. We're seeing the same thing now with Republicans and British Conservatives. Congressional Republicans who voted against aid for Ukraine literally a week ago are now voting for a No Fly Zone.) For his part, Putin is doubling down on threatening "traitors and scum". Even if there's a peace agreement, he's likely to launch a massive pur...

Do people genuinely not understand the difference between "biological labs" and "biological weapons labs"? Remember when the US claimed that food safety testing vans in Iraq were "mobile bioweapon labs" in the lead up to the 2003 US invasion? This is exactly like that. We know that at various points in the past, the US, the UK and the USSR had active bioweapons programs. Each program had a small number of highly secure sites within their own territory - Fort Deitrich in the US, Porton Down in the UK, Komsomolskiy Island in the USSR. Why would you build 36 separate facilities in another country? In total, the US supports over 300 biological labs in different countries. This is an insane and ludicrously excessive number of bioweapon facilities and yet some people are claiming these are all bioweapons facilities. For starters, if you're dealing with really dangerous human pathogens you need a Level 4 biolab, meaning you have , in effect, airlocks on ...

  Not only does the US have secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine they have them in Russia too! For 10 years, these activities have been referred to by DOD as the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) and have been implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). They have been carried out in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2007. The Biological Threat Reduction Program of the Department of Defense: From Foreign Assistance to Sustainable Partnerships. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/12005 .

  Russia's threatening to confiscate the assets of foreign companies that leave Russia. Sure they can do that. Then the US and Britain can use the $350 billion in frozen Russian government foreign currency reserves to compensate those companies. Then they can sell the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs and confiscate the foreign assets of Russian companies. That will leave Russia with a bunch of businesses which are mostly dependent on technology, parts and key personnel from overseas. Also, no foreign investor, including those from countries not currently sanctioning Russia will invest in Russia for the next 20 years. Because, sure, today it's the US and EU but are you if you run an Indian or Chinese firm are you going to take the risk that Putin won't fall out with the Indian or Chinese governments next? But, hey, Putin's being gradually renationalizing the Russian economy for years - mainly by having listed but majority-state owned banks and energy companies buying u...

  Svoboda is a Ukrainian far right political party. It is often described as Neo-Nazi but they expelled all overt NeoNazis in the early 2000's. Despite this they continue to be racist, authoritarian and ultranationalsitic. In 2012, before the Euromaidan revolution, they won 10% of the vote and 38 seats in the Rada. In the 2014 Ukrainian election, despite having played a role in Euromaidan, they scored just under 5% of the vote and won 6 seats in the Rada. In the 2019 election, they ran a joint ticket with other far right parties. They got 2% of the vote and won a single seat in the Rada. Their presidential candidate got 1.6% of the vote. It sure sounds like the Ukrainians were doing a fine job of denazifying themselves. Or maybe Servant of the People, Zelenskyy's party are the Nazis. Well, lets see, they're a member of ALDE, the federation of European centre-left parties. Currently Ireland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Belgium and Luxembourg have Prime Min...

 The Real Ukrainian Threat to Russia Russia's GDP per capita at PPP nearly doubled in Putin's first ten years in office. since then it's essentially stagnated. This data cuts off before COVID and the current war and sanctions. currently things are probably significantly worse. (Purchasing Power Parity compensates for changes in exchange rates and essentially measures what your income can purchase inside Russia, Because of the collapse in the Ruble the fall in nominal GDP (i.e. measured in US dollars at current exchange rates) is much, much worse. That overstates how much ordinary Russians have been affected - unless they want to travel abroad or buy imported goods. The thing is though: Russia's population is still falling. Russians are not getting any better off. Russia should be an economic and cultural superpower, a key exponent of soft power. But that would require an open society, free speech, free media and an end to massive corruption. None of that is possibl...

  Nikkei survey says China's GDP will grow 5.1% in 2022 (1), Moody's say 4.8%. Morgan Stanley says 5.5% (2). Given the uncertainties involved - such as whether China can avoid much larger COVID outbreaks and how the Evergrande bankruptcy and the related showdown in the Chinese property market - the difference between the two figures hardly matter. Nor does it really matter that China's official GDP figures are almost definitely overstated. Lots of foreign banks and economists have constructed shadow indices to estimate Chinese GDP based on stuff like market indices and share volume; inbound and outbound tourism numbers (that one'll take hit this year), home sales; car registrations, loan and bank deposit growth and import and export volumes and values. There's a pretty good consensus that you can deduct about 1% from Chinese official GDP numbers to arrive at the real figure.     It's worth noting that the CPC Politburo broke with tradition by not announcing a fo...