Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 53

On March 15 2022 22:47 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
There are numerous ways this can go wrong very quickly.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1503725201481211905

On March 15 2022 19:06 gobbledydook wrote:
I wonder what is happening to Russians that are now stuck in Ukraine.
Are they being viewed suspiciously by the native Ukrainians? How about dual nationals?

On March 15 2022 22:55 Vivax wrote:


Not gonna lie, would be kinda funny if they got a rifle handed to them and ended up on the front lines.
How are they gonna show support otherwise? Waving flags?Stripteases?

On March 15 2022 23:02 deacon.frost wrote:

Handshaking, selfies, talks, promises and saying they will not support creating the NFZ or sending any army into the conflict.

On March 15 2022 23:07 Vivax wrote:


That'll help!

Unlucky day too if you're superstitious, today's the ides of march.

PRAGUE -- Slovak authorities have broken a Russian spying network that was operating on Slovak territory, officials said on Tuesday.

“We’re talking about serious cases,” Lipsic said. “It’s about a long term, paid cooperation with the Russian military intelligence service" (known as GRU).

The two are accused of seeking out and gathering highly sensitive, strategic and classified information about Slovakia, its armed forces and NATO and handed them over to undercover GRU officers who were based at the Russian Embassy in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, in exchange for money, Hamran said. He said such a case has not been known in Slovakia before.


One of the two charged men was pro-rector and the head of the Security and Defense Department at the Armed Forces Academy in the northern town of Liptovsky Mikulas. The officials identified him as Pavel B., and said he had secret contacts with four GRU officers dating to 2013.

On March 15 2022 23:10 deacon.frost wrote:

Well, on the brider side of the things Slovakian PM has some good news

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/slovaks-charge-spying-russias-military-service-83454193

Damn, this was hard to find in English, our media went crazy over this.

On March 15 2022 23:17 Amanebak wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if certain people around our president were soon charged with espionage too.

On March 15 2022 22:47 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
There are numerous ways this can go wrong very quickly.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1503725201481211905

On March 16 2022 02:43 plasmidghost wrote:
Would anyone be able to enlighten me or speculate on what this meeting could accomplish? I imagine that it could be more sanctions, but am curious about anything else

https://twitter.com/USNATO/status/1503778365442043914

With Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack against Ukraine, political analysts are now reassessing the long and deeply complicated relationship the Russian leader had with ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and how Moscow came to hold so much sway over the rest of Europe.

The former German leader was known for speaking Russian and keeping diplomatic ties with Putin. It was also during her term that Germany stepped up its energy links to Moscow and kept its national defense spending to a minimum.

But, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has now led to a dramatic shift in German politics.

New Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “forceful policy shifts is a firm repudiation of the core of Merkel’s foreign economic policy,” Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank, told CNBC via email.

“Germany’s foreign economic policy is no longer predicated on ‘Russia being a stability oriented actor,’ but instead an aggressive imperialist power,” Kirkegaard added.

Scholz announced a halt on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline after Russia’s first military moves into two breakaway regions of Ukraine in late February. Nord Stream 2, which started being built in 2018 during Merkel’s chancellorship, is seen as a controversial project which was meant to bring additional gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, circumnavigating counties like Ukraine and Poland.

Merkel’s “big failure” was not reversing those economic links and energy projects in the wake of Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, said Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations think tank.

In fact, Merkel kept her backing for the gas pipeline in place, despite concerns from Ukraine and other countries, notably the U.S. The German chancellery was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC Monday.

Germany’s gas imports from Russia amounted to around 36% of its total in 2010, which rose to a roughly 65% share by 2020, according to figures from Eurostat.

Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at H.E.C. Paris Business School, said: “No other country has downplayed Russia’s rebellious stance towards the world order as Merkel’s Germany.”

“It is Nord Stream 2 which epitomizes Merkel’s appeasement approach towards Russia, to the point of embodying today all what was wrong with Germany’s stance towards Russia. By establishing an unnecessary relationship of interdependence with Vladimir Putin, Merkel’s Germany made him stronger while weakening the whole of Europe and NATO,” Alemanno added.

Scholz initially appeared careful with his stance toward Nord Stream 2 since he took power in December. However, as tensions with Russia worsened, he announced a halt on the certification of the pipeline as many political analysts had been expecting.

More recently, as Russia advanced its invasion of Ukraine, Scholz said Berlin would be sending weapons to Ukraine and would be stepping up government investments on defense. The move signaled a major shift in a German defense policy that’s been in place since the end of World War II that prevented the exporting of locally made weapons to conflict zones.

“Merkel underspent,” Schwarzer said, both toward NATO and the EU. “Part of the [new] money is not a new strategy, but the recognition that we need to do more,” she said, noting that the German army is “in a bad shape.”