• Maeve@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 days ago

    When exactly that will happen is hard to predict because Trump is so erratic and completely changes his mind from one day to the next based on personal whims.

    It depends on if he listens to Miller, who is almost certainly completely delusional (but also extremely cunning and instinctively good at manipulation) or someone more able to distance their logic from their own emotional triggers.

    But for Russia it doesn’t really matter because the current trajectory is entirely in their favor. They have time on their side and the longer this drags the worse Ukraine’s battlefield position gets, and this is currently happening at an accelerated, unprecedented pace.

    Absolutely, and I suspect their finances must be in decent enough shape to play the long game without access to their own money the EU is trying to sort how to slap a sheen of legality on the confiscation of it.

    I’m not going to go into all of that right now and i will put off posting about what is happening on the battlefield until the situation stops changing so rapidly that it is hard to even keep up with, but if i was Ukrainian i would have only one word to describe it, and that’s: catastrophic.

    Yes; someone mentioned some months ago it’s almost enough to conjure sympathy for Zelinsky…not quite though. He was between a rock and hard place and decided to go all in with the Nazis. His head was always on the chopping block, though, he could have chosen to sacrifice himself fighting the good fight and didn’t. And I get it. Odds may have seemed a little different, at the moment of decision.

    Anyway, it is too early to predict specifics, and I appreciate honest acknowledgement much more than bs. Thank you for that.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 days ago

      I suspect their finances must be in decent enough shape to play the long game without access to their own money the EU is trying to sort how to slap a sheen of legality on the confiscation of it.

      I think that’s pretty much a given. I mean they’ve been able to function just fine for three years now without those funds. The reason why I say that Russia is very unlikely to give consent to its frozen reserves being used for Ukraine even in a peace deal that would otherwise be very favorable to Russia is not because they desperately need those funds but because the frozen reserves are a massive poison pill for the Western financial system.

      The way i see it Russia is using that money as bait, as a trap essentially almost daring the Europeans to seize it because that will lead to trust in their entire financial system imploding if they cross that line. This however relies on Russia continuing to insist on its lawful ownership of the frozen reserves. I think however that Russia would secretly be quite happy if the Europeans were to make the enormous strategic blunder of pulling the trigger on that theft.

      And the smarter Europeans understand this. Problem is that Europe is led by a bunch of fanatics right now who might just be desperate and stupid enough to do it against the advice of their own financial and legal experts.

      • Maeve@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 days ago

        I understand you completely, I think.

        I was impressed Belgium spoke truth to power and seemed reasonable, but now they’ve closed their embassy in Cuba, I’m not so confident.