Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "FRANCE 24 English" channel.

The key to Putin's latest plan -- say Plan Z -- is the 1st Guards Tank Army. It had been vectored straight towards Kyiv -- back in March -- but it's now driving straight south out of Izyum. You just know that its ranks are filled with fire eaters. It's a prestige outfit, a path to the highest ranks. Yet, Zelenskyy's boys have been just tearing it up. Gerasimov almost lost his life visiting the boys -- to buck them up. (Or was he mortally wounded ?) The flank of this advance is now being shot up with long range howitzer fires -- almost certainly with smart munitions. These must be shocking to the Russians, quite demoralizing. The 1st Guards Tank Army is the main thrust -- not the boys off to the east. The Ukrainians are deliberately giving ground there so that it's impossible for them to be put in a bag. A controlled retreat, while under fire, shows extreme professionalism by the Ukrainian generals. Putin's crew is being bled to death. Biden signed Lend-Lease -- so Kyiv will soon have no end of smart munitions. Putin has actually lost his war... probably knows it... hence the subdued recent celebration of May 9th. He can't bear to run up White Russian casualties -- as their demographics are driving all of his thinking. If he were to call up levée en masse -- White Russian fatalities would surely explode -- and take down Putin's regime by popular rage. His immediate, ready, reserves are stuffed silly with his repression goons. He needs them to stay right where they are.
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Unprepared talking-heads: Putin CAN'T export oil from St. Petersburg to India, let alone Red China. The ships carrying his exports (usually) don't have the bunker capacity to make the transit... and no-one along the route is willing to refuel them... or permit others to do so in their waters. Further, Putin's pipelines (at issue) terminate in the ex-Warsaw Pact lands. Putin's oligopoly position has run into Europe's monopsony position. Putin will HAVE TO semi-permanently shut many oil wells. Many will go out of production -- forever. ('Cricket-pumps' and 'christmas trees' all need expensive maintenance -- non-stop. Most crude is quite corrosive.) The ships that could make the transit, can't enter the Gulf of Finland -- they are THAT deep. Putin would have to come up with some sort of kludge-up off the shore of Kaliningrad... cross-shifting crude into VLCCs. But then, Putin doesn't own any VLCCs. The nations with the ships hate Putin. They all thrive by the grace of the USN. He'd HAVE to turn to Xi to get his ships... becoming his vassal -- over vessels. (!)
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When the Dutch first landed, centuries ago, there were virtually no locals. Cape Town was empty. Western South Africa is -- essentially -- a semi-desert. ( Cape Town has been in water crisis for years.) All of the locals lived east, high in the mountains or even further off to the east coast -- where rain permitted plants to grow strongly, year round. Black Africans -- all tribes -- had Big Problems with the wildlife -- which had long adapted to humanity -- over the last few million years. (The San. ) The Dutch changed everything with their long guns. The Dutch were hyper-liberal -- and never practiced slavery -- and did not force locals off their turf. It wouldn't have worked if they had tried -- being so few in number -- and much further from Holland than the British colonists in America. Back then it was taking practically half-a-year to sail from Europe to Southern Africa. ( Everyone waited for the seasons to line up in the age of sail. ) The Boers simply settled where no-one lived -- where the Big Beasts made life impossible for humanity -- until their long guns changed everything. And, with that, Black tribes started migrating in -- from hundreds of miles away. Americans conflate American history with that of the Boers. They shouldn't. American migrants circled their wagons to hold off the natives; Boer migrants circled theirs to hold off the wildlife. What a difference. The British imperialists ( Chamberlain ) oppressed the Black tribes and conquered the Boers -- all for diamonds and gold.
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Absurd! The Internet is still with us -- everyone. No-one can stop talking. Moscow is just turning into Pyongyang.
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That's one way to describe a retreat. Pulling heavy howitzers away from bombarding Ukraine's second-largest city was not part of the Big Plan.
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@buttert5091 Not really, OPEC would LOVE to see Putin's oil disappear from the market place. Their selling price could only go up.
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@AugustusOmega Augie -- they're not set up for it -- AND -- they don't own the ships. Most of the punishment is due to private parties (the shippers) not wanting to support an imperialist warmonger. Marine underwriting (insurance) is brutally competitive -- it's not a fount of profit. There are no barriers to entry. Lloyd's of London will allow just about anyone's money to play in the game. You'd better be a high roller with vast liquidity. It's nothing for an underwriting syndicate to go broke -- and to demand -- INSTANTLY -- cash from its membership. If you had any commercial history under your belt, you'd know that such 'calls' often destroy millionaires -- over night.
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@petboy5839 It certainly worked that way back then. Even now, in American law, if you reside on a chunk of land -- and never pay rent to another for its use -- after thirty-years -- it becomes yours. If the land is Federal land, then if you meet certain requirements/ tests, then the land is yours very much sooner. But to break your bubble, it's impossible to move to any portion of Europe or America -- these days -- and not run into an activist-owner who either wants rent or your eviction. In the case of the Dutch, Cape Town was devoid of humanity. There were no local tribes. Even water was a seasonal 'thing.' Even the San shunned it. Far enough back, the San owned the entire continent. Their cousins exterminated/ pushed them out of 99.99% of Africa. Only the desert was left for them. Life is tough all over.
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Putin has taken diplomacy off the table... pretty much from the first. Demanding, de facto, surrender is strictly end-game 'diplomacy' last seen in WWII.
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@abhijnankhamrui7514 There is NO long term with Putin. So, stop saying that.
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No, it's done all the time. If your diner plate is full of food -- do you really HAVE to stuff your face? No. What if the plate has a hefty serving of Lima beans? Well, you just say, "No!"
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Cute. Swan Lake was played upon the death of a General Secretary. There'd be dancing in the streets if it played tonight. Hodges is quite correct. At any point from here on, Chechnya, et. al will begin to revolt. Putin can't send in his army -- it's all tied up.
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Putin told the whole world that Russia would never invade Ukraine. The West trusted Russia. The USSR broke itself up -- via an attempted coup. It was a short march, though. Your nic says: "I'm a commie." Swell.
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The Ukrainians are simply pulling back; the Russians are pulling back. It's a 'martial dance.'
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Even Putin knows his game is up. He just can't admit it to the cameras. One saw the same BS from Adolf -- as his world was tailing in.
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You're correct -- except it's Holland that is doing the big importing. Italy, Holland have most of the LNG receiving capacity. Germany has none. France only has two on the Atlantic -- IIRC. It has an ancient one down south for Algerian gas. (That plant started the entire industry, BTW. By modern standards, it's tiny. Once France could import Algerian gas via Spain all thoughts of expanding its Med LNG facility died.)
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This is phony. ALL naval mines are set with various corridors for free movement - - and those are kept secret, top secret. That's how it's done. To hide the location of such gaps, dummy mines are set, instead. The same is done on land. On land, dummy mines usually out-number real mines -- as fakes are so much cheaper. The fakes slow down any combat engineer attempting to clear a path -- since he obviously has to treat all contacts as genuine. What's holding up grain shipments is NOT the mine field -- it's Putin's Black Sea fleet. Period. Have French IQs collapsed in the last few days ?
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@abhijnankhamrui7514 How does THAT work? In the future, Putin will be gone. (The discount only exists because of the EU, not Putin.) The price cap is textbook monopsony power. (Look it up.) What will happen is that the Indians/ Red Chinese will pay the price cap figure -- plus $1 per barrel. Putin will have to take it -- or sell to NOBODY. For India or Red China -- billions will be saved. BTW, the benchmark figures we all read never applied to Urals crude. It's not as good as Brent, Libyan, Algerian, etc., grades. Putin has always had to sell his stuff at a discount... always will.
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@Anna None. Even crude oil has a signature. Yes, it really does. Think of it as a chemical fingerprint. Every oil load is analyzed by chemists before it ever enters the active refinery. That's why all crude oil is pumped into holding tanks - first - before being pumped onwards.
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It's not going to run on that long. At the current rate, Putin will be deposed -- and the Russians will convene another Revolution.
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Ukraine's pressure, up north, is directly at Putin's jugular: the highway (south) coming out of Belgorod. Russia's pressure, in the east, is pushing the front westward -- at a crawl. The fundamental problem for the Russian Army: their tanks are defective. Crew survival after a hit is zilch. And they are being hit, night and day. By now, morale must be rock-bottom.
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But they DID. Every battle map since the first days showed them under Russian occupation. This was the turf whence Russian howitzers shot up Kharkiv. Pulling such units back was not part of Putin's battle plan.
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