Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "Russia's Whole Economy Is About To COLLAPSE | It's NOT What You Think..." video.

I will be very surprised if Ukraine lasts until the end of winter.
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@tsubadaikhan6332 Possibilities to consider 1) They already have most of the territory they want - with the exception of Donetsk oblast which is so heavily defended that advances are very slow. 2) Once the Ukrainian army has collapsed, it's relatively easy to take the rest of the territory they want. The Ukrainian army is suffering high attrition and desertion so although collapse hasn't happened yet, it's probably inevitable rather than just conceivable. I don't know for sure exactly what territory Russia wants but it already has the land bridge to Crimea and the city of Mariupol (which rebelled against Kiev in 2014). It has already secured the Azov Sea and Crimea's water supplies and the best farm land in the country and most of the coal fields and most of the gas fields. Quite likely they'll want Kharkov too and Odessa (other cities with large pro-Russian movements) but who knows? The other consideration is that Russia is playing a very cool game. Avoiding sudden movements avoids unduly alarming the rest of the world. This artillery war of attrition plays to Russia's strengths diplomatically and militarily. As for Kherson, check the latest reports. The Russians are already regaining the villages the Ukrainians took at high cost over the past couple of days. Supply lines? Don't you think the Russians have barges? Pontoon bridges? A huge fleet of heavy lift helicopters? Ukrainian attacks on logistics are about preventing a Russian attack north of Mikulayev, not about seriously retaking Kherson which is just militarily impossible.
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Even assuming Europe can avoid blackouts and mass death through hypothermia this winter - and that's a big if - then moving off cheap Russian gas means permanently higher prices for European industry. The permanent loss of energy intensive industry and the loss of millions of jobs. All for America's right to push NATO up to Russia's borders and the US installed, Bandera worshipping Kiev regime's right to treat its ethnic Russians how Serbia treated its ethnic Albanians.
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@Klaatu-gl7jg Obviously Algeria, Netherlands and Norway will not be able to make up all the supply in time for winter - and they won't be able to supply enough gas for all of Europe as cheaply as Russia can. I don't think Europe's blockade of Russian gas will last for long. As for all the LPG Europe is importing... where does it all come from? Well much of it comes from China. And where did China get it? Russia :) So Europe is basically paying a huge premium just to pretend it has sanctions on Russia. Pretensions that expensive aren't sustainable.
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Agree - and long term better pipeline connections to China and through Iran puts Russia in a very strong position. Until now, Russia was bound to European buyers, in future, Europe and Russia will be doing business again even if they hate each other, there's too much mutual benefit. And Russia will have the option to switch buyers more easily once better infrastructure to Asian markets is up and running. As for the economic damage to Russia - this relies on harsh sanctions remaining in place long term. With an economic collapse in Europe looming, that seems extremely unlikely.
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The Russians are already rebuilding Mariupol. I don't think rebuilding the Donbass will be easy or fast but I don't think it will be expensive enough to make much difference to such a huge country as Russia. Compare West Germany rebuilding East Germany, the size difference there is small whereas the Russia to Donbass size difference is huge. Construction costs in Russia are very low. As for Putin's popularity, it's riding high. Assuming he gets some convincing victory which seems highly likely, winning a major war doesn't usually make national leaders weaker.
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@andyw_uk74 The West is running out of all kinds of munitions. French generals told their government they can't send any more aid to Ukraine or they won't be able to fight a war themselves. The Germans had huge holes even before the war. Even American officers are worrying about the same thing. The Russians are talking about setting off to demilitarise Ukraine but actually having demilitarised NATO.
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@TroenderTass In reality, the Western companies have Russian partners and Russian employees. When the Western company pulls out, it sells its operation to a Russian company. The actual change in real economic activity might be quite marginal. An engineer who works for Shell on Friday now works for a Russian company on Monday but he's working on the same project with the same equipment with the same colleagues on the same site.
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@TroenderTass My point is just that the narrative whereby Western companies pull out with X $billion of operations represents a X $billion loss of Russian GDP is misleading. The actual economic disruption is much smaller. I've worked for several companies where the ownership of a division or subsidiary changed and it made no difference to the employees - or customers - or delivery schedules.
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@terjeoseberg990 On the very first day Biden took office his first major action was to shut down the Keystone Pipeline. The motivation was purely political - to appease his own party's environmentalists. I haven't checked this myself but I've read that It would have been operational this summer if it had not been shut down. Furthermore, Biden shut down any drilling on federal land.
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@terjeoseberg990 Biden wanted to save jobs by shutting down a major infrastructure project? That's a truly bizarre claim.
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@tsubadaikhan6332 The Russians aren't trying hard to gain territory. They're just sitting back and shelling the Ukrainian army with overwhelming artillery superiority, inflicting high casualties at a low cost to themselves. That's why looking at the map is misleading. Ukraine can't survive the winter. They're already running out of everything and Western military aid is running down since Western countries have already dangerously exhausted their own stockpiles. Follow the long vaunted Kherson offensive which started a couple of days ago - it has already run out of steam.
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@Klaatu-gl7jg I don't know what a monkey currency is but it's interesting that so many Western commentators predicted the rouble would crash upon the imposition of sanctions. If any currency seems to be doing badly just now, it's the Euro since the Euro zone's economic prospects for next year are dire. I think you are overestimating how the balance of power is changing in the world. At the end of WWII, the USA had half the world's GDP and the "West" had a large proportion of the world's population and almost all of the world's educated population. Over time, the West is declining demographically and the rest of the world is catching up economically - not necessarily per capita but certainly in absolute terms. The West in contrast has political instability (over half of the US population excepts a civil war and countries like Sweden and France have huge problems assimilating their immigrants). And economically, the West is unsustainable. It has unaffordable bureaucratic and welfare costs. Am I correct in guessing you are from Finland? If so, congratulations, Finland seems to be an especially well organised Western country. Most of the West is more corrupt, less efficient and more internally cohesive. Outside of the West, the rest of the world looks at Russia very differently. Most of the world regards the USA as a cynical and hypocritical bully - and Ukraine as a corrupt American proxy that continues to make ridiculous and absurd claims for example that the Russians are shelling themselves with mines in Donetsk and that they're shelling a nuclear power plant which they control themselves. It doesn't necessarily matter whether we agree or disagree ourselves, the fact is this is how most people in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and at least some countries in South America think about this war. As for Europe - well we will disagree here I think. I expect that by the end of the winter, the consensus we saw against Russia after the invasion will be completely broken. I don't know where each individual country will stand but I give you two examples. Already in Italy, the new government wants to improve relations with Russia. Even more interestingly, in Poland, the same prime minister who only weeks ago was criticising the Germans for their lax response to Russia is now talking about the need to negotiate.
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@Klaatu-gl7jg I don't defend extremist Indian nationalism but India is nevertheless a real democracy. The extreme nationalism you criticise in India is also widespread in Ukraine. For example Stepan Bandera was allied to Hitler and his followers murdered tens of thousands of people from other ethnic groups. Yet in modern Ukraine right now, he is a national hero, officially celebrated by the regime. Extremist Ukrainians have oppressed ethnic Russians in Ukraine and committed real atrocities, it's not all just made up by Russian propaganda. I don't defend communism or the atrocities committed by Lenin and Trotsky. However, it should be obvious that the modern Russian state, Vladimir Putin and the population of Russia are not responsible for the atrocities of the Soviet Union. And actually, although the Russian people were the largest ethnic group in the Soviet Union, the original Bolsheviks were disproportionate from other ethnic groups, Georgians like Stalin and Beria, Finns, Latvians and especially, Jewish people. Simply said, it's not fair to blame modern Russians for the crimes of Stalin any more than it is fair to blame the modern Germans for the crimes of Hitler. At least Hitler was ethnically German, Stalin was not even Russian at all.
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Is that because Russians, who have been in the oil business for a hundred years, are too thick to maintain their infrastructure?
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