Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)
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ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
In Crimea, Ukraine is beating Russia
The peninsula is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces
Russia-China gas pipeline deal stalls over Beijing’s price demands
Power of Siberia 2 project would offer lifeline to exporter Gazprom as Moscow’s dependence on its neighbour grows
www.ft.com
Russia-China gas pipeline deal stalls over Beijing’s price demands
Power of Siberia 2 project would offer lifeline to exporter Gazprom as Moscow’s dependence on its neighbour grows
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in front of their national flags
A deal on the pipeline was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top requests for Chinese leader Xi Jinping when they met last month, according to people familiar with the issue © Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/Pool/AP
Russia’s attempts to conclude a major gas pipeline deal with China have run aground over what Moscow sees as Beijing’s unreasonable demands on price and supply levels, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Beijing’s tough stance on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline underscores how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left President Vladimir Putin increasingly dependent on Chinese leader Xi Jinping for economic support.
The people familiar with the matter said China had asked to pay close to Russia’s heavily subsidised domestic prices and would only commit to buying a small fraction of the pipeline’s planned annual capacity of 50bn cubic metres of gas.
Approval for the pipeline would transform the dire fortunes of Gazprom, Russia’s state gas export monopoly, by linking the Chinese market to gasfields in western Russia that once supplied Europe.
Gazprom suffered a loss of Rbs629bn ($6.9bn) last year, its biggest in at least a quarter of a century, amid plummeting gas sales to Europe, which has had greater success than expected in diversifying away from Russian energy.
:mindblow:
While Russia has insisted it is confident of agreement on Power of Siberia 2 “in the near future”, two of the people said the impasse was the reason Alexei Miller, Gazprom’s chief executive, had not joined Putin on the Russian leader’s state visit to Beijing last month.
Miller, who was instead on a trip to Iran, would have been essential for any serious negotiations with China and his absence was “highly symbolic”, said Tatiana Mitrova, a research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
Map showing Gazprom pipelines across Asia including the proposed Power of Siberia 2 project running from the Yamal peninsula inside the Arctic Circle through Mongolia to northeast China
A deal on the pipeline was one of three main requests Putin made to Xi when they met, according to the people familiar with the matter, along with more Chinese bank activity in Russia and for China to snub a peace conference being organised by Ukraine this month.
China announced on Friday it would skip Ukraine’s summit in Switzerland. Two of the people said Beijing and Moscow were discussing ringfencing one or more banks that would finance trade in components for Russia’s defence industry — all but certainly incurring US sanctions that would cut any such bank out of the broader global financial system.
An agreement on the pipeline, however, remains distant, while the proposed co-operation with Chinese banks remains at a far smaller scale than Russia had requested, the people added.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said Russia and China were still in talks on the pipeline.
“It’s totally normal for each side to defend their own interests. Negotiations will continue, because the leaders of both countries have the political will for it, and commercial issues will continue to be worked out, and we have no doubt all the necessary agreements will be made,” Peskov told reporters on Monday.
“As far as aspects of ongoing commercial negotiations go, they are, of course, not public,” Peskov added. Gazprom declined to comment.
Asked about the gas talks, the Chinese foreign ministry said only that “the presidents of China and Russia agreed to look for areas where our interests converge . . . and enable each other’s success”.
China would “work with Russia to deliver on important common understandings reached between our two leaders and deepen our all-round cooperation [for] mutual benefit”, the ministry said.
Russia’s failure to secure the deal underscores how the war in Ukraine has made China the senior partner in the countries’ relationship, according to Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“China could need Russian gas strategically as a secure source of supply not based on maritime routes that would be affected in case of a maritime conflict around Taiwan or the South China Sea,” Gabuev said. “But to make that worthwhile, China really needs a very cheap price and flexible obligations.”
China’s demand for imported gas is expected to reach about 250 bcm by 2030, up from less than 170 bcm in 2023, according to a paper published by Columbia’s CGEP in May.
That paper said the 2030 level of demand could still be largely or entirely met through existing contracts for pipeline supply and for liquefied natural gas. However, by 2040, the gap between China’s import demand and existing commitments would reach 150 bcm, it said.
A worker at Gazprom’s Power Of Siberia gas pipeline
A worker at Gazprom’s existing Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China. Researchers said China could largely meet its import demand to 2030 through contracts already agreed © Maxim Shemetov/REUTERS
Russia’s lack of an alternative overland route for its gas exports means Gazprom would probably have to accept China’s conditions, Gabuev said.
“China believes time’s on its side. It has room to wait to squeeze the best conditions out of the Russians and wait for attention on the China-Russia relationship to move elsewhere,” he said. “The pipeline can be built rather quickly, since the gasfields are already developed. Ultimately the Russians don’t have any other option to market this gas.”
Before the war in Ukraine, Gazprom relied on selling gas to Europe at high prices in order to subsidise Russia’s domestic market.
China already pays Russia less for gas than to its other suppliers, with an average price of $4.4 per million British thermal units, compared with $10 for Myanmar and $5 for Uzbekistan, the CGEP researchers calculated from 2019-21 customs data.
During the same years Russia exported gas to Europe at about $10 per million Btu, according to data published by the Russian central bank.
Gazprom’s exports to Europe fell to 22 bcm in 2023 from an average 230 bcm a year in the decade before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These are likely to dwindle further once a trans-shipment agreement with Ukraine expires at the end of this year.
Failure to agree increased supplies to China would be a hefty further blow. An unreleased report by a major Russian bank, seen by the Financial Times, recently excluded Power of Siberia 2 from its baseline forecast for Gazprom. That reduced the company’s expected profit for 2029 — when the bank expected the project to launch — by almost 15 per cent.
China did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article has been amended since initial publication to reflect that the Ukraine peace summit is taking place at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland, not Geneva
Spidey Man
Superstar
Russia well on it's way to becoming China's Mexico instead of Canada. Russia even has the hard liquor part mastered as well
The better you understand US government motivations, the easier it is to understand their approach. "Saving Ukrainian lives" or even "Preserving Ukrainian territorial integrity" has never been the sole geopolitical motivation.
We're well over two years and nearly 2000 pages into this thread. Those who are still willing to participate must have a pretty strong grasp of how things are going at this point. With somewhere around 600,000 casualties to this point and relatively little territorial change in the last two years, how do y'all think things will go from here?
1) When do you believe the war will end?
2) How do you believe the war will end?
3) What will Ukrainian territory look like at the end of the war?
4) How many more casualties do you predict once the war ends?
5) How long will it take Ukraine to recover from the war after it is over?
6) How much space do you believe there will be between the end of this war and the next Russia war?
1) When do you believe the war will end?
2) How do you believe the war will end?
3) What will Ukrainian territory look like at the end of the war?
4) How many more casualties do you predict once the war ends?
5) How long will it take Ukraine to recover from the war after it is over?
6) How much space do you believe there will be between the end of this war and the next Russia war?
Last edited:
China knows its so over
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
The New York Times traced how a web of officials and politicians aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin’s party carried out a campaign to permanently transfer Ukrainian children from Kherson.
Navigator,” the man who had ordered the children removed from the church, visited the foster home repeatedly. He would later be identified as Igor Kastyukevich, a Russian member of Parliament from Mr. Putin’s political party, United Russia.
Anna Kuznetsova, a deputy chairwoman in the Russian Parliament and Ms. Lvova-Belova’s predecessor as children’s rights commissioner, traveled from Moscow to deliver baby products on behalf of the party. “#WeDon’tAbandonOurOwn,” she wrote on Telegram, using a pro-war hashtag to suggest that the children belonged to Russia.
In interviews with The Times, Russian officials echoed that view, saying that the children from Kherson were Russian.
In May, Mr. Putin fulfilled his promise to Ms. Lvova-Belova by issuing a presidential decree that eased citizenship requirements: In Kherson and other occupied regions, Ukrainian caregivers could now file for Russian citizenship on behalf of Ukrainian foster children and orphans.
The decree also expedited the process so that children could become Russian citizens in 90 days or less, instead of up to five years.
The next month, Ms. Korniyenko, the director of the foster home, was summoned to Kherson’s Ministry of Health, now run by the occupation authorities. A Russian-backed official asked her to remain the director, but under his supervision. She was even offered a Russian passport.
But Ms. Korniyenko refused. She’d had enough of the occupiers, who, she said, intimidated the staff by asking them about their political views in a test of their allegiance and carried guns while monitoring the children.
Dr. Lukina resigned, too. She cared deeply about the children, but she didn’t want to have any role in what Russian-backed officials might do to them.
“I didn’t want to take part in it,” she said. “And I was afraid that they would take me away as well.”
In search of a new director, the occupation authorities turned to Dr. Tetiana Zavalska, a pediatrician at the foster home who often worked night and weekend shifts. She was sympathetic to the new occupation administration and made clear her pro-Russian views.
Seven of the children from Kherson Children’s Home have returned to Ukraine with the assistance of Ukrainian authorities and third-party Qatari mediators. They included Anastasiya and Mykola Volodin, whose mother traveled this February to Moscow to claim them.
Anastasiya later died in a Ukrainian hospital just weeks after her sixth birthday. A doctor attributed her death to an epileptic seizure. Ukrainian authorities have resumed care of Mykola while a court determines whether his parents can be his legal guardians.
For now, the rest of the children from Kherson remain in Russian custody.
HOW WE REPORTED THIS STORY
Times reporters conducted more than 110 interviews over the course of a year with the children’s relatives and caregivers from Kherson Children’s Home, Ukrainian officials and prosecutors, Russian-appointed officials in occupied Kherson and Crimea, caregivers at two Crimean children’s facilities, humanitarian volunteers in Crimea, adoption support group administrators, attorneys in Russia, international war crimes lawyers and experts, historians, and military experts.
To trace the 46 children from Kherson Children’s Home to Crimea, The Times searched Ukrainian police and government missing persons directories and found the children’s full names and photographs. (Reporters discovered errors in some of the profiles that were later corrected by Ukrainian investigators after they were contacted by The Times.) Using these profiles, as well as images obtained exclusively from the children’s caregivers, The Times confirmed the whereabouts of the children on at least 13 occasions between 2022 and 2023. Reporters discovered the children in videos and photos posted to Telegram by Russian officials who visited them, in documentaries produced by Russian propaganda outlets and in advertisements for a Russian Christmas toy drive. The reporters built a database of the children’s faces over time and corroborated their results with Ukrainian caregivers. They then used the data to sift through thousands of profiles on a Russian federal adoption website and identified at least 22 children from Kherson Children’s Home who have been put up for adoption and foster care in Russia.
To identify the Russian officials involved in planning and carrying out the removal of the children, The Times paired interviews with data obtained from public platforms, including legislation and archives published by the Office of the President of Russia and the Office of the Children’s Rights Commissioner; Crimean and Russian news clips; photos posted to Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, two popular social networks in Russia; videos shared on public Telegram channels of Ukrainian and Russian officials; and tax documents found on the Russian registry of legal entities. Reporters cross-referenced their findings with exclusive documents, text messages and photographs provided by the children’s caregivers in Kherson and volunteers in Crimea — some of which were reviewed by analysts at the Institute for the Study of War. They also reviewed and independently verified information sourced from Telegram bots that leak Russian data, and websites that use facial recognition software.
Navigator,” the man who had ordered the children removed from the church, visited the foster home repeatedly. He would later be identified as Igor Kastyukevich, a Russian member of Parliament from Mr. Putin’s political party, United Russia.
Anna Kuznetsova, a deputy chairwoman in the Russian Parliament and Ms. Lvova-Belova’s predecessor as children’s rights commissioner, traveled from Moscow to deliver baby products on behalf of the party. “#WeDon’tAbandonOurOwn,” she wrote on Telegram, using a pro-war hashtag to suggest that the children belonged to Russia.
In interviews with The Times, Russian officials echoed that view, saying that the children from Kherson were Russian.
In May, Mr. Putin fulfilled his promise to Ms. Lvova-Belova by issuing a presidential decree that eased citizenship requirements: In Kherson and other occupied regions, Ukrainian caregivers could now file for Russian citizenship on behalf of Ukrainian foster children and orphans.
The decree also expedited the process so that children could become Russian citizens in 90 days or less, instead of up to five years.
The next month, Ms. Korniyenko, the director of the foster home, was summoned to Kherson’s Ministry of Health, now run by the occupation authorities. A Russian-backed official asked her to remain the director, but under his supervision. She was even offered a Russian passport.
But Ms. Korniyenko refused. She’d had enough of the occupiers, who, she said, intimidated the staff by asking them about their political views in a test of their allegiance and carried guns while monitoring the children.
Dr. Lukina resigned, too. She cared deeply about the children, but she didn’t want to have any role in what Russian-backed officials might do to them.
“I didn’t want to take part in it,” she said. “And I was afraid that they would take me away as well.”
In search of a new director, the occupation authorities turned to Dr. Tetiana Zavalska, a pediatrician at the foster home who often worked night and weekend shifts. She was sympathetic to the new occupation administration and made clear her pro-Russian views.
Seven of the children from Kherson Children’s Home have returned to Ukraine with the assistance of Ukrainian authorities and third-party Qatari mediators. They included Anastasiya and Mykola Volodin, whose mother traveled this February to Moscow to claim them.
Anastasiya later died in a Ukrainian hospital just weeks after her sixth birthday. A doctor attributed her death to an epileptic seizure. Ukrainian authorities have resumed care of Mykola while a court determines whether his parents can be his legal guardians.
For now, the rest of the children from Kherson remain in Russian custody.
HOW WE REPORTED THIS STORY
Times reporters conducted more than 110 interviews over the course of a year with the children’s relatives and caregivers from Kherson Children’s Home, Ukrainian officials and prosecutors, Russian-appointed officials in occupied Kherson and Crimea, caregivers at two Crimean children’s facilities, humanitarian volunteers in Crimea, adoption support group administrators, attorneys in Russia, international war crimes lawyers and experts, historians, and military experts.
To trace the 46 children from Kherson Children’s Home to Crimea, The Times searched Ukrainian police and government missing persons directories and found the children’s full names and photographs. (Reporters discovered errors in some of the profiles that were later corrected by Ukrainian investigators after they were contacted by The Times.) Using these profiles, as well as images obtained exclusively from the children’s caregivers, The Times confirmed the whereabouts of the children on at least 13 occasions between 2022 and 2023. Reporters discovered the children in videos and photos posted to Telegram by Russian officials who visited them, in documentaries produced by Russian propaganda outlets and in advertisements for a Russian Christmas toy drive. The reporters built a database of the children’s faces over time and corroborated their results with Ukrainian caregivers. They then used the data to sift through thousands of profiles on a Russian federal adoption website and identified at least 22 children from Kherson Children’s Home who have been put up for adoption and foster care in Russia.
To identify the Russian officials involved in planning and carrying out the removal of the children, The Times paired interviews with data obtained from public platforms, including legislation and archives published by the Office of the President of Russia and the Office of the Children’s Rights Commissioner; Crimean and Russian news clips; photos posted to Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, two popular social networks in Russia; videos shared on public Telegram channels of Ukrainian and Russian officials; and tax documents found on the Russian registry of legal entities. Reporters cross-referenced their findings with exclusive documents, text messages and photographs provided by the children’s caregivers in Kherson and volunteers in Crimea — some of which were reviewed by analysts at the Institute for the Study of War. They also reviewed and independently verified information sourced from Telegram bots that leak Russian data, and websites that use facial recognition software.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
In other news what I said was going to happen in Kharkiv happened, imagine that
9 villages not 20?
Ukraine is operating defense in depth. Forward defenses would expose Ukrainian units to Russian artillery and possibly encirclement so they retreat to pre established defenses and catch Russian troops in a kill zone.
We know this because the Russians are no longer advancing at the same pace and are suffering the highest casualties since the war began. Which even your guy in Ukraine says.
These guys are in Ukraine as well so I don’t know what the he’ll you are talking about.
Putin calls an emergency meeting with Xi in China and is now talking about Chinas peace plan. Yep sounds like he’s going to move on Kyiv any day now
Don’t forget smoked an airfield
In other news what I said was going to happen in Kharkiv happened, imagine that
@3:04
"Fresh Groups that were in training for 4-5 days.
They were sent to assault in the morning; didn't even make it past 2 houses.
Pinned down by machine guns, they crowded and were finished by FPV
In one group, just one guy was left.
We're being minced, sent under machine gun fire under drones, during daylight. It's a bloodbath.
So I don't know if I can make it out dead or wounded. I don't know.
And I realize that our leadership, Senya and Finansist, are given orders and those in Moscow don't give a fukk."
1/1
russians pissed im showing pictures of deceased russian "super soldiers"..
my answer?
Rumyantsev Vladimir Alviyanovich
60 years
Ivanovo region
Died
think about it, a 60 year old mobilized private.... how low on manpower do you have to be for this to happen????
i woke up with over 200 death notifications this morning
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
russians pissed im showing pictures of deceased russian "super soldiers"..
my answer?
Rumyantsev Vladimir Alviyanovich
60 years
Ivanovo region
Died
think about it, a 60 year old mobilized private.... how low on manpower do you have to be for this to happen????
i woke up with over 200 death notifications this morning
To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
