Re:Biden says he's now convinced Putin has decided to invade...
by mschuster91 on Friday February 18, 2022 @06:00PM
(#30392316)
Hard to predict the future, especially given that Putin is both known to be completely unpredictable and, as a former KGB agent, a master of deception and trolling.
> do you think this will actually happen? On what scale?
Personally, given the suspicious non-participation of Russia in the Munich Security Conference starting tomorrow, the evacuation of people from the occupied territories, the suspected pipeline explosion in Luhansk and the car bomb in Donezk earlier this day, it is not unreasonable to believe there will be either a major incident or an outright invasion rather sooner than later.
> And if it does, what might the impact be?
Immediately? Rising oil and gas prices. European gas storages are on record lows, and the winter is not over yet. It's not clear yet if the pipeline that has been hit today is oil or gas - if it's gas and it's one of the pipelines supplying western Europe, us Germans are fucked because there is no real short-term alternative to Russian gas and 16 years of Conservative and 8 years of a bought-off Social Democrat government (1998-2006 chancellor Schröder has been a high profile lobbyist for Gazprom) have not done anything to reduce our dependence on gas for heating.
>Will I actually care a few years from now?
That depends on how far this mess escalates. If it's a full blown war or a world war, we will all care for the next decades. If it's just another skirmish, the situation might not change that much from a global perspective.
> do you think this will actually happen? On what scale?
Personally, given the suspicious non-participation of Russia in the Munich Security Conference starting tomorrow, the evacuation of people from the occupied territories, the suspected pipeline explosion in Luhansk and the car bomb in Donezk earlier this day, it is not unreasonable to believe there will be either a major incident or an outright invasion rather sooner than later.
> And if it does, what might the impact be?
Immediately? Rising oil and gas prices. European gas storages are on record lows, and the winter is not over yet. It's not clear yet if the pipeline that has been hit today is oil or gas - if it's gas and it's one of the pipelines supplying western Europe, us Germans are fucked because there is no real short-term alternative to Russian gas and 16 years of Conservative and 8 years of a bought-off Social Democrat government (1998-2006 chancellor Schröder has been a high profile lobbyist for Gazprom) have not done anything to reduce our dependence on gas for heating.
>Will I actually care a few years from now?
That depends on how far this mess escalates. If it's a full blown war or a world war, we will all care for the next decades. If it's just another skirmish, the situation might not change that much from a global perspective.