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Russia & Ukraine War

BrokeStraightBoys

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I never thought I would see something like this in my lifetime. It is crazy that this will be in history books. I'm not sure how this is really going to end well. Sad to see the death, violence and we sit back and not really do much. I understand why but it is also frustrating to see. I am proud the Ukrainians have really stood their ground and I wish them the best. The world is rooting for them to win.
 
Me too. I'll have much more to say on this later over the weekend. I'm too tired and not a proper state of mind to take on the subject right now. But I'm eager to do so.
 
The tragedy is solely the fault of a dictator who denies the very existence of the Ukrainian people, language and religion. The 700 year oppression of Ukraine by Russia outlawing the oppressed's language and religion is amazingly similar to England's 700 year occupation Ireland also outlawing the colonized's language and religion. The Ukrainian people, their government and military are the underestimated heroes, and their inexperienced President has risen to the occasion to become a second Churchill. Russia's brutal mass bombings of Ukrainian cities is petulant cruel retaliation out of the dictator's shocked frustration that a country expected by all to fold to the Russians in 24-48 hours still controls 90% of its territory and all of its major cities. Russia's mass bombings is in part fear that if their soldiers were sent into the cities, they might either refuse to fight at all or be defeated. The fact that Russian is hiring Syrian Thomas mercenaries this week is an implicit admission that it is not clear whether or not their soldiers will fight. Unfortunately when a deranged dictator does not get his way and is frustrated, he might get even worse instead of doing the rational thing and negotiating a face saving way to end the madness. If there is ever a modern example of evil versus good, this is it.
 
The village my father's family comes from is just across the Hungarian border from Ukraine. I have met many Ukrainians and become friends with some. They are good people and proud of their country. They also are not too fond of the Russians who have a slang term for Ukrainians which translates as "little Russians". Ukrainians have also not forgotten the Holodomor, the planned famine imposed on Ukraine by the Russians under Stalin in the 1930s.

I wish them all the best as the fact is, as valiant as they are, the Russians are far stronger militarily and will occupy the country unless something miraculous happens.
 
It’s very sad. I worked for over a decade on cruise ships and have a few friends from Ukraine. I’m saddened and scared for them and pray for them daily.
 
Sadly this is so reminiscent of the invasion of Russia by the Nazis and will end as it did for them. Hopefully the one good that may come out of this is the demise of Putin.
 
. If there is ever a modern example of evil versus good, this is it.

Great points KG. And especially your conclusion.

As tough as things will get economically for us here with prices going up due to oil prices...I find it easier to call it the "Putin Gas Tax". We've just told him to keep the 9% of our oil supply that he sells to us, and to go pack sand. To give Putin hell, I'm willing to pay more a the pump and to pay a little more for groceries that all have to be transported by truck. It's almost a patriotic thing to do to show support for Ukraine, NATO and a tough U.S. policy.
 
The village my father's family comes from is just across the Hungarian border from Ukraine. I have met many Ukrainians and become friends with some. They are good people and proud of their country. They also are not too fond of the Russians who have a slang term for Ukrainians which translates as "little Russians". Ukrainians have also not forgotten the Holodomor, the planned famine imposed on Ukraine by the Russians under Stalin in the 1930s.

I wish them all the best as the fact is, as valiant as they are, the Russians are far stronger militarily and will occupy the country unless something miraculous happens.

You allude to another sad point Juanjo. That is that if Putin decides to level the whole country of Ukraine to the ground, bomb them back to the Stone Age, follow a scorched earth policy.........he can. He has both the weapons and the numbers to do it eventually if he chooses.

When the Soviets invaded Finland in 1939 they got a very bloody nose at the beginning. It was a disastrous start. The Finns ran circles around them and made the Russians look like they were playing in amateur hour. Many thousands of Soviet troops froze to death without getting to fire a shot. It was a huge embarrassment for them. It was made even worse for them knowing that Hitler was nearby, looking on with interest, and taking note of Russian weakness. But brutal Russian military might and numerical superiority eventually won the day for them. So it may be in Ukraine.
 
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Here is the fuller document mentioned in the video above.

My only hesitation in sharing it with you is that it could be a forgery or a foreign psy-ops propaganda tool. It comes purportedly from a disgruntled FSB bureaucrat. Said person does not claim to speak for the FSB, or even intimate that his opinions are indicative of a consensus view of the upper FSB. But it's startling, insightful and bleak regardless of authenticity.

This extended version of the document (that I found via the Twitter link) has purportedly been run through a clunky Russian translation program rather than being translated by an actual interpreter who could make it flow more fluently into English. It seems to have many Russian idioms that don't translate well literally, but are still for the most part able to convey the author's intent and state of mind.

Whether this leak is of genuine origin or not, some of the fears and semi-predictions expressed are quite chilling, realistic and plausible. He likens Russia's near future to that of a losing Nazi Germany in the 1943-1944 period before its inevitable doom in early 1945.

They (in the upper echelons of Russian policy analysis) also seem to be much more worried about their military obligations in Syria than I expected. They claim to have been enticed there by false claims and rosier scenarios by the Iranians than what they found themselves in after they had already committed.

It contains pessimistic tidbits such as in referring to a supposed previously set internal schedule for the military campaign in Ukraine to be successfully completed. "We have a conditional deadline of June. Conditional - because in June we have no economy left..."

He alludes to Putin possibly growing so desperate by the burden of a prolonged losing war and a collapsed economy, that he threatens a broader war in Europe (possibly nuclear) just to bully the West into agreeing to lift sanctions. (Regardless of the Russian military posture in Ukraine.) Then he writes fearfully, "What if they [the Western powers] refuse?"

Here is a very awkward translation of the longer document. Though it still seems like an incomplete one toward the end. I did no edits or corrections of spelling on it. It's verbatim. Except... I am however a big believer that, "Paragraphs are our friends." So I did break up the mountain of mostly unbroken text into smaller and easier to read paragraphs.

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18+ One of the insiders from the special services of the Russian Federation, I will publish without edits and censorship, because this is hell: “I’ll be honest right away: I have hardly slept all these days, almost all the time at work, my head is a little floating, like in a fog. And from overwork, sometimes I already catch states, as if all this is not real.

To be honest, the Pandora's box is open - a real global horror will begin by the summer - global famine is inevitable (Russia and Ukraine were the main suppliers of grain in the world, this year's harvest will be smaller, and logistical problems will bring the catastrophe to a peak point).

I can't tell you what guided those at the top when deciding on the operation, but now they are methodically lowering all the dogs on us (the Service). We are scolded for analytics - this is very in my profile, so I will explain what is wrong.

Recently, we have been increasingly pressed to customize reports to the requirements of management - I once touched on this topic. All these political consultants, politicians and their retinue, influence teams - all this created chaos. Strong.

Most importantly, no one knew that there would be such a war, they hid it from everyone. And here's an example for you: you are asked (conditionally) to calculate the possibility of human rights protection in different conditions, including the attack of prisons by meteorites. You specify about meteorites, they tell you - this is so, reinsurance for calculations, nothing like this will happen. You understand that the report will be just for show, but you need to write in a victorious style so that there are no questions, they say, why do you have so many problems, did you really work badly.

In general, a report is being written that when a meteorite falls, we have everything to eliminate the consequences, we are great, everything is fine. And you concentrate on tasks that are real - we don’t have enough strength anyway. And then suddenly they really throw meteorites and expect that everything will be according to your analytics, which was written from the bulldozer.

That is why we have a total piz_ets - I don’t even want to pick another word. There is no protection from sanctions for the same reason: well, it’s quite possible that Nabiullina will be sewn up with negligence (rather, the switchmen from her team), but what are they to blame for? No one knew that there would be such a war, so no one prepared for such sanctions. This is the reverse side of secrecy: since no one was told, then who could calculate what no one told about?

Kadyrov is going crazy. And the conflict almost started with us: perhaps even the Ukrainians threw in misinformation that it was we who handed over the routes of Kadyrov's special forces in the first days of the operation. They were covered there on the march in a terrible way, they had not yet begun to fight, but they were simply torn to pieces in some places. And off we go: it was the FSB that leaked the routes to the Ukrainians. I do not have such information, I will leave 1-2% for reliability (it cannot be completely ruled out either).

Blitzkrieg failed. It is simply impossible to complete the task now:

if Zelensky and the authorities were captured in the first 1-3 days, they seized all the key buildings in Kyiv, they gave them the order to surrender - yes, the resistance would subside to the minimum values. In theory. But what's next? Even with this ideal variant, there was an unsolvable problem: with whom to negotiate? If we demolish Zelensky, well, with whom should we sign agreements? If with Zelensky, then after we demolish it, these papers are worth nothing.

Opposition Platform for Life refused to cooperate: Medvedchuk is a coward, he fled. There is a second leader there - Boyko, but he refuses to work with us - even his own people will not understand him. They wanted to return Tsarev, so even our pro-Russians turned against him. Return Yanukovych? But as? If we say that it is impossible to occupy, then any of our authorities will be killed there in 10 minutes, as we leave. Occupy? Where are we going to get so many people? Commandant's offices, military police, counterintelligence, security - even with minimal resistance from the locals, we need 500 thousand or more people. Not counting the supply system. And there is a rule that by covering the poor quality of management with quantity, you only spoil everything. And this, I repeat, would be with the ideal option, which does not exist.

What now? We cannot announce mobilization for two reasons:

1) Large-scale mobilization will undermine the situation inside the country: political, economic, social.

2) Our logistics are already overstretched today. We will drive a many times larger contingent, and what will we get? Ukraine is a hefty country in terms of territory. And now the level of hatred towards us is going through the roof. Our roads simply won't be able to handle such supply caravans - everything will come to a standstill. And we won't manage to pull it out - because it's chaos. And these two reasons fall out at the same time, although even one is enough to break everything off.

Losses: I don't know how many there are. Nobody knows. For the first two days there was still control, now no one knows what is going on there. You can lose large units in communication. They can be found, or they can dissolve due to being attacked. And there, even the commanders may not know how many of them are running around somewhere nearby, how many died, how many are in captivity. The number of deaths is definitely in the thousands. Maybe 10 thousand, maybe 5, or maybe only 2. Even at the headquarters they don’t know for sure. But it should be closer to 10. And now we don’t count the LDNR corps - they have their own accounting.

Now, even if Zelensky is killed, taken prisoner, nothing will change. There is Chechnya in terms of hatred towards us. And now even those who were loyal to us are against it. Because it was planned from above, because we were told that there would be no such option, unless we were attacked. Because they explained that it was necessary to create the most credible threat in order to peacefully agree on the right conditions. Because we were initially preparing protests within Ukraine against Zelensky. Excluding our direct entry. Intrusions, to put it simply.

Further civilian losses will go exponentially - and resistance to us will also only increase. They already tried to enter the cities with infantry - out of twenty landing groups, only one had a conditional success. Remember the assault on Mosul - after all, this is the rule, so it was in all countries, nothing new.

Keep under siege? According to the experience of military conflicts in the same Europe in recent decades (Serbia is the largest testing ground here), cities can be under siege for years, and even function. Humanitarian convoys from Europe there are a matter of time.

We have a conditional deadline of June. Conditional - because in June we have no economy left, nothing remains. By and large, next week there will be a turning point in one of the sides, simply because the situation cannot be in such an overstrain. There are no analytics - it is impossible to calculate the chaos, here no one can say anything for sure. Act intuitively, and even on emotions - but this is not poker for you. Rates will rise, in the hope that suddenly some option will shoot through. The trouble is that we, too, can now miscalculate and lose everything in one move.

By and large, the country has no way out. It’s just that there is no option for a possible victory, and defeat is everything, sailed at all. They 100% repeated the beginning of the last century, when they decided to kick weak Japan and get a quick victory, then it turned out that the army was in trouble. then they started the war to the bitter end, then they began to take the Bolsheviks for "re-education" into the army - after all, they were outcasts, uninteresting to anyone in the masses. And then, the Bolsheviks, who were not really known to anyone, picked up anti-war slogans and it started like this ...

From the pros: we did everything so that even a hint of the mass sending of "penalty boxes" to the front line did not pass. Send convicts and "socially unreliable" political prisoners there (so that they don't mess with the water inside the country) - the morale of the army will simply go into the negative. And the enemy is motivated, terribly motivated. He knows how to fight, there are enough middle-level commanders there. There are weapons. They have support. We will simply set a precedent for human loss in the world. And that's it.

What we are most afraid of: at the top, they act according to the rule of overlapping the old problem with a new problem. Largely for this reason, the Donbass of 2014 began - it was necessary to divert the attention of Westerners from the topic of the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis, it seems, should have drawn all the attention to itself and become the subject of bargaining. But there were even bigger problems.

Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit).

I don't know who came up with the "Ukrainian Blitzkrieg". If we were given real introductory information, we would at least indicate that the original plan is controversial, that we need to double-check a lot. A lot of things. Now we got into the shit somewhere up to the neck. And it is not clear what to do. "Denazification" and "demilitarization" are not analytical categories, because they do not have clearly defined parameters by which one can determine the level of accomplishment or non-completion of the task.

Now it remains to be seen that some fucking adviser will convince the top to start a conflict with Europe demanding to reduce some sanctions. Or reduce, or war. What if they refuse? Now I do not rule out that then we will be drawn into a real international conflict, like Hitler in 1939. And then our Z will be compared to us with a swastika.

Is there a possibility of a local nuclear strike? Yes. Not for military purposes (it will not give anything - this is a defense breakthrough weapon), but with the aim of intimidating others. At the same time, the soil is being prepared to turn everything to Ukraine - Naryshkin and his SVR are now digging the earth to prove that they secretly created nuclear weapons there. Damn, they are now hammering on what we have long studied and dismantled: you can’t draw evidence here on your knee, and the presence of specialists and uranium (Ukraine has a lot of depleted isotope 238) is nothing. There the production cycle is such that you can’t do it imperceptibly.

You can’t even make a “dirty” bomb imperceptibly, but the fact that their old nuclear power plants can produce weapons-grade plutonium (plants like REB-1000 produce it in minimal quantities as a “by-product” of the reaction) - so the Americans introduced such control there with the involvement of the IAEA, that sucking on the topic is stupid.

Do you know what will happen next week? Well, even after two. Now it will cover us so much that we will start to miss the hungry 90s. While the auction was closed, Nabiullina seemed to be taking normal steps - but this is all like plugging a hole in a dam with a finger. It will still break through, and even stronger. Nothing will be decided in 3, 5, or 10 days.

Kadyrov beats his hoof for a reason - they have their own adventures there. He created for himself the image of the most influential and invincible. And if it falls once, it will be taken down by its own people. He will no longer be the owner of the winning teip.

We go further. Syria. "The guys will hold out, everything will be over in Ukraine - and there in Syria we will again strengthen everything in positions." And now, at any moment, they can wait there for the contingent to run out of resources - and such a heat will set in ... Turkey blocks the straits - to transport supplies there by planes, it's like heating an oven with money.

Notice that all this is happening at the same time, we don’t even have time to bring everything into one heap. We have a situation, like in Germany in the 43-44th. At the start right away. Sometimes I am already lost from this overwork, sometimes it seems that everything was a dream and it was a dream, that everything is as before.

In prisons, by the way, it will be worse. Now the nuts will begin to tighten so that to the bloody ichor. Everywhere. To be honest, purely technically, this remains the only chance to keep the situation - we are already in the mode of total mobilization. But you can’t stay in such a regime for a long time, and we have ambiguity with the timing and it will only get worse for now. From mobilization, management always goes astray. Yes, and imagine: you can run a hundred meters in a snatch, but it’s bad to go to a marathon distance and give a jerk with all your might. Here we rushed with the Ukrainian question, as if we were running a hundred meters, and fit into a cross-country marathon.

And that's what I'm talking about very, very briefly.

From the cynical, I will only add that I do not believe that VV Putin will press the red button to destroy the whole world.

Firstly, there is more than one person making a decision, at least someone will jump off. And there are a lot of people there - there is no "one-man red button".

Secondly, there are some doubts that everything is functioning successfully there. Experience shows that the greater the transparency and control, the easier it is to identify shortcomings. And where it is not clear who controls and how, but always bravura reports - everything is always wrong there. I'm not sure if the red button system works as advertised. In addition, the plutonium charge must be changed every 10 years.

Thirdly, and this is the most vile and sad thing, I personally do not believe in the readiness to sacrifice oneself of a person who does not let the members of the Federation Council, but his closest representatives and ministers, come close to him. For fear of the coronavirus or an attack, it doesn't matter. If you are afraid to let the most trusted people near you, then how will you dare to destroy yourself and your loved ones, inclusive?
If anything - ask, but I can not answer for several days. We are in rush mode, and there are more and more tasks.

In general, our reports are peppy, but everything flies in the pi_du.

Never before has this Gulagu.net source swearing, writing short and to the point. But even now he...

*************************************************************************


There's a lot to process and digest there. I'll leave it for you all to check out overnight. I have a degree in International Studies. So this is my forte and the pond I swim in fairly easily. On some of the more obscure points of national and international Russian policy that he speaks to, I will try to clarify tomorrow with more explanation and historical context.
 
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You allude to another sad point Juanjo. That is that if Putin decides to level the whole country of Ukraine to the ground, bomb them back to the Stone Age, follow a scorched earth policy.........he can. He has both the weapons and the numbers to do it eventually if he chooses.

When the Soviets invaded Finland in 1939 they got a very bloody nose at the beginning. It was a disastrous start. The Finns ran circles around them and made the Russians look like they were playing in amateur hour. Many thousands of Soviet troops froze to death without getting to fire a shot. It was a huge embarrassment for them. It was made even worse for them knowing that Hitler was nearby, looking on with interest, and taking note of Russian weakness. But brutal Russian military might and numerical superiority eventually won the day for them. So it may be in Ukraine.

The Finns kept their independence with that 1939 resistance, stunning the Russians with attacks by soldiers on skies!
 
One thing he is not is deranged, isolated by yes men yes. The only thing he respects is strength as all bullies do & fear and of course the ultimate weapon loss of his money .
 
I realize that my last post above was rather monster sized for many of our typical attention spans in here. haha If I have something lengthy to say I will often try to break it up into multiple posts. I realize that it makes it easier for people to respond to individual points, as well as making it more appealing for people to actually read the shorter ones. :)

Moving along, I did want to break down some of the amazing insights offered by this FSB analyst. Yes. There is a caveat that it could be fake. But I'm actually inclined to believe that it's genuine. Regardless though, the points and warnings laid out in the letter are quite relevant to what is happening. I mentioned that I would try to give some insight and historical context to some of the more opaque statements he makes. For those of you in here who are more knowledgeable about international affairs, I don't mean to appear to insult your intelligence if I spoon feed some things you already know. Given that not everybody is a world geography whiz or a history buff, my only intention is to add some meat to the bones of what the guy is discussing.
 
"To be honest, the Pandora's box is open - a real global horror will begin by the summer - global famine is inevitable (Russia and Ukraine were the main suppliers of grain in the world, this year's harvest will be smaller, and logistical problems will bring the catastrophe to a peak point)."

I'm not sure if he is saying that he expects Russia's own harvest to be smaller than last year's. But it's possible. Regardless though he is giving a stark reminder that with war in Ukraine many of the farmers there will be unable to plant vital crops in the spring. So not only will there be a man-made famine in Ukraine, but the global supply of surplus grains and produce for export will be much less this coming year.

This will follow the other infamous historical and completely intentional man-made famine in Ukraine, at the hands of Mother Russia. To oversimplify a bit, when Ukrainians in the early 30's showed signs of rebelling against Soviet rule, Stalin in a pique of anger decided to kill a bunch of them off as punishment. He seized a majority of their harvest for the year and put it on trains bound for Russia proper. Then he sat back and left the Ukrainians to starve to death. Over 4 million Ukrainians died of starvation. In some places they resorted to cannibalism. It was that bad.

Is it any wonder that modern Ukrainians don't have much trust in Russian intentions?

From Wiki:

"Holodomor

The Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The term Holodomor emphasises the famine's man-made and allegedly intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement. As a large part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government."

Source:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Wiki+...ge..69i57j69i64.13488j0j1&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS
 
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You allude to another sad point Juanjo. That is that if Putin decides to level the whole country of Ukraine to the ground, bomb them back to the Stone Age, follow a scorched earth policy.........he can. He has both the weapons and the numbers to do it eventually if he chooses.

When the Soviets invaded Finland in 1939 they got a very bloody nose at the beginning. It was a disastrous start. The Finns ran circles around them and made the Russians look like they were playing in amateur hour. Many thousands of Soviet troops froze to death without getting to fire a shot. It was a huge embarrassment for them. It was made even worse for them knowing that Hitler was nearby, looking on with interest, and taking note of Russian weakness. But brutal Russian military might and numerical superiority eventually won the day for them. So it may be in Ukraine.

Coincidence that you mentioned the Russo-Finnish War, because it does offer a slight glimmer of a resolution to the present situation. Then and now Russia was surprised by stiffer resistance from the defending armies than expected. Then Russia agreed to a piece treaty taking 10% of Finnish territory (which gave Russia exclusive control of a formerly shared lake) and a Finnish pledge of neutrality. Though pathological liars, Russia has reduced its resolution demands to Ukrainian neutrality and recognition of Russian control of Crimea and the two Dombas statelets. That's close to the deal Russia made with Finland to conclude the Russo-Finnish War.
 
The difference here is Putin's pathological hatred of Ukrainians & Ukraine
 
I wanted to note that while the analyst predicted global famine pretty much based on a decrease of supply from Russian and Ukrainian harvests alone, there are other facets in play now too. Other unintended consequences of the war affecting the availability of food worldwide will be its impacts on oil and fuel prices. Another factor in a plunging supply of surplus grain harvests is the diminished ability and higher expense in feeding livestock. Meat prices will go up and the availability of surplus meat available for export on the open world market will go down. So it's not just about grains and produce.

From CNN today:


War has brought the world to the brink of a food crisis

London
CNN Business


Svein Tore Holsether says the world is careening toward a food crisis that could affect millions of people.

Record high natural gas prices have forced the company he runs, fertilizer producer Yara International, to curtail its production of ammonia and urea in Europe to 45% of capacity. With less of those two essential agricultural ingredients, he expects knock-on effects for global food supplies.

“It’s not whether we are going to have a food crisis. It’s how large that crisis will be,” Holsether told CNN Business.

Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the prices of key agricultural products produced in the region have skyrocketed. The biggest problem is wheat, a pantry staple. Supplies from Russia and Ukraine, which together account for almost 30% of global wheat trade, are now at risk. Global wheat prices hit an all-time high earlier this week.

Another major problem is access to fertilizer. Essential for farmers to hit their production targets for crops, it’s never been more expensive, as exports from Russia grind to a halt. Output in Europe has also plunged thanks to the surging price of natural gas, a key ingredient in nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea.

The wheat planting season, which is about to begin in Ukraine, will be disrupted by fighting. It’s not clear there will be enough farmers to till the land, as people in the country take up arms — or whether they’ll be able to access machinery and other essential products that would typically arrive through Black Sea ports.

“It’s anyone’s guess if Ukraine will be able to export anything for the rest of this year, or next year, or in the foreseeable future,” Mera said. The country also accounts for half of all exports of sunflower oil.

Russia and Ukraine serve as the breadbasket for countries in the Middle East, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that depend on imports. Many will be hit hard as a result.

“If Ukrainian fields lie fallow this year, aid agencies such as ours will be forced to source new markets to compensate for the loss of some of the world’s best wheat,” David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, said in an op-ed published in the Washington Post this week. “Doing so will come at a vastly inflated cost.”

Beasley noted that Ukrainian wheat has also been essential to feeding populations in other countries facing conflict, including Afghanistan, Sudan and Yemen.

“The vast majority of wheat is used for human consumption, and that’s irreplaceable,” Rabobank’s Mera said.

Yet even developed countries will feel the effects of a food crisis. The affordability of food is a problem for lower-income shoppers everywhere, Mendelson Forman emphasized.

“We’re used to a globalized system of trade to get all kinds of varieties of food,” she said. “People will see it in their pocketbooks, and they’ll see it in the grocery stores.”

— Mostafa Salem contributed reporting.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/12/business/food-crisis-ukraine-russia/index.html
 
Coincidence that you mentioned the Russo-Finnish War, because it does offer a slight glimmer of a resolution to the present situation. Then and now Russia was surprised by stiffer resistance from the defending armies than expected. Then Russia agreed to a piece treaty taking 10% of Finnish territory (which gave Russia exclusive control of a formerly shared lake) and a Finnish pledge of neutrality. Though pathological liars, Russia has reduced its resolution demands to Ukrainian neutrality and recognition of Russian control of Crimea and the two Dombas statelets. That's close to the deal Russia made with Finland to conclude the Russo-Finnish War.

The difference here is Putin's pathological hatred of Ukrainians & Ukraine

You bring up great points guys. I'll add a few thoughts of my own. At risk of making Stalin out to be a reasonable and rational person by agreeing to end the Russo-Finnish War with modest Soviet gains on Finland's eastern border, it's hard to say that that historical precedent would be appealing to Putin today. We will never know if Stalin's calculations were based on generosity, fair play...or pragmatism. We'll never know if in a vacuum of any other national threats to the Soviet Union whether he would have settled for a sliver of Finnish territory as the price for ending the war. He was in a tough spot at the time. He had a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939 where they had an agreement to play nice and not attack each other. Stalin seemed to believe he could trust the pact to keep Russia safe. But... He and his generals were not totally oblivious to the possible threat.

IF Stalin had really gone all in on Finland, tried to take it all, and occupy it... It would have tied up too much of his army and supplies in Scandinavia. He knew he had to keep a large contingent of his army, planes and weapons on his main western borders facing closest to Germany. While he may have trusted Hitler in the beginning, I still don't think he wanted to give the impression that his army protecting his primary borders was weak and understaffed. From Stalin's perspective, why tempt Hitler into wondering if Russia might be vulnerable or an easy mark? I think he knew that the best way to maintain the non-aggression pact was to project as much strength as possible.

But you could be right KG. And maybe the prices Putin asks for would be enough to end the war.
 
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