• perestroika@slrpnk.net
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    22 hours ago

    Writing from Estonia, Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk (on the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea), whereby they export at least 30% of their oil, but perhaps even 40% in recent times - have indeed been very intense during the past week.

    Day after day, large swarms go and many hit their targets despite heavy-handed air defense. The smoke of burning oil is visible to 70 km distance and some confused “birds” end up landing here (one hit a concrete smokestack, another fell in an empty field). The traffic jam of cargo ships and oil / gas tankers on the Gulf of Finland is considerable, sailors describe it “like a new city appearing on water”.

    If this is what it takes to force Putin to end his war, I have no complaints.

    But we should be aware that due to Trump’s simultaneous adventure in the Persian Gulf, which was entirely avoidable, and has entirely predictable results, a global economic recession is currently a realistic outcome.

    If I were in the shoes of Zelensky, I would advise Trump: “please, do save the global economy by ending your adventure in the Persian Gulf, we cannot have a pillow fight with Russia, they are extremely serious and not easily dissuaded (have been attacking 4 years)”.

    Meanwhile, his statemement does offer a pathway to somewhere…

    “If Russia is ready not to strike Ukraine’s energy, then we’ll respond by not attacking theirs.”

    …it’s merely that Russia has shown willingness to cause a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine by destroying their energy infrastructure in the winter that passed, and Ukrainians now have very little reason to believe mere words that it won’t repeat next winter. There will have to be at least ink on paper to assure it won’t happen again.

    • 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Yea This past sunday in Finland was quite scary, two Ukrainian drones landed here. Fortunately no-one was hurt, and none of our leaders have asked to reduce Ukrainian strikes or anything

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOP
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        15 hours ago

        This is what I think a lot of folks are missing about the current situation. This won’t be a run-of-the-mill recession. It would be physical, material disruptions in a whole lotta systems in transportation, food, manufacturing, energy, you name it. This means a lot of unemployment. The pandemic and 2008 are gonna look funny conpared to it. It’s not merely a crisis in the metadata (finance) which can be corrected via adjustments. It’s actual lack of a thing we use for everything. Increasing the price of it, which will absolutely occur, won’t make significantly more of it available. It would just change who gets more of the much smaller amount available. And when something gets expensive, the poorer people and countries get less of it than than the richer ones. Which means the crisis gonna get em that much harder. The only reason we haven’t experienced disruption yet is because we’re burning buffers and reserves at the moment.