Russia - USA Relations

They whine NS2, while buying Russian oil as fast as they can.
It is jus a business. If you can nail your competitor - why not?

The irony is that the competitor in this case is the EU, because it is the EU that is looking at $2K per gas unit... Russia is making very good money out of this BS.

In addition, it makes technological breakthroughs in many areas. Plus an alliance with China. They don't need US guarantees worth toilet paper.

Getting it in writing means leverage... of course they will still weasel out of it if they think they need to, but it is something they can hold up and demand compliance with until they withdraw.

The ABM treaty was useful, as was the INF treaty and the START treaties, but America didn't want to be restricted but in most cases it was Russia that was really restricted.... the INF treaty especially because it meant cheaper lighter IR and MR ballistic and cruise missiles could not be developed so Russia had to use ICBMs and SLBMs and ALCMs for targets in Europe and the Middle East and the Pacific... with the INF treaty gone they can free up their ICBMs for targets in the US and use smaller cheaper lighter easier to hide missiles against Europe and the ME and Pacific/Asia region.

You can't make an omelette, without breaking a few eggs.

That is the problem though... the west are not chiefs... they are anarchists... they don't take the eggshells off and drop the contents into a pan... they throw the eggs against the wall and watches for the results... if it creates a weak government they can control then they are happy,  if not fund and support the enemy till they get into power and try to control them... during the cold war allies were built up despite being under total control... Germans and Japanese probably didn't care that Washington was in control because there was work and their economy was great and they were making stuff and moving forward.

For Syria or Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan... the rebuild was a lie... Halliburton made billions rebuilding stuff but don't check their work because you will be disappointed in terms of value for money.... in the end in Syria they didn't spend any money on infrastructure... just bombs an bullets and how much oil can they steal to make a profit...

Everyone complains about Donald Trump but all US presidents have been like that... but he was the only honest one in terms of being open about being a bastard to allies and enemies alike.

The Facade has slipped and people bypassing the propaganda machine of the western media are finding out the truth which is very different from what the US and UK media have been showing us or want us to see... despite saying they show every angle... every angle but the truth...

The wheels are falling off and they don't know how to fix it... printing more money and giving rich people tax breaks is not working... it never did.

The SJW degeneration in the US shows that all of its "soft power" tools end up messing it up. The same fake stream media that
spews hate propaganda at Russia has been very active doing the same thing against the US public. I suppose this is a variation
of "if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail". It may also be karma. The evil that the US (and the west)
eventually catches up with it. But there is no balance. As the situation degrades in the west, it will get more hysterical and we
may well see a nuclear war. The sanctimonious west will not go away like the USSR.

As the situation degrades in the west, it will get more hysterical and we
may well see a nuclear war. The sanctimonious west will not go away like the USSR.

The closer to the nuclear button the cooler and more sensible the heads tend to be and we will be relying on that for a non nuclear future.

GarryB wrote:

They whine NS2, while buying Russian oil as fast as they can.
It is jus a business. If you can nail your competitor - why not?

The irony is that the competitor in this case is the EU, because it is the EU that is looking at $2K per gas unit... Russia is making very good money out of this BS.

Less then you think. Russia is supplying the maximum at its current contracted rate. (which is normal gas prices) I think Poland is stopping more gas from going from Yamal. It would be a golden opportunity but additional gas volumes do not seem to be moving.

And here is where Gazprom appears on the scene, saying : sure, we can sell more gas to you, but on our terms, not yours. We will not pump more gas via Ukraine, we have brand nes NS2 ready, so happy to start it up.

They just built a new pipeline direct to Germany that bypasses a lot of extra countries that would normally draw transit fees for gas transfer through the pipes on their territory... they are not actually doing anything to collect those fees like maintaining their pipes or anything... they seem to be putting most of their energy into sabotaging NSII and shit talking Russia.

They have pumped all the gas they were contracted to pump... if the customers want any more gas or they want to top up their own storage facilities in Europe then it does not make sense to send it through hostile countries when a brand spanking new pipeline exists... they are in no hurry to top up their storage... they are obligated to make sure Russian customers needs are met first... they can wait till May or whenever to top up their storage tanks in Europe.

The only value for Gazprom for the extra capacity in storage tanks is if they get a big order and don't have the pipe capacity to deliver it, they can tap into their storage reserves, but if the EU wants to play stupid games and stop them pumping gas through the new pipes and also demanding extra gas be sent without actually ordering or paying for anything then Gazprom can simple smile and ignore them.

If the EU wants Russia to send gas through Ukrainian pipes then order some gas... but the spot price is very high and of course the countries on the route will get a good slice too... making it even more expensive....

BTW where I live in New Zealand there is no gas network, most houses are on the electricity grid, but those that use gas for cooking or heating or water heating often get rather large gas bottles... like the big gas bottles used for gas wielding... normally two of them.

The only time I buy gas is little 9kg bottles used for barbecues or gas heaters.

They are about $25 to fill.

They have small trucks that deliver the big gas bottles, but not a huge number of people have gas like that...

I must say it is certainly more efficient for hot water supplies than electricity, but most of the other things I use power for electricity makes more sense.

Note for the AC excess electricity use during Summer... wouldn't that be the ideal situation for Solar panel power?

The US totally twists official statements by the OSCE over the conflict in the Donbass and keeps harping about
Russia needing to "fulfill its obligations under the Minsk Agreement" including to pull back its forces, inside the
Donbass, from the LOC.

This is full bore lying and not merely spin or selective quotation. But it also shows how demented US propaganda
is. If Russian forces are already inside Ukraine, then why would they need to invade. The US has not even provided
any evidence of these supposed Russian forces in the Donbass.

The cherry on top of this yanqui turd cake is the whole "full support for Ukraine's territorial integrity". Based on what?
The Kosovo precedent and the the ICJ ruling in 2008? Yet more "principles" pulled from the ass.

People in Europe, Russia and the rest of the world do not appreciate how detached from reality the yanquis are.

It's naturally far more a priority for Russia's frigid climate than for a country like New Zealand.

The electrical grid is pretty much complete and total because a lot of the electricity generation is in the south of the south island... if it was in the far north they probably would not bother, but because the hydro electric dams were down here every town has electricity.

It does not really get very cold here and most houses have some sort of wood burner or open fire for heating when it gets cold so electricity was mostly for lighting and cooking and TV etc. These days heatpumps are rather more popular and open fires are banned in some regions to deal with air pollution.

I remember in the 1970s there were fuel shortages and a lot of petrol driven cars were converted to LPG... but retained their petrol tanks so they could run on either petrol or LPG with the flick of a switch.

We had car less days... at a time when most families had one car you got a sticker to show which days of the week you could drive...

Regarding the future I don't think any company or the government would go to the expense of putting in gas pipes even for major cities because the demand for gas is simply not there.

Perhaps if a hydrogen fuel technology is developed that can separate the carbon in hydrocarbons as a solid without combustion then petrol and diesel and kerosene would be useful ways of carrying and distributing hydrogen so the existing fuel stations and trucking and shipping of fuel might continue as normal...

But there are some funny parts as well, saw a material where the people who live just outside the Gazprom facility at Yamal were saying, that they are not connected to the gas system Laughing
They addressed that to Putin at the last annual Q&A session, leaving him literally speechless for a few seconds

That sort of thing is normal though isn't it?

We pay more for the milk and meat and fruit and food our farmers produce than someone in London or the EU pays and they send the best stuff overseas, so we pay more for lower quality products.

In spite of the complaints, piped gas delivery to Russian regions has expanded spectacularly since the 1990s. During
the Soviet period it was common to have remote regions obtain gas in canisters. In Russia people bitch as if all around
the world every God forsaken crack gets urban level service. No, in the real world people do without or move.

I posted a video on this a while back.

Arrow wrote:The US / NATO vs Russia talks on security guarantees will begin on January 12.  In my opinion, this is a complete waste of time for Russia.
Even if the US agrees something, they will not obey the agreement anyway.

The Russians are saying that the word of the US regime is worth less than zero themselves, but this is the way of the diplomacy, and as said it covers Russia from the kind of smear they will be receiving when they take the measures they are most probably going to take. It is now in their interest to call out the Western military bluff, so despite their prudence I think they are going to act much bolder from now onwards.

They wont expect the west to keep its word, but once they have their word in writing then they can justify responses... putin even mentioned it...

He said everyone has red lines so if you cross ours then you have no right to complain when we respond and our responses might cross your red lines... so for instance if the US forces the Ukraine into HATO then Russia might start selling Su-57s to Iran and North Korea and might start placing nuclear weapons on the border of the Ukraine with warheads targeted and ready to launch on a moments notice... they might send Zircon missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba... there are a variety of things they could choose to do...

That is the Cold War all over again. Except Russia this time has less resources and people.
Been there done that. Russia needs to treat Ukraine like the US treated Mexico in its history.
If there is trouble in the borders, you do a punitive expedition and annex easy pickings.

Arrow wrote:But better technologies and weapons, a strong economy.  The West, on the other hand, is bankrupt.

Except the Soviet Union also had better technologies and weapons in the late 1950s. The US isolated them and eventually they stagnated.

US established an unipolar international order after the WWII based on nuclear weapons and an economy which was 50% of the world's one after the destruction of its rivals. Now things do not even remotely resemble that, the forces of history cannot be stopped.

BTW, talks Russia-US scheduled for the 10th of January in Geneva:

https://tass.com/politics/1381725

The sanctions that tried to sabotage the MS-21 project were petty spazzing by sore losers in Washington. The Russian
company making the composite wings could form half the wing in one go. The US had no such ability. So the natural
response of sore losers was to sanction the supply of composite materials to the project. Russia gave Washington the
middle finger in 18 months and fully replaced the inputs.

Next time you hear some Washington aligned bitch whinging about Russian technological "inferiority" recall this case. US
loser bitches have a long history of taking the ball back to mommy when they can't win fairly. They did the same thing
in the early 1990s when they imposed import tariffs on NEC vector supercomputers. Cray was totally outclassed by
the Japanese and Washington could not tolerate such insolence from even its own "ally". I recall this because it forced
the adoption of crummy IBM parallel computers for HPC which I used. The code had to be reworked from vector optimization
to scalar architecture. Now we have parallel HPC systems using commodity Intel CPUs. I view this as a long term decline.
A hybrid vector-parallel approach is superior for many real world needs such as fluid dynamics and the related atmospheric
circulation models.

BTW, the recent move by U-rope to take Russian counter-sanctions moves to the WTO are a total joke. Washington sabotaged
the dispute resolution function of the WTO by blocking appointments of judges. So U-rope will be going into an empty room
and demanding Russia be convicted of a crime.

GarryB wrote:BTW where I live in New Zealand there is no gas network, most houses are on the electricity grid, but those that use gas for cooking or heating or water heating often get rather large gas bottles... like the big gas bottles used for gas wielding... normally two of them.

The only time I buy gas is little 9kg bottles used for barbecues or gas heaters.

They are about $25 to fill.

They have small trucks that deliver the big gas bottles, but not a huge number of people have gas like that...

I must say it is certainly more efficient for hot water supplies than electricity, but most of the other things I use power for electricity makes more sense.

Note for the AC excess electricity use during Summer... wouldn't that be the ideal situation for Solar panel power?

The gas in those bottles is propane. Its really quite a bit more expensive then Natural Gas which is mostly methane. Methane is a bitch to liquify. The way its shipped is to super cool it so it will liquify at a reasonable pressure. Its loaded into massive ships and as the gas slowly heats up and gasses off, its used to propel the ship. Generally NG is stored in underground cavens under pressure. Its not typically stored or transported as a liquid unless it has to go on a ship, due to the high pressures or low temps required for liquifaction.