To think we cannot afford to support Ukraine anymore

Is that the Ray Dalio who said that a negotiated settlement with Russia with Putin controlling western Ukraine and managing to remain on the world stage would make Russia a 'lesser loser' in the war than the West and NATO?

@ChillyFloss Russia have repeatedly stated that negotiations would need to be predicated on Western acceptance that they keep the 4 territories they illegally annexed in September. This is totally unrealistic.

So this requires a bit of analysis. Where's the economic pain coming from? Mainly energy prices. (Our own economic problems are exacerbated by the economic own goal of Brexit without plans for eg the labour force, but let's put that to one side as OP seems a bit sensitive about that.)

Are we doomed to these energy prices forever? Also no - we can see that already. Even though the war continues, the European energy system is recalibrating itself away from Russia. In the short term than means massively increasing the number of LNG terminals and getting our gas supplies from elsewhere. That's already getting cheaper as the international system adjusts to the new demand patterns. In the medium term it means speeding the trajectory we were already on, which is ditching gas. We're behind in the UK because successive governments fell for the idea that gas would always be cheap and that despots wouldn't use energy as a weapon so they didn't invest in things like new nuclear. We also had a decade of Tory rule where they decided they were violently allergic to the cheapest renewables, but were quite up for North Sea subsidies.

But we are where we are. We're getting the nuclear programme back on track. Our offshore wind capacity is massively increasing and, despite what the fossil fuel lobby would like you to believe, it's a very rare day that the wind isn't blowing somewhere in our coastal waters. And for those days, energy storage, both small and large scale, are coming on in leaps and bounds.

And in the next year or so, with REMA, we should should see reforms to the way electricity prices are set, so that the price paid at settlement isn't the cost of the most expensive unit of electricity produced.

So the global gas prices that currently set our bills become less relevant as we become more energy independent.

And in terms of the wider priority of the rules-based global system, I do keep coming back to the economic pain that would be caused if China felt that this would be the right time to go for Taiwan.

JFC - bastards. Call themselves soldiers???

id heard about them raping women & obviously that's disgusting/horrifying, but a small child in front of her parents.

nasty bloody bastards!

@Saysomething1234 it's pretty pathetic to name change to name change & not stand behind your post.

I support, supporting Ukrainians here and in Ukraine. They didn't ask for this attack on them

separately, we're protecting OUR border & were collectively showing Putin that we will all stand together against him.

thirdly this would be a ridiculous time to Stop.

🇺🇦 to any Ukrainians that are reading, the vast majority support Ukrainians & want to support you AND we accept it's not just your war, but you're paying the price 🫶🏻

Sorry so do you admit now that you didn’t actually deal with that in your previous post contrary to your assertion? Oh and that we don’t have control of whether or not negotiations are even started contrary to your earlier post? Asking for a friend.

Lol! Yip - escalation of the innocuous invasion of Ukraine. Would all have been ok if only we hadn’t handed over some cash

Beginning to think Jeremy had a point. 😕

Afghanistan brought down the Soviet Union. While the occupation by uK and us troops ultimately didn’t end well it’s didn’t have anything like the effect it had on ussr. If Ukraine is like Afghanistan then that would be to our benefit overall- of course it’s much more complex than that.

Is that you, Jeremy?

No. But we are part of NATO, and can use our seat at the table to press for talks, which Russia has hinted at being receptive too in recent days. What happened to "jaw jaw" being better than "war war"?

China will definitely appreciate your budgeting, prioritising NHS over world security:) yes, that will work for everyone.. especially for those trying to create new world order:)

It’s nothing to do won’t ‘being nice’ or ‘morals’. More like trying to stop WW111

the world is global you may have noticed. We are an island but this is now irrelevant

No one is overlooking the threat from Russia. It is clear.

We have nuclear weapons too. Let’s hope that Putin doesn’t intend to use nuclear weapons or it could mean the end for all of us. It’s not an argument we should just appease him though.

Also worth reminding ourselves why Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons, amongst some of the selective 'history' on the thread.

But that's the point isn't it? Is it short term economic pain? Or a long, drawn out, ultimately unwinnable war (something the West have form for. Afghanistan for example). And then, we have the nuclear threat posed by a desperate, humiliated Russia.

By the way, it was precisely this sort of attitude (in the form of "America First") that led him to believe that he could get away with it.

We cannot afford not to defend them. Who will be next - Estonia? Latvia? Lithuania? Moldova? China is watching very carefully, to see if they could get away with annexing Taiwan. You cannot appease a dictator, they just want more.

Oh don't worry about nuclear bomb over Britain,he won't do it as knows he'll get one flying to Moscow in few minutes as retaliation.
Ukraine is a different matter though, Ukraine has no nuclear weapon since 1994 so is very vulnerable to an attack

None of your previous comments addressed this. Just some stuff about China and how you don’t think nato has the stomach for a war. Nothing that addressed that it’s not up to us if there is a negotiated settlement or not nor that we do not control the outcome unilaterally.

Not really in the long run - a Europe that is economically dependent on Russia is much more in China's interests than one that is much less entwined.

And a Europe that had shown itself unwilling to take short-term economic pain is less relevant as a consideration than one that shows it prioritises security and the rules-based system.

China has shown its colours in terms of how it's currently supporting Russia. Warm words but it's clear that unless things change significantly, China is disinclined to get involved. China is much more invested in a stable international system (skewed in its favour) than Russia is.

Fighting this war economically, by supporting those actually fighting and by reducing both Russia's economic influence and ability to fund its own war, is a much more cost effective way to achieve our goals than by actually waiting for it to become a fighting war.

Anyway, that ship has sailed. Through its actions, Russia has accelerated the shift to net zero energy systems as governments are now looking at it as a national security as well as an environmental issue. The best thing we can do in terms of restoring economic stability is to learn from our errors over oil and gas and take steps to prevent control of the global food system from ending up concentrated in the hands of a few potentially malign actors.

And on it goes. Your apology is accepted BTW.

The situation in Ukraine is complex. I have been trying to fathom the positions of all parties.

There has been a civil war going on since 2014 when the elected President Yanukovych who wanted Ukraine to be non aligned, was deposed. The Donetz People's Republic was set up in the Russian speaking Donbass and been recognised by some 7 states. Ukraine has been fighting 'the terrorists' from their point of view, ever since, defending the integrity of the Ukrainian State.

Ukraine is split between Russian speakers ( largely in the East and South ( Crimea eg ) and those who speak Ukrainian largely in the North and West. Historically I think Kviv was founded by the Rus who gave their name to the country Russia.

From the Russian point of view they and the Russian speakers in Ukraine are concerned about a hang over from WW2 when some Ukrainians supported the invading German Nazis. Some Nazi Organisations eg Azov Battalions have been adopted into the current Ukrainian armed forces. (These organisations have eg organised pogroms against the Roma, broken up meetings organised on International Women's Day etc. )

The Ukrainian Government has banned all opposition political parties and has banned all Trade Unions and confiscated their assets.

The US do not appreciate that using the Azov Battalions etc will only help Putin to play on the memory of the trauma of WW2 to keep the Russian population supporting him.

Putin claims that the US broke the agreement with Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War 1989-90 that Nato would not expand further East. He feels that it was betrayal of International Law.

Somewhere there has to be a peace negotiated for the sake of the people of the Ukraine.

@ChillyFloss yes I did mistakenly tag you, apologies. You don’t need to start swearing about it, as it further undermines your already irrelevant points 🙂