German ex-chancellor Schroeder says Russia wants negotiated solution to Ukraine war

Uhu, maybe you shouldn't believe everything you read or maybe look for better sources. A concept you should be familiar with re the American media, right? I don't see "such panic about the approach of winter" in Germany. Neither do I see "warning about economic catastrophe [...] and the virtual shutdown of German industry." I have to ask myself where that comes from.
Opening up coal operations again means being prepared for the worst case - Putin cutting all gas supplies to Europe completely. This is also why keeping nuclear power plants in operation longer than originally planned has become an option and why the EU passed its plan to cut energy by 15% a few days ago.
Regarding the gas turbine, Russia is simply using this case as a cheap excuse (a lie) not to send more than 20% via Nord-Stream1.They claim that this turbine is absolutely essential for operations, but cannot be send to them because of the current sanctions; a couple of days ago they claimed certain official papers where missing and they couldn't accept the turbine without them. The German government says it can be send to Russia immediately despite the sanctions. Russia simply wants to continue this power game like they always do.
The situation is not even remotely as dire as you seem to think and what you call "the impression" is your impression, nothing else.

 

Yeah...if NATO got involved tomorrow....Russki military would be completely destroyed in a week....Dwarfstan would go nuclear....

 

Russia's losses in this Ukraine adventure have been great, but that has never been of paramount concern to any Russian government, no matter whether it was under the Czar, under Communism, or under Putin (the 'neo-Czar). The Russians will dig their heels in and ultimately they will, at the very least, take over Donetsk and Luhansk... and possibly quite a lot more in order to secure the 'land-bridge' to Crimea, and, the northern section in the vicinity of Kharkiv.

All that notwithstanding, during the last two months, Germany has been sounding the alarm about very real problems they face because of the lack of energy. I'm certain that you must know this, but I'll give a few examples of the kinds of things that have made your headlines in Germany in just the last two months:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...hutdown-amid-gas-shortage-spiegel-2022-06-24/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...n-head-warns-of-collapse-of-entire-industries
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladi...ment-if-gas-crisis-continues/?sh=184b80f78c33
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...an-economy-at-risk-over-russian-gas-imf-warns
https://www.zawya.com/en/projects/o...y-shutdown-amid-gas-shortage-spiegel-dppa5uzv

. "Doch, ich habe "Katastrophe" eigentlich gesagt!" -- Robert Habeck

 

He's lying on behalf of his master.

Mr. Schroeder is one of comrade Putin's agents on German soil. We call guys like him "Russlands fuenfte Kolonne". Schroeder is a member of the "Social Democratic Party" (SPD), which historically always has strong ties with RuZZia.

Btw, also Chancellor Scholz is an SPD member. This may explain his reluctance to supply arms to Ukraine.

I disagree with Schroeder in any way. As a fellow German, should I be ashamed of him? I don't. Even though he's an anti-western bastard.

 

LOL - I was chatting with some NCOs from the Army Logistics University a couple of months ago and everyone was literally laughing at the Russian military's gross incompetence. As far as Putler's goon squads are concerned, it's amateur hour in Ukraine....

 

Yes, but if you look at things through the lens of Russian 'norms' about warfare, they see nothing wrong with wasting large numbers of troops in the field, and they don't care whether they have a lot of their materiel destroyed, either. Look back through history and you see that nearly any Russian victory is a Pyrrhic victory.

The famous Battle of Tannenberg in World War I provides valuable insight into the workings of the Russian mind during pivotal battles in large wars:

"The Russians lost 30,000 killed or wounded, while the Germans sustained a total of only 13,000 casualties. Some 92,000 Russian prisoners were taken, two and a half army corps annihilated, and the remaining half of Samsonov’s army severely shaken. The Russians also lost 400 artillery pieces and other vital war matériel. The Germans were certainly favoured by Russian mistakes—above all, by the folly in dispersing the fog of war by sending unciphered wireless messages." (Does that sound familiar in 2022 also?)

"The German victory at Tannenberg remains a singular achievement, as its scale was unique in the history of the war."

Link: https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Tannenberg-World-War-I-1914

 

Schroeder may well have some access to Putin but it was born of the previous German relationship with Russia which encouraged Germany's dépendance on Russian energy.
It was naive and of course played into Putin's hands...à joker in his back pocket.
I am not sure the balance of power now held by Russia makes any viable negotiations between equals possible. And I don't think Putin is in any mood to be empathetic or kind to long term friends.
To have any hope of à successful negotiation requires that both sides have something to win and something to lose if the talks fail.
The one who can engagé in meaningful talks cannot NEED anything from the other. Macron tried...he doesn't rely on Russia for much of any importance, but the effort came too quickly when Putin was still enthusiastic. He could have done better to have waited but Jupiter can't help himself wanting à legacy.
I wouldn't be surprised if the European Union tried to engagé Putin. Putin has to respect the membership of the 27 who all belong to NATO, and who are the highway to a combined force that can match his. And would of course act in sync with the US. Sooner or later Putin will have to come to terms with Europe /the EU.. Doing it one country at à time is far too difficult and time consuming even though it is possible since the EU does not direct national foreign relations.
Unfortunately there is no established EU military force although there is a relatively small coopérative one. The UK has always refused to endorse one. ( one of my hige disagreements with UK policy, now coming home to bite them in the consumer energy bills).So there is no strong military representative voice to negotiate with Putin. And Putin holds the key to European economic strength.
What is his Achilles Heel?
His legacy in Russia.
I hope/suspect that behind the headlines, some operatives are working to weakening that. (After all there are Russian operatives in the West doing the work of disseminating pro Russian propaganda.)
I suspect the end will come when the mining under the Russian impression of Putin will start to destabilise Putin as a figurehead.
And it will take some time.

 

BTW I also include turning Putin's military command. Rock the foundations.

 

Quite true - plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.

Speaking of which, the sorry state of what passes for "logistics" in the Russian military was exposed during Vlad the Invader's first Not-So-Excellent Revanchist Misadventure in Georgia in 2008. Since then, his underlings have developed some shiny new headline-grabbing missile systems that are supposed to impress someone but he didn't do a damned thing about the logistics in his conventional military that became the laughingstock of the world 14 years ago.

Nothing has changed, and to your point about the Kremlin's disregard for human life, Putler & Co.'s negligence has contributed to the deaths of countless Russian soldiers, many of whom were poorly trained, poorly equipped and most certainly poorly led young conscripts, whose families are lucky to receive their loved one's remains...

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the soldier was lost.
For want of a soldier the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Again to your point, it's amazing how little things have changed in Russia over the years, isn't it?

In many respects it's like gazing through a window into the past, and not surprisingly we see that it's being led by an autocrat who aspires to be the next Peter the Great.

 

In several practical respects, Russia is actually a surprisingly landlocked country. Yes, it has ports at Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, and Vladivostok (which is 5,673 miles from Moscow by car). But those seaports, except for Vladivostok, are in areas highly susceptible blockades because they are located on 'choke-points', or very far north and far away from everything else (as is the case with Murmansk). Murmansk would also be very vulnerable to interdiction by NATO-member, Norway, and soon by NATO-member, Finland.

All you have to do to choke off everything going into or out of the Black Sea (and from there to the Mediterranean Sea) is to cut off passage through the Bosporous and Dardanelles Straits. To bottle up St. Petersburg, which is the 2nd-most important city in all of Russia, you need only restrict traffic in and out of the Gulf of Finland, which is quite shallow and narrow.

You could add the port city of Kaliningrad to the list, but it, too, is easily cut-off because it is merely an exclave of Russia, and completely surrounded by NATO countries. Moreover, it is located on the Baltic Sea, which is shallow and fairly narrow.

See the possibilities? Russia could be forced into a position in which it faces huge problems getting nearly anything in or out of itself, if 'push' came to 'shove'. Throwing bureaucratic obstructions on commerce with Russia through its seaports would not necessarily cause a shooting war, but it would seriously harm the Russian economy -- or what's left of it.

Hint: it's a LONG way from Moscow to any friendly nation that has anything that Russia wants or needs....

 

That's true. Even comrade Pooteen knows that. But he's bound to appear as the greatest dictator capable of conquering the whole world.

Wouldn't good for him, if he would fail to keep up this illusion.

 

Sure, that's solid analysis, but I'm positive every POTUS since Coolidge was aware of the issues of Russian sea travel....

I'm all for blockades, but that will actually be closer to war than assisting Ukraine, IMHO

Also, although it's not exactly in the same situation as the other cities you mentioned, Vladivostok could be bottled up relatively easily as well, if Japan and South Korea were fully onboard...

 

Seems like a good week for Nato.

US senate voted 95-1 in favor of admitting Swe/Fins.....French National assembly voted 209 for/46 against admission of Swe/Fin....I think 6 remain to vote....and those will be soon enough.

It's a done deal....afaic.

 

Dwarfstan has to look to look "tough &cool" to his local audience....anything less....he's chopped liver.

 

It's funny, really. As this Ukraine war drags out, it appears more and more that Russia is getting very little out of it, considering how very much it is putting into it. Sure, Russia has bragging rights in Iran and China, but Iran could be reduced to nothingness in mere days, and China? Well, in just the last week we've seen Xi Jinping revealed as a weakling coward, a tyrant who tried to intimidate the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives -- and failed at doing so completely!

Putin and Xi have been talking a tough game ever since Biden's humiliating fugg-up during the Afghanistan 'withdrawal' a year ago, but exactly what substance is there for real war-fighting in either Russia or China...?

 

Pretty much....it's amazing how much HASN'T changed with the Mafiosi....1942 called ...they want you back....colossal losses for pyhrric victories and minimal gains.

 

Sure we can negotiate: Pull back to the pre 2014 invasion borders and we'll stop hitting you.

 

What do you mean by "Dwarfstan"? Germany, as the little USA?
I think that Ukraine is the better "Little USA", in terms of bravery and resilience.

 

He means Putin's Russia, not Germany or America. I believe zoom is originally from Ukraine, too.

 

"Dwarfstan"= Botox Vladolf Putler.

 

Nope....lol....not from Ukraine....not even Ukrainian.....

 

Sorry. I stand corrected on that and what you meant by Dwarfstan. I thought you were referring to RuZZia, not its dictator.

 

No probs.....

I refer to Ruzzia in all insulting terms........Dwarfstan, Putlerstan,Botox chimp, Mafialand, Mafiosi, olgino, etc, list goes on.

 

Russia has achieved almost total autarky. Beyond that, it has as its neighbor the world's factory.

Other than that, you may have a point.

 

Well, you're right, and as we have seen, Russia and China are "joined-at-the-hip". My comments were focused on the logistics of Russia being able to keep vital levels of imports and exports moving smoothly without any hindrance. With that emphasis in mind, I'll remind us all that it's 4,560 miles (at least) by roadway from Moscow to Beijing. Trip planners estimate that the drive will take you 92 hours and 25 minutes to complete. The route will take you through mountain ranges and some of the most forbidding deserts on the planet.

I'm sure you get the point... there is a train, but how much can a train carry compared to the enormous daily demand of Russia? Moreover, how vulnerable is a train to, uh, disruption...? . And driving truck convoys over the notoriously horrible (HORRIBLE) Russian roads found anywhere east of the Ural Mountains isn't a drive I would want to make under any conditions, unless my compensation was so huge that it gave me a tax problem for years to come....