MBW - 3/2/2022
Good morning friends. Here we are again at the start of a new day. Let’s get to it:
War in Ukraine has intensified during the past 24 hours. Kharkiv and Kyiv have been under heavy bombardment which has caused many civilian casualties. Here’s the Television Tower in Kyiv struck by a missile but still standing.
In the meantime, Apple stopped selling iPhones in Russia, Visa and Mastercard blocked all their Russian operations, Maersk the biggest cargo operator in the world stopped shipping to Russian ports.
President Zelensky virtually addressed the EU Parliament and got a standing ovation:
In contrast, the Russian foreign minister Lavrov got a walkout during his address of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
You may know that Zelensky was a comedian before he started his political career. Here’s a video of him playing the piano with his genitals.
Who among us has not played "Hava Nagila" on a piano with their genitals on stage and then gone on to lead their country against a foreign invasion?Speaking of balls, this is crazy. Facing armed invaders shooting guns in the air, holy shit these people are brave.
Last thing on Ukrainian balls:
We have touched on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances a bit before, but let’s try to understand what it was really about.
The document was signed on 5 December, 1994 at the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the eastern European country inherited 176 strategic and more than 2,500 tactical nuclear missiles. Ukraine at that point had the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world after the United States and Russia.
Ukraine could have kept the nuclear weapons, but the price would have been enormous. Additionally, the West threatened Ukraine with isolation since the missiles were supposedly aimed at the United States. Therefore, the only possible decision was to give up the weapons.
The problem is that these guarantees were only a formality, since no sanctions mechanisms had been established at the time. Nowhere does it say that if a country violates this memorandum, that the others will attack militarily. And as a Ukraine expert put it "The agreement is not worth the paper on which it was written."
It is obvious by now that Putin was caught off-guard in his assessment of the intervention in Ukraine. But the question is why is that? How could he not know? There are several reasons for this. I will try to go through the most relevant ones each day.
First reason: Being surrounded by corrupt yes-man.
Defense Minister Serdyukov truly reformed the Russian army from 2007 until 2012 when he was ousted due to pressure from military interest groups. His successor Shoygu is the current Defense Minister. Contrary to Serdukov he is a typical yes-man and all the anti-corruption measures and reforms of his predecessor were undone.
Shoygu is not an ethnic Russian. He belongs to the Tuvan minority and in Russia someone with a minority background can hardly become the supreme leader, therefore he is not dangerous to Putin who in return can delegate him the army. Shoygu is also a talented PR guy. He pondered to numerous feel-good-lies regarding the Russian ‘big strategy’. (to be continued)
People I know seem to fall into two categories when it comes to dealing with the current nuclear threat in Ukraine and beyond. The first group trying to play it cool and emphasize that the risk of mutual annihilation will prevail as it has always done in the past. The other group are in full fledged panic mode buying potassium iodide in case of an atomic cloud coming their way, getting cash out of ATMs, getting hold of physical gold etc. I personally am a bit of both. I don’t know which is the best way to react to this situation but here’s an interesting article from Politico that I ran into. It is a bit long but it is a good read. Fiona Hill has spent many years studying history and she thinks Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones. “It’s important not to have any illusions — but equally important not to lose hope.”
And lastly the pics and memes for today:
Rolling clouds over Kentucky.
The State of the Union.
Vodka it is then.
Best tweet ever.
Elon for the win.
That was it for today as well folks. Wishing you a nice rest of the week, see you tomorrow.