Xerxes

Putin didn’t even want to annex those newly declared people’ republic of Donbas from few weeks ago. For those of you who have been following the events in Georgia in 2008, you would know that after 14 years, those people’s republic of Abkhazia and the other one seized from Georgia were still not annexed to this day. the reason is probably more economics, Kremlin wants defacto control and not dejure control. I.e in full control but not in name. only Crimea was the exception to the norm given its strategic location and history. And Russia was already in Sevastopol. I know the “Putin wants to restore USSR” gets thrown out a lot. I would say that he wants the same thing every Russian ruler (Tsar or Communist) wanted: a series of buffer states separating it and the West. This is not new just happens to be front and centre on Western media these days.

“If it is victory, than it will tastes bitter as defeat” who said that in what movie ?I don’t remember anymore. A Pyrrhic victory it will be for Moscow. The de-militarization objective itself will end up de-fanging it own military instead. The Ukrainian can remove the statement from the constitution (I think I heard somewhere that is on their constitution) about NATO aspiration (it will be an inside joke that it is the cost of Putin’ off-ramp. now looking past this event, the crystal ball turns blurry. The Economist calls it full StaliniZation, what comes out of that is anyone’ guess.

OMG amazing. You can also see that scene with the old battery in the movie “king’ choice” on Prime. edit: it was not a battle cruiser though as per this article. Blucher was a heavy cruiser. Royal Navy was the only navy that operated battle-cruisers at that time

and more appropriately and more related is the infamous “Mig corridor” during the Korean War. Soviet pilots actually flying Migs with Korean insignia.

I have always found PBS Frontline to have amazing investigative journalism. All the interviews are in YouTube full but the full episode is the thing to watch. I don’t think we have access in Canada (yet) for those in U.S. here is the link. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-road-to-war/

When I heard that it reminded of me Norway old gun batteries in Oslo sinking the German heavy cruiser Blucher on the eve of the invasion, which was carrying the diplomatic and personal staff of the invading force.

Agreed about lack of Russian air superiorty. There is however, one school of thought out there that thinks that within the Kremlin, there must have been a calculus of a possibility of a what-if scenario where NATO would have intervined, thereby they kept their cream of the Air Force out of sight. I dont disagree with that view. That possibility must have been wargamed. But it is also clear that in the inital phase of the war, they failed to take out Ukrainian air defenses. The curious case of Russia’s missing air force | The Economist On the lack of coordination between its forces. Russian army was and always been an artillery-based army. Even in the second world war, while historian often give credit the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union (and rightly so), the one often overlooked point is that the Luftwaffe was tied down protecting the Reich against the Anglo-American heavy bombers and slowly decimated by them. How well would have the Soviet Union overall against the full wrath of the Reich with the full support of its Luftwaffe. What other major conflict did Russia fought since the end of world war, except for proxy wars. My own personal belief (clearly wrong now) was that Russia had really used the war in Georgia in 2008 as a test bed to modernize its doctrine and bring it up to date to something akin to a Western coordinated fighting machine.

For clarity, while the irony rings through, I would say that Ukraine could not have really made use of the nuclear arsenal. They were just based there as part of the Soviet arsenal while the nuclear code was controlled by Moscow. The same way the space program launching pads happened to be based on what is today called Kazakhstan. Had Ukraine refused to give up the nuclear arsenal back in the 90s, it is possible that Yeltsin with explicit U.S. backing would have gone in to secure them militarily, even though it might seem like a hard picture to imagine given what we today. Those were different times ….

The pledge was signed with then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had the backing of Russia, in December 2013 in Beijing. It contained the following joint statement:

Amazing …. presidents/PM of Poland, Slovenia and Czech republic are heading to Kiev, a city under siege, to meet the Legend himself.

1991 Gulf War was a clear win with clear objectives. it did however created a thirsty and vengeful cabal of men bended on feeding their fantasy and going back to finish the job in “special operation to de-ba’athify Mesopotamia” in 2003

whilst it is true that the “special operations” has not been going well for Kremlin, the reports of Syrians and Chechens are (I think) more to inflame anxiety and racial tension, than a strategic pause for its conscript army. Persians and Romans always used armies pooled from “fringe provinces” from the other side of their empires to fight their wars and supplement their regular forces. the one thing Russian army does well is to obliterate cities into submission with its artillery. There are not going to be doing any street fighting. Grozny is mentioned a lot on reports as an example. And since West took its gloves off on its economic war, so will Moscow. Nothing to loose unless Zelensky comes to a point.

Enter the Siloviki https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/04/putin-security-elite-siloviki-russia

Amazing !! He probably served under Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein, who got his field marshal baton at the siege of Sevastopol (in Crimea) ! We found a link you probably know this already. a fun anecdote. FLAK = Fliegerabwehrkanone

haven’t heard of that one. admitingly, C&C and Red Alert were just b-type games. the one game that I really liked and was realistic was called “Blitzkreig”. You played most of the campaign in world war 2 as Germans. With all the h/w relevant to that campaign based on historical events. I recall this very well because in the game the famous German 88 gun you could use it both as an anti craft artillery as well as anti-armour. Which is what exactly happened in the war. The 88s were first AAA and later on became famous tank killers. and much later they were actually mounted as part of the Tiger’ arsenal.

Some allies. Decades of friendship capped by a sword dance tournament with Trump in Riyadh and you get this.

for the next 10 years, all of the Call of Duty , Command & Conquer (90s game) games will be based in Ukraine and Russia. We are back to having them as the good ol’ reliable villians. they will probably resurrect Red Alert as well.

China will only buy the dip on Russia if it is well below book value with sufficient margin of safety. (i.e. they will get involve if it is 10x worth for it for them, i.e. having the Russian on the rope with massive concessions). In other words highly unlikely. There is no honor among autocrats everything is transactional. It has to be well worth it and right now not sure why PRC would supposedly be gaining beyound symbolic gesture. The future superpower (PRC as they see themselves) cannot be associated with what it looks like (and certainly is) a balatant and naked aggression that is getting so much attention. The Ukrainian blood that is being spilled is buying Taiwanese perhaps another decade of independence. The "Russia needs help from China" news is either exagerated up by U.S./allies intelligence community or it is very real but leaked by the U.S. intelligence community. Either way it was good to leak it, as it will pre-empt China and force it to take a posture. On Russia, the Oligarch cannot do anything. They have been de-fanged long ago, despite Western fasinations of them. There will be no "upraising" by the peasants and population, another fancifull Hollywoodish dream. The only threat to Putin is from within its own security establishment, ex- and current FSB. That said, they will also be pariah in a post-Putin world if ever that happens. Sometimes, crisis tend to focus the mind as it did for Zelensky the Comedian. Perhaps current crisis is also focusing Putin's mind. Power respects power. If he cannot pull it together, the only way out in Kremlin is in a bodybag through a palace coup. Thus self-preservation will have him focus his mind after all he is not dumb ,... just getting old, and for whatever reason it seems, he accepted the wrong inputs by his intelligence chiefs and miscalculated on a biblical scale. Some years from now, consipracy theories will develop that it was Western intelligence that fed that wrong intelligence to Kremlin, making Putin walk into a trap, de-fanging its warmachine, and its economy and sending it back to the Brezhnev era. This would be an interesting novel.

I have little understanding/knowlege of Oxy or its assets or what supposedly Buffett read in the earning call transcript that he didnot know about Oxy that was new, but just from the outside looking in, it seems this is not just an "oil-tracker" investment. He could have those buy investing in more liquid and deeper pool of assets like Chevron or Exxon. Maybe he seeks some sort of passive control on these O&G assetes and is willing to pay up for that control premuim. But none of that could have happened with Icahn around. I just dont think it is a concidence.

Timely thread: Private markets have grown exponentially | The Economist There is also the new (not so new) kid on the block: TPG

I just finished reading this book. It covers the internet sector and I think provides a good framework to aleast help investors not to brush off high valuation out of hands. Somestimes it makes sense and is warranted. The author talks a lot on CNBC and Bloomberg and i have watched (and liked) his interviews in the past. Nothing But Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons from One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts: Mahaney, Mark: 9781264274963: Books - Amazon.ca

I don’t know about CNBC but she has one with Bloomberg from 5 days ago. It is on YouTube. On Icahn, something tells me that Buffett was always interested to expand on Oxy but wasn’t going to show his hand with Icahn there. When Icahn left or was leaving, he jumped on it ….

So no one is going to say it .... Fairfax !

A Russian debt default may be 'imminent'. What does that mean for bondholders? | Fortune Russia owes roughly $40 billion worth of euro- and dollar-denominated sovereign debt, approximately $20 billion of which is held by foreigners, the Financial Times reports. The relatively small sums—the U.S. paid out $137.2 billion in interest payments on foreign-held debt in 2020 alone—means a Russian default is unlikely to pose a major systemic risk to the global financial system, but it will be enough to roil investors with exposure to Russian debt and downgrade the country's status as a trusted borrower. Up until a few weeks ago, when Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia was considered one of the world's safest bets for sovereign debt investment, due to the country's low GDP-to-debt ratio and its sizable foreign reserves. Russia likely still has enough cash to pay back its debts, but recent sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports may have closed off a major revenue stream for the country and strained its cash flow.

RTX they are in business of selling picks and shovels, anything aerospace. Fully platform-agnostic. The commercial side is well balanced by the former Raytheon defense assets. most people gravitate toward Boeing and the likes for aerospace exposure (guess because of name recognition), far better to have a business where the aftermarket earnings goes over multi decade than the one that is lump sum with delivery of the aircraft.