Re: Ukraine's Curve Ball

On Wed, 14 Aug 2024, JAB wrote:

On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:19:25 +0200, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
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Let's hope now

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Hopefully Ukrainian's military carefully considered consequences of
their blitzkrieg on Russian soil.  Either they planned for a transient
duration, or long-term if needed.

Yes, let's pray! I read in the swedish mainstream news today that Ukraine admited to some goals in the form of cutting supply lines which feed the russian deployment which go through Kursk, as well as taking out arifields and artillery which has been stationed there.

Putin would not tolerate being mocked.  So a land swap is most likely
moot, and most likely he will reject war reparations.

If Putin does not win, he is dead. So could be that if they decide to talk, Putin will first fall down some stairs or off a baclony.

I'm not sure if the Russian propaganda machine could walk back any
statements made by Putin, et.al.  I have no idea what their press said
after Soviet-Afghan War (24 December 1979 - 15 February 1989)
>
Press has stated that "Money generated by Russian financial assets
frozen in Europe will soon start flowing to Ukraine, giving Kyiv a
boost ..."  So the interest money from some $282 billion will be used,
but could the principal be used for war reparations...unknown.

As I understand it, what everyone is deadly afraid of is to open the legal possibility in europe of confiscating assets from your political enemies without due process. That is why only the interest is used and not the assets themselves.
However!
What I find so strange about that is that in many european countries, there already are laws which make it easy to confiscate private property without due process such as cars and boats, for traffic and fishing crimes.
Doesn't matter if the owner was in another country and someone else commited the crime, the property is seized without any process.
So... how come it is so easy in these cases, yet, when we are talking about assets of war criminals, there is so much hand wringing?
Maybe it's a case of the size that makes everyone uneasy.

I'm not familiar with potential leverage levers that could be used to
make Putin think about consequences.
>

No, he is all in. He must win to remain a strong and credible leader. He could of course declare tomorrow "mission accomplished" and the public would just shrug their shoulders, but the next in line to the throne would see it as a huge admission of weakness and kill him.