re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Finland and the Netherlands beat Germany to the punch and paid less for their FSRU's chartering them months before Germany. They are used elsewhere in the world and have been for years, as a stop gap or temporary measure until less expensive terminal with vaporization is built on land.

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I just wonder how much of this is being egged on by Russia to draw Western eyes away from Ukraine?

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Likely 100% Russia aided and funded. One of the pet peeves of Putin is how everything went down regarding Milosevic and Serbia when Russia was too weak to do anything

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I’m ashamed to call myself an American this morning and that hurts. You just traded the merchant of death for a law breaking, America hating liberal while leaving the real American deserving to go home still sitting g in a Russian prison. So all you have to do today is say how much you hate America and how racist it is and you are a hero I guess. I’m just beyond tired of this. This shouldn’t be political this should just be common sense and our current President just proved he has none. I don’t want to hear one more time how Trump was a Putin lover when Biden just agreed to this bullshite deal.

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We traded a convicted arms dealer for a basketball player. No wonder Putin thinks that the Biden administration is weak.

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Finland and the Netherlands beat Germany to the punch and paid less for their FSRU's chartering them months before Germany. They are used elsewhere in the world and have been for years, as a stop gap or temporary measure until less expensive terminal with vaporization is built on land.

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The article was talking about the onshore aspects of the LNG facility like the pipeline needed to connect the LNG dock to gas grid. Something that would have normally taken 5 years instead took less 1 year because they used common sense.

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No wonder Putin thinks that the Biden administration is weak.

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That's an interesting comment considering that the Russian propaganda slant for months is that they are losing on the battlefield because Ukraine is being aided by America and that's why the Ukrainian military is so strong. "American weakness" has not been a feature of Russian propaganda at all during this war.

You should consider that the Russians made the decision who they would trade. We have offered to trade the arms dealer for Paul Whelan several times (according to Whelan's brother) but the Russians didn't agree to the trade. The Russians agreed to trade the former arms dealer for Griner. The Biden administration did the deal to take what they could get, and bring at least one of the Americans home. Paul Whelan's brother has spoken publicly that they are disappointed that the Russians wouldn't agree to release Whelan and they also stated that it was absolutely appropriate to trade for Griner.

At the same time that the Russians agreed to the trade, they went on a propaganda blitz criticizing the US for trading for Griner but not Whelan, as if that was our choice. The target audience for the propaganda was the American right wing, which picked it up and ran with it. Right wing speakers are directly parroting the Russian propaganda line without any apparent awareness or care that they are being used by Russia against America.

May I suggest that if any part of this situation actually gets you riled up, that you take a step back and look again with an objective eye. The Russians are hostage takers. They have elected to hold Whelan for a subsequent trade. But it is America's duty to try to bring everyone home, even a bone-headed person like Griner.

No one person on planet has fricked Putin and Russia harder than Biden. The tab at the end of the day for Russia will be hundreds of billions, isolation, irrelevancy. It has cost Putin status and wealth and hopefully his life.

Did Putin believe Biden (and the US) was weak in Feb 2022, absolutely, I doubt he believes that now.

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amplifying the culture-war inflaming messaging.

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The reality is we will get one more significant appropriation before America moves on.

The good news is that should be plenty to break the Russians and the Europeans seem to be coming around to the reality they are going to have to step up funding.

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suspect the Russian have been told to lay off the infrastructure or the really cool shite will start showing up on the battelfield.

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The brutality and the persistence of the missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure seems to finally have passed Biden’s tolerance.

I hope that he and the Pentagon will let Ukraine take the war to Russia. I think Russia’s elite will quickly move for an end to the war if it appears to them that their Russian assets might be in danger.

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If this is the route you are going to take (blaming the right for parroting Russian propaganda in this trade instance), then you have to also place some blame on Griner. This would not look so bad if Griner did not take her anti America stances which were also assuredly bits from Russian cointel propaganda. It’s good to bring an American citizen home but the “bad look” phenomenon has plenty of blame to go around.

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Griner is an idiot. She thought that because she was an athlete, she could travel around with illegal drugs in her luggage and there would be no risk. It’s her own fault that she was in this situation.

I don’t know enough about Whelan to know why he was arrested. Wikipedia describes him as a “security consultant” prior to his arrest in Russia. I don’t know what the hell that means, but it sounds like he was involved in some sketchy stuf himself.

But America has a duty to try to bring them home, not as a reward for good behavior, but because they are Americans and they are being held by Russia as basically hostages.

Sure, Griner is responsible getting herself into that situation. Perhaps Whelan was too. But don’t lose sight of the fact that the party who decides who gets to come home and who does not is Russia. I won’t accept Russia, the hostage holder, or the American right, criticizing America based on who Russia decides to release. That’s fricking lunacy and it’s offensive to me.

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The only reason this opportunity for Russia exists is because they won the information war on the front end with the left- BLM. Don’t lose sight of that either.

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The use of the word “won” is too strong. Russians have used BLM as a wedge issue in America for sure. But they haven’t “won the information war.” In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Russia is generally seen in America as evil and weak, not because of propaganda really, but because the descriptions appear accurate.