Member Info for LoungeLizard1

POWER, there's good reason for panic. Russia, unfortunately, is winning this war of attrition. No investor of FXPO should want that. The stock will be basically worthless if Russia captures its facilities and requisitions them for its own use. The only good thing about this mess is that it means bargain shares – but at a cost.

James Waterhouse from BBC reports that up to 3,000 North Koreans are expected to be deployed to the Kursk region. The Kyiv Post adds that they will be embedded within the 11th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces. Thousands of NK troops are already in Russia, training and awaiting further orders. Earlier on Tuesday, 18 NK troops reportedly deserted from Russian positions on the Bryansk and Kursk border. This comes after at least 20 NK personnel, including at least 6 officers, were killed while training at a base in Donetsk. That attack also wounded at least 3 other NK personnel.

Proof that timid responses towards Russia only invite more violence. This could get very hairy, very quickly. There's no way Eastern Europe will sit idly by while Ukraine gets pummelled. If the US does not give the Ukrainians the green light for them to strike targets in Russia with US weapons I expect the Russians to advance. The West needs to wake up.

Cleverthoughts, Latvia just gave Ukraine €1.7 million for strengthening the resilience of its energy sector during the winter months. Speaking today with DW news, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said that Ukraine's allies acknowledged a "very difficult winter is coming for Ukraine," and that the West needs to "mobilize more support. So there is no time and place for fatigue. Otherwise we are going to seek enormous and negative consequences for regional and global security."

Interestingly, Rinkevics expressed that Latvia will continue to support Ukraine "with all means at its disposal," before extensively criticizing the restrictions on the use of US weapons against Russia. Unlike the Biden administration, the Latvian government cannot afford to be complacent and understands what must be done.

Agreed, prime time to stock up. We will see if FXPO has any real legs once the US election is done and dusted. Europe is gearing up for every possible outcome – today, Rheinmetall and Leonardo signed a €50 billion JV for the development and production of combat vehicles. The venture (Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles) will endeavor to plug the shortfall of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in European armies.

troajan, what do you mean? you can be a critic of western foreign policy and not be a putin supporter. it’s not binary.

also, it’s good that trump backs israel. you say it like it’s a bad thing. why not? there’s no reason to ever support the palestinians. unless, of course, you are one of those bleeding heart liberals, a muslim, or a radical type. the palestinians are troublemakers.

malingerers. burnt every bridge opened to them. lebanon does not want them. they remember the plo, the civil war. beirut was the paris of the middle east, lebanon itself known as the switzerland of the middle east. nor does egypt want them. they despise hamas. hamas is an offshoot of the muslim brotherhood, a sworn enemy of the regime of egyptian president abdel fattah al-sisi. the only reason why such countries voice sympathy for the palestinians is out of political expediency – they have to placate huge sections of their respective societies who hate jews even more than they hate palestinians. most arab elites don’t care. too westernized they are. majority are schooled in london and paris, shop in dubai and zurich, holiday in verbier and monaco. even hamas leadership live in qatar, slumming it in multimillion dollar penthouses.

sure, israel has an extreme right settler element, but this pales in comparison to the majority of palestinians. these people have views anathema to western society. women, ***s, dogs, all treated like garbage.

lemontree1, julian assange put mission critical assets in danger. lucky he didn’t get assassinated, he deserved capital punishment.

also, what do you mean about hk? the uk relinquished hong kong (foolishly, i might add). hk should never been returned to china. china does not deserve hk at all.

hong-kongers are totally different from mainland chinese. mainland chinese are awful.

untrustworthy and devious. then again, the british government is not too dissimilar. they threw the hong-kongers to the wolves, just like they did to the rhodesians.

This was no genocide in a conventional sense. More a civil war where blood-thirst went utterly rampant. The Serbs themselves were allied with one group of Bosnian Muslims on the western side of Bosnia, whose leader was a secular Muslim, Fikret Abdic. He actually got more votes than Izetbegovic.

Anyway, I hope Ukraine perseveres. FXPO depends on it!

Troajan, the US has made the terrible error of letting the Russian’s dictate the narrative. All this fretting over upsetting the Russians is not the proper behaviour of a superpower.

This has just enabled Russia to continue its war of terror. It has also made the likelihood of an eventual confrontation with them more likely, not less. Why would Russia negotiate when it is abundantly clear the West is absolutely terrified of getting into a fight? They wouldn’t. And that’s not good for us in the West. Avoiding the bully in the playground just signals fear and cowardice. They only respect strength and only understand violence. Henry Kissinger would be turning in his grave if he saw how the US was acting. And this is a man who once said: “It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

I am not surprised Putin has stated his preference for Kamala – she will be predictable. Trump? For all his faults (and my God, there are many) he would be an absolute nightmare for Putin. Kamala would just be Biden 2.0. Trump is unstable and erratic. If the US wants to show it is serious, it should provide direct military support to Ukraine. Air support at the very minimum. The military aid is all well and good, but at the end of the day it is soldiers that Ukraine desperately needs. Unlike Russia, it cannot afford them. Russia has a steady stream of mercenaries from all over the globe, as well as North Korean volunteers. It is mobilizing about 30,000 a month. Huge numbers.

The US had absolutely no problem getting involved in Kosovo. It was just US policy of allying with Muslims around the world, particularly when such Muslims were opposing Russia interests (previously it was the Mujahideen in Afghanistan before Serbia). Like Russia in Afghanistan, the US really messed up there. They really didn’t think about it. Serbia wasn’t any different. Izetbegovic, the guy they championed to be the first ever president of Bosnia, made Milosevic look positively tolerant. Even the Yanks soon realized Izetbegovic was not the defender of a multi-ethnic Bosnia they had proclaimed, but, in fact, a rabid Islamist with started courting Osama Bin Laden himself once the Yanks got cold feet (Bin Laden sent Mujahideen in support of Izetbegovic).

I don’t know why they were the Yanks were so surprised. Clinton knew Izetbegovic was bad. During WW2, Izetbegovic was a recruiter for the SS Handschar party which SS leader Heinrich Himmler had set up for Bosnian Muslims and which was led by the fanatically anti-Semitic Mufti of Jerusalem‬. Izetbegovic also sold out his own people out – he let the Serbs take Srebrenica because he wanted US and NATO support, and they would only support him if this happened. Another Bosnian Muslim leader, Ibran Mustafic, said that Clinton himself told Izetbegovic that it would basically be better if bodies were found – Izetbegovic agreed! I’m not saying it was staged or anything crazy like that, but

Yes, Troajan, I know, although I have to concede he does make a few good points. Just a shame about everything else. I have a strong feeling the war will escalate massively this winter. Yesterday, at the Defending Baltics conference, Polish Chief of General Staff Raimund Andrzejczak stated that Poland will "strike directly at St. Petersburg," if Russia crosses into Lithuania. Whats interesting is that Lithuanian Army Commander Raimundas Vaikšnoras added that the Baltic states would need to respond immediately, without waiting for NATO’s decision under Article 5 on collective defense. Basically, they would act unilaterally – without US approval or not. We are seeing history in the making here.

lemontree1, sure, nato doesn’t exactly have a clean history (intervention in serbia in the 1990s), but they are the lesser of two evils in this situation. i do actually agree that the uk should be spending more domestically by investing in nuclear energy, infrastructure and industry but unfortunately labour are absolute morons in this regard. they could save money easily by stopping foreign aid to most countries. i mean, in 2023, the uk sent £164m to ethiopia, £115m to afghanistan, £109m to syria, £101m to yemen, £100m to nigeria, £98m to somalia, £69m to ****stan, £62m to brazil, £58m to bangladesh. most of these countries are actively hostile to our interests. most have attitudes and values utterly at odds with ours. the £250m we gave to ukraine last year in official development assistance, however, is money well spent considering the importance of the nation in our geo-political interests. it's certainly a lot cheaper than direct military assistance to ukraine – something not totally unthinkable if russia significantly breaches ukrainians defences.

Krok, the 'billions in financial aid' is almost all invested in Western arms companies: BAE Systems, Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc. You think Zelensky wants to pursue the war because he doesn't want to relinquish power? Sure...

I would laugh at you but find such obvious lies and conjecture depressing reminders of just how widespread such views are.

LemonTree1, a little nuance please…

Ukrainians that support the aims of Russia are legitimate targets by the security services of Ukraine. It doesn’t matter if they are an informant or a judge, a traitor is a traitor. Any functional society removes threats to its existence, and does this quite often violently.

Most of the books banned by Ukraine are the works of writers like Alexander Dugin and Eduard Limonov. Both hardcore Russian nationalists. Seems more than reasonable to ban any material that might threaten or negatively influence the integrity of the Ukrainian state. Kind of a shame to be honest, Limonov is a really damn good writer.

Ukraine did not ‘ban’ the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Ukraine demanded the separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. Why not? The Moscow Patriarchate supported Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

What’s your point about the gypsies? They were a prolific group of pickpockets caught by a band of local vigilantes. They were harshly treated, but what did they expect? Looting in a warzone often warrants extreme punishment. Pro-Russian Telegram channels deliberately misconstrued the incident to be the work of Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

The conscription squads underline the huge shortage of manpower in Ukraine, as well as the desperation of the state to refill its ranks. I know colleagues who have brothers and fathers in hiding from these squads. They only want the men. Women getting press-ganged into the forces is just as likely as some kid with Downs Syndrome – that whole affair, by the way, was fake. You know that? Russian-related TikTok accounts pumped out a whole load of videos with dubious details (guys face is visibly glitching in some/uniform missing insignia/misuse of flags).

Holding elections in wartime is a stupid idea anyway, why would you do it in wartime?

People have bigger fish to fry.

How can you take Gonzalo Lira seriously? No different to Jackson Hinckle and Douglas McGregor… just another contrarian grifter who made his money spouting anti-Western rhetoric.

LemontTree1, indeed, truly is a bargain still. And a gamble, o yeah! I have been buying and selling back and forth this past month – I feel things could go either way at this point. There are simply too many variables: changing attitudes/support from Ukraine's backers (principally the US), division amongst said backers (e.g. Germany vs Poland), deeply opposing objectives from both Russia and Ukraine. The signals are too mixed!

Rise is interesting. Even more interesting was the results of the meeting in NY yesterday regarding the recovery and eventual reconstruction of Ukraine. The meeting involved the G7 and 30 other countries.

I’ll break down the commitments…

1) Russia’s responsibility under international law to pay for the damage it is causing.

2) Economic assistance to ensure Ukraine maintains macro-financial stability, to repair and build critical infrastructure including in the energy sector, to boost economic growth, to support social resilience as well as the implementation of priority reforms. These include improving the business climate, strengthening anti-corruption efforts, implementing the justice system reform and promoting of the rule of law within the context of the EU accession process. Ensuring the rapid and transparent absorption of donor financing.

3) Implementing the decision made at the G7 Summit in Apulia to launch Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans for Ukraine by the end of the year, in order to make available approximately USD 50 billion in additional funding to Ukraine. The loans will be serviced and repaid by the future flows of extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian sovereign assets held in the European Union and other relevant jurisdictions. Part of these funds will be directed to military assistance to Ukraine.

4) Strategizing, coordinating and steering support for Ukraine’s economic recovery and reconstruction through the Ukraine Donor Platform. This will include catalyzing private sector contributions as well as leveraging bilateral, European Union, and international financial institution funding, and encouraging Ukraine’s reform agenda in view of the country’s accession path to the EU. Supporting Ukraine’s human capital through an ongoing response to humanitarian needs and social protection.

Biden admin also has now authorised $5.5 billion guaranteed for Ukraine by the end of his tenure. This is on top of $2.4 billion the DOD plans to give Ukraine through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Most of the funds will go towards UAVS, additional air defense (especially Patriot systems) and and air-to-ground munitions as well as strengthening Ukraine’s defense industrial base and supporting its maintenance and sustainment requirements. Package includes training for 18 more F-16 pilots.

Absolutely Mogg.

Everything. Things have worsened since 2021 (when they paid huge dividends). It's a shame as they are still making plenty of cash.

Gaijin, a few months back I was fairly confident at least one dividend would be paid in 2024. Now, no chance. Things have escalated too much. I can't see peace talks of any kind happening soon. I'm expecting more fighting, much more fighting.

Very skeptical of any peace this year EarlofAimPlus, the sources are Indian... I wouldn't trust them, China or Brazil at all. BRICS is ghastly. Those channels are pumpers for Modi – the man is focused on putting India at the forefront of the world stage, as well as getting as much discounted Russian oil as possible.

Poltava is another question entirely!

Very nice MakinHay – save some change though… If Pokrovsk is taken by the Russians then the SP could fall further. Maybe, not to the lows of 15ish pence back in Christmas 2015, but sub-40 perhaps. Aside from being one of two key logistical hubs, Pokrovsk is Ukraine's largest producer of coking coal as well as the mining capital of the nation. Ukraine cannot afford to lose it. They have already lost the Azovstal steel mills in the siege of Mariupol as well as the Avdiivka coke and chemical plant in the Russian assault there. I’m expecting the fortress will turn into a veritable charnel-house over the coming weeks/months…

Howardzz, let’s see. I sometimes ask the Ukrainians at my work about things. Many are from Poltava oblast. Some, especially the young ones, only really remember a Ukraine at war. Peace is a dream. Many others have become so inured to it that they can’t imagine anything else. They acknowledge the ugliness of the situation, but just shrug and grin. One told me yesterday that ‘we don’t think about the end.’ It seems they may be forced to…

Lemontree1, very valid points. However, there is a plus side: iron exports to Turkey. These have risen considerably this year. 158,505 tons, as of June 2024. Compare this to 72,763 tons in June 2023. Much of this ore is shipped straight across the Black Sea to Erdermir, the port itself named after one of Ferrexpo’s biggest clients and receiver of said ore.

Alex1978uk, I hope so. BRICS is a joke. China, especially. China cares only for China.

Ukraine should turn to its other neighbours like Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltics and Scandinavia (particularly Finland). They know how to deal with Russia. Ukraine should depend less on the US, the Yanks are unreliable.