Cheap energy? As in "cheap gas and oil"?
Climate change? As in "caused by burning gas and oil"?
I'm afraid you cannot have both

My in laws, yes. I am lucky to never have experienced this.

Just to add to that.
Yes, it is possbile, that Putin and his cronies don't believe that stuff about imperial ambitions and so on...

But they need to sell that sh** to Russia's citizens in order to keep calmly stealing sh**loads of money and remain in power.
They need to maintain status quo by propaganda and promises about coming back to "Great Russia times" and saying that NATO is dangerous for Russia.

Constant fear and constant promises about bright future. NATO is the stick, promises about bigger Russia - the carrot. Perfect mixture.

Please tell me where I'm wrong here. Are they not stealing? Or are they not promising bigger and greater Russia? I'm really curious how you process that and make it coherent.

https://www.infobae.com/en/2022/04/0...o-vladivostok/

same as for covid and climate change. people will ignore it until they are on a ventilator begging for (the now too late) vaccines. i guess climate change they can probably ignore as the timelines are too far away and impacts not easily attributable.

The thing is - he doesn't need to get everything.
He just needs to show that he is realizing some promises about making Russia bigger/greater in order to keep his power.
It's not about the goal or end of that process, it's about process itself.

Macron in 2019:
https://www.courrierinternational.co...tente-cordiale
He even twitted it:
https://twitter.com/emmanuelmacron/s...72183752462336

There is a marked progress in its realisation:
This is what Russia's "liberation" of Mariupol looks like (Pictures via Ramzan Kadyrov)

Macron is a very intelligent person, no doubt, so these statements cannot be taken at a face value, of course. Why does France so badly court Russia? Is it about (spheres of) influence in Middle East and Françafrique?

Meanwhile in Germany, as reported by the public Bayern radio:
BR24: Deutschland liefert offenbar schon länger keine nennenswerten Waffen mehr

Putin's goal is to achieve greater Russia, sorry, "Eurasia" from Lisbon to Vladivostok, by killing Ukrainian national identity, among others. Quite revealing for their plans. Suppose they want a different type of USSR, they do not want an Eurasia of nations, they want a Russian Eurasia. Prepare for learning Russian and for your kids to study in Russian, folks. "Slammer" (it could be anyone here, not particularly him) still doesn't believe. He thinks he'll be safe in UK and have cheap flights and goods as before.

Good, that means that they are sticking to the anti-military stance implemented by the allies after the second world war while trying to find ways to assist. I don´t get why the rest of nato is ok with Germany flinging weapons around and spending billions on new military hardware. Perhaps Germany should take notes, you know, for reference so that there is no misunderstanding in the future.

Another question I have is with Germany getting 60% of it´s gas supply from Russia, could Russia turning the gas tap off be seen as an attack on critical infrastructure to a nato country and trigger article 5?

__________________
Back in Bavaria, god´s own belly button.

Article 5 can only be triggered by an "armed attack". You can read it up, the treaty is in the open domain.

I rather not comment on the rest.

But you are assuming that as well.
I don't buy into Russian narrative that this is the Western narrative.

That's probably the case. Things change, we adapt.

Seems to be a bit fuzzy in the definition of attack, I did read up by the way. Now bare with me, a cyberattack on a nato country could be seen as an attack for instance and trigger article 5, so why not an attack on a nato members energy supply?

Nothing new, it has always been like this. It social systems lasted forever we'd be writing on Latin forum

Yes, society is fragile and individuals are even more fragile. But, depression and anxiety are useless. About energy, just be ready to park the car and go anywhere using public transport. It's boring and tiresome but it's not the end.

Fortunately, we're humans with feet and not trees with roots. Hey, this is an expat/immigrant forum, some people with experience living on 3, 4, 5 different countries. One more change? Tiresome but possible.

True, this applies for you and me and I think that most on this forum are flexible and intelligent enough to adapt to any sudden change. But we are not the majority and I very much doubt that Hans and Lisel will be able to do the same.

I personally don't get how someone can be so scared of an imminent change, acknowledge the change is happening as we speak, and in the same time believe they can somehow avoid or at least postpone the change.
But if you try to understand slammer, who nonchalantly talks about giving Ukraine and Moldova (that we don't have, last time I checked they weren't on my inventory list so I can freely dispose of them, don't know about slammer) to the dogs or even worse, please feel free to translate to me. I gave up.
*or Greek, btw.

Is the word "armed" so difficult to understand? And in any event, as the text says, there can be varying degrees of response, and not all members have to act in the same way.

If you think Article 5 is fuzzy, so be it. It has never been properly tested. But I firmly believe it is much more credible now than it was a year ago.

"armed?" Weapons these days don´t have to be bullets and bombs, weaponizing the energy supply and deploying cyber weapons are just as disruptive as boots on the ground.
I suppose it´s in the definition of what counts as an armed attack and I hope it is never put to the test.

Back to the war, it's quite interesting to see how dangerous is Spain for Russian people of interest. Add all the unsolved deaths of Russians in the UK over the years. Power struggle to say the least. Putin talked about all the traitors with their hearts in Miami, but maybe he said Miami because Cataluña is harder to pronounce.

https://www.businessinsider.com/2-ru...22-4?r=US&IR=T

We had an iron curtain before, I think there will be another one and sooner than we think...Putin has lost the war as soon as he started it. Even if he'll capture the Eastern parts of Ukraine and Mariupol, he'll have to explain the Russians why did he do all of these when the living standards will sink even lower and people will queue for Western products as they used to during communism.

This is the interesting part. Where will the new line will be? Or will it be a stripe?

Also, if I were a dictator that relied on Putin's support for survival I'd start packing.