Comment by lordnacho
4 years ago
Someone on the UK will be found in their home, frozen to ice. The story will pass, Sunak government continues. Nurses get screwed, along with border force, train drivers, and everyone else.
Inflation will come down but will still be high historically, governments will pretend it's a win. Central banks won't. SPX down 10%.
Twitter has a major outage.
Bitcoin touches 10k and 30k. At least one more explosion in the space, someone at a big player gets arrested.
Rust continues to grow, everywhere but especially in Linux.
More AI awesome stuff comes out.
Ukraine wins the war. Putin makes excuses. No actual treaty of course.
Covid causes massive problems in China.
Property crisis in China continues.
Either Biden or Trump passes from natural causes. Big news of course, conspiracy theories.
Messi gets next Ballon d'Or.
Brock Purdy becomes a starter. Eagles win the next SB.
I also think Russia will mostly withdraw from Ukraine. What do you think will happen with Crimea? I think that will remain with Russia for a long, long time, like Turkish Cypress. The rebuilding process in Ukraine will take 20+ years and cost crazy 100s of billions of Euro. The damage looks similar to fire-bombed cities during World War II (both Germany and Japan).
And to be real: I am so sad about COVID-19 in China. I am sad because it is preventable but the gov't doesn't want to lose face and allow mRNA vaccines to be imported. I think millions of elderly people will die in China. It is a humanitarian crisis. Sorry to any Chinese people here that will lose grandparents to COVID-19. It is a shame.
> What do you think will happen with Crimea?
Crimea and the Sevastopol naval base are being used as a platform to launch missiles at Ukrainian cities. It's hard to imagine a successful peace-deal that leaves Sevastopol in Russian hands.
Crimea is maintained by (a) the Kerch Bridge and (b) the land-bridge through Mariopol. The Kerch Bridge is very vulnerable, and the land-bridge too. Northern Crimea looks hard to assault, and is very well fortified.
As far as I'm aware, Crimea is nowadays occupied mainly by retired Russian sailors and their families; there has been a great replacement. I think it would be possible for Ukraine to drive Russians out of Crimea, but hard. I think it would be difficult for Ukraine to govern Crimea, and I doubt the USA would back a Ukrainian counterattack in Crimea. I suspect Ukraine will come under increasing pressure to give up claims on Crimea, in exchange for a full Russian withdrawal from Donbas. I think it would be a mistake for Ukraine to yield; Russian sentiment still seems to be strongly pro-war and pro-Putin, and a peace deal isn't the same as a Ukraine victory. I don't think there will be peace until Ukraine is able to defeat that pro-war Russian sentiment.
FWIW, I think the reasonable deal would be for Russia to withdraw from Donbas, in exchange for Crimea. Such an agreement would be heavily dependent on Western guarantees and weapons; and probably troops.
Crimea is valuable to Russia as its principal Black Sea naval base. It's not so valuable to Ukraine. But it is a serious threat to Odessa, Ukraine's principal Black Sea naval base.
I think someone has to win this war; a peace with no victory will just result in a resumption of the conflict. Russia could win quickly, by invading Kiev and removing the government. Ukraine can only win slowly, by reversing Russian pro-war sentiment through attrition. I can imagine a retaliatory Ukrainian attack on power infrastructure in e.g. Muscovy, if Ukraine were given long-range accurate missiles; that might swing sentiment.
I think Ukraine has more urgent problems than recovering Crimea. But I think that fucking bridge will have to go, in any peace deal.