Best estimates I read were half a trillion euros. Many variables and uncertainties though, the war neds to end. The Pentagon has already ruled out a victory for Ukraine NATO in 2023. Ukraine will nor be able to regain all of its "sovereign" territory with Crimea included. With the recent escalation, the destruction will continue at a fast pace. Occupied Eastern Ukraine is the heart of the industrial economy. I recently posted some information on rebuilding Grozny ... it took 20 years.

EU proposes options to seize frozen Russian assets, but legal concerns remain | EurActiv - Nov. 30, 2022 |

The EU sees legal grounds to temporarily leverage at least €33.8 billion of Russian central bank assets to help pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, sources say [_link]

— Bloomberg (@business) January 26, 2023

Total blocked assets of Russian National bank is €300bn.

At the moment the Ukrainian government have zero bargaining power vis a vis the EU or the USA or any MNC offering investment. Their survival depends on the receipt of weaponry they cannot pay for. Their re-construction after the war will require trillions they have no hope of generating even in the long term. So they are wide open to being totally taken over economically, if not politically. No doubt MNC's will extract a high price.

But it is Russia which has put Ukraine in this position, and Ukraine's bargaining position will only improve once it is no longer dependent on western aid to secure its existence against Russian aggression.

Not a nice place to be in.

Vaccine injured protest, London 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exUwYR3rV_I

To illustrate the point, let me draw your attention to the preamble

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, on behalf of the Ukrainian people -- citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities [...] adopts this Constitution -- the Fundamental Law of Ukraine."

(translators COE.int, 1996; justice.gov, 2004; rada.gov.ua, retrieved 26.01.23)

juxtaposed with demographic terminology employed for 2001 Ukraine census

The peculiarity of the national structure of the population of Ukraine is its multinational composition. According to All-Ukrainian population census data, the representatives of more than 130 nationalities and ethnic groups live on the territory of the country. The data about the most numerous nationalities of Ukraine are mentioned below:

and the government's violent struggles to discriminate between Russian "nationality", legal rights of "ethnic-Russian" citizens wherever resident, and Russian-speaking ethnic-Tatar and -Greek captives of Crimea who twice fielded referendums to secede from Ukraine's "nationalist" regimes since 1991.

The salient point is, previailing concept of a nation, or political union, called Ukraine cannot follow from methodical destruction of its constituents.

The rental market in Germany is becoming nightmarish and experts say the government hasn't even begun to grasp the scale of the crisis.

So what's causing the problem and what needs to be done about it? [_link]

— DW News (@dwnews) January 26, 2023

New on MoA:
Spain Debunks 'Russiagate' like New York Times Letter Bomb Story [_link] pic.twitter.com/7foJyLtZO5

— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 26, 2023

Vetoed by the UK/US cabal of Boris Johnson and Joe Biden...

Ukraine's President Zelenskyy seems to be offering full neutrality and giving up long-cherished ambitions to join NATO, as well as not pursuing nuclear weapons - but will Putin budge?

Analysis from Sky's @DominicWaghorn 👇 [_link]

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 28, 2022

Ukraine war: Tanks, peace talks, Putin and Boris Johnson - key points from Kay Burley's interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Sky News - Jan. 26, 2023 |

The president added that, before the invasion, Putin never met for talks because he had no intention of preserving peace, saying: "He was just trying to mislead us. He doesn't want negotiations because he doesn't want peace. He can slow down things.

"They were sending messages about peace talks, and we have proof of it, only when they needed time to regroup on the battlefield.

"When they had huge losses, they were saying that they wanted peace. This is a lie. We saw them say that they wanted peace and then they would strike with missiles at night.

"We hope that once Russia pulls its troops back to their territory, they will admit their big mistakes, and there will be a new government in the Russian Federation. We are neighbours. It will be only then that we will be resolving this situation. Then, probably, talks will be possible."

#Ramstein
The war started by RF doesn't allow delays.
I can thank you hundreds of times - but hundreds of "thank you" are not hundreds of tanks.
We must speed up! Time must become our common weapon, just like air defense, artillery, armored vehicles & tanks.
The Kremlin must lose pic.twitter.com/wieu6fkMBn

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 20, 2023

After ordering more weapons, it's not time to speak about peace ... after Putin stands down, then peace talks would be passible. #RegimeChange

Ukrainian leader: I'm not interested in meeting Putin

Zelenskyy said that Putin doesn't want negotiations because he doesn't want peace:
"I am convinced that Ukraine is just the first step for him. I am convinced that he is waging a big war. And having the whole world helping Ukraine now - he is not thinking about that. He is thinking, 'Well, it's not working out in Ukraine now, but we will wait... the world won't stay united, they will get tired and I will move further'.

"But after Ukraine, there will be further steps, there will be other countries if we fail to withstand. I think we will manage, we will get support, and we will win."

Wed Aug 31st, 2022 invisibility, transparency, accoountability UPDATE since 1991

Nothing new here to see, we have been blogging about Propaganda, Warmongering and Disinformation ... #EUvsDisInfo

#WeAreNato #unitedwithjoe

• Leak: German Government's Ukraine war propaganda campaign
• Disinformatie: Controle van de media door de Duitse regering

The German Government has now confirmed in answer to a parliamentary question that the document is authentic.

Leaked document: How the Federal German Government is working on "Gleichschaltung of the narrative" on the Ukraine war--Part I 

NachDenkSeiten has exclusively been leaked an internal document of the German Government. We were able to verify the paper and we also know the identity of the whistleblower. The document gives an illuminating insight into the extent of the horizontal and vertical structures of--there is no other way to put it--propaganda by the German state at federal level, especially as regards the official involvement of media (e.g. Der Spiegel and Stern), Western social media corporations, educational institutions and so-called "fact-checkers".

Censorship a Characteristic of Advanced Fascism

a flak, of course, enforcing certain prejudices  which I may or may not be prepared to interrogate.

Google makes Jones' 2,427 pp encyclopedia ("combined publications") of organizational hygiene within Russian Special Forces, for instance, prepared for training US military officers available to the public. This fact alone indicates that the contents are not valuable in execution of present US military strategy. It's an artifact of US military culture and its knowledge base (or doctrine), which ought not be construed as either impartial or revealing US situational intelligence.

Of the sections that have not been restricted by Google publishing marketing, I selected that excerpt to corroborate my recollection of events (approximate period, time) contemporaneously reported by anglophone popular press. In particular I had been searching for ATO activity in Donbas immediately after Dec 2013 Maidan. A "Fort Sumter" rebel battery, if you will. Otherwise (to mix analogies), one might argue that Uncle Volody's "anti-terrorist" warrant in CY 2014 characterized a pogrom were details of concerted UA law enforcement agents, army regulars, and militia volunteer missions not studiously avoided by NATO-sympathetic OUN informants to this day.

Conversely, I supplemented this excerpt with a few competing documents of responsibility for Trilateral and Minsk I, II agreements by relevant parties. Which ironically illustrates the dearth of archived informantion provided by Russian "delegates" to intergovernmental agencies said to be assuring civilian safety in the "grey zone"—despite my inordinate effort to drill relevant databases. By year.

Here's my rule o' thumb, when reading historiography: survey multiple sources, compile chronolological qualitative and quantitative facts, prioritize historicity of witnesses (oldest before newest), and note "outlier" dictation—usually these set upper- and lower-bounds of plausible testimony.

So. In this case, all I needed Jones (a "hostile witness", as it were) to do is confirm active ATO combat in Donbas before, during, and after Minsk deliberations, because the UA regime prefers not to.

Anyone care to comment?

https:/twitter.com/FWarweg/status/1580539903028252674

https:www.nachdenkseiten.de?p=88618

https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/leak-german-governments-ukraine-war-propaganda-campaign-part-i

This is a war on Europeans from day 1. It comes with the complete destruction of universities, especially in human sciences and literature, where (the few remaining) researchers are now being forced to become self-employed and uberized. Lots of money spent on big events, coloured paper, but actually no jobs behind them, rather a desperate attempt of the EU institutions to find staff for its own cannibal bureaucracy.

Lessons never learned ...

That's all the more reason to defend the South [Korea] against China's resurgent, aggressive leadership that's a throwback to the one we were courting half a century ago while betraying our South Vietnamese friends in their hours of greatest need.

Media and journalists are similarly obsessed with war and evil empires while a mirror would makes more sense.

The Christmas Bombing -- dropping between 20 and 40,000 tons of bombs

In a scene that seemed right out of the World War II film classic Twelve O'Clock High, the briefer came to the podium and announced, "Gentlemen, your target for tonight is Hanoi," as a slide of North Vietnam with a target triangle over the capital lit up the screen behind him. This was the first time the big bombers would be sent against Hanoi's heavy defenses.

The US had been fighting in Vietnam since 1965. Since 1968, alongside the hostilities, the then US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Lê Đức Thọ were engaged in secret talks in Paris, seeking a negotiated peace.

In the spring of 1972, the DRV launched its largest offensive, the `Nguyen Hue' Offensive (known in the West as the Easter Offensive), in which the North Vietnamese forces almost overran South Vietnam. In response, the US conducted `Operation Linebacker,' an aerial bombing campaign over Hanoi and mining Haiphong Harbor.

Context of President Lyndon Johnson decision in March 1968 for a partial cessation of bombing over 90% of North Vietnam, including the major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. In the major TET offensive of early February 1968, the Viet Cong took the battle into the outskirts of Saigon.

Johnson urged North Vietnam to reciprocate by not taking advantage and come to the conference in Paris for peace talks. It was a start in the career of Henry Kissinger to leak essential information of the negotiations in Paris to the Nixon campaign. Traitors to America and the international order presumed by the UN Charter.

The Republican cabal of Nixon in the White House were willing to bomb the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table four years later in 1972. The American electorate were quite fond of Tricky Dick Nixon and carried his cabal to a second term by a landslide.

Bankers and Wall Street define US Foreign and domestic policy. Capitalism above all.

The Vietnam War eventually ended in 1975, essentially on the same terms as had been available in 1968. Tens of thousands more Americans died, as did a far higher, uncountable number of Vietnamese. During this time, the war further metastasized to Cambodia, where the Nixon administration ramped up a bombing campaign that dropped 2.7 million tons of ordnance on that poor, rural society. This was more than the 2 million tons of bombs the U.S. had used during all of World War II. The extraordinary devastation plausibly led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent Cambodian genocide.

That's the downside. The upside is that Nixon got to be president, and Americans' innocence about how politics works was preserved.

... It was only in 2016 that Nixon's direct involvement was finally proved beyond a doubt.

RICHARD NIXON: Let me say--

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: --your platform--

RICHARD NIXON: I won't take any advantage of you.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Oh, I know that. I know that. I wouldn't be--

RICHARD NIXON: Naturally, because we've got to do the right thing--

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I wouldn't be calling you. I'm going to keep you informed--

RICHARD NIXON: I appreciate it.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: --just as much as I keep anybody informed.

RICHARD NIXON: Yeah.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And I'm going to tell you everything that affects the country.

Most of the press reports on the tape release ignored the extraordinary hypocrisy of Nixon, having repeatedly promised the President that he would not politicize Vietnam (while at the same time accusing Humphrey of doing so), then turning around and playing politics with the war when Nixon's lead all but evaporated as Election Day neared. The changed circumstances, of course, partly resulted from a development Nixon had feared: Humphrey broke with the President on Vietnam. The newly released tapes confirm Johnson's fury with his Vice President's Salt Lake City address, but the move re-energized Humphrey's campaign.  

Who is Jeffrey Frank Jones?

A publisher of US Government books?

USMC Combat Hunter Training Introduction And Fundamentals: Profiling

What about Johnson? It didn't pose a "condrum"; he just took them - and not just some random documents, either.

Politico.eu.com | OpEd | How Not to Negotiate with Russia, 24 Jan DMYTRO KULEBA

[...]
The so-called peace talks known as the Minsk process was initiated in 2014 and included Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. For eight years, Ukraine and the West tried to end the war by means of politics and diplomacy. Ukraine agreed to freeze battle lines and engaged in years of fruitless negotiations in order to, seemingly, avoid escalation and preserve peace in Europe.

archived: Merkel's Explosive Interview Die Zeit (25.12.22)

Needless to say, it didn't work. While we were holding back, Russia was building up. The Minsk process ended when Russia unleashed a devastating total war of aggression on Ukraine at the end of February 2022.
[...]

Jeffrey Frank Jones, Russia's Regular And Special Forces In The Regional And Global War On Terror

The Russo-Ukraine War consisted of four major phases. The initial phase began in mid- to late-February 2014. The phase consisted of unconventional covert actions and the establishment of the DPR and LPR in April 2014. The second phase in the Russo-Ukrainian War found Ukrainian forces, to include the military and local police, seeking to regain equilibrium following the innitial succes of Russian forces and their partisan counterparts. Classifying the actions of the partisans as terrorist operations and the perpetrators as terrorists, the Ukainian government launched a series of actions they called Anti-Terrorist Operations [ATO], to retake seized territory by the DPR and LPR. The second phase bled into the third phase, which consisted of a series of major battles between Ukrainian forces and those of Russi and their partisan supporters. The final phase, which is ongoing, is essentially a stalemente with forces from both sides dug into defense positions along the entirety of the front ["contact line"] who engage in sporadic, smale-scale skirmishes and artillery or rocket attacks. The third and fourth pases of the war, as journalist Thomas Gibbons-Neff writes, are more reminiscent of World War I battlefields [ATO trench network] that what would expect to find to find into the twenty-first century. [p 31-32]

Protocol on the results of consultations of the Trilateral Contact Group with respect to the joint steps aimed at the implementation of the Peace Plan of the President of Ukraine, P. Poroshenko,and the initiatives of the President of Russia, V. Putin (Minsk Protocol, or Minsk I Agreement), 5 Sep 2014
OSCE | Statement by the Delegation of Ukraine at the 772-nd FSC plenary meeting, 26 Nov 2014
UNGA | Report of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita Izsák, 17 Jan 2015
archived "contradiction of the accord"
UNSC | Security Council Press Statement on Situation in Debaltseve, 17 Feb 2015

CNN | FDA wants to simplify the use and updating of Covid-19 vaccines, 23 Jan

...The FDA said it expects to assess circulating strains of the coronavirus at least annually and decide in June which strains to select for the fall season, much like the process to update annual flu vaccines....

thehill | FDA panel to consider annual COVID-19 vaccine shots, 23 Jan

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will meet Thursday [26 Jan] to discuss how to simplify and streamline the COVID-19 vaccination process, including the composition of coronavirus vaccines and the recommended scheduling for these shots.
[...]
While acknowledging that COVID-19 and the flu are not identical, VRBPAC said the deployment of the bivalent COVID-19 boosters, created to target both the ancestral strain of the virus as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, was "analogous" to annual flu vaccinations.

Politico | FDA lays out vision for annual Covid vaccine updates, 24 Jan

..."When you have recommendations that are changing, that can certainly lead to some confusion," Neil Maniar, the director of the Master of Public Health Program at Northeastern University, told Prescription Pulse. "This is a really important opportunity ... to kind of hit the reset button in a way, and to say 'this is what it's going to be like moving forward now for all of us.'"...

GT | Daily COVID infections peaked at nearly 7m around Dec 22, 2022 before plummeting to 15,000: China's CDC, 25 Jan

Ukraine has laready received 250 applications within the Advantage Ukraine investment platform

..."Investors are primarily interested in tax benefits when it comes to the prospects for opening new factories, partnerships, or purchasing Ukrainian assets. Besides, many strategic investors are interested in establishing trade relations with Ukrainian manufacturers to further integrate them into their global supply chains," said Oleksandr Hryban, Deputy Minister of Economy.

Among the project initiators' requests, the agro-industrial sector and the fields of innovations and technologies, as well as energy received the biggest number of proposals.

As a reminder, the investment attraction initiative "Advantage Ukraine" was presented on September 6 as part of a major campaign developed by the WPP [?] with the support of the President of Ukraine. The platform includes investment projects and opportunities in 10 sectors of the economy with a total capacity of more than $400 billion. The Advantage Ukraine project team works with the support of the USAID Competitive Economy Program....

Slava Ukraini! Zelensky opened trading on the New York Stock Exchange

Congress Approved $113 Billion of Aid to Ukraine in 2022, 5 Jan 2023

...The Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 omnibus appropriations package included an additional $47.3 billion of emergency funding to provide humanitarian, military, and economic assistance to Ukraine on top of the $65.8 billion of funding already approved in three other emergency funding packages enacted by Congress...

$226.1B to date, roughly 0.96% of estimated 2022 GDP ($23.315T), far short of NATO suggested annual hurdle to entry. No wonder Uncle Volody is such a nag.

See how "Defense Industrial Complex" is pinned open at the top? Savvy!

For anything less than $750B, these "innnovative technologies" wizards can't be bothered to install a translation widget. Comical or tragic? You be the judge.

Happy birthday, Uncle Volody!

is a distiction without difference to rational persons.

So is "genocide" and "war", ceremoniously declared or not.

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group

Ça pouvait difficilement finir autrement... @LaurentOzon pic.twitter.com/CrmzAOGRZM

— Stratpol (@stratpol_site) January 25, 2023

🇪🇺 The EU welcomes the fact that the Ukrainian authorities are taking corruption charges against high-ranking officials seriously - this is how the representative of the European Commission commented on the wave of resignations in the Ukrainian government

— Ukrainska Pravda in English (@pravda_eng) January 24, 2023

🤣 🤣

🙅‍♂️ Corruption cases in Ukraine not related to US aid - Department of State [_link]

— Ukrainska Pravda in English (@pravda_eng) January 25, 2023

Who are you kidding? 🤥