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Russia to Seize Hundreds of Leased Airliners
According to Joe Blogs, Russia has just passed a law allowing Russian airline operators to simply declare themselves the owners of commercial aircraft leased from western companies. Ireland likely hardest hit, IIRC. These are Airbus and Boeing aircraft owned by leasing companies, but the deals are off, and the planes are due to be repossessed. How? Aye, there’s the rub.
Over 500 aircraft worth over $10 Billion may simply be swiped from the western owners. This is another destruction of wealth, not just a transfer. The aircraft are no longer supported with parts and inspections from manufacturers and owners. And a great number of the planes are grounded anyway — Russian airlines don’t have as many destinations to go to these days.
This may be an expensive way to find out what can and cannot be done. We shall see.
Published in General
Please, no more bailouts! The lessors of these planes made a big mistake operating under the control of Putin. Let them bear the costs.
I could use a bailout. Everybody seems to be getting sweet government money but me. Starting to get annoying
Lives are always cheap as long as they are not you and yours.
Someone posted a meme on another thread recently, showing some kind of general or something smiling in front of the ribbons and stuff on his wall, and a mother sitting in a chair looking sadly at photos of her (presumably dead) sons on the wall.
Wish I could find it now.
Perhaps this may be a short term gain for Russia, but in the long run they would have lost the confidence of the international markets. It will not end well for Russia if this is how it stays.
Each and every one for participation in a training exercise, likely.
No, one of them was for having the most medals.
Google image search was useless. If someone remembers it or they’re the one who did it before, I hope they put it here too so I can save it for later.
Who goes back in when this is over? Russia’s participation in the boons of the West was predicated on a consensual aspiration: they will not, at the end of the day, do that thing where they act like Russia. There was money to be made, and everyone was happy to see the banners of Apple and Ikea hoisted over the graveyard of the Communist empire. In time they would moderate, seeing the advantages of economic integration that would lead to a lasting order. Your whole end-o-history thing. (See also, China.) Putin – and more subtly, Xi – had other ideas.
Russia has burned its bridges now, and far from returning to its imagined state as a terribly great power that hasn’t spent the last century cocking up nearly everything it attempted, it will be sold off in chunks and crumbs to China. To paraphrase what they used to say about the capitalists: Russia will sell China the pen used to sign away their economy. Except the pen doesn’t work, and so China sighs, and produces its own pen, made in China, based on designs stolen from the West.
I wonder if we underestimate the number of people in the Russian Government who’d turn on Putin the moment it seems doable, because they’ll be damned if they give up trips to Italy and London for trips to China. The wife, she loves Milan. She went to Beijing once and hated it.
IMHO, if Putin uses a nuke (“one nuke only, Vasily”), it will be in Europe, not Ukraine, and it will be in a city. That’s how you make a point. And on cue, the West will make peace.
What would cause him to use a nuke? If the Ukraine thing drags on and he must decide whether to go bankrupt or go home. The combination of sanctions and Ukrainistan could destabilize Russia with a here today, gone tomorrow quickness.
Russia doesn;t care about farmland and water — they have more of both than anybody in the world. And China doesn;t need Taiwan’s stuff. In both cases these are chokepoints for the larger nations’ military aims, and galling, embarrassing, failures that make them look like also-rans. Russia cannot stomach Ukraine any more than China can stomach Taiwan. Food or not, people or not, water or not. None of that matters. Just geography and national authority.
Russia’s nuke will be in a European city. We will fold.
Like a cheap suit? Or, rather, a cheap Biden?
Like catching a liver kick:
Just a reminder – Obama cancelled the missile defense shield in Poland as part of his Russian reset plan
Putin may. But I seriously doubt the rest of the leadership and the oligarchs behind him are willing to die in a fire for his failed ambition.
Of course they did. The asymmetry is the problem for Putler. Russias economy is a dwarf, about the size of Italys and based on commodity exports and little else. The West can absorb these loses as little more than a bump in the road. By doing things like this and nationalizing foreign assets he will ensure no one is going to want to invest in his little empire for the foreseeable future. So Russia will spiral back to where it was in about 1995. It’s future will be as a gas and grocery store for China, which has wonderful historical claims on vast territories in the far east. And is just as predatory as good old Mother Russia is.
My understanding is that many of the companies that lease these aircraft have insurance for just such a loss.
Russia can look forward to being China’s discount gas and grocery store. And China will want to collect in that yummy almost empty land in the far East that it has the kind of historical claims on that Russia makes on Ukraine.
Twenty years ago (working on an idea for a book) I noted that China had excess male population while Russia had dwindling male population and land.
Thought I had come up with a stirring scene until I realized I stole it straight out of the movie Firefox (but with a rocket). Sigh.
Excellent point. I’m reminded of a quip from back in the day by an old Soviet hand who said Soviet politics was like watching men wrestle under a tarpaulin – you could tell there was lots of activity but not who was winning.
There are, I think, competing interests. Putin (and his inner clique) dreams of a unipolar EurAsian empire. The oligarchs and the Security Services chieftains nod along in agreement with that because Putin has made them fabulously wealthy. (Putin is not the oligarchs’ man, they are his oligarchs)
Xi too dreams of a unipolar EurAsian empire. Both plan to use the other as a cudgel against the West.
Both can’t be right. One will move against the other eventually. Unfortunately for us, that won’t be until after one of them believes the West is neutralized.
Those people couldnt think two seconds ahead. Which is why they are trying to make a deal with Iran and Venezuela.
Meanwhile India is going to exchange Rupies for Rubles. I was assured by Commentary that kicking Russia off Swift would prevent this from happening!
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/forex/india-is-considering-rupee-payments-for-trade-with-russia/articleshow/90153264.cms
Pfft. The country that should be concerned about not getting credit right now is the US of A and Europe. Plenty of countries around the world are backing Russia’s play. Starting with China. Then India. In fact Russia could easily make the case the seizure of these planes is partial recompense for the EU/USA illegally seizing there bank deposits. What act of Congress authorized the President to do that again eh?
If you dont think thats already affecting the US standing in the world. Well I dont know what to say.
Then we all would be dead. The Russians would Nuke us. Or first more than likely they would destroy our air forces and kill hundreds if not thousands of NATO and US personnel. Then the USA would probably retaliate with Nuclear weapons.
And we would be dead. The entire world would be dead. So much for your honor. Every human being on planet Earth is now dead. Congratulations.
I think this is foolishness of the highest order, and I am glad that someone like you isnt at the top of our governments.
You too, with the way you just nuked Marci.
Ooh, a taste of their own medicine? How subtle!
You mean “electing” Biden wasn’t enough?
Does this mean that deterrence based on Mutually Assured Destruction has failed? Putin believes it is possible to fight and win a nuclear war? If that’s true then we have a MUCH bigger problem than Ukraine, and we are, all of us, de facto hostages to Putin.
Magic 8-Ball says highly likely.
MAD is based on expected reactions or “bluffs”. We have no leadership — we have no bluff to call. The Commiecrats have taken over, and we will never loose a nuclear shot to defend the US or freedom anywhere (etc), as these are not the interests our Alinskyite friends will protect.
Putin could vaporize a middling city in Europe and while the outcry would be loud and irritating, nobody would nuke him back. He would then have a free hand to take whatever he “needs”, like Poland, East Germany, and so forth. Many of those non-nuke countries would fight like Hell, but at the same time, they will see that the US’ bluff has been called, and we folded. On them.
What matters is Putin’s appetite for war and conquest — not ours.