Turning to Afghan Mercenaries and pandering to the far right will not change that Russia will plummet from 20% world oil exports to 13% by 2030
Putin is inventive, and is not going down without a fight. However, since there is no Russia version of Silicon valley, in the future, the number to pay attention to is this one
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But this year, the IEA report is anything but boring. Besides some interesting projections about how the energy crisis will evolve, the authors of the report claim that Russia’s best days as a super-sized gas station are behind it. Specifically, the authors seem convinced that Russia’s energy exports will never return to their profitable levels seen in 2021. Moreover, Russia’s oil and gas net revenue will likely drop by more than 50% from $75 billion in 2021 to less than $30 billion in 2030. Russia’s share of internationally traded energy is expected to fall from nearly 20% in 2021 to 13% in 2030, the IEA added.
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Russia is still under performing in terms of technology investments, so this means that the basis of cash generation is being directly undermined
Needless to state, here are the gimmicks which Putin is using to mask deep decline
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Afghan commandos that were trained by the US are being recruited to fight for Russia in Ukraine, according to a report from?Foreign Policy.
Members of Afghanistan's elite National Army Commando Corps were left behind by the United States when the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021.
Now, commandos say they are being contacted on WhatsApp and Signal with offers to fight for Russia, according to the outlet.
The messages, seen by Foreign Policy, say: "Anyone who would like to go to Russia with better treatment and good resources: please send me your name, father's name, and your military rank."
Military and security officials in Afghanistan told the outlet that they fear up to 10,000 commandos could be tempted by such an offer, as many of them were left jobless and fearful for their life as they became targets for the Taliban.
"They have no country, no jobs, no future. They have nothing to lose," one military source told the outlet.
One former Afghan commando officer told Foreign Policy that he believed the shadowy Wagner Group was behind the recruitment drive.?
"I am telling you [the recruiters] are Wagner Group. They are gathering people from all over. The only entity that recruits foreign troops [for Russia] are Wagner Group, not their army. It's not an assumption; it's a known fact," he said.
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In a word this mercenary drive is commencing due to this one: Three reasons why Russia is losing this war
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The sources for both fear and panic are varied. But McCausland and other historians say that throughout the history of warfare, there are at least three reasons why armies lose the will to fight.
They lose faith in their cause
McCausland has seen a broken army lose the will to fight up close.
As to the Afghanistan situation
“If you asked a Taliban soldier, ‘What the hell are you fighting for?’ he would say I’m fighting to free my country from the crusaders, just like my grandfather freed the country from the Soviets and my great-great grandfather freed the country from the British. And I’m fighting for my religion, my country and my home,” McCausland says.
And if the same question was asked of an Afghan army soldier?
“He would say I’m fighting for a paycheck—if the company commander doesn’t steal it.”
The Taliban believed in their cause; the Afghan army didn’t, says McCausland.
They lose faith in their leaders
Every war has its defining images. The Ukraine war has already yielded some unforgettable ones showing the contrast in leadership styles of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Recent photos of Putin typically show him attired in a suit, alone at the head of an?absurdly long conference?table, in a large, sterile room, with a general or bureaucrat cowering at the other end. The caption could well read: “paranoid and isolated dictator in action.”
The best leaders often inspire their armies by visiting the front lines
Armies lose the will to fight when they lose faith in their leaders, McCausland and others say.
If you want to know how a leader can inspire an army to superhuman levels of endurance, consider this popular?story?from one of the greatest commanders in history: Alexander the Great.
Alexander was leading his parched army through an unforgiving desert in pursuit of an enemy when scouts returned to him with a scoop of precious water in a helmet. They handed him the helmet in front of his army.
Alexander thanked the soldiers and then, in full view of his troops, poured the water on the ground. He announced he would not take any water unless all his men had the same. His troops cheered.
Alexander the Great?never lost a battle.
“So extraordinary was the effect of this action that the water wasted by Alexander was as good as a drink for every man in the army,” one chronicler would?write?later.
They lose the backing of their country
A classic example is the mass collapse of the South Vietnamese Army in the spring of 1975. The US military had been South Vietnam’s big brother and benefactor for a decade as both countries fought the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.
But the South Vietnamese government was?riddled with corruption. Its leaders and their cronies siphoned off military aid to enrich themselves, and never built popular support among the populace they purportedly served.
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All three of these vectors of battlefield collapse are in the working DNA of Russian collapse. And Putin is doing nothing to stem it
In a word, empathy for the cause, not faked is many times more effective than technological gimmicks. The Tsar Bomba in the early 1960s was a super bomb which scared the hell out of the entire world
Needless to state, Russian collapse in 1991 was due to economic decline, collapse of morale,and gimmicks like recruiting 10,000 Afghanistan based mercenaries will be a drop in the bucket
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Afghan commandos that were trained by US Navy SEALs are being recruited to fight for Russia in Ukraine, report says
Alia Shoaib?16 hours ago
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Afghan commandos that were trained by the US are being recruited to fight for Russia in Ukraine, according to a report from?Foreign Policy.
Members of Afghanistan's elite National Army Commando Corps were left behind by the United States when the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021.
Now, commandos say they are being contacted on WhatsApp and Signal with offers to fight for Russia, according to the outlet.
The messages, seen by Foreign Policy, say: "Anyone who would like to go to Russia with better treatment and good resources: please send me your name, father's name, and your military rank."
Military and security officials in Afghanistan told the outlet that they fear up to 10,000 commandos could be tempted by such an offer, as many of them were left jobless and fearful for their life as they became targets for the Taliban.
"They have no country, no jobs, no future. They have nothing to lose," one military source told the outlet.
One former Afghan commando officer told Foreign Policy that he believed the shadowy Wagner Group was behind the recruitment drive.?
"I am telling you [the recruiters] are Wagner Group. They are gathering people from all over. The only entity that recruits foreign troops [for Russia] are Wagner Group, not their army. It's not an assumption; it's a known fact," he said.
Earlier this year a video emerged of the group's suspected founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin ally,?recruiting prisoners from Russian jails?to fight in Ukraine in exchange for shortened sentences.
Thousands of the Afghan commandos fled to neighboring countries following the Taliban takeover last year, and many are now losing hope in the possibility that they could be settled in Western countries. Many are still in hiding in Afghanistan.
Afghan media?reported that soldiers were being offered Russian citizenship in exchange for fighting in Ukraine.
One former Afghan commando captain, 35, told Foreign Policy that he had helped connect colleagues with a recruitment office in Tehran, and those who took up the offer were flown to Russia via Iran.
"When they accept Russia's offer, the commando personnels' phones are turned off. They proceed very secretly," the commando, who is himself hiding in Afghanistan, said.
He said that he turned down the offer because he views Russia as Afghanistan's enemy after the Soviet Union sparked a nine-year war by invading Afghanistan in 1979, but that others might have taken it up out of desperation.
"We are very disappointed. For 18 years, shoulder to shoulder, we performed dangerous tasks with American, British, and Norwegian consultants. Now, I am in hiding. I am suffering every second," he told the outlet.
The Afghan Elite National Army Commando Corps, made up of 20,000 to 30,000 volunteers, was partly trained by US Navy SEALs and the British Special Air Service, per Foreign Policy.
While, in general, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces were seen as incompetent, the commandos were well respected.
A former senior Afghan security official, speaking anonymously to Foreign Policy, said that the Afghan fighters "would be a game-changer" in the war.
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whereas
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Russia’s golden age of oil and gas hegemony is over. How Putin lost the energy war
Despite making a boat load of money this year, Russia shot itself in the foot with its unlawful war of conquest.
?by?Tibi Puiu??October 27, 2022?in?Environment,?News,?Renewable Energy?Reading Time: 5 mins read
A?A
The entire world is grappling with an unprecedented energy crisis the scale of which has not been seen since the 1970s when an oil embargo by OPEC countries set off fuel shortages and sky-high prices throughout much of the decade. This time around, the challenges we face are more complex since the current crisis is owed to a double-whammy of supply chain shortcomings from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
It is against this concerning backdrop that the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its annual World Energy Outlook. Usually, this massive report is rather stale, stuffed with hundreds of pages of technical content about how the world’s countries source their energy, along with projections of how things like renewable energy or fossil fuel use are supposed to change in the future.
But this year, the IEA report is anything but boring. Besides some interesting projections about how the energy crisis will evolve, the authors of the report claim that Russia’s best days as a super-sized gas station are behind it. Specifically, the authors seem convinced that Russia’s energy exports will never return to their profitable levels seen in 2021. Moreover, Russia’s oil and gas net revenue will likely drop by more than 50% from $75 billion in 2021 to less than $30 billion in 2030. Russia’s share of internationally traded energy is expected to fall from nearly 20% in 2021 to 13% in 2030, the IEA added.
This dire news for the future of Russia is perhaps vindication for those who watched in horror as Putin’s armies marched into Ukraine ransacking the country while it continued to enjoy record-high exports of energy despite massive sanctions from the collective West. According to an economy ministry document?seen by Reuters, huge gas prices will boost Russia’s energy gross earnings to a staggering $337.5 billion in 2022, a 38% rise from 2021.
However, these short-term gains are destined to evaporate as Russia has become an international pariah for at least the foreseeable future. At the start of the war, the EU used to import nearly 40% of its natural gas from Russia, but now that figure has plummeted to only 9%, especially after the?Nord Stream sabotage.
Putin’s plan was to force the hand of the EU through energy blackmail so as to pressure Kyiv to surrender. But this strategy seems to have backfired. In a strange turn of events, Norway is now the most important gas supplier?for Europe. Liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and the Middle East rounds out most of the rest of the demand that is no longer served by Russia. Meanwhile, Russia has turned to other markets such as India and China to sell its stocks, but despite the fact that these nations are happy to buy energy at a significant discount, they don’t come anywhere near the 2021 demand of the EU. There is simply no room in China’s projected gas balance for another large-scale pipeline from Russia, the IEA concludes.
Moreover, the IEA mentions that the crisis is accelerating efforts to boost renewable energy and the energy efficiency of homes and heating. Coupled with sanctions, Russia is rupturing from the European energy market at a pace that was unimaginable prior to the war. And although coal use and CO2 emissions are rising as countries scramble to respond to energy shortages, these developments are only temporary. Clean energy investments are expected to rise to over $2 trillion by 2030 given current policies, much more than previously forecasted but still woefully short of the $4 trillion required to drive global emissions to net zero by 2050.
The IEA concludes that the war in Ukraine marks a “historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system,” adding that “many of the contours of this new world are not yet fully defined, but there is no going back to the way things were.” For instance, the IEA projects that global oil demand will peak around 2025, a full decade earlier than the organization previously predicted.
“The shocks in the 1970s were about oil, and the task facing policymakers was relatively clear (if not necessarily simple to implement): reduce dependence on oil, especially oil imports. By contrast, the energy crisis today has multiple dimensions: natural gas, but also oil, coal, electricity, food security and climate. Therefore, the solutions are similarly all-encompassing. Ultimately what is required is not just to diversify away from a single energy commodity, but to change the nature of the energy system itself, and to do so while maintaining the affordable, secure provision of energy services,” wrote the authors of the IEA report.
Although profoundly disruptive and dreadful, the war in Ukraine may have the undesired positive outcome of accelerating the deployment of clean energy much faster than previously anticipated. In effect, Putin might have already lost the energy war he’s started.
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Andrew Beckwith PhD