[Centraal] Irak en IS #140 Waar Ramadi bijna vrij is

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:46 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Gebakken lucht? Volgens mij heb ik bronnen gegeven over de Russische economie. Ik denk dat je Irak en Syrië op het moment niet kunt onderscheiden. Er is immers geen grens tussen die twee gebieden met de komst van ISIS. Als je beetje algemene kennis had dan zou je dat weten. Ik blijf bij mijn punt dat Poetin zijn eigen land helemaal naar de tering gaat helpen en nee dat is geen gebakken lucht. Ik heb je de macro-economische gegevens gegeven.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:55 schreef TheJanitor het volgende:

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In de eerste periode onder Putin was er geweldige groei in de Russische economie, groei die er totaal niet was onder Jeltsin. Maar dit is off-topic

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:54 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Gaat lekker in Ramadi.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:00 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Dat kwam door de hoge energieprijzen en monopoly op energie. Hij heeft die monopoly niet meer. Nu er andere energiebronnen in de wereld zijn en de energieprijzen lager dan ooit zijn zal het ook nooit meer goed komen met Rusland. Zonder de energieindustrie stelt de Russische economie helemaal niks voor. Het gaat niet goed en dan heb ik het nog geen eens over de sancties de er zijn en die er nog gaan komen.

Groeipercentage Russische economie:
2015: -4,1%

2016: -6,5%

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 00:54 schreef ClapClapYourHands het volgende:

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Maliki hebben ze gedwongen er uit gedonderd. Daar was niks vrijwilligs aan.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:07 schreef Atak het volgende:
Turkish troops in Mosul, Iraq in line with pre-arranged deal: KRG president Barzani.

Barzani.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:52 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Poetin droomt over de Sovjet periode. Hij heeft een rooskleurig beeld van die periode en denkt dat iedereen gelukkig was. De waarheid is dat niemand de Russen moet hebben. Alleen van die gefaalde staatjes met dictators zoals Iran, Irak en Zuid-Korea kijkt op naar Rusland. Jammer dat Poetin niks heeft geleerd. Met al die sancties die er zijn en de sancties die nog gaan komen zullen we zeker weer brood & wcpapier toestanden zien in Rusland. En dan zullen we zien hoeveel van de bevolking achter Poetin staat. Misschien als de wodka op is dat ze dan normaal beginnen te doen in Moskou.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:10 schreef Peunage het volgende:

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Waarna hij vice-president is geworden

Hij wilde niet dat zijn partij zou splitten, dus is hij afgetreden. En iemand van zijn eigen partij heeft de touwtjes overgenomen.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:42 schreef TheJanitor het volgende:
Raar verhaal. Waarom doet Turkije dit zonder toestemming. Als ze willen helpen dan vraag je toch normaal toestemming?

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:12 schreef DUTCHKO het volgende:

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Dus Turkije valt gewoon een ander land binnen? Tw. Irak?

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:09 schreef DUTCHKO het volgende:

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Je loopt wel te zemelen over Rusland en zijn energie "problemen" maar je vergeet dat het Westen even hard getroffen word en dat er al zat mensen in de rij staan voor voedel en wc papier in het Westen.
Plus dat de Russen het gas en de olie hebben en nog steeds het merendeel van de EU bevoorraden. En nu hebben ze China ook als klant.
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twitter:

Conflicts twitterde op dinsdag 08-12-2015 om 17:04:36 Turkey stopped deployment of troops to northern #Iraq two days ago - Foreign Ministry - @Reuters reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:09 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Dit hebben de Turken nu al een aantal dagen herhaald. Punt is dat ondanks Turkije die extra troepen aan de grens houdt nu, er nog steeds troepen zijn op die basissen die een week geleden werden aangevoerd terwijl Bagdad claimt dat Turkije daar geen toestemming voor heeft gekregen. Vandaar dat de Irakese regering eist dat Turkije al haar troepen die het recentelijk aanvoerde terugtrekt.

twitter:

ingarogg twitterde op dinsdag 08-12-2015 om 16:02:50 He has been sacked last year: "Turkey deployed troops at the request of Mosul governor," #Turkey PM says. #Iraq https://t.co/y3LCC5LJHE reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:11 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Legitiem omdat een ontslagen gouverneur haar toestemming heeft gegeven? Jij hebt internationaal recht aan ROC Leiden gevolgd begrijp ik?

SPOILER: 18+

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:17 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Wie is niemand? De meeste landen hebben nog steeds hun ambassade in Damascus; de regering van Syrië heeft nog steeds haar zetel in de Verenigde Naties en Iran heeft officieel een defensie-pact met de legitieme regering van Syrië.

Turken daarentegen heeft geen toestemming van Bagdad, die nog steeds officieel het land bestuurt, dus waar Iran's aanwezigheid volgens het internationaal recht wettig is, heeft Turkije tegen Bagdad's toestemming in en tegen het internationaal recht talloze troepen naar het land verplaatst.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:10 schreef Atak het volgende:
Gewoon legitiem volgens Barzani.

twitter:

ingarogg twitterde op dinsdag 08-12-2015 om 16:02:50 He has been sacked last year: "Turkey deployed troops at the request of Mosul governor," #Turkey PM says. #Iraq https://t.co/y3LCC5LJHE reageer retweet

Er zijn nu 2k troepen, 30 tanks, 10k klaargestoomde lokale strijders. Het doel is om 40 k lokale strijders te trainen om Mosul over te nemen.

Daarna westwaarts en zuidwaarts oprukken.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:28 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Niemand interesseert wat jij ervan vindt, of welk onopgeleide, kortzichtige Turk dan ook.

Dit is illegaal en Turkije gaat dat de komende dagen gewoon merken.

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Turkey's Time Has Come

With the Turkish downing of a Russian fighter jet still fresh on his mind, Russian President Vladimir Putin had some choice words for his erstwhile ally Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he delivered his state of the nation speech to the Russian Federal Assembly on Dec. 3. Putin angrily lamented "we were prepared to cooperate with Turkey on most sensitive issues and go further than their allies. Allah knows why they did it. Apparently Allah decided to punish the ruling elite in Turkey by taking their sanity."

While Putin may sound a bit dramatic, there is a hard geopolitical truth behind his shock and dismay toward Turkey. Russia knows the importance of keeping Turkey as a friend when it is facing off with bigger powers to the West. That is because Turkey holds the keys to the Dardanelles and Bosporus — the only way Russian merchant vessels and warships can reach the Mediterranean from Russia's warm water ports in the Black Sea. All of Putin's calculations in dealing with the United States are now turning on an uncomfortable reality that Moscow can no longer fully rely on Turkish neutrality in one of the most strategic spots on the map.
Stressing Over the Straits

The year 1946, when World War II had just wrapped up, offers a useful snapshot into Moscow's extraordinary obsession with the Turkish straits. Since losing its empire after World War I, an economically devastated Turkey had struggled to piece together a nation, wisely choosing to sit out the second round of global conflict. A decade earlier, when Hitler's troops had invaded the demilitarized Rhineland and Mussolini was openly declaring his desire to take over Anatolia, an anxious Turkey demanded a revision to the doctrine governing the straits, arguing that the straits needed to be remilitarized and placed under Turkey's exclusive control. The result was the Montreux Convention of 1936, which formalizes Turkey's role as custodian of the straits, ensures freedom of passage for merchant vessels in times of peace and imposes size, type and tonnage restrictions on non-Black Sea war vessels. Under the convention, war vessels from non-Black Sea states Turkey permits to enter the straits cannot stay in the Black Sea for longer than 21 days. In times of war, Turkey is expected to ban belligerents from the straits altogether to keep the Black Sea conflict free.

But the Soviets were never completely satisfied with Turkey's neutrality, knowing that Ankara was likely to tilt West when things got rough. The Soviets told the Turks in 1946 that if they were sincere about being allies, then they should give the Soviets basing rights in the Dardanelles. The Soviets bandied a number of threats to convey its seriousness to Turkey, such as Soviet territorial claims to portions of eastern Turkey, stirring up Kurdish separatists and backing Syrian claims to Hatay province.

A frazzled Turkey looked across the Atlantic for U.S. help. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Edwin Wilson explained to U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes that, "the real [Soviet] objective towards Turkey is not a revision of the regime of the Straits, but actual domination of Turkey. In the vast security belt of the Soviet Union, which extends from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Turkey constitutes a sole gap … the Soviet objective, therefore, is to break down this present independent Turkish government and to establish in its place a vassal or "friendly" regime in Turkey, which will complete the security belt of subservient countries on Russia's western and southern frontiers and put an end completely to Western influence in Turkey."

The time had thus come for the United States to bring Turkey under its security umbrella.

On April 6, 1946, the USS Missouri arrived in Istanbul on the pretext of delivering the ashes of a Turkish ambassador to the United States who had died on U.S. soil. A jubilant Turkey celebrated the arrival of the U.S. battleship with special postage stamps and gifts for U.S. naval officers. As Ambassador Wilson put it, "the USS Missouri visit is thus apt to take on the character of one of those imponderable events, the influence of which extends far beyond the immediate theater in which it occurs." The ostentatious display of a U.S. security guarantee was the prelude to U.S. President Harry S. Truman's February 1947 request to Congress to provide foreign aid to Turkey and Greece "to assist free people to deal with their destinies in their own way." This was the Truman Doctrine that locked in the Cold War, with Turkey sitting squarely on the U.S. side.
An Old Rivalry Revived

The Turkish-Russian confrontation is now back, not because either side willed it, but because geopolitics compelled it. Putin and Erdogan are the inheritors of two historical empires that fought several wars from the 17th century to the 19th century. With both countries resurgent, they were bound to butt heads again. The first sign came in August 2008, when Russia's invasion of Georgia woke Turkey up to a Moscow ready and willing to apply military force to re-create buffers in the former Soviet sphere to counter Western encroachment. At that time, Russia was not happy at the sight of Turkey allowing U.S. warships into the Black Sea to deliver aid to Georgian ports; Moscow conveyed its displeasure by holding up thousands of Turkish trucks at the Russian border. But both sides went out of their way to avoid a bigger breach.

The 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea was the next big Russian punch to the Turkish gut. Roughly 300,000 Turkic-speaking Tatars remain on the Crimean Peninsula as a remnant of Ottoman history. Turkey's quick defense of the Tatars in the wake of the Russian invasion stemmed from more than a concern for its ethnic kin: Turkey understood that the balance of power in the Black Sea was shifting. Russia's seizure of Crimea meant Moscow no longer has to deal with pesky lease arrangements with a mercurial government in Kiev. Russia now enjoys the freedom to beef up its Sevastopol-based Black Sea Fleet, a fleet largely designed to counter Turkey's naval strength.

Russia's push into Syria in 2015 was the red line for Turkey. In this chapter of Turkish expansion, the Islamist Justice and Development Party is logically prioritizing its volatile Middle Eastern backyard. The Turkish focus is on northern Syria and northern Iraq, a belt of former Ottoman provinces that naturally extend eastward from Turkey's Hatay province. Russia's involvement in Syria in defense of the Alawite government runs directly against Turkey's objective of expanding its own military footprint in Aleppo, keeping a check on Kurdish separatist activity and eventually replacing Syrian President Bashar al Assad with a Sunni government friendly to Turkish interests.

Syria is of peripheral interest to the Russians, just as Ukraine is of peripheral interest to the Turks. But there are a number of factors drawing the Russian military dangerously close to Turkey's core interests along the Syrian-Turkish border. The Islamic State is a real threat to Russia, and Moscow has a legitimate interest in targeting the threat at its source. At the same time, Russia's relationships in Syria are concentrated in Alawite circles. Russia sees its leverage with the Alawite government as its main way to negotiate with the United States, keep Iran dependent on Moscow and deal with threats like Islamic State. The more crowded the battlefield, of course, the greater the chances of a Turkish and Russian collision.

To supply its forces in Syria, the Russian navy has been relying on the so-called Syrian Express, a naval supply route from Sevastopol on the Black Sea to its Eastern Mediterranean naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. As gatekeeper of the straits, Turkey could theoretically complicate this supply route. In peacetime, Turkey could still claim it is abiding by the Montreux Convention and allowing Russia free access while increasing inspections on passing Russian ships. While it would prove an annoyance to Russia, Moscow's main worry is Article 20 of the Montreux Convention, which says that in wartime Turkey as a belligerent has full discretion when allowing or preventing the passage of warships through the strait, potentially cutting Russia off from the Mediterranean.
Turkey's Double-Edged Sword

The straits are powerful tools Turkey can use against Moscow, but Ankara cannot easily quit Russia. Turkey is the second-largest buyer of Russian natural gas, a significant importer of Russian oil and metals, and the largest buyer of Russian wheat and sunflower oil. A contentious relationship with Russia will bring enormous economic pain to the Turks. Nowhere is this truer than in their energy relationship. Unlike oil, coal or wheat, which can be sourced from alternative suppliers, Turkey has no quick and reliable alternative for natural gas, an important energy source for industry and households. Russia supplies around 55 percent (or about 27 billion cubic meters of its 50 bcm annual needs) of Turkish natural gas consumption. That supply is split between two pipelines that each can hold 16 bcm of natural gas; Blue Stream, which runs directly from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea; and the Gas-West pipeline, which transits Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria before reaching Turkey. Turkey is not close to closing the straits to Russia nor is Russia close to cutting off natural gas to Turkey. But even so, Turkey must start taking its energy security much more seriously now that it is in an open confrontation with Russia.

The problem for Turkey is that there are no quick-fix solutions to its energy dilemma. Turkey has only two liquefied natural gas import terminals, at Marmara Ereglisi (8.2 bcm annual capacity) and Aliaga (5 bcm annual capacity). With limited LNG import and storage capacity (3 bcm), Turkey has much work to do — and investment to raise — to build out this infrastructure over the course of several years.

Ankara's alternative pipeline suppliers carry their own set of complications. Turkey imports roughly 20 percent of its natural gas from Iran; such imports could grow as Iran begins to repair its energy sector after years of sanctions. It will take considerable time, however, and expanding the Iran-Turkey energy relationship would still carry big risks for Turkey. Iran is just as much a geopolitical challenger to Turkey as Russia is, and the more assertive Turkey becomes in the Middle East, the more its competition with Iran will grow in Syria and Iraq.

Iranian-Turkish competition only further complicates Turkey's ambitions for Iraqi Kurdistan, where Erdogan has developed close business ties to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani. Turkey has already helped Barzani develop an independent oil export route at the expense of Iran's allies in Baghdad and is now gearing up to do the same for natural gas to feed the Turkish market. But the collapse of Turkey's peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (whose fighters rely on Iraqi Kurdistan for refuge) and a power vacuum in northern Syria exploited by Kurdish separatists will drive Turkey's military to become more aggressive beyond its borders in both Syria and Iraq. Turkey's control over the revenues from those oil export sales gives Ankara substantial clout over the Iraqi Kurdish government, but Barzani and his allies are also in the untenable position of doing business with the Turkish enemy at the same time Turkey is incrementally enlarging its military footprint in Kurdish territory. This creates an easy opportunity for Iran and Russia to exploit Kurdish divisions and militancy to push back against Turkey.

While pursuing an extraordinarily complicated energy plan in Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey is also trying to edge its way into the Eastern Mediterranean energy scene. Both Israel and Cyprus have seen their offshore natural gas export plans stall because of export and regulatory obstacles while Egypt has emerged as the new potential natural gas hub of the region. As the debate continues over the many proposals for pipelines and LNG export terminals, Turkey will have added urgency to prod along reunification talks in Cyprus to remove one of the key blocks to Turkey's energy integration with its estranged eastern Mediterranean neighbors.

The most geopolitically compatible energy source for Turkey is Azerbaijan, which is preparing to send 6 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Turkey starting from 2019 through the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (and another 10 bcm that will be sent onward to Europe through the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline). This will help Turkey shave down its energy dependence on Russia by about 12 percent, but Turkey will still need to look elsewhere to truly loosen Russia's grip. The Caucasus, like the Middle East, will redevelop into another big arena for Turkish-Russian competition. Russia is already hard at work trying to pull Baku closer to the Kremlin through diplomatic maneuvering over Nagorno-Karabakh and will do what it can to obstruct plans by Turkey and Azerbaijan to create an energy link across the Caspian with Turkmenistan.
The Turkish Awakening

Four years ago, Stratfor co-hosted a simulation in Istanbul with the Turkish Industry and Business Association to paint a picture of the energy world in 2040 and Turkey's place in that world. We saw a world in which a reluctant Turkey was inevitably going to be drawn into conflicts in the Middle East and with Russia, making it all the more imperative for Turkey to strategize a future that would deny Russia the ability to cripple Turkey economically. Then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (now prime minister) concluded the simulation with a message that Turkey is "not about to follow a new expansionist policy" and that Turkey's way of coping with energy challenges is to take advantage of its geographic position and maintain a stable relationship with its neighbors.

This was a time when Davutoglu's "zero problems with neighbors" policy was still clouding the vision of the Turkish political elite. The policy proved to be shortsighted, but was also expected from a country that was awakening from a decadeslong geopolitical slumber and was in no mood to create trouble in the region. But all the signs were there: Russia was already making aggressive moves in its near abroad, the European Union was showing early signs of unraveling and the Syrian civil war was just getting started.

Four short years later, Turkey has shot down a fighter jet belonging to its main energy supplier and is preparing for a military push into its Mideast rim. And Putin now has to figure out how to manage a Turkey that is much more willing to work with the United States and its Central and Eastern European peers to balance Moscow's aggressions. Ankara has been suppressed for some time, but there is no denying it now: Turkey's time has come.
Send us your thoughts on this report.
This Weekly is part of multiple Timelines
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/turkeys-time-has-come

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:53 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Begint een beetje zielig te worden met al die Turkse fanboys hier.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:46 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Gebakken lucht? Volgens mij heb ik bronnen gegeven over de Russische economie. Ik denk dat je Irak en Syrië op het moment niet kunt onderscheiden. Er is immers geen grens tussen die twee gebieden met de komst van ISIS. Als je beetje algemene kennis had dan zou je dat weten. Ik blijf bij mijn punt dat Poetin zijn eigen land helemaal naar de tering gaat helpen en nee dat is geen gebakken lucht. Ik heb je de macro-economische gegevens gegeven.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 18:02 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:
NAVO steunt Abadi:

twitter:

HaiderAlAbadi twitterde op dinsdag 08-12-2015 om 17:58:01 PM Al-Abadi spoke with NATO Sec Gen to discuss presence of Turkish troops. Mr. Stoltenberg affirmed NATO's commitment to Iraqi sovereignty reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 14:52 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Poetin droomt over de Sovjet periode. Hij heeft een rooskleurig beeld van die periode en denkt dat iedereen gelukkig was. De waarheid is dat niemand de Russen moet hebben. Alleen van die gefaalde staatjes met dictators zoals Iran, Irak en noord-Korea kijkt op naar Rusland. Jammer dat Poetin niks heeft geleerd. Met al die sancties die er zijn en de sancties die nog gaan komen zullen we zeker weer brood & wcpapier toestanden zien in Rusland. En dan zullen we zien hoeveel van de bevolking achter Poetin staat. Misschien als de wodka op is dat ze dan normaal beginnen te doen in Moskou.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:32 schreef Atak het volgende:
......

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The straits are powerful tools Turkey can use against Moscow, but Ankara cannot easily quit Russia. Turkey is the second-largest buyer of Russian natural gas, a significant importer of Russian oil and metals, and the largest buyer of Russian wheat and sunflower oil. A contentious relationship with Russia will bring enormous economic pain to the Turks. Nowhere is this truer than in their energy relationship. Unlike oil, coal or wheat, which can be sourced from alternative suppliers, Turkey has no quick and reliable alternative for natural gas, an important energy source for industry and households. Russia supplies around 55 percent (or about 27 billion cubic meters of its 50 bcm annual needs) of Turkish natural gas consumption. That supply is split between two pipelines that each can hold 16 bcm of natural gas; Blue Stream, which runs directly from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea; and the Gas-West pipeline, which transits Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria before reaching Turkey. Turkey is not close to closing the straits to Russia nor is Russia close to cutting off natural gas to Turkey. But even so, Turkey must start taking its energy security much more seriously now that it is in an open confrontation with Russia.

The problem for Turkey is that there are no quick-fix solutions to its energy dilemma. Turkey has only two liquefied natural gas import terminals, at Marmara Ereglisi (8.2 bcm annual capacity) and Aliaga (5 bcm annual capacity). With limited LNG import and storage capacity (3 bcm), Turkey has much work to do — and investment to raise — to build out this infrastructure over the course of several years.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:17 schreef Intellectueel het volgende:

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Wie is niemand? De meeste landen hebben nog steeds hun ambassade in Damascus; de regering van Syrië heeft nog steeds haar zetel in de Verenigde Naties en Iran heeft officieel een defensie-pact met de legitieme regering van Syrië.

Turkije daarentegen heeft geen toestemming van Bagdad, die nog steeds officieel het land bestuurt, dus waar Iran's aanwezigheid volgens het internationaal recht wettig is, heeft Turkije tegen Bagdad's toestemming in en tegen het internationaal recht talloze troepen naar het land verplaatst.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:18 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Je weet zelf ook dat de beschaafde wereld Assad niet als legitieme leider ziet. Dat paar gefaalde staatjes achter hem staan zal de wereld een worst zijn.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:32 schreef Atak het volgende:

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"Intellectueel" die iedereen weer een Turk noemt die niet met hem eens is. Zelfs als ik een Turk was dan heb ik liever dat dan dat ik een radicale polder-Mulah ben die dag en nacht docu's kijkt over Syrië. #NoLife

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Die troepen gaan daar dus gewoon blijven. Weer een afgang voor de Iranisten en Poetinisten.

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 15:00 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Dat kwam door de hoge energieprijzen en monopoly op energie. Hij heeft die monopoly niet meer. Nu er andere energiebronnen in de wereld zijn en de energieprijzen lager dan ooit zijn zal het ook nooit meer goed komen met Rusland. Zonder de energieindustrie stelt de Russische economie helemaal niks voor. Het gaat niet goed en dan heb ik het nog geen eens over de sancties de er zijn en die er nog gaan komen.

Groeipercentage Russische economie:
2015: -4,1%

2016: -6,5%

quote:

But what the Rosstat data also show is that Russia’s economy, commonly described a plodding Soviet dinosaur, somehow adapted to the new reality of cheap oil really quickly. Despite a more than 40% drop in the value of it oil export earnings, Russia has still managed to run a current account surplus throughout 2015. That’s not what you would expect from a “petrostate” that had grown fat and complacent on oil money and cheap imports. It’s certainly not what’s currently happening to Saudi Arabia, where the government is burning through cash at a prodigious rate as it desperately attempts to avoid a currency depreciation.

“Stable” doesn’t’ mean “strong” or “rapidly growing,” but in late 2015 Russia’s economy seems to have adjusted to a new normal in which its energy exports are much less valuable. Russia, in other words, is not buying more than it can afford: unlike other major energy producers it’s not running up unsustainable current account deficits in order to placate the population and defer the pain of economic adjustment.

twitter:

RudawEnglish twitterde op dinsdag 08-12-2015 om 21:57:34 Breaking: The Turkish jets hit the PKK positions in Qandil as Iraq's deadline to Ankara for pulling back new deployed Turkish troops ended. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 17:04 schreef Atak het volgende:

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Europa doet het heel goed vergeleken met Rusland. Hoe weet jij nou hoe het gaat in NL? Je woont nog geen eens hier. Ik ken ondernemers die zaken doen met Rusland dus ik weet de ins en outs. Het klopt dat de Russische bevolking wordt getroffen door de sancties maar dat hebben ze aan Poetin te danken. Als ze niet blij zijn met de huidige omstandigheden moeten ze maar een revolutie beginnen om Poetin van zijn troon te stoten. Ik denk dat dat ook gaat gebeuren. Rusland is in zijn eigen val getrapt ala Afghanistan 2.0.