Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The Russian Army maybe finished (or not) long term, but currently they are far from it. If they were Ukraine would have already chased them out of Ukraine and Crimea all the way back to the Red Square in Moscow. Best case so far from the Ukrainians is that by next march / spring they will have amassed enough troops and equipment to start a major pushback. So while we are seeing heartening good news about massive destruction of Russian military assets, we will need to see a whole lot more of it before we can start to even think that the Russians are defeated. I would definitely not be writing them off just yet. Down the road? Yes. But not just yet.

The 2+ years of COVID will also play a part in the mentality of people, there is a lot more resilience built in now that wasn't there before 2020.

That depends on how the EU pulls together and shares resources & pain insofar as possible. Even though we get gas supplies from UK and Norway, already talk that we may have to soak up some shortfalls as well. At least we tend to have milder winters than central Europe. Be interesting to see what happens here with carbon & other taxes on solid fuel heating like coal in the autumn. Despite Green's best intentions, may need to be a moratorium and campaign to use more coal for home heating where possible for expediency and to spread the energy sources.

The thing with Germany being stuck because their import infrastructure is pivoted to Russian oil and gas is that is also a two way street ..Russian export infrastructure is pivoted to Europe ...

Their pipelines are mainly to Europe .. and their tanker terminals are limited ..

You're ignoring that that the US and Joe Biden are effectively leading the war against Russia and shaping how it is being conducted, not Germany. Therefore the Germans will be in no position to push Zelensky to sue for peace, they are effectively only bit part players.

I wonder will the opinion poles change though as winter starts to take hold?

That’s good to know.

The sooner the better this all ends hopefully in a scenario that suits Ukraine.

That’s also good to know.

The Russians must be bleeding money (and soldiers+equipment).

So hopefully if Germany makes it through this winter (hopefully it’s mild) Russia will be running out of money at that stage.

This energy war could be Russias last card to play?

They would have at least 80 days for the whole country at 100%. Germany’s new storage targets were set at 75% for Sept. 1 and 85% for Oct. 1. Their final target is 95% by Nov 1st. That will largely see them through the winter.

Dyr, your anti-eu rhetoric is tiresome, if anything shows it just shows you that you bought part of the propaganda over the last number of years from the Kremlin.

Brexit was designed bought and paid for by Russia. So was Trumps election. Those 2 events were the prelude to the Ukrainian invasion and the date was set as a "now or never" by Putin, because he had judged that Brexit and Trump (and his failure to get re-elected) had by the point of the invasion reached a highpoint and that was as far as his efforts to damage western institutions would go.

Russian Navy TU-154 enroute to Kaliningrad...