Macro Fund manager..GS prop alum..My interests: markets, politics, foreign affairs, history, philosophy, modern art, poker, yoga, squash, judo 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇸
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Igor Schatz retweeted
Vladimir Putin used most of his call with the leaders of Finland and Norway to lecture them about medieval Slavic history, underscoring the difficulties Europe faces in asserting itself in upcoming peace talks with Russia.
w/ @maxseddon @HenryJFoy @FT
ft.com/content/a384acd1-c90c…
Igor Schatz retweeted
Judging by the Kremlin readout of Putin’s phone call today with the Finnish and Norwegian leaders, the Russian president hasn’t moved a single inch on the issue of peace in Ukraine despite the recent flurry of diplomatic activity
Just the same old tired talking points
Igor Schatz retweeted
It’s amazing that the US is refusing major Ukrainian concessions (and these are) while asking nothing at all of Russia. The US seems fine with Putin attacking anything he wants in Ukraine.
🇺🇸🇺🇦 Zelensky offered the US three options to stop strikes on Russian refineries!
"I said: if you want us not to hit diesel, refineries, then let them (the Russians, - ed.) not hit our electricity. This is fair. An energy truce.
The second option is you open Starlink over Russia, we show you the places where there are ballistic missile launchers. We want to destroy them.
The third option is if you don't open Starlink to us, and it depends only on you, and you said that Musk doesn't want it, then give us something that doesn't depend on Musk and Putin - missiles for Patriot."
Igor Schatz retweeted
What “poor Russian conscripts” is he talking about? The Russian soldiers fighting against Ukraine serve under official contracts and are paid for it. Their salaries are funded in part by the extra money Putin is receiving as a result of Trump’s recent decisions to waive some of the sanctions on Russia.
And now, something very important.
Russia pretends to be “great,” yet it is a very poor country. Its entire economy is comparable in size to that of the U.S. state of Texas. Millions of Russians live in economically depressed regions. For them, signing a contract with the Russian army is often the only realistic path to social advancement, because it lets them earn the kind of money they could only have dreamed of in their impoverished home regions.
The families of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine are perfectly satisfied. They receive sums of money that their husbands or sons could never have earned, even if they had worked for the rest of their lives.
That’s why our Russian human rights colleagues call this kind of economy a “necronomy,” meaning a “death economy.” Russia sells death. Literally.
Yes, this bloody war must be stopped. And to stop it, we must make the cost of war for Putin higher than the cost of peace.
So if Musk truly cares about the lives of Russian soldiers, America must break the Russian necronomy’s ability to fuel this bloody war. But the Trump administration has done exactly the opposite. America has begun to finance it.
I am attaching to this post just a few examples of Russian state advertising, showing the amounts in rubles for which “Russian kids” go to kill Ukrainians.
Igor Schatz retweeted
Eric Hoffer wrote this article about Israel almost 60 years go. It reads like it was written yesterday.
"The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."
Igor Schatz retweeted
Thank God Serbia borders Europe, which is why we preserved our democracy. If we bordered Russia, we might have suffered the same fate as Belarus or Georgia. That's why I'm also sad tonight, because our Georgian and Belarusian friends continue to suffer the fate we managed to escape.
Wtf
New: Sources from three countries confirm that the Trump Administration has advocated Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-General.
The US has encouraged Orbán to enter the race, even bringing him the initial idea of a joint U.S.-Russia-China candidacy.
WSJ:
wsj.com/opinion/viktor-orban…
Igor Schatz retweeted
Lmao Vučić bought even Joe Marinara. Can you fathom how easily MAGA can be exploited by Putin and Xi, if it can also be rented out to two-bit tin-pot autocrats from the Balkans? You guys in America are cooked when half of you voted for these guys
Kremlin loses another ally in Europe
BREAKING: Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat in Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, saying the student-backed Student List had won.
“Based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we have lost this election. The student blockade list won,” Vučić said.
The result ends more than a decade of dominance by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party.
Igor Schatz retweeted
“There is not in Europe any such thing as a pure race. Russians have an admixture of Tartar blood, Germans are largely Slavonic, France is a mixture of Celts, Germans, and people of Mediterranean race, Italy the same with the addition of the descendants of slaves from every corner of the Empire imported by the Romans. The English are perhaps the most mixed of all. There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging to a pure race. The purest races now in existence are the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines; the Tasmanians, thanks to the British, who were probably even purer are now extinct. There is a special absurdity in applying racial theories to the various populations of Europe.”
— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, Ch. VII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
Igor Schatz retweeted
only 29% of russians in latest poll (levada center) want the fighting in ukraine to continue. most (64%) want negotiations and an end to the fighting.
sadly they don’t get a vote.
Igor Schatz retweeted
Don’t be distracted. This just shows he is on the admin’s script: keep blathering about Starlink and “terms of use/service,” don’t engage on Starshield, which is the issue and which — as Musk himself says — the Trump administration controls. nationalreview.com/corner/th…
Correct.
Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.
Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.
Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.
Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.
Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.
SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.
That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.
End of story.
Igor Schatz retweeted
About that Melania-brokered “ceasefire”… See below. Trump-friendly American media have apparently been invited, and it’s fair to surmise that’s not because Russia wants them to see the truth.
🔴 A ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky opens the way for a Kremlin-controlled press tour and gaslighting operation designed to shift blame for the humanitarian crisis onto Ukraine.
Here is how it is done:
kyivpost.com/analysis/88041
Igor Schatz retweeted
This footage is from the very beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Look at that little Ukrainian boy, walking towards the border in tears, surrounded by families fleeing a Russian invasion. Now consider the extraordinary moral bankruptcy of Trump, Rubio, Hegseth and Musk, whose message to Ukraine increasingly amounts to: “Fuck Ukraine. Russia gets our sympathy.”
Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff apparently sees Putin as some sort of humanitarian. Quite remarkable. Most people can distinguish a humanitarian from a man whose army bombs hospitals and forces children to flee their homes. Apparently, this requires a level of intellectual sophistication beyond certain members of the American establishment.
It hardly takes a magnificent imagination to work out which side these gentlemen might have found more accommodating in 1939.
“Never again” was supposed to mean something. It wasn’t a decorative slogan to be dusted off once a year while making excuses for the next dictator.
And to those who admire Russia as some glorious defender of Western civilisation, perhaps try learning something about the country. Russia has millions of Muslim citizens. It is hardly the anti-Muslim paradise some of its Western admirers imagine. Nor does Putin’s dictatorship represent the democratic freedoms they claim to cherish.
But then, understanding history, geography or basic human decency does rather spoil the pleasure of having absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
That little boy understood who the aggressor was. Remarkable how many supposedly powerful adults still struggle with it.
Igor Schatz retweeted
Elon Musk claims that Ukraine allegedly violated Starlink's terms of use and used the system on combat drones.
As someone who was inside the process at the Ministry of Defense, I can say with certainty that this is not true.
In February of this year, whitelists were introduced. Stationary terminals could be registered by both military personnel and civilians.
But for any satellite terminal to work while on the move, it had to be added to a special list and connected to the military Starshield system. Otherwise, no satellite communication terminals in Ukraine would work.
In other words, using civilian Starlink for drone missions was technically impossible. All drone missions that required satellite communication could only be carried out using Starshield.
We are very grateful to the United States and SpaceX for access to critically important satellite communications. Ukraine did not violate the terms of use.
Igor Schatz retweeted
At one of the tensest points in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two Americans teamed up with a former GDR spy to stop nuclear war. They just needed to tell Putin.
On the cover of @FTMag this week, one of the most extraordinary stories I've ever reported:
ft.com/content/dcb57f30-bbfe…
