Geo Political Risk

[Davexl]

Luke Harding

@lukeharding1968

After midnight in #Kyiv. The mood grim, friends calling each other, the city still up and drinking tea.
The rumour - from officials, foreign contacts, journalists - is that Russian action will began at 4am local time.
#Ukraine is bracing, joking, hugging, loving. We wait

11:45 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

[Davexl]

Hope your hedging strategies are beginning to work?...

[Davexl]

Guardian

8m ago 23:49 Zelenskiy makes national address, says Russia has approved offensive against Ukraine

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has just given a 10-minute national address to his country in the early hours of Thursday morning, local time.
Zelenskiy said Russia had approved an offensive against Ukraine and said Russian president Vladimir Putin had not replied to his invitation to hold talks, Reuters reports, citing the address in which he spoke in both Ukrainian and Russian.

He also warned that any flare-up from Russia could “burn everything” and create a catastrophic crisis.

Speaking in Russian, he called on Russians to not believe the narratives about Ukraine being presented on Russian state television.
I initiated a telephone call with the president of the Russian Federation. Result: silence.

This step could be the start of a big war on the European continent. The whole world is talking about what could happen any day now.
Any provocation. Any flare-up – one that could burn everything.”

The address has since been posted on Telegram.

[Davexl]

BHP dn 6% - big moves in Aussi - GLTAHs...

[Davexl]

Cyber attacks occuring in Ukraine...

[Davexl]

NYT

KYIV, Ukraine — With Russia apparently poised to invade and overwhelm his country, Ukraine’s president made a dramatic televised plea to avoid war, appealing directly to the Russian people and their nations’ shared history and culture.
“The Ukrainian people want peace,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said after midnight on Thursday morning in Kyiv. “The government in Ukraine wants peace and is doing everything it can to build it.”

While acknowledging that Russians, whose news diet is tightly controlled, were unlikely to hear his words, Mr. Zelensky insisted that Ukraine had no grievance with Russia and meant no harm to Russians, disputing the picture of his country painted by the Russian government and news media.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he said, had approved an invasion. “Any spark,” he said, “could burn everything down. You are told that this flame will liberate the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free.”

It was, in all, an impassioned bid to save his country — delivered in Russian, his native language.
“You are told we are Nazis,” said Mr. Zelensky, whose background is Jewish. “But can a people support Nazis that gave more than eight million lives for the victory over Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Tell my grandpa, who went through the whole war in the infantry of the Soviet Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.”

He addressed Mr. Putin’s claim that Ukraine is an ersatz country, rightfully part of Russia.
“Neighbors always enrich each other culturally,” Mr. Zelensky said. “However, that doesn’t make them a single whole. It doesn’t dissolve us into you. We are different, but that is not a reason to be enemies. We want to determine, build our future ourselves, peacefully, calmly and honestly.”

He said that he had tried to call Mr. Putin but that “the result was silence.”
A Russian invasion of Ukraine, he said, “must be stopped before it is too late.” Whether war happens, he said, “depends only on you — the citizens of the Russian Federation.”

[Davexl]

Guardian

2m ago 00:34

Russian invasion of Ukraine is ‘ready to go’, Pentagon says

The United States has said that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent, and that Russian troops and separatist forces surrounding the country were in combat-ready positions.
Pentagon spokesperson, John F Kirby, told reporters.Russian forces continue to assemble closer to the border ... They are ready to go.

They could attack at any time ... with a significant military force.”

[Panda-NZ-]

How long until another surprise shelling (hmm) into the new russian terrorities justifies a full scale invasion.

[Davexl]

Guardian

3m ago 00:45
Stocks in Asia Pacific are being hammered on Thursday morning as the grim drumbeat of war becomes louder by the minute in Ukraine.
The Australian ASX200 index was first cab off the rank and is down 2.3% after 90 minutes of trading.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei average is down 0.8% and the Kospi in Seoul has fallen 1.4%.



A trader works at the New York stock exchange where stocks fell heavily on Wednesday. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

It follows steep losses on Wall Street where the Dow lost 1.4%, S&P 500 dropped 1.8%, Nasdaq plunged 2.6%.

The S&P 500 – the broadest measure of shares in the US – has fallen 10% since its record high on 3 January, meaning it is officially in a correction phase. The Dow is only a fraction off the same metric.

The Nasdaq has tumbled more than 16% so far this year

[Davexl]

Flight paths are now closed along the Ukrainian border...airport runways closed...

Don't know about the shelling Panda-NZ, but there were 5 big explosions in Donetsk 20 mins ago...False flag?