I am surprised by how many fake alt accounts you Russian trolls have made over the years. Kudos to you guys tho. I keep blocking you all and you just come back like mushrooms after the rain.
Captured nuclear plant doubles as launch pad for relentless Russian rocket assaults July 22, 2022 AlphaNews https://alphanews.site/captured-nuc...ch-pad-for-relentless-russian-rocket-attacks/ Mykhailo Poperechnyuk was driving in the direction of the city of Nikopol, in southern Ukraine, earlier this month when he noticed a barrage of Russian rockets streaking throughout the night time sky. The missiles had been fired from what stands out as the most impregnable Russian positions alongside your entire entrance line: these across the Zaporizhia nuclear energy plant simply 5km away on the opposite aspect of the Dnipro river. The Russian military seized the huge facility — the most important in Europe, with six 950MW reactors — within the early weeks of its invasion, destroying a coaching workplace through the assault regardless of the plain dangers of damaging the plant and radiation leaks. Since then, Ukrainian officers say, the Russians have stationed 500 troops and heavy weapons throughout the perimeter — in breach of Worldwide power conventions — and are utilizing the reactor blocks to guard in opposition to retaliatory fireplace. “Think about how cynical and immoral the Russians are,” mentioned Poperechnyuk, a businessman and activist who’s a member of Ukraine’s territorial defence forces. “They’re placing their artillery simply behind the reactors so Ukrainian armed forces can’t reply.” A Nikopol resident clears particles from a home broken by a Russian army strike © Dmytro Smolienko/Reuters The individuals of Nikopol, a down-at-heel Russian-speaking metal city made up of factories and Soviet-era housing blocks, now dwell within the shadow of an influence plant that has been became a Russian fortress. And there’s little the nation’s army can do both to assault or defend. Because the salvo Poperechnyuk witnessed on July 14 there have been virtually nightly Russian bombardments, scary and exhausting residents — simply as different cities and cities within the jap Donbas area and southern Ukraine are being pulverised by Moscow’s assault. Over two nights this week, the Russians fired 100 rockets at Nikopol and at one level air raid warnings sounded for 19 hours straight. Among the many scores of individuals ready for meals parcels at a charity centre within the city funded by Poperenchuk, the concern was palpable. The earlier night time 5 Russian missiles had hit a number of residential blocks and a manufacturing facility, killing two individuals. “It was scary,” mentioned Lisa, a refugee from the southern metropolis of Mariupol, the place she spent seven weeks dwelling in a basement amid a ferocious Russian bombardment. “We gave some antidepressants to our child who was in tears at 4am. The child was panicking so we hugged him very arduous.” Businessman Mykhailo Poperechnyuk has organised meals parcels for locals within the city © Ben Corridor/FT “I’m shocked by what occurred final night time,” Zina Sidorenko, a pensioner, mentioned of the most recent assault, as tears welling in her eyes. She insisted she wouldn’t go away, however hundreds have already got. Poperenchuk estimated that Nikopol’s inhabitants had halved from about 100,000 within the eight years since Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula and the separatist warfare broke out within the Donbas. Tens of hundreds have fled within the months since Moscow’s troops swept by way of southern Ukraine within the spring and took up positions just some kilometres away. See also Earnings at British Fuel proprietor Centrica forecast at high of anticipated vary “Earlier than the rockets hit, enterprise was bouncing again,” mentioned Andriy Vezetelnik, who owns a restaurant, fitness center and a bunch of comfort shops within the city. Now “everybody has gone”. Simply throughout from his restaurant, dozens of principally aged locals had laid out on the grass a couple of meagre possessions on the market — some cups, a cracked casserole dish, a skipping rope. However there have been few clients. Mariya Poloz, operations supervisor for Poperenchyuk’s basis, expressed a mixture of trepidation and defiance on the prospect of a Russian assault. “I’m a lawyer, a volunteer and a girl — I perceive what they [Russian soldiers] can do if they arrive right here. However lots of people watch me. In the event that they see me go away it’s a foul signal that there’s no hope right here.” Within the close by city of Oleksiyivka, Oksana Glushko was handing out meals parcels to locals from exterior the village corridor. The municipal councillor hailed the extraordinary effort of unusual Ukrainians to assist not solely their neighbours but additionally to help the warfare effort. She and different activists have been delivering clothes, boots, automotive components and 10,000 home made prepared meals to military models as much as 250km away. They raised sufficient cash to purchase two automobiles and had been now fundraising for a 3rd. Glushko pulled out a ledger recording each supply. “Our individuals are beneficiant,” she mentioned. “Our individuals are our wealth.” Ukraine’s armed forces have come to depend on crowdfunding and charity for automobiles, fundamental provides and non-lethal tools reminiscent of drones and computer systems. However it’s the nation’s army excessive command that distributes heavy weaponry. And Nikopol’s defenders would not have any. Oksana Glushko hailed the extraordinary effort of unusual Ukrainians to assist their neighbours and help the warfare effort © Ben Corridor/FT “Now individuals from the highest want to assist us out,” mentioned Volodymyr, a platoon commander within the territorial defence forces and veteran of the Donbas warfare. Standing on the waterfront, the fortified nuclear energy station seen within the distance, he mentioned the Russians might attempt to launch an assault on Nikopol utilizing helicopters and boats. “However for now their technique is to threaten civilians,” he mentioned, pointing to a residential block on the crest of a hill. “These individuals really feel notably uncovered.” Nikopol’s seashore, a brief strip of sand backed by a playground, was fenced off and mined to thwart a potential Russian amphibious assault. Alongside the street, on the SOK seashore membership, supervisor Svetlana was attempting to make one of the best of a enterprise she solely purchased final autumn. A number of visitors lounged within the sweltering warmth as others launched themselves from a pontoon into the greenish waters of the Dnipro. “There’s good power right here,” she mentioned, “it’s a type of sacred place. These individuals [the Russians] should struggle arduous with us.”
Thanks to Putin. Finally NATO woke up. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/06/07/poland-himars-us/ Poland to Acquire 500 HIMARS
Could just be western propaganda, but then again......... Report Exposes Putin’s ‘Basement Trap’ for Hundreds of Defiant Russian Troops Hundreds of Russian troops who refused to continue with the war in Ukraine are being forcibly held in basements and garages in occupied Luhansk, according to a new report published Thursday. Citing families of the soldiers and human rights organizations, the independent news outlet Verstka reports that at least 234 soldiers who were deployed to various regions of Ukraine are being held at facilities in the town of Bryanka. https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-exposes-putin-basement-trap-181427332.html
Could all just be western propaganda, but then again....let the viewers decide. Sounds like they have deformed the barrels on their artillery pieces by overheating. ‘We’re Losing’ but Moscow Will Never Admit It, Russian Soldier Says As Russia openly announced its plan to seize more Ukrainian land on Wednesday, a Russian soldier was caught spilling to relatives back home that Vladimir Putin’s troops are “losing,” according to Ukrainian intelligence. Audio shared by Ukraine’s Security Service is said to capture an intercepted phone call between a soldier based in the Kharkiv region and a female relative outside Moscow. It was not immediately clear when the conversation took place, but the unnamed man’s complaints appear to echo those heard repeatedly from Russian troops throughout nearly five months of the war. “We’re losing now,” the purported soldier says, prompting an indignant response from his female relative, who replies, “Well it’s you guys who are losing there, but they are winning everywhere [else].” “That’s the picture they paint for you on television, but in reality it’s drastically different here,” he says. “They will never show you this on television, they will never tell you the truth. We’re losing.” Taken aback by the confession, the woman asks him to explain how Russian troops could be losing—and there seems to be no shortage of answers. “We should have about 90 tanks left, and you know how many we have left? We have probably 14 tanks left,” the man says. “You don’t have artillery?” “We do, but it’s so curved you can measure the [target] misses in kilometers,” he says, adding that “Everything’s sad.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-...oldier-says?via=rss&source=articles_fancylink
key phrase, there. and: dailybeast: 'nuff said. Purported soldier - lol. I'm still gonna guess there's a thread of slight possibility this is BS.
It is real. Russians use Ukrainian cell communication networks to call home, they don't have any other way to do it, and Ukrainians can easily intercept them. I have listened to a few dozen of these calls, and there are hundreds available. Each one is completely different voices, accents and manners of speaking, the Russian regional accents are there, the military terminology is correct, they are authentic. There is no way Ukrainians have that many voice actors that are that good to simulate all of these phone calls.
Here are two articles. Twixt the two, there is something for everyone. If you want an article that says the Ukrainians' ass is grass and the russians are a lawnmower, then go with the first article. If you want to read something showing that the Ruskies are in a grim, overextended scenario, then go with article number two. As Ukraine's war grinds on, soldiers are outgunned and injuries are rising (Npr link won't let me copy and paste the link. hold on. I will try to paste article below. Okay, I pasted the first, then the second article is a link way down after the paste of the first article.) DNIPRO, Ukraine — Under the hot sun and relentless Russian artillery, 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers painstakingly drive their vehicles single-file along the Siverskyi Donets river, beating a retreat from eastern Ukraine as Russian troops fire at them. "The Russians have so much ammunition, they can afford toshell us continuously, and we do not have enough ammunition to suppress their fire," says Oleg, 21, an infantry platoon commander among those retreating. "That was how they eliminated our units." Against all odds, Ukraine's army has managed to hold off a full-scale Russian invasion. But now they must continue to survive while outgunned and outmanned by Russia. NPR interviewed Oleg and a half-dozen soldiers in early July,just two days after they came off a brutal three-month stint fending off the Russian military from the strategic Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk. They all requested NPR use only their first names for security reasons, to prevent them from being identified or located by Russian forces. Front line fighter Sasha, 39, a former solar panel installer, spent months living in underground dugouts and basements in Sievierodonetsk, running through forests outside the city on eight-hour shifts. "The specter of war stays with us," he tells NPR. Carol Guzy for NPR On June 24, Ukraine's defense ministry said it had been forced to withdraw its troops from Sievierodonetsk. The week after, they withdrew from its sister city, Lysychansk. constant shortage of military experience, artillery and ammunition. "Of course, I am afraid of death," Oleg says. "But I am a military commander. If I show fear, my deputies will be scared as well." Young volunteers and recruits often enter the war with little training or preparation Oleg was finishing his semester at a Kyiv military academy when Russian soldiers invaded in February and set their sights on taking over Ukraine's capital. His academy let him graduate early, in March, so he could enlist in the Ukrainian military. Today he is responsible for more than 260 infantry soldiers in an all-new platoon at the front lines. The entire platoon is comprised of volunteers who also enlisted in March. A handful received military training decades earlier, but most were fresh recruits fired up by patriotism. They were woefully inexperienced. At most, they got three weeks of training before shipping out. "Let me answer this way: I enlisted on March 22, and by April 4, I was in Sievierodonetsk," says Oleksandr, a civil engineer by training who now works setting and clearing mines. "I had to learn everything." Oleksandr had already lived through eight years of war, starting in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized territory in Ukraine's east, next to his home in Kramatorsk. But nothing prepared him for the brutality of the front. On one reconnaissance sweep, he recalls, his team encountered a group of unsuspecting Russians, leading to a close-range firefight. "Not all of the Russian soldiers were able to leave this encounter, so to speak," he says. Front line fighter Oleksandr, 33, a former construction engineer, now works setting and clearing mines. "I had to learn everything," he says. Carol Guzy for NPR He worries young volunteers are being shipped out without preparation. The high casualty rate also robs the Ukrainian military of a chance to build up an experienced officer corps. "The young soldiers are like a sponge, they absorb everything, but they need time to be cultivated," Oleksandr explains. "A commander may need 30 years' experience, but they're 20-year-old boys who are giving their lives even though they have not even seen life yet." The soldiers NPR interviewed describe intense shelling from the moment they arrived in Sievierodonetsk, once a densely-populated city at the heart of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region known for its rich coalmines and chemical fertilizer plants. The shelling picked up in May, as Russia added cruise missiles strikes launched off of aircraft and ships in the Black Sea. Oleg, the commander, also says well-trained Russian special force soldiers appeared in May, replacing the previous ill-equipped infantry, and began making advances toward Ukrainian lines at least twice a week. Not all Ukrainians have welcomed their country's military defenders Not all Ukrainian citizens are grateful for the soldiers giving their lives to defend the country from Russia. Even before February, Ukraine was deeply politically split, with many people in the eastern regions openly supportive of Russia and nostalgic for Soviet times. And even Ukrainian residents living in areas subject to deadly shelling from Russian missiles have been susceptible to Russian social media and television propaganda falsely claiming that the strikes are launched by the Ukrainian army, intentionally firing on its own citizens. Olga Bashey, 45, a front line paramedic known by her nickname "Krokha" (meaning "small" or "baby") says while evacuating injured civilians from Lysychansk, the site of key battles in June, one woman began berating her medical team for being a "Nazi junta" — a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin's false claim that Ukraine's government is run by Nazi supporters. "She was lucky that I am Muslim and know to control myself," Bashey remembers. "I would have otherwise left her on the field, injured without any help, and let the Russians save her." Oleg, the infantry commander, said he was surprised by the lackluster welcome they received along the front lines from their fellow citizens. "They looked at us as if we are aliens, from another planet," he remembers. In the days after his battalion evacuated Sievierodonetsk, he saw videos on Russian social media featuring Ukrainian residents he'd met and provided food and medicine. But in the videos, they are welcoming the invading Russian soldiers. "It leaves a residue in the soul," he says. Eleven days later, the remainder of Oleg's regiment was back at the front lines, fighting again. Ukrainian forces struggle due to insufficient ammunition and artillery A doctor in a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine, shows shrapnel pulled from an injured soldier. Carol Guzy for NPR Sasha, 39, the head of a mortar unit, spent the last three months living in underground dugouts and basements in Sievierodonetsk, running through forests outside the city on eight-hour shifts, packing artillery with new shells. "Here, we miss the constant boom, boom, boom of war. It is too silent. On the front, silence means the enemy is loading their weapons and about to kill you," he tells NPR from his barracks. "The specter of war stays with us." Like all the soldiers NPR spoke with, Sasha praises American and European ammunition and artillery such as M777 howitzers that they had received. The problem was there just was not enough. "Russia uses the same weapons as us, it is just they have more of it. If I set 100 mines a day, they set, say, 500. In terms of manpower, they have six men for every one soldier we have," says Sasha, a former solar panel installer. A dearth of ammunition hinders any offensives Ukrainian troops can make, soldiers say, because infantry would be quickly wiped out by incoming Russian artillery. Clothes from front line fighters recovering from their war injuries in a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine. Carol Guzy for NPR "Without good, intensive support from artillery aircraft that shield you, it makes no sense to go head-on with tanks and machine guns and all that," saysYaroslav, 32, a former policeman who fought in Ukraine's south, near the country's Kherson region, until shrapnel pierced his leg and lungs in June. The U.S. has given Ukraine advanced guided rocket systems, called HIMARS, which can hit targets up to 50 miles away and allowed Ukraine to score notable victories against Russia's better-resourced army. In July, Ukraine's defense ministry said the HIMARS took out several major Russian ammunition depots, and there are signs heavy casualties may be forcing Russian authorities toward conscription. Another challenge is the increasingly lethal and often illegal Russian arms, such as cluster munitions, being deployed en masse against both civilians and the Ukrainian military, according to Yakuv Nemykin, the deputy head of the Donetsk region's emergency services. "The Russians are using lots of new weapons. We have to learn by making mistakes, but it is costing us lives," he says. Those taking part in the department's mine clearing operations have sustained particularly high casualty rates. Even those hardened by the grim business of war since 2014 say they are shocked by the dire conditions the Ukrainian army faces in the east. "This war is more aggressive, fought with deadlier weapons that leave behind not just dead soldiers, but dead civilians too," says Bashey, the paramedic. She says few soldiers even survive long enough to be brought to her triage tents, now based in Kramatorsk, an eastern Ukrainian town at the very edge of Ukraine-held land in the eastern region of Donetsk. On many days, she says her team is often pinned in place by intense, unceasing shelling that frequently forces the medics to choose who to save and who to leave behind on the battlefield because of the limited time they have to evacuate the injured. "There are times when we cannot pull out heavily injured, so we prioritize the lightly injured," Bashey says. "We do not dwell on those we leave behind. This is war." Serious injuries are increasing The casualties of this war are mounting. Precise Ukrainian figures are tightly guarded, though President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said as many as 200 soldiers are dying a day. The human toll is evident in civilian and military hospitals across the country. "I've treated soldiers before, but with the expansion of the battlefield and the use of deadlier weapons, the concentration of serious wounds has increased," says a doctor named Oleksander, the head of surgery at a hospital in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's hometown. He asked that NPR use only his first name for security reasons. Oleksander says he's treated 900 front line soldiers since the start of the war. They were the ones who survived long enough to be brought to the hospital. Most of the soldiers in the Kryvyi Rih hospital suffered serious injuries and have months of convalescence ahead. "Recovery is hard, especially when I remember the pain and fear I saw in my comrades as they were screaming in that dugout. There was a lot of blood," says Yaroslav, 38. The former muay thai martial arts instructor was sitting in a roadside dugout in late June when a Russian mortar exploded inside. Injured front line fighter Volodymir and his wife Julia work on a painting together as he recovers at a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine, on July 7. He was wounded on March 11, and his face and hand were badly burned, requiring a skin transplant from his legs. He has been a soldier since 2019. Carol Guzy for NPR He still has flashbacks to the bits of skin and limbs that plastered the concrete walls afterward. Some of the bits were his. "I now have nightmares at night," he says. "The fear is ever present." At one point, his heart stopped. He'll need six months to heal the shattered leg and deep shrapnel wounds he suffered. Kostantyn, 33, remembers everything that happened after a Russian missile hit a tank next to him in June. His ginger beard is still blackened from burns; his left forearm tattoo of a bamboo grove is flayed nearly beyond recognition. "I went blind and was thrown like a sack of potatoes by the blast. Pain coursed through my body," he remembers. He could feel his right arm bleeding heavily, so he reached for the tourniquet he kept in his right jacket pocket, but fatigue overwhelmed him. "I was so tired," he says, "and I thought, just let me die, and I put my head down and waited for the end." He survived by eventually crawling behind another vehicle. "Even when they started cutting off the remnants of my clothes from me," he says, "I even remember how the rocket looked as it flew towards us." The hospital's head doctor describes how he painstakingly put Kostantyn's body back together. It took a month of skin graft procedures to treat the severe burns covering a quarter of the soldier's body. Some of the grafts were Kostantyn's own skin, others were pig skin. Like many other soldiers in his regiment, Kostantyn has spent most of his adult life fighting: He is a former internet technology engineer who enlisted in 2014, after Russian-backed separatists took control of his home city in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Oleksandr, recovering after coming under mortar fire on the front line, turned 46 on his birthday spent in a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine, on July 8. He is an entrepreneur and had been in the army for two months. Carol Guzy for NPR Despite his wounds, he's optimistic that he'll rejoin the fight. "I feel so much better in this week alone," he insists to his doctor, between labored breaths. "That is because you have been here for more than a month, but you remember none of it," his doctor gently chides him. Later, in private, the doctor tells us quietly that Kostantyn's right ear and eye will never regain function at all. He has not had the heart to tell this soldier he is no longer fit for military service. Russia using 85% of fighting force in Ukraine: senior US defense official Senior U.S. defense official says Russian command is struggling in Ukrainian war https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-using-85-fighting-force-ukraine-senior-us-defense-official
Everyone's there tired and those who are eager, they're probably just fresh Russian cannon folder, imported from some far east or prisons. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W4fVSggqL7A But then again, when a Russian wakes up in the morning and he asks himself , ,,Why should i keep going ?" <.... silence....> Meanwhile, for Ukrainians, the reason is very obvious. Now or never. p.s #neverforgetMariupol
Katja Hoyer Germany is caught in Putin’s trap 23 July 2022, 2:00pm https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/germany-is-caught-in-putin-s-trap A collective sigh of relief went through Berlin this week as Russia resumed its gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after a scheduled ten-day maintenance break. But even with the immediate crisis averted, Germany remains palpably jittery: it is unclear whether it will have enough gas to get through the winter. Threats from Vladimir Putin to curb or even stop energy supplies to Europe altogether have been part of the Russian war strategy right from the beginning. Shortly before the invasion of Ukraine in February, when the German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a halt to the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, sneered: ‘Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!’ Since then, Putin has been keen to highlight the vulnerability that Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal has created. The Kremlin has already cut off other countries, such as Poland and Bulgaria, from its gas supplies. Last month, the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom blamed a missing Siemens turbine for cutting Nord Stream 1 flows down to 40 per cent of capacity: a staggering amount given that the pipeline is capable of delivering 55 billion cubic metres a year to Europe. Putin indicated on Wednesday that gas flows could be reduced even further. Speaking to reporters during a visit in Iran, he stressed that the missing turbine, which had been sent to Canada for repairs due to the ‘crumbling of (its) inside lining’ had still not been returned, impairing the pipeline’s capacity. ‘There are two functioning machines there, they pump 60 million cubic metres per day…If one is not returned, there will be one, which is 30 million cubic metres,’ the Russian president continued ominously. So Europe held its breath as specialists monitored the return of the gas flow through Nord Stream 1. All indications so far suggest a resumption of the pre-maintenance levels of 40 per cent, putting Germany and Europe back where they were before the ten-day break. But the EU’s largest economy continues to rely on a third of its gas from Russia while currently receiving less than half of the agreed amount. The fact that Putin has decided to resume this reduced delivery for now ‘is no reason to think we are out of the woods,’ says Klaus Müller, the head of the Federal Network Agency. Germany is now bracing itself for a looming crisis. What began as a vague debate on diversifying energy supplies and medium-term contingency planning, is rapidly turning into outright panic. Many experts have pointed out that Putin is using the excuse of a faulty turbine to stir up political and social insecurity in Germany by summoning the spectre of imminent energy shortfalls and rising prices. But this hasn’t stopped the government from pressuring Canada into delivering the component to Russia in spite of economic sanctions. Alarmingly, German politicians are doing very little to hide their own panic over the matter. The German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock admitted to journalists that her team had tried to impress on the Canadians that the turbine must be returned to Russia because, ‘otherwise we won’t get any gas anymore and then we won’t be able to support Ukraine at all anymore because we will be busy dealing with large-scale social unrest.’ Such rhetoric from German government officials is playing right into Putin’s hands, revealing that the Kremlin’s psychological and economic warfare on Germany is more effective than the reverse. As the German journalist and Russia expert Christoph Wanner points out: ‘the Russian president is keeping our country on a short leash.’ Baerbock’s open admission that Germany might be willing to drop what support it has lent Ukraine altogether if the social, economic and political price for it becomes too high domestically, will only serve to encourage Putin to turn the thumbscrews again. The Russian plan is as predictable as it is effective: keep gas supplies to Germany going on a level that allows the country to function, yet low enough to create price hikes and uncertainty. In this way, Russia will continue to generate enormous revenue to fund its brutal campaign in Ukraine while grinding down German commitment to the war and driving a wedge into the Western alliance. All the indications suggest that the Kremlin will succeed with this tactic. Public morale is already waning in Germany. A recent survey indicated that energy prices have become the top issue. The poll also suggested that the majority of Germans think economic sanctions have hit them harder than Russia. Worryingly, this is accompanied by increasing pessimism regarding the West’s ability to help Ukraine win the war. While over half of those surveyed still support the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, the figure has dropped since the last survey. Nine in ten Germans want their government to continue to talk to Putin. Alongside a previous survey, in which half the respondents said they wanted Ukraine to cede territory in the east to Russia, this suggests the German public is becoming war-weary and might push for a quick end to the conflict, even if that means rewarding Russian aggression in Europe. The mood in the country certainly seems at a dangerous tipping point. Energy prices are soaring to record highs as the government is forced to return to resources it had hoped were on the way out. Coal, oil and possibly even a continuation of nuclear electricity generation beyond the planned phase-out at the end of the year are all back on the table, so that the scarce gas supplies might be reserved for heat generation in the winter. In some regions, people have already been told to expect reductions in room temperatures and limited availability of hot water. In the middle of a European heatwave the prospect of a cold winter with dwindling gas supplies may be hard to imagine, but Germany is palpably edgy. While it is likely that private households and essential services will be shielded from the worst effects of shortages, the country’s industry would be left to take the brunt. Some economic models are forecasting a contraction of over 12 per cent of Germany’s GDP. As summer moves into autumn, the Kremlin will be watching very carefully what happens to German resolve. Caving to Putin’s demands domestically and in Ukraine will not reduce the conflict but encourage it. Instead of watching gas meters and Putin's announcements with bated breath, Berlin should look for realistic solutions, communicate them clearly to the public and prepare the country for a tough winter. There is no easy way out of a trap of Germany’s own making. The sooner Berlin confronts this reality, the better so that it can find a way through the looming crisis. Panic is helping nobody but Putin.