KrasnaiaZvezda

Of the 31 Abrams tanks the U.S. sent to Ukraine, six have been destroyed

Is it really that low? I was pretty sure it was at least double that many by now.

but when Iran gives Russia missiles suddenly it’s a problem

Not even that. They probably just invented it to try to use this as an excuse as there isn't even any evidence of that.

I guess they could also do something like destroying GPS satellites or undersea cables as well, which might be a better approach if they don't want to kill anyone in NATO countries while hurting them considerably.

I don't see many chances of the US backing down of striking Russia by use of Ukraine, specially as they likely accept their own propaganda that Russia won't or can't do anything, so we unfortunatelly might know soon enough.

It took him far too long to realise that the western leadership is not interested whatsoever in peace or equality.

I'm not even sure he has fully realized it though.

I'm pretty sure US companies can still sell to some extent, or at least could, it's mostly their puppets that can't. But even then the second part of the comment is very much right.

Not so much "wasted" as transfered to billionaries and politicians (massive profits on weapon sales) with some loss (actually having to pay to build the items bought and sold).

It's likely, specially as from what I hear China was able to sell steel in Brazil cheaper than the local production too, so something likely changed/improved in China recently. It could be, at least in part, due to less internal demand, but cutting off the middlemen might have helped too.

From what I remember from a few months back the H100 GPU (I think) cost something like 30k and there were a few companies each buying up to 100k of them so something like this makes sense.

So if the demand for this GPUS don't continue high, which is possible as the newer LLMs are smaller and much better while not taking as much compute to run after trained, then what matters is by how much this deman will fall as I really doubt the demand will fall to 0 but we could be one development away from the deman tanking, being maintained or even going up.

The 2.5% in this case comes from all the international trade from Russia in 2023-2024, where 42% use Yuan to 39.5% the dollar.

So not globally passing the dollar yet, but it's nice that there are examples for others to see the new opportunities.

Probably something like the smaller producers sold locally, governing their prices in part by what bigger producers set. Meanwhile, large producers could likely pay for the price discovery, individually or in a group, or they had many contacts which allowed them to have an idea of what would be fair. But it was likely the US was stealing quite a lot as middlemen, which can now be at least atenuated somewhat by having many people trading directly and perhaps even more "state help" to figure out good prices long term.

I would be interested in understanding this better as well, and nice to see that the new system is already being used. Whoever is not using the new system yet will likely do the math to see how good it will be for them.

Edit to add another point: Large producers would likely buy smaller local producers' production as well in case the export price was good, so the smaller producers would increase their prices when they knew the bigger producers were buying a lot.

Even just a country existing independently by themselves is already enough for them to do whatever they can to demonize and attack them as such an independent country will be a symbol of hope for other countrries wanting the same.

That's my thinking as well. I am actually kinda expecting them to do something as they had been responding to attacks on their refineries and looking at the ammount of refinneries, air bases and other things that have been hit recently toghether with the whole Kursk incursion and the west giving green light for the use of their weapons inside Russia, they kinda of are pressed to do what could be the biggest attack since the war started, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just pretend nothing of this happened too and just continue pushing in the east as they may think they will win soon.

But if they do actually do something perhaps they could take the opportunity to do it at the same time as Iran and Yemen, and even others as well, to really show that a red line has been crossed.