How Putin's Invasion is Changing Our World Forever

this video was made possible by curiosity stream and nebula watch another brand new full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that explains the entire course of russia's prior devastating wars against chechnya throughout the 1990s along with further episodes covering the russian invasion of georgia and the entire war between russia and ukraine up until now all of which you can access by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal for less than 15 a year at curiositystream.com real life lore in the early morning hours of the 24th of february 2022 after many months of military build up along the borders something that was previously unthinkable to nearly everyone actually happened within ukraine the morning everywhere erupted with the sound of cruise missiles and artillery barrages as the russian armed forces initiated their full-scale invasion of the country prompting the largest military conflict between two nation states in europe since the second world war clashes followed a campaign of aerial bombardment bombings too at the other airports and military sites more than 200 000 russian soldiers along with their guns tanks trucks and planes surged across the ukrainian border along three different fronts and in the weeks since the world as we knew it before has been forever and irreversibly changed in countless ways as vladimir lenin once said over a century ago there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen while the russian invasion will certainly have numerous enormous consequences that will be felt by nearly every single country around the world it's obvious that none will experience more severe consequences than ukraine itself their country is the one being invaded bombed besieged and destroyed as i'm speaking and their country is the one whose very existence vladimir putin has now openly called into question while the extent of the damage is unclear for the moment after all the dust has eventually settled it will no doubt be horrendous ukraine will experience reverberations of this trauma for generations to come and from the perspective of the kremlin the invasion is most likely not exactly going according to their initial plans putin and the russian military clearly underestimated the ferocity of ukrainian resistance while they also place too little of an emphasis on their own logistics and supply chains the conflict is likely dragging on longer now than they initially anticipated and that is a very dangerous situation because with western sanctions pouring in the russian military is in a race against the clock before they basically go bankrupt and in order to try and force a surrender faster they may begin utilizing even more of their destructive and indiscriminate firepower like concentrated artillery or air power which they so far have largely been holding back and when that happens the destruction and refugee crisis already the largest in europe since the second world war will only continue getting worse as it stands now when i wrote this video more than two and a half million ukrainians mostly women and children have been forced to flee the country as refugees primarily towards the west in poland hungary slovakia romania and moldova if the war ends up dragging into a protracted conflict the un has estimated that there could be as many as 10 million ukrainian refugees fleeing westwards to the rest of europe which will be enormously catastrophic to put these figures into some kind of perspective during 2015 when europe was undergoing the so-called migrant crisis from the middle east and north africa the continent saw 1.3 million refugees coming in over the course of the entire year there have now been nearly twice as many ukrainian refugees as that in a matter of weeks and it could be nearly 10 times as many and at the same time as the refugees have been leaving equipment supplies weapons and thousands of foreign volunteers have been pouring in from dozens of countries across the world in order to help ukraine's fight for survival it's also worth remembering that we're only a few weeks into this conflict so far and wars are often fought and won over the course of months or even years it is still far too early to tell how this is all going to go but should putin's russia manage to emerge victorious it has the potential to completely upend the entire order of europe with the flurry of sanctions travel bans airspace restrictions mass arrests within russia and more over the past few weeks it truly appears that a new iron curtain is descending across the european continent this time shifted over slightly to the east from where it was before from kaliningrad on the baltic to the ukrainian shores on the black sea it is beginning to appear that the cold war in europe between the west and moscow once believed to have ended for good back in 1991 when people like francis fukuyama unilaterally declared the end of history merely instead took a 30-year break and has now once again returned to haunt us all the evidence of this is manifold and all around us historically neutral recent polls in both sweden and finland have shown that the majority of the population in both countries is now in favor of joining the nato alliance for the very first time both governments have expressed some form of interest and moscow has directly threatened them both with some kind of action should they dare to proceed of course finland's admittance into the alliance would be particularly controversial owing to their large land border with russia and their proximity with saint petersburg russia's second largest city and the hometown of vladimir putin for decades during what i will now always refer to as the cold war's first phase the soviet union essentially bullied finland into always staying neutral between east and west and it seems as if old habits die hard but among the greatest of changes ushered in by putin's war in ukraine is the revolution undergoing germany and specifically the german military and defense doctrine during an incredible session of the german bundestag just three days after the invasion the new chancellor olaf schultz announced a series of earth-shattering measures the german armed forces would receive a one-time 113 billion dollar defense fund to rapidly modernize themselves and from there after would receive a permanent annual budget increase to more than 2 percent of germany's annual gdp this means that their yearly budget will be increased to around 78 billion dollars causing germany's military to suddenly become the third best funded in the world only behind china and america and critically that means they'll be ahead of russia's military budget very rapidly the german army will likely once again for the first time in nearly a century take over the reins of being the most formidable on the european continent and the geopolitical revolution goes even further beyond that germany has also agreed to send lethal aid to ukraine and most unexpectedly of all they've even agreed to indefinitely suspend the nordstream 2 pipeline project that would have brought in even more enormous quantities of natural gas directly from the vast sources of siberia and russia the cost to build this controversial pipeline was more than 11 billion dollars and so of course such a move will be difficult for the german economy to bear but such is their resolve in showing solidarity with ukraine this is all quite unexpected and unprecedented because right up until the actual invasion germany was hesitant to actually support ukraine and come out hard against russia because germany is critically over dependent on russian natural gas even without the nordstream 2 pipeline with limited domestic energy resources of their own germany has had no other choice but to import nearly the entirety of her energy needs from abroad and with some of the largest natural gas and oil reserves in the world geographically nearby russia has always been the most significant provider through a complex series of pipelines that have been constructed over decades sprawling out from the vast oil and gas fields in siberia russia directly provides germany with a third of her oil and half of her natural gas and the same is true for much of the rest of europe as well italy and france also import significant amounts of russian fossil fuels and the closer eastwards the countries are to moscow the more fossil fuels they generally import to the point where many nations like bosnia north macedonia moldova finland estonia latvia serbia bulgaria slovakia croatia czechia and austria import nearly the entirety of their gas from russia this is largely because geologically the european continent was not blessed with large amounts of oil or natural gas that power the modern engines of civilization and instead large amounts of these resources can be found all around the european union's perimeter in the north sea between the uk and norway across the euro mountains in russian siberia in the eastern mediterranean around cyprus israel and egypt and of course around the persian gulf with critically few oil and gas resources themselves the european union is therefore critically addicted to the imports of russian oil and gas flowing in from their pipelines and it severely limits their abilities to actually confront moscow's aggression in order to overcome this dependency and energy insecurity the european commission has since the invasion outlined a 10-point proposal to make the eu completely independent from russian fossil fuels by the end of the decade but of course that is going to take years to accomplish and until it happens every drop of oil and gas that europe continues to buy from russia will go directly towards funding the russian war machine in ukraine the problem though is that there aren't really any easy alternatives for europe to choose norway the second largest provider of gas to the european union is already at maximum export capacity through their own pipelines and cannot provide any more than they already are in theory the eu could replace some of russia's gas with liquefied natural gas or lng imports coming in on tanker ships from friendly countries like the united states qatar or australia but there are many problems with this strategy as well first europe lacks a lot of the infrastructure that's required for importing lng in order to do so they need lng processing terminals at ports they can take in the lng from container ships turn the liquid back into its gases state and pump that into pipelines unfortunately europe has very few of these lng terminals existing right now with only a handful in portugal spain italy france the uk belgium the netherlands poland and greece while major global economies like germany who import more than half of their gas from russia have zero so in order to begin importing lng at a large scale the germans will have to build brand new lng terminals but that is going to cost billions of dollars and take years to accomplish secondly even if the eu had the infrastructure the supply chain of lng is already highly constrained as it is and met by massive demand for it in asian economies like china south korea and japan if the eu suddenly began buying lng at a large scale then the price for everyone would increase dramatically the eu could also rely a bit heavier on their own limited domestic sources of gas but this too is highly problematic the largest natural gas field within europe and one of the top 10 largest in the entire world is right here the groningen field in the netherlands for decades this field provided gas that powered much of the netherlands and the rest of the continent and in 2013 provided as much gas was extracted from it that flows through nordstream 1 towards germany today but the field's days are numbered the extraction of gas from here caused wide scale subsidence that is the sinking of ground beneath it this phenomenon was further accompanied by significant earthquakes in the region of the northern netherlands that damaged many houses and caused significant local unrest therefore it was decided by the dutch government nearly a decade ago to steadily phase the gas field out between 2014 and 2022 when production was supposed to halt entirely but now faced with a threat of russia's invasion of ukraine and the dire need to get the continent off of russia's gas supply the netherlands has decided to continue extraction in the field until as late as 2028 with unknown seismic consequences around groningen and the northern netherlands for the future and there are precious few other alternatives for the european union to make in theory new gas pipelines could be constructed into the continent from other sources like the gas fields around israel and cyprus in a proposed project called eastmed or from the gas fields of nigeria that would loop around the african continent towards spain but just like building out the lng infrastructure these projects will cost billions of dollars and take years to develop and in the end they'll each only substitute a fraction of the gas that russia is capable of pumping into the continent meanwhile and quite unlike europe the united states is tremendously geologically well endowed with enormous quantities of domestic oil and gas resources across some of the world's largest fields in texas alaska north dakota and northern pennsylvania thus a full 65 of america's oil and gas supply is produced domestically within the country and america has tremendously more energy security than europe does as a result and thus substantially more flexibility when it comes to dealing with russia therefore it was a much easier decision when president joe biden decided to ban the imports of russian oil and gas into america since russian fuels were only providing less than two percent of the total u.s supply in the first place america can easily replace the difference by banning russian imports whereas europe simply cannot of course the russians do realize that by this point their lucrative days of selling fossil fuels to the west are rapidly coming to an end and in anticipation have been massively pivoting their supplies and business towards asia where many major economies like china india and pakistan have still so far declined to join in on any serious sanctions against russia right now europe remains russia's largest customer of gas by far since they import around 200 billion cubic meters from them per year by comparison right now china only purchases around 38 billion cubic meters a year from russia which is primarily provided by the power of siberia pipeline here in the russian far east however in light of recent events this will likely change very quickly china has yet to become connected to the massive gas fields of northern siberia that the russians use to dump gas into europe from and under an agreement that is closer than ever now to fruition a second pipeline called power of siberia 2 may be finally constructed from these very same fields directly to china's hungry industrial core around beijing that'll double russia's gas exports to china unlike the west china will likely continue without passing any serious financial sanctions on the russians and quite to the contrary will even provide the russian government with investments into new pipeline infrastructure that flows towards beijing like power of siberia too because they want and need russia's vast energy resources and now that business in europe is drying up china senses an opportunity to make a good deal while russia sees the opportunity to simply shift business elsewhere as a result while the war in ukraine is ripping apart all of the bonds between europe and russia it also seems to be pushing russia and china closer together from a financial and energy perspective over time russia may end up pivoting the entirety of its energy resources towards the emerging markets and economies of asia and from china's perspective whatever happens in ukraine might provide invaluable insights into how a potential future chinese invasion of taiwan might go at the same time as all of this has been happening another fascinating way that the world is changing before our eyes over this war can be seen in the air since the beginning of the war's outbreak ukrainian airspace has obviously been completely sealed off from the rest of the world and international flights have all been avoiding it but then just a few days following the invasion and as part of their overall sanctions package the european union blocked all russian airlines from flying over their airspace followed up by similar declarations from norway iceland the uk canada and the united states in retaliation to these blockages russia also decided to ban the airlines of 36 countries from using their airspace including all eu british canadian american and japanese airlines as a result western airlines have largely stopped flying to russia while russian airlines have largely stopped flying to the west so while a physical iron curtain has yet to actually descend back across europe on the ground the iron curtain of the air is already very much a new reality again live flight radar maps are right now showing the airspaces of russia and europe as being completely separated with a massive empty nomad zone in between them where nobody is flying over at all covering the entirety of ukraine belarus moldova and western russia all the locations nearby to the war respecting the dangerous boundaries of war and the political airspace blockades russian airlines are sticking to their own flight corridors while european airlines are sticking to theirs as well across the new iron curtain of the sky as the largest country in the world russia's geographic position on the map now represents a colossal barrier to the free flow of western airlines around the world and especially represents a huge geographic challenge to fly around for western flights between europe and east asia for example just a few weeks ago prior to the war air france was operating a route between paris charles de gaulle and tokyo narita that took them through a substantial amount of russian airspace and now after the ban on using russian airspace they've had to start flying this new route to the south that adds 2 hours and 30 minutes more onto the total flight time and there are dozens and dozens of examples just like this that have been forced to change over the past few weeks here's the old flight route on lufthansa from frankfurt to beijing and the new one here's the old route on thin air from helsinki to bangkok and the new one and probably the worst of all this route pre-war the japan airlines operated between tokyo and london they used to travel west across russian siberia and now instead is traveling east over alaska the arctic circle and greenland before finally arriving in london which adds an extra three hours of total flight time to the journey this geopolitical impact on the aviation industry over the past few weeks is not new and it's pretty much an exact mirror of the old phase of the cold war back when the soviet union denied their entire vast airspace to western airlines just as russia is doing now during those times in the older cold war airplanes were far less fuel efficient than they are today and so flights traveling between japan and western europe over the arctic circle had to stop somewhere to refuel and that primary refueling stop became anchorage alaska i already made an entire video covering the geostrategic importance of anchorage's location and that video has never been more relevant than it is now when the cold war abruptly took a pause in the early 1990s and russian airspace was finally opened up to the west anchorage's importance as a layover and refueling hub for flights between europe and east asia nearly evaporated but suddenly now after more than three decades in the past few weeks with a resumption of russia's airspace closure to the west anchorage might just be making a huge comeback and the geostrategic location of anchorage in alaska is now even more important than ever as many more international flights will likely begin making their long-awaited comeback flying above america's last frontier but interestingly many airlines operating the same services have been made to fly extremely different routes because of all the different bands since many asian airlines can still fly across russia they can now do what european western and japanese airlines cannot while the lufthansa flight from frankfurt to beijing now has to add hours of time flying to the south in order to avoid russia air china doesn't have to and they're still flying straight through russia in a similar vein the air france flight between paris and seoul must now fly the much longer and costlier route to the south while korean air can still just fly straight through russia thus western airlines are facing a serious economic disadvantage on all of these routes between europe and east asia when compared to their asian counterparts who are immune to the russian airspace ban and who knows how that's going to play out over time at the same time russian airlines themselves are being affected as well by their own newly made geographic barriers the primary russian carrier aeroflot has cancelled all flights to europe until further notice and with the airspaces of basically all of europe and north america now blocked off to them russian flights elsewhere have been seriously complicated this aeroflot flight from moscow to cancun mexico for example has had to change to a completely new route that carefully avoids european icelandic greenlandic canadian and u.s airspace in order to reach its destination but significantly more challenging from moscow's geographic perspective is this the russian exclave of kaliningrad wedged in between poland and lithuania completely surrounded by eu states and eu airspace the airspace around kaliningrad is now completely blocked off to russian airlines before the ban russian flights between the exclave and the russian mainland would simply fly in nearly straight lines between their destinations but now they have to all concentrate around st petersburg and thread a very narrow needle of open air space that's allowed to them through the baltic sea in order to reach kaliningrad and none of this is to even mention the unprecedented and enormous sanctions that western countries are pouring onto russia which will have devastating financial impacts on every russian citizen for years or even decades to come further i haven't even mentioned the dozens upon dozens of western companies that have announced their pull-outs from the russian market like most symbolically of all mcdonald's who was among one of the very first western companies allowed to open a store in moscow back in 1990 when it was still a part of the soviet union in the 30 years since then mcdonald's in russia have built and developed an incredibly close relationship with around 850 locations across the country that provide around 10 of mcdonald's entire worldwide revenue but then in a matter of days putin's invasion of ukraine completely wiped out what it took the company more than three decades to build as mcdonald's announced that the company would be closing all of their locations throughout the country and the same story is true of dozens of other companies from ikea to adidas to netflix to visa to sony and so many others the list is seriously enormous and in response to all of these pull outs the russian government has threatened to nationalize the assets of all of them still remaining in russia essentially turning the page back to the command economy style of the soviet union of especially critical importance however are the maritime shipping companies maersk and msc who've joined in pulling their shipping and logistics services from the ports of russia and this will only exacerbate perhaps one of the most major ways that this war is changing the world the supply of food you see during normal times ukraine is the world's fifth largest exporter of wheat and during 2020 they exported more than 18 million tons of it to countries across the world but most importantly to hungry countries across the middle east and north africa 60 of lebanon's wheat supply just prior to the war was being shipped in from ukraine and since their most major grain silos were all blown up back in 2020 during the beirut port explosion they only have one month worth of wheat reserves still remaining as of the writing of this video and they're in an extremely dire situation meanwhile egypt with a population of more than 100 million people to feed and with scarce agricultural land of their own is the world's largest importer of wheat and an overwhelming 85 of their wheat imports come from just two places ukraine and russia who are currently at war understandably with the russian army currently occupying large chunks of ukraine including most of the country's ports and ukrainian farmers fighting on the front lines the harvesting and shipping season in the country will be a difficult one this year but it won't be much easier for russia either with enormous international sanctions shipping companies leaving ports and an increasingly unpopular war that is consuming vast quantities of resources and money russia who is usually by far the world's largest exporter of wheat may struggle to ship out supplies to countries who need it as well together russia and ukraine account for around a third of the entire world's wheat and barley exports and as a result of the war and the sanctions hampering that third of the global supply wheat and barley prices across the world have been skyrocketing and countries that rely heavily on wheat coming in from the bread basket of europe are going to struggle to make ends meet war-ravaged syria has already announced that it'll have to cut spending and ration bread and then there's yemen already torn apart by an ongoing and brutal civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and already facing a starvation situation yemen is the world's 12th largest importer of wheat and nearly 40 percent of the country's wheat imports usually come from russia and ukraine what are they going to do if 40 of their wheat supply gets wiped out this year when they're already facing the prospects of a famine as it is the consequences of ukraine and russia's wheat being blocked off from the global market will be profound and likely hugely unexpected the last time that global wheat prices surged this high was more than a decade ago back in 2010 and the steeply increased prices on such a vital commodity for much of the middle east and north africa led to public unrest that potentially partially contributed to the arab spring revolutions at the end of that year that saw titanic political shifts across tunisia libya egypt yemen and syria there's really just no telling how vastly the crisis in ukraine today could affect things like this going forward in the near future but something that is clear now is that wars in the 21st century almost always have vast global consequences putin's invasion of ukraine has changed russia ukraine and the world forever in more ways than i could ever convey in a 30-minute video on youtube but by analyzing how putin and how russia have behaved and fared before during times of war and crisis we can likely figure out how this present conflict will ultimately go the invasion of ukraine is only the latest of several wars initiated by putin's regime and as the ferocity and intensity of russian attacks on the country continue ramping up in scale the scenes that we're all seeing in the news every day are beginning to reflect more and more the very first war that putin led russia through more than two decades ago in chechnya today chechnya is a republic within russia and its leader ramzan kadyrov is a close ally of putins who has deployed his own chechen forces alongside of the russians in ukraine but three decades ago this was hardly the case as the soviet union disintegrated chechen separatists declared their independence from russia and the russian government fought a series of brutal wars to keep them under their control the first war against chechnya lasted for two years and despite having overwhelming military superiority the russians largely failed to win because of poor morale amongst their troops and near universal opposition amongst the russian public at home two issues that are similarly crippling the russian war effort in ukraine today after thousands of lives that were lost the russians signed a peace treaty and chechnya was a de facto independent state but then just a couple of years later in 1999 after the rise to power in the kremlin of an at the time unknown vladimir putin the war resumed once again under his new command chechnya was devastated and the capital grozny was besieged and so thoroughly destroyed then in 2003 the united nations called it the most destroyed city on earth punin began his political career as the leader of russia by violently subjugating chechnya back beneath the control of the kremlin and as a result it is one of the most important conflicts to know about in understanding the current war in ukraine but unfortunately if i made a video about all of that on youtube the violent nature of the war would mean that it would become demonetized and age restricted and as a result there's simply just no way that you would ever see it here so instead i created yet another full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the same length as this video that covers the entire course of russia's two wars against chechnya throughout the 1990s from beginning to end and uploaded it directly to nebula which as you've probably heard by now is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with 11 other additional full-length videos with more than three hours of additional content that you can go and watch right now including this 25 minute long video that i made last month about the 2008 russian invasion of georgia or this 26 minute long video i made even earlier covering the entire course of the conflict between russia and ukraine before the invasion took place last month there are plenty of other episodes too that cover subjects like the battle of aleppo the wars of saddam hussein the u.s iran conflict and much much more of course the reason why all of these videos are only available on nebula is because they just wouldn't ever work on youtube and would never be viewed here because of the way that this site works on the other hand nebula is a different platform without an algorithm and without any ads it's just a platform about great and unique content made by great and independent educational creators with plenty of other unique exclusive bonus projects from other creators you probably already know like wendover productions half as interesting tier zoo real engineering tom scott and so many others the best way to get access to nebula and all of this incredible content is definitely through the amazing curiosity stream and nebula bundle deal and with its current sales price it's less than 15 a year to get full access to both sites and curiosity stream has some phenomenal stuff that you're definitely going to enjoy as well like afghanistan 1979 an hour-long documentary focusing on the entire soviet invasion of afghanistan from beginning to end if you want to see a documentary explaining in depth the historical trend of russian leadership making poor foreign policy invasion decisions complete with incredible interviews from key historical eyewitnesses like mikhail gorbachev and the wife of iran's final shah then this is the documentary for you to go and watch right now i really can't recommend it enough and i genuinely don't know about a better deal that exists anywhere in streaming you get two streaming sites both with content you'll actually watch and all for less than 15 a year at the current sales price but what's more signing up will actually help countless independent educational creators beyond just real life lore so please make sure to do so by clicking this button that's here on screen right now which will take you directly to curiositystream.com real life lore to sign up or by following the link that's down below in the description and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 5,378,583

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, ukraine, russia, putin, invasion

Id: ZLyUeKa2jzY

Length: 34min 49sec (2089 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Reshe]

Except for... gasp Ukraine. Specifically in... gasp Donbas and Crimea (and the Carpatheans but mostly the former).

[u/IneffableQuale]

I'd rather wear a jumper and burn candles than pay the Russians.

[u/trytobanmelol]

Heat pumps wave of the future

[u/dat94egu]

Well too be frank there have been years and decades to switch but oil and gas has been too cheap and it have been too easy to ignore the global warming signs.

So in some sense it's good that some part finally happens. Very bad it had to be to the cost of a war in Ukrina for it to happen.

[u/DCer0]

Schröder did all he could to close as many nuclear power plants in europe (not only in Germany, he made the requirements EU wide, e.g. Ignalina). It was efforts in many European countries by bought (agent) politicians and quasi political parties to rally against development in shale gas, and renewables. Now it's crystal clear, when looking retrospectively

[u/MercatorLondon]

We need to de-carbonise our economies anyway. This Russian war will just give us a chance to speed things up. There will be 2-3 years of hardship but we have means and tools to do it. After this war there is a climate emergency waiting in a queue. And the tools to fight it are exactly the same. Russia is just a physical version of our ugly dependence on oil and gas. The earlier we can get out of that addiction the better. Better for society and also for the climate.

For now - put your old jumpers and t-shirts on instead of sending them to Ukraine. Send them money instead. Then we can turn our gas heating down by 2 degrees and wear a jumper. Or cuddle under the blanket in front of the TV. Even just cutting down 10% of gas / electricity usage will make a huge difference.For next years - we can insulate our homes and start cycling more. It seems like pointless excercise but it is not.

[u/TheBiologist01]

TL:DR of the video: Even if we had the infrastructure in place (which we don't), there isn't enough production, or supply routes to replace Russian gas right now.

In order to replace Russian gas with gas from other sources, we'd need to build new pipelines toward Nigeria, the Mediterranean, and the middle east.

If we wanted to import LNG instead, we'd need to build dozens of new facilities to re-gasify LNG, and we'd also need to build hundreds of LNG tankers because the supply chain is already at maximum capacity.

[u/psych0ticmonk]

What do you mean no replacement? What about green) renewable? Hell even nuclear is as a temporary solution would be better.

[u/Kronaan]

If a decision will be made to invest in infrastructure, just Canada alone can replace whatever Russia was selling to EU.