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I have to say it's impressive, Zelensky's star has really risen. Even some of my Trump-loving relatives were talking about how impressed they are by him. If he survives this, I think we should nominate him for next UN Secretary General or something.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:21
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Zephro posted:This is interesting given Turkey's public statements about how they don't want to choose a side between Ukraine and Russia because both are allies etc From what I can tell, if it's true, these were already bought before everything kicked off not given as lend-lease.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:27
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Small White Dragon posted:I have to say it's impressive, Zelensky's star has really risen. Even some of my Trump-loving relatives were talking about how impressed they are by him. For all his leadership he's probably a corrupt motherfucker in charge of a corrupt government.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:27
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gay picnic defence posted:For all his leadership he's probably a corrupt motherfucker in charge of a corrupt government. Sources please.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:28
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:From what I can tell, if it's true, these were already bought before everything kicked off not given as lend-lease. They ordered 48 and had gotten 12 by the time the war started. These would be some of the 36 that Turkey owes them. Given how well the first twelve have worked, I'm sure that Turkey is very satisfied with the press they are getting.
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Mar 2, 2022 10:29
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Charlz Guybon posted:They ordered 48 and had gotten 12 by the time the war started. These would be some of the 36 that Turkey owes them. Given how well the first twelve have worked, I'm sure that Turkey is very satisfied with the press they are getting. Haven't people been saying the drones were being produced domestially inside Ukraine?
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Mar 2, 2022 10:31
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I once got into an almost Abbot and Costello routine with my Russian history professor (a Hungarian) trying to pronounce Pskov. I could not say it right no matter which way I tried pronouncing it. That's mostly because Hungarian sounds as it's written. Meaning if you know how to pronounce the letters of the alphabet, you can pronounce basically every word. Issue is, our alphabet has 44 letters (sounds). So when you tell a Hungarian a foreign word, they will desperately search for the closest equivalents out of our 44 letters and put them there. My mother used to be a Russian teacher but for the life of her can not pronounce Ы, she just uses ü instead. (But hey this is why Dracula speaks so cool, thanks Mr Lugosi.) Anyway to add some content to the thread, and not always just the bad stuff. Ukrainian refugee boy lost his cat in Budapest last night but search efforts have been successful and Ljuba has been found. Here is a photo of Ljuba: 
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Mar 2, 2022 10:39
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gay picnic defence posted:For all his leadership he's probably a corrupt motherfucker in charge of a corrupt government. Corruption is almost given in former Soviets but claiming the president himself is corrupt without backing it up is not helpful.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:02
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gay picnic defence posted:For all his leadership he's probably a corrupt motherfucker in charge of a corrupt government. Sounds like he'd be a perfect fit for the UN in that case.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:04
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Anubis posted:Am I reading these tea leaves wrong? What exactly am I missing here? what downward pressure (people selling hryvnia) meaningfully exists at this point? the currency is down like 75% since 2010. their current round of bonds from 2015 coming due are guaranteed to get paid because the west isn't going to let ukraine default. their central bank has foreign currency flooding in and their currency is already in the gutter, so they can keep it propped up if they have to. there's even upside on the chance they join the eu and adopt the euro (lmao). the russian sanctions probably have more risk long term. their central bank getting frozen out of swift is loving nuts, its batshit insane that it happened in like a week. thats something like 400+ billion that just got deleted, and the russian central bank can't even try to fix it because they don't have access to like 70% of the currency market.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:06
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Literal medieval ultimatums. Surrender or we put everyone to the sword. https://twitter.com/chrsaile/status/1498948785631809536 https://twitter.com/chrsaile/status/1498949612815724553
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Mar 2, 2022 11:06
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https://twitter.com/shivam_bangwal/status/1498022827533869058 e; it was supposed to go to gbs spam thread but whatever, it's not like these two threads aren't intertwined in their souls Fewd fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 11:08
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gay picnic defence posted:For all his leadership he's probably a corrupt motherfucker in charge of a corrupt government. 1) is your basis for this just general cynical shitposting or do you have an actual reason 2) his party, for what it us worth, cMe to oower on an anticorruption platform 3) if he were all that corrupt he'd probably have run by now
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Mar 2, 2022 11:10
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Turkey has confirmed that 4 Russian warships have withdrawn their request to sail into the black sea from the Mediterranean after Turkey denied then permission to enter the straits under the montreux convention. Russians clearly don't want to argue the point.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:11
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Fritz the Horse posted:edit: I get the impression some posters feel like D&D moderation is ideologically motivated and is censoring them for being correct to silence their viewpoints. This is not the intention and I don't believe the case. It doesn't matter what position a poster takes on the history of NATO and Russia, if it's rehashing stuff mentioned in the OP you'll be asked to stop. The intention is to prevent threads from revisiting the exact same arguments again and again. This is not interesting, and does not produce good discussion. I'd like to touch on this really briefly because I recall 'D&D threads get bad when they start endlessly circling the same arguments' as a bit of feedback I gave recently: firstly there's no way anyone in a thread this big and fast is keeping track of what's been discussed so I think new people appearing should get a bit of generocity, secondly if you are going to say 'this topic is done unless you have something new to say' then you can't leave people to track through 500 pages to see what the discussion was, you either need to say 'read between p.356 to 375 where everything new was said' or pick a few good posts and highlight them in the OP.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:11
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some sort of fish posted:the russian sanctions probably have more risk long term. their central bank getting frozen out of swift is loving nuts, its batshit insane that it happened in like a week. thats something like 400+ billion that just got deleted, and the russian central bank can't even try to fix it because they don't have access to like 70% of the currency market.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:14
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Sashimi posted:I'm actually a bit surprised Putin's oligarch friends haven't taken a shot at him yet after his actions just deleted a shitload of their wealth. Putin controls the oligarchs not the other way around. There's basically nobody in a position to take a shot.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:17
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drilldo squirt posted:Sources please. I mean, take a look at any independent press in Ukraine, and scroll down to the coverage before the war. Take the Kyiv Independent, which has been cited extensively throughout the war for their coverage. Scroll down from the war coverage and into politics.  If you click through the section and scroll down from that you see the Poroshenko trial, an Oligarch in Zelensky's party buying a TV channel, protestors demanding Zelensky's resignation for concessions to the Kremlin, some sort of corrupt judge appointment thing, a bill of attainder designed to hit an oligarch's assets, an allegation that the State guard fired servicemen for not shooting down journalist drones, the State opening a criminal investigation against a journalist who argued with Zelensky, more illegal judicial appointments, a press conference with handpicked media, more illegal judicial appointments, Zelensky breaking his promise not to use state residences and having a party at one, some sort of corrupt construction contract thing, an article about how the government forced out the anti-corruption prosecutor and didn't fill the seat. This is all news in the last 4 months. It's not like he's the first and it's not like he'll be the last. Russia got Yanukovych in by rigging the elections, then the Orange Revolution turfed him in favour of Yuschenko (who Russia tried to assassinate with dioxin), Yuschenko... promptly governed in a corrupt way, got into an intra-party turf war, fired his government for being corrupt, got emboiled in his own corruption scandals, then appointed Yanukovych as Prime Minister, got into a corrupt pissing match with the court system, tried to dissolve the government and failed. Yanukovych becomes president again, governs incredibly corruptly, gets turfed by Euromaidan, Poroshenko (incredibly corrupt) comes in, governs corruptly, gets turfed in favour of Zelensky, Zelensky pretty much immediately has Poroshenko arrested. It's a poo poo show all the way down. None of it is relevant to this war, or Zelensky's capabilities as a national hero during war. But he wasn't governing effectively before now. Corruption is extremely hard to disentangle and when a system is corrupt it's difficult to get anything done without yourself using corruption. None of this justifies the Russian invasion. It just means we don't need to write fan fics about him.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:18
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Sashimi posted:I'm actually a bit surprised Putin's oligarch friends haven't taken a shot at him yet after his actions just deleted a shitload of their wealth.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:19
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The Russians who made the demand to the mayor above held grenades in their hands as a deadman safety features to keep from getting lynched https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498960233544224770
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Mar 2, 2022 11:24
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Man Plan Canal posted:None of it is relevant to this war, or Zelensky's capabilities as a national hero during war. But he wasn't governing effectively before now. Corruption is extremely hard to disentangle and when a system is corrupt it's difficult to get anything done without yourself using corruption. None of this justifies the Russian invasion. It just means we don't need to write fan fics about him. I think a key point though is that these are all examples of corruption being caught. Ukraine was getting better and it was voting for politicians who had mandates to make things better .
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Mar 2, 2022 11:26
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Zephro posted:The oligarchs of today aren't the oligarchs of the 1990s. They exist and own their business empires at Putin's sufferance. The guys with the money are not going to win a fight against the guy with the army and the secret police. I was thinking about this yesterday and the only way I can see Putin getting ousted from power would be a Military coup/assassination and that possibility seems extremely unlikely!
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Mar 2, 2022 11:27
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I once got into an almost Abbot and Costello routine with my Russian history professor (a Hungarian) trying to pronounce Pskov. I could not say it right no matter which way I tried pronouncing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eadXRjR7Y
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Mar 2, 2022 11:30
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StarBegotten posted:I was thinking about this yesterday and the only way I can see Putin getting ousted from power would be a Military coup/assassination and that possibility seems extremely unlikely! It seems like he takes is personal security extremely seriously, I doubt anyone is allowed in his presence with a gun except a couple of bodyguards.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:33
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The balls on this guy! https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1498948871514435588
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Mar 2, 2022 11:33
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Charlz Guybon posted:The Russians who made the demand to the mayor above held grenades in their hands as a deadman safety features to keep from getting lynched Jokerification of War.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:35
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Alchenar posted:I think a key point though is that these are all examples of corruption being caught. Ukraine was getting better and it was voting for politicians who had mandates to make things better . I'm inclined to agree with the general thrust that things are or were generally improving in Ukraine, but I'm not really sure if this is falsifiable. If we had no stories talking about corruption, it could be evidence there was less corruption or evidence corruption was going unchecked. If we have stories talking about corruption, it could be evidence things are very corrupt or evidence the processes are rooting out corruption. Transparency International (which has the Corruption Perceptions Index, which is still the de facto political science choice for measuring corruption despite a bunch of problems with both the data and the instrument) has Ukraine more or less exactly where it was both in terms of score and rank for basically the last 10 years, which is to say a bad score and a low rank -- do we want to take that as evidence things aren't getting better? I'm not sure, but I would certainly take it as evidence that this improvement isn't externally obvious. In an environment where it's difficult to tell what's going on, I would revert to my prior beliefs which is that it's a country with a very long history of corruption (certainly since Kuchma every administration has had overt and public corruption controversies), and an equally a long history of populism cloaking itself in the rhetoric of anticorruption. But again all of this is basically a tangent to what's going on, which is martial law government in a warzone by a national hero against a foreign aggressor. I genuinely don't think his corruption or lack thereof is relevant to the war. I just don't think it makes sense to write a "What Western Leaders Can Learn From Zelensky" novella.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:37
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Here's another town blocking the roads. Their town has a large nuclear plant: https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1498951257783947267?t=BDaq77UUcPgX2wa7kRcUog&s=19
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Mar 2, 2022 11:38
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New pivot for bad faith posters in D&D: Putin is sending an anti-corruption task force to stamp out bribery in Ukraine. Specialised tools include cluster munitions and mass starvation
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Mar 2, 2022 11:39
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Corruption is a system thing not an individual thing usually. To my knowledge the best case study in ending corruption was Singapore’s crackdown on police corruption in the…80s? Which involved: * Raising police salaries to a competitive level * Amnesty and honourable retirement for corrupt police * Very harsh penalties for corruption in the police force going forwards Attacked the incentives behind the behaviour. Without that, the best intentioned people are going to end up getting caught up in the system or pushed out of it, as apparently happened to that Russian guy who tried to reform the army.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:39
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a podcast for cats posted:Here's another town blocking the roads. Their town has a large nuclear plant: One way or the other the russians are going to lose this. What a pointless loving waste this all is.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:41
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I missed it at the time but Matt Levine has a really thought provoking take on the central bank sanctions and their wider meaning https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-28/russia-s-money-is-gone quote:
There's an interesting quote in there comparing the role of money to that of China's fledgling social credit system - how we've thoroughly naturalised the concept of money, but it isn't necessarily that different.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:42
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Alchenar posted:I'd like to touch on this really briefly because I recall 'D&D threads get bad when they start endlessly circling the same arguments' as a bit of feedback I gave recently: firstly there's no way anyone in a thread this big and fast is keeping track of what's been discussed so I think new people appearing should get a bit of generocity, secondly if you are going to say 'this topic is done unless you have something new to say' then you can't leave people to track through 500 pages to see what the discussion was, you either need to say 'read between p.356 to 375 where everything new was said' or pick a few good posts and highlight them in the OP. This is true, though I think while I would give leeway for people, the post in question seemed to have all the intellectual rigor of a poo poo and run. I think it failed the 'boring' test really badly. Realpolitik but extremely vague is the most tiresome brand of analysis to me.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:42
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Posting about Ukrainian government corruption feels a little like Fox News "he was no angel" stories right now. The relative fiscal honesty of Zelenskiy's government feels like an issue for another day, preferably one where Russians aren't currently shelling Ukrainian civilians.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:45
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Chalks posted:I guess they'd be happy to sell them to Russia too if they could work out how to pay for them The Ukrainian government had 48 on order before this kicked off, this is just Turkey meeting their contractual obligations  E:fb KitConstantine fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 11:47
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KitConstantine posted:Decoder table for the markings on Russian equipment As far as I'm aware this isn't accurate. Z is from Western Military District (Zapadneyy Voyennyy Okrug) and V is Eastern (Vostochnyy Voyennyy Okrug), I'm not sure about the rest but since they got those two wrong I doubt they're correct either.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:47
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NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:Posting about Ukrainian government corruption feels a little like Fox News "he was no angel" stories right now. The relative fiscal honesty of Zelenskiy's government feels like an issue for another day, preferably one where Russians aren't currently shelling Ukrainian civilians. I completely agree, but the line of discussion here was a guy proclaiming that Zelensky should be the next UN Secretary General, and another guy somewhat foolishly taking the bait by responding "ehhhh no", and then getting called out for sources, and then me inexplicably determining it was wise to actually provide sources, and now it's a distracting derail that I don't think anyone involved in the conversation actually wants.
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Mar 2, 2022 11:49
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All Ukrainians that I follow on twitter had relentlessly mocked Zelensky ever since election (comedian, man of Kolomoisky, lib etc) but war is war and unlike Churchill he doesnt have Bengal famine in biography. "He used to be Zelupa but now he is Volodymyr Alexandrovitch"
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Mar 2, 2022 11:51
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Finnish media reporting that, according to Ukrainska Pravda, the russians have brought Viktor Janukovytš to Minsk and intend to proclaim him the president of Ukraine. Didn't he run for the hills in 2014?
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Mar 2, 2022 11:56
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I just saw a post on reddit (which I now cannot find) of a dozen or so Donask soldiers who surrendered. They all were in schools/technical schools. All had the same story- show up for conscription, here's your uniform, off you go. 3 days later they are on the front line. Back in the 80's I played M1 Tank Platoon on the Amiga- it had a guide at the back of the book on the Air-Land 2000 battle plan to defeat the Warsaw Pact. Hit their supply columns, trade space for time when you need to, slow down and then stop the advance. Looks like it probably would have worked. Huh.
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