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OddObserver posted:In lighter news: as part of decommunization, a village in Transcarpathia had its Lenin Street renamed Lennon Street. I look forward to seeing statues of Groucho in city squares.
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Mar 2, 2016 16:25
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Vasukhani posted:It would be a "signal" that Russia needs to invade asap The Russian strategy has been to start frozen conflicts with any of its neighbors that its worried about joining NATO, because that precludes membership. If that's off the table I don't see them backing down.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:31
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1380868228394651653 The point isn't to conceal who murdered them, the point is to kill foreign critics in an unglamorous way. Of those who've accepted that they may die, which is already a huge barrier to speaking up, how many will accept that that means a slow death from radiation or poison instead of a bullet at night?
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Apr 10, 2021 17:04
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GABA ghoul posted:I wonder how long Russia can keep going on like this. The post 2014 economic crash was almost as bad as the 98' crash and now the economy is just stagnating while corruption grows and they fall back further and further and become increasingly isolated. They gotta hit rock bottom at some point. This poo poo can't go on forever. We've seen from other rogue states like the DPRK and Venezuela that, yes, you can just go on forever after scuttling your economy and cutting yourself off from the global financial system.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:49
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One of the most important things to understand in a soft power competition is that sometimes you take a minor loss instead of doubling down.
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Jul 22, 2021 13:14
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Vasukhani posted:
Modern problems require modern solutions.
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Aug 19, 2021 04:33
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I'm conflicted, because on the one hand I'm down to defend a plucky nation state against an invading empire that used to rule it, but I'm also aware I'm not the one signed up for the dying.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:48
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There was definitely a huge missed opportunity for the West to properly integrate Russia into the global community, but it's not entirely their fault. For better or worse other Eastern European countries, with the notable exception of Belarus, have come a long way towards doing so and largely posted concrete gains in quality of life and freedom of expression. As others have pointed out Russia has a large, well educated population with immense natural resources and it's a huge failure of governance and politics that has held it back. It's a conscious decision made by the Russian elite to rob their country, stoke nationalism, and try to do an imperialism on their neighbors. The only reason they're able to get away with it as the world's 11th largest economy (sandwiched between South Korea and Brazil) is because its western competitors are not playing the same game.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:47
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The proper view is of a Russia in decline, making very risky military moves to defend a shrinking sphere of influence.
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Dec 29, 2021 03:48
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The assumption is that Tokayev can actually hold onto power, which remains iffy.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:25
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It's probably not going to shift a meaningful number of troops from Ukraine, if that's the only element of the equation. But it definitely freaks out the Kremlin to have a near color revolution in their own backyard: at this point it seems no government of their little bloc is stable. The question is whether that makes them more cautious vis a vis Ukraine and sanctions or makes them desperate enough to take risks.
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Jan 6, 2022 18:53
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Sinteres posted:Russia's obviously a bigger deal than the regional power Obama dismissively described them as, but I don't think they're anywhere near reclaiming superpower status themselves, let alone toppling the US from that position. Russia is a regional power, it just so happens that Ukraine is in their region. Within living memory, the area they're currently preparing to invade wasn't just part of their sphere, it was considered some of their core territory. They punch above their weight because of a disproportionate investment in military and cyber systems and vast natural gas reserves, but their economy is on partner with South Korea.
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Jan 15, 2022 05:16
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Yeah I feel like the decision was made months ago, and we're just seeing theatre and preparation.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:59
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It's just NATO is running into the limits of power projection. If Russia were threatening Ireland, also a non-NATO member, they'd be able to shut that down instantly.
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Jan 27, 2022 03:57
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Military action is also incredibly risky: Georgia was wildly successful, but it was Russia vs a ridiculously smaller and poorer nation. 2014 was a panic move following the sudden collapse of Moscow's most powerful client state. The Russian government's support is very brittle, it can't absorb a military slog even on par with Chechnya. It can probably overrun the Ukrainian military quickly, but that probably is very important. And if it does, then it needs to extract value either by taking or holding territory or through negotiating for political concessions (probably both), both of which are going to be further challenges.
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Jan 27, 2022 19:26
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It feels like western leaders are taking turns: "who has Putin duty this week? Boris? Boris!"
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Jan 29, 2022 03:48
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All this discussion of Crimean popular support for Russian annexation ignores the facts that Russia annexed the peninsula regardless of any popular support. Whether the native population opposed or supported annexation in 2014 was not a factor into Russia's decision to invade and annex the territory of one of its closest neighbors.
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Feb 8, 2022 16:33
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Any annexation of Crimea at this point is very fruit of the poisonous tree, if we're applying legal principles. Russia has had nearly a decade to decimate the actual native population, disappear dissent, and colonize it. There's big issues with the modern international system of sovereignty but one thing it tries to prevent is states biting off chunks of their neighbors like this.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:02
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Alchenar posted:I suspect this is a bit of mischievous briefing. The point behind Lavrov's question was obviously 'do you accept we have an absolute right to move troops to Rostov and Voronezh?' to which the answers are either "yes, but if you want that answer then you have to accept that Ukraine can host whatever forces it wants in its territory" or "no, under the security framework that you are asking for you do not have carte blance to mobilise an invasion force without other nations having a right to take an interest". You're reading too much into it. He's trolling her by taking advantage of the fact she doesn't know the difference between Donetsk/Luhansk and Rostov/Voronezh. It gives him a neat sound bite for domestic consumption as a perk.
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Feb 10, 2022 16:55
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Giggle Goose posted:Meanwhile Jeremy "Kompromat" Corbyn is trying to blame NATO for everything. He's even got Starmer out there writing OP eds about his dumb rear end. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/10/labour-nato-british-left-ukraine-keir-starmer I think you should stop reading UK media. Whenever it touches on a domestic subject the quality drops down to Pravda levels.
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Feb 10, 2022 22:37
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The UK media is going to clamp down on anything that diverges from mainstream political thought, like Corbyn. His position on this issue, like many others, is reasonable if you're not a shrieking ghoul only fed with the blood of children and the poor like most British journalists are.
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Feb 11, 2022 18:46
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A big part of the issue is this will be a military conflict on a scale not seen since, what, the Iran-Iraq war? It's hard to grapple with the idea that someone would willingly choose that, looking back at the last century of military history.
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Feb 11, 2022 21:55
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