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Vincent Van Goatse posted:No, some of us had no illusions about Russia being too smart, we just hoped they wouldn't actually do the thing. Yes. I recall discussing this topic with an old friend who also follows international news (we're Belgians, if it matters), and while we agreed that Putin's stated goal of "not letting Ukraine become a NATO member" had already been achieved by the frozen Donbas conflicts and the Crimean annexation, neither of us were sure that Russia's leadership was still rational enough to not actually go one step beyond and simply invade. On a more personal note: my best friend's husband is Russian, and he has Russian, Ukrainian as well as Tatar ancestry, with friends and family members living both in Russia and Ukraine. The war hasn't only torn his family apart, he's getting messages from friends who are desperate to escape Russia but can't, some friends of friends who are committing suicide because they see everything as hopeless, and some others who are afraid Russia could descend into a civil war. The reasoning behind the latter is as follows: "If it becomes just as big a crime to speak the truth as to bomb a police office, I'm going to bomb a police office." Take this with a grain of salt, this is just hearsay from my friend's Russian husband. Still, the poor guy is going through a massive identity crisis right now. He feels ashamed to go out in public and fears he may never see his mother again, who lives in Kazan. He's still a Russian citizen and of fighting age (he's ~35) so obviously as long as Putin is in power, he won't set another foot on Russian soil.
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Apr 4, 2022 23:59
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bad_fmr posted:After Nicholas abdication the last vestiges of the imperial authority remained in the Finnish senate. After the October revolution the senate declared independence from Bolshevic Russia and the independence was recognized by Lenin. The senate authority was later transferred to the Finnish parliament, which is still in power today. Therefore, Finland is the last inheritor of the Roman empire, or Fourth Rome. Let me help you here: 
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Apr 12, 2022 14:36
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Sorry in advance for a pretty long post with responses to things a few pages back, but I can't read SA at work and I have to catch up in the evening. That being said, thanks everyone - this has been a hugely enlightening and informing thread for me so far.KitConstantine posted:This article goes into why Russia isn't likely to be having any populist uprisings any time soon. I included the reply as it's screenshots hit the major points, but the article isn't long and is worth the time It's a bit of a melodramatic article, but between 2019 and early 2022, I worked for a company with a very large subsidiary in Russia and I was my teams "Russia contact" because I once studied the language in evening school and have a few Russian acquaintances. Most of the employees in our subsidiary fell/fall into the category of the "IKEA Russians" and I still follow some of them on Instagram. Some of them expressed solidarity with the Belarusian protests back in 2020/1, but most of them said nothing at all and continue to post regular IG stuff you'd expect, like visits to pretty places, hip eateries, walking their dogs and so on. Djarum posted:No, not one bit. China has been trying to modernize for 30 years now and the issue is that they just can't manufacture basic things to the level that they require. For full clarification: I was the ghostwriter for a Belgian businessman who is also a sinologist and wrote a book about business in and with China. But from what I know, I would say it'd be dead wrong to underestimate China to work itself up from an almost comically inept situation. They have a number of genuine and astounding successes under their belt, such as lifting millions of people out of poverty, creating an HS rail network almost out of thin air as well as a manned space programme. All three of these things require a dose of luck, sure, but they also require competence. It's true that China's modern military capabilities are untested and could well be a paper tiger, and its industries and governments still make easily avoidable blunders (e.g. their less than effective coronavirus vaccine), but underestimating their potential to rapidly come out of such situation is not a good idea. Things may change for the worse as Xi's regime further consolidates and becomes more isolationist and nationalist (the signs for which are obvious), but modern-day Chinese people are on the whole still optimistic, better-educated and more well-off than their parents and grandparents (which the CCP derives its legitimacy from), which puts them in a completely different ballpark from their Russian peers. E.g. well-educated Russians are leaving and have been leaving Russia in droves. Foreign-educated Chinese citizens no longer see the West as a destination, but a waypoint. SmokingFrog0641 posted:Also, just to clarify on LePen, leading into the first election I saw articles about her saying she had changed her positions on NATO but afterwards, I feel like I saw articles about how she still wished to remove France from certain command positions within NATO, which I think may have been done in a limited scale before by France. She seems to have tried to shed some of the old policies of her father and distance some from her closeness to Putin; however, she still seems to be a threat to a more unified Europe. To what degree, I’m not as sure at the moment. It's all a sham. While Marine Le Pen is probably no genuine neo-nazi the way her father was, her very recent about-face is just for show. She's still a fascist who sympathises with Putin. mobby_6kl posted:^^^  The Netherlands are to the west of Germany. The term 'Southern Netherlands' used to be used for Belgium, though.-- Also, for the more expert-level people in the thread, I have a few questions that have been bugging me: - Why is the Ukrainian Air Force still operational? Isn't it trivially easy to bomb airfields and airports so that planes no longer have take-off and landing strips? Isn't that something you would do as the first thing of order in a country-wide invasion? - Why doesn't the Russian army bomb supply convoys coming into Ukraine? Sure, it's bad PR if a line of Polish, Slovak or Austrian trucks gets bombed and demolished, but what are these countries going to do - declare war on Russia?
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Apr 20, 2022 23:06
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KillHour posted:Trump did poo poo like that all the time and it just made him look unhinged That's not what made him look unhinged though. Never mind that he was a bitch-made pissbaby through and through himself and went in catastrophic meltdowns when anyone would portray him as such. No one enjoys being ridiculed but it's pure kryptonite to (would be) dictators.
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Apr 21, 2022 21:05
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The 7000 missing ground troops are ominous. Some are surely dead, but I wouldn't want to be a civilian in an area where the survivors are "foraging." Let's not forget that there may also be some Russian soldiers who have deserted their posts or have outright defected and have ended up with the "Free Russia" brigade. Their numbers aren't known, obviously, but they exist. Their combat patches look very interesting also.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:40
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CommieGIR posted:Russia may be trying to use troops and men there to open a Western front towards Odessa. Its a laughably desperate and stupid move. I keep reading they only have like 1,500 troops there - then again I also read they may number into as much as 7,000. Still, not enough by far to be militarily significant for the war. They'll maybe terrorize some villages before they're completely quashed. I can't imagine Transnistrian military capability to even be anywhere near Belarusian levels, and that says enough.
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Apr 28, 2022 17:54
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nutri_void posted:A true Slav can replace anything with some potatoes There is a Latvian potato joke angle in there somewhere (and yes I know Latvians aren't Slavs): "My wife she want breast implant. Is too expensive." "True. Who can afford two potato? Is crazy." Thanks for sharing this, this is beautiful. It reminds me of the works of the Belgian painter Constant Permeke (check out his work if you're unfamiliar with it), although there is definitely a strong influence of Gustav Klimt in there.
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May 1, 2022 23:00
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Dapper_Swindler posted:sorry, should have been more specific, i mean the OG Crimean war in 1850s, basically the UK public realized most off the officers were upper class inbred twist who bought commissions and promotions and it led to mend under them getting slaughtered. the charge of the light brigade is a big example of it. where a bunch of inbred twits hosed around and found out. alot of it was more to do with bad communication techniques and the commandinger general being basicaly mush brained and made head commander because he was the secretary of wellington at waterloo. They didn't completely learn their lesson though, WW1 was a shitshow with much of the same problems. For all armies involved.
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May 7, 2022 16:58
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cinci zoo sniper posted:No, there’s a ton of decorum involved for memorial events such as the Victory Day. Food tents and stalls are arranged for festive activities, such as city birthday. Procedural events, like opening of a new museum, in this regard are completely random. Maybe not the most appropriate question, but just to be sure: you're from the Baltic countries, am I right? Lithuania? I just want to picture these cultural habits correctly on my socio-geographic mind map.
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May 8, 2022 22:31
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Despera posted:Theres the 2% GDP defense spending "requirement". Also nobody is invading sweden but with article 5 sweden might be forced into unpopular foreign war Yeah, good thing about the scare quotes, because many countries have not been hitting that target for decades but none of them was ever kicked out for it.
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May 11, 2022 21:57
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Vox Nihili posted:The question is what sort of economic impact is actually being experienced in Russia, by the people of Russia, and what that means for the government of Russia. Everything I've read talks about future impacts that the sanctions are supposed to cause. I haven't moved any goalposts, you just got outraged when I didn't give you any sources. From a few pages back, but there are plenty of dictatorial regimes that don't give a poo poo about keeping their populations "on board and placated", never mind their living conditions. In fact, most authoritarian states I can think of have populations that are generally poor to desperately poor. E.g. China is a bit of an exception in that the CCP explicitly stakes its legitimacy on providing better living conditions to its population. But keeping populations compliant through sheer terror, fear-mongering and misery is much more common, for instance in most dictatorships and kleptocracies in Africa, North Korea, Myanmar or Belarus.
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May 17, 2022 23:08
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KitConstantine posted:https://twitter.com/Cen4infoRes/status/1527686355366592512?s=20&t=ZagUvvekJZ6S_09lf10hCQ The Eurovision thing is darkly hilarious and one step away from literally saying "homonazi", as the ESC doubles up as basically Europe's largest queer event and has done so for decades.
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May 20, 2022 19:52
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OddObserver posted:(Though Petersburg would totally vote to join Sweden and Kaliningrad Germany). From a few pages back, but are there any sources to back up this statement? Either of these things would honestly surprise me.
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Jun 5, 2022 15:11
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I'm still a little baffled as to why the Romanian president was in Ukraine as well. Not that Romania isn't important, but at least they ought to have also invited the Polish president, no?Ynglaur posted:https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1537443202315059203 off topic by who do so many older American men have these unnaturally, shiny white teeth? it's a very American thing
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Jun 16, 2022 19:02
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FishBulbia posted:In fact, there was a whole slew of IR scholars writing about the impossibility of a large European war from 1880-1914, economies were too inter-connected and all parties knew that war did not create wealth , the first Liberal Peace, it will prove just as much of an illusion as the second unless we mandate humanism globally. I guess it would be "the first Liberal Peace" if you don't count the continuous wars in the Balkans up to 1913.
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Jun 18, 2022 21:13
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Nenonen posted:Can't have all those hot Ukrainian women come and steal our husbands and boyfriends!! I've never quite understood this cliché - is it some kind of orientalist projection? The law of averages would dictate that attractiveness would be spread more or less evenly among any culture or ethnic group with sufficient numbers.
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Jul 7, 2022 17:45
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Good post but it's 'casus belli' (literally 'the case for/of war'), 'causa belli' would be 'the origin of war'.
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Jul 16, 2022 19:26
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PederP posted:The outcome of the war and the social perceptions towards veterans matters a great deal here. The efforts of the state, also beyond the financial aspects, are a reflection of this. If Russia is victorious and this war ushers in a new world order and expands the borders of the federation - these veterans will be viewed far differently than if the war ends in a humiliating collapse. The veterans will have much the same trauma and proportion of awakened monsters in either case, but how they integrate back into society differ greatly in these two scenarios. Humans can to some degree repress the monstrous aspect, remold memories and lie to themselves and their closest family. And much as this applies to Russia, it applies to Ukraine. A great victory and the veterans will be viewed as heroes. A bitter defeat and they may find the return to normalcy without proper recognition of their sacrifices. All of this + the effects on civilians as well, especially children. A decade or so ago my home city had a very small but very visible population of young Chechens, who had probably been born either between the First and Second Chechen war on in the middle of the Second one. Seeing the haunted, rage-filled eyes of a Chechen teenage boy is something that sticks with you forever.
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Jul 24, 2022 17:16
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Somaen posted:Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said that there was a command from the top to invade and the military did not do it Whether this is true or not, I believe that Perun video (or it could be another one) also had numbers that showed many Belarussians believed their army would not fight or might even defect en masse if it was ordered to invade Ukraine, and only about 1/5th of the population would support the the decision to join the war as an active combatant. Those numbers, if real, tell you everything you need to know.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:20
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Nenonen posted:Naked imperialist desire for expansionism is the point in of itself, but it works in several ways. Once the territory is Russian Federation, you have to ask what are non-Russian citizens doing there? Either they take the Russian passport or they will not get any food or medical services. But if they do so they become traitors to Ukraine, so they can be told that if Kyiv takes the areas back then they will either be shot or will lose their homes. Integrating even some of them to the Federation makes it easier to control the civilians. Not that I don't disagree with all of this, but there are downsides to this, too - even if we assume the annexations happen and remain 'succesful', very real resources need to be poured into these regions to make them defensible and turn them into places people want to live. The piss-poor PR we've seen from even official Russian sources can't sand-paper over the fact that local support is small and mainly consists of the dregs of society's barrel. One could argue that many Russians are indoctrinated enough to accept limited state resources to flow to these areas in the name of solidarity, and that disgruntlement among Russian citizens doesn't matter to Putin, but those are non-starters, because Putin has been careful to a) not draw many recruits from cosmopolitan, mostly 'middle class' Russian areas and b) it's been widely accepted mobilization isn't a viable option because Putin is afraid of the possible backlash. One could also point to Crimea as an example of succesful annexation, but Crimea is actually a desirable place to live (or vacation at, at least), had a pre-existing population that didn't hate Russia's guts and has a draw beyond geopol considerations. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas do not.
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Aug 10, 2022 00:12
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Saladman posted:The EU won't care about gas supply/energy prices after winter 2022, so that's not a very good bet, considering Europe is already planning to cut gas by 15-20% this winter, which will have a bunch of mild effects that few normal people will care about (iirc in Switzerland, I think they announced here that heating gas will be turned off once the outside temperature hits 20°?), but will hit a few large businesses fairly hard. To be honest the effects announced on normal consumers are so low that even though it affects me I don't even remember because it's so trivial. Some countries (UK and ... maybe just the UK?) are loving consumers with home heating gas prices, but here I don't even think they're supposed to rise by more than like 10% or something, which is noticeable but not exactly a huge problem. This may be true for you, but is absolutely not true for me. My annual gas bill has more than doubled and the prices of regular consumer products are through the roof. The war in Ukraine isn't the only cause of this (and not even the main cause, no matter what politicians who fail / don't want to stop energy companies' ghoulish greed, say), but it has a very real effect on my life.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:13
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mobby_6kl posted:Most people probably get it, it's just pretty clear that the European / EU powers don't seem to be taking this as a serious threat. Only the bordering Eastern countries are freaking out but mostly don't have the MIC scale to move the needle. That isn't close to true. Many W-European countries are experiencing record inflation and energy prices are through the roof, yet no one with any serious power is talking about dropping aid to Ukraine. Yes, we have whiny op-eds every now and then about how we should stop support and have Ukraine sue for peace, but they never gain much traction. I can't speak for other countries, but the reason my own (Belgium) isn't providing much military hardware is because it doesn't have much hardware, and a lot of it is in a sorry state. For the first time in decades, though, the government is actually investing in new material and resources. In addition (and sadly, while non-white asylum seekers are still treated like subhuman trash), Ukrainian refugees are provided with gov't-built temporary housing. When painting Europe as whiny or ineffective, Americans always conveniently overlook most countries are a) doing what they can, within their limits and b) are dealing with a refugee crisis that dwarfs the previous waves of desperate immigration from the Middle East and Africa.
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Aug 20, 2022 13:25
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Griefor posted:Is this offensive not the most massive news since Russia's retreat from Kyiv? Dutch news today spent half the time on the death of the queen of England and the other half on measures dealing with the energy crisis, domestic and EU wide. Not even a cursory mention of this biggest offensive of Ukraine against Russia since the start of the war. It was mentioned tonight on the evening news in Belgium (Flanders region) though, along with the other topics you listed. It was a brief item but it did discuss the quick advances right up to the borders of Kupyansk. Annoyingly, even 7 months into the conflict, Flemish television still uses the Russian names for most towns and cities in Ukraine. It's a minor pet peeve but compounded by the fact that for Flemings, Ukrainian is actually easier to pronounce than Russian!
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Sep 9, 2022 21:01
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PederP posted:Most of European Europe, including Russia, has actually been relatively on the better side of history during the last many decades in that regard. Way far off from perfect, but generations have experienced a life without actual ethnic cleansing. The Balkans would disagree, I think. To frame identity / language in another way: thinking or believing Russian-speaking Ukrainians are basically ethnically Russians is about as dumb as saying the Irish or Scots are basically English because they speak English.
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Sep 16, 2022 17:20
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mobby_6kl posted:Weird, I though fascists loved losers You jest, but that's the thing: as soon as a certain strongman (strongperson? idk) no longer looks "strong", a large part of at least their soft support evaporates. Strongmen can lie, bluster, cheat or even whine, but if they begin looking unequivocally weak, their support begins melting rapidly. The only exception to this is perhaps Trump, but then again he never admitted he lost in the first place ("one weird trick! democracies hate it!"). ZombieLenin posted:He is an American Linguists, his model of language being akin to Einstein’s General Relativity. He is also a social theorist, anarcho-syndicalist, activist, opponent of the post-modern turn in social/political theory, and probably the paradigmatic American intellectual (such that we respect intellectuals at all in my country). I'm not up to date on the state of linguistics in an academic sense since I obtained my Master's, but even circa 2005 there was a solidifying majority opinion that Chomsky's linguistic theories were a lot like Plato's philosophy: an incredible intellectual achievement from a brilliant mind, but likely also completely wrong.
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Sep 28, 2022 19:08
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Pookah posted:I am a thousand miles away from this conflict, so I have no intimate knowledge, beyond the fact that a whole group of refugees from Ukraine are now living in my town, and they are very welcome and supported. A Ukrainian lady posted in a Facebook group that she was living in a local hotel, but her son had a disability that required regular massage and the hotel bed wasn't suitable, so did anyone had a massage table. By the end of the day, she had a table and a solid offer of massage supplies to help her son Reading this, I was reminded of my surprise after February 24 at the enormous public outcry in the rest of Europe at the Russian invasion. One of the reasons the outcry was so overwhelming is that to most Europeans, Ukraine is Europe. I'm quite sure that would not have been the case if Russia had invaded in 2002. I recall reading a book written by a Dutch journalist ~2000 who traveled around the "edges" of Europe, which included a trip to Odessa, where locals were ambivalent whether their city was really part of Europe or not. But 2004 saw the eastward expansions of the EU and NATO as well as the Orange Revolution as seminal events that a) began the process of convincing Western Europeans that Eastern Europe was well and truly 'Europe' and b) pushed Ukraine closer to that psychogeographical place due to internal events. This isn't an inevitable process, by the way: for Georgia, for instance, it's still very much a one-way street - Georgia itself wants to be more 'European' but Europeans themselves mostly don't regard Georgia as 'truly' European.
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Oct 10, 2022 23:03
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uXs posted:I'm also Dutch-speaking, but from Belgium, and "de Oekraïne" doesn't sound that wrong to me. Phlegmish posted:I am also Flemish, and I would never say "de Oekraïne". I'd definitely raise my eyebrows if I heard that. Wondering if it's a regional thing, steamed hams style Agricola Frigidus posted:So am I, but it does. Don't think there's any country with an article without an explicit koninkrijk/kingdom or republiek/republic in the name (and even then you'd need to be dragging it out to "the islamic republic of Iran" or "the Russian kleptocracy"). I think we've all had different experiences. I had a very boomer geography teacher (late '90s) who did consistently say "de Oekraïne". Note that one of the reasons him saying that stuck with me is because even by the late '90s, it felt archaic and a relic from the Cold War.
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Oct 11, 2022 18:14
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