War Invasion of Ukraine News Megathread - Thread is only for articles and discussion of articles, general discussion thread is still in Happenings.

Super-Chevy454 · Mar 30, 2022

Not directly related to Ukraine but American Thinker posted a interesting article about the ghost of James Monroe and the countries of Latin America stance about Ukraine.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_democrats_new_latino_problem_the_ghost_of_james_monroe.html

March 30, 2022

The Democrats' New 'Latino' Problem: The Ghost of James Monroe
By Robert Oscar Lopez

On social media, some disturbing maps have circulated showing the globe in terms of which nations have sanctioned Russia over her invasion of Ukraine. Bolivian writer Ollie Vargas posted this map, which makes clear that sanctions in Russia are seen as an absolute must in Europe, the English-speaking world, Japan, and South Korea. Everywhere else, President Biden's requests for economic war against Russia have been rejected.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki recently claimed that we have "basically crushed" Russia's economy through sanctions, but is this true? The sanctions can't work in crushing the Russian economy and forcing the ouster of Putin if only a small percentage of the globe is really sanctioning Moscow. Despite how important the United States and her allies are, Russia still has a huge playing field in which to recover trade.

Domestically, the Democrats have prided themselves on being the party of inclusion. They spent half a decade convincing all of us that Trump was racist; Republicans were despised white supremacists; and people of color everywhere would embrace the liberal diversity gestures of Walt Disney, the Clinton Global Initiative, Twitter, Bloomberg, MSNBC, and Harvard University. It seems black, brown, yellow, and otherwise non-white people have told Biden's progressive party to take a hike.
Perhaps they see in Biden everything that the Democrats condemned Trump for; they just happen to think Trump does a better job at being Trump than Biden does. Trump never tried to bully them into starving their citizens of Russian wheat, petrochemicals, fertilizer, barley, rye, gas, and oil. Apparently this little detail matters a lot more than rumors that Trump once talked about s-hole countries.

It is hard to interpret events as anything other than a massive blow to American credibility abroad. Around the world, people sympathize with innocent civilians harmed in Ukraine. But there's a difference in how people moralize and assign blame. Europeans, Anglophone nations, Japan, and South Korea take America's claims and promises seriously mostly because their experience with American credibility has been rather helpful.
On the other hand, now would be a good time for all those Critical Race theorists in New York and California to update their antiquated assumptions. People outside the tidy U.S. sphere of influence don't see the Ukraine invasion as a simple bad/good dichotomy. Many recognize that the 2014 coup d'état that put the current Ukrainian regime in power as a typical Western intelligence operation, something they can recognize from their own histories. Therefore, they aren't swayed simply by the idea that Zelensky is naturally the good guy by virtue of being the one holding power before the war started. A lot of them look at Zelensky and see a puppet, an agent of Western infiltration and subversion, not very different from the countless phonies that the CIA has installed in the four corners of the globe.

Most depressing is the fact that a lot of the world just doesn't believe us. They don't have a lot of reason to believe us because the Biden administration got caught in quite a few recent lies. Our reason for taking such keen interest in a dispute between Russia and Ukraine looks suspicious, given how many hotspots exist on the globe, which the United States all but ignores.
Americans think the rest of the world sees a nation leading the charge for freedom, democracy, prosperity, and human kindness. The rest of the world sees some of that glowing idealism, mixed with a great deal of cynicism and hypocrisy. It used to be Republicans who didn't want to concede that people abroad had some reason for distrusting the U.S. Now the Democrats are incapable of considering whether their fascination with green energy, LGBT rights, feminism, race, and Big Tech persuades people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America or just creeps a lot of people out.

Who are the countries that said no?
That Africa and the Middle East would shrug off Biden's calls is not that surprising, given that the United States has never treated issues in Africa as a high priority.
After the War on Terror, we did not expect Middle Eastern countries to jump on Biden's bandwagon, especially since Biden voted in favor of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq.
The high-profile refusals of China and India are disconcerting, to say the least, given their enormous populations (together nearly eight times the population of the U.S.) and the prospects that their continued commerce with Russia could create an alternate world economy from which the United States will have effectively exiled herself.
But perhaps the most underreported, and indeed most dangerous defections from U.S. dominance have taken place in Latin America. Mexico's president hails from the Party of the Democratic Revolution and has been celebrated for being the first truly indigenous leader of the tenth most populous country in the world (close to 130 million people). You would think a man with such lefty credentials would be positively thrilled to work with a Democrat after four years of Trump...but you would be wrong.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced soon after the imposition of sanctions that Mexico would not partake in them: "We are not going to take any sort of economic reprisal because we want to have good relations with all the governments in the world."
Let us just say it is less than comforting that we have a 1,900-mile open border with a country that just announced that it wants good relations with a Russian government the U.S. has sworn publicly to crush.

The other powerhouse south of the border is Brazil, where president Bolsonaro is not playing ball with Joe Biden, either. Besides mocking Zelensky's status as a comedian, Bolsonaro said Brazil needs Russian partnership to support its agribusiness and feed its population of over 200 million people. As Reuters reported, "[h]e added that he was against any sanctions that could bring negative repercussions for Brazil, citing Russian fertilizers which are crucial for the country's giant agribusiness sector."
Countries with smaller populations are not holding back, either. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador loves to needle the United States government on Twitter now that Biden is in office. In response to calls for a united front against Russia, Bukele wrote: "The real war is not in Ukraine, it's in Canada, Australia, France, Brussels, England, Germany, Italy. They just want you to look the other way." Nowadays he seems emboldened to use Bitcoin as an alternate currency despite the United States Congress issuing statements strongly opposed to such a move. In response to criticisms over currency, Bukele asked on Twitter whether El Salvador deserves "sovereignty" the same way Ukraine does.
In nearby Nicaragua, still led by the now older superstar of Reagan-era geopolitics, Daniel Ortega, that rejection of sanctions is the least of Biden's worries. Ortega has openly sided with Russia and supports her latest moves, saying: "If Ukraine gets into NATO they will be saying to Russia let's go to war, and that explains why Russia is acting like this. Russia is simply defending itself." Recently, Russia's deputy prime minister, Yuri Borisov, visited Venezuela and Cuba, both nations that have ironically survived U.S. sanctions against them, though not without pain.

We could go from Guatemala to Argentina, with each nation having its own flavor and specific angle on the issue. But the continent is not going to sanction Russia.
That is not good for the United States for a lot of reasons, but for one reason, especially: Joe Biden publicly and aggressively asked all the countries of the world to sanction Russia and make her a pariah state. By saying no to such an important request, our neighbors have made Biden's America a pariah state instead.
The Monroe Doctrine Comes Back as a Zombie
If it were just Brazil and Mexico, we could blame the right-wing president in the former and/or the left-wing president in the latter. But everyone seems to hate Biden's America and what it represents in Latin America. The left will have to grapple with this for years to come.
Democrats and Republicans alike would love to shrug off Latin America's response and say, "Well, who needs them anyway?" I am not so sure that's a viable position to take. Our border with Mexico is gaping. If Biden's recent slip-up ("Putin cannot remain in power") spoke unintentional truth and our secret goal is regime change in Russia, we are looking at a war that will last a long time, in which Russia will defend her home turf against a foreign aggressor.

In the defender role, Russia will probably count on support from China and India. Our military and intelligence operations are going to be stretched thin. If the war goes on, we will probably need a draft to staff our military efforts. We will simply not be able to defend our homeland from Russian and Chinese assets that find their way into the many nations of Latin America. Put simply, we cannot place ourselves at war with Russia, China, and India, while conducting a sprawling intelligence and covert operation in all of Latin America to keep all those countries out of alliance with Russia and China. And unlike the Middle East, the Latin American countries live right next to us.
Despite the posturing of the two parties, both Republicans and Democrats have inherited the Monroe Doctrine as their default framework. On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe gave an address regarding the Latin American republics that had recently gained independence from Spain. The 1820s was a time of excitement and rapid change in the Americas, especially with the colorful figure of Simón Bolívar in the middle of it all.

Speaking to the spirit of the age, James Monroe balanced conflicting sentiments. On the one hand, many Americans were delighted that Latin American revolutionaries like Bolívar emulated Washington, Jefferson, and Adams — and indeed patterned their movement after the spirit of '76. On the other hand, the United States was already almost fifty years old and needed to contend with certain political realities. The Americans had recently struck a deal with Spain and acquired Florida. It was in the interests of the United States not to make an enemy of Madrid by allowing the independent republics to sign treaties with Spain's rival, England; the Spaniards, ruled by the same dynasty as the French in the eighteenth century, had sided with the Americans against the British in the Revolutionary War.
Ideology was not so dear that we would pay any price to assist other democracies if it meant endangering our own. It was one thing to have a far-flung Spanish empire led by weak Bourbon kings to the south of us. Quite another thing was to have a quarrelsome clan of republics afire with idealism and of questionable stability. American leaders feared that the volatility of independent Latin America, combined with the meddlesome influence of England, France, Spain, and possibly Russia (then advancing her interests in the Pacific Rim), would make the continent a breeding ground for groups subversive of U.S. interests.

bread n circuses · Mar 30, 2022

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/ukraine-is-ready-for-painful-concessions/

This article quotes Zelensky saying that it would be impossible to drive Russia out of Ukraine at this point. Looks like territorial concessions beyond just the Donbas Republics/Crimea are on the table now. Russia probably wants to grab as much territory as it can in the south, Nikolaev and Odessa specifically.

It’ll probably need to destroy the Ukrainian army in the east to get concessions that large though.

RodgerDodger · Mar 30, 2022

The Unbecoming said:
That's a lot of broomsticks.

Don't forget the minivans

No. 7 cat · Mar 30, 2022

Andrei Soldatov talking on whether the silovoki or security class or similar elements might revolt, and is largely doubtful. Wonders why the National Guard are sent despite their purpose to repress internal dissent, and then they keep getting ambushed. He also thinks Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu might hang around, despite slurred speech, as there are no replacements, particularly none of the popular generals of the past, and he understands Putin. He emphasises that Putin needs a victory out of this, and will have to keep going.

source

Some analysis, one thinks Ukraine will be a sink for Putin, positive on Western intelligence efforts.

Navalny aide, Leonid Volkov says that Putin has shortened his time in power.

дядя Боря · Mar 30, 2022

Ted Gazynski said:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/ukraine-is-ready-for-painful-concessions/

This article quotes Zelensky saying that it would be impossible to drive Russia out of Ukraine at this point. Looks like territorial concessions beyond just the Donbas Republics/Crimea are on the table now. Russia probably wants to grab as much territory as it can in the south, Nikolaev and Odessa specifically.

It’ll probably need to destroy the Ukrainian army in the east to get concessions that large though.

this immediately set off bullshit alarm:

He even indicated a readiness to change language policies that had disadvantaged Russian speakers.

The highest concentrations of Russian language speakers are the ones that got de-nazified, i.e. large cities and Eastern parts of Ukraine. In some parts of Lughansk a Russian billboard proclaimed: "you may speak Russian freely now" ... which elicited a lot of hate, because from all places in Ukraine, the places that got it the worst were the ones who spoke Russian more often and didn't feel all that oppressed.

and just a friendly reminder that Ukrainian parliament has an authority to actually do that, some changes (like to constitution) require two sessions. This is not Soviet Russia and Zelelensky party has formidable challengers.

Suburban Bastard · Mar 30, 2022

Oats12345 said:
There's also parts of Russia that are uninhabitable. So despite it being a big country you got both alot of uninhabitable places and alot of poor towns. The only thing it has going for it is the major cities and that's it. And even the major cities are more for the rich in Russia.

Everything I've heard about rural russia makes me believe it's effectively lawless.

SBG · Mar 30, 2022

I've been seeing a lot of cope around the Ruble appearing to be bouncing back. Which doesn't make a ton of sense to me when it doesn't exactly magic up supply chains or businesses blocked by sanctions.

Plus you have the issue that people could just be more optimistic about the Russian economy due to the prospect of peace talks, so if Russia fucks it up is the expectation that the Russian economy would just be wonderful again?

Regardless, it's strange how many imagine the point of sanctions is purely to affect average Russians, when part of what the sanctions do is prevent tech going over to Russia that could be used to help construct weapons.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-boris-johnson-business-global-trade-1250954224ec20034f166f1d27ce4576

https://archive.ph/KJV8z

Russia’s ruble rebound raises questions of sanctions’ impact
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ruble is no longer rubble.

The Russian ruble by Wednesday had bounced back from the fall it took after the U.S. and European allies moved to bury the Russian economy under thousands of new sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has resorted to extreme financial measures to blunt the West’s penalties and inflate his currency.

While the West has imposed unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russian economy, Russia’s Central Bank has jacked up interest rates to 20% and the Kremlin has imposed strict capital controls on those wishing to exchange their rubles for dollars or euros.

It’s a monetary defense Putin may not be able to sustain as long-term sanctions weigh down the Russian economy. But the ruble’s recovery could be a sign that the sanctions in their current form are not working as powerfully as Ukraine’s allies counted on when it comes to pressuring Putin to pull his troops from Ukraine. It also could be a sign that Russia’s efforts to artificially prop up its currency are working by leveraging its oil and gas sector.

The ruble was trading at roughly 85 to the U.S. dollar, roughly where it was before Russia started its invasion a month ago. The ruble had fallen as low as roughly 150 to the dollar on March 7, when news emerged that the Biden administration would ban U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas.
Speaking to Norway’s parliament on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president urged Western allies to inflict still greater financial pain on Russia.

“The only means of urging Russia to look for peace are sanctions,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message from his besieged country. He added: “The stronger the sanctions packages are going to be, the faster we’ll bring back peace.”

Increasingly, European nations’ purchases of Russian oil and natural gas are coming under scrutiny as a loophole and lifeline for the Russian economy.

“For Russia, everything is about their energy revenues. It’s half their federal budget. It’s the thing that props up Putin’s regime and the war,” said Tania Babina, an economist at Columbia University who was born in Ukraine.

Babina is currently working with a group of 200 Ukrainian economists to more accurately document how effective the West’s sanctions are in stymying Putin’s war-making capabilities.

The ruble has also risen amid reports that the Kremlin has been more open to cease-fire talks with Ukraine. U.S. and Western officials have expressed skepticism about Russia’s announcement that it would dial back operations.

President Joe Biden promoted the success of the sanctions — some of the toughest ever imposed on a nation — while he was in Poland last week. “The ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” Biden said.

Sanctions on Russian financial institutions and companies, on trade and on Putin’s power brokers were crushing the country’s economic growth and prompting hundreds of international companies to stop doing business there, Biden noted.

Russian efforts to counter those sanctions by propping up the ruble can only go so far.

Russia’s Central Bank cannot keep raising interest rates because doing so will eventually choke off credit to businesses and borrowers. At some point, individuals and businesses will develop ways to go around Russia’s capital controls by moving money in smaller amounts. As the penalties depress the Russian economy, economists say that will eventually weigh down the ruble. Without these efforts, Russia’s currency would almost certainly be weaker.

But Russia’s oil and gas exports have continued to Europe as well as to China and India. Those exports have acted as an economic floor for the Russian economy, which is dominated by the energy sector. In the European Union, a dependence on Russian gas for electricity and heating has made it significantly more difficult to turn off the spigot, which the Biden administration did when it banned the relatively small amount of petroleum that the U.S. imports from Russia.

“The U.S. has already banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas, and the United Kingdom will phase them out by the end of this year. However, these decisions will not have a meaningful impact unless and until the EU follows suit,” wrote Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, in a report released Wednesday.

Hilgenstock and Ribakova estimate that if the EU, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. That’s compared with projections for up to a 15% contraction, as sanctions stand now.

Knowing this, Putin has greatly leveraged Europe’s dependence on its energy exports to its advantage. Putin has called for Russia’s Central Bank to force foreign gas importers to purchase rubles and use them to pay state-owned gas supplier Gazprom. It’s unclear whether Putin can make good on his threat.

The White House and economists have argued that the impact of sanctions takes time, weeks or months for full effect as industries shut down due to a lack of materials or capital or both. But the administration’s critics say the ruble’s recovery shows the White House needs to do more.

“The ruble’s rebound would seem to indicate that U.S. sanctions haven’t effectively crippled Russia’s economy, which is the price Putin should have to pay for his war,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.

“To give Ukraine a fighting chance, the U.S. must sever Putin’s revenue stream by cutting off Russian oil and gas sales globally,” Toomey said in an email to The Associated Press.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers are considering ways to expand the sanctions Biden recently imposed on members of the Russian parliament “and probably widen that to other political players.” Brown, D-Ohio, said lawmakers also are weighing more penalties against banks.

Western leaders, under Biden’s encouragement, embraced sanctions as their toughest weapon to try to compel Russia to reverse its invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO and not protected under that bloc’s mutual defense policy.

Some of the allies now acknowledge their governments may need to redouble financial punishment against Russia.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that the Group of Seven major industrial nations should “intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of (Putin’s) troops is out of Ukraine.”

But that’s a tougher ask for other European countries such as Germany, which depend on Russia for vital natural gas and oil. The EU overall gets 10% of its oil from Russia and more than one-third of its natural gas.

Many of those countries have pledged to wean themselves off that dependence — but not immediately.

If European nations did move more quickly off Russian petroleum, wrote analyst Charles Lichfield of the Atlantic Council, “a more comprehensive embargo from Europe would threaten Russia’s current account surplus — suddenly making it more difficult to pay public-sector salaries and wage war.”

He noted that “such an outcome may be beyond the reach of Western consensus.”

No. 7 cat · Mar 30, 2022

The Ruble probably has a fairly limited market now, allowing Central Bank to more easily employ gold sales (Russia produces 200 tons of it) and other measures to prop it up, like using foreign currency grabbed from citizens. Zerohedge is always going to take the most pro-Russian angle on this anyhow.

dictator drip

Super-Chevy454 · Mar 30, 2022

RodgerDodger said:
Don't forget the minivans

As well as SUVs where Karens and others soccer moms moved on.

LORD IMPERATOR · Mar 30, 2022

MembersSchoolPizza said:
Have you ever played either the STALKER games or the Metro games?

Either one is a fairly accurate depiction of Russia. And I don't mean a post-apocalyptic Russia, I mean Russia right now. Alternately, Russia right now is basically a post apocalyptic wasteland, whichever you prefer to see it as. I watch a few Youtube channels of people exploring Russia away from the major cities. There are whole cities that are basically run down abandoned shells. Maybe a few people living in one or two soviet apartment blocks that have some working utilities, who have nowhere to go, no prospects, no hope. War monuments listing the dozens of people who died from that city, maybe a single store, a bus stop, maybe a post office if they're lucky. Old grannies and grandpas living on their own in ramshackle old houses that look like they probably have every type of mold imaginable, miles from any train stop or bus stop.

It's very hard for most westerners to really comprehend how bad it is once you get away from the few borderline modern, prosperous areas of Russia.

Oats12345 said:
There's also parts of Russia that are uninhabitable. So despite it being a big country you got both alot of uninhabitable places and alot of poor towns. The only thing it has going for it is the major cities and that's it. And even the major cities are more for the rich in Russia.

Basically, once you leave the grandeur of the more famous cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, you're left with block after block of run-down apartment buildings, ruins from the old Communist days, and little else. Very few stores, schools, or places of any human activity. They're basically ghettoes, and people live like that in a country that fancies itself as the rival of the United States. Basically, they give even Detroit a run for its money. There are third-world nations out there whose people live better than most Russians and have more things to do.

Suburban Bastard said:
Everything I've heard about rural russia makes me believe it's effectively lawless.

The great Russian wilderness is effectively that. They have a great big pile of nothing in most of their eastern territories, and they've had difficulty controlling that part of their country for ages, which explains why the Tsarist government sold Alaska for a bargain to the Americans.

Harlay de Champvallon said:
View attachment 3127293

dictator drip

It reminds me of the old saying, that if you want to find out who's a Communist Party Member in the USSR, you look for the guy with the good shoes. Poor, young Russians dying so that a select few can live like kings seem to be par for the course for Russia, be it from the days of the Boyars, to the days of the Communist Party bosses and Russian oligarchs. And all they'll have to show for it is a ruined city (Mariupol) and more dead Russians.

But hey, those are less mouths to feed for Putin and his gang, so I suppose they get something out of it.

Suburban Bastard · Mar 30, 2022

LORD IMPERATOR said:
The great Russian wilderness is effectively that. They have a great big pile of nothing in most of their eastern territories, and they've had difficulty controlling that part of their country for ages, which explains why the Tsarist government sold Alaska for a bargain to the Americans.

All I know about those cities past the urals is they're depressing as shit and many of them were built using slave labor. Some of which was so horrid, the slaves literally ate the dead to survive.

LORD IMPERATOR · Mar 30, 2022

Suburban Bastard said:
All I know about those cities past the urals is they're depressing as shit and many of them were built using slave labor. Some of which was so horrid, the slaves literally ate the dead to survive.

That's par for the course in Russia. It seems that little has changed. It seems that ever since the Rus city-states fell to the Mongols, it's just been one big fat game of "who's going to be the slavemaster now?"

No. 7 cat · Mar 30, 2022

LORD IMPERATOR said:
Basically, once you leave the grandeur of the more famous cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, you're left with block after block of run-down apartment buildings, ruins from the old Communist days, and little else. Very few stores, schools, or places of any human activity. They're basically ghettoes, and people live like that in a country that fancies itself as the rival of the United States. Basically, they give even Detroit a run for its money. There are third-world nations out there whose people live better than most Russians and have more things to do.

The great Russian wilderness is effectively that. They have a great big pile of nothing in most of their eastern territories, and they've had difficulty controlling that part of their country for ages, which explains why the Tsarist government sold Alaska for a bargain to the Americans.

It reminds me of the old saying, that if you want to find out who's a Communist Party Member in the USSR, you look for the guy with the good shoes. Poor, young Russians dying so that a select few can live like kings seem to be par for the course for Russia, be it from the days of the Boyars, to the days of the Communist Party bosses and Russian oligarchs. And all they'll have to show for it is a ruined city (Mariupol) and more dead Russians.

But hey, those are less mouths to feed for Putin and his gang, so I suppose they get something out of it.

Kamil Galeev, the Russia loathing think tank Tatar of Twitter said young men in Russia are regarded as lower value resource. They tend not to live long, so if they die, the family gets a sizeable government payout, and so are content.

1905 Russo-Japanese War replay? No, but History With Hilbert goes over the sources of possible Russ--Japanese tensions like the Kuril isles and sanctions.

source

Kamil Galeev suggests the Russian leadership is not too cut up about middle class destroying sanctions. Given that emigration routes are closed people have no choice but to toil for their food. It consolidates Putin's grip on power (like most sanctions really, whether Saddam who only fell via invasion or Revolutionary Iran).

LORD IMPERATOR · Mar 30, 2022

Harlay de Champvallon said:
Kamil Galeev, the Russia loathing think tank Tatar of Twitter said young men in Russia are regarded as lower value resource. They tend not to live long, so if they die, the family gets a sizeable government payout, and so are content.

1905 Russo-Japanese War replay? No, but History With Hilbert goes over the sources of possible Russ--Japanese tensions like the Kuril isles and sanctions.

View attachment 3127479

I'm of the opinion that the contested land should belong to the Japanese. They need the space. Some Japanese today live in capsules. Meanwhile, Russia has all the land in the world, and has done little to develop it economically.

No. 7 cat · Mar 30, 2022

LORD IMPERATOR said:
I'm of the opinion that the contested land should belong to the Japanese. They need the space. Some Japanese today live in capsules. Meanwhile, Russia has all the land in the world, and has done little to develop it economically.

Russia could even lease some of it for money, but they won't. Every inch, no matter how empty has to be kept.

дядя Боря · Mar 30, 2022

Suburban Bastard said:
All I know about those cities past the urals is they're depressing as shit and many of them were built using slave labor. Some of which was so horrid, the slaves literally ate the dead to survive.

when Gulag prisoners planned to run, they brought with them "canned food" - prisoners fattened up that were expected to be food during a long trip to civilization.

Kadyrov's boots are actually ladies Prada boots, only the best

and ruble ... private person can't purchase those, but in the action marketplace, you can buy 100$ bills for their collectors value for 25'000 rubles.

in USSR a dollar was 0.6 Ruble ... but you could not buy it because posession of foreign currency by private parties was illegal (unless you were going on a trip, which is never for mere mortal)

Banks will still buy foreign currency from you.

LORD IMPERATOR · Mar 30, 2022

Harlay de Champvallon said:
Russia could even lease some of it for money, but they won't. Every inch, no matter how empty has to be kept.

Even though it doesn't serve the national interest or help the local population of Russia in any way. It's just empty pride, now. They don't need the land, they have more than enough land and natural resources.

Maybe if, instead of burning $20 billion a day on a fruitless war where their outdated army gets the crap pounded out of them by hohols wielding NATO guns and Turkish drones, they could have spent more of that money on economic development, so that their citizens can get better jobs, get more money, and pay more taxes into the state, while the smarter and more industrious Russians are incentivized to stay and develop the country instead of fleeing to America to start businesses like Google.

ArthuriusMartyrius · Mar 30, 2022

Ted Gazynski said:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/ukraine-is-ready-for-painful-concessions/

This article quotes Zelensky saying that it would be impossible to drive Russia out of Ukraine at this point. Looks like territorial concessions beyond just the Donbas Republics/Crimea are on the table now. Russia probably wants to grab as much territory as it can in the south, Nikolaev and Odessa specifically.

It’ll probably need to destroy the Ukrainian army in the east to get concessions that large though.

Can someone find a source on Zelensky actually saying any of that regarding concessions or an official declaration from the Ukrainian government about them? I can't find shit even from the most recent round of cease-fire talks except Ukraine saying that they are open to negotiations on Crimea and obtaining individual security guarantees from NATO countries to protect Ukraine (basically Article 5 while not actually being Article 5). It's especially suspect because you have news quoting Zelensky saying that Ukraine agrees to neutrality when he never actually said that, he said that NATO is reluctant to accept Ukraine. I certainly haven't read anything regarding concessions on Donbas.

Rezza · Mar 30, 2022

@SBG reply bug, but you kind of answered yourself there. The overtly optimistic view of peace talks made people buying Rubles again, but that's highly optimistic since the promise of peace talk will be nuked once Russia and Ukraine launched offensives and counter-offensives, which they definitely will soon

Also the article you quoted answered your question as well, Moscow is artificially propping up the currency with some extreme measures. And the impending announcement about Putin's threat to cut off gas and oil if the West won't pay them with Rubles affected that as well. But as the article said, it's only temporary and very short-term. We probably going to see Rubles fell again

Astro Galactic Megalul · Mar 30, 2022

Ted Gazynski said:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/ukraine-is-ready-for-painful-concessions/

This article quotes Zelensky saying that it would be impossible to drive Russia out of Ukraine at this point. Looks like territorial concessions beyond just the Donbas Republics/Crimea are on the table now. Russia probably wants to grab as much territory as it can in the south, Nikolaev and Odessa specifically.

It’ll probably need to destroy the Ukrainian army in the east to get concessions that large though.

What are you smoking? Russian army never even made it to Odessa, and at this point they won't.

War Invasion of Ukraine News Megathread - Thread is only for articles and discussion of articles, general discussion thread is still in Happenings.

Super-Chevy454

The Democrats' New 'Latino' Problem: The Ghost of James Monroe

bread n circuses

RodgerDodger

No. 7 cat

protecc flower pot tabby cat

дядя Боря

Suburban Bastard

Professional China Hater

SBG

Russia’s ruble rebound raises questions of sanctions’ impact

No. 7 cat

protecc flower pot tabby cat

Super-Chevy454

LORD IMPERATOR

Suburban Bastard

Professional China Hater

LORD IMPERATOR

No. 7 cat

protecc flower pot tabby cat

LORD IMPERATOR

No. 7 cat

protecc flower pot tabby cat

дядя Боря

LORD IMPERATOR

ArthuriusMartyrius

Rezza

Astro Galactic Megalul

Bigot Sandwich Connoisseur

War Invasion of Ukraine News Megathread - Thread is only for articles and discussion of articles, general discussion thread is still in Happenings.

The Democrats' New 'Latino' Problem: The Ghost of James Monroe​

protecc flower pot tabby cat

Professional China Hater

Russia’s ruble rebound raises questions of sanctions’ impact​

protecc flower pot tabby cat

Professional China Hater

protecc flower pot tabby cat

protecc flower pot tabby cat

Bigot Sandwich Connoisseur

The Democrats' New 'Latino' Problem: The Ghost of James Monroe

Russia’s ruble rebound raises questions of sanctions’ impact