Kiev Is Burning

[sunday]

16 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

He's succeeding.  Ukraine is quite different from when he took power.

Indeed it is!

On the economic war front:

Quote

The EU should forget about sanctions – they’re doing more harm than good

Far from compelling Russia to exit Ukraine, they are causing great suffering worldwide as food and energy prices soar

Six million households in Britain face the possibility of morning and evening blackouts this winter to maintain sanctions against Russia, as do consumers across Europe. This is despite Europe pouring about $1bn a day into Russia to pay for the gas and oil it continues to consume. This seems crazy. Proposals by the EU to halt the payments are understandably being opposed by countries close to Russia and heavily dependent on its fossil fuels; Germany buys 12% of its oil and 35% of its gas from Russia, figures that are much higher in Hungary.

The EU in Brussels seems not to know what to do. A diplomatic compromise has been raised – exempting sanctions on imports via pipeline, which would spare Hungary and Germany – but no practical plan has been agreed. The real reason is that arguments over the sanctions weapon have been reduced to macho rhetoric. They are supposed to induce a foreign regime to change some unacceptable policy. This rarely if ever happens, and in Russia’s case it has blatantly failed. Apologists now claim that sanctions are merely a deterrent, intended to work in the medium to long term. As war in Ukraine shifts into a different gear, that term could be long indeed.

(...)

Money quote

Quote

Sanctions may have harmed Russia’s credit-worthiness, but the 70% surge in world gas prices alone has supercharged its balance of payments. Its current account trade surplus, according to its central bank, is now over three times the pre-invasion level. At the same time, sanctions are clearly hurting countries in western and central Europe who are imposing them.

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by sunday

[P Lakowski]

Ukraine is being invaded as we speak , they have more important priorities.

[glenn239]

7 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

Transparency International ranks Ukraine 122 out of 180 countries in their 2021 corruption index, Russia 136. I guess you could call Ukraine the most corrupt country in Europe if you argue that Russia is not (only) a European country.

I see that data set is used for many different sites, which is strange.  Here,

Global Corruption Index | Global Corruption & ESG Indexes (risk-indexes.com)

 

Ukraine is shown to be only slightly more corrupt than Russia.

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Stuart is correct that Russia is not a democracy as we know it, but Russia now is certainly more democratic than it's ever been in the past, so overall it's moving in the right direction compared to Russia in the past.  For Ukraine, the standard is that they are "improving".  But, between Ukraine and Russia, the idea that Ukraine is the more democratic of the two?  Seems a bit nebulous to prove one way or the other.

No, I said it wasn't a Democracy. It's a Democracy in the same spirit the GDR was, except more corrupt and less competent.

Russia was more Democratic under Yeltsin. They actually had more ability to complain and demonstrate under Gorbachev.

I read the Chernyaev diary for 1982 the other day, and there was a joke in it about someone being detained by the police for handing out leaflets with nothing on them. It was a joke then, it's the reality now.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-invasion-protests-police-arrest-activists-holding-blank-signs-paper-1687603

 

[sunday]

22 minutes ago, P Lakowski said:

Zelensky has murdered nobody.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

Edited May 31, 2022 by sunday

[glenn239]

2 minutes ago, P Lakowski said:

Ukraine is being invaded as we speak , they have more important priorities.

Choices are important and the world is not always fair.   Zelensky had a clear choice between conquering the breakaway regions and becoming the greatest leader in Ukrainian history, or by moving into the Minsk Accords and securing the safety of his country at the price of being a caretaker president. 

He made the expected choice, and as I mentioned, the world is not always fair.

[BansheeOne]

9 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

I see that data set is used for many different sites, which is strange.  Here,

Global Corruption Index | Global Corruption & ESG Indexes (risk-indexes.com)

 

Ukraine is shown to be only slightly more corrupt than Russia.

Yeah, also has Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo as more corrupt than either, which I'm frankly surprised TI doesn't. I think the latter places more weight on reports by individuals, which would explain the difference in emphasis.

[glenn239]

11 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Russia was more Democratic under Yeltsin. They actually had more ability to complain and demonstrate under Gorbachev.

Russia was more compliant to Western interests under Yeltsin, which in your book translates to the term "more democratic" when what you actually mean is, "more submissive".  But was Russia in 1995 actually more democratic than today?  Probably not.  I seem to recall that back then police charging motorists to cross bridges, for example, was actually a thing.  Whereas now, not so much.

[sunday]

Wonder if there is a sort of international relations assumption that ultimately goes "When looking to other countries than mine, a more or less democratic sh*thole is better than any kind of more or less authoritarian prosperity."

[Yama]

Yeltsin sent tanks against the parliament...

[sunday]

Those were democratic tanks!

[glenn239]

Unconfirmed report of 'Grad' missiles hitting an Iraqi base with American troops in Iraq,

Iraqi officials: 5 missiles hit Iraqi base hosting U.S. | CityNews Toronto

No casualties thankfully, but if confirmed were they really Grad missiles?  I don't recall Iraqi militias having Grad surface to surface rockets before. 

[jmsaari]

Obviously Russia never made it into a stable democracy stage, but just as obviously slid further and further into increasingly strict autocracy over the last decades. "But parliament was shelled in 1993!" isn't going to change that.

[Yama]

31 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Unconfirmed report of 'Grad' missiles hitting an Iraqi base with American troops in Iraq,

Iraqi officials: 5 missiles hit Iraqi base hosting U.S. | CityNews Toronto

No casualties thankfully, but if confirmed were they really Grad missiles?  I don't recall Iraqi militias having Grad surface to surface rockets before. 

'Grad', like 'Katyusha', is used a pretty much catchall name for various light rocket launchers, sometimes homebuilt. 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Yama

[Mistral]

Germany offers to exchange what I guess is BMP-1s for Marders?

BRUSSELS — Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Germany is working on a deal with Greece that would see Athens deliver old military equipment to Ukraine and get armored personnel carriers from Germany to fill the gap.

Germany has faced criticism for a perceived reluctance to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, which the government rejects. It points among other things to arrangements for NATO allies to deliver older equipment — particularly of Soviet design — to Kyiv and then have modern material supplied by Germany.

Scholz pointed Tuesday to an arrangement already made with the Czech Republic. He said he had agreed with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to draw up a similar deal after a European Union summit. He didn’t give details, but said it will be finalized by the countries’ defense ministries and can be implemented quickly.

Scholz said he also spoke to his Polish counterpart about such arrangements.

[P Lakowski]

2 hours ago, sunday said:

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

i did not write that, you are quoting someone else

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, Yama said:

Yeltsin sent tanks against the parliament...

Undoubtedly. Although as that could be perceived as an attempted coup by the Rutskoi faction, to my mind it's not as cut and dried as perceived. Nobody in that standoff could be seen as good guys. 

 

2 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Russia was more compliant to Western interests under Yeltsin, which in your book translates to the term "more democratic" when what you actually mean is, "more submissive".  But was Russia in 1995 actually more democratic than today?  Probably not.  I seem to recall that back then police charging motorists to cross bridges, for example, was actually a thing.  Whereas now, not so much.

Well that's really not true either, is it? There were plenty of disputes between Yeltsin and Clinton, not least over the Balkans. The difference was Yeltsin kept talking, and Putin instead uses small disputes as an excuse for aggressive war against his neighbours, and fellas like you lap that nonsense up.

Yeltsin was massively flawed, but he was a reformer. He proved That in 1991. That Putin has spent the past 20 years ripping up everything he did, demonstrates how he is the complete polar opposite. 

[sunday]

1 hour ago, P Lakowski said:

i did not write that, you are quoting someone else

Forum software fault, then.

However, it could be said that software has a sense of fairness, since you stated the admiration for the post that included that statement.

[TrustMe]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

...Yeltsin was massively flawed, but he was a reformer. He proved That in 1991. That Putin has spent the past 20 years ripping up everything he did, demonstrates how he is the complete polar opposite.. ..

 

A drunk Yeltsin a man in charge of the second largest nuclear weapon stockpile 😀

 

 

[Stefan Kotsch]

Poland is trying to conquer western areas of Ukraine, says Patrushev

Security Council Secretary Patrushev said Poland wants to grab land in western Ukraine

https://ria.ru/20220531/patrushev-1792037525.html

_______

Why is Patrushev lying so blatantly? He can only tell his Russians that. They believe everything without checking it.

Patrushev is a former secret service agent and very closely linked to Putin. That's probably the answer to my question. The Russians are already astronomically far from the reality that one is speechless.

[crazyinsane105]

Just read that up to 70 percent of Severdonetsk is now in the hands of Russian forces. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

26 minutes ago, TrustMe said:

 

A drunk Yeltsin a man in charge of the second largest nuclear weapon stockpile 😀

 

 

Yeah, and you know what? I still trusted him more than I do Putin. Because corrupt drunk he might have been, fundamentally he was not a bad man and he tried to do right by Russia. He finished the Soviet Union, and he has my respect for that at least.

Nobody can possibly say Putin has done anything with Russia but line his own pockets, and drive the rest into a ditch. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

4 minutes ago, crazyinsane105 said:

Just read that up to 70 percent of Severdonetsk is now in the hands of Russian forces. 

How much is still standing?

[Yama]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Undoubtedly. Although as that could be perceived as an attempted coup by the Rutskoi faction, to my mind it's not as cut and dried as perceived. Nobody in that standoff could be seen as good guys. 

No, but Yeltsin was the one who blatantly broke the law. But the Army decided eventually to back him, so effectively he did an armed coup. 

Putin has never done anything remotely similar, though it could be argued that he has increased his grip over the system to such extent there is nobody realistically challenge him by any means.

I suppose it could be that media had more freedom during Yeltsin era, though I obviously have no personal experience about that.

[Stuart Galbraith]

19 minutes ago, Yama said:

No, but Yeltsin was the one who blatantly broke the law. But the Army decided eventually to back him, so effectively he did an armed coup. 

Putin has never done anything remotely similar, though it could be argued that he has increased his grip over the system to such extent there is nobody realistically challenge him by any means.

I suppose it could be that media had more freedom during Yeltsin era, though I obviously have no personal experience about that.

Not disagreeing. But I suspect Yeltsin standing on a tank 2 years previously was also technically breaking the law.

There is something suspect about condemning a man who did more than anyone else to try to make Russia a Democracy. It's too easy, and pays no heed to the reactionary forces he was struggling agains, which were curbed even more brutality by Putin. Yes, Yeltsin broke the law, no argument. But I'm not sure there was an alternative.

I read a book by Peter Pomerantsev that suggested the media was (very) briefly free, then captured by the Oligarchs whom used it as a weapon against Yeltsin. Then when they similarly used it against Putin, he clobbered them. Thats why most of Russia's media is now in Kremlin hands.

interesting example, the Russian version of Spitting Image, Koekly, was taken off air after they took the piss out of Putin. The creator recently fled to the west.

https://deciliiter.com/satirist-shenderovich-known-for-the-russian-spitting-image-flees-russia/

Edited May 31, 2022 by Stuart Galbraith