Because, Russia

[Ivanhoe]

24 minutes ago, DB said:

Could have been far worse, like Las Ketchup, or Tatu.

You are a monster.

 

[sunday]

6 hours ago, DB said:

Could have been far worse, like Las Ketchup, or Tatu.

Ha! 

 

[bd1]

Quote

´just point that ###### button to me, you ######! with your hand, point  you ######!  which ##### button do i ####### have to push, #######, ######-######, all those ######, winged clunkers are different ###### POS. Ah ###### the ###### mic is ###### open !

´´Dear passenger, please excuse., the captain of this flight  Stanislav welcomes you onboard......´

 

[Harold Jones]

This probably fits here better than in the Kiev Burning thread.  It's a long but interesting take on Russia's apparent failure to prepare for increased sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine special operation.  One of the answers is that Putin didn't give his ministers any warning and part is that outside of Finance they have squandered the time and opportunities that they have had since 2014.

Quote

The full-blown invasion of Ukraine, which Putin planned unbeknownst even to his own government, and the subsequent smothering sanctions delivered a tremendous blow to the Russian economy. Despite the many years of public officials paying lip service to the import substitution effort, the sanctions came as a shock to both the manufacturing and mining industries. Major infrastructure projects have also had to be suspended. Only the financial sector proved to be sufficiently flexible and sustainable. Six months into the war, Russian leaders still don't have a contingency plan to handle the crisis, and the economy is headed for an imminent collapse.

https://theins.ru/en/economics/255893

Edited October 17, 2022 by Harold Jones

[Ssnake]

I don't think that their definition of "collapse" matches mine. Collapse of selected sectors, maybe. Severe recession, increasingly likely. But eventually there's going to be substitution with some recovery, as always.

[DB]

I don't think anyone expects mass starvation and a return to a hunter gatherer lifestyle (although that could apply to Soviet era starvation campaigns, I suppose), but "collapse" to me has always meant "relative to everyone else", and is not restricted to a definition of GDP growth, but also includes population, productivity, technical development, education, etc.

One could also include "ability to project power more than 100km beyond your own border", if one wanted to be particularly topical.

[bd1]

import replacement program in action? 

somebody is stealing speed cameras in swedish highways, cameras use the Canon DSLR which are, according to the article, same as used in drones. 

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/VPPe8l/stulna-fartkameror-blir-donare-i-kriget-i-ukraina

[urbanoid]

Quote

Opinion: In neighboring Georgia, the mass arrival of Russians triggers anxieties

Tbilisi CNN  — 

“Tbilisi is filled with Russian refugees,” read the 18-year-old woman’s diary entry. Soon after it was posted on social media in Georgia, it went viral, summing up the popular mood.

What’s striking about these words is that they were written in 1920, by a writer whose diary is a record of an era of uncertainty and hope. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had finally given tiny Georgia a chance at independence from the Russian empire. It also turned it into a refuge for thousands of Russians.

“They are running from the Bolsheviks and they are all coming here,” wrote Maro Makashvili as the newly-born liberal Georgian democracy opened its doors to thousands of Russians fleeing the revolution and the civil war it triggered. “We host them, we accept them.”

Over a century later, Russians are once again fleeing tyranny at home for safety in their former colony. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens, mostly men, queued for days to get into Georgia after President Vladimir Putin announced partial mobilization for his war in Ukraine. They were following an estimated 50,000 Russians who arrived in the weeks following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.

Today, as I walk under Tbilisi’s carved balconies, many adorned with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags, Russian is all I hear. Hipsters from Moscow crowd the city’s bars, a friend’s Pilates class recently switched to instruction in Russian, and for the first time since the Soviet days there is a demand for Russian language schools.

For Georgians, the mass arrival of Russians has, confusingly, triggered both desperately needed economic growth and a very tangible sense of deep, historically rooted anxiety about yet another Russian takeover.

Georgians, like Poles, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or anyone else who has been on the receiving end of Russian colonialism, generally see it as the root cause of the war in Ukraine. But the rest of the world doesn’t.

Because as the story of Russians in Georgia shows, the story of historical oppressors seeking refuge in their former colony doesn’t really fit the established narratives of migration and colonialism and it challenges our understanding of both.

“They are victims,” a British journalist friend covering the Russian exodus, argued at a recent dinner party in Tbilisi. “They are, but they are also the perpetrators,” said the host.

The confusion stems partially from the nature of Russian colonialism. Over the centuries, while European powers conquered overseas territories, Russia ran a land empire that absorbed its neighbors. While Europeans instilled the notion that their subjects were “different” from them, Russians conquered using another device: “sameness.”

“Russians chose ‘sameness’ as an instrument of domination. The message of Western colonialism was: ‘you are not able to be like us,’ while the message of Russian colonialism was ‘you are not allowed to be different from us,’” explained Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko at the recent Tbilisi Storytelling Festival (ZEG) co-hosted by Coda Story, the newsroom that I run.

The idea of “sameness as an instrument of domination” also explains why most well-meaning Russians I meet seem weirdly unaware of their country being perceived as a colonial master.

“They are oblivious to the fact that they are coming to a place that has suffered because they chose to go along with their government’s imperialist ambitions,” says Kristo Talakhadze, the owner of Ezo, a popular Tbilisi restaurant.

Angry with the Georgian government for refusing to impose a visa regime for Russians, Kristo, like many other business owners, has taken it upon herself to filter her Russian customers by giving them a history lesson.

On every table in Ezo there is a “manifesto” in Russian that reminds customers that Georgia has been the victim of Russian aggression for centuries, that Moscow engineered and fueled separatist conflicts in Georgia the same way it is doing in Ukraine today and that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and has since occupied 20% of the country’s territory.

Are they listening? She doesn’t think so. Over the years, many Tbilisi restaurants, including Ezo have come under cyber attacks, as Russian citizens grouped together to leave negative reviews accusing owners of “russophobia” and bringing down restaurant rankings on Google.

There are, of course, exceptions. Like Russian journalist Andrey Babitsky, who told me how a few months after coming to Tbilisi he went out for dinner with friends from Moscow and discovered that after months of being here, not a single one of them knew how to say “excuse me” in Georgian.

“I’ve read my share of colonial studies, but to see colonialism acted out in front of you with every cup of coffee you buy at a local counter is another matter.” he wrote.

But in my experience, even the most liberal Russians I know seem utterly disinterested in engaging on the issue of colonialism.

“We are not colonialists!” said an editor-in-chief of a prominent Russian TV station that now operates in exile. He seemed genuinely upset by my suggestion that the war in Ukraine was an opportunity to finally introduce the topic of Russian colonialism to his liberal, Russian audiences.

“When British and Indian journalists speak to each other, their history is the context to their conversation. When will it become context to ours?” I asked him.

“Why should it? I don’t believe in collective responsibility,” he shrugged.

One reason why the debate about colonialism is missing from the Russian liberal discourse is because Russia is missing from the debate about colonialism in the West. Yermolenko, the Ukrainian philosopher, believes it is because when it comes to colonialism, the Western intellectual elite went from one extreme in the 19th century to another in the 21st.

“They went from saying ‘we are the best and no one can compare to us’ to saying ‘we were the worst and no one can compare to us,’” Yermolenko said during a panel discussion at ZEG.

At the heart of this inability to understand, accept and analyze other forms of colonialism, lies “paradoxically, the West’s own colonial mentality” argued Georgian historian Lasha Bakradze. “This is where skeletons of Western colonialism are really buried,” he said.

For two decades, these self-imposed limits of Western debate about colonialism have given the Kremlin an enormous propaganda advantage, enabling Putin to position Russia falsely as an anti-colonial power, and himself as the champion of all the victims of European colonialism.

The war in Ukraine may have seriously undermined the Kremlin’s narratives, but it didn’t shatter them. This is why, across Latin America, Asia and Africa, in places where the Soviet Union was linked to liberation movements from European colonialism, Russia continues to work hard at its image as an anti-colonial power, reaping benefits in the form of UN votes and trade agreements.

At the same time, as kamikaze drones kill civilians in Kyiv, many Western intellectuals provide fodder to the Russian state propaganda machine as they continue to argue about the rights and wrongs of the NATO enlargement and not the fact that a sovereign country has the right to break away from its colonial masters.

“At last my poor country will be blessed with freedom,” Maro Makashvili wrote just before Russians began to pour into the country, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution, in 1918. For the following years, she documented the birth of one of the most liberal, most progressive democracies in Europe, a place where women could vote and minorities were granted rights.

But few knew about Georgia’s ambitious democracy, or how tragically it ended.

Maro was killed, along with thousands of others, when the Red Army invaded in 1921 occupying Georgia for the following 70 years. In Georgia today, she is a national hero. But unless her story becomes part of the global anti-colonial narrative, Putin or whomever succeeds him in the Kremlin, will continue to win.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/26/opinions/russia-georgia-colonialism-anxieties-antelava/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1YellmxCwICSA4jugWB8iXDbqCs7CcEfVjrDeRXiCnR7VbnBP0c6LqHlw

A bit long-ish, but interesting-ish.

[bd1]

heh, just last week there was an article about russians in georgia, locals are fed up because if russians are poor , they are pointless for a tourism-dependent economy and if they are rich, they are obnoxious turds that irritate everyone 

 

all in all, the exodus of mobiki and their reception in all neighbouring countries will probably mean end of the whole 

´oh-how-they-all-miss-us-from-the-old-soviet-days´  genre in youtube😀 

[bd1]

and, just  for the manbunny from canada, finally the realistic  mobilisation numbers 

 

[bojan]

1 hour ago, bd1 said:

...and if they are rich, they are obnoxious turds that irritate everyone...

How is that different from any other group of tourists?

[bd1]

that there´s suddenly a lot of them ? like, some critical level for locals has been reached?

https://news.err.ee/1608764959/aimar-ventsel-sentiment-toward-russians-cooling-in-georgia

actually , there are differences between nations.  like beginning of last summer, when europe had heat wave, there was suddenly lots of germans and spaniards around, we had 25c temp.

very well behaved.  climate tourists/refugees?

 

[bojan]

Euros are generally well behaved. USians, despite all stereotypes are OK also. "Tourists from hell" are Chinese and British.

[DB]

29 minutes ago, bojan said:

Euros are generally well behaved. USians, despite all stereotypes are OK also. "Tourists from hell" are Chinese and British.

My family used to deliberately pick package tour holidays from Scandinavian and German tour companies because it meant that we were generally not put into hotels with other British tourists.

Mostly they drink too much, are too loud, have less than zero comprehension of local customs and demand food that they might as well be getting back home. They should all go to Blackpool for their holidays and leave the nice places to those of us who aren't pond scum.

Went on a bus tour of Spain and Morocco. One of the idiots had to be physically dragged out of sight of the Moroccan funeral procession he'd been told to be respectful of, but had decided to video. Same moron was loudly talking about how "we got proper drains 'undreds of years ago, why do they not have those in the oldest part of an Arab town that was definitely built long before London ever had any proper sewers, and he'd obviously not paid any attention to the beautiful fountains in courtyards you could see behind some of the residential entrances. And so on.

[bojan]

"Remembers student years and summer job as a tourist guide with mix of fondness and repulsion + all stories from friend's father who owns tourist agency"...

Loud is not a problem, Serbians are generally loud, and Italians are lauder than British and Serbians combined, yet almost none complains about Italian tourists. I think it is combination of not being able to take alcohol well and yet drinking too much, complaining about... pretty much everything*, and as you have noted being ridiculously obnoxious at the times. Funny enough, unlike some other nations it appears those were traits that did not care about class divide, chance that group staying in the top of line hotel would be obnoxious twats was pretty much the same as for those staying in the run down hostel.

* My favorite one is signing up for a "5km, 2h walking tour" and complaining (including cursing) multiple times about having to actually walk...

That all said, Chinese are worse than British, by orders of magnitudes. To define it, imagine worst British isles could produce, give them all cheap bear they wanted to have, after their football club lost  - now you have a well behaved Chinese tourist group before they got to drinks... and if someone can not stand their drinks it is Chinese.

Russians are total mixed bag, you have "high culture" types that, that generally behaved how US sitcoms portray British upper class.  Funny enough, ~50% of time they wanted guided tours in English (with few cases of French thrown in...), not Russian for whatever reason. They could come from both richer and poorer, through most commonly were upper middle class. Then you had "new rich" which were obnoxious, but not out of line for such assholes all over the world. Worst thing with Russians was that just like French they always wanted (with exemption of "high culture" types) guides in their language (OK, understandable and not impossible to find), and expected everyone in the Belgrade to speak Russian (not OK).

Americans were pretty much as Russians, total mixed bag, but with decent amount of "blessed ignorance" of the wider world thrown in.

Spanish, Portuguese and South Americans are pretty close to a local mentality so "unnoticeable". French, Germans and  Scandinavians - middle of the road. Turks have their noses in the air, but other than that are generally well behaved.

Vietnamese were probably most polite one, with possible exception of Dutch.

 

OFC, it is always really bad ones that people remember the most...  

[bd1]

the ´kulturniye´ russians are generally well liked everywhere, tourists or not. 

wife had in her institute 2 russian scientists from Jekaterinburg , classical image from movies, elderly , woolen sweaters, quiet , polite, thoughtful. at leave party brought cake from their own pocket etc.  fond memories of them (incl. finding small empty vodka bottles from their workplace afterwards 😄 )

then there was 3 uppity twits from moscow university, who commented everything with ´hnnngh, in moscow we do/have it this or that way  hnngh ´ .  and finally a hosting professor shut them up when took them to their leave party in merc  cls  drove them to his home , which is a well restaurated 19th cent. mansion with park. 

´bbbbut .... can a university professor afford this?´  

´what? this? you mean , your professors can´t afford this?´

shocked silence.  these 3 are still remembered in the institute even years later

 

actually, the professors then-wife was wealthy businesswoman and owner 

[urbanoid]

1 hour ago, bd1 said:

the ´kulturniye´ russians are generally well liked everywhere, tourists or not. 

wife had in her institute 2 russian scientists from Jekaterinburg , classical image from movies, elderly , woolen sweaters, quiet , polite, thoughtful. at leave party brought cake from their own pocket etc.  fond memories of them (incl. finding small empty vodka bottles from their workplace afterwards 😄 )

then there was 3 uppity twits from moscow university, who commented everything with ´hnnngh, in moscow we do/have it this or that way  hnngh ´ .  and finally a hosting professor shut them up when took them to their leave party in merc  cls  drove them to his home , which is a well restaurated 19th cent. mansion with park. 

´bbbbut .... can a university professor afford this?´  

´what? this? you mean , your professors can´t afford this?´

shocked silence.  these 3 are still remembered in the institute even years later

 

actually, the professors then-wife was wealthy businesswoman and owner 

And their greatest fear in life is that someone calls them 'nekulturniye'.

[bd1]

russian think tank agrees with glenn´s situational analysis

 

[bd1]

funeral services fair in russia.  they certainly know how to keep in touch with times

 

including competition for speed dressing of the deceased

 

 

[Roman Alymov]

 

[Roman Alymov]

On 10/2/2022 at 11:16 PM, sunday said:

Captured in Mariupol? He should have known he was fighting alongside Nazis.

Foreign combatants captured in the Spanish Civil War, by both sides, used to be shot. If captured by the Reds, tortured then shot.

DDR view of that, in context of Spanish Civil War

 

[sunday]

9 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

DDR view of that, in context of Spanish Civil War

 

Thanks, but I do not understand anything!

[bd1]

possibly the criminal world tries to stop wagner pmc recruiting their men? what he claims, sets prigozhin at the lowest rank of prison hierarchy. OTOH, prigozhin was 18 when got convicted for 10 years, but got out in 8 and russian prisons were what they were. 

 

 

A Russian man who introduces himself as an ex-convict who served sentence with Wagner's Prigozhyn claims the latter was providing sexual services to other prisoners

 

 

[JWB]

Almost half of top foreign-policy experts think Russia will become a failed state or break up by 2033, according to a new survey (msn.com)

[Roman Alymov]

On 12/1/2022 at 10:45 PM, bd1 said:

possibly the criminal world tries to stop wagner pmc recruiting their men? what he claims, sets prigozhin at the lowest rank of prison hierarchy. OTOH, prigozhin was 18 when got convicted for 10 years, but got out in 8 and russian prisons were what they were. 

 

 

A Russian man who introduces himself as an ex-convict who served sentence with Wagner's Prigozhyn claims the latter was providing sexual services to other prisoners

 

 

Since when "somebody on Twitter" is "criminal world"? Criminal world (at least in Russia - and, i think, not only in Russia) got own channels of communication, and since it is relatively close community - there is no way they will learn something new from US source. Re "stop.......recruiting their men" - see politicians in Ukraine found to be of untraditional sexual habits and still keeping their positions (at least one Rada party leader/volunteer battalion commander and one Presidential spokesmen). Who cares.....