81–90 of 241 posts
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Sadly the EU is not that eager on taking new memberships right now. Look at North Macedonia and Albania's potential membership negotiations getting initially opposed we are too busy right now and then conditioned by France ok, but one step at a time .
After the backlash they got after opening up the borders with Bulgaria and especially Romania it would be political suicide to open up for Albania.
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Only Belarus from your list didn't "liberalize" its economy and retained central planning.
Also Belarus is benefiting mostly from 1) refining Russian oil, which they buy at lower prices, 2) gambling (which is illegal in Russia, so Russians go to Belarus) and 3) reselling European food to Russia to bypass Russian anti-sanctions. Their economy is quite shitty and simply parasitizing on Russia.
The former soviet states are a great natural experiment in economics. Countries that liberalized their economies, like Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Latvia (the "mostly free" countries here: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking ) have grown much faster than countries that retained socialism and central planning, like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17…
I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…
I don't want to sound like a Negative Nelly but you all in this thread are swooning over a dictatorship with pretty awful human rights abuses.
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Also Belarus is benefiting mostly from 1) refining Russian oil, which they buy at lower prices, 2) gambling (which is illegal in Russia, so Russians go to Belarus) and 3) reselling European food to Russia to bypass Russian anti-sanctions. Their economy is quite shitty and simply parasitizing on Russia.
Gambling is legal in Russia in specific gaming zones.
Which are virtually non-existent.
https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2019/01/14/791383...
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Since Russia is subsidizing Belarus, they can start tightening the screws on Lukaschenko politically any time they want. Belarus is just one military exercise away from Russians taking over. Every time these countries have a big joint military exercise in Belarus there is possibility that Russian troops might not leave when the exercise is over.
>> there is possibility that Russian troops might not leave when the exercise is over. Why they would do that? Unless you organize a pro-West revolution like in Ukraine. It is possible but making people dirty poor and desperate can take a decade like in the latter case.
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Gambling is legal in Russia in specific gaming zones.
>Gambling is legal in Russia in specific gaming zones. Which are virtually non-existent. https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2019/01/14/791383...
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>Gambling is legal in Russia in specific gaming zones. Which are virtually non-existent. https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2019/01/14/791383...
Non-existent gambling doesn't make it illegal.
It's illegal outside special zones which are virtually non-existent. Yes, it's virtually illegal.
I had the chance to visit Belarus last year for a extended period. The capital, Minsk, is by far the cleanest and safest place i have seen anywhere. Putting aside the human right issues, i think the president there has run the country quite well given the circumstances and the post-soviet situation he inherited. Mostly staying out of conflicts, keeping a balance between the big brother to the east and the western Eur…
This media blitz started in 2008 right about at the start of the Olympics.
I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…