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Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

novayagazeta.ru

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Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#141

Post by mijamo »

satellite2 wrote: post #135
nuccy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People from the west may say: well yes, our media is biased also. And that is true, but direction of this bias is different for each media outlet, so by watching something else you can find discrepancies and inconsistencies. While in Russia all tv, radio, newspapers are government controlled, so they put the same fake and propaganda which due to lack of anything else (all blocked) yields brain washing on a whole coun…

It depends on the subject. Try to find a western media that defend the point of view of the Talibans for instance. Or their history and significance to the population for instance. Even in the most niche papers you won't find that. There will always be a line on their barbarian and anti democratic aspect. And that's why western medias didn't get that the US lost the war because the Talibans always had the backing of…

It is not about defending but presenting the point of view. It is easy to find articles explaining the Taliban point of view and why they had support in Afghanistan (I even saw a very interesting 5 hours documentary on the national french television not long ago with interviews of prominent talibans). It is not easy to find articles explaining the Ukrainian point of view in current Russian media.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#142

Post by jacquesm »

Borrible wrote: post #136
jacquesm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not alone in that I think there are quite a few people that would like a little bit of quiet quality time with a certain dictator.

If it were just a certain dictator, the Ides of March are just around the corner. But, as you mentioned, it's not that simple. Russians are in favor of Putin. And of course, the apparatus has been driving up approval ratings for him for months before this stunt. And now most Russian don't know anything from independent sources, some probably didn't even heard about that Ukraine Peace Operation. A lot of them just bel…

Civil war in Russia is pretty much a given at some point. This can't go on forever. Though, it has gone on long enough that maybe that is based on a faulty assumption: that in the longer term the world trends to improvement. That might not be the case, we may be able to reach some local maximum and then fall back again.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#143

Post by sto_hristo »

aftergibson wrote: post #120
oezi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it seems more russians are concerned about not getting a BILLY than standing up to Putin.

Just like when the west stood up to the US Government and stopped the Iraq war? It's easy to point the finger when you're far from the reality.

Try the Vietnam proxy war.

And any sensible and rational being with non-zero knowledge of Iraq and Saddam's transgressions against humanity should support the Iraq war which was all about toppling him. Since you're clearly not one of those, here's some homework to get you started: Halabja massacre, Kuwait invasion.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#144

Post by neverminder »

jdrc wrote: post #97

These kind of photos always impress me about the number of people who are on their phones. We dont live in countries anymore, we live in screens with our legs on some kind of ground. I hope it's not irreversibly long until these stores can be reopened. We should stop pretending we re living in the cold war era, world is always new. Russia has shown itself to be an irresponsible holder of nukes. After the fall of puti…

They may be spending much less time on their phones soon. The apps in Russia are shutting down like falling dominoes. Same goes for phone sales.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#145

Post by EnKopVand »

kyriakos wrote: post #5

They say every crisis is an opportunity. This could be a great opportunity for Russian owned brands to establish themselves and thrive later when the crisis is hopefully resolved.

How would they do that though? Russian interest rates are through the roof, so even if you could borrow money to start a business you likely couldn’t make it profitable. If you had assets to begin with they better not have been in the stock market, because that has been closed since the invasion began and basically everything you own is now rated 0. If your assets were in savings, then they too have lost basically all value along with the rubbles.

Even if you somehow overcome the need for capital, how do you setup the supply chain necessary in a world where you can’t readily trade with anyone but China? Which you may not be able or doing in a month if things turn sour and China also start sanctioning.

Sure Russia has a lot of wood, but Russia doesn’t have the industrial material to transform it into furniture, and right now, Russia doesn’t have access to the high tech commodities required to build an efficient lumber industry, let alone factories to process it.

You’re right of course, this will open up for opportunities in the very long run, but it’ll be very localised opportunities that can’t take advantage of the global supply chain in a country that had an economy which was around the size of the economy of Italy before this began.

If you look at history, then you can’t really build empires in isolation. Even the current “American empire” saw a lot of its economic rise throught things like the Marshall plan, which as an example, lifted my country (Denmark) from what was basically medieval farming methods with lots and lots of manual labour to the average farmer owning tractors in less than a decade. Unless the oligarchs of Russia plan on investing basically all their national profits into building the country’s industry, then I would personally wager that these images are the last chance that a lot of Russian have to but IKEA things for a good while. It won’t stop there either, after a few years of isolation the average Russian won’t be able to buy things like coffee if the sanctions get worse.

War is hell.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#146

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jacquesm wrote: post #122
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was the generally accepted rationale? What other explanations are there?

That Putin was given faulty intelligence that Ukraine would roll over and welcome the invasion because of their urge to return to the Russian fold.

I don't think I've seen that take and you may be mixing up what he says with what he thinks, always confusing when talking about blatant liars.

I've seen people saying that he thought he could force them to install a pro-russian regime (or further split the country) with shock and awe and merely the threat of great violence and underestimated the will and ability to resist, and overestimated his ability to project power, but not that he's totally disconnected from the reality of public opinion in Ukraine.

The whole point, whether the invasion worked really well or not, is that he needs to overule their democratic opinion by force. He seems to grasp that or nothing he's doing makes any sense.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#147

Post by b3kart »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #101
bitwise101 wrote: post #36

Go visit the homepage of this newspaper. It's crazy, there's no clear reference to war or attacks. This article on Ikea is just an attempt to tell the desperation without breaking the censorship law.

As one of Novaya backers, I voted for it to continue operations, even under the censorship. The Novaya team and their readers are bright people who can write and read between the lines, a working independent media of any form, not blocked by roskomnadzor, is more valuable than none. The alternative was to shut down and wait until the situation resolves. I admire their resolve.

I am conflicted about this. On one hand, people’s livelihoods are at stake, and one can argue some news is better than no news. On the other hand, by continuing reporting on events unrelated to war, are we not helping Putin’s regime to push the “it’s all fine, don’t worry about the war” agenda?

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#148

Post by Borrible »

raverbashing wrote: post #123
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, NATO donating some training and a couple of A-10s would be an interesting move. Obviously it is never going to be that simple.

True. But I'm afraid there are several issues and training is not a 2 day affair even if the other issues didn't exist https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/no-the-us-air-force-isnt...

This. Absolutely this. And especially for the Warthog.

But, hey, there are flight simulators out there, aren't there?

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#149

Post by waffleiron »

jdrc wrote: post #97

These kind of photos always impress me about the number of people who are on their phones. We dont live in countries anymore, we live in screens with our legs on some kind of ground. I hope it's not irreversibly long until these stores can be reopened. We should stop pretending we re living in the cold war era, world is always new. Russia has shown itself to be an irresponsible holder of nukes. After the fall of puti…

> Russia has shown itself to be an irresponsible holder of nukes.

In which way, so far only a single country has used nuclear weapons in war, and it’s not Russia.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#150

Post by namdnay »

onion2k wrote: post #121
xvilka wrote: post #85

Well, IKEA leaving is not a big issue - making furniture is easy and doesn't require high-tech. Thus, in one year or two nobody will even remember them. The industries that require technology, like electronics, biotechnology, healthcare - those will be permanently crippled, maybe completely eliminated.

Well, IKEA leaving is not a big issue - making furniture is easy and doesn't require high-tech. Firstly, IKEA sells a lot more than furniture. You might be able to make a table at home, but that's one of the simplest things IKEA sells. Making a bowl, or a drinking glass, or a clock is significantly harder. Most people don't have the skills or the equipment. Secondly, IKEA don't simply sell furniture. They sell furnit…

IKEA is way higher than the minimum level of quality. Their range goes from medium-low to medium. You can find far worse furniture than ikea (often more expensive)
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