You ever get the feeling people will finally say enough is enough?
Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
161–170 of 323 posts
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putins regime was a massive economic improvement from Yeltsins regime though, which is one reason why he is (was? hard to gauge) so popular. Also counter examples of more authoritarian regimes having economic resurgences - south korea, taiwan, to lesser extents china and vietnam... I'm sure there's more.
no. it's not. It just happened during the rise in the global oil prices
Right, I guess there's a lot of debate on why things improved so much economically around that time. But still people will tend to associate it with the administration it happened under - we do it in western countries as well.
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which totally makes sense. Russia is a dictatorship waging a war of aggression a democratic neighbour. Why should we give their state propaganda outlets any amplification?
Because you believe in freedom of speech?
Typical liberal democracy has 2 modes of work: peace time and war time.
In time of peace, value of human life is infinite, thus fredom of someone ends where freedom of somewhere else starts. Nobody can cut basic freedoms of someone else without court decision.
In time of war, this freedom creates vulnerability, so modern democraties have utalitarian laws designed to maximise survivability of nation as whole instead. It's not so important for behemoths, but it's essential for smaller countries. However, even in large and powerful democraties there are loopholes around basic freedoms for desperate times, such as natural disaster, or assault, or war, etc.
For example, it's not allowed to shut somebody else, except when defending or to save life of someone else. It's not allowed to force somebody else to keep silence, except when it puts lifes of others in danger, such as hate speech, or division by race, color of skin, nationality, religion, income, etc.
Russian outlets are doing just that. They are trying to portrait other nations as evils. They are telling to Ukrainians that Jews are rulling our country (half truth, many politics in Ukraine are Jews), then they tell to Jews that Ukrainians are Nazi, to induce fighting between nationalities, to start civil war.
This creates danger for everybody, so we cried for years to shut down Russian propaganda. Nobody listened to us until today.
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#164Earlier 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.
It's incredulous that he would believe that after Ukraine flirting with joining NATO and receiving a lot of defense funding from the west.
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
China produces a lot of interesting stuff! India, by the way, too. They are big trade partner of Moscow. China gladly buys a lot of Russian oil and natural gas, for instance. But China still can't produce certain high-end things. Say, a high-end server-class CPU is sort of problematic, event though ARM architecture allows to produce capable server CPUs. A powerful enough GPU is even harder to come by. I did not hear…
True, but China buys all of those "high-end things" in enormous quantities already. Can't they just resell them to Russia, if Russians (or anyone else) want to buy them? Without sanctioning China, I really don't see how the US and her allies can prevent most "normal" goods from making their way (eventually) to Russia. Hell, even IKEA is in China.
Yes, consumers will get resold stuff from other markets but b2b it is sheer pain as now you probably need credit and in a foreign currency, and you may be rolling the quality and service dice on unauthorized resellers.
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which totally makes sense. Russia is a dictatorship waging a war of aggression a democratic neighbour. Why should we give their state propaganda outlets any amplification?
Because you believe in freedom of speech?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps Russia can get electronics, biotechnology, and healthcare supplies where the US gets their's: China. Are Russia and China on good terms these days? Does Russia have anything to trade with China for yuan so they can buy those Chinese goods? I guess we'll find out. Or maybe the US tries to sanction China for freely trading with those evil Russians? Interesting times ahead…
China produces a lot of interesting stuff! India, by the way, too. They are big trade partner of Moscow. China gladly buys a lot of Russian oil and natural gas, for instance. But China still can't produce certain high-end things. Say, a high-end server-class CPU is sort of problematic, event though ARM architecture allows to produce capable server CPUs. A powerful enough GPU is even harder to come by. I did not hear…
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Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#168They 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.
It could be but they need to be primed for it already. How did the US not selling drones to Turkey made Turkey a drone superpower? Well, Turkey already had a large engineering talent pool and related industries, therefore US not selling drones to Turkey was an opportunity. Does Russia already have a talent base or flourishing industries for all the stuff they are being denied? I find it unlikely, it's a common proble…
Not so long ago, Russians used to have a population for being extraordinary programmers. Doesn't that still apply?
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putin is 69 in a country where average age at death is 73. So the most likely scenario is that the status quo remains until he passes away. At which point there would be an opportunity for a clean reset in relations.
> At which point there would be an opportunity for a clean reset in relations. No. All major industries are breaking up contracts with the Russians. SWIFT took a century to build. None of that is coming back. Russia can never trust Europe again, and no country can trust Cloud products anymore, seeing how many Russian people are getting HTTP 410 from Cloud products.
Putin can never trust Europe again. A new democratic government could.
Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Civil war? Majority supports the invasion, the rest is indifferent, and 0.1% are protesting (soon to be jailed).