41–50 of 310 posts
I heard that in Russia they consider it's natural to separate parts of the country by people's referendum...
Aren't the islands full of Russian people? I imagine a referendum wouldn't yield a result that was unfavourable to Russia.
What would be the value (economical, strategical) of those islands for Japan? Apart from the sentimental one?
When asking the question “what is the value of those islands/rocks-in-the-sea?” the answer is always 'EEZ boundaries'. I.e., having extra bits of land in the middle of the sea enlarges your exclusive economic zone where you can exploit resources in the ocean and below the ocean bed (oil) significantly. Which is why so many disputes exist over really boring bits of rock jutting out of the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute#World_Wa...
Russia can't afford to open another front
In the case that Russia actually collapses as a state ... which is not likely, but cannot be ruled out if they lose this war badly (lost wars are an enormous stress test for authoritarian regimes where the ruler gets all the blame, just look at the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917) ... a lot of territory would be up to grabs. Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its ter…
South Ossetia and Abkhazia which would probably be reintegrated into Georgia and pave the way for potential NATO or EU membership.
Transnistria integration into Moldova.
LDR / DPR maybe even Crimea back to Ukraine.
Just yesterday I was thinking: What if others started to grab territory, which Russia claims to be its territory around the world now? Wouldn't that be fortunate timing and overload Russian army? Today I read this.
In the case that Russia actually collapses as a state ... which is not likely, but cannot be ruled out if they lose this war badly (lost wars are an enormous stress test for authoritarian regimes where the ruler gets all the blame, just look at the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917) ... a lot of territory would be up to grabs. Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its ter…
EU is not a country and to my knowledge none of the neighbors wants to join that territory. It's quite a poor region with Russian population... Germans effectively left in the late 40s'
What would be the value (economical, strategical) of those islands for Japan? Apart from the sentimental one?
When asking the question “what is the value of those islands/rocks-in-the-sea?” the answer is always 'EEZ boundaries'. I.e., having extra bits of land in the middle of the sea enlarges your exclusive economic zone where you can exploit resources in the ocean and below the ocean bed (oil) significantly. Which is why so many disputes exist over really boring bits of rock jutting out of the water.
Didn't they always (well, since WW2) consider southern Kurils their territory occupied by Russia? Has anything changed in their messaging?
Yes, it looks like Japanese government just reminded about the position they always had that southern Kurils were occupied by Russia illegally. But the timing of the reminder is interesting.
It seemed slightly delusional (but mostly harmless) to me at the time, but now - who knows?
In the case that Russia actually collapses as a state ... which is not likely, but cannot be ruled out if they lose this war badly (lost wars are an enormous stress test for authoritarian regimes where the ruler gets all the blame, just look at the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917) ... a lot of territory would be up to grabs. Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its ter…
Could you provide some links? I would like to learn more about that. As far as I knew until just now the treaties between russia and china aren't all that old and the PRC has no claims on any currently russian land. But I am not well informed about the topic at all.
(After some research: The ROC and freer press were quite unhappy with the treaty and ROC still formally claims those areas if I understand it correctly.)
Overall it is an interesting (albeit very unlikely) scenario, maybe because it reminds me so much of old EU4 matches I had.