Earlier quoted context omitted.
All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working. Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common f…
So do countries, if we're looking at a long enough time scale. There is no end in sight for the war in Ukraine and when the end comes it's likely to be messy. It might be more of a pause than a true end, and one or both sides will likely be pretty unhappy with the outcome. It could be many years before Russia and the west go back to a comfortable economic relationship.
Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
331–340 of 359 posts
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder when you will arrive at the understanding that if Russia is not going to have more revolutions, then you are going to have to live alongside Russia on the tiniest of continents and it would be best for both sides to learn how. Is's not like you're going in with a military action and capturing Volgograd, after all. Adolf Hitler could be neutralized by capturing Berlin. Good luck dealing with Russia that way.
Learning to live is arming the eastern NATO border to the teeth. Russia has never stopped trying to expand westward, is still very far from giving up on its imperialism and strength is the only language it understands.
The problem is what to do with the likes of Georgia and Ukraine (which has been deeply regretting giving up nukes against Russian/US/UK "protection" for some years now).
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Israeli invasion killed alread > 1% of total population of Gaza, further 2-3% have been iniured. According to you, did Israel get a blank check? Are they justified to do literally anything? Whst if the killed percentage will go to 5, 10 %. Still fine?
Out of curiosity I looked for a relevant reference, apparently in WWII, civilian casualties to allied air raids were 0.6% of the total population and twice that for wounded, so around half the numbers you cite for Gaza (though IIUC you are including both civilian and militant deaths in your counts so not perfectly comparable). Given that Hamas seeks to maximize their civilian deaths I'm not sure how to take that comp…
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia After 9/11, the US maintained productive relations with the Saudis. They're actively supporting Israel through the Gaza business. They have a long history of propping up dictators and thrashing countries for hard-to-articulate reasons (I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometime…
We have nothing to gain by normalizing relations with Russia. They have nothing that we want and they can't be trusted to negotiate in good faith anyway. So it's back to containment: Cold War 2. As such we should take every opportunity short of direct conflict to disrupt, undermine, disrespect, and humiliate the Putin regime. In a few decades the Russian empire will undergo another internal collapse or civil war, and…
Sure they do - a big border with the US's main geopolitical rival, China. The US anti-China strategy relies on making it difficult for China to secure resources in the event of a war - blocking sea routes, destabilising western paths that could be used, southern countries being a bit leery of China's military.
They're majorly screwing themselves over by encouraging cooperation through the northern border and giving Russia every incentive to establish what overland trade routes it can. The NATO response to Ukraine seems a bit panicked - they're acting like they suddenly realised they aren't as competitive and secure as they thought. Building up a Russia-China-Iran axis under those conditions is an unforced error that is not clever. If the US had been more reasonable about Ukraine, we could be talking about how China is hemmed in from all angles. Instead the north and west look like they might be opening up to them.
Combine that with the US getting literally nothing out of the Ukraine war except an opportunity to blow up resources that they really needed at home (and reopening old wounds with people who didn't need to be enemies I suppose), and the situation is a bit of a baffler. I can explain it with corruption, I can explain it with stupidity, but I'm struggling to find a "here is how the US comes out ahead" perspective.
I can only guess at what Iran and the Houthi are thinking, but it is interesting that after watching NATO's performance in Ukraine the Middle East immediately starts to flare up. Might be a coincidence but that isn't saying great things about NATO's reputation. I dunno, it might be fine. We'll see.
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wiki has a surprisingly good timeline of the event. [1] Even the identity of the snipers has, again, a quite reasonable page on Wiki. [2] You might want to at least add in the whole thing about "protesters" shooting at police officers to try to escalate the conflict, occupying government buildings and seizing substantial quantities of weapons, Western cities (which tend to be very pro-EU and anti-Russia for those not…
> Wiki has a surprisingly good timeline of the event. [1] Even the identity of the snipers has, again, a quite reasonable page on Wiki. [2] None of these link support your point of view, though.
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#336Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I don't struggle to imagine how Eastern Europeans loved Russia, Soviet Union and Communism just 40 years back. 80 years back, Eastern Europeans just loved Germany and Hitler. Now they are huge fans of the USA. This time it's for real. Genuine Eastern European feeling and honest hatred for everybody who came before. The problem with most Eastern Europeans is that they'll sing and dance on anybody's 5 cents. Yo…
Oh, loyalties? Do you know Russia is committed to defend Armenia thru the CSTO, but apparently just said meh and now Armenia is on their own?
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the Kyiv offensive was obviously a poorly executed failure. And it happened right at the start of this war, which is exactly what I am saying. "That" Russian military lost to a relatively improvised small scale counter-offensive, while the "new" Russian military beat back a massive Ukrainian counter-attack directly backed (and probably directed) by NATO. These are practically two different forces. We're not weake…
You don't have to worry about my knowledge of Avdiivka. It's a village which has a value only for Russia, because it's very close to Donetsk city and is a major thorn in the Russian propaganda - can you explain to me how is Russia so strong and at the same time after 2 years of war still can't push Ukrainians more than 10 kilometers from the downtown of Donetsk city, the capital of DPR? For Ukraine, the only value Av…
So for instance the average Ukrainian soldier is now up to 43 years old [1], more than a decade older than when the war began. And Ukraine has been turning to increasingly aggressive conscription efforts, with the military demanding even more. There's now also major friction between the head of the Ukrainian military and Zelensky, with Zelensky looking to replace him. [2] These sort of little nuggets, which are not disputed by either side at this point, give you an indication of the "direction" of the war.
It's the same reason I find Avdeevka relevant. Avdeevka does have strategic value, but what really matters is that it's a hill both sides have decided to die on. It's similar to something like Verdun. Verdun is a completely irrelevant town in France, far smaller than Avdeevka and with much less strategic value, yet hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives fighting over it. The reason the result mattered is not because this side or that now controlled Verdun, but because it was a major bellwether for the "direction" of the war.
[1] - https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-intervie...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/world/europe/ukraine-zele...
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#339Any large business in Russia cannot exist independently of the state - even if the relationship is informal. Particularly, if the company is related to mass media and surveillance. Yandex is a state-controlled company even if the legal structure doesn't indicate this. I would interpret this divestment as Russian intention to use Yandex as a tool for doing foreign influence, similar to RT or their social networks mani…
Not unlike other countries... Particularly the ones that boast freedom.
Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
That happens in 2014 when Ukraine lost Crimea. They accepted it and lived on. There is zero safety guarantees for them.
Ukraine has been fighting Russia for nearly a decade, with active if low-level warfare in the Donbass region the entire time. I wouldn't exactly call that "accept[ing] it and liv[ing] on."
Empires die and vanish all the time.