211–220 of 265 posts
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It also depends on what you mean by elite. The social elite in Moscow or St Petersburg does not run the show. Neither does the military. The security apparatus does.
And it doesn’t appear the security forces know exactly what is going on.
This is realpolitik, so there isn't any morality beyond expansion and acquisition. Can we stop pretending these are anything other than resource wars, combined with an excuse to throw money at the defence industries? Russia looked at US actions in Iraq etc and apparently had an irrational attack of imperial atrocity envy, blended with greed over the mineral-rich areas of Eastern Ukraine. Neither empire is wholesome a…
Did the US ever present any proof of Russia manipulating elections or co-opting any politicians? After Trump was cleared, I’ve started thinking that the US is just going through another Red Scare.
There's a real problem in spy-hunting that the people hunting the spies may themselves be compromised. Was a problem with the Cambridge four https://www.nationalcoldwarexhibition.org/schools-colleges/n...
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You can skim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... for a wide range of items with varying levels of evidence. "Proof" comes down to whether you're willing to accept assertions - the ability to execute a search warrant on the Kremlin is... limited - and what level of interference counts. The Republicans concluded Paul Manafort, for example, "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" and…
That article does not seem to have been updated given the recent massive trove of information provided by the Twitter files. [1] A group, "Hamilton 68", was a central source on the "Russian trolls" narrative. They were widely cited, frequently as an exclusive source, by media and congressmen alike. They had a secret list of 644 "Russian trolls" whom they surveilled and used to populate their dashboard on the latest t…
That is not backed up by even the overly breathless Twitter Files coverage.
Post #3: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029780179075073
"Unlike #ReleaseTheMemo, this one is primarily being driven by data from Hamilton68."
The Wikipedia article covers substantially more involvement than Twitter bots.
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I'm not sure reparations have a good track record of brokering any sort of lasting peace and de-escalation, see the treaty of versaille for Germany post wwI...leading into wwII..
The myth of overly harsh measures imposed on Germany after WWI leading into WW2 doesn't make sense. If anything, the measures weren't harsh enough, since after WW2 Germany was denazified, partitioned and occupied for decades, which is much more extreme, but obviously worked.
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Interestingly, the USSR also held a referendum in the Baltics, but similar to Ukraine, it was after they invaded them and installed a puppet regime. The more you study history, the more you notice the same old tricks.
The referendum in Crimea has been repeated by numerous Western organizations, including Gallup. [1] The results are nearly identical to what Russia said they were. Russia claimed a 97% "yes" with an 83% turnout rate. Gallup found that 82.8% of Crimeans agreed that the poll reflected the will of the people. It's two ways of saying, more or less, the exact same thing. The minority that opposed joining Russia chose to b…
With the "minor" difference that Serbia was committing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, while no such thing happened in Crimea.
> The big difference is that the one remained relatively peaceful with no further largescale escalation. Ukraine, by contrast, was determined to retake Crimea and clearly had the full backing of the West.
That's completely false. Crimean border has been more peaceful than Kosovo-Serbia border.
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>Russia seems to believe it can “bomb” Ukraine to the negotiating table. I doubt Russia wants any such thing, they just want their toy back in their pram and the good feeling that having Ukraine under their heel gave them, as well as any useful resources Ukraine might have - agricultural land, seaports, raw materials. Stuff like that. They don't want to negotiate with anybody, they just want their stuff (back?) on th…
> ...but lots of 60+ yr old Russians are living in a past they'll never get back to and are blithely ruining Russia's future to get there. That sounds like a Russian Federatiom Boomer generation dragging the rest of the nation down with it to rack and ruin for a nostalgic kick. For those on the ground in the Russian Federation or corresponding closely with those on the ground, is support for the war really mostly ste…
And the Russian leadership certainly is gerontocratic: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/01/31/the-old-guard
As for the social leverage, I don't think they have much on the national level. However, I feel the lower-rung govt staff is mostly composed of 50-something women, and these also dominate meetings of homeowner associations. The men are either hard at work or already dead, and the younger people are not numerous and don't have much rights.
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it was collectivisation not industrialisation, there were droughts in Ukraine 3 years in a row, there was an epidemic, the kulaks were sabotaging farming
I meant industrialization as a general government direction, not as an official Party policy buzzword: the Soviet state just did not care about the agricultural population except as a potential source of workers for the industry. The droughts and the epidemic still did not stop the grain exports (again, the main source of income for the state before, during, and after the famine, even per the official statistics) or…
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Putin vision is Soviet Union 2.0, it has been pretty clear in the last year and even before. From the Kremlin: "Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegrat…
Tell me you don't know what a Commonwealth of Independent States is, without telling me. Putin doesn't want a "new USSR". He wants a Commonwealth. If its good for Brits and Canucks and Aussies and Kiwi's, it'll work for the rest of the world too .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St... Its the USA that doesn't want to see this commonwealth form and become economically viable as a trading par…
During the first months of the invasion when the Kremlin was searching for powerful symbolism, one of the symbols they tried to use was a Red Flag Granny: https://rg.ru/2022/04/12/babushka-s-krasnym-flagom-stala-sim....
They even installed some hastily-made monuments to her, which had to be removed just weeks later after the Granny apologised to the Ukrainian media.
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Only if you consider a 100 year old border a dire situation. Otherwise it would make way more sense economically for Russia to offer to resettle anyone interested no longer being Estonian instead of invading yet another sovereign country.
The present border is more like 80 year old, it was adjusted by the USSR (favouring Russia) after the Baltics were annexed in 1940. However, it generally follows the pre-1917 borders of the Governorates of Estland and Livonia.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=352476
I was unable to find a map overlaying pre-1917 borders and current borders.
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I am well aware of Russian Imperialism. Are you talking about the left and the right in the USA? Who aside from modern US Republicans is giving them a pass?
It's been understated in the US because the US did something similar marching westward across the continent.