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Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

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Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#31

Post by smcl »

zerr wrote: post #27
smcl wrote: post #9

I commented somewhere a few weeks back[0] that we should probably be making it easier for Russians who are vulnerable (those who left during the mobilisation push, are vocally critical of Putin, or who simply want to not be part of it) and want to defect. There's not a great deal we can do to make it easier on their end - presumably there are some controls on the Russian side on the way out - but if someone does make…

How was this handled for Nazi Germany defectors?

No idea, probably not very well

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#32

Post by smcl »

lm28469 wrote: post #18
smcl wrote: post #9

I commented somewhere a few weeks back[0] that we should probably be making it easier for Russians who are vulnerable (those who left during the mobilisation push, are vocally critical of Putin, or who simply want to not be part of it) and want to defect. There's not a great deal we can do to make it easier on their end - presumably there are some controls on the Russian side on the way out - but if someone does make…

> but if someone does make it to the UK ... we should help them do so. Didn't brexit happen exactly to fight that ?

Brexit happened for many dumb reasons. The current government has been going through a patch of being deeply unpopular and have decided that banging the anti-immigration drum can help shore up their base. So in truth yeah it's unfortunately quite unlikely they'd do much to make it easier to come to the UK, particularly if you're from Russia :-/

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#34

Post by darrenf »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #22

> Russia confiscates passports of senior officials ... which passport? Russians have two passports, one is for the internal matters and other one for traveling abroad. Add: lol downwotes. Sure, guys, you are always concentrated and read the article, filled with the fillers and stating what the water is wet to the brim, because, you know, someone may wake up from 20 years coma and suddenly need to read this article. A…

The passport required for foreign travel seems the likely answer, given:

> Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, confirmed Russia had tightened the restrictions on foreign travel for some who work in “sensitive” areas

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#35

Post by EliRivers »

codedokode wrote: post #33
traveler01 wrote: post #28

Clearly they're winning the war /s

[flagged]

Russia has many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks

I've got a high quality 486 processor here but it still gets slaughtered by a cheap, ropey CPU I bought last year. A high-quality Soviet tank is a high-quality outdated tank that's very vulnerable to modern weaponry.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#36

Post by t0m44c »

codedokode wrote: post #33
traveler01 wrote: post #28

Clearly they're winning the war /s

[flagged]

Ukraine is not a small country. And Russia is also relying on imported weapons from Iran despite its "infinite" resources. And finally it does not matter how many men Russia has, what matters is how many soldiers they have. Just because they hand rifle to someone doesn't make him a soldier.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#37

Post by EGreg »

mateo1 wrote: post #25
EGreg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I can totally believe it could happen 2) Every intelligence agency is trained to put out disinformation, to their own publics no less, and what’s worse they actually foment the revolutions and destabilize countries which leads to these very wars that create so much havoc UK spy agencies are behind the astrotufed revolution in Iran, for instance, which took out their democratically elected government. CIA helped ar…

Ironically you also listed most the reasons I'm not a libertarian. As more things move from the public sphere to the private one, there's less transparency, not even a hope of public control (such as providing a moral direction via elections), and no obligation of improving anything. Structures like KGB and CIA will still exist, they'll just be completely outside the law, multiply in numbers and intensify the violent…

Well, you assume I am a right-wing libertarian. I am a left-libertarian:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

I don’t want concentrations of power in unaccountable corporations, either. I want housing cooperatives, credit unions etc.

But given that we have large states and corporations, let’s use that “public control” to vote body cameras for all cops and make ALL negotiations by our politicians publicly accessible. They work for us! We should know why they failed to prevent a war or a pandemic! Do you agree w that?

PS: It hasn’t happened, democracy wasn’t able to even get term limits for Congress despite overwhelming agreement it should happen. MAYBE they will outlaw insider trading. I would say that the problem is large concentrations of power in the hands of those who put profit / ideology over human lives — this whole “democracy” thing is just the system (organizations) pacifying people. Sometimes it can even make things worse as administrations change (eg Clinton’s deal with North Korea and Obama’s deal with Iran were killed by the next administrations… and USA has been doing this for centuries, eg Andrew Jackson renegging on Jefferson’s promises and causing the trail of tears). A small kingdom like Morocco or Monaco may actually be more stable and peaceful and less belligerent than a large democracy. The UK was a democracy during the British Raj and that didnt make it any nicer than when it was less of a democracy.

https://youtu.be/VP_SpW-DyQg

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#38

Post by MoSattler »

codedokode wrote: post #33
traveler01 wrote: post #28

Clearly they're winning the war /s

[flagged]

You are completely leaving out social factors. Are Russian citizens willing to support the invasion no matter the cost? Are they willing to dedicate their lives to it? Or is there a point where they would decide it's just not worth it? Without the support of the populace, the government wouldn't be able to pursue this for long.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#39

Post by raverbashing »

codedokode wrote: post #33
traveler01 wrote: post #28

Clearly they're winning the war /s

[flagged]

> has many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks

You men the ones that go extra-boom whenever something hits them?

(just to be clear I mean having the auto-loader under the turret make things extra-spicy when hit even by a grenade or something)

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