Putin has always walked liked that, apparently it's down to KGB training.
What's this about? It's already sovereign no? And what right to secede from the Republic? Is it a region full of Russians kicking up fuss?
Afraid of being poisoned.
Putin's regime know the tricks.
(You can see the limp as well..as the big head. And one side of his face is up and the other down. )
I would say that was more on the orders of Putin because of his COVID paranoia.
The size of his head
More Russian stuff going up in flames
She's rumoured to be anti-Putin.....but cannot say so publicly of course or even hint at it.
China supplies the stuff they cannot make tbh. But seems not the case for Russia.
She wanted to quit earlier this year but was told to stay.
The Russian Central Bank Chief - a lady - must have been on holidays And she being held up by some boardies as the smartest central bank manager in the world!
But Putin appears to be making sweeping long term assumptions and predictions - European resolve waning, America ditto, famine putting pressure on the West etc. It's all roll of the dice stuff with very little to back it up or to indicate it may happen. So far, he seems to have gotten every big call wrong.
There may be trouble ahead in Uzbekistan
Russia/Putin appear to have learned somewhat from the earlier part of this phase of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, although it's far from a sophisticated kind of learning, more of a 'concentrate artillery into this one area and rain it down indiscriminately' kind. It's working to the extent of keeping Ukrainian forces at bay, although it's grindingly slow progress for Russia - a really ugly attrition warfare. Ukraine needs those long range weapons in number to render Mr. Putin's strategy in the Donbas yet another miscalculation.
He has miscalculated so many times though and seems very badly advised. You'd have to think he's making a mess of these predictions as well.
They can shrug all they want and shrink back into an economy of self sufficiency and comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, a la DeValera. Lorded over by an elite who will continue to splash the cash on desirable consumables. That's what generally leads to revolution.
I am not intimidated nor moved by your low-ball attempt at trying to tar me as anti-Semitic.
A lot of Russians (and indeed Ukrainians) who immigrate to Israel may have extremely limited Jewish heritage (often a single great grandparent). They are encouraged to do so by Aliyah organisations because of demographic concerns within certain strands of Israeli politics. That they often ghettoise themselves in Russian only communities and has become a matter of concern for Israeli government and commentators is documented fact. That they have moved Israeli politics to the hard right is also not in dispute.
I don't give a sh*te if you think the above is anti-Semitic. It's documented, and it's a fact. And a lot of Israelis would hold the same view.
Not interested in your family history. Although it adds a certain amount of colour to your Putin bootlicking.
I never called for collected punishment. I'm on record on the thread saying Russians who aren't part of the Z column have nothing to do with the war are welcome to have Ireland as their home. Those who were in the Z convoy on the motorway are a public order and security risk and should be sent packing. No question.
I won't lose sleep about Russian invading soldiers heads on pikes though.
Macron put out a tweet about the tanks (I believe it was an English tweet), which was quickly corrected to armoured vehicles. People put it down to a translation error, but I'd say someone questioned the tanks and it was corrected. I don't think western countries have that many Soviet tanks left, so they would need to be western tanks, which for some reason the west is reluctant to send.
Neither of these things are happening nor likely to happen, especially while they are raining down missiles. Most of what inflation can do to us has been factored in already but Russia is far from the worst of sanctions. They also haven't seen all of the promised Western weaponry deployed against them yet.
Net result of a heavily sanctioned country though is that they just get left behind. Also, the idea that they could very quickly turn things around if sanctions were lifted might not be realistic....it could take them many years to recover from being a sanctioned regime.
I'm completely with you.
If Putin had his way he'd push all the way to the Adriatic bypassing turkish closing the Bosphorus. Pride themselves on long term thinking.
All for the "common good". Hitler thought that way too. Hopefully his people or other forces get to grips with him and end him.
Yeah, Putin is counting on two things right now - war-generated austerity weakening European resolve, and American political instability turning America into an unreliable partner in the alliance of Western countries. The famine-induced immigration to Europe would just be more fuel to the fire.
I drew attention to the influx of Russian-born Jews into Israel, in reply to which Yurt2 posted the piece you were responding to. It is clear that Yurt2 was very critical of far right influences (just read his post), as indeed I am.
You accusations of calling for collective punishment based on race are plain nonsense and a complete misrepresentation of others' posts.
Why do you think Russia invaded Georgia 2008?Certain pipelines goes trough from Russia
Same with Ukraine,also have pipelines going trough from Russia and also have large gas reserves themselves
There's a post and a half!
Just wondering if you knew is oil and gas originating from Kazakhstan that is exported through Russia to Europe included in Russia's inventory of exports?
Kazakhstan gets a right hammering from Russia in control of those pipelines to Europe. It's also imo why Putin is eyeing Kazakhstan next.
Eh? Apart from the horses mouth? Are you worried this is a deep fake video, why?
Supplying tanks is a ratcheting up... 'boiling frog' continues.
I have a strong feeling you're underestimating Russians' abilities to shrug at things. Their middle class isn't particularly big (and shrank with people flying off at the start of this) and they're all that need to be taken care of.
For the craic I decided to dig a little deeper into the "Russia being one of world's largest exporters" of your list. And I looked for data before this nonsense kicked off so the anti/pro spin would be minimal. This graphic from 2017 popped up:
just over 56% of their exports are oil/gas(and coal). If we threw in byproducts of those industries I'm sure we could add a few percent to that. Fertilsers for example. Nitrogen based ones use over 50% gas in their production. WOOD = a couple of percent. STEEL = ditto. ALUMINIM(interesting spelling..) = same. Even CEREAL is around 3%.
Now the petrol pumps make them a tidy sum indeed, but yep they're basically a petrol station with a counter at the till where you can buy a wheat bar and a couple of trinkets. Plus a fair number of those exports are also now under sanction.
Now let's look at their imports for the same year:
Medications aren't on the sanctions list which is fair enough, but a shedload of the rest are under sanctions so they have to look elsewhere like China, or go back to producing their own. Both take time to shore up the difference and will cost more in the short and long term. Modern high tech stuff will take even longer and cost a lot more*. They can't design and build smartphones in Russia and a few truckloads driving in from China won't shore up the difference any time soon. Now smartphones are trivial, but this goes for all their IT stuff that controls damned near everything these days.
They could do it back in the days of the USSR, even if they lagged behind on many metrics, but they're not a self contained command economy built up since the 1920's with a load of vassal states and double the population and a population who expected less and were exposed to less.
While the West, especially the EU, got overly reliant on their gas and oil, Russia got overly reliant on Western tech and markets, but the West is a lot bigger and richer and with more advanced clout.
*the vast majority of modern tech is Western or Western licenced to places like China. Now China could go all in and just nick that stuff, but then they'd be facing sanctions of their own and would lose the two largest markets with the most hard cash on the planet; the US and EU, and a few others who would hop on like the UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. China's economy would face huge losses. Or they can continue as they are, keeping "friendly" with Russia while buying up their oil and gas at big discounts, but not taking things too much further to protect a massive part of their economy. The Chinese are no dummies, so guess what they're most likely to do...
is there any other indication from anywhere, that this may be true?
2 more weeks right? we can only hope
By that time the Russians will have taken all of Luhansk and be pushing toward Kramatorsk so the sooner the better
No, I mean new relative to the stock Ukraine has which dates back to the USSR. And even then its only some of their stuff is relatively new, they have plenty of their own from the cold war era.
Another aspect to this is how Russia will support Belarus when they run out of disposable cash, let alone rebuild Mariupol etc.
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