This thread is about Russia and any events, political or otherwise, that are or might be worth discussing.
Any news, links or posts pertaining to the situation involving Russia, Crimea and Ukraine must be put in the 'Crisis in Ukraine' thread.
Group of deputies wants Gorbachev investigated over Soviet break-up.
Above in the Guardian version
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Putin's war against Russia's last independent TV channel
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No discussion regarding nuclear war. As nuclear weapons are not being used by either side, nuclear war is off-topic.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 27th 2022 at 11:26:10 AM
Are the World Tourism Organization going to drop Russian as one of their official languages, then? No point in keeping it if Russia are no longer part of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/v9tqoy/russian_invaders_repainted_the_stele_in_mariupol/
The Mariupol sign is changed into Russian from Ukrainian. And they also repainted it.
Crossposted from the War in Ukraine thread, Russia are literally erasing Ukraine and Kyiv from their history books: https://mobile.twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1535800488783925249
Igor Volobuev of Gazprombank fled to Ukraine. He's ethnic Ukrainian and the reason he left was that he was worried when he kept hearing news that rich businessman and their loved ones are found dead.
Not in the reuters article though, but the latter details I mentioned are from Russian/Ukrainian-language articles AFAIK. I'll have to look.
Looks like Russian Mc Donalds is now up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vkusno_%26_tochka
Name is Vkusno & tochka.
The Ukraine war conversation recently brought up a retracted Izvestia article
attributed to Putin's deputy chief of staff Sergei Kireyenko, which supposedly declared his willingness to rebuild occupied Donbas at the cost of trillions of taxpayer rubles. Meduza addresses the sketchiness surrounding the article's publication and whether it might be a fake designed to smear the government.
“Working today on joining new territories to our homeland, I deeply understand like no one else that Mariupol, Melitopol, Berdiansk, Kherson, Simferopol, and Sevastopol aren’t just names,” says a speech published in Izvestia on June 12 and attributed to Sergey Kiriyenko. In the text, the author goes on to advocate referendums on joining Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, explaining how these Ukrainian cities belong to “the Russian people’s shared tragedy” of supposed persecution by the government in Kyiv. “There will be no more of that,” reads the speech. “I am ready to guarantee it today, tomorrow, and 10 years from now.”
A source with knowledge of the Kremlin’s domestic policy work told Meduza that the remarks in the speech do, in fact, represent Kiriyenko’s views, but the text itself is uncharacteristic for several reasons. For example, “only the president can make public addresses like this,” said one source. Even on a holiday, speaking to the nation is not Kiriyenko’s role at the Kremlin.
Another source explained that officials in the presidential administration are expected to stay in their respective “spheres,” which is why it is especially odd that the speech attributed to Sergey Kiriyenko mentioned the economic costs of rebuilding the Donbas and international issues like the West’s attempts to impose its “vision of the future” on both Moscow and Beijing. The speech also wandered into sensitive international issues, likening Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian lands to territorial claims by China in Taiwan and Turkey in Cyprus.
Two sources close to the presidential administration and another person with ties to the prime minister’s cabinet told Meduza that they suspect Kiriyenko’s adversaries inside the government likely hired hackers to plant the speech at Izvestia. “His public activity bothers a lot of people,” said one source, adding that not everyone welcomes Kiriyenko’s ambition or access to the president. By tying Putin’s first deputy chief of staff to a speech about matters foreign and domestic, styled on a presidential address, the hoax’s perpetrators possibly hoped to show that Kiriyenko is overstepping his boundaries.
Another source told Meduza that hacking Izvestia might be the work of Russia’s “peace party” — the largely silent political bloc of figures and officials (including some major businesspeople) who oppose the invasion of Ukraine.
One person with ties to the presidential administration also speculated that “Kiriyenko’s own people” at Izvestia may have published the speech with his secret approval: “It’s a summary of his views. On the one hand, it’s obviously fake. On the other hand, it’s planted in the public agenda for evaluation. Everyone who needed to read the article has read the article.”
Whatever the reasons for the hack, Kiriyenko must now contend with the consequences of the article’s publication. “It clearly seems to be fake,” said another source, “but what if [Putin] suddenly starts having doubts and thinks maybe it’s for real?”
Meanwhile, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told Meduza that Putin has “not seen” the article published at Izvestia in Kiriyenko’s name.
The BBC are reporting it. According to the Dutch security agency the guy spent years building a fake identity (as a Brazilian), applied for an internship and then got refused entry to the Netherlands when he arrived to start work.
The Dutch security agency have apparently published the guy’s cover aid from 2010, as in the document he wrote detailing his fake identity so that he could keep the cover story strait.
Edited by Silasw on Jun 16th 2022 at 12:23:43 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
Guess Russia wasn't as immune to sanctions as he claimed
Hypothetical question: Suppose that Vladimir Putin had never come to power after Yeltsin, and instead someone who was an actually competent former KGB intelligence officer (thus ensuring he had teeth through his connections in the KGB's successor agencies), and had both the ambition and morals to purge the corruption that riddled post-Soviet Russia and turn it into a functioning, Western-friendly liberal democracy with a thriving economy that was not overly dependent on oil and gas exports (even though they'd naturally form an important pillar). How much that have affected the international politics of Europe? Would this new Russia end up joining the European Union and even NATO, just like the rest of the former Eastern Bloc states have done or are trying to do IRL?
Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 19th 2022 at 5:51:53 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.What, you mean like Yevgeny Primakov—
...Oh. Hmm, don't you feel that these two criteria might be at odds with one another? Just saying.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.It's not the same time period but now I'm reminded of Lavrentiy Beria, the last head of the NKVD. IIRC, if he had successfully seized power after the death of Stalin, he wanted to strike an alliance with the US, which may have nipped the cold war in the bud. Key word being 'may'.
Of course, this would have not necessarily been good or even preferable to what actually happened, considering that Beria would almost certainly have done this for entirely self-serving reasons - he was a mass-murdering pedophile rapist who even Stalin didn't trust to be in the same house as his daughter, and was the same guy who carried out Stalin's purges, then did purges of his own, then ordered they stop doing purges so he could take the credit for it. His depiction in The Death of Stalin was actually toned down from real history.
So an alternate timeline where he held on to power might have lead to a more cordial international situation, but at what cost? And that's the best-case scenario. More likely, it probably would have just been a case of Meet the New Boss (same as the old boss).
...I realize I've strayed way off-topic but like, going from what
has said, I can imagine there were similar figures post-Yeltsin who may have been better internationally but just as bad as Putin for Russia proper, if not worse. Come to think of it, isn't it true that Putin took a less overtly anti-Western stance when he first came to power?
Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jun 19th 2022 at 4:32:56 PM
Those sell-by-dates won't stop me because I can't read!
Didn't Khruschev want to initially reduce hostilities with the capitalist powers too? The whole peaceful co-existence doctrine was based on that wasn't it? Doubt any attempt by Beria to get some kind of alliance with the US would t have ended in failure too since the Soviet Union wasn't going to stop competing and expanding political influence in the global stage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_coexistence
Edited by xyzt on Jun 19th 2022 at 9:12:50 PM
Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 19th 2022 at 7:19:19 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Of course everyone already knows with all the lying Russias done concerning Ukraine already that he planned on doing this anyways. He probably thinks he can bring them into submission until he does.
Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/vgbixn/apparently_russian_import_substitution_for_coke/
Funky Monkey soda is used to replace Coke and Fanta.
