"Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there" is an obvious choice that comes to my mind.
I don’t think the US would leave Iraq because they couldn’t buy IP licensing. They’d probably say that the IP licensing is invalid and do it anyway.
Anyway. Obviously I want this invasion to end, but obviously they don’t. So, this move makes sense given that context.
I've used a lot of them personally, especially games. Some of those translations were pretty good, and some were so bad they were actually hilarious, and have become a meme (like "wasted → потрачено" in GTA San Andreas)
I know one indie game whose Russian localization was done and distributed with the pirated version first, before being adopted by the dev and added to the official distribution. (of course since the guy is only doing gamedev as a hobby, his stance regarding piracy of his own games is quite relaxed)
Decades ago I patched binary Commodore 64 applications to have messages in Spanish, getting as far as patching programming environments like Logo and BASIC to have not just error messages but also the keywords translated.
Even without source code it is somewhat doable, and modern applications often have localization mechanisms that remain in the compiled executable.
They will use Linux, build their own alternatives for Google/Youtube or use Chinese sites. It will all be fine. In fact their data will be safe from Google and Meta.
oec.com has lots of info per country on what makes up their economy.
Russian oil is already going unsold, without formal sanctions.
Also, remember that while China and India can choose to continue receiving exports they didn't pay as much as Europe did _before_ the war. If Russia has reduced itself to one or two potential buyers, those buyers have the power to dictate pricing well under market and the financing options are going to be very much not in Russia's long-term interests. China has a strategy they've used on smaller countries where they offer aggressive loans for projects and then take control of infrastructure / resources if the borrower defaults, and I'd be exceedingly unsurprised if some Chinese companies end up doing something similar here.
In some sense they could survive on a war footing (i.e. people won’t starve) but their economy will take decades to recover even if sanctions are lifted soon. They lost 25% of their wealth in a few days (rubble) and don’t even have a functioning stock market.
This is already a catastrophe for Russia.
All Russia has the domestic capability for is going back to long range four engine planes, which will increase maintenance and fuel consumption.
It is only necessarily for regional flights.
In the worst case, the airlines will have to transport the parts to Russia themselves, which is not much more costly than getting Boeing to do it.
Explainer-Importance of Russian Titanium to Global Industry
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2022-03-01/...
In the long term, Russia can survive by selling gas to Europe, and buying goods from China. In the short term, there's an absolute madhouse in the domestic markets.
Unlike in the Soviet days, when most of its domestic products were locally produced, Russia has de-industrialized, and all of its supply chains have become incredibly dependant on the West. It can't turn back the clock 40 years overnight.
Since you didn't specify bad for who (but really, even if you did) still this:
> "Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there"
The Russian narrative of "we're helping the newly recognized DNR/LNR" doesn't make much sense - why are they invading all of Ukraine to make those two regions safe?
This is sort of like if the US "helped" Taiwan by taking Beijing. Or South Korea by capturing Pyongyang.
Also, the Russian news keep saying "DNR/LNR forces aided by Russian forces". When it's clear it's just the Russian military.
Not 8 years ago, but for the last 8 years. You know, being unaware of some pretty basic circumstances around an issue and then claiming undeniability is pretty rich of you.
> constructive comments that add to the conversation
How did your comment add to the conversation? You just repeated a common black/white sentiment and showed that you weren't fully informed about the topic. Please, be mindful next time.
This is what eventually will happen, but over Putin's dead body most likely. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", that kinda thing, etc. Everybody agrees that by starting this pointless war Putin has painted himself into a corner.
ie. there are still diplomatic ways out of this open to Putin. If he is not open to considering them and feels cornered, it is his own shortsightedness and failing.
It has been said that you should never draw your pistol unless you are going to shoot. I don't know if that's true; but I do think it's unwise to threaten violence unless you are quite sure you are prepared to carry through.
I think Putin is prepared to carry through (he's made the threat more than once). Russia seems to be losing in Ukraine; but they can't be seen to be slinking away with their tail between their legs. So I think there's a good chance Russia will pop a tactical nuke in Ukraine.
For the same reasons, NATO can't be seen to tolerate the popping of tactical nukes in a regional conflict; they would have to retaliate, for fear that their nuclear deterrent be treated as a joke. I haven't any idea how NATO might select their target, though; striking a city would be gross over-reaction, and striking Russians in Ukraine would be rather counterproductive.
NATO should definitely not respond to nukes with nukes unless Putin drops one on a NATO country. Ukraine is not in NATO. That makes it a first strike, not a retaliatory strike. Putin's propaganda has been that NATO is an aggressor threatening Russia. If NATO strikes Russia in retaliation for a strike on a non-member country that only vindicates him, and you know, leads directly to WWIII
Hey, I didn't mean to sound like a cheerleader for global thermonuclear war! I'm just observing that the logic of nuclear deterrence calls for a response whoever Russia attacks. If it becomes clear that Russia can nuke anyone it likes as long as they're not in NATO, then it can march into e.g. Georgia or Armenia with a company of conscripts, and take over, declaring that any resistance will be met with nukes.
Suppose Russia pops a small nuke in Ukraine? Really, that's not going to achieve any major military victory. They'd need a few to end the war in Russia's favour. That would result in clouds of fallout afflicting NATO countries. At some point you'd have to say "that's enough". But at what point? After two? A dozen? Only after the first megaton city-flattener?
I was a member of CND for a year, back in the 80's. I still favour unilateral disarmament. I quit not because I didn't support the goals, but because I was shocked at the political infighting I observed at the Annual General Meeting.
Not everybody. The "NATO pushed Putin into corner by inviting Ukraine" theorem is still alive. In any way, cornered Putin is angry Putin and angry Putin is dangerous and may be unpredictable.
Do you of a good source that covers the topic?
You can use Realism to predict that Russia would eventually try to regain the power it lost over Eastern Europe and the Baltics with the dissolution of the USSR. In fact that very understanding and fear is precisely why countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics pushed so hard to join NATO and the EU, because they predicted that would happen.
But that doesn't make Russia's actions the right move, either legally or morally. They have agency too and could always have made the choice to not to try to act like an empire with violent hegemony over their neighbours.
2. "NATO pushed..." does not imply Russia is right. Russia is wrong, legally and morally, but it can be simultaneously true that NATO pushed Russia.
2. "NATO pushed" is deceptive framing. The countries that joined NATO after 1991 had to lobby hard over many years to get NATO members to agree to expand. Even then the process took forever with MAPs and other interim steps each designed to slow the process down.
No wonder China is gleefully standing by. They're just biding their time. When 2 dogs fight over a bone...
Putin has said that Ukraine is a historical mistake, and laments the dissolution of the Soviet union. This war is because he want's to create a larger Russian empire, not a preemptive strike for self defense.
an unrealistic choice is not a choice.
Or from a different perspective: if the opinion of the citizens doesn't matter, then why is Putin shutting down independent journalism and turning up the propaganda in his own country? That only makes sense if he cares what the public thinks.
Shutting down the media limits the average person’s reason to know there is even a thing to protest against.
It’s not absolute power over the people, but it does diminish the power of the people.
Putin's approval rating is at 70% [0]. From [1] (referring to the invasion of Crimea):
> President Putin's approval rating among the Russian public increased by nearly 10% since the crisis began, up to 71.6%, the highest in three years, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, released on 19 March.[346] Additionally, the same poll showed that more than 90% of Russians supported unification with the Crimean Republic
So it looks to me that most Russians supported the Crimea invasion. Why would it be different now? I find it hard to believe that if Russia hadn't found such a stubborn resistance and would've been able to annex Ucrania quickly, which was what the Russian government thought would happen, in five years all the polls wouldn't show Russians supporting the invasion.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_...
Do you remember "garbage in - garbage out"?
If people fed nothing but bravado on how the glorious leader shines the path to the wonderful future, how in the world they would see him in a negative light?
The last two years showed everyone what even the professionals are happy to spew an utter nonsense, directly contradicting their profession and education, just because they want to feel that way.
And remember - population polling gives you information on how people feel about something, not why do they feel that way.
PS:
"Let us ask your opinion on these matters:
1. How do you feel about our President?
#a I'm delighted to live in this glorious days and I'm fully supported our glorious leader!
#b I'm a shithead and prefer to spend the rest of my days in gulag."
Hyperbole, sure, but how the poll is constructed, where it was performed also matters.
On the other hand, I have a limited amount of empathy and at the moment it is being consumed by people who are actually being bombed by not their own government.
Hmm, no.
I would say believing that garbage is on them. [1]
But when you have nothing other than garbage?
Don't forget what this is the country where you can be detained for holding an invisible placard [0] - so saying something out of the party line is a quick way for the unemployment at least, hence the people who could had provided some other info (primarily on TV) have big incentives not to do so.
[0] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-protest-arrests/25324619.html
[1] which is another joke because half of those people lived or at least were born when "government never tells the truth" was the default MO even for the government itself.
Then they can all take to the streets and protest against the regime to make their PoV heard. Sure, the protesters will clash with the police/military who will use force against them, but if it's indeed the vast majority of people as you claim, against the regime, then the police/military cannot overwhelm over ~80 million people on the streets.
If the vast majority refuse to take to the streets in protest, then it means they silently or otherwise approve the government's actions. It's up to the Russian people to sort out their politics, by violent force if need be, if they're truly unhappy with the past 30 years of fake democracy and corruption among their leadership.
Same how in 1989 people and students in Romania took to the streets, en masse, to oust the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who refused to step down and had the military shoot the protestors. Spoiler alert: he still got ousted, so the excuse that "we can't protest in Russia against Putin" does not fly.
For a man who is said to have thought the people deeply loved him, he sure was paranoid. Or maybe he actually knew how much people hated him and he was just fooling himself?
But Putin is nowhere as unpopular as Ceausescu was. His approval ratings that I've seen are no different from those of Western leaders. A lot of people there seem to believe Ukraine is full of Nazis. Nobody is going to storm his palace any time soon and I don't think the sanctions will help. They'll just reinforce his "the West is out to get us" narrative. Don't forget they don't have anything reminiscent of a free press anymore.
The problem is - as long as the economy is fine they don't care.
Personal anecdote:
In April 2010 I was protesting ratification of the so called "Kharkiv Pact" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact) in Kyiv. I remember a moment, when I was single-handedly pushing three rows of soldiers (national guard; they didn't really try) and almost no one else joined, one of the members of our group said to another: "There won't be a revolution today. Let's wait till they start losing money, then we'll try again".
Where you go wrong is that the comment you were replying to was not talking about their ability but their options. The grand parent comment said: (paraphrasing) “Hey, what can Russia do, if no one licences them software?” To which the comment you responded said (again paraphrasing) “They have the option to stop the war”.
You are not disputing that Russia has the option to retreat, you are just talking about how they are strong and nobody can force them. Which might be true, might be false but certainly is a complete non sequitur in the context of this conversation.
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