Russian airlines ordered to stop selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65
airlive.net
airlive.net
Relevant articles: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/20/russia-sends-army-...
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1572571676524838915?...
Why do you think so much hardware was captured by Ukrainians? Because there just wasn't enough people to drive it all back when they retreated.
Russian tactics suffers because they are sending tanks without infantry. The tanks are meant to support troops to achieve results, not be standalone solution.
Now, the reason I think the mobilisation will not help is actually different. I think somebody summed it up pretty well: "$50M piece of artillery driven by an 18yo". There is already not enough experienced soldiers and now they will be diluted with even more that have no idea what they are doing.
It will also put a clock on whatever Putin is trying to do. Now that this is done, he will absolutely have to show results or public opinion will start deteriorating very quickly.
Just as a caveat, note that the provisions of the current partial mobilization explicitly exclude students and conscripts and is for 300K “reservists who have previously served in the Russian army and have combat experience or specialised military skills”. So, I don’t think the mental image of fresh recruits who have no idea what they are doing is necessarily accurate.
The only real war Russian army fougt ended 22 years ago, and it was a civil war against poorly equipped guerilla.
You have to roll back 20 more years to find a full-fleged invasion of a neighbouring country by the Soviet Union.
That's not exactly true. Russia has problems supplying themselves, but thanks to the astronomical casualty rate they've progressively getting fewer bodies on the few gear they have.
Their units are chronically underequiped to the point whole units barely have boots or bullet proof vests to equip their grunts.
Russia has been rushing their ancient 50 year old tanks to the front lines even without maintenance or any type of update.
Russia is now in such a state of despair that Russia, once one of the world's to arms exporter, are resorting to buying gear from Iran, of all places.
IIRC, Iran has a pretty impressive domestic arms industry. The thing they should probably be more embarrassed about is buying arms from North Korea.
I agree with dilution of skills, with modern equipment number of troops alone mean almost nothing, high motivation and morale can be easily 10x multiplier etc...
But equipment left in Ukraine - that's often part of that low morale. There are countless videos of russian soldiers ignoring their fellow soldiers lying on the ground bleeding and concerning about themselves only. Whole tank crew coming to police station to 'ask for direction', effectively giving up. Imagine US soldiers doing that anywhere... That's something that won't get fixed in 10 years even if they started in right direction now, and they aren't and won't.
These are fragilities of dictatorships, where ass kissing and corruption trumps competence every time. This is one of the cores of what russia is as a state now. I say good for us, since they will never reach even fraction of potential their numbers and equipment gives them.
There is a difference between understanding what is happening and caring about it.
I believe Russians do understand what is happening, for the most part. But I believe most Russians just don't care enough to do something about it. That might change when their sons, fathers, husbands are on the hook to go to a bloody war.
It is kinda like eating meat. You know it comes from an animal that most likely had to live in poor conditions and then be killed. Most people do understand that this is what is happening, and yet they do not act on it because it is easier to not do anything.
I agree. The Russian regime is based on corruption and cynicism. This breeds an attitude of everyone for himself. It is not fertile soil to grow a competent army in.
> These are fragilities of dictatorships, where ass kissing and corruption trumps competence every time.
There have been plenty of autocracies that have had good armies. E.g. Alexander, the Roman Empire, the Rashidun Caliphate, Nazi Germany.
Those vehicles had crews, that's how they got to the battlefield in the first place. The vehicles are being abandoned because they don't have the fuel to make it back to friendly lines because their logistics is a joke. So crews are abandoning vehicles rather than sitting in a Javelin magnet waiting for a fuel truck that will never arrive.
In a professional army if a vehicle managed to run out of fuel or was damaged but serviceable its unit would detach some soldiers to watch over it while an engineering vehicle (an armored tow truck essentially) was dispatched to retrieve it.
Yeah, I read somewhere that their units are so undermanned that they've been sending APCs into action with just the drivers, which apparently is both ineffective and also makes them really vulnerable to the kinds of anti-tank missiles that Ukraine has been getting by the truckload.
Also Russian soldiers didn't care whether it was captured or not. They just care about saving their own lives. This does not make for an effective army, but it's all Russia can do.
“It won’t be pretty, it won’t be efficient, but they’re going to be able to find the people. I think the more relevant issue is: How capable and ready are they going to be — not very. How much training are they willing to give them before they send them out to the front lines. Right now, the indications are — the way they’ve pumped units into Ukraine — is not a lot and certainly not enough.”
This is a classic Russian style of warfare. Throw conscripts into battle. The survivors will become good soldiers or die.
Usually countries do this when they're being invaded, desperate, and fighting on their own territory with the support of the locals. It's rare to see it for a country that's the attacker and is operating in hostile territory. That takes a lot more training, organization, and support.
This can go on for a long time. Russia does not have enough power to conquer Ukraine, and Ukraine does not have enough power to conquer Russia. But they can fight for years.
This can go on until Putin dies.
[1] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russia-mobilization-reserve-...
Russia's strategy seems taken straight out of Zapp Brannigan's Art of War, where they are banking on Ukraine's arms supplies to eventually run out after spending them all wiping out wave after wave of Russia's "badly trained, led, equipped and supplied troops" until there's no resistance left.
Starting from day 1, Russia has been sending unwitting and unequiped conscripts through the Ukraine frontlines until they draw contact.
Ukraine is not trying to conquer Russia. It’s only trying to free its occupied territories. And it has the power to do so. HIMARS and stuf …
I understand their argument, but I dispute it. The way things are going, the war is not going to last for years. Russia's military is collapsing. They have low morale, little training, bad leadership, little to no will to fight, deprecated weapons, no strategy, no allies. Ukraine's military has great motivation and morale, phenomenal public image, good training (and getting better every day), good troop rotation, great intelligence, numerous allies. And now they have the silver bullet too, in the from of HIMARS.
We are not watching a slog. We are watching a lopsided fight.
That said, there's already a huge migration for many Chinese citizens, especially those from Shanghai, to Singapore and Malaysia this year, since now it's super hard to emigrate to US or Australia or Canada. The rich do see the writing on the wall. or rather, the many buses to the covid concentration camps.
What do you mean? Sure it has a large population, but it's also a nation of only children.
And because any conflict its likely to fight will not be one across a two-thousand kilometer front that physically requires millions of people sitting in trenches. It's not 1943 or 1917 anymore.
>> What do you mean? Sure it has a large population, but it's also a nation of only children.
> For the same reason that China did not need conscription when it fought the Korean war.
Your kind of ignoring the point. During the Korean War, China didn't have the one-child policy and families were big. The US never had such a policy.
There are more people between the ages of 15 and 35 in China than there are people alive in the United States.
There are more 20 year-olds in China than there are men in Taiwan.
You don't need conscription to fight a naval war when you have almost a billion and a half people. Your demographics support finding enough volunteers.
Also, the one-child policy put China's fertility rate at 1.70 children per woman. You know what the US fertility rate is?
1.70 children per woman.
Taiwan's fertility rate? 1.2 children per woman.
The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force is much more impressive than the Brits and the French though. (And Japan has major strategic reasons to keep the Chinese on the far side of the Taiwan Strait, most relevant being that that's the easiest place to stop an island hopping campaign towards the home islands)
Sure, might be challenging to project that power to the straight of Taiwan, but by no means impossible as part of a coalition force. And especially the French have some vested interesst in the Pacific with their overseas territories.
I'm not sure the Italian carriers are relevant for operations in Southeast Asia. Maybe once they get F35Bs, but their Harriers would not fare well against much of anything, and that's assuming they have the ability to operate at such a distance from the Mediterranean in the first place. (Incidentally, what most of the world calls a carrier is not what the USN calls a carrier. STOVL carriers are not really in the same class as CATOBAR carriers!)
True so that US carriers, and vessels like the De Gaulle and the British carrier (Elizabeth-class if memory serves well) are different beast than the Italian ones. And the US has quite a few of those.
China will be hindered by not having any real allies, other than short term allies of convenience (Iran, Eritrea, for example).
Unstoppable hypersonic missiles could destroy the semiconductor production infrastructure in minutes.
Wait, why does the Chinese government hate a free Taiwan ? US gov was pretty on point with the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Shouldn’t we be suspicious about a government that “hates” a free neighbor ?
See also the CCP's crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was another place where Chinese people lived with independent courts, a free press, and multiple parties and the CCP was not satisfied.
Interestingly, CCP wanted to help Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea and many other provinces to independent. It is KMT (nationalist government) who advocate unifying all Chinese. I guess the nationalist government won the propaganda war, now CCP go KMT's way.
The answer to that is the most important subject barely taught at schools: history.
Well: history, and humans being.
what does this mean?
In all fairness, the Russian people had
* a chance to stop the KGB in 2000, possibly in 2004
* at least fifteen years to get another passport in a great environment before 2014
* an opportunity to oppose the war in 2014 when that didn't mean getting fired and likely jailed
* another 5 years under more challenging but still workable circumstances to run away
* half of 2022 for really desperate actions
At this point those still in the country have nobody else to blame for their situation unfortunately.
The scale of the tragedy for the Eastern Slavs is reaching truly historical proportions. The 21st century was not supposed to be like that and I don't really want to know what's next.
Getting another passport is really difficult and expensive.
My family emigrated 16 years ago and I still can't get one. In my entire family only one of us succeesed.
I know quite a few Russians here, who wanted to get passport has it, its just about strong enough will and consistency. But that's something very few have, ie consistently take language courses for a year or two, learn culture, history, actually integrate into local society and not just stick around the people from same speaking country all the time.
If you have no good expertise, work hard on getting one, god damn there are countless programmes in both EU and Switzerland to become an expert in something basically for free. It may not be a CEO position but it will be a well paid honest job. Sorry but every single time I've met people complaining about this, they really, really slacked on above and just kept dreaming about superb chances for free, which obviously never came.
This may not be true about other continents, no experience there. But commenter you respond to is 100% correct for Europe.
For example in UK your passport application will be rejected if you were not in the country 5 years ago from the exact date the application is recieved by the Home Office. You could pay all fees, taxes, pass all tests, live in country for 20 years, but if you left for one day on Sept 1 2015 and post delivered your application on Sept 1 2020, your application will be denied.
If you spend 4.9 years on a dependand visa, but then your partner gets a permanent residency, you have to switch to a family visa, and your period of 5 years starts all over again.
Student visas don't count to the 5 year period, being outside the country for too long resets the period, for example if you had to help out aging parent after surgery.
The rules change all the time and there isn't an 'immigrant newletter - what will fuck you up at the next step'. Its usually when you try and apply for the next step, you find out you've wasted 5 years.
Also the amount of money I've spent on various immigration and lawyer fees is probably about 40 grand.
There was some bad luck and one poor decisions made, but the bottomn line is, it's easy to fall through the cracks and end up with nothing no matter how resourcefull you are.
I'm extremely privileged that my experience with naturalisation in Sweden was very smooth. At the same time I lived 5 years with some anxiety due to numerous cases of mishaps with immigration processes from personal contacts.
It includes high-skilled immigrants being deported due to a past employer not paying worker insurance, something that as a worker you're never aware of in your payslip, contract, etc. Includes couples being separated for years, waits of weeks to months for getting a permission to leave the country to care for ill relatives without affecting their process. All of it just for the sake of applying rules, not empowering immigration case agents to take decisions pending further reviews, or a justice system that is rigid on the application of rules (as was the case of the missing worker insurance, which affected a few other people).
Living with those reports from others close to me always kept me on the edge of what could happen to me, and this is a great country as an immigrant, including in terms of bureaucracy.
I can't imagine other places with much more confusing and contradictory immigration systems...
UK rules often seem arbitrary or deliberately trying to trap people.
> The rules change all the time and there isn't an 'immigrant newletter - what will fuck you up at the next step'.
That surprises me: I would imagine there are online forums, maybe a subreddit, for such a purpose.
Given how much of a shitshow shock-therapy economics were in the 90s, I think the results of those elections were completely expected.
People have spilled a lot of ink in 2016 about how MAGA rode a wave of people being disillusioned by the status quo - well, imagine that, but ten times worse, and you'll get a picture of Russia in the 90s. It leaned westwards, got burnt hard, was ready for a change, any change, and look, here comes a Russia-first strongman to make the country 'great' 'again'.
It had as much of a chance to stop Putin in 2000 and 2004 as Kentucky has to not re-elect Mitch McConnel.
IIRC, Russia was a different kind of trainwreck in 2000, so it's not really fair to fault them for not proactively dealing with $CURRENT_THING, when it could have only been distant speculation.
Beyond the reality of instant and powerful retalation, dropping nuclear weapons on Berlin or Kyiv or Warsaw is a tad suicidal from that POV alone.
And even the use of a small scale "tactical" nuke inside Ukrainian territory would essentially force NATO into committing its own forces inside Ukraine. It would be too far beyond the pale.
I don't think Putin will take this gamble. The whole world would lose, but Russia would lose even more.
I totally think Putin is insane enough by now to order a tactical nuclear strike. I also think, for now, the Russian military will act by then and "remove" him from power. Or not, because who knows how those things play out in real life.
Hence Lavrov constantly crowing about the hypocrisy of "the west." It's not that they think what the US empire has done is immoral. It's that they (and by they I don't mean the Russian people, but instead a select cadre at the top) want the same thing for themselves.
The irony is there was no singular unified west until Russia invaded Ukraine. Out of that conflict, they have inadvertently forged a much more united western opposition to them.
I hated the whole concept of NATO until Russia invaded Ukraine.
So yes, I agree, think Putin overplayed his hand in a clumsy way. But he may have had no other choice.
The parallels to WWI are strong.
Yes. What Lavrov doesn't understand is that the West isn't an empire, it's a series of states with similar cultures and political and economic systems, that voluntarily choose to work together. But Russia doesn't seem to realise that there are other ways of getting people to do what you want than brutality and threats.
> What Lavrov doesn't understand is that the West isn't an empire series of states with similar cultures and political and economic systems, that voluntarily choose to work together. But Russia doesn't seem to realise that there are other ways of getting people to do what you want than brutality and threats. > brutality and threats
Brutality and threats is what U.S. sanctions and U.S. national security strategy are.
True but irrelevant -- my whole point was the USA (alongside most nations) has other tools to getting what it wants.
Russia is a country whose only tool is a hammer, and all problems look to it like nails.
You are talking about mobster who understands only strength and rule of stronger, any concept of morality, fairness, rule of law etc. is meaningless. At this point, he considers large parts or whole Europe should be under his dictatorship, and so does parts of middle east. Well we Europeans say NO (and much more). Waving nuclear threat won't change our stance since what goes around comes around, if he goes in others go in and all was for much less than nothing. Fighting for greater Russia will lose any meaning since there won't be any to talk about anymore.
Russia has so much more to lose, it hasn't even begun losing properly.
Western Europe already did that in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
How did that danegeld went?
The west did exactly what you said the last two times Russia took a bite out of Ukraine, and now we're in this mess, with millions involved and nuclear war on the table. I fear to think where we'd be with another round or two of passing the buck.
Every time you give in to Russian threats and aggression, you get more Russian threats and aggression.
The West should tell Russia, firmly and directly, that any use of nukes by Russia will result in the same on Russia, and advise the Russian armed forces not to obey any order that would amount to national suicide.
I won't say you shouldn't be feeling for the Russians, but maybe at least feel as much for the Ukrainian victims?
How long before they start selling territory to China?
Not that I would take that particular offer so...
Nit: We can probably retire this term now.
I had to look it up because this is first time I heard this nonsense term, so it's not like it's commonly used
*everyone but those poor souls being drafted or invaded...
I wonder how many people are trafficked in Shanghai these days tho.
I don't think that's what "descriptive" means. The term is as descriptive as much as "laconic" or "china" or "japan" (meaning varnish) - in each case, you can't independently derive the word's meaning from the original place name.
(Since I'm getting downvoted anyway - anyone avoiding the overwhelmingly more common near-synonym, "drafted", is doing so because they don't like to remember that the US can still do it, too.)
The former I expect to be a highly managed process through which the state renders you unable to seek employment, housing, education, free movement etc, in order to coerce or capture you violating the law, encouraging you to present yourself willingly rather than dealing with criminal charges in addition to or instead of conscription.
The latter, my expectation is that mercenary recruiters, driven by sales team esque metrics, eventually resort to pulling random young men off the street, out of bars, etc, based on a best guess of the young man's age. It's far more chaotic, error prone, and disruptive to family life, while being less coersive.
Did you know all words are just sounds with an arbitrary connection to what they describe (except the unusual case of onomatopoeia, of course)?
It's exactly as descriptive as most other words, and the benefit over a neologism is the arbitrary connection has already been established in speakers' minds.
The expression "to shanghai someone" doesn't just derive from the city name -- it is the city name. And the term originated at a time when respect by the West for Chinese people was not at a historical high point.
FWIW, according to https://wordhistories.net/2019/07/16/shanghai-kidnap/ , in 1857, in San Francisco, they considered the term vulgar slang:
> It was suspected that he had been drugged and carried off, or, as it is vulgarly called, “Shanghaied,” on the ship Oliver Jordan, which sailed yesterday.
I don't think it's necessarily wrong, my issue with it is that the policing comes usually with snark. As if only total disgust to a term and a middling aggressive tone will help.
I only got to learn how some terms can be harmful through empathy, and try to apply that when trying to make a point about why I think using term such-and-such wrong. Even then I still reject when someone approaches someone's perceived non-politically correct speech with snark, we should save that for egregious instances of it, not for small slights...
> Telling people how to talk is just wrong in my opinion
Everyone has their line, though. Not knowing anything about you, I will wager there is some language you were maybe OK with 20 years ago, which you're not cool with today?
So threatening to nuke somebody is completely routine for Russian government and as it seems for not insignificant parts of the angry population too.
EDIT Here's an article about it: https://eurasianet.org/russian-mp-threatens-to-nuke-azerbaij...
I have to add that "Delyagin’s comments were swiftly condemned by senior Russian officials" - but as I said, making the threats itself is routine even for people in government positions.
At this point it's become rather meaningless to take too much notice of such frequent occurrences. Even Putin cannot help himself alluding to nukes, so it's not like you could point to certain people in particular that would be more worth listening to.
In the end, does it matter? If it was possible that threatening nukes gets you whatever you want - and what Russia wants right now is really big and bad - then they could just go and do whatever afterwards. I think the only logical conclusion is that one has to ignore the threats and act as if it's only used as political and propaganda weapon. The possibility that someone will do much more has always been there, but never has it made the West back down in whatever fight it came up in, despite repeated close calls. Right now the losses of giving in would be much higher and longer lasting than in many of the previous instances. I doubt even the Cuban missile crisis was as big a deal as giving Ukraine to Russia would be. Ukraine has industry and resources in large amounts, and people, and it would be a huge boost to Russia's strength to control it all. Whether they can after hat they did is another question, but lets not underestimate the power of a brutal police state. At the very least they will spread tons and tons of misery, more and much longer than they already do, and they will have significantly more control over Europe.
It would tell me a lot about how successful pro-war propaganda is among it's viewership, but very little about what is likely to be done by the department of state.
If Russia breaks the nuclear taboo, all other countries can retaliate nuclearly against Russia. At that point China invading Russia becomes an advantageous action for China.
As I know, this is first formulated by Mussolini: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law".
And the reach of Russian authorities is unlikely to extend into Georgia at least.
you could have money, skills and eligibility to be in EU country, but if your one and only Russian passport has expired you can't extend the visa, the embassy won't extend and you will be sent back.
EDIT: In case it's not obvious, I'm referring to people who do not support invading another country and murdering innocent people, but are being drafted to do so anyways.
Please don’t get triggered by OP. He/she obviously means the ones that don’t support the war, have 0 influence about what the government does, and will be forced to go and die in a foreign country.
Having empathy for the Russians citizens that are going to die fighting a war they don’t support is not mutually exclusive to having sympathy for the Ukrainians.
No other options. The mental settings about society in Russia
Like how many supporters of military action are fine with sending other people to war, but would change their mind if it meant them having to go.
"Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah"
This war is already lost by Russia precisely because the generals and leaders are too far from the frontline. They are using people as pawns.
The only reason this war appears so dangerous is because of nukes. This will be the first time in history that a non-American nuclear power is losing a war.
I thought Russia was losing generals left and right in Ukraine?[1] Certainly, Putin and his sycophants are not on the front lines.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_generals_kille...
That is hard to believe but I am unable to contradict it.
Soviet invasion of Afganistan?
"Can you think of anything funnier than a man having the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his king quarrels with mine, although I don't with him?"
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, circa 1660.
Or we could build giant dueling death robots who decide wars 1-on-1 instead of pointlessly wasting human lives like in classic Sci-Fi schlock Robot Jox [0]:
> Fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, mankind is decimated and the surviving nations—the American western-influenced Market and the Soviet-Russian-influenced Confederation—have agreed to outlaw traditional open war. In their place, disputes are settled with gladiator-style matches between giant robots operated by pilots called "robot jox" [...]
CCR answered this question back in the 1969:
https://genius.com/Creedence-clearwater-revival-fortunate-so...
> Why even stop at war?
Because it's an act. Poverty isn't.
When it did any good, yes, I did my share of protesting. I even did some politics, I'm actually still a party member.
Meanwhile in Putin’s Russia you can get jailed for just calling it a war.
All states, regardless of professed ideology, are only concerned with matters that affect their stability. Nobody in US power elite gave an F about people stretching for miles in DC and NYC. And many in the country were not even aware of the scale of the protests.
Look at what any state suppresses without remorse and that is where their vulnerabilities are.
In countries like Russia, China, and Iran, where the notion of a "leader" is significant in maintaining state cohesion, public displays of division undermine the psychological barriers that any person (anywhere) creates internally, in a very similar fashion to taboos. Public rebuke of leadership breaks taboos that maintain the 'magic circle' of power. It is all psychological, with local variations based on history, culture, system timeline, etc.
For what it's worth, I support people dodging this and every draft.
Flights could have been maintained for the last two hundred days. Russia has had no sanctions against the West and honoured contracts. It was the West that stopped the flights, denying the option for Russian people to leave.
They still do travel into Europe, just need to add a hop or two. Same for Switzerland, chock full of them just as before. You can spot them from mile, and their language is hard to not recognize immediately (especially since I come from former eastern bloc previously occupied by russians)
This.
We already have Putin's pundits demanding thins like the Russian diaspora to increase waste of gas in Germany and the like to contribute to keeping Germany dependant on Russian gas.
We have elements of the Russian diaspora organizing protests against support for Ukraine, and in support of Russia's invasion.
We have Russian tourists flashing Russia's fascist symbols and messages of support of Russia's invasion, oppression, and genocide campaign.
And now these guys are supposed to want out?
These sudden refugees are no better than those Russians who suddenly felt compelled to flee south Ukraine, specially Crimea, when Russia's war effort started to crumble.
You seem confused. Tell me which war are these invasion- and genocide-supporting russians fleeing from. Or are we supposed to believe that to Russia's fascist militants a war is only awesome if it's everyone else doing the fighting?
And yes, as long as Russians in, e.g., Germany are protesting in support of the war, and follow the rules concerning demonstrations, they should be allowed to do so.
Russian colonists in Ukraine didn't fled war in Crimea. They started leaving occupied ukraine territories because the war they are and were supporting enthusiastically suddenly stopped going in their favour.
There is already a wealth of reports of Russian tourists being enthusiastically militant about Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the point of assaulting people who bear any relationship with the country or show any semblance of support and even vandalizing their tourist destinations with propaganda supporting Russia's assault.
If these prospective political refugees exist, in the very least they should actually stand up against their country's murderous and self-destructive attack on Ukraine. Until then, let them reap what they sow.
Don't confuse chickenhawks with dissidents.
Just kidding.
The ones that stood up are spending 15 years in a jail system known for torture and rape of men
> There is already a wealth of reports of Russian tourists being enthusiastically militant about Russia's invasion
So jail them, fine them for very large amounts, deport them back naked. Force them to lick dirt off the streets, whatever.
Can our police not manage some fat asshole drawing a Z with a crayon?
Aren't the russian armed forces are also known for torturing and raping their own conscripts and soldiers? With reports from captured soldiers on how russian officers are systematically killing wounded soldiers?
I have a weirdly unique counter-point. Of course totally anecdotal but: I lived in a shore town for a few years that exclusively had a ton of Ukrainian/Russian workers over the summertime.
Not only were they usually quite attractive - they were also intelligent and hard working (most of the time, emphasis on MOST of the time)
You had to be careful as they would latch onto you for obvious reasons but they were honestly typically pleasant. (Green Card, etc;)
Where did you hear/read about russian horror stories?
Before 2022 could you even distinguish between a Russian and Ukrainian? Especially if the latter is speaking Russian?
> I heard only nasty stories about Russian tourist
Edit: and this is doesn't answer my question: did you have been able to distinguish between them? Did the people who told you nasty stories could distinguish between them? In 2022 it is much easier because they haul their flag almost everywhere, but before that?
not unthinkable such things will follow, but so far might be fake news
Europe is not a safety net for Russian lack of democracy and common sense.
Russia 101: Russia forcibly mobilizes men from occupied teritotries, most of them will die off in the spec operation, then (after war) loyal russians will be imported to that region.
Those who should take responsibility are the rich who also don't have to worry about being sent to war. The question is, how do we make them take responsibility?
Easy. Sanctions, travel bans, financial restrictions, and stop buying natgas.
Ramzan Kadirov is a regional warlord in russia, known foe decades for murder and torture. Before the war he had instagram and other social media accounts. Should the Western leaders ever take responsebility for working with blooduly dictators when it suits?
As opposed to some poor John Doe in the middle of Siberia, who protested mutiple times and got nothing but a broken skull to show for it
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/09/the-ob...
Reminder: If Afghan or other refugees from the various wars and occupations in that region of the world send money to finance resistence, we in the West have a tendency to call it funding of terrorism.
Russian citizens don't bear the financial responsibility (or the moral blame) for what Putin in doing.
So — tone deaf, perhaps, but only if you have a stereotypical image of a "refugee" in your mind.
It sure is! And yet, emphasis mine:
>... everyone who did get out...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30505495
> We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming". I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government. If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it. Free speech is one thing but this decision is more about a government that is committing war crimes against innocent people that we want nothing to do with.
Yeah I'll take all your downvotes. My family got out and I don't appreciate companies calling me a monster by accident of my birth on the wrong side of an arbitrary historical border.
At no point in that quote were you called a monster, nor were you specifically blamed for anything. This sentence is key:
>I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime.
I empathize with how difficult the Namecheap issue may have been for you, but Namecheap did not call you a monster. They simply didn't want the tax dollars generated from you going to a cause they may not support, even if that was never your intention. Simple as that.
Oh but they didn't ban them... they simply gave them 7 days to move.
Oh but they're not calling them monsters, they're simply calling them people who support a regime of monsters.
Oh but they're not calling them supporters of that monstrous regime, they're calling them funders of that monstrous regime.
>Oh but they're not calling them supporters of that monstrous regime, they're calling them funders of that monstrous regime.
INADVERTENTLY. That's how taxes work. I disagree with different presidents and their policies and their actions, but I don't go to the people who oppose that president, but still pay federal taxes, and call them monsters. Hell, I've felt uncomfortable knowing that my tax money was used for things I disagreed with, but I also know that that did not make me a monster.
You are not a monster. Nobody thinks that you are. You got screwed by Namecheap, and that fucking sucks, but you are not a monster.
What they don't know is where I live and to whom I pay taxes.
But hey: you can't ban all people in Russia from a platform without banning loads of people not in Russia too, right?
no way for me to do this. most companies are not like this but it feels like gradual lockout and the walls are closing in. thankfully I don't have family to support, but some do
I specified residency in my comment, because I (mistakenly, it seems) thought your mention of not paying Russian taxes or living in Russia meant you were a resident elsewhere. I'd be curious to learn more about what country issues almost-year-long visas without involving some sort of residency status.
It seems generally reasonable that people who have not actually formally immigrated from Russia and obtained residency elsewhere are affected by sanctions on Russian citizens.
If I legally reside in your country for a long time, do not use Russian financial system or pay taxes to Russian government, do not plan to return to Russia, haven't had a Russian customer in my freelancing career (not working in your country, that would be illegal, but working with customers in other countries) I know I'm a Russian tourist in your eyes and the eyes of immigration officers but no matter how you spin it legally in reality I've been a resident of your country.
There are also examples in that thread of people who got exceptions. One person was doing a notable job of protecting Russians against the regime.
And Namecheap is 95% Ukrainian it seems. So, raging about having 7 days to move seems inconsiderate considering the situation.
However, you may be required to stay in your home town and not travel outside without permission if you are potentially subject to mobilization (which is the case for ~50% of men in Russia) - IANAL, there's different readings of the rules here.
The Russian government keeps their borders open so dissidents can freely leave if they want. They don’t bottle them up within the country as the USSR did.
I hope Russian leadership is already seeking an exit in which they can restore productive international relations, not intending to go out in a blaze of personal infamy.
And I hope everyone else outside of there wants to see relations restored, not to cripple them, at tremendous human cost.
Also the OG source - guy in Israel who tries to sell his fiction books. Always check the source.
Russia has used this tactic before with success. They used to send wave upon wave towards the Germans. Your choice was get shot by Russians or maybe get shot by Germans. Turns people choose to try and kill the Germans first.
As far as I know, they were fighting a rather well trained army which had better training and weapons than they did.
It's realistically possible that they could just win the war just by sending so many people that Ukraine runs out of people to fight back even if they were killing multiple Russians per Ukrainian that died.
It's like everyone forgot the reason Russia were feared wasn't that they were a super power, had an amazing military. It was the fact, they don't care how many Russians die to win and they are brutal.
China is making serious overtures about invading Tawain. It's well known they want to take Tawain "back". Letting them US and other countries waste their weapons on killing Russians is benefical to them. It also creates an overall unstable geopolitical envoirnment which they can take advantage of. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It is much better off continuing to do what they're doing today: providing token diplomatic support to Russia in exchange for steeply discounted fossil fuels.
No, if we're talking about Germans attacking during a world war, it was an existential threat to Russia. The same cannot be said of Ukraine.
Don't know how this thing works.
Tickets for the Moscow-Belgrade flights operated by Air Serbia, the only European carrier besides Turkish Airlines to maintain flights to Russia despite a European Union flight embargo, sold out for the next several days. The price for flights from Moscow to Istanbul or Dubai increased within minutes before jumping again, reaching as high as 9,200 euros ($9,119) for a one-way economy class fare.
How do they simultaneously argue how awesome they are doing at war and then a draft?
There's no way anyone is convincing me nuclear isn't happening if things go even worse and maybe not even locally, he's got nothing to lose at this point, there's literally nothing the world can do about it because they aren't starting WW3
Could be Ukranian propaganda to stir up Russian society, who knows.
Do they mean this Bible prophecy teacher? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Tsarfati
Do you have a reference for this? The raw numbers don't seem that bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#Data
Everything I can find suggests they're ok, short term, with possible long term problems from loss of foreign markets.
The context of the article is that partial mobilization has been ordered. All reservists and all veterans have now been conscripted.
The distance between what is currently happening and full mobilization is quite small in fact.
No, this is not true.
I haven't heard anyone deny the translation, why do you?
The fact that flights were sold out are all over the news, including CNN, BBC and APNews, e.g.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-fleeing-mobilizati...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-21/flights-out-of-russia...
It included this paragraph:
"Mr Putin's announcement, made in an early-morning television address on Wednesday, raised fears that some men of fighting age would not be allowed to leave Russia."
EDIT: To be clear, the linked Reuters report did not say airlines had been told to stop selling tickets, just that above sentence speculating that it could happen. The Reuters report is 6 hours old at the time I am posting it here.
The safest way forward is for Russia to be comprehensively defeated in Ukraine.
You cannot appease a fascist state.
"If you tell Ukraine to just surrender the parts Russia want, please point to the parts of your country you would surrender if one of your neighboring states attacked your country."
Oh, that's fun. Just imagine if Florida was ceded to Cuba.
The problem here is that the war doesn't seem to be about Donbas.
Sounds like a win-win to me!
A truce would've just given Russia what they wanted, and given them more time to mount the next and inevitable attack.
Otherwise, you'd be creating an incentive for countries to invade smaller countries and then ask for a truce when they're losing.
I just wanted a nice job, wife, and family. I won't be sad if the "elite" centers burn to ash.
How many hedge fund managers have a private plane? Not many.