503 karma · joined January 4, 2014
Of course, according to propaganda, it's all "efficiency" and "saving" and definitely not US effectively killing EU industry.
USA works for many years on destroying German industry. Starting from not allowing to build gas pipelines from Russia to Germany and eventually destroying them (I don't think that even brainwashed western population believes in that bullshit theory that 5 guys on a yacht destroyed Nord Stream). To the Volkswagen emissions scandal and plundering Deutsche Bank.
Russia always wanted to be a friend with Germany because that would be highly beneficial to both parties. USA always looked for a way to make that never happen and to destroy German industry.
USA succeeded, Germany has a bleak future ahead. But that is only tangentially related to energy import/export.
Putin came to power in 1999. Until then there was hunger, rampant crime and corruption. He managed to stop all that in just 2-3 years. People started to eat right, they had normal jobs again, it had become safe to go outside.
Western media that disguise as "Russian opposition" that work on destroying Russia from within, still have a very hard time explaining this to population. Because everyone who lived through the 90s remember very clearly how Putin managed to fix everything at once so quickly.
But to the western reader there's no need to explain that, you can start outright with the most obnoxious lies about Putin, since nobody there understands what happened here before and after Putin.
> You think that the measly Russian economic output is what paid for the 90s boom?
People on the West are used to count everything in paper (USD) which is printed in absurd amounts and allows them to inflate their GDP as they wish.
USSR economic output was higher than Russian. USSR had lots of resources, including immense supply of strategic materials (precious metals for example).
1. All that was sold to the West for the price of scrap. Also, not only materials, but plane's, ships and rockets blueprints, scientists, teachers, sport coaches. Just about everything that could be sold.
2. Collapse of the USSR and deliberate destruction of all the industry overnight created a huge market for Western corporations. Just overnight.
And yes, that paid for the boom of 90s.
> And what do all these Russian oligarchs own? The Russians were preyed upon by their own
And do you know how that happened? Before 1991 everything was state owned. After 1991 it was the western "advisors" (from CIA and that's not even a conspiracy theory) that created Russian oligarchs. Also made a buck themselves while being at it.
So, how do you think he's portrayed in the western media? As a freedom fighter and icon. It's unbelievable! But strength of western propaganda is unbeatable, they can make an idol out of anyone.
And if someone still says that World Economics is not a zero-sum game, I'll laugh in the face of that person.
USSR was destroyed and plundered exactly so that the West would enjoy the golden era of 90s while people were dying here and everything was being destroyed and sold to the West by the price of scrap metal.
NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Ukraine could be friends with EU and US and not be a part of NATO.
> The NATO excuse doesn’t explain the invasion and partial annexation of Georgia in 2008, either.
Do you really know anything about what happened in 2008? Honestly, not from the media and not from Wikipedia. Because regurgitating the easy-peasy propaganda from media is not interesting in any way.
How can you be so sure that it was Russia that "invaded" Georgia in 2008? How comes that although Russia beat the Georgian military force so easily that we could capture the whole Georgia, we didn't do it? There was nothing to stop us in 2008. How comes that "greedy Putin" didn't take Tbilisi and everything with it?
Putin rules the largest country in the world. One of the most rich countries also (in real resources, not just printed money and inflated GDP). What do you mean by his "greed"? That he wants to take the place of USA and rule the whole world?
> being detached from reality due to covid fears and paranoia
If he's been detached from reality, how he succeeds ruling the huge country in clearly hostile environment? Don't you ever find a contradiction in this?
> overconfidence in his army
I guess (we all can only guess) that he didn't expect that all the West would supply so much weapons and soldiers of fortune to Ukraine (AFAIK, there're tens of thousands of soldiers of regular army of Poland fighting there, also France, US, and other countries). Still, Russia is prevailing, there's already no young Ukraine men left, there're only 45+ years Ukrainian men left and Western combatants.
And it's almost evident by this point in time that there's no way Ukraine would win that war. There're some scenarios like CIA would be able to organize successful coup de etat and replace Putin with traitor like Gorbachev or Yeltsin or someone of that kind who will simply sell Russia to the west.
But there's no way to win this battle any other way. Not with 45+ years old soldiers riding 100 donated western tanks because Russia already burned down 7,000+ soviet tanks donated to Ukraine during the past year.
All of our demands were declined in the most obnoxious manner possible: "You mean nothing, we don't want to listen to your concerns, go away and die silently in your Siberia"
If you think that Putin is sick, do you think it is possible to rule the huge country with quite big population, huge territory, and a bunch of problems exacerbated by Western sanctions, quite successfully? E.g. the effect of sanctions on everyday life in Russia is negligible opposed to predicted effect. E.g. if you read comments on HN from about 1 year ago, you'll read something like "Russia would collapse in 3 days" (or 3 weeks or 3 months).
Also, is it like some God-like force makes his subordinates to listen to him although "he's clearly mad"?
It's such a primitive train of thought fueled by propaganda, that it never ceases to amaze me, especially on site like Hacker News and not reddit.
Journalism is dead. There is only propaganda (2-3 kinds of propaganda). Or maybe it was always the case only that I never noticed that.
There are 8 billion people in this world, close to 200 countries. Every second, there are millions of different events happen everywhere. Someone is born, someone dies, someone is killed, someone is promoted, some building is built, some building is being demolished.
There is simply no way to describe all this in any newspaper. The more I live, the more I see that every paper, TV channel, blogger, carefully selects tiny percent of facts out of billions of facts that happen every day. Only those facts that push the agenda or fits existing view.
There's no independent news and can't be. I don't know even what happens in a district which is 5 km away from my house. Thinking that I'm perfectly aware of what happens in some country that is 1000, 2000, or 6000 km away from my home is insanity.
There cannot be a different result in such circumstances.
But I'm pretty sure that most Windows users wouldn't use any editor resembling vim.
Well, lots of them definitely are fake. Ukraine government had even to fire one of its propagandists because she started creating such an absurd fakes about rapes that nobody could believe this and it undermined the influence of Ukranian propaganda. Her name was Ludmila Denisova.
McFaul is considered an expert on Russia, he even lived here for some time. Still, when he says something about the way we live or the way we think, or anything like that, it's usually so delusional, that I can't understand what was he doing here for two years. Has he even stepped outside of US embassy a single time?..
But on the other hand, I think it's beneficial for us, that all the West lives in a dream that they know everything about Russia.
Just about every twit from McFaul about Russia is so deranged, that I'm not even surprised anymore, I read him as a good comedy.
Well, there is. Why do you think I have less possibilities to access information than you? Yes, some websites are blocked. A tiny minority of USA/EU funded propaganda horns like Meduza, that for years translate pretty obvious rusophobic messages. But I can read even them through VPN or through numerous other ways that CIA and NSA provide for free for such propaganda factories.
A huge difference is that I can speak and read three languages. I can (and do) read US and European news in their native languages. I can read and do read from time to time social media like Reddit. I have friends and relatives in various countries of the world.
People in US and EU have less possibilities. Does any significant proportion of population can read Russian? No. You are forced to read only tiny amount of information that is selected by somebody else and translated for you.
Regarding Russia/Ukraine conflict there's even more. There's no separate Ukrainian nation. It's not genes, it's not anything else. Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia. We do not yet fully understand why they did it. We only see documents signed by Stalin, for example, "to intensify teaching of Ukranian in schools in universities" in this region. It's an irony, that they vilify and destroy monuments devoted to people that created their state. Also, I'm sure you never read about this and saw these documents translated anywhere in your media, because it would be pretty inconvenient truth.
Anyway, because it was always Russia, there're millions of families split between Russia and Ukraine. We understand each other. Even Ukranian language is easy for us to understand - it's Russian grammar but some words are replaced with Polish equivalents. There was and is perpetual movement of people between Ukraine and Russia. My ancestors were living on Ukraine when there was no such state but it was a part of Russia.
You cannot understand the history and relationship of Ukraine and Russia to the same extent as we do. You can't understand the Nazi propaganda in Russian and Ukranian that is all over the Internet, especially Russian/Ukranian parts.
You're being told a very simple story: "Putin hates democracy and that's why it want to destroy the great democratic state of Ukraine and it's great democratic people!" and you have no other choice but to believe it. There's simply no other source of information for you. Nor would you ever be able to understand what people here feel and think about it, when US based agencies come to Ukraine, for example, and publish books like "Paladins of Hitler" and other rusophobic propaganda, that is either Nazi or entirely confabulated.
You have no means of access to objective or balanced information. You can't read anything about Russia or Ukraine in the original uncensored form. You can't watch any video from Ukraine or Russia without it being carefully selected by somebody and then translated for you.
E.g. you wouldn't be able to ponder when you see videos of Ukrainian soldiers being killed during combat, why seconds before dying they always speak in Russian, how that resonates with Joseph Brodsky poem last lines: https://russianuniverse.org/2017/02/27/joseph-brodsky-on-ukr...
And usually it's you, Western audience that makes blanket statements with no basis, uttering it so arrogantly as you know it all, where you actually know nothing.
What makes you think so? What was/is democratic about Ukraine? How Zelensky, for example, crushed all the opposition parties and media, and even arrested some of his opponents after he came to power? Do you know about that?
BTW, here's the video of him before he became president: https://youtu.be/cAfXNbnXwxg Hilarious, if you understand Russian. It's about so-called Ukrainian democracy. I'm pretty sure it won't exist for long on YouTube, and it won't be ever translated to English.
> If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?
Would you be able to understand without translation? Who would translate it to you?
Can you understand this, for example: https://youtu.be/ofEF5l72sjQ
> Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.
There are no parallels. Except that Ukraine was pumped with nazi propaganda to the top. They named streets and stadiums after Nazi collaborators that helped Germany exterminate tens of thousands of Jews in Ukraine during WWII. If you look at almost any photo/video of Ukainian army personnel, they openly wear Nazi uniform, Nazi tattoos, SS insignia. They even use Nazi salute.
It was especially easy to find before 24.02, they've become more careful since then, but still they fail many times to blur swastika or Hitler tattoo when filming their new propaganda videos.
There're tons of videos like this: https://youtu.be/_eDjtPwC2wY
> US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.
More like, US does bad things and always gets away with it.
Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.
> This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus
How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?
You attribute to him something that western propaganda fakes like it's some irrefutable absolute and complete truth.
BTW, do you remember that before it all started, Russia explicitly asked for guarantees that NATO won't expand further towards Russian borders and that request blatantly refused by the West.
Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.
You'll never be able to get a complete picture of what was and what is happening here because you can read and understand only what is fed to you by your media and this information is heavily biased to put it politely.
> the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich
It wasn't a revolution - it was a coup funded and organized by the EU and USA.
This is an excellent example of wishful thinking. American influence is clearly shrinking. Just one example: when Biden went on a tour to oil-producing countries to ask them to increase oil production, every single country either ignored him or agreed to make homeopatic scale increase (which was presented as a huge win by US media).
And BTW, despite all that, USSR invested a lot in development of those Baltic states like Latvia. Like really a lot. They were swimming in money compared to RSFSR or other republics (maybe only Georgia had the same level of allowance in the USSR). USSR built industry and power plants there, that they later happily sold for scrap after 1991. And closed fine nuclear power plant built for them by the USSR. Now they have no jobs, population is rapidly declining (during the "awful" USSR times it was growing), they have no energy. Good luck to them.
I think it was a mistake to invest so much in those states, one of the reasons for USSR decline. Russian people worked hard to make those Baltic states happy and now they are the most ungrateful nations saying only dirty words about USSR and Russia. Just as Georgia.
It seems the more you give to people, the more ungrateful they become. Just look at British/USA colonies: they still respect the master. E.g. Japan didn't invite Russia this year for the ceremony on the anniversary of US nuclear bombings. But invited USA. We joked: "Why the didn't invite us, but invited USA that bombed them? Because without USA this ceremony wouldn't even exist in the first place".
What did USA did for Afghanistan besides bombing it into stone age and leaving tons of weapons and deceived people behind?
So we had to invest all the available resources into developing a technology that would protect us from US nuclear strike.
Although I agree that in many (but not all) cases USSR tried to copy western technology and goods, Tu-144 is a bad example as it had flown 2 months before the Concord, so it clearly couldn't be a copy of Concord.
Also, they killed almost 30 million of young productive citizen of USSR.
It was a huge knock which almost no other country ever endured. And it set back the development of USSR.
Also, those comments about war and propaganda are also inaccurate. USA started much more wars than USSR/Russia, and as the result of those wars USA killed at least 20 million of people, destroyed infrastructure and industry, plundered resources, e.g. oil of Iraq and Libya. And haven't built anything.
If you'd really study the history, although I'm pretty sure you won't find any accurate information about USSR in the western history books, you'll learn, for example, how USSR built kindergardens, hospitals, schools and industry in Afghanistan and other countries. Investing the money and labor of Russian people in 3rd world countries. Had ever USA did the same?.. Other than printing another billion of USD and "giving" it to some other country, with 90% disappearing in somebody's pocket in transit.
And don't get me even started on propaganda. Do you believe western society doesn't have propaganda? How comes then that you all have the same opinion about everything? Especially on external politics.
USSR wasn't an ideal society, but you're either inventing imaginary horrors or repeating lies invented by somebody else.