Winter_Rain

Nah, this population mess goes back to before Putin was even born. A lot of it can be blamed on Stalin, population transfers were one of his common tactics to deal with nationalists and assorted other "troublemakers". He would remove the ethnic group to Siberia or Central Asia or whatever and bring ethnic Russians into their lands (this was not always consensual for the Russians either). In the later Soviet era some of these ethnic groups were allowed to move back to their homelands, but authorities still had a heavy hand on the situation and heavily suppressed nationalism. But it backfired, and instead surged across almost the whole former commie bloc once the boot on their necks was gone, leading population movements, ethnic cleansings, religious revival, xenophobia, etc. Transnistria is a difficult problem to solve because wtf do you even do with those people?

The thing is that Putin showed his ass pretty much from the beginning of his time in power, everybody just chose to ignore it. He was suppressing dissent from the beginning. And after more than 20 years, well...not super shocking that there's not much open dissent anymore. 20 years in politics is a very long time. Invading a neighbor? Putin did it already in 2008, in Georgia, with almost no consequences. So then he decided to get more bold and try to grab Crimea. Still few meaningful consequences. So was him launching a full invasion of Ukraine really shocking, or a natural progression? He'd already showed his ambition. The lack of humanity, the destructiveness, the brutality of the Ukraine war? Putin did all of it already in Chechnya. Before there was Mariupol, there was Grozny. Then after Putin crushed them he installed a strongman loyalist to rule them. Chechnya was a brutal, savage conflict that cast a long shadow over Russia and it's neighbors. It destabilized the whole North Caucasus, showed very low value for human life, killed or displaced large numbers of people, and was a major generational trauma for multiple assorted ethnicities of Russia, yet it's rarely mentioned by Western analysts unless it's politically convenient to do so, which is kind of amazing to me. Eastern Europeans though...they paid attention and didn't forget. Ukraine actually gave refuge to Chechens who didn't want to live under Putin, and now some of them/their children are returning the favor by fighting in the Ukrainian army. Chechnya has cast a very long shadow over the whole region.

I mean...the problem though is that most average people aren't seeing benefits from it. Unemployment doesn't matter when the jobs don't keep up with cost of living. "Growth" doesn't matter when people are stagnating in place and can't access the property market due to high prices and high interest rates. Hopefully these things will improve in the coming years. Because perception matters. If the economy is doing well on paper, that's good. But if regular people don't perceive that they're getting benefits from it, that's bad. 🤷🏼‍♀️

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/02/17/commander-ukrainian-troops-withdrew-from-avdiivka/ After a bloody months-long battle, Russia has taken the town of Avdiivka in Donetsk. It's just a stagnant, bloody war of attrition at this stage. https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/28/eu-considers-exports-curbs-against-countries-that-help-russia-avoid-sanctions-ft-says/ Also, Russia has been bypassing sanctions. The loophole is that EU countries/companies have been exporting to third countries (primarily Russian neighbors like the Caucasus and Central Asian countries), and then those third countries export the goods to Russia.

This is not true. There are various memorials to the victims of Soviet repressions (in fact one of them is mentioned in the article about Navalny). And Stalin is definitely not memorialized, he's a very controversial and divisive historical figure still. I don't know if they'll memorialize Navalny, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, because they memorialize Boris Nemtsov (last major opposition figure before Navalny, arguably the last person in Russia who actually had a chance of being a genuine threat to Putin). He was assassinated on a footbridge at the base of the Kremlin walls in 2015. People set up a makeshift memorial to him. From time to time the authorities remove it (including just yesterday, because people had started leaving tributes to Navalny there as well), but people put it back again. Sometimes it's been desecrated and people who maintain it have been threatened or assaulted (one guy actually died after being beaten, officially it's still an "unresolved case"). But people still keep the memorial going. For nine years now. When I saw it I was honestly really surprised. This isn't some out of the way location, it is a high foot traffic area, right at the base of the Kremlin. It's like a constant symbol of defiance against Putin. So there is a flame of hope burning there still, even if it's a small one.

Tucker Carlson groveling and shilling for Putin's regime is honestly just cringey and infuriating. Like it's super obvious for one thing that he doesn't actually know any ordinary Russians and that he didn't travel outside of Moscow, which are classic tourist mistakes. IDK as someone who's had an interest in Russian culture and history since childhood, I just hate that so many of these people repulsive weirdos interested in Russia for all the wrong reasons (to try to get Russian women or because they think it's some kind of conservative utopia against the decadent West... that sums up like 90% of them).

Ultra-nationalists in general can get pretty wild. Just bring up [insert bad thing their people have done here] and things can get really uncomfortable really quick. The more typical Russian WWII narrative minimizes/disregards stuff like Molotov-Ribbentrop, Soviet war crimes, and invasions of their neighbors (Baltics, Finland, Poland), and portrays Soviets as primarily victims (somewhat true) and as liberators (which is.. very debatable to say the least, because going from Hitler to Stalin is pretty much a heads you win, tails I lose kind of situation). But this is a level of historical revisionism that's pretty much just straight up Nazi propaganda, honestly. And he pretty clearly paralleled the Nazi invasion of Poland with his invasion of Ukraine so...yeah. You're never on the right side of history if you have to compare yourself to someone like fricking Hitler to justify your actions. (It's even more mind boggling because a lot of Putin's family was killed or otherwise victimized by the Nazis when they invaded the USSR, and most people tend to have visceral feelings about things that negatively affected them or their family members and feel the effects of generational trauma. It's very weird).

You didn't even mention the best part: that she's still pretending she's black and changed her name to Nkechi Diallo 🥴

Anyway, probably not going to watch the entire interview, but I did watch the beginning of it because as an Eastern European history nerd I did get curious. It was pretty much a typical Russian nationalist take, which I expected, and definitely got more egregiously misleading as Putin got into the 20th century. (Particularly how he chose to recount Poland's role in history, jfc). Completely omitted for instance that Russia participated in partitioning Poland and they didn't even have a state for 150 years, until after World War I. And also blamed Poland for getting invaded by Germany in WWII. Claiming Ukraine is an artificial state made up by the USSR is also a pretty common Russian nationalist take. The main danger with nationalist narratives is that they are based on historical facts, just interpreted creatively and with omissions, and when they're presented by someone with a calm and authoritative vibe, it can be hard to detect everything that's wrong with what they're saying. And it's almost a certainty that the average Tucker Carlson viewer can't even find most of the nations being discussed on a map, to say nothing of knowing their history. Tucker Carlson himself clearly didn't seem to know much either since he never challenged anything except to say he didn't understand the relevance. So pretty much, I'm not at all confident that the average Tucker viewer can even detect BS. (I mean...if they could, they wouldn't be Tucker Carlson viewers in the first place, I suppose).

I didn't originally have an interest in watching it, but after I saw the memes about Putin pretty much being a Reddit history autist while Tucker looks dumb and clueless, I did admittedly get curious.

To be fair, that's a very typical Russian Boomer opinion. And it's honestly understandable, because the collapse of the USSR WAS catastrophic for most of their generation.

Funnily enough this was already being rumored a couple weeks ago but was shot down as "Russian disinformation" etc. So it's kind of interesting that it turns out to be true after all. Zaluzhnyi is popular among Ukrainians so Zelenskyy gave him some high military award, most likely to stave off bad rumors and prevent bad feelings and disunity.

I mean...they've been like that for quite some time now. It's immediately noticeable if you follow Russian language media at all. It's just "США" this, "США" that, everyday. 😅 Although to be fair, it's not just a Russia thing. Americans kind of live in this bubble where we pretty much ignore everybody unless they're relevant to us for whatever reason. The rest of the world watches us way more than we watch them. It's a consequence of being a big power.

I don't understand the complaints about this ending or how the idea of bad stuff happening in a distant future long after all the characters are dead somehow makes the story pointless. Life isn't pointless because there is death. History isn't pointless to know about just because like 95% of it is civilizations and societies that are long gone. Trying to push forward and create a better future for the following generations isn't pointless even though you can't guarantee what might happen in that future. I think It's a realistic, thematically fitting ending and I can't really imagine a different one, not with the way the story was told leading up to this point.

By the way, for the last couple months a big tiff has been going on between Ukraine and former staunch ally Poland. It's economic related, pretty much Ukrainian goods and services flooding the EU market has been hurting Polish businesses a lot. (Ukrainian prices and salaries are much lower than Poland, plus they don't have to follow EU workplace regulations. In summary). So Polish truckers and farmers have blockaded the border, and by extension severely limited Ukraine's land links to the EU (keep in mind that the northern and eastern borders are hostile and that Russia is blockading the Black Sea). Additionally Poland voted in a new government a couple months ago and the transfer of power has not been entirely smooth. So that's a thing that's been happening, and with surprisingly very little coverage in English language media. Here's one of the most recent articles I could find talking about it. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/07/1223065019/20-mile-backup-as-polish-truckers-blockade-border-in-standoff-with-ukrainian-dri

Seems like typical sycophant behavior to me. I have a very simple explanation --- because he's going against his nature. Medvedev was known for having a very mild-mannered personality as well as being more moderate and open to reform compared to Putin. The macho tough guy thing doesn't come naturally to him. But, the political climate in Russia has become much darker and more openly aggressive and nationalistic, a moderate seems downright anti-war at this point. So, he has to evolve to keep up with the times and keep himself in the running as a viable Putin successor.

Projection? She's obsessed with his peen and therefore assumes the rest of us must be too?

Last week marked an important anniversary. 10 years ago, the Maidan began. It started as a protest against the pro-Russia Yanukovych government. This set off a chain of events that led to the present moment --- Yanukovych getting removed from to office and fleeing Ukraine to live in exile in Russia in disgrace; replacement with a pro-EU government; annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbass conflict; election of Zelenskyy; and invasion by Russia. That one moment in time, that one starting protest, completely changed Ukraine's trajectory and led to the next ten years. Bohdan Khmelnytsky made the defining choice to join Ukraine and Russia's fate together in the 17th century, because it seemed like the best choice at the time in a dangerous world. Ukrainians themselves chose to part ways and align with the West in the 21st century, for the same reasons. History is a circle sometimes.

So the bin Laden thing actually does have a backstory. A couple weeks ago bin Laden's manifesto went viral among some of the TikTok kiddies and they were posting reaction vids about, like, them agreeing with his points, because it was Babby's First Anti-Imperialism I guess and half of these TikTok clout chasers are dumb 15-year-olds while the other half are just dumb. Anyway right wing social media accounts ran away with it and apparently decided that this represents a majority view of pro-Palestine people. Very disingenuous but also very typical. Because of the pro-Palestine people are disingenuous too, in that their position is not truly "pro-Palestine" but is actually "anti-USA" (if they are pro-Russia/China it's usually a dead giveaway that their true underlying intentions are dishonest). The distinction here is very important, but right wingers like to pretend it doesn't exist (whether they genuinely can't tell the difference or they're pretending not to for the sake of making strawman arguments, I'm not sure of). So this bin Laden TikTok thing once again gave right wing accounts the chance to muddy the waters and try to push the idea that pro-Palestine people are inherently anti-US subversive elements. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think it "feels" different now because there are a lot of chronically online influencers and NPC personalities who get geopolitics solely fed to them through social media algorithms jumping in on the pro-Palestine thing for internet clout. This crowd makes things feel artificial. Because in their case, yes, they pretty much did just learn about Israel-Palestine this year, and they'll move on the next trendy thing eventually. However, there are a lot of legitimate pro-Palestine people, and there have been people who have sympathized with them and disliked Israel's actions for a long time now. Maybe you just didn't notice them as much before. (Also think that public sentiment has in general been shifting towards Palestine in the last decade or so in particular for varying reasons).

Bro you're thinking way more deeply about this than any secessionist ever has. Who needs to think about things like economics, or how to feed your population? Sounds like some elitist ivory tower woke shit to me.

There's been talk about a second mobilization for two months now, so I am skeptical for now. Worth mentioning though that the first one was rather...targeted. They disproportionately went for ethnic/religious minorities and "undesirables" (poor, alcoholic, criminal history, etc). If they do go for students that will almost certainly be targeted to --- students who are known to be anti-Putin for instance. Ain't no way the kids of the elites are going to get drafted (of course, most of the really top elites are already living in and have most of their assets in the West, though...)

Main source for this claim appears to be Russia so I am very skeptical. (If it is true though, that would be a poor decision by Ukraine).

He did it the week of the war anniversary actually (which is today, I mostly remember because it's my son's birthday and that was a real depressing start to it last year 😅). You are definitely right about the importance of dates though. Which is why the invasion date was almost certainly not coincidental --- February 23 is a major commemorative military holiday in Russia. And then Putin invaded immediately the very next day. The only military date that would have been more notable would have been May 9 (WWII Victory Day) --- a date that Putin was almost certainly planning to have the "special operation" completed by, so that he too could try to grab some glory like leaders before him. No one expected Ukraine to put up such a strong resistance (although Russia's utter incompetence certainly has helped them in that regard). The sad part is that Putin was quite a decent leader at the beginning of his tenure. Russia was pretty much a failed state when he took over, and he turned it around and made it into something halfway decent. He's thoroughly destroyed his own legacy. But in the end, this is the trap most autocrats fall into. It's never enough, their glory seeking is never satisfied.

I can safely say I know Russia far better than the average American. I wrote academic papers about it college, I know some of the language, I've been there multiple times and spent time there, I know maaaaany people from there, got married there, married a guy who had been born and raised there and had never left until our honeymoon, all of my in-laws still live there. So I feel qualified to say that your takes are overly simplistic and shallow. Like it genuinely boggles my mind that people can unironically try to blame the US for Russian aggression (most of whom have never even been to Russia and are just repeating the same dumb takes that are copied and pasted directly from Russian state TV). Russia is still Muscovy at heart, except in the modern era cultural and economic power are far more effective than trying to gain vassals by brute force. Just because you dislike US foreign policy actions doesn't automatically mean anti-US regimes are worth defending (autocrats around the world have certainly used that mentality to their advantage to try to maintain power, though...). I cannot emphasize this enough.