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Topic: What's Going On In Russia? (Read 49740 times)

Re: What's Going on in Russia?

Reply #125 –
Quote from: Mr. Tennessee on
Is [Russia] a democratic state or a floundering proto-Soviet empire wannabe?
Well, North Korea is an empire wannabe. Russia, as the greatest territory in the world, is no wannabe, but a state with imperial ambitions that can actually be enforced, if they play it right. Or, better said, if everybody else keeps playing it stupidly enough. And it looks like US/EU specifically are playing it stupidly enough. The force that can reasonably moderate Russia's ambitions is China who has very much the same ambitions.

Floundering? Not economically, surprisingly. I thought Russians would attempt a revolution when rouble shrunk in half in devaluations, while loans of the people are tied to USD, i.e. the people were officially robbed. Some mobs attacked banks in response, but for some reason this wave cooled down.

Democratic? There are hardly any democratic countries in the world. Where I live, the supranational entity called EU has eroded much of the power and distinction of nation-states by an undemocratic process. When/if EU begins critically failing, the countries who relied on it too much will have to re-orientate themselves or re-discover their own identity. The latter often means nazism to some degree and the former is not necessarily democratic either.

A country like Russia always found expansive opportunities under the rule of a Czar or Czar-like figure plus kleptocracy. Which is right now. About high time I went there again to see it all myself first hand.

Edit: And congrats for managing to open a third thread on Russia exactly with the same heading. The other two are here
https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=549.0
https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=260.0

We also have threads specifically dedicated to Putin. Hot stuff.

Re: What's Going on in Russia?

Reply #126 –
In general terms since the collapse of the USSR there has been a general improvement. Years ago I had a boss who was desperate to visit the USSR as if it was some place of inspiration (poor woman). However when she came back from her holiday she was a changed person. From poor hotel matters to everything controlled by the State. Outside of party bosses who had use of cars it was tram or bus. Shops were not very attractive. Personally i can remember the dreadful views inside shops and it never appealed to me at all. Shops had shortages and the lives of the population boring as hell. Even food shops had constant queues. Today the cities are crammed with traffic jams, wide variety of commerce, shops and competition so well moving in the right direction.

The place has vastly changed from the control, freakery of the Soviet nonsense and being so large has every right to make it's presence felt.  Just nodded to my picture of the last Tsar.....
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #128 –
Quote from: jax on
Edit: And congrats for managing to open a third thread on Russia exactly with the same heading. The other two are here
Sorry, I couldn't find the earlier versions.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #130 –
Quote from: jax on
Merged the thread into thread #549, probably to be merged into #260.
What would be about us if not protected by buroucrats?
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #131 –
Putin has a law on the Russian nation in the making.

"Nation" is an unfortunately ambiguous word in Indo-European languages. The ambiguity helps politicians to cover up their real intentions, enabling rhetorical retreat when challenged, while sending appropriate signals where needed. In the West, "nation" means more like country and citizenship, but in Russia it means more likely ethnicity.

To add to the ambiguity, Putin chose the foreign loan word to refer to the law plans. This has a double effect. The foreign loan word may convey to Western nations that the concept would be just like they in the West have it. On the other hand, the loan word in Russian is pronounced close to "Nazi" in English. Say no more.

It also has a direct connection to the hitherto shunned (shunned in Kremlin) word "nationalism". For Kremlin thus far, it's always those other countries, such as the Baltics, who are "nationalists" while Russia is cozy and peaceful and merely helping "compatriots" (=ethnic Russians abroad). Now it's evidently the turn for Kremlin to be openly nationalists themselves.

In other news, Steven Seagal visited Putin in Kremlin and ceremonially received his Russian passport. Grab yours too while they are still hot.


Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #132 –
A KGB at the left, an idiot at the right but who's the man in the statue?
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #133 –
Hope the statute was of a Tsar. As for the FORMER KGB man your country could do with someone like him.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #134 –
The Tsar is the KGB man. The statue is there for giving him the ancestry he doesn't have.

Your cult of personality is turning into a maniac obssession for the man Rjhowie. I suppose you already started the Putinesque Fan Club at your village.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #135 –
Dear oh dear, Belfrager. You re getting like the usual anti-Russian guff here and trying to take the distance by accusing me of ne--fanaticism.

What I have done is to show the advantages to Russia and the place is a hell of a lot different from Soviet days. Interestingly that country has looked back to the previous days with the pre-Revolutionary national flag, Tsarist emblems and dress uniforms.  You have had your brain infiltrated by the usual Western media guff. Hey you could pass for a Yank.  At least trump for all his question marks wants some sensible link with the Russians as they cannot take oer it's capitalism nor military!
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #136 –
Quote from: rjhowie on
You have had your brain infiltrated by the usual Western media guff. Hey you could pass for a Yank.
Hardly such thing could ever happen.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #137 –
Well I dashed well hope not my amusing white socks man supporter!  ;)
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #138 –
For quite a while I wondered if the weird passport regulations for foreigners had originated in Tsarist era. Because if they did, they would make sense. Now I found out that this is indeed so.

Quote from: Handbook for travellers in Russia... 1898
The passport must be exhibited on arrival to the local authorities (through the hotel-keeper or house-porter to avoid inconvenience), who will register it... Neglect of this rule may be punished by expulsion from the Empire... The passport regulations are now more strictly applied than ever, particularly at St. Petersburg. Tourists should keep this in mind, for any neglect of these regulations is visited with discomfort and annoyance, and even with penalties.
This applies even today, but is still commonly ignored by foreigners in Russia. Particularly journalists should know better, but then again, sometimes they have good reasons to try to circumvent it.

Source https://archive.org/details/handbookfortrave00john_24

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #139 –
Being a long Tsarist sympathiser very interesting...... :up:
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #141 –
Ukrainian state TV says that Tuva Republic (part of Russia) wants to become independent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WSwYISuvoM

(just a few activists talking about history of Tuva in the video)

Incidentally, Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Defence of Russia, the main state official responsible for the war, is from Tuva. Cannon fodder for the war front is disproportionately drawn from remote regions of Russia, including Tuva. According to official statistics, Tuva has always been the poorest region of Russia.

And here is a map of Taiwan's territorial claims. Tuva is the bigger yellow patch. Not heard if Tuvans want independence from Taiwan also.


Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #143 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Meanwhile things seems to be happening.
https://www.dw.com/en/live-updates-putin-threatens-punishment-for-wagner-mutiny/a-66018647
In my assessment, there's much fakery/propaganda/fog-of-war going on.

Prigozhin is not complaining about the war because he think's the war is a mistake. Prigozhin is complaining about the war and the official war leaders because he is playing a role assigned to him. His role is to represent and channel the war extremists, to get people excited about the war. In case of failure in the "special operation" (the failure that became the case soon enough), the war extremists need to be channeled away from targeting Putin and towards targeting Shoigu and war generals - this is the role Prigozhin has.

Wagner's march on Rostov or Moscow or whichever was a calculated farce. There's only a semblance of mutiny. Putin's denunciation of Wagner was a continued calculated farce. The Belarus solution is as real as Minsk agreements of 2014. The idea of these moves is to make Westerners/Ukrainians think that the power of Kremlin is crumbling due to disagreements within Russian power elites. This would invite Westerners to attempt to identify and exploit different factions in Kremlin.

In reality, the are no factions in terms of internal disagreements. Russian business elite (oligarchy) has always been and still is united in one goal — the preservation of their wealth privileges. The oligarchy does not care about any other values besides hedonistic values. The oligarchy has no political preferences apart from having given away the political power to Putin's inner circle. There are no cracks in the inner circle worth mentioning, even considering the Prigozhin/Wagner shenanigans. There are, however, disconnects between what Kremlin does as opposed to how Russian oligarchy would like it. The oligarchy would prefer "business" — plundering Russia's wealth and stashing it in Western tax havens, which presupposes stable relations with the West — whereas Kremlin needs to consider some geopolitics — the post-Soviet continental drift away from Kremlin and the encroachment of Nato. The geopolitics needs to be managed by hybrid military means due to Kremlin's lack of prestige and lack of popular appeal among its neighbours.

The Kremlin's power is brittle due to this widening disconnect. Brittle is not the same as crumbling. Brittle means that it can collapse swiftly and unexpectedly, while there is no institutional decay, no political opposition versus coalition and no real internal "doves versus hawks" in Kremlin, i.e. the power is singular and uncontested all the way to the very end. It's similar to the way Gorbachev's power ended. Towards the end of Soviet Union, Gorbachev often provided a military response to any attempts to secede, it's just that the army did not stretch everywhere, and eventually having the army shoot Russians on Red Square thoroughly demoralised the army. A more managed response was to set up local "national front" movements around some figures of local nomenklatura. The anti-Gorbachev coup of 1991, mostly believed to be genuine in the West, was actually orchestrated with Gorbachev's consent, with his own participation. It was meant that he'd return to power in less than a week as a hero, but the orchestration failed as Russia itself (Yeltsin) seceded from Soviet Union, something that the conspiracy maestros failed to foresee.

Similarly right now, Kremlin's power is singular and uncontested; it's just that Kremlin is getting worse at its own game. The game needs to be refreshed occasionally, but Kremlin is only good at rigid repetitive routine. There are elements and aspects that they fail to consider and analyse properly, for example how they overestimated their own military capabilities and underestimated the West's readiness to support Ukraine. However, in all its badness it's still a game that Kremlin controls.

It's not real news that Lukashenko and Prigozhin and Putin came to an agreement. They were already in agreement, but now it's presented as if news or as if a development in events. In the "mutiny" maneuvring there was no good outcome for Prigozhin, so he was either doing as told/agreed or he went so out of his mind that it's unsafe for him (potentially leading to arrest or deposition). But the Belarus solution indicates that Kremlin's crisis managers foresee a continuation of the same role for Prigozhin.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #144 –
If the mutiny was orchestrated, then what did Putin's regime gain from it? If there's not much gain, I guess it was not all that well orchestrated. It still was orchestrated though: Perceived betrayers, such as investigative journalists and West-friendly youtubers in Russia are beaten up, locked up or killed, but Prigozhin suffered none of the usual fate assigned to a betrayer. So evidently he was within the limits permitted to him. The limits were to not threaten Putin directly, but to whip Russian military leadership, hopefully urging them to better coordination, and making Russian war-blogosphere hold a similar rhetorical line. Unfortunately, the organisation and management of the war effort has been so bad, the lack of ammunition and provisions has been real, leading to mutual clashes so that Prigozhin could not keep things purely rhetorical any longer. Prigozhin is an actual criminal since youth and he has a criminal's code of honour, which demands an actual carrying out of some of the threats/promises, lest his own soldiers turn against him.

There was a severe downside in the eyes of general Russian public: Putin's power seems shaky and weak. Russians don't like a weak czar.[1] However, in terms of his relations with the West, Putin in fact wants the West to think of his power as shaky and weak to a point. When Putin's power seems crumbling, it induces the West to shiver more about nukes and post-Putin market opportunities, and proportionally worry less about Ukraine, thinking that Ukraine needs less support than it is requesting.

Make no mistake: Ukrainians believe that the West is as hypocritical as Russian propaganda makes the West out to be. This is not because of the propaganda, but because of history. When the Warsaw bloc was falling apart, there were Western ambassadors in all the Soviet Union member states advocating the member states to stay in the union — because a bigger common market is more beneficial to everyone, the nukes would be safer etc. Ukraine got to experience the full onslaught of such Western ambassadors and the result was a confused political orientation of the country: One president of Ukraine leaned towards West, next towards Russia, and so on alternately until the current president. Nobody but the West must correct this now. The outcome of the war is not "for Ukrainians to decide". It's up for the West to correct their own hypocrisy: Stop rewarding Russian hybrid assaults and landgrabs. The latest Russian landgrabs are Donbass, Crimea, and invasion of Ukraine. These latest Russian landgrabs must, as a minimum, be fully reversed with the help of NATO countries and the EU, then Ukraine (along with post-Soviet countries that have already allied with the West) can forgive the Western hypocrisy and become a good member. If not, then the EU will crack along the Old/New or West/East faultline, because the Eastern members will conclude that the EU is more like a knife in the back instead of a safe roof. The Eastern members want to be safe from Russia and this is why they joined the EU. This is an existential need. This should not be hard to understand, but somehow has been beyond the comprehension of Western members.

As it stands now, the West still has not defined "victory". They say it's up to Ukraine in negotiations. This implies that Western plan is that Russia's evils will yet again be rewarded and rights of national self-determination will yet again not be respected. The West keeps doing this because of hypocrisy: Russia is a more lucrative market than Ukraine will ever be; to keep Russia a lucrative market, the more urgent concern is to hold Russia together whereas Ukraine is entirely negotiable. The Western mindset was the same when the Warsaw bloc was falling apart: Seek compromises with Russia over everybody else's rights and needs, a la Budapest Memorandum, the idea of which was to prevent things coming to a head, but things came to a head anyway and the value of the memorandum for Ukraine turned out to be exactly zero while Russia could again do as it pleased despite signatures and assurances and whatever. Western behaviour has been consistent on this throughout. For Russia it is a welcome vulnerability to keep exploiting.

An interesting point is that Wagner has been meddling in Syria and several African countries taking over, in particular, former French colonial possessions, and France has had essentially no response. Macron's plan seems to have been to "talk" with Putin. This is the level of servility of the West to Russia. And I suppose this is why Prigozhin is useful alive for Putin. Prigozhin has the experience of posing such direct threats against the West (remember that the troll factories are also Prigozhin's project) and the West's response, at best self-humiliating requests for "talk" which can only produce something ridiculous like Budapest Memorandum or Minsk Agreements, is a lovely dynamics that is reasonable to keep going from Russia's point of view.
1 They may still want to fight for their Otechestvo though — Otechestvo is in danger! On balance, the fighting morale would not be too much affected, since army recruitment is conducted by force anyways.↵

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #145 –
Sergey Zhirnov (or Serguei Jirnov, as he lives currently in France, or Сергей Жирнов, as he is a former Russian KGB officer) says that Putin has already killed Prigozhin and it will be revealed within months. His theory is sound from the conspirological point of view (conspirology was his field of expertise when working for KGB) and ties neatly some ends that are loose in my own theory.

Namely, according to my theory Putin would acknowledge that Prigozhin is the best operative manager in the world (because he indisputably is) and the two would reconcile, which might make generals conclude something like "Hey, when you rebel with a whole fully-equipped army, then you won't fall out of the window..." Putin would not allow direct threats like this arise against himself.

On the other hand, the weakness of Zhirnov's theory is that, knowing that Prigozhin is more of an authority to Putin than the other way round, how would Putin be able to bring himself to conspire against Prigozhin. And what co-conspirators would he be able to find? And also, is it likely that Prigozhin would walk into a deadly trap? We'll see if Prigozhin turns out alive again, and if yes, in what shape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ-IJzTR9aU

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #147 –
A tent? Well then.

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #148 –
Basically, my theory discounts Putin's abilities and assumes that Prigozhin is about equal to Putin. The conspirologist's theory discounts Prigozhin's abilities and assumes that Putin has the upper hand.

The tent pic fits the conspirologist's theory better. Prigozhin has stopped publishing bravadocious videos of mighty Wagner and friends. The tent pic indicates that a new image and reputation is being built for Prigozhin, so that by the time his death is announced nobody will feel sorry.

This fall from grace is particularly hard for the likes of Dugin (the one whose daughter was killed) who proclaimed Prigozhin as nothing short of Christ the Saviour of Mother Russia. I personally still think Prigozhin is alive and his abilities will still be useful to rob gold and diamonds in some third continents at least, if not meddle in elections and serve rotten food.
 

Re: What's Going On In Russia?

Reply #149 –
Igor Girkin has been arrested in Russia. To those not in the know, he is Mr. Donbass, the person tasked with and leading "militant separatism" in Donbass. As an aside, whenever somebody says that there are militant separatists in Donbass in Ukraine, you are being fed Russian propaganda. A separatist would be a local, but the events in Donbass were an operation of green men from Russia, a Russian invasion, exactly like in Crimea at the same time.

Igor Girkin is a citizen of Russia, always was, and his background is — might come as a surprise — FSB. He has been sitting more or less put in Donbass ever since he shot down MH17 (yup, there's your culprit, if you wanted him), but he has been vocally pro-expansion of Russia on the Telegram thingie. He has been the sweetheart of Russian warbloggers along with Prigozhin.

Why was he arrested? He did not like that Prigozhin survived the march on Moscow unscathed. He pointed out, correctly, that Prigozhin had conducted something that very much looked like a coup attempt or insurrection and that should be followed up with death penalty or similar, instead of exile. Different from Prigozhin, Girkin has been sharply dismissive against Putin directly when decrying the failures of the "special operation". Thus he is now finally under arrest for "extremism" (see the new anti-extremism laws of Russia).

What may follow? Perhaps Russia will use Girkin as a negotiation pawn à la "see, we are prosecuting war criminals" in order to deflect accountability away from bigger war criminals, such as Prigozhin, the generals, or Putin himself. Girkin's arrest indicates that the voices of Russian militarists (who are far more militant than the army) have become uncomfortable for Putin (something that was understood by observers as soon as the larger invasion stalled). It does not indicate that Putin's power is crumbling, however. The vocal hypermilitants are a very narrow group, consisting of "influencers" from among the rubble, not army people or state officials. Their leader Girkin and some of his closest fighters were the only ones in that group who are derived from among Russian state institutions, such as FSB, and they were that because they were originally specifically tasked with the occupation in 2014 and feeding to journalists that there was local militant separatism going on. This task is now over as the place is overrun by the larger official Russian army, so the former green men can be scrapped.

Prigozhin was effective at the front. Prigozhin took Bakhmut. Girkin was effective at the front. He held Donbass for years. For Putin, something else is more important than being competent or effective, and he proves it whenever things become critical. Since competence does not matter, the generals have remained the same all along (their heads were rotated for a while, but there were no new faces, they were all together at the front from the beginning as the same team), while those who have been competent and effective and demanding more competence and efficiency are being decommissioned or reassigned. That such reassignments occur and that Girkin is being scrapped is a demonstration that Putin can wield arbitrary power like an autocrat.

If one wants to think of some people in Putin's circle as his potential future replacement, then the closest to it is Prigozhin. Not Girkin. Girkin is expendable. Prigozhin has a proper army and other para-state institutions of his own that he has managed to keep. Overall it is not a good idea to entertain the notion that there is somebody in Putin's circle who wants to become the next leader of Russia. Definitely there is nobody pro-Western or with democratic tendencies. Putin himself was mistaken as pro-democracy by the West for far too long. And there is nobody autocratic either who would be able to administrate the autocracy — effective ambitious people are dangerous and they have already been purged. What remains are unambitious people, some more effective than others, but the more effective the less ambitious.

If there is someone ambitious and administratively effective, he is definitely outside of Putin's circle and has not revealed his ambition yet. Since we do not know who they are and even whether they exist, don't bet on them.