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In the 60s-70s, my parents house was in a suburbs of DC mostly surrounded by woods. Our neighborhood was a 1 mile circle with houses on both sides. There were 4 houses that didn’t have indoor plumbing. In the late 80s, the State (Virginia) offered to pay the costs of connecting those houses to the county’s sanitary system. The homeowners resisted.
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After that thread about why the oligarchs were all concetrated in “simple” industries (most organized crime doesn’t work well with nerds calling the shots), and seeing the amount of GDP generated by hydrocarbons in Russia…
You understand why the puppetmasters in Moscow have decided that’s a good narrative.
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I don’t think so. At least from what I seen on the photos, Ukrainian villages are pretty wealthy due to the modern argiculture. They are very similar to ones in Poland. Considering that Russian soldiers are frequently from poorer regions of Russia, the difference would be shocking for them.
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I meant in terms of architecture, not living standards. If Russian television producers went to Ukraine to film shows set in Russia, it means that Ukraine doesn’t look obviously foreign to Russians.
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No indoor plumbing, or their own well and septic system? Big difference.
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They had outhouses. They did have wells for water.
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Volodomyr Zelenskiy announced that oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s closest ally in Ukraine, has been captured by Ukrainian law enforcement. On his official Telegram account, Zelenskiy posted a picture of Medvedchuk in handcuffs.
More (inc. pics) here.
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… and further down the same liveblog…
Lukashenko goes full delusional.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, claiming it was a pre-emptive strike against the west.
Lukashenko was speaking to reporters following talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the Belarusian state-owned news agency BelTA reports.
Lukashenko said:
If only Russia had delayed its military operation just a little bit, they would have launched, according to them, a crushing blow on Russia’s territory - on neighbouring regions. We are now clearly convinced that this was possible.
So if someone doubts the rightness of the decision, imagine what we could have seen just half a month or a month later.
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We can imagine a lot of magical scenarios in which his master might have had a more successful outcome by waiting a month or two. Lukaschenko is so used to be an unquestioned dictator that he doesn’t bother to try and offer up even one in support of his pronouncement.
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He is saying Putin had to act when he did and NO LATER or two weeks later NATO / The West would have landed a crushing blow on Russia and poss Belarus.
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I read it differently and take it as a reference to Ukraine because he uses the term “Russia 's territory – neighbouring regions” rather than “a neighbouring country”.
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Not a new position, Lukashenko lecturing a bemused Putin about this last month has become a meme.
(many more examples in the Twitter thread)
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Oh. I see. That’s not how I read it.
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It could be either. Lukaschenko, like Putin, sees Ukraine not as a sovereign state but as wayward Russian territory that is (supposedly) geopolitically and strategically vital in protecting them from Western attacks. It’s hard to parse given that often they’re operating from completely different assumptions about reality.
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Hmm. On reflection I think he was talking about the ‘fact’ (his allegation/fantasy) that had Putin not acted when he did, Ukraine (egged on by the west) would have attacked Russia/Belarus.
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