That would be “pretend to poke the Bear but very, very gently, just in case.”
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You can replace “Putinist” with the name of any so-called conservative party in the West (let alone the far-right ones) without finding the change at all jarring.
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Conservatism has many flavours, except they all taste of vanilla.
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That is the (admittedly completely unenthusiastic and frightened) spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, addressed to the rest of the world. The lies they’re spreading to their own citizens must be even more absurd.
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Thread on the British government’s response to the war.
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Bloomberg, March 8, 2022
Owners Fear Planes ‘Are Gone Forever’ After Russia Shields Them From Seizure
- Lessors have retrieved only a couple dozen of 500 aircraft
- Repo man’s biggest fear: ‘These aeroplanes are gone forever’
Aircraft owners are coming to grips with the loss of hundreds of Airbus SE and Boeing Co. jets that Russian carriers have effectively shielded from seizure behind a new incarnation of the Iron Curtain.
With the window just about closed, foreign leasing firms have succeeded in repossessing only about two dozen of the more than 500 aircraft rented to Russian carriers, according to Dean Gerber, general counsel for Valkyrie BTO Aviation. The planes in limbo have a market value of about $10.3 billion, aviation analytics firm Ishka estimates.
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Putin learning the wrong lessons from Mao
Russia’s techies flee country they fear is ‘flying into an abyss’
He filled the 160 or so seats on the March 3 charter flight from Moscow to the Armenian capital Yerevan within 24 hours. Most passengers were IT professionals or business people with an international focus.
“The people leaving were those who understood that for them, all this represents a ban on their profession, because they receive income from conducting business internationally,” Siniushin said.
Even before the invasion and international sanctions, Russia’s economy faced two big problems, according to analysts: a need to develop new industries to reduce reliance on exports of hydrocarbons and other natural resources, and a falling working-age population. The loss of tens of thousands of educated and skilled people will make the situation worse, say economists.
“The exodus is a self-imposed sanction by Russian authorities. Many flee what they see as an iron curtain closing upon them,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance.
“The long-term impact is a lack of hope for any progress or productivity growth. Sanctions will impose severe limitations on Russia’s ability to import technology, while self-imposed brain drains will drain Russia of human capital.”
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The author calls it appeasement but it’s worse than that. You can criticise Neville Chamberlain for a lot of things but neither he nor his party at the time took donations from Hitler’s cronies or accepted Nazi Germany’s indirect support in pushing forward its policy aims.
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Of course she’s frightened. Didn’t you hear? The Americans have biological weapons next to the Russian border.
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Thread:
Like Kharkiv, Mariupol is home to the “Russian speakers” Putin claims to be protecting.
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Freedom Vanilla!
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Regarding Luce’s comment about “robbing the US of badly needed golbal support,”
I could be mistaken, but there seems to be a pretty unified front against Putin. Granted, a whole lot of it is due to enlightened self-interest from European countries very interested in not being gobbled up in a new Russian Empire, nonetheless, the support is certainly there and much more unified than I think anyone would have predicted a year ago.
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The two trains that cover that route were almost empty before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but are now full, with 700 people arriving from Russia daily, Finnish public rail operator VR said.
Hundreds more people travel by car to join the long lines at border crossings in Finland, Estonia or Latvia,
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