What I find amusing is how, despite all the thunderous “THE WEST IS A HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY (AND NAZIS)” propaganda, most, if not all, of the replacements for Western product still have Western names. It was the same in the good old days, so many Eastern knockoffs of Western products still had Western names because to people that carried an image of “things from the West are special/better”. (Eg. we couldn’t get jeans from the West but we had our own brand, called “Trapper”, as in the English word.)
It’s kind of like how far-right anti-EU and/or pro-Russia populist politicians and talking heads in the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, etc. are all “THE WEST IS DOOMED, IT IS NOW A HIVEMIND OF FAR-LEFTIST DEVIANT WOKISM AND [insert far-right populist buzzword of the week], IT IS ONLY THE EAST THAT DEFENDS TRUE, CHRISTIAN VALUES” and whatnot… But then when you look at them, they wear Gucci and Versace and other expensive western fashion, make-up, etc. They prefer to vacation in Barcelona, Marbella, Malta, etc. (or Dubai, I guess), not Sochi or Almati or St Petersburg or something.* They send their kids to study in American and Western European schools and universities, not Russian ones. Many of their rich friends and business partners live in France, the UK, the US, and not in, like, Georgia or Armenia. And so on and so forth, including favored places to do business, etc.
Hell, I’ve found that even your garden variety Eastern/Northern European Putin fan could be shut up or forced to change tactics when you point out that even Putin’s ex-girlfriend used to live in Switzerland and not in the sweet lap of Mother Russia.
Something something complexes and understanding realities and whatnot.
(*Of course there’s a lot of domestic tourism in Russia, also a lot of Russian tourists in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia, but they’re mostly average people who can’t or don’t want to spend on going to Spain and whatnot. The real rich folks go to the West, or even further East to the usual tourist spots.)
IIRC Putin wanted Sochi to become a “patriotic” alternative to Crimea. Then Crimea became “ours” and Sochi became redundant.
Dubai will probably be the go-to place for buying all those evil Western luxury goods.
Finns are like everyone else: gotta keep huffing that cheap petrol.
It’s really fucking annoying that governments haven’t announced to businesses “do your bit: let your workers work from home where possible”. But no, real estate and petrol industries got to be served.
“Ok, now we’re really going to get started. If you mention that the actual start date was five months ago we’ll send you to prison.”
Russia is learning a lot of valuable lessons. For example, that bluffing becomes a lot less effective after you’ve shown your hand.
Must be super inspiring for their soldiers that have been fighting and dying for the last five months, too. “Nah, we were just fooling around. We could have done more, but we thought to throw your lives away first.”
Short thread:
Technically they haven’t started yet, though. Most notably, on their end this is not war, it’s “special military operation” meaning they haven’t actually mobilized their full military force yet. If they decide to declare war that would be really really bad.
I think they’re waiting until they can fully claim Donetsk & Luhansk their own - because at that point any Ukrainian attempts at getting them back would mean Russia would be defending itself, which is much easier to shove down citizens’ throats than being the aggressor, and it’s also better “optics” (insofar as there’s still any “optics” but anyway, they insist on pretending there is).
Fuckers!
Evil fuckers. Ukraine is at war with some dark soulless assholes.
HIMARs with longer range are looking pretty good right now.
The construction of this laser follows a growing trend in terms of anti-satellite activity. General David D. Thompson, vice chief of space operations for the United States Space Force, told The Washington Post in 2021 that U.S. satellites are under attack(opens in new tab) “every single day” and that the United States is “really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”
It’s quite possible that ground-based lasers like Russia’s new Kalina system could provide exactly the type of “soft kill” methods described by Chinese researchers — techniques that, unlike “hard kill” methods, don’t create risks for everyone else operating in space.
Nobody wants Space Junk to interfere with “hard kill” operations.
