American exceptionalists and British-Commonwealth exceptionalists and EU exceptionalists can all point to real stuff that’s special about our various nation-states
All that Russian exceptionalists can cite is, “We have the biggest country. Look at our bigness.”
If that’s all they’ve got, there is nowhere to go with it except to conquer more territory, and more and more and more, forever 
News of potential tax hikes comes as experts say that Russia’s isolation from global markets is starting to damage its economy.
The finance ministry has stopped publishing monthly reports since war in Ukraine broke out in February, but documents reviewed by Bloomberg showed it had lost billions from western sanctions, with its budget surplus falling by 137 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) as of August.
This passive voice, ^ right here? I can’t even. It was not spontaneous, Russia invaded a neighboring sovereign nation, FFS. This website, Markets Insider…who are they carrying water for?
Was owned by Bezos, now by Axel Springer, a “German digital and popular periodical publishing house.” Business Insider is mostly click bait same goes for Market Insider. Both repost stories from other sources for the most part.
Noteworthy: “According to German scholar Gudrun Kruip of the Stiftung Bundespräsident-Theodor-Heuss-Haus, Axel Springer SE and its subsidiaries spread a strongly pro-American view in which criticism of US foreign policy is largely absent.[38] In an interview with The Nation, two former CIA officers alleged that Axel Springer received $7 million from the CIA to support American geopolitical interests with his publishing house.”
Well, that’s kinda weird, then. The official US view is that Russia started a war of aggression against their neighbor. [Not that the US has a moral high ground in this department, but we haven’t tried to wage war on Canada or Mexico in a really long time, and have no appetite to try again any damned time soon.]
Axel Springer is deliberately making an effort to position itself as the Fox News of Germany, and the son of Mathias Döpfner, its CEO, is Peter Theil’s chief of staff.
Take from that what you will.
Good to know. Thx.
That’s helpful, and now this no longer seems weird. Nope. Right on brand.
Putin, in a delayed (from yesterday) speech, is calling for partial mobilisation
"Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction.”
In all honesty, I’m surprised that any of these slap-dash ad hoc barely trained Russian units were provided toilet paper. And from the story, it doesn’t appear he had enough time to scrounge it up.
Small all-terrain transport/haulers can be useful. The Germans in WWII had their Kettenkrad.
Aww, no-one with options wants to be part of Vova’s war.
I’m assuming that these mobilised soldiers are intended for a garrison/occupation role in the Ukrainian territories where the pro-Russia side “wins” the referendums. Throwing more poorly trained cannon fodder into an already over-stretched invasion logistics train doesn’t make much sense even for the depraved fascists in the Kremlin.
Yeah, it’s good to keep in mind that Döpfner is all sorts of scummy human, and was notorious as editor in chief of BILD. He got into his current position by sucking up to the heiress Freide Springer, according to some dark rumours. He also has about the same relationship to the truth as Donald Trump does, and really is the embodiment of all that is wrong with rich assholes running news media.
I wonder how much of those general professed beliefs are driven by a fear of saying otherwise then ending up dead from being poisoned, a fall, a heart-attack, or strangulation.
