I don’t have any specific links to post, but The Content Mines podcast yesterday mentioned there have been other Russian celebrities coming out against the war. Amazing considering that it is effectively career ending
Piling pressure on Johnson re Tory party Russian oligarch links helps to expose how little the UK govt is doing, and why.
It may be naive to hope this may in some small way help move the UK govt to do more meaningful things (and I’m not holding my breath). So this is not looking at it through a local politics lens. Starmer has no capability to do anything meaningful, only Johnson does, but Starmer can draw attention to the hypocrisy and corruption of the Tory govt when it comes to meaningfully impacting the Russian oligarchs who support Putin.
Any other party might be embarrassed by it, but not the Johnson party, unfortunately.
(I feel we are probably violently agreeing, though.)
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." — Edmund Burke, 1729.
Oh, so they’re no longer friends with Putin. Better late than never
Whoa
Wow. That’s a very interesting development. A warning shot?
Ummm, that could actually be a game changer if it holds up. Did not see that coming!
More like an ‘sit your ass down’ warning from Xi.
Maybe they’re scared of the government being toppled and a truly democratic Russia sharing a massive border with them
They all bear the Z marking, whose meaning is not yet known.
war makes good money if you own the oil ( or own the government. ) iran nationalizing oil was a money loser, russia invading ukraine? there’s a lot to be made off fueling those tanks and jets
This is why
China’s four largest banks have complied with previous U.S. sanctions against Iran, North Korea and even top officials in Hong Kong because they need access to the U.S. dollar clearing system, a person familiar with the matter said. In a phone call with Vladimir Putin on Friday, Xi urged the Russian leader to negotiate with Ukraine to defuse tensions.
“Chinese financial institutions take sanctions compliance seriously,” said Ben Kostrzewa, foreign legal consultant at Hogan Lovells in Hong Kong, who formerly handled U.S.-China disputes and negotiations at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. “They don’t want to be sanctioned themselves, they can’t lose access to U.S. dollar transactions, so they are going to have to think about it very seriously – whatever the geopolitical impact might be.”
Not sure, but it sounds like this is a financial risk management decision made without direction from the government. From a risk standpoint it of course makes sense - financially the situation is extremely risky. This could change when politics get directly involved and the bank is given assurances. Or, the article rightly points out, China might be very concerned about losing access to the dollar based international financial system.
It would be interesting if Russia made the same mistake in counting on allies early on that the Soviet Union did.
A BBC reporter clearly stated a few days ago that it was indeed to help battlefield participants to identify Russian tanks, etc. as the Ukrainian army has many similar models - an attempt to avoid friendly fire.
That’s the most likely explanation, which the article does mention, but there’s more depth of discussion in the article. A bit small for the normal friendly-fire mitigation markings, and also the markings come in a few varieties.
It also looks as if the trucks’ number plates have been removed, perhaps so that they can’t be tracked with ANPR systems.
Entirely possible. China’s leadership sees itself as Superman… and public protests as being Kryptonite. Noticing the protests in Russia…
