Ukraine Conflict - Der Weg zurück

[Elerond]

36 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Whichever one, Crimea was never part of Ukraine post 1991. Only because it got invaded and direct Ukrainian military control imposed.

 

On 6 May 1992 Parliament of Republic of Crimea former Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic changed constitution of Crimea so that it says that Crimea is part of Ukraine.

In 1994 Russia, UK and USA  and recognized Crimea legally part of Ukraine in Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which they signed.

[Gromnir]

29 minutes ago, Gorth said:

 If you accept the Soviet Union had the authority to hand it to Ukraine, you also have to accept that it had to authority to remove it again. If you don't accept it had the authority to remove it from Ukraine, you're by the same token also rejecting it had the authority to move it to the Ukrainian S.S.R in the first place.

am gone for a bit over a week and this happens?

no, and no. worse, am suspecting is no way you would be making this argument if it were just about any western colonial power which wanted to revisit the issue o' granted sovereignty. by definition, the recognition o' sovereignty and self-determination is irreversible as is a surrender o' authority by the previous sovereign, which necessarily  includes some kinda imagined legit power to revoke. sure, the power politics model means force invariably makes right, but that clear ain't your justification. am s'posing there may be arguments as to why ukraine ain't a real country and why crimea somehow were a legit target for russian annexation, but you aren't making a good argument. sorry, but no.

as for the rest o' the thread, and not directed @Gorth in particular, am gonna let you all have at it. is a whole lotta silliness from folks who made a bunch o' posts which has not aged well given the reality o' the invasion by russia. folks who were most wrong appear to be the most vocal. lack o' self awareness/reflecyion is expected and unfortunate.

HA! Good Fun! 

[BruceVC]

22 minutes ago, Elerond said:

On 6 May 1992 Parliament of Republic of Crimea former Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic changed constitution of Crimea so that it says that Crimea is part of Ukraine.

In 1994 Russia, UK and USA  and recognized Crimea legally part of Ukraine in Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which they signed.

@Gorth

When you mentioned Crimea was " never part of Ukraine " how do you explain what Elerond mentioned ?

[bugarup]

18 minutes ago, Elerond said:

On 6 May 1992 Parliament of Republic of Crimea former Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic changed constitution of Crimea so that it says that Crimea is part of Ukraine.

In 1994 Russia, UK and USA  and recognized Crimea legally part of Ukraine in Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which they signed.

There's also Nikita Khrushchev's territorial redistribution in the sixties, but it would be even harder to pin that on Ukraine than pacts of Sovietistan's collapse. Although Gorth seems to think that "referendum" with Russian military present in Crimea was fair and square () and has this theory that Putler is  an anime girl who only went criminally insane after mean girls of West kept blocking his heartfelt, earnest efforts to be accepted as part of the "West mean girls" club or something,  so maybe things really look upside down from the distant Down Under. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Bartimaeus]

@Gorth Do you have any half-decent article or author that supports your version of events? Wikipedia certainly doesn't seem to, but I'm certainly amenable to better sources - I know how politicized Wikipedia can get, and this is certainly a hot button issue right now.

Wikipedia says Khrushchev inexplicably transferred the Crimean province from the Russian state to the Ukrainian state in 1954; given how tight all the Soviet states were bound together then, it did not really make much practical difference at at the time. Fast forward to 1991, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed: in January 1991, the Soviet Union held a referendum in just Crimea that asked whether Crimea should be made its own republic - they overwhelmingly answered yes, and in February of the same year, Crimea was consequently made into an "autonomous republic". What exactly that means is not clear to me, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to explain - at this point, is Crimea its own state separate from Ukraine and everyone else, are they simply given special administrative status but still within the Ukrainian state, or are they now in the Russian state? I would guess it is the first or second option, but it is not a hundred percent clear. September: the Crimean parliament votes to be a "sovereign constituent" of Ukraine; December: Ukraine would hold a referendum on independence from the Soviet Union - it had 84% turnout, with 92% approval. Notably, Crimea was included in this vote (which certainly suggests they're still a part of the Ukrainian state at this point), and had the lowest turnout as well as by far the lowest "yes" percentage...but still a a majority at 54% yes. The Soviet Union as a whole would officially dissolve later that month.

That's the "official" Wikipedia story as best as I can tell. You said Soviet leadership transferred Crimea to Russia shortly before the Soviet Unions' dissolution; ignoring the issues of authority (imperium when a state is stable and at the apex of its power is, I think most people would agree, a very different subject compared to moments before its collapse), did this actually happen? Did Ukraine actually invade Crimea at some point following the dissolution of the Soviet Union? Crimea seemed to have declared itself a part of Ukraine, and Russia also seems to have agreed in 1997 that Crimea was part of Ukraine. Give me more concrete deets, please.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

I do agree that the west is also very much to blame for this conflict, but as said before... if living under russian rule wouldn't be such a crap deal, more people might consider it. If russia would be able to fix itself and be more trustworthy, the bordering countries might not try so hard to get away from them...

I mean in 1944-45 when the Soviets were steamrolling the Germans there were lots of communists in those countries that welcomed Soviet liberation, which is why they absorbed them in the first place.  It wasn't until decades later when the narrative completely flipped and Soviet Russia bad West good became almost a religion.

As for Russia's current condition....yes their economy is the size of Texas and Putin is no Stalin when it comes to rapid economic growth, not by a long shot.  He did a lot to curb the West's pillaging of Soviet state owned enterprises and renationalized them in the 00's, and did a lot to restore national pride, but it's honestly not nearly enough.  Putin at this point seems like bread that is well past its expiration date and needs new leadership imo.

And yes, Russia is a very socially conservative country, that's not gonna change and could be the biggest factor in more squeamish people not wanting to live there, aside from its largely stagnant economy at the moment.

[Mamoulian War]

Please take it with a big grain of salt, there are reports, there are some leaked documents, how Russian secret service did not knew about the attack, and now there is a big notion, that all the blame will be put on them, despite not knowing all details. First this might be a very strong anti russian propaganda hitpiece published to lower russian soldier morale even more, but on the other hand, this is from web page of our television, which is owned by a person, who has very close ties to Sputnik News. The link should be google translated to English.

https://www-ta3-com.translate.goog/clanok/230111/ruska-tajna-sluzba-vraj-o-invazii-nevedela-teraz-caka-katastrofu-uvadza-to-uniknuta-sprava?fbclid=IwAR35MhBl8qI1KMW_isz_CqMqFcIKU2zyvq84zizOLoEpwvy6qT0pMxGwQyA&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Mamoulian War]

2 hours ago, Gorth said:

What could have been done depends on what stage in the sequence of events we're talking about. The west could have objected to the Ukrainian invasion and occupation of Crimea. To this day, most western media (most likely out of complete ignorance) talks about Crimea as if was once part of Ukraine, the nation. Hint, it never was. The same Soviet legislative authority that assigned it from the Russian S.S.R to the Ukrainian S.S.R. also removed it again before the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you accept the Soviet Union had the authority to hand it to Ukraine, you also have to accept that it had to authority to remove it again. If you don't accept it had the authority to remove it from Ukraine, you're by the same token also rejecting it had the authority to move it to the Ukrainian S.S.R in the first place. Whichever one, Crimea was never part of Ukraine post 1991. Only because it got invaded and direct Ukrainian military control imposed.

You could argue as a nation, with it's old internal Soviet administration borders suddenly resulting in a significant land grab containing a really significant amount of Russians, which ended up on the receiving end of a lot of stick and persecution from a new nationalist government in Kiev in 2014. It's not coincidence **** started hitting the fan that year. It was never going to be a stable country and secessionist movements were written on the wall already 1991 because of some really nonsensical border drawing.

So, what does the west do? Instead of putting pressure on Ukraine to respect the rights of ethnic minorities and cease the occupation of Crimea, they encourage them by dangling a EU membership under the noses of western Ukraine (where the population is predominantly Ukrainian), regardless of Ukraine not meeting any criteria whatsoever of EU membership. Especially corruption is rampant and no election so far has been without it's problems. Oh yeah, and the treatment of ethnic minorities. No other country would have gotten into the EU in the shape Ukraine was through the 2010's

The war in the Donetsk region is recent history. The Minsk accord was agreed upon as the future, but when NATO suddenly hinted at Ukrainian membership, Zelenskyy suddenly felt brave and publicly declared, that Ukraine no longer had any intention of honouring it's commitment to the accord. With visible results. The people in eastern Ukraine declared themselves independent (the people in Crimea were already independent and held a valid referendum asking to be accepted as part of the Russian Federation).

So many places this could have been nipped in the bud, but western countries with typical arrogance simply decided what is best for all other countries, regardless of realities on the ground.

 

So, stage one, the west should never have accepted Ukraine's original claims to it's new national borders, regardless of ethnic composition. We saw that in the 1920's too int he middle east (the Kurds sends their "regards"). Stage two, The west should have put sanctions in place against Ukraine over the invasion of Crimea, demanding the removal of Ukrainian troops. Stage three, If more effort had been put into seeing Ukraine and former parts of Russia in as neutral territory rather than advanced military outposts to encroach on Russia in it's own backyard, a lot of paranoia and suspicion could have been avoided. Last but not least (my pet peeve), done more to integrate Russia too into the western " cultural hemisphere" and let cultural change seep in gradually, rather than being handed to them, ultimatum by ultimatum.

Proud people don't respond well to threats and holier than thou attitudes.

Allow me to give you few details, which you might not know about the current situation. I will not comment about Crimea, because I do not know the history, but the whole **** hit the fan situation started before 2014. And the culprit was Putin's puppet Yanukovych.

It all started in 2004, when he was appointed as a candidate for Ukrainian president. The votes did end up as illegitimate, in a very similar way as the last Belarusian elections. This started Orange Revolution. Unlike in Belarus, these were annulled by Ukrainian Supreme Court. In the final/repeated round he lost to Yushchenko. Unfortunately for Ukraine, Yuschchenko did disappoint the people so in the next election, Yanukovich won again, this time it was legitimate. Though his close ties to Putin were still the same. He started his presidency in 2010, and has slowly start to decay all the pro-western agreements with EU, and moved closer and closer to Russia. In 2013 he discarded the EU-Ukrainian Association Agreement, which sparkled another  Revolution - Euromaidan. And in 2014 when he passed new law, which prohibited protesting, it sparkled even more unrest, and even in the cities, with very high population of ethnic Russians, like Kharkiv.

What happened next, you already know. Separatists republics, and annexation of Crimea.

In short. Russia started to meddle directly in Ukrainian politics in 2004, with appointing the same Yanukovich puppet, which Russians transported soon after the start of War in Ukraine to Minsk. The intel on this move says, that he was planned to succeed Zelenskyi, after the defeat of Ukraine...

 

EDIT: The same Yanukovich, which today publicly appealed to Zelenskyi to surrender to Russia... Of course brought by the Russian RIA Novosti. He was sentenced in Ukraine for 13 years for corruption and high treason and ran away to Russia.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

That's the "official" Wikipedia story as best as I can tell. You said Soviet leadership transferred Crimea to Russia shortly before the Soviet Unions' dissolution; ignoring the issues of authority (imperium when a state is stable and at the apex of its power is, I think most people would agree, a very different subject compared to moments before its collapse), did this actually happen? Did Ukraine actually invade Crimea at some point following the dissolution of the Soviet Union? Crimea seemed to have declared itself a part of Ukraine, and Russia also seems to have agreed in 1997 that Crimea was part of Ukraine. Give me more concrete deets, please.

My bad, it didn't transfer it "to" Russia, it transferred it "away" from Ukraine. An independent S.S.R. like Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine etc.

Sadly google is useless at the moment as any search with the word crimea or ukraine leads to 10+ pages of history starting in 2014...

 

Washington Post simply describes it as "a brief tussle" (Crimea having no military). Details being notoriously hard to come by atm because of the popularity of related and more recent events, forcing just about anything else out of the search results...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/02/27/to-understand-crimea-take-a-look-back-at-its-complicated-history/

Following a brief tussle with the newly independent Ukrainian government, Crimea agreed to remain part of Ukraine, but with significant autonomy (including its own constitution and legislature and – briefly – its own president). In 1997, Ukraine and Russia signed a bilateral Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, which formally allowed Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

So far, so good (and frankly, Yeltzin did NOT inspire a lot of confidence in the early 1990's). Things changed as the conflict of interest between west and east Ukraine heated up (you mentioned yourself, governments coming and going at some point)... an interesting map from WP that sort of shows *why* there could be a problem the way the country was created post Soviet Union. The darkest blue areas are "lost causes", the people there never going to identify as Ukrainians.... at least as long as the government isn't an inclusive type of government, toning down the nationalist rhetoric a bit. The lighter blue areas may not go into open rebellion, but probably just be grumpy for many decades to come (hypothetical situation if there had been no war).

edit: trying a twitter source rather than the WP website

[Chilloutman]

49 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

Please take it with a big grain of salt, there are reports, there are some leaked documents, how Russian secret service did not knew about the attack, and now there is a big notion, that all the blame will be put on them, despite not knowing all details. First this might be a very strong anti russian propaganda hitpiece published to lower russian soldier morale even more, but on the other hand, this is from web page of our television, which is owned by a person, who has very close ties to Sputnik News. The link should be google translated to English.

https://www-ta3-com.translate.goog/clanok/230111/ruska-tajna-sluzba-vraj-o-invazii-nevedela-teraz-caka-katastrofu-uvadza-to-uniknuta-sprava?fbclid=IwAR35MhBl8qI1KMW_isz_CqMqFcIKU2zyvq84zizOLoEpwvy6qT0pMxGwQyA&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Does not sounds too real. No idea why would one agent send something like this to another...

[Bartimaeus]

13 minutes ago, Gorth said:

My bad, it didn't transfer it "to" Russia, it transferred it "away" from Ukraine. An independent S.S.R. like Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine etc.

Sadly google is useless at the moment as any search with the word crimea or ukraine leads to 10+ pages of history starting in 2014...

Washington Post simply describes it as "a brief tussle" (Crimea having no military). Details being notoriously hard to come by atm because of the popularity of related and more recent events, forcing just about anything else out of the search results...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/02/27/to-understand-crimea-take-a-look-back-at-its-complicated-history/

Following a brief tussle with the newly independent Ukrainian government, Crimea agreed to remain part of Ukraine, but with significant autonomy (including its own constitution and legislature and – briefly – its own president). In 1997, Ukraine and Russia signed a bilateral Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, which formally allowed Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

So far, so good (and frankly, Yeltzin did NOT inspire a lot of confidence in the early 1990's). Things changed as the conflict of interest between west and east Ukraine heated up (you mentioned yourself, governments coming and going at some point)... an interesting map from WP that sort of shows *why* there could be a problem the way the country was created post Soviet Union. The darkest blue areas are "lost causes", the people there never going to identify as Ukrainians.... at least as long as the government isn't an inclusive type of government, toning down the nationalist rhetoric a bit. The lighter blue areas may not go into open rebellion, but probably just be grumpy for many decades to come (hypothetical situation if there had been no war).

From what I recall reading, it was about a six year "tussle" between Ukraine and Crimea for them to completely come to an agreement with each other on how things should work administratively between the two of them, with Crimea getting special status and treatment that no other areas of Ukraine got...but I did not see any mention of occupation or invasion or anything like that. That doesn't mean nothing happened or was threatened, but it wasn't mentioned.

I don't disagree that it certainly makes some sense for Crimea to belong to Russia and not Ukraine, but I don't think it was really up to "the West" to just deliver Crimea unto Russia, or be okay with Russia just suddenly seizing it after it'd been a part of Ukraine for about twenty years (and mind you, the rest of Europe didn't even really react *that* much to Russia doing exactly that - this new situation with the rest of Ukraine is a whole other thing). It seems like a pretty shaky foundation to lay "it's the West's fault" upon...Numbers' appeal to empathy seems much stronger to me.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

18 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

From what I recall reading, it was about a six year "tussle" between Ukraine and Crimea for them to completely come to an agreement with each other on how things should work administratively between the two of them, with Crimea getting special status and treatment that no other areas of Ukraine got...but I did not see any mention of occupation or invasion or anything like that. That doesn't mean nothing happened or was threatened, but it wasn't mentioned.

Yes. The Crimea situation wasn't settled after 1992 any more than it is now after Russia seized it in 2014. The main difference seems to be that back then, Ukraine and Russia were willing to find common ground and respected each other... at least compared to now. Ukraine went from granting it special economic status and allowing Crimea to have its own constitution to stripping that constitution and detaining and exiling the overtly separatist Crimean president. Add to the mix ethnic and historical factors on both sides and you get a much fuzzier picture than "X said that Y belongs to Z and signed so-and-so treaty to that effect". You really can put anything on paper.

As an aside, I find it interesting how some people are seemingly much more receptive to Catalonian arguments for self-determination than they are to similar pleas when they are put forth by Crimeans. There are a lot of parallels between the two.

[Gorth]

47 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

From what I recall reading, it was about a six year "tussle" between Ukraine and Crimea for them to completely come to an agreement with each other on how things should work administratively between the two of them, with Crimea getting special status and treatment that no other areas of Ukraine got...but I did not see any mention of occupation or invasion or anything like that. That doesn't mean nothing happened or was threatened, but it wasn't mentioned.

I don't disagree that it certainly makes some sense for Crimea to belong to Russia and not Ukraine, but I don't think it was really up to "the West" to just deliver Crimea unto Russia, or be okay with Russia just suddenly seizing it after it'd been a part of Ukraine for about twenty years. It seems like a pretty shaky foundation to lay "it's the West's fault" upon.

A bit more complicated than that... (messy, right?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Crimean_referendum

At this point, it looks like (the wiki is very sparse on detail and background) patience with 'Autonomous Republic of Crimea' was wearing thin, turning from being "friendly" towards Crimea to becoming "less friendly". The outright hostility towards all things Russia wasn't until after the 2014 elections, at which point the general unrest in eastern Ukraine also happened in Crimea with things happening very fast (you couldn't write an action book, where events happened this fast I think).

 

Edit: Tl;dr; Ukraine started unilaterally dismantling the Crimean autonomy and being the one with the military presence on the peninsula (outside the Russian naval base that is), the Crimeans had to suck it up, that their autonomy was removed.

[BruceVC]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

From what I recall reading, it was about a six year "tussle" between Ukraine and Crimea for them to completely come to an agreement with each other on how things should work administratively between the two of them, with Crimea getting special status and treatment that no other areas of Ukraine got...but I did not see any mention of occupation or invasion or anything like that. That doesn't mean nothing happened or was threatened, but it wasn't mentioned.

I don't disagree that it certainly makes some sense for Crimea to belong to Russia and not Ukraine, but I don't think it was really up to "the West" to just deliver Crimea unto Russia, or be okay with Russia just suddenly seizing it after it'd been a part of Ukraine for about twenty years (and mind you, the rest of Europe didn't even really react *that* much to Russia doing exactly that - this new situation with the rest of Ukraine is a whole other thing). It seems like a pretty shaky foundation to lay "it's the West's fault" upon...Numbers' appeal to empathy seems much stronger to me.

Of course the West responded to Russia annexing Crimea, where do you think most of the current Western sanctions against Russia come from?

Im not sure  what else you expect the West to do back  then but it was heavily criticized 

[BruceVC]

4 minutes ago, Gorth said:

A bit more complicated than that... (messy, right?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Crimean_referendum

At this point, it looks like (the wiki is very sparse on detail and background) patience with 'Autonomous Republic of Crimea' was wearing thin, turning from being "friendly" towards Crimea to becoming "less friendly". The outright hostility towards all things Russia wasn't until after the 2014 elections, at which point the general unrest in eastern Ukraine also happened in Crimea with things happening very fast (you couldn't write an action book, where events happened this fast I think).

" outright hostility towards Russia  " 

Russia a such a peaceful country and they would never ever be hostile, good one Gorthfuscious. At least you still can find humor in this crisis, Im impressed 

[ComradeYellow]

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1501197313859104768

Yanks gonna Yank.  The people struggling to get by be damned of course. 

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

But then the US has quit pretty much every treaty designed to prevent that scenario. ABM. INF. Open Skies. They're doing a very good job of looking suspicious.

You mean after Russia was caught cheating or abusing each of these treaties? The real question is why did the US continue to stick with these treaties for as long as they did. That Russia cannot be trusted has been demonstrated again and again, especially in the Putin years.

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/02/united-nations-russia-ukraine-vote

141 countries  out of  193  UN nations voted with the US and Ukraine in condemning this unprovoked invasion by Russia

Only 5 countries voted against and those include the worst dictatorships in the world and I mean real dictatorships like NK, Belarus and Syria 

So I would say Russia needs to expand that list to include most of the world because condemning the Russian invasion should be considered an "unfriendly action " 

It is because Russia doesn't want to acknowledge all those countries standing against their invasion, so they are deliberately focusing on only a small subset of those countries as the "unfriendly" countries, all the more so they can simultaneously emphasize the 47 countries that either abstained or did not vote as countries that are with them (even though there is zero evidence to support any such claim).

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Please take it with a big grain of salt, there are reports, there are some leaked documents, how Russian secret service did not knew about the attack, and now there is a big notion, that all the blame will be put on them, despite not knowing all details. First this might be a very strong anti russian propaganda hitpiece published to lower russian soldier morale even more, but on the other hand, this is from web page of our television, which is owned by a person, who has very close ties to Sputnik News. The link should be google translated to English.

https://www-ta3-com.translate.goog/clanok/230111/ruska-tajna-sluzba-vraj-o-invazii-nevedela-teraz-caka-katastrofu-uvadza-to-uniknuta-sprava?fbclid=IwAR35MhBl8qI1KMW_isz_CqMqFcIKU2zyvq84zizOLoEpwvy6qT0pMxGwQyA&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

I've been reading several similar articles from a variety of sources in the past few days. Hard to tell what's real and what's part of the information war. But historially, political intrigue and backstabbing are synonymous with the Kremlin, so ....

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/02/united-nations-russia-ukraine-vote

141 countries  out of  193  UN nations voted with the US and Ukraine in condemning this unprovoked invasion by Russia

Only 5 countries voted against and those include the worst dictatorships in the world and I mean real dictatorships like NK, Belarus and Syria 

So I would say Russia needs to expand that list to include most of the world because condemning the Russian invasion should be considered an "unfriendly action " 

Probably chose a subset of those actually making a difference - sending aid and such to Ukraine.  Then again -  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/8/russia-deals-with-unfriendly-countries-require-moscow-approval

"The list follows a presidential decree on March 5 allowing the Russian government, companies and citizens to temporarily pay foreign currency debts owed to overseas creditors from “unfriendly countries” in roubles."

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Chilloutman said:

Does not sounds too real. No idea why would one agent send something like this to another...

Would not be the first time, when one agent gets the idea, that his leader has became insane

[Chilloutman]

sure, but you usually dont send LETTER describing it all

[BruceVC]

7 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Probably chose a subset of those actually making a difference - sending aid and such to Ukraine.  Then again -  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/8/russia-deals-with-unfriendly-countries-require-moscow-approval

"The list follows a presidential decree on March 5 allowing the Russian government, companies and citizens to temporarily pay foreign currency debts owed to overseas creditors from “unfriendly countries” in roubles."

That is one of the worst things Putin could do, pay any country with the Ruble .....thats really cruel Malc, thats really uncalled for. What are countries supposed to do with that, why not pay them with the Zimbabwe $ 

[bugarup]

Congratulations to Russia for becoming the world leader in some field! Go Russia, I believe you can do even better! 

https://www.castellum.ai/russia-sanctions-dashboard

 

[Malcador]

Because we need a laugh about this - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/poutine-not-putin-classic-quebec-dish-under-fire-in-france

People are ****ing stupid.