Do you know how much time and money these things take to build?
Couple of years, I guess. Ten, twenty tops. And the Sevastopol situation was awkward ever since Ukraine became independent - at least a small facility (which would be easily expandable) could've been built there much earlier.
Helgo, Sevastopol isn't just a port in the sense of it being a pier and a bunch of buildings where ships can dock. No, Sevastopol is a port in the sense of it being an absolutely massive military - industrial complex at an incredibly important location, which is simultaneously one of the few unfreezing ports we have and and a fully - equipped warship factory - cum - battlefleet headquarters to boot. It is a product of several decades of disproportionately huge investments by an equally disproportionately paranoid superpower, and saying that building another Sevastopol is somehow more feasible than simply paying rent to Ukraine for the existing one, or, as of now, dealing with sanctions is rather ignorant of both economics and geography, in my opinion.
Am I really the only one who sees the Russian intervention in Ukraine and Crimea as the desperate actions of a fading power struggling to stay relevant in the modern world in the face of China, the EU and the USA, especially as it sees its past colonial territories and modern-day puppet states e.g. Yanukovych-era Ukraine drifting away to greener pastures?
I agree in general, but it gets Knit mad and doesn't lead anywhere, so I usually stay quiet about it.
No, by all means, go right ahead and tell us what you think! Aside from pointing out the factual error of saying that Yanukovich's Ukraine was a puppet state of Russia, which it wasn't, I mean, have you seen the exorbitant sum he charged Putin every year for the aforementioned port of Sevastopol, I am not going to say a word. Ignorantly convincing yourself that other countries are poor and unimportant and will stay that way is a favourite Western pastime, and one that has deep roots in history as well - I think the first European mention of Russia as a totalitarian basket case of a country dates back to the XII century, and let's not forget how thoroughly Russia was discredited by the European pundits during its days of carving out the world's largest unified empire, and so I am not going to interfere with this hallowed tradition of showing one's head up one's own ass out of sheer respect for the persistency with which you approach this uneasy task. Maybe you could even say how Russian economy is going to collapse in the immediate future, as well.
How could experiencing Scotland up close and personal be so bad as to turn Knit Tie into a Russian nationalist? Then again, I suppose he is in Edinburgh after all... yeah, I can't really blame him.
Edinburgh is an amazing city, and my experiences in it have been nothing short of wonderful. The actual reason why I've been swinging to the right ever since I came here is, I believe, summed up by Anatoly Karlin quite well:
Paradoxically, spending a lot of time in the West does not make these expats significantly more liberal or anti-Putin; even the reverse, if anything. On closer analysis this is not surprising. Even when in Russia, they already have access to what Western “free journalists” write about their country – if not in the English-language original, then translation websites like Inosmi. When spending time in the West, many realize their own country isn’t that bad in comparison; and that typical American perceptions of Russia tend to be irredeemably skewed (“Is it always cold in Russia?”, “Do you drink vodka everyday?”, “What do you think about your dictator Putin?”). Consequently, even someone who may be relatively liberal in Russia not infrequently ends up defending many aspects of Russian politics and society that he otherwise hates when in the West.
Also, Owlbread, modern Russians really do have easy access to EU and NATO - getting out of Russia is a very cheap and quick process nowadays.
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Topic: Russia Watch Thread/Ветка о России (Read 263815 times)