Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Strongpoint]

...or nuking them.

Nukes are perhaps the only piece of technology in this world that is expected to not be actually activated.

He won't dare press that button.

I am 99% sure that this madman will give this order at some point. My hope is that it won't be followed

[da_nang]

They could close exiting ships, not incoming ones.

In time of war, Turkey not being belligerent, warships shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation through the Straits under the same conditions as those laid down in Articles 10 to 18.

Vessels of war belonging to belligerent Powers shall not, however, pass through the Straits except in cases arising out of the application of Article 25 of the present Convention, and in cases of assistance rendered to a State victim of aggression in virtue of a treaty of mutual assistance binding Turkey, concluded within the framework of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and registered and published in accordance with the provisions of Article 18 of the Covenant.

Article 19, Montreux Convention.

Article 25 is just boilerplate to ensure the Convention doesn't "prejudice the rights and obligations of Turkey or [...] High Contracting Powers members of the League of Nations, arising out of the Covenant of the League of Nations."

And there's hardly any "mutual assistance" involved here, so I think Turkey is free to close the straits both ways.

[martinuzz]

Even Putin's European friend Viktor Orbán of Hungary has now stated that he fully supports all European sanctions.

EDIT: African top economists and the World Food Program have issued a warning that increased grain prices will soon start to become a serious problem, not just for the African countries, but also for refugee camps.
World Food Program gets about 50% of all it's grain from Russia and the Ukraine. WFP director David Beasley says the war in Ukraine will have a 'dramatic impact' on the food situation in refugee camps.

[MaxTheFox]

Everything went to shit within the span of 3 days. Putin now fucked himself.

[Strongpoint]

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

Here is a good resource for confirmed equipment losses of both sides

[Il Palazzo]

He's already (...) threatened to basically hold the maintenance of the ISS hostage in a way that's had some people interpret it as a threat to de-orbit it

Please, stop repeating this. It's a false spin.
There was an exasperated comment from the head of Roscosmos in response to the sanctions - which would involve stopping cooperation with the Russians in the space sector, which includes performing periodic boosts to keep the ISS in planned orbit (it's scheduled to crash into the ocean in eight years) - to the effect of: 'you can't fire us, we're the only reliable maintenance company in town and your station needs maintenance or it'll crash uncontrollably, possibly in a populated area'. Nobody's threatening to deorbit the station. They just want to keep their main source of income. And it's Roscosmos who is held hostage here - that's the point of the sanctions.

[martinuzz]

Well, he also said that we should not forget tht Russia is the only manufacturer of the ISS's maneuvering thrusters.

[da_nang]

I'm concerned for Mariupol. The Russian column in Melitopol seems to be advancing upon it, according to liveuamap.com. The Mariupol defenders will be fighting on two fronts if it's not stopped.

Turkish authorities are also denying that they've closed the straits.

[Starver]

Қазақстан is closer to "Kazakstan" I think.

Maybe, maybe not. Depending on how much I express my (local) vernacular, it could be nearer 'ch'-words than '(c)k' ones. But that's still me repeating the 'English' version. Think of "Moscow". English: "Moss-Coe"; US:"Moss-Cow" but neither actually matches "Moskva" anyway...

Let's look it up. It commonly represents the voiceless velar fricative /x/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in “loch”.. Based upon my rather limited knowledge of Dutch (a.k.a. "English spoken through a bad cold" ) and more specifically the pronunciation of van Goch's name (/vɑŋ ˈɣɔx/ - it neither rhymes with "loch" or "go", though the latter seems doubly wrong), I wouldn't have been surprised to see "Kazaghstan".

(Also note that it says: "Kha is romanised as ⟨kh⟩ for Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, and Tajik, and as ⟨ch⟩ for Belarusian, while being romanised as ⟨h⟩ for Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Kazakh." So right now, as part of my personal Russian sanctions/apparent Қазақ stand-offishness, I'll start using "Kazahstan", with possible further derussifications later once I've checked out all the other letters.)

I'm not (particularly) a lingual prescriptivist, when it comes to loanwords and loan-names that I have no control over, so I say let the Netherlanders choose their own conventions. (And the Deutsch choose his, or is he a German/Allemand/Tysker/Nemec/Prus/...  )

I liked that research too much. Seemed a shame to waste it.

[martinuzz]

The ch is a linguistical multipede.
In Dutch, it can be used for many sounds.
It can be pronounced like tsj, like in the dance, cha-cha-cha
It can be pronounced like just a slightly softer g than the one in loch, with the g sound becoming softer and softer the further south you go. It turns into a 'h' somewhere near Gent in Belgium (pronounce: hand).
It can also be pronounced as a kh, like in Kazachstan.

A lot of it has to do with the classical Latin, of which linguist still cannot agree if the original c was pronunced as a ts, a s or a k.
In german it became a k. Ceasar became Kaiser.
In Russian it became a ts. Ceasar became Tzar.
The anglosaxons and francophones just didn't know and they settled on emperor, with some Latin root c's becoming an s (centimeter), and some becoming a k (conjure).

To complicate things, throw in the classical Greek chi (Χ)

[da_nang]

Kyiv Post reporting Russian soldiers attacking ambulances near Kherson, posts Twitter video with burning ambulance.

Would appreciate a third-party confirmation of this war crime.

[MaxTheFox]

Қазақстан is closer to "Kazakstan" I think.

Maybe, maybe not. Depending on how much I express my (local) vernacular, it could be nearer 'ch'-words than '(c)k' ones. But that's still me repeating the 'English' version. Think of "Moscow". English: "Moss-Coe"; US:"Moss-Cow" but neither actually matches "Moskva" anyway...

Let's look it up. It commonly represents the voiceless velar fricative /x/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in “loch”.. Based upon my rather limited knowledge of Dutch (a.k.a. "English spoken through a bad cold" ) and more specifically the pronunciation of van Goch's name (/vɑŋ ˈɣɔx/ - it neither rhymes with "loch" or "go", though the latter seems doubly wrong), I wouldn't have been surprised to see "Kazaghstan".

(Also note that it says: "Kha is romanised as ⟨kh⟩ for Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, and Tajik, and as ⟨ch⟩ for Belarusian, while being romanised as ⟨h⟩ for Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Kazakh." So right now, as part of my personal Russian sanctions/apparent Қазақ stand-offishness, I'll start using "Kazahstan", with possible further derussifications later once I've checked out all the other letters.)

I'm not (particularly) a lingual prescriptivist, when it comes to loanwords and loan-names that I have no control over, so I say let the Netherlanders choose their own conventions. (And the Deutsch choose his, or is he a German/Allemand/Tysker/Nemec/Prus/...  )

I liked that research too much. Seemed a shame to waste it.

In Russian it, at least in my area, is pronounced "Kazahstan". You're too late.

[Strongpoint]

Official transliteration from Kazakh is Qazaqstan and phonetically it is qɑzɑqˈstɑn ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Kk-kazakhstan.ogg ). Kazakhstan is transliteration from Russian


Back to the topic: Situation on the southern front looks grim. Ukrainian forces in the East may get surrounded.

[Starver]

Back to the topic: Situation on the southern front looks grim. Ukrainian forces in the East may get surrounded.

That they haven't been already is a Russian failure/Ukrainian triumph.

Even with home-ground advantage, the country was surrounded from NNW clockwise to SSW with freshly practiced troops drawn from one of the largest countries in the world. I bet the wargaming in Moscow went a lot better than this.

[martinuzz]

Chechnyan president Ramzan Kadirov has announced that Chechnya's army will be joining the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.