Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 21

Now?

Kind makes you rethink that second Chechen war.... moscow pays them massive amounts to play nice, they get to ignore russian laws and play at caliphate at home and armed chechens roam the corridors of power in moscow.

Who won again?


no such think as a free market dictatorship.... russia is more of an oligarchy which is limited by the oligarchs' very limited tolerance for those beneath them to thive. It's Brasil with trains instead of highways and tundra instead of forests...

Accurate.


Hard to say. The Chechens got hammered so hard, that nobody else has dared to raise their head since - so I suppose you can put that into the "winning bucket".

On the other hand, we have a cancer growing within the body of Russia. As soon as it is strong enough, it will likely make another attempt. The Chechens have been fighting us since the times of Pushkin and Lermontov. Fighting is in their blood.

Bobko, please explain it to me.....are the Chechens part of Russia? Can't Russia get rid of them?

Who wants crazy islamist barbarians within their borders.....is Putin somehow dependend on them?

There are wars....and money donatings....that is all to confusing....can you give me a short easy summary what these people are to the Kremlin?

I don't think you can cite another example of irresponsible behavior worldwide: killing the most unique lake, the most significant source of fresh water, surpassing even the Great Lakes. There never was or will be another Baikal. It belongs to all of humanity, not rotten Moscow's crazies.

Memo to Polish Russia haters:

You are really stupid since there is no upside to calling Russians names.

In fact, there is no upside to insulting anyone who can hurt you.

If you can't resist the temptation, you are just a low-IQ broads. They never think before they say crap like this. I see them on YT videos when they are pulled over for traffic violations.

Lucky for me, my mother was an exception and didn't tell the Germans checking her travel documents in 1944 that they were war criminals.

Thanks, Mom...We both would be dead if you did...RIP...

Opposition to 'Eurofascism' driving rapprochement with US - Russian spy agency
Western Europe is predisposed to tyranny and "global conflicts," Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service says

Spot on...Just check where all the -isms came from. They can't do it today so they have Thought Police for their own "subjects".

The US and Russia are natural allies against "Eurofascism" and the tyrannical tendencies prevalent in Western European countries, Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service has said.

My position from day one here...It's amazing how Americans and Russians see things the same way...

Like a dog and a cat.

Final NATO mistake after which Russia`s Putin emerged >

NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 > Belgrade`s air defense in full spread, defending the Garden >

It never fails...If it's stupid, it's from a Polak...

Oh, come on. Crow...don't you know how it works...

NATO bombing - good. It's for "freedom and democracy". Dead kids - collateral damage.

Russian bombing - bad. It's to unjustly liberate Russia from NATO proxies. Dead kids - war crime.

You're right.

Why would we get rid of them, when we forced them through enormous force of arms to join us?

If they do not belong to us, they would be parts of Turkey or Iran. Did you know, that in Iran - there are 25 million Azerbaijanis - many times more than in Azerbaijan itself?

We give the Chechens an opportunity to be free. We give them a chance to flex their Muslim diplomacy.

When Putin flies to Saudi Arabia or UAE - Kadyrov is always with him - as the token Muslim.

Chechnya enjoys a much bigger international profile, as a part of Russia, than nearly any other Muslim country.

Ramzan Kadyrov is much more powerful than King Hussein, or the leader of Iraq, or the current leader of Syria.

Imagine being a Chechen from Chechnya,a country destroyed by Russians, much of its population decimated just 20 years ago, forced to fight Ukrainians so that Russians can massacre them too.

Millions of them don't have access to running water or working toilets though. Perhaps the Kremlin could fix that before engaging in costly wars abroad?

An Uncle Ahmed as it were.....

Actually a lot of it is nicer than russia russia now.... if you spend a bit of time on google maps (away from the capital) it generally looks better maintained than russia (russians aren't good at keeping things nice), better than dagestan.... which is also generally better kept up than places like omsk or chita at any rate.

A weird thing about russian imperialism is that the center (apart from a couple of propped up cities) is poorer than the periphery.... same way during the iron curtain where even during martial law Polish living standards were higher than most places in the cccp

Seriously! Wahnsinn...

So, that means that Kadyrov more or less depends on Putin? He should donate money to the Kremlin then....

Explain this strange paradox to Tacitus.

Not so strange if you think about that the quite recently incorporated countries already had another living standard than the old center....

But it's also one thing that held the whole thing together for so long, I believe....as I read the forced money reparation from East Germany were stopped 1953, as were the moving from german technology and factories and such eastwards.

Imagine that hadn't happened and Moscow would had glowed with all the stolen riches from it's whole Empire....the resistance to it would had grown much faster much bigger.
But the knowledge that the common Ivan did not live so much better than the common Fritz, maybe even worse, played a part.....

A much much worse, and much less liberal living standard than within the Russian metropole.

All of the Caucasus belonged either to the Turks or the Persians, prior to Russian control. They started entering into the Russian dominion starting in the 15-16th century. It started, obviously, with various Orthodox principalities. By the 18-19th century, most of it had been conquered by Russia - including all the Muslim areas.

If you think they would have been better off as Turks or Persians, go and ask them yourselves - you may be surprised at the response.

Within Russia they actually still have the ability to express their own national spirit - and to a huge degree. Contrast this to Turkey or Iran where everyone has to be a Turk or Persian.

Okay....I now see all the advantages for the chechen elite in power, but the chechen people will keep going for independence, there might be more wars and terror attacks....what's so important for Putin that he fights to keep them?

If Chechnya shows you can fight, defeat, and break from Russia... what stops the much larger Tatarstan? What stops Bashkiria? Etc, and so on. Most of these larger republics contribute a huge percentage of our federal budget through fuel exports.

Chechnya is the misbehaving child that must be punished as an example to all the others who are curious about what may lay beyond the fence.

russians are the most committed members of empire and the leaders know they'll put up with literally anything (up to and including killing them in large numbers) and still be loyal and so there's no need to facilitate any kind of improvement...

newer less committed members have more oil in their engines and maybe get a little (very little) slack when it comes to improving living standards, a way of trying to buy some loyalty

that's just within russia/cccp, in the iron curtain East Germany, Poland, Hungary etc had their own traditions and didn't necessarily closely follow russian/soviet models... though they had their own problems....

Right! Now that makes sense....

And in a way the Ukraine-war belongs to that policy....showing the the rest of the Empire and the world that even if some achieve to get away, Russia gets all whats important back...sooner or later....

Wow!

No wonder the Baltics get so nervous!

Basic law enforcement.

Over the long term - no one can escape the long arm of imperial law.

If one actor shows that you can disobey Moscow, then that example can become very contagious. So you have to make an extreme example of these "brave souls", as a lesson to all the meek folks in the choir.

You're an honest man. And to think that there are some people (even on this board) who still claim that war in Ukraine isn't about Russian imperialism but about self defence from "NATO threat"!

@Torq

Did not the Christ say to pay to Caesar what he is due?

Chechnya is the second poorest part of Russia, with the average income being around 1/5 of the Russian average income per capita. The Russian government has made a great fuzz about repairing some part of the destroyed infrastructure, but there are lots of reports how once you leave Grozny, the damage is still visible. That is despite Chechnya having significant oil and gas reserves, comparable to the Arab oil states. But as said before, the profits dont stay in the area.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_GDP_per_capita

What you are refering to is an assessment about the Empire of the Soviet Union, which supposedly empoverished itself while its' satellite states in Eastern Europe were much more prosperous. Which is really a myth. While it is true that e.g. the people in Poland or the GDR were more weathly than the Soviets, that had nothing to do with the Soviet Union supposedly keeping its satellites economically afloat (quite the contrary really).


Of course he could fix it. That is one of the advantages of being a dictatorship: If you really want to, you can push great infrastructure projects through without any resistance. But Putin has decided to spent 40%+ of his state budget on his war in Ukraine. Priorities.

@Bobko

There's too many Caesars these days though. And they all want to get paid.

Yalta V2.0?

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I didn't mean that at all... I basically meant the satellites weren't directly run by the soviets or russians and so they were better off....

I just looked at google maps street view (not in Grozny) and.... it looked nicer than similar places in russia, I'm sure there's poverty because chechens don't like (honest) work that much but it's obvious that the local government is spreading someof the booty it gets from moscow around... places inaccessible by road are probably pretty bad...