Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

If countries wants their citizens safe, they need to be pressuring Russia to end the fighting. Ukraine's not responsible for evacuating foreign nationals at the expense of their own citizens when they are being invaded.
You seem to call everyone out on any comments deemed not sympathetic enough to Ukrainians, yet you're not seemingly very sympathetic to foreigners in Ukraine at all. There is a vast difference between your suggestiong of prioritising foreign nationals and outright just ignoring them(or worse still kicking them out of lines) and leaving them there to potentially die. There's more than a hint of hypocrisy in some of the stuff you've said.
 
Usyk has gone back to enlist and is in the equivalent of the territorial army. That means staying and defending a particular territory, maybe never fighting if the war doesn’t reach you, and not just being sent to the front lines where the professionals are.

Vitali Klitschko is one of the more prominent politicians in Ukraine and Mayor of Kyiv.

Might want to rethink that post.

I should have clarified I wasn't directing that at the Kiltscho's. I still stand by my point around Usyk.

Perhaps I am jaded by the rubbish in the ME where celebs would come, full body armour, helmet and the works while the guys doing the job are in shorts and topless, in the middle of the biggest, most well-protected bases in the country. The places that were the only sanctuary of relative calm most of the time. And then you'd look at the stuff they'd put on SM and they'd get praised like they were some kind of brave messiah.

The praise should be going to the men and women who will not come home and the ones that will end up with life-changing injuries.
 
No. The system is built in a way that there are no potential rivals, anyone who possesses any such threat is ostracized and demoted (if not worse). Like the character assassination of Medvedev, who at some point of his “presidency” started to look like a more liberal alternative to Putin… or Sergey Ivanov, who, for a long time was seemingly groomed as a potential successor to Putin… who is now the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation on the Issues of Environmental Activities, Ecology and Transport.

The threats from without are dealt with even more efficiently. Khodorkovsky had served what, a 10 year prison sentence? Nemtsov was killed, although not likely by Putin’s direct order. Navalny was poisoned & later imprisoned with new bogus charges being invented one after another.
I see, so sadly no viable alternative on the horizon.. Maybe the economic challenges might provoke some movements but seems the grip is tight at the moment..
 
Not exactly breaking news and a very bad source.

But Russia do have options here, I don't buy the whole sanctions thing. The fact that Russia and China have both dramatically reduced their holdings of foreign currency/moving it to their own central banks and the increase in buying physical gold, point to both of them coming up with a way to create their own 'Eastern' economy. If they get the Gulf states, Iran, India and Brazil enrolled, the sanctions will have done more damage to the West than good.

A majority of Russian central bank money lives in EU/NATO nations, which significantly more than what they have at home and in China combined.
 
I imagine what was driving them was having no regrets about not having done their part if the worst happens, rather than IG content.

I hardly doubt people like the Sheriff Tiraspol manager wanted to follow up a historic win at Bernabeu by enhancing his brand with a spell in the territorial defences.

Exactly. I would never sign up to fight somebody else's war but if the UK was ever invaded I'd be coming back to do whatever I could. I'm sure I'd be more harm than help on the front lines but as territorial defence it's a different story.

If the Russians break into your area, you're fighting whether you like it or not.
 
Usyk has gone back to enlist and is in the equivalent of the territorial army. That means staying and defending a particular territory, maybe never fighting if the war doesn’t reach you, and not just being sent to the front lines where the professionals are.

Vitali Klitschko is one of the more prominent politicians in Ukraine and Mayor of Kyiv.

Might want to rethink that post.

Putin may want to reconsider escalating to avoid the Furys getting involved

 
I asked @Raoul this question but he didn't answer me, so I'm asking it again for everybody to answer, what economic sanctions did they place on Russia now that they didn't place on Iran?
 
I asked @Raoul this question but he didn't answer me, so I'm asking it again for everybody to answer, what economic sanctions did they place on Russia now that they didn't place on Iran?
If I answer, I think it will probably very long passage but it's very interesting questions and can view in many perspectives.
 
I asked @Raoul this question but he didn't answer me, so I'm asking it again for everybody to answer, what economic sanctions did they place on Russia now that they didn't place on Iran?

What's the point in the question given that they are different nations in different predicaments and different sets of resources to deal with sanctions.
 
I'm Serbian and we, as a country, traditionally have close ties with Russia but what their government is doing is clear invasion on another country. My support for Ukraine and their people. Not sure if they can hold on but defending even this long seems impressive given the size of their enemy.

Think what Putin is doing will inevitably spread some anti-Russian sentiment that was probably there in Europe and USA anyways, and even hatred towards Russian people. We have to always remember it can never be fault of every Russian citizen, but of those leading the country.
 
I'm Serbian and we, as a country, traditionally have close ties with Russia but what their government is doing is clear invasion on another country. My support for Ukraine and their people. Not sure if they can hold on but defending even this long seems impressive given the size of their enemy.

Think what Putin is doing will inevitably spread some anti-Russian sentiment that was probably there in Europe and USA anyways, and even hatred towards Russian people. We have to always remember it can never be fault of every Russian citizen, but of those leading the country.


Myself and i'm sure many others here don't have a problem with Russian people or even their soldiers, it's Putin, his cronies and the oligarchs who are the issue and where the hatred is directed towards.
 
959c134238cdf618cc58121b6cac98edfcfab5042b6d503423ebaa17136cbdd1.jpg

maxresdefault.jpg

e53e99ce74.jpg

Ukrainian people protest in my country
 
Any exposure banks have to Russia can be mitigated by their respected governments to help cover risk and losses. This is after all an emergency that transcends the ins and outs of routine banking activity.
They can be mitigated, but will send shock waves through those economies. Also some banks/EU/US citizens have cash in Russia which technically can be used to fund military actions.
 
You seem to call everyone out on any comments deemed not sympathetic enough to Ukrainians, yet you're not seemingly very sympathetic to foreigners in Ukraine at all. There is a vast difference between your suggestiong of prioritising foreign nationals and outright just ignoring them(or worse still kicking them out of lines) and leaving them there to potentially die. There's more than a hint of hypocrisy in some of the stuff you've said.
I don't know what people expect Ukraine to be doing right now? The infrastructure isn't there to now being organising a co-ordinated evacuation of all foreign nationals in their territory, whilst also fighting Russia on multiple fronts. The country is absolutely massive with vast distances between sizeable cities, and even in peacetime travel is very difficult and time-consuming due to poor infrastructure. There are no motorways in the whole country, except for a short distance between Kyiv and the main airport. There are no flights in or out of the country. There is a severe shortage of rolling stock on the train network.

This is exactly why the US, the EU and the UK told their nationals to get out whilst they could, because they knew exactly this would happen. Usually you turn to your embassy at a time like this for assistance for fleeing from a country in a crisis, but that offer internally from most embassies has now largely dried up. It's like Afghanistan all over again. I see India is trying to organise some busses now for their nationals from Kharkiv, because the suggestion is that their government has spoken to Russia on allowing them some breathing room to get their students out.

It's a massive logistical challenge for Ukraine to even prioritise getting children and their mothers away from the fighting, let alone other adults, especially men of fighting age.

I haven't once supported ignoring foreigners internally or at the borders. What I have said is that people will be prioritised for the processing at borders (where everyone is safe anyway), both for efficiency reasons and for needs-based reasons, and that the very limited transport out of big cities will also be likely be prioritised along similar lines, especially for women and children.
 
You forgot the resource rich African countries who do most of their trade with China, if China can strong arm them into their system then it might really create a parallel system to Swift.
That's important aspect as well. It's not only African countries but also other Asian countries and Brazil.

There has already been talks that BRICS will create their own payment system and CIPS is already operational so depending on where those 4 go and their stance Russia has option to operate outside of SWIFT.
 
You forgot the resource rich African countries who do most of their trade with China, if China can strong arm them into their system then it might really create a parallel system to Swift.

CIPS is currently the Northern Premier League Division One Midlands of global payments systems.

15,000 messages vs 50,000,000 per day for SWIFT.

It's not going to "rival" SWIFT anytime soon.
 
I don't know what people expect Ukraine to be doing right now? The infrastructure isn't there to now being organising a co-ordinated evacuation of all foreign nationals in their territory, whilst also fighting Russia on multiple fronts. The country is absolutely massive with vast distances between sizeable cities, and even in peacetime travel is very difficult and time-consuming due to poor infrastructure. There are no motorways in the whole country, except for a short distance between Kyiv and the main airport. There are no flights in or out of the country. There is a severe shortage of rolling stock on the train network.

This is exactly why the US, the EU and the UK told their nationals to get out whilst they could, because they knew exactly this would happen. Usually you turn to your embassy at a time like this for assistance for fleeing from a country in a crisis, but that offer internally from most embassies has now largely dried up. It's like Afghanistan all over again. I see India is trying to organise some busses now for their nationals from Kharkiv, because the suggestion is that their government has spoken to Russia on allowing them some breathing room to get their students out.

It's a massive logistical challenge for Ukraine to even prioritise getting children and their mothers away from the fighting, let alone other adults, especially men of fighting age.

I haven't once called or supported ignoring foreigners internally. What I have said is that people will be prioritised for the processing at borders (where everyone is safe anyway), both for efficiency reasons and for needs-based reasons, and that the very limited transport out of big cities will also be likely be prioritised along similar lines, especially for women and children.
I would say the absolute minimum they should be doing is not explicitly excluding foreign nationals from any evacuation efforts, and refusing to process them at the border. It kind of flies in the face of the the principles of their fight against Russia and the help they are receiving from a vast array of countries, if they are treating people that were working and studying in their country as second class citizens.
 
Any exposure banks have to Russia can be mitigated by their respected governments to help cover risk and losses. This is after all an emergency that transcends the ins and outs of routine banking activity.
Yes but those exposures are in Russia, no ? Putin just invaded a sovereign country, I don't think he's the type not to touch foreign assets because they're not his.
 
CIPS is currently the Northern Premier League Division One Midlands of global payments systems.

15,000 messages vs 50,000,000 per day for SWIFT.

It's not going to "rival" SWIFT anytime soon.
SWIFT has been operational for 40 years now? CIPS is from barely 7. The current economical state and trade war between US and China and a huge influx of 140 million population that Russia can bring will definitely boost those numbers in the coming years.

As I said China is the far and away the biggest winner of all this and if they play their cards right they will gain advantage over pretty much everybody.
 
Myself and i'm sure many others here don't have a problem with Russian people or even their soldiers, it's Putin, his cronies and the oligarchs who are the issue and where the hatred is directed towards.
I'm sure you don't and it's nice to read that, it's just some things people write on Twitter are ridiculous, but Twitter is one toxic place I guess.
 
I asked @Raoul this question but he didn't answer me, so I'm asking it again for everybody to answer, what economic sanctions did they place on Russia now that they didn't place on Iran?

I don’t think Europe has ever cooperated fully with the American sanctions on Iran. The US kept imposing fines on the European banks that would work with Iran. This seems to be a more comprehensive package and followed willingly by everyone.
 
Do you see Navalny’s call to arms having an effect? Protesting at 7pm every weekday, 2pm every weekend day, etc? It’s getting hard to read whether people are actually protesting in Russia now with media clamping down.
We’ll see. It’s really hard to get a good read on how many people are actually protesting with those guerrilla type of protesting — you don’t get big crowds on big squares as they get dismantled by the police immediately, so you have moving groups of people that march around the city center, adapting to the police movement on the spot.

The only real number we get is the number of arrests and it’s quite high. But the feeling is that they have started to arrest more people, so it’s hard to deduct the number of actual protesters from that number.

I hope that more people would start to go out as the time goes — more and more information starts to go through the wall of Putin’s propaganda (and if troops on the ground can somehow be explained by their line of thinking, the bombing of Kharkiv, Kyiv and the likes can’t be excused even by the most outlandish lie); people are really feeling the economical struggle and its affects on their day-to-day life — so even those who don’t want to empathize with Ukrainians may do so for their own benefit.
 
SWIFT has been operational for 40 years now? CIPS is from barely 7. The current economical state and trade war between US and China and a huge influx of 140 million population that Russia can bring will definitely boost those numbers in the coming years.

As I said China is the far and away the biggest winner of all this and if they play their cards right they will gain advantage over pretty much everybody.
Let's just say for example, Russia and the opec+ come to an agreement to only sell their oil/gas in yuan. Within a week you'll see those numbers dramatically change. It would crash the dollar and nearly overnight make the Yuan one of the strongest currencies in the world.

EDIT: Before anyone jumps out at me I'm not saying it will happen, there are way too many influences at stake for it to even remotely happen, I'm just using it as an example in a dramatic scenario.
 
This is the start of ww3 then!

No, if this is true (the source was critisised and it was a bad source) - then the Russians have gotten a system that not at all can replace SWIFT. Cips is chinese laguage and yen-based. They have 1 clearing station in Moscow. So it would need extensive build up and change to work well. Also CIPS dealt with 11,513 transactions in contrast with round 40 million messages per day for SWIFT.

Edit: But if true, China are taking sides imo.