That’s a very precise statement. Which is to say, it seems like a p-hacked statistic.
a) How many goods are subject to new licensing requirements?
b) A decrease of 99% by value would seem to say that they’re foregoing products that are expensive. Last year they might have been buying a billion dollars worth of finished products, now they’re buying a billion dollars of basic parts that can be assembled into those same finished products?
I’m sure that the results have been good if you’re getting to 99% of anything that still sounds fairly general. I’d just prefer to not to have to read lawyerese from the government and have to translate back to human.
Not all of the cannon fodder is raping people and shooting people in the face. The ones that do are criminals and should be treated accordingly. There are plenty of other “cannon fodder” that have surrendered and are revealed as just scared man-boys of 17 or 18 years of age who don’t have any real interest in fighting a war.
Predictable. Preventable.
The worst of the hot spots have warning signs. They must have been ignored. There are solid reasons this is called an exclusion zone. How much do you want to bet these soldiers were given no radiation monitoring devices whatsoever?
Want to know how utterly stupid and sad this is? You can use a cell phone as a radiation detector! Go to your app store and look for radiation detectors. They use the camera in the phone as a crude gamma detector. Not as sensitive or accurate as a dedicated instrument but it would give some indication of no-go zones. Enough that the US government is talking about equipping first responders and others who might encounter radiation sources (border personnel, junkers/scrappers) with these apps. Yes, we know that soldiers’ cell phones were confiscated but IF the commanders had had them and IF they had paid attention… They don’t need to be connected to the internet to give this information to the user. So, so, so unnecessary for busloads of soldiers to be suffering ACS.
But, beyond apps, there are non-tech warning signs, both man made and natural:
Aside from the man-made sign with a radiation danger icon, there are the creepy dead trees (some spots are still radioactive enough to inhibit normal decay), barren patches of ground, and, around those, twisted weird mutated plants. Sure, it’s winter/early spring but these are pine trees , they should be green all year round. Gee, you’re next to the most famous nuclear accident site in the world and there’s a bunch of dead trees standing on bare ground, just maybe these are warning signs? And, oh yeah, the man-made yellow and red sign. Even if you’re so inured to government lies you don’t believe official warnings any more the natural world is also letting you know there is a serious problem here.
It is possible to travel safely through the exclusion zone, people even work in the exclusion zone, but you still have to avoid certain areas, especially if you don’t have proper protective gear. The people who placed the warning signs were wearing protective gear and they didn’t stay any longer than necessary. They certainly weren’t trying to dig trenches in these areas.
Apologies, I’m not particularly savvy at posting embedded videos or images.
The analysis maintains that Russia appears to still be committed to its primary goal of taking Kiev and are doing a variety of things that all telegraph that intent, such as shifting concentration of artillery fire to all the villages and suburbs on the approaches surrounding Kiev, so as to prepare for an encirclement, and pulling back select units to regroup and prepare for another assault. The big question is, will they be able to assemble the men and materiel that’s needed to do so. Things have very clearly not gone the way the Russians expected, but Putin seems to be committed to playing the long game and - with the help of the Chinese - will spend whatever treasure and blood that’s required over as many months or years that it takes to grind out a Pyrrhic victory destroying Ukraine in the process. That’s what he’s done elsewhere (e.g. Chechnya, Syria). No reason to suppose that isn’t the game plan now.
Just speculating … I’d be willing to bet not a lot of information about Chernobyl got shared within the USSR. These 19-year-old conscripts (and, shoot, even their commanders) may not know much, if anything, that actually happened there.
I doubt it. The HBO mini-series got a lot of exposure and attention in Russia a couple years ago, mostly because the government objected to the show’s focus on government lies in the aftermath. Russian media deflected by highlighting the heroism of Russian responders and their bravery in light of the horrible consequences of radiation exposure. It’s also worth noting that few if any of those conscripts were born before the USSR ceased to exist.
According to Energoatom, it has been also confirmed that the Russian military were building fortifications, trenches in the “Red Forest” - the most toxic zone in the entire exclusion zone.
“So it is not surprising that the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first symptoms of the disease, which occurred very quickly. As a result, almost a riot broke out among the military, and they began to escape from there,” the company wrote.
There are reports that 300 soldiers from South Ossetia who had been sent to fight in Ukraine deserted and went home.
Apparently the Russians didn’t trust them and wouldn’t give them maps or enough ammunition, but expected them to launch suicidal assaults on Ukrainian positions.
Then there was a major incident when a Russian commander ordered them not to retrieve the body of one their men who had been killed. So they simply left Ukraine en masse and threatened to shoot anybody who tried to stop them.
Putin doubling down on insisting that Europe pay for Russian gas in rubles really shows how he doesn’t expect or plan for any pushback or opposition from anybody. His demand has been rejected out of hand with no equivocation whatsoever by Germany, France, and the UK. Starting tomorrow - Putin’s deadline - Europe is just going to learn how to live without Russian gas and several billions of Euros won’t be propping up the Russian economy.
Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl:
It was reported that Russian NTV television channel has been producing its own version of the Chernobyl story in which the CIA plays a key role in the disaster.
Emphasis mine.
The Communists of Russia party called for a libel lawsuit against Chernobyl 's writer, director and producers, describing the show as “disgusting”. In a statement, party member Sergey Malinkovich spoke of the party’s intentions to lobby TV regulator Roskomnadzor to request that it block local access to the series. Marianna Prysiazhniuk of Vice Media notes that multiple Russian media outlets describe the miniseries as one-sided, incomplete, or anti-Russian propaganda. Argumenty i Fakty dismissed the show as “a caricature and not the truth.”
“The only things missing are the bears and accordions!” quipped Stanislav Natanzon, lead anchor of Russia-24, one of the country’s main news channels.
Sooo … Russians may indeed know about Chernobyl, but what they “know” was heavily influenced and / or completely whitewashed by state-controlled media.
In other words, the guys digging trenches probably didn’t think it was all that dangerous to do.
It’s been said that lies at least care enough about the truth to want to impersonate it; whereas bullshit just says “that’s my story and if you don’t like it, too bad”. Reality control means that everyone you say is as pure and true as if God himself had said it, so of course anyone who disagrees with you is a liar, a monster, the Devil himself for daring to have blasphemed “the truth” (i.e., whatever you claim).
IANAEconomist (or even a particularly savvy financial person) but wouldn’t it be better to be paid in stable currencies such as Euros instead of the increasingly worthless ruble?
Or is the idea that they’d have to buy rubles (from Russia) and thus prop up the collapsing currency?
