War in Ukraine

Meanwhile they are excluded from literally the only thing their citizens have to look forward to in life.. Olympic competition. LOL. Suck it losers.

Why Only 15 Athletes From Russia Will Compete at the Paris Olympics - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Banned from participating because of the war, Moscow has chosen to spurn the Games in return. It is framing them as part of the same narrative that President Vladimir V. Putin has used to stoke nationalism at home: that Russia is engaged in an existential standoff with a Western alliance bent on the country’s humiliation.

“No one wants to recognize the real reason for the increased barriers to Russia’s participation,” said Dmitri Navosha, a Belarusian who co-founded a prominent sports website in Russia but has left the country and opposes the invasion of Ukraine. “The reason is the war.” And in Russia, he said, “this fact is simply hidden and interpreted as ‘the West doesn’t like Russia, so they don’t let us go anywhere.’”

Still, the Kremlin and its supporters insist the decision to bar Russia is borne of American hypocrisy.

There was a public pressure campaign inside Russia to persuade athletes to withdraw. At least 20 Russian athletes who qualified and met the criteria for competing rejected the invitations — either because their federation decided not to participate or out of solidarity with other team members who were not greenlit by the Olympic committee.

 

Please. Their economy is in shambles. They are neglecting infrastructure and investment falling decades further behind the West in productivity, depleting their wealth, and suffering massive brain drain. They are F'd.

Russia is lying about its economic strength: sanctions are working – and we need more | Eight European finance ministers | The Guardian

While Russian GDP may be growing, the economy is increasingly geared towards the war industry, upheld by large fiscal stimulus. This is not an endless source of growth, nor a sign of a stable economy. The Kremlin’s war factories are already at maximum capacity. Unemployment has fallen to the point that there are reports that Vladimir Putin approved the replacement of imprisonment for forced labour. The tight labour market has put upward pressure on wages, while the weaker ruble increases import prices and is contributing to increasingly high inflation, despite Russian central bank efforts to fight it with high interest rates.

To finance the war, the Russian government has tapped into the liquid assets of Russia’s national wealth fund. Estimates by Bloomberg suggest it has almost halved in size since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as the country sacrifices its future prosperity to wreak havoc abroad. Moscow has also resorted to several extreme interventions to control the Russian economy. Export bans for petrol and sugar have been introduced to secure domestic supply. Strict capital controls have been put in place to prevent the exodus of private funds from the country and keep the ruble from freefalling. Even so, there are still reports of billions of US dollars being transferred out of the country. For many Russians, the wartime economic policy of the Kremlin must bring about a sense of deja vu. Capital controls, export bans and heavy investments in the war industry are not new policies, but rather a return to the Soviet playbook.

What could be perceived and mistaken as a “boost” to Russian growth is, in fact, the beginning of a re-Sovietisation of the economy. Many of the hallmarks are there: far-reaching market controls, heavy public spending financed by expropriation of private assets, and a reorientation of the economy towards the war industry, with a total disregard for the social and economic wellbeing of the population. History clearly shows that this is not a successful long-term strategy. The short-term overheating of the economy, fueled by heavy investments in the war industry and very limited access to technology, will likely hinder productivity gains and result in stagnation of the private sector, even more rampant inflation and increasing pressure on Russian households.

To cover future deficits, Putin will have to use monetary financing, adding more fuel to inflation, and further deplete the Russian cash reserves. If Putin stays on this path, the long-term damage to the Russian economy could be significant and is likely to further erode confidence. However, this also requires patience and resolve from the west. We must maintain and increase pressure, while continuing and strengthening our support to Ukraine. Russian propaganda must not be left unchallenged.

 

The Russian economy is doing very well. I'm hearing they may eventually get electricity and water in small cities in southern Russia. If that isn't the height of luxury, I don't know what is. How many American cities have electricity and water?

 

Even the WaPo is reporting Russia’s Kharkiv incursion earlier this year as a feint:

After an influx of American weapons and money helped Ukraine blunt a renewed invasion of the northeast Kharkiv region in May, preventing a major breakthrough and dashing Moscow’s hopes of surrounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian commanders have refocused their attention on the Donetsk region, perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top territorial goal.

The reinvasion of the Kharkiv region, while yielding limited gains, nonetheless diverted Ukrainian resources. Oleksandr, 30, a battalion commander of the 47th brigade, fighting near Ocheretyne, said that Ukrainian forces are struggling and that Putin’s prize increasingly seems within Russia’s reach.

“This strategy is clever: You try to concentrate the strength of your enemy in one direction and then distract them at another,” said Oleksandr, whose call sign is “Genius” and who is being identified only by first name in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol.

Russia, adapting tactics, advances in Donetsk and takes more Ukrainian land — The Washington Post

 

Rooskies Olympic chances look as good as their economy.

 

Now do our own America’s potemkin economy.

 

Armed only with shovels, frostbitten and subsisting on zoo animals, Russia somehow presses ahead …

 

Like the US Olympic team it is the best in the world.

 

Fake news. Anyway. What year is this war? Sure takes a long time for shovels to be effective. They could have built a giant wall by now. And for cheaper. I bet they could even make Ukraine pay for it.

 

Unwrap the flag from your face and you’ll see not best in world, but rather best in G7. In other words, tallest midget in the room.

 

Memory hole: our own War on the Afghans lasted twenty years and we were eventually driven out of the country by goat herders.

 

And not only did the Taliban not pay for it, we left them a billion dollars worth of equipment!

 

It will be rusted and useless soon enough, just like the American equipment that the Mullahs in Iran inherited.

 

Wrong answer, Lee Harvey. We have the #1 economy in the world ($27T GDP), including your heroes China ($18T) and Russia ($2T). The U.S. economy is more than one third bigger than China and Russia put together.

 

Ukraine accomplishes something unexpected, destroying a Tu-22M3 strategic supersonic bomber with a drone at an airfield. What was unexpected was the location--near Finland, in Russia's Arctic region, 1100 miles from Ukraine.

In other news, a Russian Su-34 fighter jet crashed on a training run in one of Russia's southern areas. It is not reported whether the pilot had access to water or air conditioning prior to the flight. Scratch one more Russian jet . . .

From what I've heard, Russian pilots have started to refer to the Su-34 as a "flying balcony".

Ukrainian drone strikes Russian supersonic bomber

 

At least Moscow is good.

 

Triggered alert! Russia is a shithole. It always has been. It always will be. There isn’t a less successful country in the world.

Why Russia sucks:

• Rampant poverty and polluted cities
• Obedient and submissive populous
• Indifference to everything including corruption
• Victim/fatalist mentality - all our problems are because America is mean or it is what it is
• Disregard for all laws amongst its people from the small laws that bar smoking in elevators that is ignored up to public corruption
• Religious bigotry
• Poorly educated dummies trailing US Nobel Laureates 26-371 in a romp
• Toxic aggression - shitty even in online games
• Alcoholics

 

You can do quite a bit with your capital city if you extract resources from everywhere else and collect the revenue and spend it in on your capital city (and your dictator's house, obviously). Sometimes, people in the outer lands have to do without water, electricity, heating in winter, and they have to die in your wars for you, but that's just the way it is.

 

Imagine Kamala Harris taking over this dumpster fire..