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They're pretty large enclaves, and Putin has recognised the halves which aren't under separatist control -  a simple grab.

They add up to 1/5 of the area of the UK, hardly 'tiny'.

Off topic but your whole country is a land grab, dilbs. Mine is too.

uziq wrote:

the actual areas concerned at the moment are technically smaller than the shaded regions, as not all of the claimed areas have been in separatist control.

As I understand it Putin has claimed the entire shaded regions, not just the areas under separatist control.

Also saw I think the UKR Foreign Minister pointing out that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for Europe and Russia agreeing that its borders would be protected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_ … Assurances

That was a bad deal, should have taken NATO membership as part of that one, now the UNSC should step in - fat lot of use they are.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

the actual areas concerned at the moment are technically smaller than the shaded regions, as not all of the claimed areas have been in separatist control.

As I understand it Putin has claimed the entire shaded regions, not just the areas under separatist control.

Also saw I think the UKR Foreign Minister pointing out that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for Europe and Russia agreeing that its borders would be protected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_ … Assurances

That was a bad deal, should have taken NATO membership as part of that one, now the UNSC should step in - fat lot of use they are.

lmao yes, well done, quite a hot take. 'ukraine shouldn't have given away its nukes'.

this has literally been a talking point in ukraine and ukrainian nationalist politics for, erm, the last 25 years at least. you're really keeping up with your reading, dilbert!

at the fall of the USSR ukraine had a pretty good claim to a huge chunk of the russian nuclear arsenal, as well obviously as the russian navy's fleet ports, etc. that's a large part of the entire reason for russia's geopolitical ambitions in the region.

it's an incredibly hot take, a radioactive take, you could say, to claim that the best course of action would have been for a brand new infant democracy to have one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals. or to argue that any country, really, should be invested in nuclear armament.

besides, it was the early 1990s, the era of 'end of history', end-of-Cold War triumphalism, russia was a madhat capitalist experiment and had seemingly sloughed off all of its axis of evil ideology overnight. denuclearisation of any geopolitically hot regions is generally a laudable aim, imo. would it change the balance of power now? erm, probably not? it's not like even a nuke-armed ukraine would have used the things over crimea. this entire region has nightmarish memories of nuclear spillover already.

Last edited by uziq (2022-02-23 02:42:10)

which is literally why i said

the actual areas concerned at the moment are technically smaller than the shaded regions, as not all of the claimed areas have been in separatist control. it remains to be seen how fierce the fighting will be over these breakaway regions borders.

and, in any case, we are a very fucking long way from 'putin will roll his tanks through europe', part of dilbert's usual paranoiac tirades about china conquering the world, russia causing the fall of europe, etc.

it's a huge crisis, no doubt, but i don't know what use this 'putin rolling tanks through europe' rhetoric has.

Dilbert_X wrote:

So anyway, where's the post where I said Putin could sweep across Europe again and uziq ridiculed me?

errrrm yeah .... no.

Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Off topic but your whole country is a land grab, dilbs. Mine is too.

And since the UN was created land grabs are not acceptable.

Except for Israel, they can grab all the land they want.

We do land grabs in smaller chunks now. The wealthy snap up properties everywhere and price everyone else out of affordable housing. I have watched homes get flipped (read: "fresh-coat-of-paint" repairs, lol) for double, triple, quadruple+ their 80s prices for the past 30 years. Places near where I lived then have had a figure added, and in another 10-20 years could easily have a second on top of that and be in worse condition than ever before.

Where's the UN to protect us from ourselves?

Women healthcare products should be free.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2022-02-23 06:54:56)

it's pretty odd that russia and china have both totally skipped mRNA vaccines. and even in their regular vaccine tech, they have singularly failed to produce an effective vaccine.

cuba tasked its own health system with developing vaccines and came up with, afaik, 3/4 working ones in a short order.

2.5 years into a pandemic and its like russia/china have squandered every opportunity. very bizarre.

but remember: china should be looked to as an example. it's totally sensible to skip highly effective vaccines and lock down 40 million people for months on end!

dilbert: vaccines might one day have an unintended side-effect. we should use lockdowns and closures.
also dilbert: puTiN iS crAzy. hE beeN in LockDown ToOoOo lOng!!!!

Last edited by uziq (2022-02-24 00:54:25)

this has been written about and reported on for years. ‘shady shit coming out’ LMAO. hawkish thinktanks and political quangos have been writing about the infiltration of russian money into the UK/US for most of the last decade.

no shit it’s majorly compromising for johnson’s current iteration of the conservative party in particular. the money goes deep.

the last defence minister, a useless oik gavin williamson, infamously said in an interview that the ‘russians should go away’, and then the next day took lunch with a russian woman connected to their own defence/interior ministry. she paid him like £60,000 for his time. no idea what she wanted or the purposes of that meeting.

boris as foreign secretary was filmed limping home on a budget flight from his russian oligarch’s italian party palace on more than one occasion. the same oligarch that johnson recently put into the house of lords as a thanks for his years of funding/patronage.

raises crosswalks are very much still in the paradigm of cities built around cars. routing pedestrians around the necessary cars’ domain. we had cities built like that in the 1970s. it was supposed to be ‘futurism’ and the urbanism of the future. birmingham in the UK has an awful lot of raised concrete crosswalks or underpasses. they are generally considered to be dangerous and unsightly spaces.

the real step forward is no emissions zones, cycle paths, and getting rid of private vehicles in city centres altogether.

don’t, errr, chicago and minneapolis also have lots of raised crosswalks, on account of the weather? in a similar 1970s jetsons vibe?

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-02 18:07:20)

Bicycle lanes are a waste of space. I rather have more outdoor eating places.

I bet Ron DeSantis is going to ride bicycles around San Francisco when he is out of office.

Yes he will