Anti-Russian Railway Workers in Belarus Reportedly Sabotaged All Rail Traffic to Ukraine (msn.com) 153
"Belarusian railway workers have reportedly cut off all rail connections between their country and Ukraine," reports Germany's public broadcaster DW:
Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin thanked Belarusian railway workers for this claimed act of sabotage on Saturday. "As of today, I can say there is no rail traffic between Belarus and Ukraine," Kamyshin was quoted as saying by Ukraine's Unian news agency. Kamyshin said that he would not give further details.
Franak Viacorka, advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tweeted about the incident and said that it had been confirmed by Belarusian railway workers, while declining to provide details.
Although Russia has moved many of its troops and military equipment into Ukraine through Belarus, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has not committed Belarusian troops to the offensive.
A Ukrainian online newspaper claims that "There is no longer a railway connection between Ukraine and Belarus, so the Russian occupiers will not be able to deliver Russian equipment by rail from Belarus," citing the longer televisied remarks of Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin: "I believe that these people will be able to prevent Belarusian Railways from transporting military convoys to Ukraine," Kamyshin added.
"Currently, the railways are out of order", Kamyshin confirmed, "so Russian equipment from Belarus will not be able to be delivered."
Franak Viacorka, advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tweeted about the incident and said that it had been confirmed by Belarusian railway workers, while declining to provide details.
Although Russia has moved many of its troops and military equipment into Ukraine through Belarus, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has not committed Belarusian troops to the offensive.
A Ukrainian online newspaper claims that "There is no longer a railway connection between Ukraine and Belarus, so the Russian occupiers will not be able to deliver Russian equipment by rail from Belarus," citing the longer televisied remarks of Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin: "I believe that these people will be able to prevent Belarusian Railways from transporting military convoys to Ukraine," Kamyshin added.
"Currently, the railways are out of order", Kamyshin confirmed, "so Russian equipment from Belarus will not be able to be delivered."
They have more important things to worry about (Score:2)
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Authoritarian countries often get their priorities wrong. Look at Russia, a country that has twice the number of tanks as the US, but not enough trucks to allow those tanks to operate further than 90 miles from a railhead. Russia has 10 supply brigades each operating roughly 400 trucks, so that's about 4000 supply trucks. In contrast the US military operates over 150,0000 supply trucks. After the beating Russian supply lines have taken it's no wonder that their offensives have ground to a halt.
Authorita
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The cynic in me says that today's Russian Army is designed to fight in low-intensity conflicts only, and that, should it become necessary to directly confront another semi-powerful nation militarily, its intention has always been to do so with nukes.
I hope I'm wrong.
But if I were a bastard that cared nothing about innocent life, that would probably be my strategy as well.
Rail repair corps (Score:2)
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How long will that take?
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Basically Putin's on the clock and he needs to wrap this up. Which is why he's attacking civilians directly and
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NATO is a defense pact.
If a NATO country is attacking another country, or e.g. going to Ukraine to help them, there is no obligation by NATO to help/join them.
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NATO entered Afghanistan under Article 4. In case you were wondering.
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NATO entered Afghanistan under Article 4. In case you were wondering.
Article 4 does not obligate any member to take military action. Many NATO countries did not participate in the Afghan operation.
Article 5 is binding: "An attack against one is an attack against all." But it is only triggered when a NATO country is attacked, not when it is the attacker.
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NATO entered Afghanistan under Article 4. In case you were wondering.
NATO invoked Article 5 [history.com] in relation to invading Afghanistan.
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https://www.cigionline.org/art... [cigionline.org]
Article 5 had nothing to do with ISAF NATO mission in Afghanistan.
That would have been earlier Operation Enduring Freedom.
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Also, and I don't know how true this is, but there are rumors that Poland is getting nervous that Russia May attack them in the future and in Poland May step into Ukraine directly.
You are parottng actual Russian propaganda that peddles fear of Polish forces occupying west Ukraine. Those rummors are just coming from paid trolls. It plays on a fact that it is somehow logical for uninformed that Poland should have some claims to west Ukraine, with Lwów (Lviv) that for centuries was considered a Polish city. This narrative works well on those who know Polish-Ukrainian history only from Wikipedia - it is also aimed at Ukrainians themselves. In reality, there are no such claims (to oc
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Thank you for this information and insight. It makes sense.
You are welcome. Of course with full NATO support and American nuclear umbrella Poland would consider taking on the offense - in direction of Kaliningrad and maybe Belarussia. Russia claims to Kaliningrad are very weak, certainly weaker than those to Crime. It was a simple land grab from 1945. Many consider taking it a prudent move, like popping a big pimple. Again not for any silly nationalistic reasons but purely political ones, to relieve pressure from Baltic states and break their siege. It is only logi
propaganda and misinformation Re:Rail repair corps (Score:2)
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There's also the fact that this sabotage took place in Belarus, which was meant to be entirely friendly territory. Sabotage of rail lines inside the Ukraine is one thing. Did the Russians expect to need to send repair teams to Belarus to undo damage there?
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The reports early in the invasion is that the Ukrainians had sabotaged the lines coming from Russia and Belarus themselves anyway. If it where me I would have blown bridges because good luck repairing those quickly. However in the south this didn't work and Russia was able to capture a rail yard which explains their better performance in the south, as they where able to bring supplies up from Crimea. However I would be astounded if the Ukrainians had not by now blown rail bridges to halt the advance from th
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It is almost certainly a combination of factors.
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Poland _should_ be nervous. They're direct neighbors of Ukraine and of Belarus, Russia's previously successful political conquest.
I also believe you also meant "en masse", rather than "in Mass". I don't believe the Russians are directly focusing on churches.
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Maybe those Russians (Putin) should have attended mass more often.
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More specifically a few years back the Russian foreign minister suggested to his German counterpart that Poland was not a real country and that they should divide it up. Yeah sounded ridiculous at the time, not so much any more part from the fact Germany would not be having anything to do with such a notion in the 21st Century.
Next on the list was almost certainly Moldova if it had gone to plan. Right now if I was in Trans-Dniester I would expect Moldovia to reassert it's authority of the area. If I where a
Re:Rail repair corps (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also another clock - his age. He is 70 years old and probably thought that taking Ukraine would be lasting legacy. He might even have imagined choosing his successor and going into semi retirement as the "father of the country" or some such bullshit honorific. And indeed Ukraine will be his legacy but not in the way he imagined.
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Re:Rail repair corps (Score:5, Insightful)
Putin is not under any clock.
Russia has lost 10% of its forces which invaded Ukraine either killed, captured, wounded or MIA in the first three weeks. Russia is currently in the process of transferring troops from Vladivostok in the Far East to make up for those losses because it can't pull any more troops from its western districts. Russia is so desperate for troops it is offering payment for Syrian terrorists [timesofisrael.com] to join the fight. Russia has lost 5 generals and at least four times that number of other officers in the first three weeks. Russia is unable to reliably resupply its troops in the field, so much so that the city of Voronezh was asked to provide assistance [imgur.com] on a voluntary basis [twitter.com].
Putin is on the clock. Every day more weapons flow into Ukraine and every day more Russian troops keep getting killed and their equipment destroyed, stuck in the mud or abandonment by his troops. Russia is almost wholly unable to mount any effective force to fight and has resorted to static bombardment. The longer this drags out the worse it's going to be for Russia. Ukraine will be able to rebuild with the help of the West, but with their access to western money and resources cut off due to sanctions, Russia will wither on the vine. Not even China can halt the downward spiral.
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20% is a moderately conservative estimate.
Is it? Where does that number come from? Even the Ukraine government only claims 14,700 casualties.
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US/UK where saying conservatively about 7000 dead two days ago. If you have that many dead you have on average four times that number wounded and out of action. So Russia is looking at ~18% of their troops out of action right now. So yeah 20% out of action is in the ball park for moderately conservative percentage of Russian troops out of action.
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Some time after their shitty diesel powered aircraft carrier leaves dry dock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Errr - The USA has many shitty diesel powered aircraft carriers - about thirty. So the US navy is thirty times worse than the Russian navy.
No, the US has 11 aircraft carriers and they are all nuclear powered. They also have 11 amphibious assault ships that can carry aircraft, 9 wasp class and 2 America class who are all fossil fuel powered. However, unlike the Admiral Kuznetsov, all of them have functioning toilets, and none of them travel with a tugboat in tow in case they break down somewhere while out on operations.
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Errr - The USA has many shitty diesel powered aircraft carriers - about thirty. So the US navy is thirty times worse than the Russian navy.
This can't even be considered a troll because it's so stupid. All U.S. aircraft carriers are nuclear powered. The last non-nuclear powered one was the Kitty Hawk which went out of service in 2009.
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Depends on what kind of sabotage. Most kinds are repaired in hours, but there are some ways to delay that to days.
That's with WW2 technology. We've progressed since then in repair tech, while rails are still pretty much the same when they're not high speed.
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there are some ways to delay that to days.
For a longer delay, target bridges and tunnels.
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Very difficult to do. Requires explosives, and large amount of them and someone who knows how to use them correctly.
This is the sort of stuff armies spend months to years training people to do because of just how hard it is to blow out a bridge or collapse a tunnel. When it comes to railway sabotage, the most common thing is to just remove or damage rails or switches. That requires just a few hours with tools and very little training.
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Very difficult to do. Requires explosives, and large amount of them and someone who knows how to use them corre
You assume that there isn't someone in Ukraine that doesn't know how to do this? You also don't need explosives to disable a bridge. A large boat in a river hitting a structure support will do nicely. You don't need to destroy the bridge to make it un-usable. Just structurally damage enough so it can't carry the load that needs to be carried.
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We're talking Belarus rail workers. Not professional Ukrainian soldiers. Not captains of large riverine vessels. This whole ridiculous "ghost of Kiev" fantasy stuff is getting tiring.
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I'm not talking about Belarus rail workers. I'm talking about ways to render a bridge unusable to a occupying force. Really this whole slashdot idiot with out reading comprehension is getting tiring.
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I think the context is, how much time does it require to undo the effects of whatever the sabotage did? The GP just mentioned, in line with this context, that it's not the hypothetical scenarios that are interesting (hitting a bridge with a giant boat) but whatever the Belarus folks could've conceivably done to sabotage military transport into Ukraine
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I'm talking about reality, where Belarus rail workers are claimed to have sabotaged the rail lines, just like the topic suggests.
You know, the topic being "Anti-Russian Railway Workers in Belarus Reportedly Sabotaged All Rail Traffic to Ukraine".
You appear to now admit to be talking about some random off topic fantasy, so I guess we're not talking about the same thing.
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I'm sorry that you didn't understand the fact that we are talking about two separate things. Please enlighten me what part of the original post you found confusing. I will do my best to explain it to you using small words. I'll even type it slowly to assist you with your reading comprehension issue.
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Depends a lot on quality.
Here in the U.S., tunnels [wikipedia.org] and bridges [wikipedia.org] have been known to fail spectacularly, all by themselves, and I don't imagine that Ukrainian infrastructure is much better.
Also, if you know that Russian invasion is a realistic threat, you probably have planned and prepared for that invasion, and one of the first things you'd want to do is to limit the enemy's mobility. He has to cover long distances, and supply his lines over those distances. As a defender, you really don't. That is one
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Story is about Belarussian rail workers sabotaging rail lines in Belarus. Not civilian militia, and not in Ukraine.
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My bad. Sorry about that.
Point about militia: defenders (or in this case halfway decent human beings in Belarus) have an inherent advantage over attackers, all else being even close to equal.
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Defenders in Belarus would be Belarus military. Attackers would be the saboteurs on the sovereign land of the nation defended by said military that sabotage it for sovereign interests of a foreign power.
Just like in Ukraine, Russian saboteurs going ahead of the invasion to mark targets and sabotage logistics aren't defenders but attackers. Exact same logic applies there, and there are plenty of videos of how such saboteurs and suspected saboteurs are treated by the territorial defense units and citizen mili
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If anything co
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While fixing the automation would indeed take longer, there are manual overrides on site. Just have MPs manually deal with switches on site. No need for automation.
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The automation is there to reduce the amount of people being used in the process. That is literally where the name comes from. Automating a process that was done by humans.
In case of physical switching like railways, we used to have people literally working at switching location turning a switch. This is still a backup option in most cases. This is why I'm stating that if automation is damaged, that's one of the easiest things to fix. While you undo the damage to the automation processes, just send military
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Remember that this is sabotage of Belarusian rail, in Belarus, by Belarusians. That will complicate things a bit.
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Considering amount of experience of Lukashenka's government with suppressing internal dissent, unlikely to complicate it. It's going to make it easier to handle. Remember how quickly and how thoroughly that government crushed the last large protest?
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It is disputable, if railway worker part would be allowed to take over. Russian are not hosts in Belarus yet.
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I was saying to someone just today that if I was Ukraine, I'd be sending in spooks into Russia to sabotage their rail network. IED some train lines and run havok. Russia is indeed very rail dependent and people on russian twitter where posting photos of just endless train carriages of tanks and apcs being carted to the border. If you sabotage those train lines, you've caused serious damage to their logistics giving you the ability to encircle and pound the russian military into the dirt.
I'm not that surpris
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They're mission has always been to repair rail at home, defensively. The rail system in Russia is intended for the military to use when needed, they will take priority over other traffic. But the intent is that this is defensive. It's clear that they can't use rail any further than land that they control in any case.
Note the fuel being delivered to the troops was being sent in by trucks originally, and those were easily blown up, and thus a big reason for them getting bogged down. The plan seemed to hav
Re:Rail repair corps (Score:4, Informative)
Also Ukrainians have destroyed two fuel trains (with video to prove it).
It's just too easy to sneak 4 guys with a couple missiles each next to the rail lines. And a lot of fuel and a lot of tanker cars go up in smoke. Plus that particular rail is going to be blocked for a while.
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If they have to now defend the Belarus railway from being damaged, then they are in trouble. That's going to take a lot of troops.
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Makes sense in a sensless way (Score:2)
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But it does not put the caboose on that.
Seems a little bit unverified (Score:2)
So when tweets like this come out without verification, I think it's more likely that it is more of the same. That said, I have absolutely no doubt that Belarus has no appetite for this war. They tried to depose Lukashenko
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I bet Russia lost its shit trying to find out.
They fired two top FSB guys after that (they put them in house arrest). https://www.wsj.com/articles/r... [wsj.com]
This seems a bit convenient (Score:2)
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Quick question: Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, the three countries mentioned, which one do you think is a Communist country ?
Re: Nothing unusual (Score:3)
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The president of Belarus swears he won't send troops to Ukraine, although the have moved right next to the border.
Belarus doesn't have much of an army anyway.
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Nearly entirely, as you can see from the report. There has been quite some pressure on Belarus dictator recently, this is why he was made closer ally of putin. However, reported action marks hope, there could be civil sentiment and will, which are very welcome. Also true, Belarus still keeps quite reserved in this blatant aggression from Russia. Unfortunately, they did let Russian army in.
Re: Nothing unusual (Score:2)
Re: Nothing unusual (Score:4, Interesting)
The government is the Great Putini's sock puppet. The people, however, wanted to hang the chief sock puppet there and only their internal storm troopers kept him off a public gibbet. His time is coming though.
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Re: Nothing unusual (Score:3)
Think he was talking about Belarus?
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The old Soviet Union demonstrated the saying "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" by offering the people elections, then inspecting every vote cast so that people lived in fear and the current leader always got 100% of the vote
That same thing is happening in the opinion polls that get published, look at it more of a temperature check in conformity than any "real" opinion
When conformity breaks, we will see what the people really think
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The old Soviet Union demonstrated the saying "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" by offering the people elections, then inspecting every vote cast so that people lived in fear and the current leader always got 100% of the vote
That is not even close to how they did it.
What the Communists did in Central and Eastern Europe was to ban all political parties, except the Communist party. The elections might have several candidates, but they would all be standing for the same party.
The 1949 Hungarian elections are a good example. Several parties, but no real choice. [wikipedia.org]
It's kind of the opposite to how things work in America, where you have two political parties, but their policies are basically the same.
I know you're a busy guy, b
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FYI, Hungary did not become part of the Warsaw Pact until 1956
If you feel like reading:
Soviet Citizens were able to vote for representatives to represent them in The Supreme Soviet which was the legislative arm of the Soviet Union. The elections in the Soviet Union would be held every 4 years for the citizens to go to the polling station and vote for a single candidate. These candidates who were going to be elected for 4 years were approved by the Communist Party themselves and were the only option on the b
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And YES they did note who exactly did not submit a blank ballot
Did they? Do you have some evidence for that?
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The elections might have several candidates, but they would all be standing for the same party.
Why does that sound frighteningly familiar?
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Since when have Belorussians been Russians? The Belorussians did try back in 2019 to get rid of Lukashenko and he was kept in power by internal security using force with the help of Putin.
The war has not gone well for Putin, I doubt that Lukashenko is going to risk deploying troops to Ukraine. He was supposed to do it over a week ago but he has not. The longer it drags on the less likely he is to do so because if they are deployed abroad they can't protect him and the regime at home.
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There hasn't been a single election in Russia that wasn't a sham in its entire history. Not by the tzars, not by the soviets, a close shave by Yeltsin, then not again by Putin.
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The local elections tend to be fair.
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Re:Nothing unusual (Score:4, Insightful)
NYT ran massive stories about it back in the day.
You should have a link to those stories, then.
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There is nothing in there that says "The West sent their best advisors because he was their candidate." The story is balanced: it is hopeful that Putin will do good things for Russia, and fearful that he will be authoritarian. Remarkably accurate on both counts, although it could not have predicted how stupidly he would act in 2022.
If your point is that westerners were hopeful that Putin would be good, then your article proves that point. If your point is that the West was responsible for the election of Pu
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Yeah there are no articles showing that the west got Putin elected. That's on Russia.
Re: Nothing unusual (Score:2)
Good catch !
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And now, out comes the red herring. But West didn't get him elected!
No shit sherlock wallowing in his desperate need to be right and. Citizens of Russian Federation are the ones voting. That was never the claim.
Democratic Republics (Score:2)
None of them are communist. They all claim to be republics.
Well of course not if they are just republics. In the Soviet times, communist states in eastern Europe were all "democratic republics" clearly because they followed the strict principle of one person, one vote...and the one person in running the country used to get that one vote.
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Tell us?
And why you are on it, tell us why your question matters.
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You are wrong. Ukraine is not for sure.
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Russia and Belarus are dictatorships, stop sucking in Russian propaganda. . .bad for you, make you say stupid things.
Re:Nothing unusual (Score:5, Informative)
But terminology aside:
Both Russia and Belarus are authoritarian to the point of being totalitarian. When you hear Putin speaking about purifying Russian society being natural and good, it might just as well have been something that Mussolini or Hitler said if you replaced "Russian society with" "Italian/German society".
Ukraine has been a democracy for a while where they elected a number of presidents democratically for all we know.
Yes, that also includes Yanukovych, who was voted into office because people liked what he promises. Though he turned out to be a massively corrupt asshole though who seemingly only made a lot of "West friendly" promises to get the voter's support while on the other hand apparently strengthening ties and dependency on Russia.
*Very simplistically: The 1st World used to be the West or more specifically the US and their allies after WW2. The 2nd World used to be the Soviets and their allies. And the 3rd World was the rest of the world, with no particular affiliation to either the US or the Soviets.
Sure, in colloquial speech these days "3rd World" refers mostly to "developing countries" and the such. But for someone who at least somewhat understands where those terms come from, it sounds weird to lump Communism and 3rd World together.
Re: Nothing unusual (Score:3)
No, they referred to political alignment. Third World countries were those unaligned with either the Western or Soviet blocs. The use of the term to signify "Countries we don't like that are full of illiterate broke-ass Elbonians or Africans or whatever" is a modern invention.
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No
The original use of the terms were
1st world = USA, Western Nations and those that aligned with them
2nd world = USSR and those nations that aligned with them
3rd world = Unaligned nations where 1st and 2nd worlds sought to influence and sway them to either camp through covert and overt operations.
citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ya, I think it is clear the Russians would be consulting Belarusian train schedules for how to time their deliveries. Are you really that stupid?
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I doubt the train services are that reliable in communist third world hellholes at the best of times.
Which countries are you comparing to? And outside of North Korea, I am not sure there is a single country that is communist at this point.
Why bother to post a mindless FP? (Score:2)
Especially with a vacuous Subject? But on the other hand, the negative moderation could be trollish censorship calling for a requote against that... So I'll skip the requote and just quote my current thought on the topic in the form of my currently pinned Tweet:
Putin's best possible legacy?
"Last major war criminal."
The ugly historical details: How many innocent deaths? Plus his guilty death.
YUGE lies from Russia, but the truth will come out.
Solution: How can WE most quickly implode the key kleptocrats supporting Putin?
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I think it is far more likely that they are anti-war rather than anti-Russian but hey, who am I to stand in the way of dumb racism...
Not a war!
They are against Putin's Special Military Operation to murder Ukrainian civilians.
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Do you have a phone number written on your hand or in your pocket?
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You seem to be under the illusion that all Russian speakers self identify as Russian. That would be like assuming all English speakers identify as English or all Spanish speakers identify as Spanish. It's is basically fantasy.