I never visited Russia but my first job out of college was for a food distributor that shipped stuff from the US and Europe to Moscow and St Pete for sale. This was during the Yeltsin era so pretty much “everything goes.” Everything was cash only, bribes were expected as a business cost and theft (or shrinkage, as I suppose we more politely called it) was rampant. As a single dude, sometimes I would put up a visiting Russian employee at my place for a few days, that was always fun. May have done lasting damage to my liver though. I guess I don’t have a point except to say that, unfair as it may be, I’ve always associated Russia and it’s people with corruption. They just seem to drink in fatalism with their water supply, everybody is out to fuck you over so why shouldn’t I fuck you first?
I just saw the piece from The Onion in 2003. Ugh. The satire hurts.
This talk about visiting Russia reminds me of this. NSFW
Another article mentioned it lasting 40 minutes, which seems like a rather long time for an engagement to last.
Maybe they were measuring the total time from detection through breaking off contact or something. But stuff like this, while individually not that worrisome, starts to add up in terms of tension and chances for mistakes. imagine a similar scenario in Korea…
Both good and insightful pieces about Syria.
I thought I read it here, but yeah, the US bombed the fuck out of a bunch of Russian mercs, then sent in Apaches and finished the rest off. I read 300+ dead Ivan.
One wonders if they were actually mercenaries or that’s just the Russian government saying they were, much like the “Volunteers” in Ukraine, who were fed, supplied etc by the large Russian army conveniently on the border…
Sort of both. They are, according to what I’ve seen, part of a PMC called Wagner, which is owned/controlled by one or more Russian kleptocrats with interests in things like oil among other business ventures. Many of the people employed on the ground are the same folks who were in the eastern Ukraine, and apparently quite a few are Cossacks. Clearly the Russian government uses these people as a fig leaf sort of thing, plausible deniability and all that, though they don’t seem all that concerned about publicity abroad. At home, though, they tend to not tell anyone, even family members, anything. There have been quite a few stories about Russian families frantic for news about men who had joined up with Wagner, who only heard about their demise via the grapevine. The Russian government pretty much pretends they don’t exist.
In short, they serve the interest of the Russian bosses in the Kremlin, and their cronies, but don’t get any of the national support actual Russian military personnel might get.
So just like every PMC really.
Pretty much. I loathe few things in the world, feeling it’s generally not worth the energy, but PMCs are one of them. I loathe that nations are too cheap and mendacious to use their national military forces (or even clandestine but official forces) for their dirty work. I loathe that private companies can make a fortune in effect becoming a combination of mob enforcer, hit man, money launderer, and corrupt police force in places where they are hardly ever subject to any rule of law or oversight. And I loathe that people can make a living in effect being amoral killers, and be sanctified for it in the process.
A lot of these guys are Chechens too. They fought on the pro-Russia side and now that they’ve won the war, they’re unemployed. So they get hired by the Russians to fight in the next war, wherever that is.
And, um, going back to Chechnya could be difficult, as folks have long memories.
Is napalm better or worse than nerve gas?
I think nerve gas still wins that in general, but for the people being burned alive it’s semantics which horrific way of dying is worse.
I always try to keep an open mind when something like this happens, but:
The attack reportedly came just hours before a ceasefire went into effect after midnight which saw hundreds of opposition fighters and their families evacuated
They were going to get that land anyway. There was no purpose to this other than to kill some more people while they had the chance.
The White House ordered the freeze to the State Department funding following a news report the president read noting the U.S. had committed an additional $200 million to support earlier recovery efforts in Syria, a State Department official confirmed to POLITICO.
What a goddamned embarrassment. With all the joking about the Gorilla Channel, hard to believe they haven’t come up with a way to make a video briefing for the idiot. They could have large-breasted blondes wearing low-cut tops telling Donnie about all things the bad hombres are doing in the world interspersed with clips of his adoring fans.
Um. You’re riffing on Fox News, right?