UK hospitality industry hit by crisis as thousands of young Italians are forced out by latest round of rules and cost-of-living crisis
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vk4WG
UK hospitality industry hit by crisis as thousands of young Italians are forced out by latest round of rules and cost-of-living crisis
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vk4WG
I highly recommend a book by historian Timothy Snyder called Road to Unfreedom. It explains how we got here, what Russia wants to achieve and why.
The crux of it as far as I’ve gleaned is that their geopolitical theory revolves around being the bigger dog in every deal, so they want to be able to throw their weight around by dismantling blocs of smaller nations and creating a system of bilateral agreements. Is that about what Snyder says is going on?
Yes, but he goes into more detail about why that is, why Ukraine is so important etc.
Basically when the Soviet Union collapsed, US politicians believed that as long as Russia has a free market, the democracy will flourish.
They couldn’t be more wrong, what it became was a klepocracy ruled by oligarchy with putin as the master oligarch. Russia on paper looked like a democracy, it has the institutions, but they are all neutered and despite having “elections”, there was never a democracy and free elections in there even in the 90s.
Putin realized that with EU Russia doesn’t matter as much, because EU integration makes smaller countries powerful. EU requires countries to have functional democracy before they can join. Putin tried to join, but instead having Russia to adapt and become a democratic country, he demanded that EU would change to accommodate Russia. That of course didn’t work.
So he created his own union (Eurasian Economic Union) hoping that it would take over EU. Initially they tried to subverting things politically having their puppet (kind of like they did in Belarus), but Ukrainian people demonstrated as they wanted to be part of EU, so it switched to military action first on 2014 and later in 2022.
We did fucked up a bit not supporting Ukrainian earlier.
There is also a lot of how Russia basically changes its own history ignoring all inconvenient events, how option is following fascist authors that render Russia as the World savor, that is on the side of God.
It is quite fascinating. A lot people think of the war as it started in 2022, some more informed will say it started in 2014, but it was much earlier then that. We just ignored it, we seem to pay attention when people are actually fighting, which is sad as most of how Russia is operating is to subvert via disinformation, destabilization and sabotage.
The war of 2022 got to what it got is because putin trapped himself in it, but underestimating Ukrainians.
I’m still not finish with it and am just in the middle of the book.
Thanks for the writeup! All that gels with my understanding. It makes me think about how we thought letting China into the WTO would have the same effect, and now they’re economically propping up Russian savagery in Ukraine and continuing to crack down at home. You just can’t invite oppresive regimes to the table and hope for the best, and it’s weird that we tried.