Peter wrote:
They are probably judging that Russia’s economy will be buggered after all this so Russia won’t be buying much anyway, and they don’t want to risk any US sanctions.
Indeed: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/business/economy/russia-economy.html
Peter wrote:
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic told the N1 TV channel that he would instruct the country’s permanent representative to NATO to vote against this move. The future membership of the two Nordic countries in NATO will depend on whether Bosnia and Herzegovina’s electoral law is changed, he said, adding that Croats in Bosnia are “being destroyed” as a political entity.
I guess you don’t follow Croatian politics too much. This guy is complete idiot and it’s very hard to find less competent politician in Europe (although competition for this is very tough). He was Croatian prime minister few years ago and left the economy in ruins. He was so incompetent that he made more damage than highly corrupted governments before and after him. He used to be social-democrat and now if far-right-wing nationalist following ideology of first Croatian president (who was BTW communist general to become right-wing nationalist). Luckily, he’s authority and powers equal zero and he doesn’t decide about anything except appointing ambassadors and visiting parades.
Emir wrote:
He was Croatian prime minister few years ago and left the economy in ruins.
That must be the most crazy example of “promotion” of someone to make sure he’s not doing much damage…. how someone like this can be voted for president after he failed miserably as a PM is beyond me.
Emir wrote:
He used to be social-democrat and now if far-right-wing nationalist
Emir wrote:
BTW communist general to become right-wing nationalist
At least they show some political flexibility…. or wait, isn’t that what is called opportunism?
In any case you’ve got my sympathy… hopefully some day your votership will elect someone usable soon….
My entire expertise of Croatian politics is whether LDLO and LDSB retain Customs & Immigration when Croatia enters schengen 
I am told the Catholic Church runs all non-aviation activities there.
Apologies to revive this thread. @Peter I hope my post is appropriate and not in breach of policy. We’ve had a Ukrainian family live with us for a bit over 2 months now and they have become part of our family. They’ve made me aware of a family of friends that have just had to flea the east of Ukraine and have just arrived in Sweden, with no luggage, clothes or anything else. If there is anyone in Sweden on the platform that can help a family of five with 3 kids with clothes, items of first necessity etc can you please PM me directly so I can help organise?
Again apologies for hijacking the thread.
No problem; it is in a good cause
You can revive any thread anytime. No rules on that.
Good luck!
Mooney_Driver wrote:
In any case you’ve got my sympathy… hopefully some day your votership will elect someone usable soon….
I still hope for this after 30 years…
This is quite a good map showing the daily situation.
The Russian losses continue to mount at an alarming rate, despite them focusing everything on a small bit of the east (where Russia made some slow progress)
If Ukraine get the eastern bit back (which frankly seems a lot of hard work, just to liberate land inhabited by a significant pro-Putin minority) how will they deal with the sizeable % who want Russia to come back and destroy the country? Putin will always be able to claim, on any subsequent invasion, that he came as a “liberator” (the CZ 1968 Brezhnev approach). The Yugoslav solution, basically evicting the minorities, involves reparations, and they need to do those to join the EU, and they do want to join the EU to get the €€€ to rebuild Ukraine. Perhaps the final result will be Ukraine in the EU, and in NATO (important since N-A-T-O is all that Russia understands) with the necessary UN recognition of the borders, and the east and Crimea ending up as rubble, for ever, but Russian-controlled rubble so that’s ok.
It depends on what is offered to the pro-Russian minority. Czechoslovakia, like all the former Comm Bloc countries, had ~5% pro-communists, but 99% of them were just lazy people who loved the regime because they could creep crawl and brown-nose, while clapping every 5 mins at the party conferences, and for that they could have a Skoda (eventually) or a TV (a bit sooner). Few actually believed in the regime. But in the long run no democratic country can live with a real 5th Column of a few % of the population. But then the Czechs were never “fighters” like the Ukrainians are Maybe with enough €€€ from Brussels, Ukraine can buy them off like Mr Kohl did with the DDR, but he spend a trillion DM, admittedly on a much larger region
Peter wrote:
land inhabited by a significant pro-Putin minority
Few of these are pro-Putin politically/ideologically, most are just hoping to be better off funancially. Like most coal-mining regions of the world, Donbas has been sliding into economic distress for quite some time, so the comparison between the two powers was not in Ukraine’s favour. Now that Russia has simplified the naturalisation procedures for residents of the occupied areas, these folks may just move to greener pastures of Russia. Good riddance, I guess.
Good riddance certainly, but will Russia be able to provide greener pastures, having itself entered a pretty bad depression?
How will they come up with the many billions needed to rebuild the towns they turned into rubble?
The country has been set back decades, probably back to the 1960s, in the eyes of the rest of the world. It’s back to the day when the nutter Kruschev was running it. Nobody will do business with Russia again unless they can’t avoid it. Of course “money talks” but it only means Russia will have to sell its natural resources below everybody else’s prices because they have made it clear that anything they sell you cannot be depended on, and any supply relationship can and will if they choose be used as a weapon. And the explicit threat to use nukes (IMHO the biggest single mistake here) elevates this to a whole new level. It’s always been known that nearly all Russian “significant” money is criminal money, those in property have always known that it is impossible to do due diligence on virtually 100% of Russian property buyers in the West, but it was happily accepted, with local complicity if necessary for the KYC regs, but now those accepting it know what they are potentially getting into. The world’s perception of Russia has changed, for generations.
Every country the “socialists” (communists) ran was turned into the economic equivalent of a banana republic without bananas.
