Image is of President Vladimir Putin, with his cook Prigozhin, though he is more famous for other things.
I’m assuming we all know what a “Russia” and a “Putin” is, so I’m skipping the background section.
On March 15th, Putin handily won the presidential election. This is perhaps one of the least surprising things to happen in the last couple years, and all claims and debates about electoral corruption are missing the point (in this particular election at least). The reason why Putin won is not fascist brainwashing or Putin having a high Persuasion/Intimidation DC, and it’s not even really about the laws that make opposing the Ukraine War illegal. Wages are up significantly, unemployment is at record lows (for the post-USSR period, of course), as is poverty, and the ruble is about as stable as it could be given what the West has tried to do to it. The government has been forced to massively intervene in the economy to keep things afloat, buying up properties that have been ditched by foreign and domestic billionaires, though obviously Russia’s wealthy are still plenty powerful. Inflation is up, but wages are comfortably outpacing it. And the Communist Party remains a relic of a bygone era, disconnected from the young people who might hypothetically propel a revolution.
Russia is still in the transition from switching to a Western-oriented export economy to an Eastern-oriented one. Nonetheless, Russia is now China’s single largest oil supplier (unseating Saudi Arabia), delivering half of all their oil to China, and trade between the two countries has massively increased. Where Western brands have retreated from Russia (and not many actually have), more Russia-friendly corporations, and Russian businesses themselves, have filled the gaps.
By going through the news, I’ve seen a lot of economies that are not doing well at all. Most countries seem to be in that category. Either they have general growth but a deeply struggling populace, or the government is trying to keep the population afloat but running up huge debts in the process, or the government is failing on both counts. Russia is one of the few countries on the planet that I can confidently state is actually doing quite well objectively, which means it’s doing extremely well relatively. Considering the Western economists regularly delivering portents of doom in early 2022, and salivating over how they were going to divide the country following the inevitable economic collapse, this is a hilarious state of affairs.
In the long term, their predictions may come true. It is entirely possible that a post-war Russia will slump, returning to neoliberal policies and continuing their nonsensical allergy to budget deficits. Russia might not be a mere gas station, but a substantial amount of the economy is made up of fossil fuel exports, which might be troublesome in a greener future, especially as China, their main oil market, is one of the few countries on the planet that seems serious about renewable/nuclear energy. And the limited labour force means that long-term growth is inherently limited without some creative measures, even with the potential influx of whatever remains of the population and territory that Russia seizes in Ukraine. Perhaps it is in this crucible of disillusionment and hardship, after seeing that good things are indeed possible if the government wishes them to be so, that a socialist Russia could rise again. But we aren’t there yet, and the growth continues for now.
Apologies for the lack of updates (again!), I’ve been going through book titles again for the reading list (I’ve probably got a thousand or more to get through) and also trying to touch grass more. I’m not very good at balancing things out, I tend to do the hyperfocus-on-one-thing-until-it’s-done approach.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Russia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Rolled my eyes so hard when I saw that in my recommendations.
yeah the implication of election fraud is just baffling to me. Western polling agencies put putin’s approval rating at 85% -> putin gets 85% of the vote
I’m not sure what’s supposed to be so weird about it
I mean, election fraud is still very much a thing here in Russia, especially since the online polls were rolled out in the COVID days. it is apparently secured by the bLoCkChAiN, but come on, there’s no way to actually make online polls fair and secure, and it’s especially weird when you log in with your government ID account (gosuslugi/mos.ru) to vote on their website. also, all the people who vote online participate in the lottery, where you can win something like 1000 rubles to spend in certain shops (you don’t participate if you vote the usual way with paper ballots, which is kinda telling) there are also discrepancies with the protocols, like these ones, where some votes have been transferred to Putin out of the blue, and stuff like this where cops suspected that a man was attempting to spoil the ballot and take a photo of it (which is not illegal btw) and forced him out of the booth (he was apparently allowed to vote with the ballot after that though, but it’s not the only case like this) some of the more oppositional candidates (like Duntsova or Nadezhdin) were not let to be candidates at all for mostly BS reasons (these candidates were pretty lib though of course, but still, pretty much any opposition had been thrown out of the polls) I’m not saying that only like 30% support Putin here or something (I do think that the actual rating is above 50% rn, but the more young demographic you look at, the lower it would be, and I may be biased living in Moscow, where the oppositional sentiment is stronger than in other parts of the country), and obviously electoralism is doomed from the start, but what I’m trying to say is that I think it’s foolish to believe that elections here are really fair and that the rating is not inflated (I doubt Hasan knows all this of course, most likely just jumping on the lib bandwagon, but I wish there was a bit more nuance surrounding this topic here)
I also live in russia and I’m honestly starting to think 80% approval rating is believable. Even in my bubble of university-educated tech professionals the support is at least 50%. And when I talk to a normal person, they almost always support putin
god damn it, I should have voted online. I want my 1000 rubles
yeah, I kinda feel that. I’m a uni student rn, so my bubble is a bit less government-aligned I guess, but there are still quite a few people who support Putin
well it’s not guaranteed
but 1000 is the minimum prize and I think most people I know who voted online got at least that
and it’s not real money of course, you can only spend them in certain places
also now that I checked it, looks like it’s a Moscow-only thing lol
Good point. You don’t have to pretend Russian elections are a beacon of democracy to point out the double standards and outright lies of western propaganda.
What’s it like living in Moscow?
idk, hard to compare it to anything, because I haven’t really lived anywhere else for longer than two or three weeks it’s mostly alright, the public transport is nice I guess (although I do have quite a bit of grievances on that front too), can’t imagine how people get by in a lot of other cities without a proper subway, considering I use it almost daily
The West sincerely cannot comprehend a candidate with an approval rating of over 50%. If more than half the country approves then clearly it’s because of propaganda and authoritarianism
It’s hard to comprehenad more than 60% agreeing on anything. Goddamn everything has been wrapped up into culture war bullshit here, fromnthe clothes you wear, to the food you eat, to the music you listen to, to your fucking self-identification as a human being, to your medical choices.
Fucking everything is red or blue.
Does warm my heart to know we’re united in our hatred of Congress though
The weird and suspicious part to any lib is that it’s a situation involving Russia unfortunately.