Tbh, this is looking like the end of this dumpster fire might actually happen sometime in the foreseeable future. Zelensky was saying they could be in talks by year's end. He's never been a liar.
The Ukrainians should just fucking drive on when yes where is Putin's retaliation, not because I want Ragnarok but I have always thought that empty barrels rumble the most #ukraine
He might not, but one only gets to be king so long as the economy is good or the wars are being won. He looks weak, and there's no faster way to end up dead in their world than to look weak.
@eva_chaos@kimwulff for the entire first and second year i thought, ok putin now has to realised he fucked up, he will back off, and instead he has doubled down again and again
he expected sanctions, and had the national wealth fund to keep funding pensions for some years, currently that money is going to military contracts, they have been nationalizing shit left and right, they raised taxes significantly, and they are selling state bonds at rates that any western nation would never consider
also noteworthy, any international bank can take a loan in yuan, from a chinese bank (it's called shibor), at a rate of ~1,5%, that rate for russia was 31% (rusfar cny) at some point in july
now that they have a surplus of women, i actually do expect that, via methods of force, he would really set up countless brothels along the border with china to keep making money
@eva_chaos@kimwulff the only limitation is that he is not going to use nukes, the moment he does that, china will cut him off and that's the end of his economy
but any other level of repression is on the table, and the fact is, they are heavily rehabilitating stalin inside russia for the past two years
Lol you may well be right. Now that Onlyfans isn't paying out to Russian accounts any more, there's definitely a pent-up market to be tapped.
In all honesty though, he's trying to stay alive. He needed Trump to win to do that and that's just not going to happen. The Israel shitpile he started isn't getting him the traction any more. He needs to pull a rabbit out of his ass at this point.
@eva_chaos@kimwulff unfortunately i am a lot more pessimistic about this, we could very well soon have stray nuclear weapons in the hands of warlords inside russia
I don't think the pushback will be from the people at all. They know damn good and well that doesn't work for them. I think it will be from another in "the party" who has enough credibility to get back in with Europe and start making crazy money again. They've always known China wants to eat their lunch. Before sanctions, they didn't want to do business with them if it could be avoided.
You're in Europe and that's not unfounded. We can't prevent a meltdown of Russian society, but I can say for certain we have maximum surveillance on Russian nuclear everything since the cold war without interruption. If they move anything, they will get Desert Stormed and nobody on the planet will help them.