ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Putin may be the most personally wealthy head of state on earth. His greatest motivation is to ensure the indefinite continuation of his personal wealth and power. Bullying Ukraine is useful in that it helps him politically with the Russian public.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, February 9, 2022 7:06 PM

I tried to drill down into this a little bit, suspecting that Xi might be a contender. There's a lot of speculation out there about Putin's net worth but not much hard data. Most estimates show him being at least an order of magnitude richer than Xi tho. (Xi and Trump are probably on par.)

If you're a de facto dictator, what does money even mean? You have as much of anything as you will ever want, on demand, as long as you hold power, and it's hard to see Putin or Xi willingly going anywhere. And if they went unwillingly, then money likely won't help them.

Dictators still need to negotiate power and keep wealth onside to some extent if they want to hang on to their position (skeptical of to what extent it makes sense to treat Putin and Xi as if they were in comparable positions, tbh).

Likewise immense wealth has been of much use to many an ex-tyrant getting themselves a comfortable place in exile.

shocked that autocrats are wealthy, you don't get that shit in a democracy

hi guys just started playing really enjoying it so far but finding it all very complicated has anyone got a user guide for how to start eg week one of this, ive selected biden as my player but havent gotten too far into the save so would be open to picking one of the others and going from there!

you want to max out your balls stat as soon as poss

Trump is massively in debt and his businesses hemorrhage money left and right

Putin might actually be the richest man on the planet

Emotions running high and I let them get the better of me. I still expect action this week but Putin may drag this out. We still don't know. Bottom line is that I recognize that I need to be more judicious. https://t.co/clc9c8gm8s

— Melinda Haring (@melindaharing) February 14, 2022

"it was a goof!"

So if that person now think it might not happen, does that mean ... it is going to happen?

https://gimlet.spotifycdn.com/page_art/9fdb9f7f-75f0-4aab-954e-5f81156438a7/fallback
L-R: United States, Russia, Ukraine.

omg

ha, i wouldn't be too hasty to add your predictions on this thread

shocked that autocrats are wealthy, you don't get that shit in a democracy

It seems like generally in autocracy, power is a path to wealth; in US ‘democracy’ wealth is a path to power more like. (The US senate is also the single most anti-democratic institution in our entire government system.)

Putin Very Bad but honestly can’t imagine a world where his hard-on for Ukraine portends anything worse for the avg citizen there than the US’

hyper-ventilating state dept and western media’s track record on these issues not helping the case imo

lol

BREAKING: Office of Ukraine's president says his statement that Wednesday will be 'day of attack' was said with irony

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) February 14, 2022

“What, you can’t take a joke?”

Seems like it was bad reporting / translation from NBC, not that Zelenskiy was unclear.

so not gonna happen

interesting on Russian thinking and the role the suppression of Medvedchuk's pro-Russian party may have played in the current crisis https://t.co/JLLLIbMmzY

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) February 14, 2022

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRqWAfnV8fjnGHZdGCDTTsMCGo92aWi6HiclcvSyFvuDFlJyj3hnzGYH7NzxyIrCWGVurQ&usqp=CAU
"Did you hear it is sure thing, Russia will be invading Ukraine on February 16?"
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTLfAEYuhCLZ6hVjlhUvLT1hdkW_MpTXpwHGfKFBTlSQFNr3ILpqZu-R7HaTDtm4IYJwvA&usqp=CAU
"I am just kidding! Russia is already there!"

“Russia signals willingness to talk about ‘you know, whatever, do you like French cars?’l

“February 15, 2022 will go into history as the day western war propaganda failed. They have been disgraced and destroyed without a single shot being fired,” writes Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

— max seddon (@maxseddon) February 15, 2022

Russian troops are apparently moving back from the Southern and Western fronts.

I really wasn't expecting that because I get all my information from US/UK media.

I really didn't need WWIII on my plate, got enough on as it is.

lol from a purely selfish pov I was looking forward to dying in a megaton nuclear airburst just for some relief!

Plenty more opportunities to come my friend!

absolutely insane website pic.twitter.com/UyBwDJh8GU

— ziyan (@ziyanm_) February 14, 2022

Some of the hawkish twitter I'd seen, which for sure had been reporting/relaying/amplifying stories that Russia was planning a false flag operation as pretense for invasion, are now completely credulously posting this:

Russian media outlet are reporting that a member of the People's Militia of the separatist LPR republic was killed as a result of sniper fire from the Ukrainian government side #Ukraine

— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) February 15, 2022

Daily Mirror still on the beat.

Daily Mirror is not buying de-escalation talk today and insists the invasion will begin at 3am tomorrow morning

“The Mirror’s senior American source warned our team in Kyiv with a simple one line message saying: 3am Wednesday.”

🤦🏻‍♂️https://t.co/jZInOdSqj9

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 15, 2022

Maybe the senior American source is just dropping their new album.

Paul Simenon’s new group Kiev 3AM

Why do I get the feeling the press is stroking themselves with the thought of an invasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3BO6GP9NMY

We are shelling out fortunes on the House of Lords for the likes of this.. pic.twitter.com/kZowUsCcNk

— Murray Foote (@murrayf00te) February 15, 2022

Why do I get the feeling the press is stroking themselves with the thought of an invasion.

― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland)

Jim Sciutto was just on cnn pretty much calling Vlad a punk for backing down lol

Not sure what’s going on there but Truscott is married to an alleged ex-KGB agent and has been accused of having overly close ties to Russian businesses. I’m not sure he’s advocating for a war unless, perhaps, he’s recently divorced.

Chris Morris otm

That's a v divorced dad q tbf

As anticipated, Putin rejects recognition of "republics", insists on Minsk II.
Russian troops are "sort of" moving away from the border.
So, Moscow is anticipating a Paris/Berlin/DC move "to help" Kyiv with implementation of Minsk. Otherwise we're back where we've started https://t.co/x6N4h2oSWA

— Anton Barbashin (@ABarbashin) February 15, 2022

The Duma voted in favour of a bill put forward by the Communist Party for Putin to unilaterally recognise the LNR and DNR as independent and he’s said no.

Ukraine could be under a cyberattack. So far, the website of the Ministry of Defense https://t.co/nrqxvlj1P2 and Armed Forces https://t.co/rT5ozqhXVE; are down;
problems reported with state banks Oschadbank & Privat

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) February 15, 2022

⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show a loss of connectivity to #Ukraine's State Savings Bank, impacting ATM and banking services; disruptions also reported on Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces networks; incident comes amid heightened tensions with Russia 📉 pic.twitter.com/QMbPPpCzaV

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 15, 2022

Modern war - terrifying in strange new ways.

could just be shitty comcast service again

honestly i do better when i don't think about the real world. i am too pessimistic. for example, i believe with 99.5% confidence that in the next 10 years there will be a massive cyberattack on the u.s. (from within or without, doesn't even matter) knocking out telecommunications for much of the country. mind you, i have no idea what the fuck i'm talking about, but i believe it all the same

this is why countries should always keep their malwarebytes installation up to date

If the average person (or hell, any of us) was threatened with shutting off their internet cold turkey, 99.9% would roll over and let the Russians invade. And the other 0.1% are already living off the grid in the woods and won't even know it's happened.

It's been a great time to prove you're hard.

Labour leader @Keir_Starmer tells me on @Channel4News “we should go now and hard with the sanctions” against Russia.

— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) February 15, 2022

xp I'd finally crack open that dusty old door stop Scuffy the Tugboat and begin my education

how would this affect my saved game