Russia invades Ukraine

From an interview with Ulrich Schmid, special correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (translated by Google):

"The spirit of resilience is incredible. In every village you can see tens and hundreds of people at work getting ready to confront the Russians. Everyone is pulling in the same direction. [...] However, I am extremely pessimistic about the future. I don't think that Putin can now say "April, April" and withdraw. I also don't think there will be a good ceasefire anytime soon. Russia is much more likely to continue the invasion - and the Ukrainians will resist vigorously. This is the recipe for a long, bloody and terrible war."
 
Dozens dead from Russian shelling in Kharkiv. Maybe this is a tragic sign of things to come as Russia changes tactics
 
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I'm still not getting adapted exchange rates (on google), Russian average salary from late 2021 (55k rubles) is still worth ~500 euro
 
The Ruble is essentially worth toilet paper today (Non Covid hoarding prices that is)

FWIW Russians always considered ruble worthless, so would've if we had to live there for decades. It was never stable or powerful.
 
I'm fluent in russian.
русский корабль - russian ship
иди нахуй - direct translation for this is: go on the dick/dong/tool. In vulgar sense of the term. So, go fuck yourself is little bit softened :D
хуй - is 'penis' in russian but very vulgar.
 
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Putin's last roll of the dice. Ukrainians will fight to the death to defend Kyev. Russian troops won't.
Yes, I doubt Russians will defend Kyiv to the death. But a lot of them will die if Putin storms the city, that's for sure. As you noted, the Ukrainians are very serious about this.

What remains to be seen is how serious is Putin, and how serious are the people around Putin going to be. The financial strikes on the oligarchs are starting to bite deep, and we haven't even gotten to property confiscation yet. We haven't tightened the noose as tight as it can go.
 
Speaking of the noose tightening:


The USA is working to ban the Russian central bank from foreign currency trading, cutting off access to Russia's foreign reserves. This will crater the ruble even further and essentially cause it to be unable to be traded outside of Russia (and presumably Belarus).
 
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has cancelled his visit to the United Nations in Geneva due to “anti-Russian sanctions” imposed by EU countries, Russia’s mission in Geneva has said.

Lavrov had been scheduled to address the UN human rights council and the conference on disarmament in person on Tuesday.

But he has cancelled his trip “due to an unprecedented ban on his flight in the airspace of a number of EU countries that have imposed anti-Russian sanctions”, the mission tweeted.

RIA news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying the decision was because Lavrov’s plane would not be able to pass through airspace that the EU has closed to Russian airlines as part of sanctions against Moscow.

- The Guardian.

Oops?
 
I'm fluent in russian.
русский корабль - russian ship
иди нахуй - direct translation for this is: go on the dick/dong/tool. In vulgar sense of the term. So, go fuck yourself is little bit softened :D
хуй - is 'penis' in russian but very vulgar.

I have a bit of Duolingo Russian and some Slavic slang and I can confirm.
 
The financial strikes on the oligarchs are starting to bite deep, and we haven't even gotten to property confiscation yet. We haven't tightened the noose as tight as it can go

It definitely starts to hurt them. Two of them have already been out calling for Putin to stop the war:

 
Yes, and Roman Abramovich is among those who negotiates right now. So, Putin will be stopped by his inner circle. Oligarchs are very worried already.
 
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has cancelled his visit to the United Nations in Geneva due to “anti-Russian sanctions” imposed by EU countries, Russia’s mission in Geneva has said.

Lavrov had been scheduled to address the UN human rights council and the conference on disarmament in person on Tuesday.

But he has cancelled his trip “due to an unprecedented ban on his flight in the airspace of a number of EU countries that have imposed anti-Russian sanctions”, the mission tweeted.

RIA news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying the decision was because Lavrov’s plane would not be able to pass through airspace that the EU has closed to Russian airlines as part of sanctions against Moscow.

- The Guardian.

Oops?
It seems like a cheap excuse. I'm sure Larvov's plane would get a special permision.
 
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