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.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/633badee-9874-42e7-ba43-b075523e84c2.webp)
I feel like I need to further explain the electoral college to the non-yanks here. Most are, of course, already aware that it's completely fucked up. But most of even these people are under the impression that state "points" are awarded to whoever wins the popular vote in each state. This is not true. In fact, ordinary American citizens have no right at all to vote for a presidential candidate. This is not an exaggeration, it's not a joke. The president is installed by the electors, who are under no obligation to honor the vote in their state. They are the only ones with the powers to cast votes for presidential candidates, and who they decide to vote for is at their sole discretion. It has happened before where an elector ignores the vote in their state. Again, the electors are not required in any way to agree with the vote in their state.
When you fill in the circle next to "Genocide Joe", you aren't voting for him, you're voting for the people who pinky promise to do so on your behalf, but who will face no consequences if they don't.
Strictly speaking, this means that the votes for each candidate are essentially a non-binding poll that may or may not be honored.
https://archive.fairvote.org/?page=967
I think the electors could simply choose to break the state law, tank the punishment, and still have their vote count.
Edit: Lol, never mind. I just read the bottom part:
If someone wins because the electors voted against the popular vote, you best believe they'll be pardoning them come January 20 (along with a supreme court case granting presidential authority to pardon state crimes), if the state bothers charging them with anything. If that person is Trump, we can expect with 100% certainty a supreme court case ruling that bans any state control over electors.
This was technically the case in 2000 and 2016
No? There was one lady in 2000 who voted present. Bush v. Gore is what stole the election. In both elections each elector who voted for a candidate honored the popular vote in their state. You can lose the electoral college with the national popular vote even if every elector votes honestly.
Faithless electors are a different phenomenon than winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college.
Meanwhile we got people locked up for voter fraud for years when the vote doesn't even matter. Disgusting ass war on the poor shithole country
It makes more sense when you think about the fact that these rules were laid down when the only voters were land owning men, so it was essentially just them voting for which one of the boys would go represent their interests in Washington
I think some states will legally punish them if they don't do what they're supposed to, but I believe even that has some issues.
If faithless electors win Trump the election, it’s a coin-flip between a 6-3 decision that states cannot punish electors for this and a 6-3 decision that the president can pardon state crimes
While there is truth to that, faithless electors have never affected the result of an election.
And the electors are mostly ideologically committed to their candidate. A Biden elector is going to be a turbo lib who would never go faithless if it actually made a difference.
A few Dem electors were faithless in 2016, but that was because Hillary lost anyway so it didn’t matter. The couple Republican electors that were faithless did so knowing it wouldn’t affect the outcome.
It’s also worth noting that electors aren’t even required to be picked by popular vote. Each state can pick its electors in any way it wants. Multiple states had their legislators picking the electors for a while in the beginning. That might be a more immediate danger considering the number of states that might vote Dem for president but have Republican state governments.
Although they don’t really need to do that overtly anti-democratic stuff when they can get away just fine with shit like voter id laws and closing voting booths in Dem heavy areas.
If they installed a president, there’d be maybe a month of protests before everyone packs up and goes home.
That option is there if they need it. They haven’t done it because there’s no way in hell any candidate that poses an actual threat makes it to the general in the only parties that ever win.