Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[Labster]

This week has been hard on me, because Ukraine asked everyone to stop sharing information on social media during the offensive, and then every actually stopped sharing.  We have gotten some vague reports of gains by the Ukrainians, which is good.  They followed even vaguer reports like "Ukraine has broken through the front lines in places" which says everything and yet nothing.  The clearest indication that we've gotten so far is from Moscow, which has said the offensive is a total failure.  Applying the usual rule that everything they say is a lie, it means Ukraine is doing quite well.

I've seen some videos from out there, but they don't show all that much.  Ukrainians capturing Russians so drunk that they had to be slapped repeatedly in the face so that they knew they had been captured.  (Not a bad survival adaption, that).  Another of Russians waving a white flag to a drone, which did cause the Ukrainians to call off their air strike.  In any case, I pray that everyone makes it home safely, and that the Russians go home as soon as possible.

There has been a lot of news about the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently being visited by UN inspectors (IAEA).  Five of the six reactors has already been shut down, which is quite good news to be honest.  I feel like Russia decided a nuclear incident wasn't going to do anything, and the threats didn't work, so the crisis has been somewhat de-escalated.

But in some ways, we're still fighting a war of the past, and not just in the antique weapons we're seeing on the battlefield.  Russians, and Putin in particular, see it as returning Russia to its rightful place as head of a Eurasian empire.  So in a way it's not surprising that the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev received little attention inside Russia.  He is, after all, the guy who was so bad at governing that he let the Muscovite empire disintegrate.  Just think about how Americans feel about James Buchanan as a US President -- even during his lifetime, people criticized him for how he could let the union fall apart like that.  In a weird way, it's almost unsurprising that Buchanan was ambassador to imperial Russia.  Yeltsin, Gorbachev's rival, was a far better politician who always favored the end of the Soviet Union, but he never could tame the ensuing corruption, and only let this obscure guy named Vladimir Putin succeed him because he promised not to prosecute him for corruption.

It's not coincidental that we're seeing lots of removal of Soviet names and monuments.  Latvia tears down Soviet era monument.  This was one I saw in person, though I never went close enough to actually notice what it was -- I have it in the far distance of two of my vacation photos, though.  Ukraine names Kyiv street after London as it scraps nearly 100 Russian-linked names.  Of course it didn't start just now; in April 2019 Kyiv City Council renames street to honor John McCain.  Why so early?  It's because he tried so hard to give Ukraine some Javelin rockets -- the recently canonized St. Javelin.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has requested the Secretary General to see documents proving that Russia is a member of the United Nations.  Of course, no such documents exist -- don't ask a legal question you don't already know the answer to.  The history of the UN vetoes are interesting.  Obviously, the great powers all wanted vetoes for themselves post war.  One was offered to India, but they refused it to focus on domestic issues instead, which I'm sure many people feel regretful over.  That veto was offered to China instead -- the Republic of China.  A few years after the nationalists were pushed out of China into Taiwan, and China's membership was officially transferred from ROC to PRC in a vote of the UN.

The Soviet Union was a charter member of the UN, of course, and that came with a veto.  They also sponsored Ukraine (SSR) as a member to the UN, which is kind of odd now that Russians are saying it was never a country.  And then people started leaving the Soviet Union.  Everyone started leaving.  Russia left the Soviet Union, leaving Kazakhstan as the final member, before the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself.  Ukraine is trying an outside theory here: Russia was never granted membership to the UN, and Kazakhstan is the rightful successor state.  The world just assumed Russia was the successor, because the Moscovites had always been at the head of the Russian empire, even when the capital was in St. Petersberg.

But as a matter of the rules-based order of international law, it is pretty clear that Russia has never been a member of the UN.  Of course in terms of realpolitik this is absolutely bonkers.  The vetos aren't really special privileges granted by documents: they're nuclear weapons and conventional armies.  The veto is an implicit threat: no, says me and my army.  It's a way to institutionalize this threat, the same way voting in republican elections institutionalizes revolution.  In theory, it's supposed to make the world safer, but it's hard to say if this has actually happened.

Which means the real message that the Ukrainian diplomatic corps is sending is: we assert that Russia is not a great power, and most certainly not a superpower.  It is on the same tier as other regional power nuclear states, like India, Pakistan, and Israel.  Do you accept this proposition?  If so, you can remove Russia's veto, and possibly get shit done.

Also:
-- The EU revoked the visa deal they had with Russia, which simply makes EU visas more time consuming to obtain. 
-- YandexTaxi hack sends hundreds of taxis into a traffic jam in Moscow.  Another NAFO strike, it seems.
-- Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov is the 8th Russian energy executive to die suddenly this year.  The poor guy "accidentally" fell out of a hospital window.  Authorities blame gravity for the incident.
-- Image: Russian general guy says Russia destroyed 44 HIMARS today.  So much green paint, MDF, and nails sacrificed in the name of victory.

-- Russian babushkas responding to America's sanctions.  This is comedy gold.

No one commented on this one, which obviously means that nobody watched it.  It will definitely brighten your day.