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.
Guess Maduro stopped them from commiting the Venezuelan 6th of January. The right in South America is so fucking dumb, Bolsonaro already tried that and it failed.
This could be some homegrown idiot chuds doing idiot chud stuff but right wing coups rarely happens in Latin America (or anywhere else for that matter) without the evil empire having their greasy hands in there somewhere so at least the likelihood of American culpability is large enough that it is worth considering the likely motivations.
I thought there had been some thaw towards Venezuela as the Biden regime wants their oil on the world market to keep prices from escalating too steeply. But that seems to be out the window if they were trying to coup the Venezuelan government. Has American diplomacy failed once again, prompting the regime to use more direct methods or is it a case of one hand not knowing what the other does?
Even when Chávez did everything he could to appease the US and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and military, the US and the Venezuelan right tried to remove him from power in 2002 (the most violent coup), the general strikes from 2004 to 2006, the attempt to annul the 1999 elections, the whole Juan Guaido thing, etc.
The fact is that all these attempts by the US have had a strange effect. It pushed the middle class, the army and part of the bourgeoisie towards the PSUV government. It didn't help that the US sanctioned all these people for simply working with the government. The US even stole property, money and went so far as to kidnap businessmen who dared to sell food and clothes to Venezuela.
I think the US is always conspiring to overthrow the Venezuelan government because they want all the oil reserves for themselves, as happened in the 80s and 90s. From what I've seen, Brazil, Colombia, Spain and Norway have agreed to Maduro's terms and said that if Machado can't run, the Venezuelan right should simply put someone else in her place.
The US wants Machado because Guaido is very unpopular, even among the Gusanos. Caprilles is a social democrat who supported Venezuela in the Guyana crisis, which I imagine angered the US. Machado is a well-known right-wing ghoul who tried to annul the 1999 elections and is very close to the Bush family. If anything the Venezuelan goverment have been pretty soft with her, she just lost her political rights because she stole money from Venezuela's reserves in the UK, together with Juan Guaido.
Trump just wanted to do a shitty bay of pigs and invade Venezuela, which is similar to the US plan to invade Cuba. It failed because they were captured by fishermen who owned guns. Biden quickly changed that approach, he reverse some of Trump's sactions on Cuba and Venezuela (But sanctoned Nicaragua which pushed the Sandinistas from a pragmatic position to allies of China and Russia).
The US wanted Venezuela to sell oil again. Venezuela need money and parts that the US, China and Russia offered. Then Petro was elected in Colombia and Lula in Brazil. The two invited Maduro to visit the country and talk with the local press. Maduro basically said there will be elections and Venezuela is back in the international community willing to negociate and trade with anyone who is not hostile. Biden also wants to cut all social programs and expel all the Venezuelan political refugees (Gusanos) from the US, the US agreed to free a bunch of Venezuelans who were illegally arrested for being members of the goverment.
I find it funny because every time the US had a problem with Venezuela in the past, they called in Lula da Silva and the King of Spain to solve it and, most of the time, they sided with Venezuela and told the US to calm down, because Chávez/Maduro were only responding to US actions. Recently, Lula da Silva said that the US should stop crying and simply choose someone else to run for president.
They aren't organic. These comical cocked up plans are almost always the US and CIA. They've done it so many times down there, the people and governments have wised up to litteral cookie cutter playbooks. They're so damned predictable, but it requires an exaustive amount of dilligence to keep monitoring it.
True, there have been many attempts to kill right-wingers politicians in Venezuela (mostly the liberal and socdem ones) or promte terrorist attacks in general to put the blame on the goverment.
The good thing is that Chavez (on his later years) and Maduro pretty much know how to deal with this people. The Army snd Supreme Court were purged from pro-US members after Chavez learned these people will never accept peace with the goverment, even when the goverment is willing to negociate.
I think even a large part of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie are tired of the US causing chaos in their country.
I think there are some good faith protest towards the goverment, but these most of the time it comes from minority groups and lgbtq+ people (who are still waiting for PSUV to approve gay marriage, which Maduro seems to be in favor. But it all depends on the congress).
Chavez seemed to connect more with the working class than Maduro, Maduro is funnier, he is pretty much the left-wing latino version of Trump. And contrary to what th US media portrays, both (Maduro and Chavez) represent the moderate part of the Bolivarian Revolution.
I guess all the competent Venezuelan reactionaries outted themselves in the 2002 coup and it's just incompetent losers since then.