Hacked Emails Reveal Russian Plans To Obtain Sensitive Western Tech 131
blando writes: A trove of emails provided to The Intercept detail Russian schemes to obtain a crucial component for military thermal-imaging systems. Though emails about the thermal imaging systems date back as far as 2006, the plans to acquire them began in earnest much more recently, in 2013. To try to hide Russian involvement, a company called Cyclone established a new company in the Republic of Cyprus. They did so with the help of a company called Rayfast, which was owned by three other companies itself. After obfuscating the new company's ownership and military ties, they reached out to several Western companies who worked with the technology.
it gets worse (Score:3, Informative)
Re:it gets worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Like how the Russian are spying on us? That isn't new either.
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Never. Now bow down before your DICE overlords peon.
Just...wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA:"In April 2014, Viktor Tarasov wrote to the head of Ruselectronics, a Russian state-owned holding company, about a critical shortage of military equipment. The Russian military lacked thermal imaging systems — devices commonly used to detect people and vehicles — and Tarasov believed that technology might be needed soon because of the “increasingly complex situation in the southeast of Ukraine and the possible participation of Russian forces” to stabilize the region."
Are they saying for the last 30 years they have had "zero" military thermal imaging capabilities? Couldn't they have just bought a few off e-bay? Something doesn't fit here...
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Basically you have to wonder how much of this is total horseshit.
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On the other hand, FA claims that Russia lacks ability to produce critical component called microbolometer arrays, this cl
Re:Just...wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to deal with these kinds of situations is to punish the Western companies suckered into the deal SEVERELY. Doing business with unknown, shady companies that involve regulated tech just to try to chase every dollar that someone hints they may throw your way
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Doing business with unknown, shady companies
Otherwise known as a free market economy.
Punish these companies how exactly? Refuse to give them any more US contracts? Then they just move offshore and serve the Chinese, Russian, Indian and other markets openly. And that's one less source our military has. If you can identify individuals within these companies that knowingly sold to restricted customers, perhaps you could throw them in prison. But in my experience with DoD contractors, you'll either get a sacrificial goat or they will wreck their own com
Re:Just...wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, fines for violating export laws.
Being slapped with massive fines is usually pretty good motivation for a company. And given that the US spends nearly half of the world's total military spending, and the EU a good chunk of the rest, simply "hopping overseas" and choosing to serve other markets isn't exactly the smartest of plans, financially.
It's idiodic for a company to wilfully risk sales of hundreds of thousands of units per year to NATO to sell a couple hundred units to Russia. Russia's economy is barely bigger than Canada's. And less than 80% the size of Brazil's.
Re:Just...wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Being slapped with massive fines is usually pretty good motivation for a company.
Some years ago, Boeing was slapped with $500 million in fines by the DoJ. Within a few weeks, the Pentagon cut Boeing a check for .... $500 million for "additional expenses".
When you are the only source for some hardware, you don't pay fines. The taxpayer pays fines. And sometimes, you even make a profit on the transaction.
Citation? (Score:4, Insightful)
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F35? gotta wonder what that extra trillion is for ;)
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fuck and now i am trying to imagine what trillion dollar would look like...
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Here you go [huffpost.com], those are $100 bills.
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i stand corrected
mother fucker!!
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Do you have an references
There are a few sentences left here [wikipedia.org]. But hurry up and read them before they edit it further.
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The problem with all these conjecture is that "When there is a will, there is a way". Russia or China, or ISIS or even American criminals can get their hands on this thermal imaging stuff. Just visit an ally and do some snooping and stealing from them.
Re: Just...wow. (Score:2, Informative)
When it comes to military hardware and technology, there is no free market, and there never has been, you incredible dunce.
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there is no free market, and there never has been,
Is that so? [businessinsider.com]
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Military grade thermal imaging of the sort on fighter jets or heat seeking missiles is not really the same as the consumer level junk you'd find on e-bay that people use to look for Sasquatch or find people in burning buildings.
How is it different apart from the usual mil spec things of being robust? The only experience I've got is with industrial thermal imagers. They're super sensitive (you could recover which keys had been pressedon a keyboard for example). One of the main things was it had some funky in
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For LWIR imagers (so called thermal camera, operating at wavelength around 10 microns), there are export controls (ITAR in the US) if you go over some resolution (around VGA, 640x480) and some framerate.
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Oh, well, that would explain why the camera had a distressingly low frame rate then.
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Military grade thermal imaging of the sort on fighter jets or heat seeking missiles is not really the same as the consumer level junk you'd find on e-bay that people use to look for Sasquatch or find people in burning buildings
That's plainly not true. If you have around $5K, you can absolutely buy military grade thermal vision devices online, including eBay. Might not be the kind they put on fighter jets, exactly, but certainly the kind they issue to soldiers in the field.
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Western intelligence has always overestimated foreign military capabilities and resources, particularly that of the Russian military. It's what justifies their huge budgets.
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Western intelligence has always overestimated foreign military capabilities and resources, particularly that of the Russian military.
One analyst presents a report that overestimates the foreign military capability, and one presents a report that underestimates it. A conflict occurs and one of the two is fired for not warning about technology that the adversary used that caused a lot of harm. Which of the two do you think got fired, and how do you think that will affect future reports by other analysts? The same problem exists in the Russian, Chinese, Indian, Israeli, ... intelligence systems - the system promotes overestimating in the
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Source: Operation Solo, John Barron.
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Interestingly, the Soviet Union routinely underestimated US military capabilities on the assumption that if the US had the capability, the US would have used it. The US hadn't used it, so obviously they didn't have it.
Source: Operation Solo, John Barron.
I doubt that. I think the US often overestimates themselves. Pretty much every war we've fought since WW2 has been against 3rd world countries with a few key assets provided by China/Russia. A war against China or Russia proper I suspect would be an eye opener for a lot of people. Aircraft Carriers are really big targets and Stealth aircraft are only really stealthy to pre-1980s anti-air systems.
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If by "eye-opener" you mean "extremely damaging to the USA" then yes, it would be. If you mean "the USA would lose" then I suspect you'd be wrong. The rest of NATO combined does not match the power of the USA alone, it's true, but any war involving the USA (particularly against Russia and/or China) is guaranteed to drag in the rest of NATO and the militaries of France, the Netherlands and even now the UK (though ask again in five years about that one since we seem determined to fuck over the world's fifth m
Re: Just...wow. (Score:2)
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The Netherlands? Ahahah. Ask them to send their tanks to save you. They don't have any left!
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You could start by reading more than the first paragraph.
1) They don't have "zero" capability, but they have way too little - only a few hundred modern imagers.
2) They have tried to buy them off ebay before. And it led to arrests. It's illegal to export military-grade night vision equipment without a license, and apparently sites like ebay are well monitored for potential violations.
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High resolution and high rate thermal imaging sensors are export controlled because they're a military proliferation risk.
Check out Flir's export regs page. http://www.flir.com/corporate/display/?id=67237
If you look at the documentation from packaged thermal imaging systems or the datasheets for thermal sensor packages you'll see descriptions of how they meet certain export criteria in marketing materials. Updates/frames per second seems to be particularly crippled (Which you would need in high speed applic
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FTA:"In April 2014, Viktor Tarasov wrote to the head of Ruselectronics, a Russian state-owned holding company, about a critical shortage of military equipment. The Russian military lacked thermal imaging systems — devices commonly used to detect people and vehicles — and Tarasov believed that technology might be needed soon because of the “increasingly complex situation in the southeast of Ukraine and the possible participation of Russian forces” to stabilize the region."
Are they saying for the last 30 years they have had "zero" military thermal imaging capabilities? Couldn't they have just bought a few off e-bay? Something doesn't fit here...
If you'd read TFA you'd see that they have been doing that as well.
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Not zero, but yes, Russia is kinda lagging behind on these things. Not even just fancy stuff like thermal or NVD, but even just plain optics or red dot and holo sights (just for giggles, look up the battery life on red dot sights that are in service there, and compare to Aimpoint, or even the more expensive Chinese optics).
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The Russians suck at microelectronics. They don't have the manufacturing facilities nor the expertise. This has hampered a lot of their military technologies like in the areas of AESA radar, command and control, night vision equipment, etc.
The Chinese are a lot better at this than the Russians now. Some even claim they are getting better than Europe at it.
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Most of the ones on eBay are Russian.
I suspect what he was saying is that Western equipment is way better (our electronics were orders of magnitude better even back when they were a superpower).
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In a way this is good news (Score:2)
sold online in Russia in abundance (Score:3)
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Yeah, but what they don't tell you is that they drop-ship from Cyprus.
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2nd Generation devices. I believe current demand is for 4th and 5th generation.
Tom Clancy Novel (Score:1)
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Is it bashing Russia to tell a truthful story?
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Alibaba is your friend (Score:2, Interesting)
"(Pentagon spokesperson Eileen Lainez confirmed that the Department of Defense had provided thermal imaging devices and night-vision goggles to Ukraine in 2014, along with a variety of other military equipment)."
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/night-vision-goggles.html
I have to say I'm very skeptical, even a quick search shows Night Vision goggles are easy to obtain and mostly made in China, but then again it does refer to 'advanced imaging' non-cooled types and this is military kit on the sights of ground
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Doesn't sound right? (Score:1)
Firstly, its not really possible in the days of big data to obfuscate the ownership of the company, nor its customer base. Today, a single query to any half decent intelligence DB will give an instant response and these companies would be on watch lists. As for infra-red sensors, well, I also doubt the usefulness of such an operation. This is physics, not magic. There are limits to what sensors can do and all the properties of elements and materials are so well defined that computer modelling would show
What is the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Russia can't build any of that stuff even if they got the plans.
Their tech is mostly bluster and bravado at this point.
Take their new fighter jet... looks cool right? Well, that's about all it does with any competence. That is in fact its point. To look cool. As a weapons platform, it is a joke.
And that goes for the majority of the Russian armory. It is either some cold war rusting piece of shit that hasn't been upgraded with new sensors or weapons. Or it is some Potemkin village farce.
The Russians have their heads so far up their own asses that they're using mobile crematoriums to hide their own war dead from their own people in Ukraine.
Talk to a Russian about Ukraine. They'll swear that this talk of Russian soldiers in Ukraine is just western propaganda.
Never mind that literally everyone else contradict that from the Ukrainians to about a dozen NATO members to sat photos showing Russian tanks crossing the border... etc.
So what are the Russians going to do if they steal our tech? They're not competent enough to build it regardless.
Their economy is a joke... look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So, they rank lower than Slovakia and Slovenia... below Greece.... you know, that country in the EU that everyone is laughing at for being incompetent.
Seriously, what is Russia going to do?
They talk a big game but Russia is the Black Knight of Asia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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LOL. For someone using such an authoritative voice in a post, you offer zero evidence for any of your claims. If Russian weapons tech was a joke, Russia wouldn't have been worlds second biggest weapons exporter.
Russian fighter jets are indeed very cool. If you're interesting in modern weapon delivery platforms, then look up the brand spanking new Su-34 on wikipedia. Russia is the second country to develop a fifth generation fighter jet, and the first country to build a fourth generation tank platform (Armat
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I am aware of the russian jet... what is your argument for it being "fifth generation"? What does that mean to you? Because the evaluation from the Pentagon is that it is a hot mess.
it doesn't manuver well, its sensor package is shit, it isn't especially stealthy... so if it engages comparable US or NATO planes it will die before even seeing its enemy.
As to their new tank... remind me again why it is a "4th generation" tank?
Again, you use these terms but I don't think you know what they mean. This whole con
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At least they make their own planes.
Few countries do.
USA, China, Russia, France.
That's pretty much it.
Would you like to have NO competition and thus out of work as an engineer because what you have is "good enough"?
Be happy they're bothering to strive. The USA doesn't do shit if no one is challenging them. It just sits on it's ass, fires all the engineers, and forgets about all the glory and expansion it was going to work on.
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... I don't understand what you're saying.
First, so what if they make their own planes? I didn't say they didn't. They're just not very good.
Second, would I rather have no competition for military power? Yes... obviously. Competition for military power is not in my interest. The less competition for miltiary power there is the less likely war becomes. The more competition for military power there is the more likely war becomes and you get arms races and other stupid shit. So yes... I do not want competition
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Armata T-14 is a fourth generation tank platform because it has a fully automated turret, with tank crew in a specially protected capsule. All weapons fully automated. This project is a stepping stone on the way to producing a fully automated, crew-less tank. So yes, it's the first fourth generation tank.
What important about Russian fifth generation fighter jet PAK FA and the Armata tank platform, as well as the Kurganets IFV platform is that the Russian military industrial complex not only can improve upo
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Having an automated turret does not mean that your tank will outclass the previous generation. I grant that it is a good thing to have.
The only thing I'm seeing with the T-14 is that it is claiming an effective range of something like 5 kilometers with its main gun. Where as the Abrams claims about 2.5.
That is a big difference but it is not confirmed.
What is more, under what scenario would a US Abrams go up against a Russian T-14 Armata? This notion of some sort of solo duel one tank versus another is unrea
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The "future" war you speak about will never happen. But there have been many conflicts in post-soviet space, where tanks and armor have proven to be both useful. It always cracks me up when there is a discussion about a new tank, there are "internet experts" who proclaim that tanks are obsolete. Well, who is going to pick the fight with the USA? Probably no one, but in all other conflicts, the tanks can be damn useful, and that's why Russia and even Ukraine sold heaps of them. In fact, even conventional tan
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As to Russians tanks versus poor eastern European nations with no back up.
Sure... you can use sledge hammers to kill babies.
But then the old Russian tanks would have been just as good for that. Saddam's tanks that we killed by the hundred in Gulf War 1 would be fine for that.
There are a few things the US could do that would stop this bullshit cold.
1. We could establish a Korean style DMZ between Russia and eastern Europe. Anti tank mines etc. Then we could give the locals a mixture of SAM batteries and man
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Please. It's quite disingenuous to say that NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance, just like it is disingenuous to say that NATO's missile defense system in Poland or elsewhere in Europe is meant to protect NATO allies from Iranian missiles. To say "you're not our enemy, but we surround you with our bases just in case if 200 years later things change" is as aggressive and expansionist as it gets. By expanding into and militarizing East Europe NATO is doing the same thing that USSR did after WWII. NATO indeed
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Listening to some Western pundits and analysts about their ideas about what NATO could do to help Ukrainians fight Russian aggression is hilarious. First of all, I don't think it will help to train Ukrainian Army or give them more weapons. Russia will then up its game, give more weapons to the rebels, send more instructors, send regular troops in, if necessary. Putin has already proved in 2008 and 2014 that he will go all the way, as far as necessary to protect Russian interests.
But the most damning reason
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The only thing I'm seeing with the T-14 is that it is claiming an effective range of something like 5 kilometers with its main gun. Where as the Abrams claims about 2.5.
That's nothing special. The Russians have supported missile launching from the gun tube for quite some time (that's how they get that range). Heck the T-80 and T-64 could do it. e.g. the Refleks [wikipedia.org] missile. The US used to have something similar with the Sheridan tank which could fire the Shillelagh [wikipedia.org] missile. If the US needed something like that
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Oh and when you claim the Russians are fighting WW2 with their emphasis on tanks a lot of people say the same about the US Navy and their emphasis on aircraft carriers in a world of satellites and prompt launch ICBMs. But to each his own.
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Oh they're missiles?... lolz. Okay. That's different. I was thinking that was the range of their main gun.
If they want to play the missile game... the US would just throw cruise missiles at them which means you're looking at a range of about 250+ miles.
As to tanks being obsolete, depends on what you're doing.
And I should point out, that those engagements in the middle east showed more a need for APCs rather than tanks. The issue was not the need for a heavy long range gun but rather for an armored car that
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And I should point out, that those engagements in the middle east showed more a need for APCs rather than tanks. The issue was not the need for a heavy long range gun but rather for an armored car that wouldn't get shredded by smalls arms and IEDs.
No man. If they need a "heavy long range gun" they would get a howitzer not a tank. Tank guns are typically used for mid distance direct fire against other vehicles or fortifications. Tanks are typically used for several missions but the most important ones are an
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I'll give you an example. During the First Chechen War the Russians sent their infantry and APCs (e.g. BDR armored wheeled vehicles not unlike the Striker) into Grozny. The results were quite horrible. In the Second Chechen War they used WW2 style tactics (hah!) and sent the heavy tanks in front of the infantry (e.g. T-80s and T-72s). This mostly worked except ERA doesn't play well with infantry. So in their next tanks you see some effort to replace ERA with NERA and things like that.
The US had similar expe
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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Also you can bomb a city to bits but you can't still clean it out of insurgents just like that. The Germans tried that in Stalingrad but the partisans just hide in the sewers and fought amidst the rubble.
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... alright, but you don't need tanks to do that.
Our close support air power can do everything but the APC part.
You want to destroy a fortification? Drop a guided bomb on it.
You want to destroy a tank column? Drop a bomb on it.
You might argue that it is cheaper to fire a tank shell at something then it is to drop a guided bomb on it.
But there are a lot of things to consider.
1. The tank shells miss a lot. Which means you have to fire more than one. They also aren't that big and for some targets you have to f
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hey bingo
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Riiiight, if I don't bow down and acknowledge that some has been bunch of blow hards aren't washed up then I must be a Nazi?
Your point is so stupid that I don't know where to start with it.
First, my points were not hyperbole and you didn't point out anything that was... you just vaguely referred to something as hyperbole. This of course conveniently protects you from analysis because no one can be sure what the hell you're talking about. Your entire post boils down to little more than a stupid insult that d
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Meh, everyone wants to re fight old wars. The Russians are nostalgic for their tank battles with the Nazis so they love their tanks. But they're not credible weapons without air superiority.
What is more, there are a lot of man portable anti tank weapons that will drop a tank.
You don't have to wipe them all out, you just have to cause such punishing attrition that the Russians run a cost benefit analysis and realize they're losing more than they could possibly gain.
We could ship a lot of tow missiles to the
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I have very much a cynical view of both. Ukraine is just as corrupt as Russia. They have their own "oligarch" quasi-criminal class, pretty much merged with the government elites, and a strong unitary government, that's no more democratic than Russian. Journalists, businessmen, and politicians are and have always been murdered in Ukraine just as frequently, if no more frequently, than in Russia. Perhaps, the only difference is that they have not setup a police state in Ukraine, so transitions of power, ofte
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If being corrupt were an excuse to invade and annex countries, the US would have invaded and annexed pretty much every country south of the border.
No one is saying Ukraine is a well run country. What people are saying is that Russia has no right to invade it.
Now that said, I DO think that some sort of long term leasing agreement should exist with Ukraine and Russia for sea ports etc in the Crimea. That is, Russia will pay a leasing fee... and Ukraine will for... say 100 years give Russia access to the sea p
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I wouldn't disagree that any territorial re-partitions should have happened peacefully. Russia should not have annexed Crimea and invaded other parts. But honestly, I also think decades of inept Ukrainian governance and occasional comical rule by west Ukrainian nationalists have precipitated this conflict. Ukraine from day one should have adopted the "Swiss model", by acknowledging that it is an ethnic multilingual state, allowing each region to have a second official language in addition to Ukrainian, as w
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It would have been fine if they had built up some defenses. Part of the swiss model is arming your people.
Anyway, if I were them, I would have given up Crimea on the agreement that Russia foreswears any other rights to so much as another inch o Ukrainian land. And then go nationalist Ukraine. Ask the Russians in Ukraine to either become Ukrainian or leave.
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I am sorry but this "take it or leave it" idea to asking Russians to become "Ukrainian or leave" sounds like some kind of a twisted neo-nazi ethnic cleansing idea. It goes beyond the modern European norms of human rights of minorities. And it really cracks me up when Ukrainian or say Estonian nationalists love to say that they share European liberal-democratic values, but are also quick to judge and treat their Russian minority as some kind of "fifth column", people of second rank, while also rehabilitating
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Right, so if I moved to Russia, refused to speak Russian, and then agitated for part for that part of the country to join the United States... and then the Russians said "you need to become russian or leave"... they'd be neo nazis in your eyes?
No.
Look, I'm prepared to accept that Crimea should just be handed to the Russians. But what remains to Ukraine must be theirs. No more bullshit from Russia.
If Russia doesn't like that deal, then fuck them. They can't have Crimea. They can't have Moscow. They can't hav
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Your reply suggests that you did not read the above post. Like I have said, the South East Ukraine actually has nothing to do with the historic "Ukraine". Before the creation of USSR, today's South East Ukraine was known as "New Russia" from 18th century on. Before 18th century, it was controlled by Tatars, not "Ukrainians" (the name Ukraine is a a Russian word meaning "borderland", and was adopted by a bunch of New Russian intellectuals in order retain a distinct identity from the rest of Russia). In 18th
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Your point about what is and is not historic Russia is about a sensible as China's opinion on Taiwan. Does China have a right to annex Taiwan at will?
By your logic they do apparently.
As to Russians in Ukraine... we're going to have to agree to disagree. Again, consider the Taiwan argument... they're all chinese ethnically. But what if there were a subgroup that was sympathetic to the mainland and ultimately hostile to the Republic? What then?
You can't tolerate it. They either integrate or they are an unacce
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I do not argue that Russia has the right to annex any part of Ukraine at will. My point has always been that all minorities of all countries have the right for self determination, which does not even necessarily mean the right to secede. But at very least, the minorities in the compact areas of their habitation should have the right for a certain degree of cultural and even political autonomy from the center. So far, Ukraine has not offered this type of deal to its Russian-speaking minority, and this tensio
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As to self determination of ethnic minorities, you're ignoring the complicating factors.
1. They're not loyal to Ukraine but rather to Russia. This means they are effectively a fifth column. They're being used by the Russians in that way. Russian special forces are being embedded to train and lead them. And Russian arms and resources are being funneled into their groups.
2. The Russian government is embracing them and using them. This is something like the anode and cathode of a circuit. Without either one yo
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First, the Russians are in error then... explain how we were mean to them in the 90s? We forgave them for the Cold War. We offered them investment opporutnities. We offered them partnership in a joint space program through the international space station.
Tell me what we did that was mean to the Russians in the 90s? And seeing that the people they abused during the cold war were given the opportunity to find their own destiny away from Russia is not mean. That is compassion. There are more people that matter
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If all it took to build a credible high tech military weapons platform was some CnC machines then enthusasts in Kansas would be turning out F22 fighter planes for the lolz.
So no. The top level military hardware requires a level of expertise the Russians don't have.
The US has it.
The Chinese have it.
The British have it.
The French have it... sorta.
The Germans have it.
The Israelis have it.
The Japanese have it.
I don't think anyone else really has it.
As to Russia's booming economy in software and electronics... r
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What about software design, will I outsource development of my company database or something to a Russian firm? No
Oracle does a lot of development in Russia. So perhaps you're using Russian developed software and don't even know about it.
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Its possible but I've been in a lot of meetings where such things were discussed and the Russian option was not considered credible. Even the indian idea was dubious.
It comes down to trust. If you're moving hundreds of millions of dollars around... do you really want to let the Somalians into your database? Seems foolish to me.
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Russian semiconductor hardware sucks donkey balls though.
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The former seat of communism is now calling itself conservative? You people are funny. Bring back the Tsar before you call yourself a conservative.
As to "nice women"... what does that even mean?
You do again realize that a lot of feminist crap we're dealing with in the US was inflicted on us by the damned soviets. A fair number of the feminist professors in those women's studies programs are self described communists.
So... explain to me how we're bad because you gave us your diseases?
As to leaving the Russia
And in also in the News (Score:1)
I am shocked by this news (Score:2)
You mean, there exists a state-sponsored industrial espionage program, often involving shell firms registered in Mediterranean or Caribbean islands better known as summer tourist destinations? Scary shit!
I would never occur that a country like Russia, or perhaps China or India would ever try to do something like this.