Looking at comments on the bird site, I am pleasantly surprised at the number of submersible experts who are also Kremlinologists.
yeah dude people having opinions is gross
The problem is that many of those same people think their opinions are fact.
Oh yes, here we go! They are finally starting to turn on each other. The sooner Russia balkanizes, the better for everyone around them. Just wall them in and let the rats eat each other alive.
This is not good. Wagner Group are literal nazis.
Im pretty shure that the Russian ministry of defense and the Wagners are basically the same level below the surface… I just hope they kill each other so Russia can rebuild itself.
(this reminds me of WW1 Germany… But it was left wing not right wing)
On the other hand, if Moscow and Wagner are busy killing each other, it’ll make it a lot easier for Ukraine to put the border back where it belongs.
For serious? Yikes. Out of the frying pan…
Isn’t that what Putin wanted? To rid Ukraine of nazis?
to be fair: i don’t know that ideologically they differ that heavily from the Russian ruling class. all of the legal parties are varying degrees of nationalist, with most of them being explicitly ultranationalist. if you want to escape from people who can be analogized as or just are functionally Nazis, i think you’re generally going to have to look to the opposition to find any (and even then it’s not a guarantee–Navalny has well-publicized and suspect comments in this regard).
Since their leader has no sway with the oligarchic class that effectively holds power in Russia, it seems unlikely he would be able to consolidate power. If somehow he offed Putin it would be more likely to end in civil war IMO than in Prigozhin as head of Russia.
You’re absolutely right. It will lead to nothing other than civil war. Which is how Putin will spin it - he’ll try to say that since Wagner are nazis, that they were actually working WITH the Ukrainian Nazis and NATO against Russia etc. blah blah blah
This seems so accurate
As much as I’d love these monsters to go to war with each other, it would mean civil war in the country with the most nuclear warheads, and that makes the prospect something I can’t celebrate.
Does the Russian upper class have access to sufficient military power to oppose the Wagner group?
Probably not. But Wagner group doesn’t have the manpower to subjugate the entirety of Russia either.
Russia doesn’t have the manpower to subjugate the entirety of Russia either.
My heart aches for all the citizens living in Russia who have to live in fear because they’re ruled by a tyrant dictator. If this news is true, things will only get worse for them. I hope the people can escape, or better: live in a better Russia with leaders who treat them like human beings.
It’s wishful thinking, I know. Please stay strong, my Russian friends! Justice will be served one day!
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At the risk of being ridiculed, as someone with decently severe anxiety, headlines around Russia tend to unsettle me quite a bit these days. Is there any community in the fediverse akin to r/UkraineAnxiety where particularly inflammatory or dramatic-sounding news headlines are put into context and relativized? Appreciate any pointers…
I enjoy Beau of the Fifth Column on YouTube. He is soft-spoken and respectful, even if opinions don’t agree. His comments are measured, informed and he will take a mea culpa. He’s mostly US politics, but will cover other topic, including Russia.
Not ridiculing you, but if you have “decently severe anxiety” over this, what the hell are you doing here?
Seriously, why are you feeding the beast in your head? This information machine is made to continue that trend. Just stop it and look at something else. Go for a walk or something and close the browser or phone. Heres a hint, if you have any excuse other than “oh shit you’re right”, you are an addict to this, and ive heard enough excuses from junkies in my life. Do better for yourself.
I generally like to know what’s going on in the world, it’s just this particular topic where I struggle with how it’s portrayed in media. It’s also not been on my mind a lot recently but with today’s news I just thought I would seek out some other perspective to put these new events into context. I’ve also gotten a lot better over time at not letting it get to me, but I guess in your mind I have to be completely unfazed by everything before I can come back online.
I will not stop occasionally checking the news as I do now, because I do not want to completely isolate myself and become politically apathetic. Nevermind that you are in no place to tell me how often I do and should read them.
I’m not sure why you immediately jumped to calling me a “junkie”, but I suspect that if that is how you feel the need to respond to my message, you aren’t in a very good place either. Maybe you should take your own advice and step away from the internet for a while.
I understand your desire to stay informed but also grounded. I have actually fantasized about a newspaper exactly like that - tells the world as it is, but also helps the readers cope. My biggest thing is climate change and climate despair. I ended up googling how to deal with climate despair and came across a number of articles that were really helpful.
Hooe you find something similar for Russia/Ukraine.
to stay informed but also grounded
Yes thank you! That’s exactly what I mean.
I think even just a more grounded comment section would be enough for me. I only really look at comments to get different perspectives on what’s happening, but I rarely find actual contextualized discussion, instead usually there’s just highly upvoted fearmongering and making jokes about the world ending. It would be nice if there was a place where the top response is more like “here’s what this means / here’s what this doesn’t mean”.
I don’t know if this will be helpful, but I wrestled a lot with dealing with despair/fear from upheaval as well. Mostly climate like I said, but I used to cry for days thinking about kids starving in Venezuela, for example (that’s a crisis from many many years back).
Studying history actually helped me cope. Just learning about the past like 5000 years of human history and how much upheavals and famine and war and civilization collapses there have been.
I kind of realized that feeling like the world is ending (as we know it) is the NORM rather than the exception for most of human existence.
We’ve been exceptionally lucky in Western countries for the past 300ish years. But that caused us to believe that’s what’s to be expected. It’s not.
It just helped me understand that humans have survived through lots of things. And the turmoil comes with being alive.
npr my man, npr.