It is called Switzerland of Asia for a reason after all. Although there is no cheese to be found, laksa and chili crab are good enough to substitute fondue and raclette (;

And cheaper, you worked there before .
5 to 6 EURO now and you get a full healthy meal and a drink

It used to be 1.5 to 3 EURO before the Ukraine War and Covid.

USSR went bankrupt, so the years next were difficult.
Maybe there was even some opposition to liberal changes, that made things even more difficult for Russia to progress.
Also I was talking that Russia leader wasnt villain at that time, not that average Russians were rich, these are different things.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-suspends-grain-export-to-poland-over-volatile/

speaking of commodities as previous pages

big tussle over the grain export deal. Poland got mad that the export deal in place wound up dumping tons of undervalued wheat into Poland that got bottlenecked there, sold at discounts and crashed the Polish domestic market ($466 per ton -> $230) because it wasn't going on to the rest of Europe fast enough, and because the EU had lifted the duties and quotas on it. They in turn tried to pressure the rest of the west to sabotage the grain deal with Russia by refusing to allow shipments of Russian grain / fertilizer as per the terms of the deal, by saying they still technically allow those sales but refusing to allow them to be shipped or paid for via controls of the ports and financial systems, and in turn Russia threatened to cut off the deal again and block all Ukrainian grain exports.

Now Poland and Ukraine struck a new deal where Ukrainian grain is going to transit through Poland but not allowed to be unloaded in Poland at all. So as far as we know, the grain deal with Russia will remain in effect and their grain/fertilizer still sold freely

https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/12feacv/no_pov_additional_leaked_documents_being_shared/

another tranche of leaked documents came out today
notably includes discussions of political leverage to try to drive Israel into the war camp, basically trying to drive up their response to Iran


This really brings up a lot more questions than answers. Is one or both tranches of documents a forgery? How much was manipulated by Russian media, or not? Is either of these dumps a public-facing disinformation campaign by western intelligence, ala operation mincemeat? These are some novelties of the social media age. There's a good chance the CIA fabricated documents and leaked them publicly so that Russian intel would find it believable. Or maybe it really is just some war briefing from early march that got leaked

This is why it's better to not lose time with it, it's impossible to be sure of one or the other, completely discarding these "documents"... Until it proves or not it changed the course of the special operation ...

IMO this

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230404-ukraine-unveils-plan-for-recaptured-crimea-%E2%80%93-but-west-reluctant-to-help

Ukraine has laid out its 12 point plan for capturing and occupying Crimea
It calls for collective punishment and tribunals to persecute civilians, blowing up the Kerch bridge, disenfranchising the residents, seizing all their property and real estate, ethnically cleansing the Russians, imprisoning journalists and media and judges, and putting residents to reeducation "detoxification" camps.

This if course would follow Ukraine's successful counteroffensive to lay siege to an extremely fortified and militarized penisula, surrounded by naturally impassable water and mountain barriers, deep within Russia's reach and their supply lines, and after somehow shrugging off the inevitable nuclear bombardment unleashed on them. Once Ukraine has valiantly captured all this territory and also laid claim to the moon and reunited the koreas and cured cancer and solved cold fusion, they will be able to set in motion the series of war crimes they decided to announce in advance despite nobody fucking asking.

Good guys always get away with war crimes. They are doing it for a good cause after all, or something along those lines. No clue.

Didn’t you see all those movies about extrajudicial execution of German POWs by brave Hollywood heroes? I mean those were nazi soldiers. Geneva conventions don’t apply to nazi scum, right? Plus Brad Pitt is hell of an actor, charismatic, brave and good looking.

Latest from Macron during his China visit. Not sure if some of it’s chopped and taken out of context but it’s a reasonable concern for France and rest of Europe considering how much of a conundrum Ukraine is.

MACRON: “The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers... The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No...

If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up… we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals."

“The great risk" Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy."

Per Politico, he also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar."

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 9 2023 01:39pm