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Yup. That's what Russia reports - and we know they wouldn't lie!
Business Insider challenges both figures. They say it is off the charts at 60%. READ IT HERE
They attribute it to the ruble free-fall. If you know anything at all about economics, you know inflation simply cannot be 4.3% when the ruble has fallen 40% against all other major currencies.
That very same site also says US inflation is 2%.
And there is nothing else on that site...no owner, no source for their numbers, nothing.
That's not a reliable website IMO
"By whose account?" you ask.
I'm prepared to answer that question, but I don't want to play the game where no matter who I give as my source, I get told they're not reliable. Tell me who you consider to be an acceptable source for ranking countries by their relative corruption, and we can go from there.
People on this thread keep referring to Ukraine as being one of the most corrupt countries.
They got it from somewhere, so what was their source?
Nobody.
Nobody, because I can listen directly to Ukrainians, whom I listened to for years, and whose channels were banned by Zelensky in 2021.
They gave me a pretty good insight of what's going on in Ukraine ( the level of corruption including,) so all these "official ratings" where Ukraine magically jumps 10 spots lower on corruption index, "just because it's not Russia," is ridiculous.
Let me give you an example of what I was listening to just a day ago;
"Hello friends. Recently the finance minster Marchenko announced that corruption in Ukraine is as its lowest in the last 20 years - a pure mockery. But I think his words were not understood or appreciated even by his own team...
...Look - voting is prohibited, leaving the country is prohibited. Some are suggesting to restrict people from leaving the country for three more years.. and so on. So all this is prohibited, but stealing? No problem. That's normal. So to give you an idea - practically every day there is a new scandal.
Already during the time of creating Zelensky "Servant of the People" party, it was acknowledged that 10% of it were "the mistakes" of recruiting. So now they are saying that "the team is cleansing its ranks." And apparently the "cleansing" is going on successfully, except for the new members that replace the old "unclean" ones, are not "cleansed" enough as well.
Because now we have the new investigation into the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. And of course if we are are talking about the MoD of Ukraine, it's a thievery made on the corpses. Because they are stealing from the budget that was allocated for the soldiers. It's that simple. So now we hear about yet another investigation of corruption of Ukrainian MoD. Supply of eggs, potatoes, bottled water - there situation is better and prices have dropped. But here is a peculiar detail; two officials are sent to pre-trial detention center. But the crimes incriminated to them are not those "golden eggs," supplied to the army for exorbitant price, but for the supply of the bulletproof vests that they supplied to the army during the beginning of the war for ( yet again) hiked up prices.
Minister Reznikov, instead of keeping his mouth shut in this situation, decides to defend his buddy ( one of the accused,) saying "and where were all of you you, when our warehouses were empty?" "All of you" could be wherever, but YOU, as in Minister of Defense Reznikov - where were you, when your warehouses were empty? You were appointed to this post in November 2021, so you were supposed to do your job.
By the way, since then there were couple of more schemes discovered, quite interesting ones - theft was made practically on everything; not only on supply of those "golden eggs," on bottled water, on some "super-dinners" that they were bragging about, that allegedly included few kinds of gourmet cheeses, that were delivered straight to the trenches for soldiers to consume. Sure thing, he-he. if that cheese ever made it there, it was not blue cheese, but molded one. But here is more; we are talking about the clothing now; the uniforms. As it turned out, during summer of the last year, Ukrainian manufacturers were alarmed that MoD of Ukraine was not making a timely order of the winter clothing for the army. This was impeding the process of the delivery of the needed material for the uniforms. But some people started figuring out soon enough what it was all about - about yet another thieving scheme, and they proved to be correct in their suspicions. MoD made a contract with some Turkish company "Vector avia... " abracadabra (you can't even read the rest of the name.)
So according to the customs' paperwork during October-December 233,000 winter jackets were delivered for the sum of 20 million dollars and 202 000 trousers for 13 million dollars. Initially, the price seemed to be all right - $86 per jacket. Another supplier from Bulgaria was offering it for a price a bit higher - $95 per jacket. Only (his) Chinese jackets were weighting 2 kilos, while the ones from Turkey - one kilo.
So you can get an idea the difference in their performance in cold weather. So once the journalists received the access to the custom paperwork, they discovered that these jackets left Turkey with the price of $29 per piece. So they left Turkey at $29, but in Ukraine their price turned into $86 - almost three times more.
"Zn.UA ( investigative journalists) has documentation on one of such shipments from "Vector Avia." You can clearly see there, how 4,900 jackets for the price of $142,000, turn into 4,900 jackets for $ 421,000. At that, on their way from Turkish to Ukrainian customs, they magically turned from "camouflage" type into "winter air protective."
Then it was learned that it was this Turkish company that was making money on these ripoffs. So what would you expect from Turks - right? Wrong.
Because it were not the Turks that owned this company after all, but it belonged to some shyster from Ukrainian Zaporozhie.
At that, there is already criminal investigation opened regarding this case, and the expertise already established that these jackets can't be even used in winter time. Then there was yet another shipment, coming from Moldova, and documentation showed that it left Moldova customs at $ 27,500, which turned into $367,000 at Ukrainian border."
Do I need to go any further? Because it explains right there, why all these official "ranks of corruption in Ukraine" are meaningless.
Oh yeah, I can add to that a video I saw recently on Wagner's channel ( I think that's what it was.)
There they come to the abandoned Ukrainian positions and explore whatever was left there, their canned food including. They open the can, and first thing, they pull out a dead mouse from there.
And then some of you don't understand why I posted some time ago that video of the crying Ukrainian soldier, whose friend is already dead, his pay is slashed, and some of them can't even access their money.
Russia can't win a conventional or nuclear war against NATO through invasion. NATO has 4 times the population and 10 times the GDP. Russia knows this.
You worry about aggression leading to more aggression. NATO has something like 90% of the world's foreign military bases while telling China they can't make foreign military bases. NATO has ruined many Muslim countries. NATO is occupying a third of Russia's ally Syria and pillaging oil and wheat. On and on.
Reasoning with "Ukrainian patriots" is hopeless.
They are as brainwashed and stubborn as Putin's bots.
No difference, since really it's one and the same people as I've said before, just different politics.
As in grabbing people from the streets and shoving them into unmarked cars?
No, that's Ukraine, not Russia.
In Russia, if you dodge the army during SMO, the system will catch up with you in many different ways ( unless you've had the ways to escape from the country all together.)
I'll say, the industrial military complex is having record revenue and profits.
This spring offensive of Ukraine that the US knew would almost certainly fail is sponsored by Raytheon!.........
If that's the case - and it isn't - then Raytheon wasted their money.
The stock (symbol RTX) has fallen from $96 to $87 in the last year, while net profit from Q2/22 to Q2/23 has "soared" from $1.304B to .....$1.327B. Earnings per share are up... 2 cents. From 88 cents to 90 cents
In 2019 Raytheon sales was $77B. The last 12 months their sales were $67B.
There are so many sources for this public information that I won't pick one for you.
Do you ever get tired of your hat being handed to you?
Its interesting that ISW seems to have dropped their daily map updates on their main page in the last few days. They still have the time lapse map, but that is a couple weeks behind.
Russia can't win a conventional or nuclear war against NATO through invasion. NATO has 4 times the population and 10 times the GDP. Russia knows this.
You worry about aggression leading to more aggression. NATO has something like 90% of the world's foreign military bases while telling China they can't make foreign military bases. NATO has ruined many Muslim countries. NATO is occupying a third of Russia's ally Syria and pillaging oil and wheat. On and on.
And yet somehow you think Russia can outspend the rest of the western world in Ukraine and continue the war indefinitely while it is some enormous drain on the west.
Why do you have such hatred for the US? Or is it only for any policy Biden supports? A broken clock is right 2 times a day.
For 200 years the US has had the Monroe Doctrine. Part of the Monroe Doctrine is to create a regional hegemony, or in other words keep world powers out of our region so we can have less military at home and project more military abroad.
The US has toppled dozens of governments including democratically elected governments to prevent world powers from moving in to our region or against communism from gaining a foothold.
For 200 years we've threatened world powers from making new military bases in our region of the world as a direct threat to us and to democracy.
The US has repeatedly over a century threatened either Cuba or Spain controlling Cuba over what kinds of military bases it can and can't have.
The Biden Administration is currently telling China that we'd have a severe problem if they built a military base in Cuba. JFK was willing to risk nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba ignoring that JFK put missiles on the Soveit's backdoor first.
Russia has faced severe threats 3 times the past 200 years from the west, each leading to millions of deaths. This is ingrained in their DNA. They want a secure western border, which is why they wrongfully blocked free elections after WW2 to create a buffer zone of puppet states in eastern Europe.
How is Russia saying that Ukraine can't join NATO any different than US policy the past 200 years in our own hemisphere?
We say we're allowed to occupy 1/3rd of Syria, against Syria's wishes because of a civil war (that would have already been over without US involvement). How is that different than Russia saying Ukraine was shelling eastern Ukrainians that wanted to break off after 2014?
More anti-US nonsense. The US has been pretty insignificant in the Syrian war. Without Russia and Iran, Assad's regime would have long ago collapsed. Now we have a standoff between the Russians, Iranians, Syrian government forces and Iranian backed militias, vs. the Turkish backed rebels, with Turkey actually occupying a little bit of Syria. All we are doing is supplying a Kurdish dominated militia who cooperates with the Syrian government and has fought the Turks.
More anti-US nonsense. The US has been pretty insignificant in the Syrian war. Without Russia and Iran, Assad's regime would have long ago collapsed. Now we have a standoff between the Russians, Iranians, Syrian government forces and Iranian backed militias, vs. the Turkish backed rebels, with Turkey actually occupying a little bit of Syria. All we are doing is supplying a Kurdish dominated militia who cooperates with the Syrian government and has fought the Turks.
You mean from so-called "civil war" organized with the help of the Arab radical mercenaries from other countries and paid with Saudi money?
Because that's what prince Bandar promised to US administration - to remove Assad from power, in order to build the gas pipeline to Europe from Qatar, with Syria having the transitional hub.
That's what US government wanted - to remove Russian economic influence in Europe, but Assad ( being Russian ally) was on the way of this plan. ( Don't remember what Bandar wanted from US gov.in exchange for this scheme.)
And that's what this "civil war" in Syria was all about.
And you know by now as well who blew up that gas pipe NS 2 from Russia to Germany too, right?
But other than that, the US of course "has been pretty insignificant in the Syrian war."
Last edited by erasure; 08-13-2023 at 04:51 PM..
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