Russia has been a third world nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Politicians just like to use the Russian boogeyman to scare people who remember the Cold War. Putin may be a monster, but China is the real threat.
I understand your sentiment but as a history major I need to clarify that Russia is literally the Second World Nation. As in, the First, Second, and Third categorization emerged to describe pro-NATO, pro-Warsaw Pact, and unaligned countries.
Edited: aside from Taiwan, Hong Kong, several other nations in the east. My question was more in the context of China as a threat to anything in the western hemisphere. They are the eastern version of the US, no doubt about it.
Just an endless slew of clickbait "China bad" headlines all the time. Really makes you wonder about if there is some sort of systemic problem with western media.
It's going to be hilarious in a year or so when we'll have LLM bots churning these types of articles out even at respected news outlets, and all critics of this narrative will still get smeared as being bots themselves
Everyone is a little bit authoritarian. It's the intent and end result that gives it meaning. You don't see France being criticised these days do you despite their citizenry being vocal about their regime's mismanagement. We've even seemingly had a Western media blackout effectively on it for the past month (they've had riots/protests).
How much control do you really have over a government that only has two parties? FPTP is a failure. It leaves government without accountability, pisses on the principle of equal representation, and shifts power towards the few areas that may actually flip.
If you lose this federal election, so what? Eventually, people will get angry enough at the current ruling party to flip.
If you vote, so what? Unless you're in a swing state, your vote might as well not exist for the presidential election.
What about representation in the house? Well, again, your vote doesn't really matter unless you're in a swing district (which tends to be suburban). If you're urban (liberal) or rural (conservative), you might as well not vote either.
Lol all states are bad. "China" as a concept can barely represent the true diversity of the people living in that across and around that huge chunk of land, as much as "USA" can barely represent each individual there.
China: sends Russia six helicopters (before the war), some children's toys, a box of consumer-grade hunting scopes, and metal. They are the bad guys who are prolonging the war.
NATO: sends Ukraine weapons and military vehicles worth more than China's entire military budget, and provides training and logistics support. They are the good guys trying to end the war.
The liberals only read the titles and then come straight to the comment sections so they don't actually realise any of this unless you spell it out for them.
Does your definition of "attack" include locking people in a church and burning them alive? How about sponsoring Neo-Nazi paramilitaries to murder and rape people for seaking a language? Shelling cities and civilians in defiance of international cease fire treaties?
Lol, if the tide of war is changed into Russia’s favor because of alibaba tier drones while Ukraine has western equipment entirely designed as weapons from the start, then the problem is a lot deeper than china supporting Russia’s invasion
Focusing on Chinese drones that end up in Russia while completely ignoring the Chinese drones that end up in the Ukraine is some cherry picking I expected from the Telegraph. Products and components are made in China, which shouldn't come as a surprise.
It looks like the data is from Malfar Group which dubs itself as open source intelligence (whatever that means). Looking at their website, it is all Ukraine related. That's fine in and of itself but it should be noted by them or The Telegraph. But The Telegraph is not exactly a paragon of journalistic integrity.
China is widely suspected of supplying Russia with equipment and materials to support their war, however no-one has adduced anything concrete to support that theory so far.
The article itself doesn't cite much in the way of sources or evidence, other than mentioning a report by Molfar, the open source intelligence agency. Molfar has published reports on the same topic in the past, but there hasn't been anything recently.
If the Telegraph had new information or evidence they would be shouting a lot louder than this. This is most likely them covering up for a quiet day by dredging up some old rumours and repackaging them as news.
Thank you for sharing the link comrade. I should have done it, but I had just 420 blazed it and it would have taken forever for me to find. No 69 unfortunately 🥲
I mean it's a pretty vacuous statement but what else do they expect? It's just them trying to please both sides, they cannot exactly make a precise potential peace arrangement without getting everyone together.
They exercise editorial control and they exercise it vigorously, so when they report on something it’s for a reason.
Does your comment intend to imply they’re just presenting some economic data points or something? It seems kind of inane to pretend that they don’t have a lens where this is a bad thing. That China bad etc etc.
One Chinese company sent 1,000 drones to Russia in the two months before the war, according to figures compiled by Molfar Global, an open source research organisation. That firm, Shantou Honghu Plastics, describes itself as a wholesaler of children’s toys on its website and social media profiles.
They are toy drones lmao. Yeah they seem upset alright.
Ukrainians also get shipped Chinese consumer drones to configure into weapons and Holosuns, so I think it evens out
Telegraph: “One Chinese company sent 1,000 drones to Russia in the two months before the war, according to figures compiled by Molfar Global, an open source research organisation. That firm, Shantou Honghu Plastics, describes itself as a wholesaler of children’s toys on its website and social media profiles.”
"The Ukrainians, and the Russians too, have figured out ways to modify these devices they've purchased online to make more and more creative ways to drop explosives from these small consumer drones,"
Telegraph: “Chinese firms have also sent optical sights to more than 50 Russian companies from the start of 2022 through the first quarter of this year. Imports of these products nearly doubled to $2.5 million last year, compared to the one prior.”
However, large numbers of Holosun optics have been fielded during the defense of Ukraine. During the war, they have been seen on AK-style rifles, AR-style rifles and even machine guns. While the battlefield performance of the optics is difficult to verify, Ukrainian troops continue to field them. Even bodyguards for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have been seen using Holosun optics. Outside of Ukraine, the Estonian Defence Forces use Holosun optics on their LMT R-20 assault rifles.
Probably not for long given the state of the Rouble and the economy. Tech-wise Russia has nothing to offer and when it comes to the stuff China might be interested in, such as ores and oil, well you'd have to not send miners to the front to continue producing them. That Russia of all countries is importing metals should make you stop and think.
Yeah, but that was the Soviets. These are capitalists. Capitalists suck at war economics and I'm not even sure it's plausible under modern finance capitalism. I agree they're not likely to run out of troops any time soon, but I don't think we're likely to see economic gains like WWII.
Oh no, their Twitter and Facebook exports are too low. They'll have to scrape by on checks notes one of the world's largest supplies of oil, precious metals, and other natural resources. Surely, the Russian economy will collapse any second now!
Such goods are classified as dual-use, meaning they also have civilian purposes, allowing China to skirt international sanctions and claim that it conducts only legal trade with Russia
The "international sanctions" btw:
You can't just unilaterally decree someone can't be traded dual use goods
A large majority of the world engaging in sanctions and not the usual suspects regularly framed in the press as the "international community." It's framed that way to imply that the entire world is doing it besides a few "rogue states" like China, North Korea or Venezuela, as if they were handed down by the UN or the world is united in agreement with the western sanctions regime. What would be far more accurate than "international sanctions" would be "western sanctions."
For a more immediate example of how framing effects perception, look at all the people in this thread upset about China giving Russia weapons. No weapons are listed, just drones, helicopters, and metals. Upon opening the article you'll see the drones arrived before the war and are presumably consumer electronics, and there are six undefined types of helicopters. Some posters even mentioned attack helicopters, as if the Telegraph would not be screaming about attack helicopters and not helicopters if that was the case.
It's a complete nothingburger and like all nothingburgers it plays with language to let you fill in the gaps using the context they have provided. Russia is being "armed" with some consumer drones, six personal helicopters, and metal, and the whole world is in uproar about it.
For those interested, the dual use loophole is how the yanks supplied Saddam when he fought Iran and used chemical weapons against the Kurds. A conbination of dual use and swaps through intermediaries. Nowadays the US didn't give as much of a fuck and instead manufactures reasons for why it's okay to ship direct.
Although there is quite a gap between saying metals are dual use, and playing coy about specific chemicals that are most useful as precursors for advanced chemical weapons being dual use
Taiwan (Republic of China) and China (People's Republic of China) are different governments that both lay claim to the same territory.
The TL;DR is that in 1949 the communists won the Chinese civil war and the remaining nationalist opposition retreated to Taiwan, beginning the state of affairs that we have today.
PRC considers Taiwan part of its core territory and will not renounce its claims. RoC has, since 1991, officially recognised that they can't retake the mainland, but there's ongoing debate about whether or not Taiwanese reunification or an independent Taiwan is the end state.
Lol, I highly doubt china will be desperate enough to use consumer level drones and scopes to take over Taiwan given how many soldiers they have with real military equipment.
But even if they are desperate, what makes you think they won’t just seize the factories and pump out 20x the number being shipped to Russia and Ukraine, and the rest of the world? Not to mention, I don’t think China is dumb enough to go to war while Russia is busy at a completely different war, so I really don’t think a couple thousand shitty drones will make a difference 5-10 years from now
Russia's military strength has been degrading since the war began. How long do you wait with your ally losing strength? Sure, you could prop him up but then that's a drain on your economy. If you postpone indefinitely, the situation may change to be even more unfavorable.
It:s a shame because supplying that gear to Ukraine would have helped China's reputation on the international stage and bolstered trade. It would have not been well received by the Kremlin but a losing army can't invade anyone else.
I wonder if this'll lead to any sort of action against China. Generally people have thought that China wouldn't outright support Russia with war materials because they can't afford to be sanctioned by "the West", as they're much more reliant on trade with the EU and US
Would those unspecified metals be of good quality or is there a risk they might be the sub-par stuff that is said to be exported by unscrupulous Chinese companies?
There is no surprise that communist China would and is supplying their northern neighbor.
If anyone is actually surprised about this, then maybe they'll be surprised when I give them an amazing deal of being able to buy the official deed to the Golden Gate Bridge for only $300 and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. Just constant me at 123-456-7890 for details.
I mean, China is notorious for its foreign policy being primarily based on realpolitik rather than ideological allegiance, so the adjective "communist" before China is irrelevant to who they will sell weapons to.