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1. simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Monday, 12-Sep-2022 04:15:48 JST simsa04
   Putin's opening of the "Moscow Sun" ferris wheel yesterday reminds me of the last days of Erich Honecker, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Saddam Hussein... in power. Acting as if everything is normal while all around them things fell apart. Putin's end may come quicker than we all imagine. And that may trigger a dangerous disintegration of the Russian Federation, with independence efforts of many republics and minorities. We may have less luck this time than 30 years ago.
   • simsa04 (simsa04@gnusocial.net)'s status on Monday, 12-Sep-2022 05:16:39 JST simsa04

     in reply to

     • Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
     Well, you might have had the similar results plus a violent dissolution of the Soviet Union with major warfare, internal deplacements, spread of nuclear weapons, warfare between autonomous republics and suppressed minority populations. In that sense all have been very lucky. That the disintegration of the Russian Federation under Yeltsin had its own violent dynamics which in part explains the rise of Putin's mafia state (not an "authoritarian state" but a mafia organisation with the rights, tools and means of a sovereign nation at hands), is a different matter.
   • Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK (vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Monday, 12-Sep-2022 05:16:40 JST Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

     in reply to

     @simsa04 I don't intend this to sound in any way anti migration, but I don't think either East or West was that "lucky" 30 years ago (OK we didn't have nuclear war I suppose). Millions of people got displaced, many new migrants got used as cheap labour by Western Europe; others who had been both traumatised and hardened by combat ended up swelling the ranks of organised crime groups producing and selling the hard drugs that fed the hedonism (and the addictions) of the EU during the 90s and 00s..