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The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine.

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Russian lawmakers also passed bills imposing up to three years in prison for acts like calling for anti-war protests and anti-Russian sanctions and spreading information that “discredits the use of the Russian Armed Forces,” according to news agencies.
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From Moscow times livefeed.
 
As President Vladimir V. Putin wages war against Ukraine, he is fighting a parallel battle on the home front, dismantling the last vestiges of a Russian free press.

On Thursday, the pillars of Russia’s independent broadcast media collapsed under pressure from the state. Echo of Moscow, the freewheeling radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990 and that symbolized Russia’s new freedoms, was “liquidated” by its board. TV Rain, the youthful independent television station that calls itself “the optimistic channel” said it would suspend operations indefinitely.

And Dmitri A. Muratov, the journalist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said that his newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which survived the murders of six of its journalists, could be on the verge of shutting down as well.

“Everything that’s not propaganda is being eliminated,” Mr. Muratov said.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/europe/russia-ukraine-propaganda-censorship.html

Russian apologists have often argued that Russia could not turn into China, Russians would not tolerate it. There would always be for a small but tolerated, if completely powerless, genuine opposition and independent critical media.

Over the years this apologist narrative has become increasingly untenable as Putin's regime tightened the tumbscrews on dissidents. The poisoning and then imprisonment of Aleksej Navalnyj is perhaps the most glaring example. Despite the Kremlin endorsed narrative that he's just a harmless attention seeker they have gone to extraordinary lengths to destroy him in every sense of the word.
 
Again "Just do what the madman wants so nobody gets hurt" and "Hey just give the madman what he wants because I love the madman and want him to win" are functionally identical.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Got to say, I don't know that much about Eritrea. Why are they continually supporting Moscow?
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Wikipedia doesn't mention any specific relationship, beyond the initial establishment of diplomatic relations in 1993, but there seems to be a "birds of a feather" element. President for life (no elections in almost 30 years), human rights violations, and no freedom of the press.


Eritrea is a unitary one-party presidential republic in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held. Isaias Afwerki has served as president since its official independence in 1993. According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government's human rights record is among the worst in the world. The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated. Freedom of the press in Eritrea is extremely limited; the Press Freedom Index consistently ranks it as one of the least free countries. As of 2021 Reporters Without Borders considers the country to have the overall worst press freedom in the world, even lower than North Korea, as all media publications and access are heavily controlled by the government.
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Garrison said:
From the BBC rolling coverage:
China, Cuba, or Venezuela can usually be relied upon to back Russia - this time they abstained.
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Venezuela didn’t abstain -- it didn't vote at all (not the same thing). This is because it has defaulted on its UN dues and has lost its voting rights until it settles a $40m bill.
 
Okay so some interesting figures came out that puts a big slash through one of the biggest pro-Russian (including "Oh I'm totally not on Russia's side, how dare you suggest such a thing... oh but here's a bunch of reason Russia's right" side).

If the people of Ukraine consider themselves Russian... why aren't the Refugees fleeing TO Russia? Only about 140,00 refugees have entered Russia from the Ukraine while in the other direction Poland alone has already seen 550,000 thousand refugees cross its border.
 
BillC said:
Venezuela didn’t abstain -- it didn't vote at all (not the same thing). This is because it has defaulted on its UN dues and has lost its voting rights until it settles a $40m bill.
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Well, given the price of oil presently, they should be raking in cash like crazy right now. Hopefully, it gets put to good use.
 
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