I guess the US has more luck running a case where they have access to one side at least but it’s not like this does anything as the US has no power to charge Russian citizens not in the US. Like this would sound more meaningful if the US worked with international institutions for this like the International Criminal Court in Hague for example.
The US does not recognize their authority due to judgements against US citizens concerning war crimes that the US is not signatory to. It’s an important legal distinction.
Well the person does not have to be in the US merely in a country that has an extradition treaty, is willing to extradite for a price in the game of geopolitics, or the US thinks it can perform a rendition.
In any way it is also a signal to the world. Do t forget about Ukraine and the Russians are doing terrible things there.
It probably also helps pressure the GOP to put forward a vote for aid to Ukraine. If they don’t they don’t care about Russians torturing Americans. And that’s not an easy thing to spin for the GOP spindoctors.
It's so prevalent in Russian propaganda, an almost Pavlovian response any time Russia's criticised, that anyone still using it when Russia comes up, is either an idiot or pro-Russian.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s pointing out that since the US doesn’t respect international criminal courts, then they don’t really have a moral standing to try and hold Russians accountable in them.
It’s not whataboutism ... There’s a reason we have the word hypocrisy.
It literally is. Wikipedia:
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument. ... The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified. Common accusations include double standards, and hypocrisy
Yes, people can claim they are calling out hypocrisy to justify actually whattaboutism, but that doesn’t automatically mean any claim of hypocrisy = whataboutism.
The key line from your own quote is.
which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified
You may not have expressively said that, but literally in every post or news article about Russian war crimes, there’s always at least one person pointing at NATO and in particular US war crimes.
No doubt did that happen, yet you don’t see Russian state attorneys trying the US in court. And they can, international criminal law can be ruled in in any country of the world. Now why don’t they or the Chinese do it? For one, because they don’t want to poke the US too much. But if that isn’t the case, the only explanation left is that they don’t want to be open to the possible repercussions of being held to whataboutism themselves.
No why does it happen in the US or NATO countries? Simply because the executive power holds very little sway on the legal proceedings of the attorney General offices, at least when compared to Authotarian countries such as Russia or China.
Honestly my point isn’t “but America war crimes too!!!” Which would probably be fair to call whattaboutism, but pointing out that if americ adoesnt recognise other countries courts or international courts, then why should they expect Russia to care about what their courts say?
No one expects Russia to accept any foreign rulings. However as the Nuremberg trials proved, acceptance can be enforced by the stronger party. And in the likely case this doesn’t happen, the court ruling can mean a lot less foreign diplomacy leeway for the US government when it comes to dealing with Russia. Also a US ruling would extend to every country that has extradition treaties with the US. So anyone proven guilty would effectively be a fugitive in a third and the most powerful and influential third of the world. Look at what the international criminal courts ruling already caused. Putin didn’t attend the meeting of the BRICS+ countries in South-Africa. The same would go for Brazil who also accept den-Haag.
Even if the leadership of a country would like for any proven criminal to appear in their country and would like the justice department to not move, in any and every democratic country, they couldn’t without causing a major breach of constitution.
Anyhow, trials like these must, without fault, be spotless examples of correct rulings, for there to be any resemblance of unpolitical justice
Fair point but that just raises the obvious point that Americans would never recognise the authority of a foreign court, even of their allies (like the UK for example) so do they really expect Russia to respect their ruling?
Given how the first reaction of Russia apologists, is so often whataboutism, so much so that the wikipedia article on whataboutism literally mentions it being part of the Russian psyche, anyone who's first reaction to an article on Russian war crimes, is "what about America?" is pathetic.
Oh, and I notice you doubled down, edited your comment above and decided to add some "What About Ukraine?" and accused people here of being hypocrites too. Didn't work the first time? Try it again.
Please understand. I'm not saying you're a Russian troll. People who inadvertently propagandize without realizing it are often called useful idiots. But I'm not calling you a useful idiot either. I don't think anyone would conceivably think your comment was useful.
Jesus christ dude I can practically smell the smugness through the screen. I get you you like to feel like you’re oh so much smarter than other people, but maybe tone it down a bit?
Even though I fully expected this kind of knee-jerk reactionary given the community I’m posting on, I thought the responses wouldn’t be full on redditor. But unfortunately I was wrong.
‘’… I fully expected this kind of knee-jerk reactionary given the community …‘’ And you are talking about smugness ;-) Really, people mostly blame others for their own shortcomings and project them onto others. Talk about hipocrisy :-)
It's important to self regulate and prosecute wrong doing of your own people, but justice requires accountability to your accusers, those wronged. Ideally, these work in concert.
The point is America does not care about international criminal courts, so they have no business trying to use them for Russian war criminals.
If Russia tried its own soldiers for war crimes, you would rightly think they will probably go easy on them and won’t be a fiar trial with proper justice as it’s motive.
Key-point here being “if”, because Russia would never try their own soldiers. Apart from desertion of course, though I believe they’d rather execute those.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument. ... the tactic was "an old Soviet trick". ... "Kremlinologists of recent years call this 'whataboutism' because the Kremlin's various mouthpieces deployed the technique so exhaustively against the U.S." ... Russian whataboutism was "part of the national psyche". ... "Moscow's geopolitical whataboutism skills are unmatched"
Austrian inflation for October 2023 is 5.4% (so 1.3% points less than the 6.7 that they had in October 2023 in Rusia). The ~8% was the inflation for 2022, where Russia had an inflation rate of 13.77%.
But to answer your question, starting a war definitely helped them getting a high inflation.
Russia's going to have to go full North Korea to keep from losing anyone that is sober enough and has the mental overhead to realize that the country is going straight down the proverbial turlet.
But that many miles of border with nations that have seen just how ineffective they truly are... yeah, that does not bode well for Russia's future.
Vladimir Gimpelson, Professor of Practice in Russian Studies in the Department Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses the state and prospects of the Russian labor market. From the second half of 2022 onward, the “demographic hole” has been overlaid by war losses, emigration, and structural changes directly related to the war.
Natalia Zubarevich, Professor of the Department of Economic And Social Geography of Russia of the Moscow State University, talks about the labor shortage in Russia, the trends in labor migration within the country, how resource exports are being redirected to China, how compensation from the state is helping to get men to sign up, and how Russians, unable to change anything, are building barriers between themselves and the war.
Not a problem, they are needed on the front instead. Why educate and train a researcher when infantry only requires 3 days of training and a shared rifle in the army.
It was always hard and expensive to leave Russia for a first world country, and right now most of those countries are making it even harder and even more expensive than before.
For example Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, (most of which share a border with Russia) banned Russians from entering the countries outright, regardless of purpose, greatly limiting options for leaving Russia via land.
Other countries introduces other restrictions, like directing anyone wishing to get a visa to their embassies in Moscow exclusively. Which is a bit of a problem, considering the size of the country.
Oh, an of course there are inherent restrictions due to the visa facilitation agreement being suspended.
The article above makes it pretty clear Russia is interested in preventing international cooperation. So I wouldn't expect things like joined research endeavors or exchange programs to be common, if allowed to happen at all.
So, how does any of that facilitate brain drain, exactly?
You do realize that crossing a border is illegal, even if there's no wall, right?
First: leaving Russia without a permit is illegal and punishable by fines and/or prison.
Second: Entering any country without a permit is illegal and will get you deported and banned from entering it ever again.
Merely being Russian does not grant anyone asylum rights. Poland and the Baltic states, for example, won't consider any asylum requests, even from persons who are being conscripted. At most, the process can be slowed down with appeals to last a year or more, but it will, almost certainly, end up in deportation back to Russia, followed by Russia prosecuting the deflectors.
Even North Koreans get deported back to NK, despite the fact that the country is considered to be hellhole by pretty much everyone, everywhere.
Maybe instead it’d be better to make the process legal and easier from the outer side so more russians leave and 1) dont get drafted and 2) dont pay taxes to russia?
It's not hard to get from Russia to any other country, assuming you have enough money. The current sanctions aren't, exactly, stopping Russian oligarchs from having vacations in Europe, for example. Or sending their kids off to colleges there. So, if Russia wanted to send "spies or terrorists". it absolutely would.
And how do you think spying works, exactly? Real life isn't Team Fortress 2, you don't just "get behind the enemy lines", put on a uniform and march into the middle of a military base to pick up some magical briefcase of intel.
Nobody, anywhere, would hire an immigrant to do any sensitive government work. It's easier to find sympathizers among the native citizens of any given country that are already in positions that grant them access to intel. Which is exactly how it's usually done. Same goes for terrorists.
Either become a criminal by deflecting and crossing the border illegally, only to face constant fear of being caught, deported and prosecuted for deflection, illegal border crossing, and treason... Which is basically, a life sentence.
Or become a criminal in the eyes of the civilized world by participating in an attack on a sovereign country. Which, honestly, will most likely result in death.
So, basically: being a Russian, who can't afford to leave the country via the convoluted and expensive ways that are still available, is a crime. Got it! Nice!
Yeah. Yet, meanwhile, a lot of people are talking about some mystical "brain drain". That's not "brain drain", that's a world-sponsored Iron Curtain 2.0. Literally the opposite of that.
No, it really is a brain drain. More so than the “usual” brain drain from poor to rich countries due to the additional stuff in Russia. Unless they close down like north Korea there is no way to stop that.
He accused his ex-wife of pressuring their son not to apply to a Russian university
14yo is too young to apply anywhere, most courses don’t even start to specialize around that age. And as a boy, he has better chances elsewhere, let’s be honest.
I’m half-sure he is consulted by the gov to bait Ovsyannikova into going back. Or and make news about child stealing, as they did with international adoption a decade prior to this mess.
But does he want to get something out of it? Return children by getting their mother into prison? Is he pressured into it, or he is just that dumb?
She was too. He’s a head of some small national subdivision handling translation mostly, she was a content manager on one of the main russian channels.
But that’s not the point, who take this propaganda bait, who doesn’t and just cash on it. I bet many topheads belong to the second category.
His obsession with taking kids there and taking revenge on his wife sounds stupid, if not insane.
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