#russiainvadingitself — Public Fediverse posts

#LetsTalkAbout Russia
A lot of people have expressed the sentiment that they don't understand Russia, particularly recently. It's quite hard to understand it's actions when thinking about it as a unified country.

Imagine instead that a large number of mafia clans, who often hate each other, populate all the national structures. Government, security services, judiciary, police, armed forces, administration and major businesses.

Whoever currently has more control of Moscow tends to get the best looting opportunities from Russia as whole. (there are of course all sorts of regional power hierarchies but they sit below). A lot of Russia is heavily subjugated & exploited regions (eg where the cannon fodder for invading Ukraine comes from).

Russia exploits the nations within it's reach, much the same way Moscow exploits the regions of Russia.

Periodically Russia covertly or openly invades nations nearby. This is about looting opportunities, but usually presented as about security or ethnic russians. The idea that Moscow cares about the well being of regional ethnic Russians is dark comedy if you look at how Russia is run.

Putting an Apple store and a BurgerKing in Moscow did not make Russia a democracy. That was a convenient global 'error' of thinking that justified apathy towards Russia while making a nice figleaf for buying oil & gas etc. The fact Russia still has nukes, some of which may still actually work, also explains some of the global looking the other way.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of other global entities, so let's skip any "but X isn't pure either" whataboutisms please, they can get tedious. This is just about Russia.

Regardless of other entities, for Russia it's helpful to note just how far corruption & essentially hostile with shifting alliances snake pit of mafia clans penetrate all levels of Russian state structures & major business. This is why you get things like Russian officials assassinating each other, parts of security services going to active war with parts of defense dept, #RussiaInvadingItself and so on.

Achieving any personal power in Russia means 3 things:
Larger looting opportunities.
More people to pay off.
Becoming a bigger target.

This makes it incredibly hard to achieve stable lasting structures of corruption. Your personal safety is mostly linked to expanding your powerbase until it collapses. This mindset also infects Russian foreign policy.

Many regions of Russia have some lean toward getting free of Moscow, but it is also often quite intermixed with junior Mafia Clans wanting to expand & get free of tributes to Moscow.

For the populace, the active destruction of objective truth inside all Russian domestic forms of media (& attempts to do same in all forms of western media they might encounter) leads to widespread apathy towards change or progress. Everything seems either corrupt & dangerous, or going to be corrupted soon anyway. Justice, rule of law, anti-corruption don't exist really as ideals any more for large segments of the populace, they're focused on day to day trying to survive without getting noticed by the mafia clans, or giving up entirely & joining one.

Many nations around Russia want clear of it's influence in a more traditional seeking independence and self determination sense, for example #Ukraine, kicked Russian control out in 2014 through civil protest. #Russia #Russian #RussiaIsCollapsing #Geopolitics #Mafia #OrganisedCrime

#RussiaInvadingItself
#Kadyrov and the #Chechens close to Rostov but not engaged anyone yet. It is likely engaging would actually turn a lot of passive support for Wagner in to active support. #Russia #Coup #Wagner #Putin #Prigozhin #Moscow #Ukraine

Omg ich will hier sofort diese Ampeln aus #Rostow haben 😻 💃
#Russland #RussiaInvadingItself