Of Russia and Ukraine (and the West)

Couple of things:

° Oh, by the way, the U.S. can start buying Ukrainian pipelines. Riiiiiight.

http://rt.com/business/180388-gas-pipelines-eu-ukraine/

° And who knows how it plays out, but Putin's food embargo is paralyzing the E.U.

http://rt.com/business/180040-eu-catastrophe-russian-ban/

Putin doesn't fuck around. Serious chess being played. Just waiting for China to jump into the pool now.

 

I ended up on a 6 mile hike with an expert on the region. He talked a lot about the consequences of sanctions against Russia and how it wasn't this harmless thing. One of the things I hadn't ever considered was how other countries would interpret that move. He explained that Russia is far different from any other country we've ever sanctioned like that. It's dramatically larger and more important, obviously, and not some obvious rogue state in the same way. And other countries, some our allies, took notice of that and wonder whether if we have some disagreement with them, we'd be willing to sanction them now.

He also had a lot to say about how much our actions were pushing Russia toward China.

Then, I was listening to an audiobook about the W. Bush presidency and it included a story about how Putin once got mad at Bush because he thought we had two different types of chicken wing factories, one for the U.S. and a shitty one for Russia.

So, that's all I've learned about Russia recently.

 

A shitty chicken wing factory would be grounds for war.

 

Russia is moving closer to all the BRICS nations. As it should.

 

Considering it's the R in BRICS and all.

 

Doesn't mean they have to or need to be allies.

The acronym simply identifes the nations as having similar stages of economic development. Ideologies can be 180-degree opposites.