Clearly Russia has no idea how to censor different things in different ways to create a specific narrative for people to buy into. They’ve never done anything like that before, they aren’t masters of the craft of disinformation or anything.

Totally unrelated joke, how do you know if a Russian is lying? You don’t, sometimes he could be telling the truth just to trick you.

And I’ll throw in one of my favourite exchanges between two characters:

“Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?” “My dear Doctor, they’re all true.” “Even the lies?” “Especially the lies.”

Trusting something coming out of Russia to be true is foolish, just as foolish is trusting it to be false. Nothing that say is reliable in the slightest or should be used to make any useful conclusion about the real world.

It’s the difference between your friend making you a cup of tea, and Putin making you a cup of tea.

Nuclear weapons in the current era of mutually assured destruction are strictly a deterrent, only useful in a hypothetical retaliatory strike but not as a realistic offensive weapon. The hypothetical situation where this would hypothetically be used would be after Seoul has fallen to the enemy and defeat is inevitable. By having such an ability, this makes it very unattractive for any enemy to try to conquer and fortify Seoul or put any existential pressure on South Korea by any means, since doing so enables the use of a retaliatory nuclear strike, since in such a hypothetical situation there is no chance of regaining Seoul left for South Korea to worry about. Therefore, as a consequence, Seoul is protected in a very material sense by a weapon that will never have to be used in any actual strike ever.

They may only be a deterrent but they continue to be an extremely convincing and effective one.

It’s adorable that they think this is “the west’s best efforts”. This is more like the west throwing some speculative bids at a penny auction to see if they can score some easy wins and if not then at least they piss off the other guy who’s bidding. If they think this is all the west’s got to offer they’re in for a real big fucking surprise.

It will still be a manged exchange rate and they will target inflation as they move forward. I am not a financial expert, even less of one in wartime economies, but their plan to end the fixed rate seems measured, reasonable and straightforward.