Yup, facts don’t exactly matter in Russian courts. If the judge is working with prosecution (which they always do), there’s practically no chance of you being acquitted. Your best case scenario is getting a suspended sentence.

That’s why it’s best to get a jury trial whenever possible. Your odds are way higher that way, but it’s only possible to have it in some specific cases.

Minor correction: key rate is 19%, interest rates are higher than that as a result.

Some important info that is missing:

1. Proposed legislation is far from being an actual law. It has only once passed the committee (1st stage out of 5), after which got sent to be re-written. Now it’s at pre-1st stage.

2. So far, it has received 2 negative reviews from the administration. First one, from 2022, said it’s redundant, and second one, from 2023 that it’s… still just as redundant as it was.

3. 2 out of 3 authors have removed their signatures since the first negative review.

Basically, there’s little to no chance this would ever pass. Our “crazy printer” may be insane, but it only does so if there is an ass to lick.

I could even link everything if anybody wants me to. Doubt it won’t get removed, but still.

Negotiations happen when one or, more likely, two sides don’t see a way to improve their positions with military force.

The rumors you’re speaking of are a direct consequence of Russia being an autocracy. When you have a country whose ruler doesn’t leave on their own (a dictator), people start speculating on when he’s going to die. These rumors have been going around for about a decade, I believe, and are pretty much meaningless.

Now, about “securing a legacy.” I think it’s much more trivial than that. Invading Ukraine was a good way to secure presidency for the next 1-2 terms and to eradicate opposition within the country. If that’s the case, then, in a sense, he got what he wanted, although he likely also expected the war to be short and victorious (judging by the state media narrative at the time). That didn’t happen. And now there are other issues at hand for him.

Since we’re sharing links now

• Kino
• DDT
• Aria
• Chaif
• Grazhdanskaya Oborona
• Mashina Vremeni
• Sektor Gaza
• Korol i Shut

Although for Grazhdanskaya Oborona, I prefer that song in Louna’s version. It’s so good, man.

In Soviet Union, the rock genre was for a very long time existing underground due to the inability of artists to be properly published.

Only starting with the 1980s could the artists finally publish their songs officially. And even then Soviet government put a lot of measures to prohibit rock music in the country.

This resulted in the appearance of many beloved bands and artists, like

• Kino (tl. Cinema),
• DDT,
• Aria,
• Chaif,
• Grazhdanskaya Oborona (tl. Civil Defense),
• Mashina Vremeni (tl. Time machine),
• Sektor Gaza (tl. Gas Sector)
• Korol i Shut (tl. King and Jester)
• And many others

The history of Russian rock is actually quite fascinating. It was inspired by bard songs and often touched darker subjects as well as being satirical and judgmental of Soviet government.

Due to that, some artists, like Yegor Letov from Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Yuri Shevchuk from DDT, had troubles with KGB (Soviet FBI).

Nowadays, rock artists are still being persecuted for their views. For example, DDT is de facto prohibited from performing in Russia.

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They may not matter in a sense that you can’t elect anybody but Putin.

But they do matter in a sense of showing the incumbent they aren’t stable.

After successful re-election of incumbent, they fall into a sense of euphoria. This leads to creation of some absolutely horrific and unjust laws.

However, when the re-election is deemed unsuccessful (say 55% voted for “the right candidate”, but the second place got scary high 30-35%), they become timid.

That’s how informational autocracies work. And that’s why elections there absolutely do matter, as they directly affect quality of life. It’s the safest and loudest way of showing the government your middle finger.

They guy did his research, and he did it right. Even mentioning the “social contract”, that’s not something you hear from an average youtuber.

There’s only a few things I’ve noted

Although the monthly rate can be calculated as yearly÷12 and is acceptable, it is inaccurate. Doesn’t change much, but still. ( (1+monthly rate)^12 = 1+yearly rate <= this is the accurate conversion)

Next is “failed pension reform.” It’s failed in political sense. The intent of it was to temporarily lessen the depletion of pension fund, which it technically did do. But, yeah, it was absolutely not popular. Not to mention that it didn’t solve the root of the problem, which was obvious from the start. Back during his first or second presidency period, he promised not to raise the age for retirement, yet in 2018, he did exactly that. Needless to say that his ratings have been falling ever since then and up till February of 2022.

The one thing I would’ve liked him to also mention is “quality of foreign exchange earnings,” which is a relatively new term. Essentially, companies now need to pay attention to wether or not they can exchange earned currency for something that they can trade with other countries or within Russia. Previously, they traded in dollars, so it was never an issue.

An economics student from Russia here, here’s my perspective.

First, is that a country’s economy is a lot less volatile than we expected. There is also another factor that played into it. During covid, Russian companies amassed a sizable amount of inventory that was already inflated compared to European companies due to how volatile our economy is. This has given them enough time to reroute supply chains once sanctions hit.

Basically, the so-called “grey import” plays a major role in assuring the stability of our economy. Companies either route their import/export through neighboring countries or through affiliated companies.

Second is the competency of our central bank. After most of the major banks were cut off from SWIFT (used for international transactions), they raised the key rate, limited the amount of money you can cash out at one time, and did some other stuff. Higher key rate = higher deposit interest rate, but at the same time, credit became more expensive. All of this was needed for preventing banks from defaulting. Once panic died down, the changes were reverted. Now, they’re dealing with inflation.

Lastly, the majority of our budget comes from oil and gas. Since Europe didn’t want to buy it, Russia started selling it to Asia at discounted prices. Quantity of oil/gas sold drastically increased, which mitigated reduced prices and led to a surplus budget. Not to mention that they started pushing on large companies to reduce the amount of dividends and instead re-invest the money.

I wouldn’t call it “thriving,” however. All of this has definitely led to a slowdown in growth, which, as time goes by, will only get worse. But for now it’s fine.

Can confirm, surprisingly effective.

Icy roads is a huge issue that often gets ignored or insufficiently addressed in Russia.

You’d be surprised how much changes from sole rotation of personnel.

Mind you, people wouldn’t be calling Putin a tyrant if he left after his second term. Yet he didn’t, that mofo rigged the system in his favour during that presidency, and… well, you know the rest.

Rotation is unimaginably more important than actual personas.

More than that. We have a giant demographical pit starting down from 25 y.o. and bottoming out at around 20-22 y.o.

It’s WW2 stacked on top of the economic collapse in the 90ies and now this. It is ugly.

He’s probably yearning for the Russian Empire instead of Soviet Union.

Russian governmental officials have some really outlandish views for an average Russian person.

They’re very religious, believe in conspiracies, actively anti-lgbt, don’t support abortions, antisemitic to name a few. None of these qualities are present in the general masses. They are in their own informational bubble.

As far as I understand it, he believes that the Russian Empire and collective Europe were always at each other’s throats, and that never changed for over 200 years. At the same time, Russia is a successor of the Russian Empire, and USSR is being omitted for some reason. That’s the simplistic explanation of it.

For you to understand how crazy that is, Russians (in general) have little to no idea of how the Empire worked and what the views those people held. USSR essentially wiped out all of that culture.

First I was “120$ for a keyboard? Sounds very reasonable, I did my 75% build for about the same” but then it hit me that it’s just keycaps.

They do look great, but that’s very expensive, wow.

I think the word you’re looking for is “Rossiya” (Россия) /s

But if for real, we don’t have a substitute for the word.

Also expansism isn’t exactly popular, people just don’t care and want to be left alone. Government officials have some really outlandish views, which sometimes leaves you wondering just where in the world could they have heard something like that. Srsly, I’ve never ever heard the words that sometimes come out of their mouths anywhere else. They live in some sort of their own bubble where everybody’s after them and any disobedience is Europe’s commision. Also they treat ex-USSR territories as being unfairly taken from them. It’s nuts.

“fact-checking” was a bit of a crude way of putting it on my part. I’m not native, so there could’ve misused it.

(Went a bit overboard with a wall of text again, but of well)

Although it wasn’t without the fact-checking in it’s normal sense. Take “English as a foreign language”, for example. One teacher will say the word is pronounced one way, the other will say its different. Who’s right? Let’s check Cambridge dictionary. Although it isn’t always teacher’s fault as a professional. Sometimes you just forget things no matter how well you know them.

The other part that I may have failed to convey is looking information up, be it a math formulae, a word, some sort of rule, name or a date.

It’s way quicker than going through your books and is actually not a bad way to remember something. You either have a tab left off or you’re seeing it when using the search, which makes you remember that you did look that up a while back. It’s very minor, but because you’re still being reminded about it from time to time, the information sticks. Essentially you’re doing unintentional passive memorisation.

That’s why I think that maybe not in primary, but definetly in secondary and high school banning technology is not the way to go about it. If the student uses it for entertainment during class, they won’t suddenly start studying if you prohibit them from usining it. You’re essentially solving a non-issue, because the majority of students aren’t even using phones during classes (Well, maybe to cheat on tests, but that’s hurting the quality of assessment and not education itself).

Banning phones is easy, but it’s also the least impactful thing you could to to “improve” educational system. It would be of more sognificance you were to reduce classes to 8 pupils, lessen teacher’s paperwork, introduce new active teaching practices, reward students for persuing their endevours and so on. But that’s difficult, banning phones is easy and brings you more polical approval.

I would still disagree about phone usage.

Even when in school, phone helped me quite a bit with education. Having a way to do a quick fact-check is invaluable.

Now as I’m finishing getting my degree such devices became an inseparable part of the process.

Yes, you may not always listen to what’s being said whilst using them, but lets be frank, you wouldn’t be listening to those parts either way.

School education in a lot of places is fundamentally flawed. It’s extremely difficult to learn when you’re expected to absorb information just by listening and writing.

I’d agree with OPs sentiment here, off-topic smartphone usage isn’t the cause for worse education, but instead is a result of poor engagement in the first place. Should people be more engaged in the topic then suddenly smartphones start being used as a studying tool and not for entertainment. There are many ways of achieving that, but that’s a whole different story.

Am a finance student from Russia.

12% is fine. It’s a temporary measure to keep the currency at bay. It’s not great, don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather it was at 4-5% as it was in 2020, but it’s appropriate given what’s happenning with the country.

In comparison, on February 2022 it was 20%, which in simple terms saved the banking system from collapsing, our Cenral Bank is one of not that many agencies that are at least compitent.

It does slow down the economic growth, but trust me, there are way bigger problems than expensive credit when it comes to economic growth. Short-term everything is quite well, but long-term if nothing changes? Oh boy, oh boy.