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The actual title of this article could be "MasterCard complies with the law".
by Sebguer 5y ago
The actual title of this article could be "MasterCard complies with the law".
- karamanolev 5y agoTrue. That part is beyond what's required by law, right? It also promised to contribute a $2 million for humanitarian relief.
- hericium 5y agoI wonder how many of those promises will actually be fulfilled before Putin gets frustrated.
- imwillofficial 5y agoI don’t get comments like these. Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 5y agoI thought he was cold and calculating until he attacked Ukraine. This looks downright ham-handed and heedless compared to the maneuvering of the decades leading up to now. He's made a damned fool of himself, if you ask me.
- lliamander 5y agoIt looks stupid to me too. Which is precisely why I think there's information I'm missing. Like, I've seen arguments that the whole "Ukraine joining NATO" justification is just a pretext. But if that's just a pretext, what's the actual reason? I haven't seen a good answer yet. I honestly don't think we'll know the true story for decades.
- phatfish 5y agoThe reason? Same as most other people with power, more power. It's just dictators like Putin can act on the impulses of their ego and ignore everyone else. The power gained in this case is attempting to rebuild the Russian empire by "liberating" areas that have since become independent countries and want nothing to do with the Russian rule.
- tguvot 5y agoGoogle translate this: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20220226/rossiya-1775162336.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20... It was auto published on 26 on ria and bunch of other sites and than purged. It explains everything
- CamperBob2 5y ago"Can't translate this." - typically useful error message from Google.
- tguvot 5y agoJust copy/paste text. But overall idea .. "russia is restoring russian world by combining together russian people: greatrussian (russians), small russians (ukranians) and whiterussians... putin took upon himself historic mission of finally solving ukranian question... .. with each year it would have been harder and harder to bring ukraine back to russia... it doesn't means that ukraine as state dissappear but it recharted, restructured and returned to be part of the russian world... etc.. etc.. etc.. see the idea ?
- CamperBob2 5y agoYes; that sounds similar in some ways to Fiona Hill's take on it at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-... .
- ezconnect 5y agoThey waited 8 years for the Minsk accord to be implemented while ethnic Russians are dying and being displaced. When the Berlin wall was removed they were assured NATO will not arrive on their borders, that was decades ago. Ukraine in NATO was the redline it was communicated for how many years now. Before the invasion Zelensky wanted a nuclear weapon for deterrence and the German foreign minister said the accord it's signed was not legally binding giving a go signal that yes you can develop your own nuclear weapon. The west just don't care and wanted war because it will benefit them. Sadly the Ukrainians and Russians will be the one suffering. Russia will survive for sure it's has vast resource and food supply. We will probably just see the old cold war back again with all the defense company so happy to sell weapons to everybody.
- SantalBlush 5y agoRussia already annexed Crimea, a Ukranian territory, so this is not a convincing argument.
- ezconnect 5y agoThey democratically joined Russia, because of the US sponsored coup d'état. It seems HN readers only believes in democracy when their bombing helpless countries. Ukraine crisis could have been prevented if only the west have common sense but no, the profit on wars and it's so sad to see.
- type0 5y ago> Before the invasion Zelensky wanted a nuclear weapon for deterrence and the German foreign minister said the accord it's signed was not legally binding giving a go signal that yes you can develop your own nuclear weapon. The west just don't care and wanted war because it will benefit them. One does not avoid a war by starting a war
- ezconnect 5y ago
- hericium 5y ago> Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? He's a hardliner, I would not say that he could be frustrated easily but this absolutely is not an easy situation. His currency has collapsed and his country is on the brink of defaulting on foreign debt. He has no support anywhere but from his puppet dictator Lukashenko. I think Putin did not expect such coordination and global effort in sanctioning Russia over Ukraine invasion. I believe that he wanted to take over Ukraine in just a few days and was surprised by Ukraine's defence and multiple desertions in his own army. He has decisions to make and choices are poor.
- pengaru 5y ago> I believe that he wanted to take over Ukraine in just a few days and was surprised by Ukraine's defence and multiple desertions in his own army. Everything I have read that isn't heavily biased anti-Russia propaganda says Russia has exercised enormous restraint so far in this invasion. There's no reason I see to believe Putin's been surprised by Ukraine's defenses, it's not as if all of Russia's forces at the border have been deployed and overwhelmed. Last I read not even half had mobilized. It's more like Putin pushed forward what he hoped was enough to compel a low-casualty outcome in his favor. What happens next seems likely to be substantially more painful for the Ukrainians, but I hope I'm wrong.
- Ajef 5y agoWhile I mostly agree with your assessment you lack to point out that using less troops saves costs, bombing less cities/civilians will make installing a controllable regime to rule there easier. These are all strategic decisions. Implying Putin held back for the sake of the ukranian people is misleading.
- tomp 5y agoHe definitely held back for the sake of civilians. Otherwise we wouldn’t have videos of civilians stopping tanks.
- Osiris 5y agoI just read an article that US intelligence is getting reports that Putin is having outbursts and not acting like his usual calculating self. Given his age, it's certainly within the realm of possibility that he is suffering from cognitive decline.
- Hamuko 5y agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/frustrated-putin-may-order-escalation-violence-ukraine-us-officials-sa-rcna18026 https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/frustrated-putin-may-... >Western intelligence agencies have good visibility into Putin right now and are closely watching his moves for any significant behavioral changes, several current and former officials said. Four U.S. officials said there is no intelligence saying he is mentally unstable, but they said he has displayed a different pattern of behavior from in the past. >The U.S. has solid intelligence that Putin is frustrated and directing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign and the worldwide condemnation of his actions, one former and two current U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence said. >That is unusual, they say, because Putin, a former intelligence officer, usually keeps his emotions in check.
- refurb 5y agoI assume this is about as reliable as “Iraqi soldiers pushed over incubators with Kuwaiti babies in them” (read: not accurate at all).
- MrDresden 5y agoLike so many others have mentioned here, he isn't the same persona he used to be (if he ever truly was). Dangerous ofcourse, but a mastermind he isn't.
- type0 5y agoI think he's got longtime COVID that muddled his brains
- rsynnott 5y ago> Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? I mean... yes, clearly! Obviously, there's the Ukraine thing, but even before that, look at photos and footage of him when slighted at conferences and so on. He's not as emotionally open as a Trump or a Burlusconi, but he's no stoic as politicians go.
- TheFattestNinja 5y agoIt's safe to assume this operation was in the planning at least since 2014. 8 years. It had weeks of operations at the border to sort out the logistics. And it had overwhelming military/intelligence superiority and access to the front from 3 sides. It should have taken hours to break through. The operation was a shamble, even if it might succeed over time. In 20 years of NATO operations over 5 different war theatres there have been 74 captured soldiers (src: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/prisoners-in-the-war-on-terror-captured-nato-personnel-since-2001 https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/prisoners-in-the-war-o... ). Here there have been 10's in a matter of days. Either he's gone full potato, or he's still very calculating but everyone around him is feeding false information upwards to "look nice" and because they can't say no. Neither scenario bodes extremely well for his chances of success.
- stormking 5y agoYes, he and especially his fans have been working on establishing the image of a strategic mastermind. But in reality, he's just a short, puffy old man, living in ridiculous kitschy palaces, sitting on ridiculous long tables because he's afraid of even his most loyal underlings. With attacking Ukraine, he made a huge mistake. He simply counted on the west doing nothing, as usual, but this time he went too far. But because he's just a powerful man, not a great man, he's unable to admit that.
- vagrantJin 5y ago> He simply counted on the west doing nothing, as usual Looks like he was right. I don't think a man who has run Russia for decades will suddenly have a brain fart and attack another sovereign state on a whim. Think carefully. Think very carefully.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoSure he does. The picture he had portrayed of him doesn't match reality. Just look at how scared he is of catching COVID. Since 2 years, almost no one is allowed near to him. The amount of COVID tests his bodyguards and others need to do daily is pretty insane too. Everyone he sees/greets needs to be in isolation for 2 weeks upfront to get near. https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-19-vladimir-putin-has-become-almost-invisible https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-... And many other sources for many years. Here's a video from him in a hazmat suite, one of his last public appearances - https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-russia-admits-virus-numbers/story?id=69768452 https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-... Fyi, sitting at a 20 meter table is not a public appearance and Putin has met his big/important friend Xi only virtually as far as I'm aware the last years. I don't think he's calculated at all. Many things have wrong that he didn't suspect: - Their 'advanced' malware was finished off by Microsoft within 3 hours - Their 'advanced hacking culture' has been reversed within days, state tv programs and websites have gone offline within hours. - Their decade long effort of a propaganda machine has been severely reduced within days ( RT, ...) - Their portrait of having an 'advanced military' has been decimated. The world now knows that his army is mostly old, rusty, unmotivated and his troops are clueless. - He miscalculated Ukraine, who he practically trained for 8 years. He also raised serious awareness under Ukrainians what happens with inaction. - He's giving up his independence, isolating himself from the world and it seems that he's fully aware of that. - He is constantly ( for years) angering his biggest and most profitable clients ( Europe). He overstepped his carefully crafted image and failed every step on the way. Not even taken into consideration that he literally had 8 years ( or more) to plan this. His image of being a world power ( while Russia has the same GDP as 30 years ago and America has grown 14 fold) is just an illusion, but real for him. We have given him too much attention on the world stage. He has nukes, not brains... Should have been known years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 ). Europe is prioritizing energy independence now, Russia still had multiple decades to profit from that to improve their situation. Now, they became 100% China dependent.
- demadog 5y agoThat’s the equivalent of me giving $2
- bojangleslover 5y agoNo it's not, it's the equivalent of you giving $2m
- raxxorrax 5y agoOnly equivalent if he is particularly humanitarian. Jokes aside, every bit helps of course.
- chrismorgan 5y ago> Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and saw how the multitude cast money into the treasury. Many who were rich cast in much. A poor widow came and she cast in two small brass coins, which equal a quadrans coin. He called his disciples to himself and said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, this poor widow gave more than all those who are giving into the treasury, for they all gave out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, gave all that she had to live on.” — Mark 12:41–44 The coinage in question was about 1⁄64 of a labourer’s daily pay, in current terms in the vicinity of $2, depending on where you are.
- stickfigure 5y agoWhile you have your bible open: How many daughters do the Ukranians have to sacrifice in burnt offering to give Putin into their hands?
- timeon 5y agoAnd number you gave is?
- throwaway09223 5y agoThe point is that it's not newsworthy. None of this is.
- Sebguer 5y agoSure, but it's not mentioned in the article title at all, it just says "block Russian financial institutions", which is now required by law.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoHow would that be newsworthy?