August 18, 2022 | by Eriс

Breaking Up the Bad. Part II

Continued. Read Part I here

Too many countries of South America, Asia and Africa continue to be the “clients” of that nation. They carry on with trade and nourish political connections for their own reasons. Turkey is making billions of dollars by openly breaking the embargoes. Countries of the Middle East are happy to receive stolen Ukrainian wheat transported to them by the Russian ships. China and India are buying Russian oil and gas in huge quantities. Among Russia’s “friends” these days are Iran, Syria, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea. Mexico is calling for the ceasefire in Ukraine, preserving land-grabbing status-quo for Russia. Russia belongs to a BRIC trade group of nations. Instead of kicking Russia out, several nations are looking to join that body right now. Even the EU can’t stop buying Russia’s gas just yet. Isolating Russia is hard. There is no unity among the nations when it comes to the Russian Federation. Perhaps in time, the USA and the wiser Europeans would apply enough pressure to close these gashing spigots, yet they remain open as the war perpetrated by that country is going on.

There is a layer of population over there that would be mostly immune to any western sanctions. These are the people who live “hand to mouth” in small villages and towns all over the country. To them heat comes from wood, cooking – from coal and wood-fired ovens – but not gas. Toilet facilities are outhouses. They have no running water. Food is what you forage in the forest or gather from your own garden plot. They earn little money. Western sanctions mean nothing to them. They have no or limited access to the internet, TV is their primary source of information. A lot of Russians live like that.

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August 13, 2022 | by Eriс

Breaking Up the Bad. Part I

What do we, people of the Western world, do when the war in Ukraine is over?

It’s not an easy matter to tackle. We were contemplating to write about this subject for some time. The war is still very much going on in Ukraine. People die and homes are destroyed. Mayhem, murder, massacres. It’s a horror movie. One day it will be over and, barring other conflicts flaring up, we can bring ourselves to start living with post-war realities. Many changes are coming: new political and economic alliances; trade agreements; recognition of who are “friends or foes”, shifts of world economies to alternate energy sources and suppliers and many more.

We don’t go back to the way life was before. We must accept that it would be different in many ways. Any war is akin the loss of innocence. It’s still you, but a more mature, sans illusions; perhaps a wiser person and the rose-colored glasses are gone.

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