"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (80 Viewers)

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GTX said:
www.abc.net.au

'Cynical and targeted' Russian strike on Ukrainian bus kills 12

A series of attacks across Ukraine comes ahead of US-brokered trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia set for the coming week.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
Click to expand...
As expected... Not a "collateral damage" but an intentional strike against the civilians. Just days after the strike on the passenger train.
news.liga.net

Russian Federation hits a bus with online-controlled drones, operators could see that the target was civilian – Flash

The occupiers targeted the drone at people who were getting off the bus after the first strike
news.liga.net news.liga.net
 
GrauGeist said:
You know that Russia will support China's appetite for Taiwan because it'll keep China from thinking about retaking their former territory in Russia.
Click to expand...


... not to mention that standing up against any Chinese move against Taiwan will gut any support China is giving them in Ukraine -- which is quite a bit. The Chinese teat is now important to Russia, and Chinese influence over DPRK means standing against Chinese aspirations towards Taiwan will cost the Russians probably two supporters, not just one.

Chinese chips and North Korean shells matter in Ukraine. Russia will not jeopardize them on principle; Russia doesn't, after all, operate on principle anyway.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Is there really any risk of China moving to militarily retake Vladivostok and area?
Click to expand...

China has territory claims extending deeper into Siberia and Yakutsk than that, if I remember correctly, and they've actually made noises about it since Russia's Ukraine invasion.


Taiwan's president made a genius suggestion a last week. In an interview with a local television station, Lai Ching-te said, with respect to China's revanchist pretensions to control his country, "If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn't it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the Treaty of Aigun?"

After all, that territory is China's for the taking, Taiwan's leader implied. "Russia is now at its weakest," he said. "Right?"

Lai Ching-te was questioning China's claims to Taiwan, but more shocking was his indirect proposal that Beijing would be perfectly entitled to demand that Moscow return the historically Chinese lands that the Russian Empire illegally annexed in 1858. That territory comprised some 600,000 square kilometers.

Russia's land grab took place at the same time that a score of Western imperialist powers were meddling in Chinese affairs and transforming China into a vassal state of the West. Too weak to resist, the Qing dynasty surrendered much of its sovereignty and territory to foreigners — a state of affairs that Mao Zedong only succeeded in reversing many decades later.

In demanding that Russia return its illegally acquired territories to China, Beijing wouldn't just be reversing the humiliation it suffered at the hands of 19th-century imperialists. No less important, Beijing would be acting in accordance with the Putin regime's own historical claims. If Moscow can insist that Ukraine, Belarus and other territories are historically Russian, then Beijing can insist that large swathes of the Russian Federation's Far East are historically Chinese.


Indeed, if, as Putin claims, Russia and China are friends in perpetuity, then it behooves China either to honor its partner's logic or to gently inform its dear friend Putin that his logic is faulty and will only increase tensions. The Chinese have already produced maps of Russia with some cities identified with Chinese names. Millions of Chinese people already live and work in large parts of the Russian Far East. And, as Lai Ching-te said, "Russia is now at its weakest, right?"

He was, of course, indirectly referring to Russia's catastrophic battlefield losses — over 610,000 dead and wounded at recent count — its army's inability to defeat a much smaller and weaker opponent, and the growing crisis of its economy and society. In many respects, today's Russia resembles China's 19th-century Qing dynasty.

Xi Jinping may be reluctant to exercise China's right to reclaim historically Chinese territories today. But he must know — as does Putin — that Beijing would have every right to follow in Russia's footsteps if and when it chooses. Putin would either have to swallow the land grab or admit that his invasion of Ukraine and de facto occupation of Belarus are imperialist adventures.

Alternatively, Beijing could simply play a long game and let conditions on the ground take their inevitable course. Why insist on a revision of a 19th-century treaty when Russia is already well on its way to becoming a vassal state of China?


This first example could well be a simple provocation from Taiwan. But wait, there's more!

Perhaps the most dramatic geographic risk is the potential loss of the one million square kilometres of Outer Manchuria that Russia took from China by treaties in 1858 and 1860. Consisting of the lands north of the River Amur and east of the River Ussuri, the territory is 50 per cent larger than the entirety of Ukraine. Known today as the southern portion of Russia's Far East, the area now constitutes all or parts of modern Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobidzhan. While barely populated outside a handful of urban areas, those cities are significant: Vladivostok hosts the Russian Pacific fleet. Khabarovsk is the seat of Russia's Eastern Military District. Russia makes military aircraft at a large facility in Komsomolsk-na-Amur. And Russia's Trans-Siberian railway runs right through the region. In short, the loss of these territories would be a big deal.

[...]

Moreover, for many decades, Chinese leaders have made it clear that the treaties transferring the territories were highly 'uneven' and that China has not forgotten Russia's landgrab. Whatever Russian diplomats might say, for the Chinese it remains an unresolved issue. In 1969, the two countries even went to war briefly over the border. Neither side has forgotten that.

[...]

As relations between the two countries deteriorated in the 1960s, China regularly raised the issue of the annexed territories. While Beijing did not explicitly demand the return of the lost territories, it insisted that Moscow formally recognise the illegitimate nature of the seizures. At the first formal round of Sino-Soviet border negotiations in February 1964, the Chinese delegation insisted that any border settlement must begin with Soviet acknowledgment that the 19th-century treaties were 'unequal' and imposed upon China under duress. The Soviet delegation rejected this demand entirely, arguing that accepting the Chinese position would legitimise unlimited future territorial claims.

[...]While the 2001 Treaty suggested finality on the border issue, that may no longer be the case. In retrospect, Chinese acceptance of those terms can be seen as a tactical compromise because China's broader strategic interests at the time required good relations with Russia. But the fundamental Chinese grievance – the legitimacy of territory taken through 'unequal treaties' – remained unaddressed. A quarter of a century later, China now has the realistic option of viewing the agreement as a pause in a territorial dispute rather than its genuine resolution. That is, Nerchinsk held, until it didn't. Aigun and Peking have held, more or less, for almost two centuries, with Russia often in breach due to its prolonged involvement in Manchuria. More generally, treaties are observed until they are changed, abrogated, or ignored. For declining hegemons, they simply may become irrelevant.

engelsbergideas.com

Russia's age of contraction

Beijing has not forgotten the territories seized by Russia during its age of imperial expansion. As Russian power continues to decline, China's determination to reclaim those lost lands may eventually redraw the map of East Asia.
engelsbergideas.com engelsbergideas.com

There's a lot of history behind this that, while forgotten in the West, is not necessarily so in Beijing.
 
Last edited:
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities on Monday detained five men accused of being part of a network that illegally exported goods to Russian defense companies after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The arrests took place in Lübeck in northern Germany and in nearby Lauenburg district, federal prosecutors said. The men are all German nationals; two are also Russian citizens and another is also a Ukrainian citizen. They are suspected of membership in a criminal organization and violating Germany's foreign trade and payments act.

Searches were carried out at properties elsewhere in the country, and another five suspects have not been detained, prosecutors said in a statement.

One of the arrested men, a German-Russian identified only as Nikita S. in line with German privacy rules, owns a trading company in Lübeck, prosecutors said. They alleged that, at least since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, he and the other suspects used the firm to procure goods for Russian industry and export them to Russia.

The men are accused of using at least one bogus firm in Lübeck and bogus customers in and outside the European Union, as well as a Russian firm which Nikita S. was also involved with, to cover up the deals and get around EU sanctions.

Russian state agencies are suspected to have been behind the network, and the end customers included at least 24 defense companies in Russia, prosecutors said.

apnews.com

Germany detains 5 men accused of illegally exporting goods to Russian defense companies

German authorities have detained five men accused of being part of a network that illegally exported goods to Russian defense companies after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
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