Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[The Larch]

In Spain we get weird with the names of Ukranian cities and actually call Lviv/Lvov "Leopolis", and expect people to understand it when it's being read in the news.

[mongers]

The talks with Veneuzeula are necessary as Russian Oil is typically heavy and similar to the oil from there, thus a number of US gulf refineries are set up for it. So there's no option to just replace it with light/sweet oil from the Saudi Arabia etc.

There's a similar issue with some European refineries in Germany and Eastern Europe, there is no easy replacement for Russian supplies.

[alfred russel]

Quebec francophone media switch from Kiev to Kyiv. I don't think any presenter has mastered the pronunciation of Kyiv yet.

@AR you should use Kyiv. It's like refusing to call it New Orleans and using Nouvelle-Orléans because "well they speak french there".

"New Orleans/Nouvelle Orleans" has been in the English vernacular as "New Orleans" for centuries. I would refuse to go along with renaming cities that kept non english elements in their names because of current events: for example if Spain does something dodgy I don't think we should insist on calling "San Diego" Saint James, or when we did the really dumb freedom fries nonsense I'm glad we could keep the french pronunciation of Louis in Louisville.

The impulse of changing from russian pronunciations because Putin did something stupid and egregious in Ukraine is a negative impulse.

[DGuller]

Super fucked up story here (NSFW): https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t9de02/hero_ukrainian_woman_shows_corpses_russian/

Basically, a commissar(!) with the Russian units orders firing on civilians.  Two Russian soldiers decide to guide Ukrainian civilians to safety instead of firing on them.  A commissar notices it and orders fire on both the civilians and the two Russian soldiers.  A woman and one of the Russian soldiers is killed.  The daughter of the woman saves the other Russian soldier, and I guess eventually he's captured by Ukrainians and interviewed.  What a mix of depravity and heroism in a single story.

[The Larch]

The US to ban today the importation of Russian oil and gas.

[DGuller]

The US to ban today the importation of Russian oil and gas.

Good.  Shame on countries that don't follow suit at least in some way.

[Admiral Yi]

Commissars!

Interesting also that they kept the old Soviet unit names: 1st Guards Tank Army, 40th Guards Armored Division, etc.

[Duque de Bragança]

In Spain we get weird with the names of Ukranian cities and actually call Lviv/Lvov "Leopolis", and expect people to understand it when it's being read in the news.

That is the Latin name used in Habsburg times (not classic Antiquity obviously). Makes sense, not weird at all. 

Used to exist in Portuguese as Leópolis, still referenced online.
Unfortunately, there is also the now common use of questionable transliterations does not help as well ; G = H is a no, as it contradicts earlier transliterations of cyrilic to latin alphabet in French and other Romance languages, the classic instance would be Igor vs Ihar.

At best it somewhat woks for English, not so for under-articulate Lisboete"journalists" where their bad pronunciation sounding as "Leviv" though not "Lêviv".
Lemberga got some use as well but is completely forgotten, too germanic.

Usually, Lisboetes are known known for making under-stressed vowels disappear, making it harder for foreigners with some Portuguese skills to understand them.

In theory, Kharkiv/Kharkov should be Carcóvia, but it's easy to mix up with Cracóvia by your average under-articulate Lisboete newsreader.

I saw some mention of Quieve but it should have been Quióvia or possibly Kióvia (spelling reform officialised a de facto use of k, w and y).

[Syt]

The US to ban today the importation of Russian oil and gas.

Good.  Shame on countries that don't follow suit at least in some way.

You mean like Shell, buying Russian oil from a tanker after the sanctions, because "it was a real bargain"?

[Malthus]

This always happens, though. Peking into Beijing ...

Isn't that based on which political side you're on? West Taiwan uses pinyin (Beijing), while Taiwan uses Wade-Giles (Peking)?

Absolutely. The choice of transliteration, though originally just pragmatic, inevitably becomes political over time, and that is just what we are seeing here.

Under the Soviet Union, people in the West used "Kiev" without a single thought that it may have political import. Now, increasingly since the breakup of the SU, using "Kiev" and not "Kyiv" is seen as making a kind of statement about Ukraine (similar to using "the Ukraine" rather than "Ukraine").

Ukrainian nationalists have been saying that for years of course, but recent events have naturally highlighted the notion.

[viper37]

So, the problem is Ukraine's decision to leave the USSR in the early 1990s.  That was nationalism.  It means in your mind, there is never a valid justification for the independence of a country, only for the joining, willingly or not of two countries.

[Malthus]

So, the problem is Ukraine's decision to leave the USSR in the early 1990s.  That was nationalism.  It means in your mind, there is never a valid justification for the independence of a country, only for the joining, willingly or not of two countries.

What the fuck?

And I ask that sincerely. 😄

[Duque de Bragança]

The US to ban today the importation of Russian oil and gas.

Good.  Shame on countries that don't follow suit at least in some way.

Some countries have other possibilities, others do not. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-reaches-venezuela-possible-russia-oil-embargo-rcna19033

March 7, 2022, 8:21 PM CET / Source: Associated Press
By Associated Press
MIAMI — Senior U.S. officials secretly traveled to Venezuela over the weekend in a bid to unfreeze hostile relations with Vladimir Putin's top ally in Latin America, a top oil exporter whose re-entry into U.S. energy markets could mitigate the fallout at the pump from a possible oil embargo on Russia.

The outcome of the talks with President Nicolas Maduro's government wasn't immediately clear.

The surprise visit came together after months of quiet backchannelling by intermediaries — American lobbyists, Norwegian diplomats and international oil executives — who have been pushing for Biden to revisit the failed "maximum pressure" campaign to unseat Maduro he inherited from the Trump administration.

But the impetus for a risky outreach to Maduro — who has been sanctioned and is indicted in New York on drug trafficking charges — took on added urgency following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and ensuing U.S. sanctions, which promises to reshuffle global alliances and add to rising gas prices driving inflation already at a four decade high. Powerful Democrats and Republicans alike on Capitol Hill last week began voicing support for a U.S. ban on Russian oil and natural gas imports as the next step to punish Putin over the invasion.

The U.S. delegation was led by Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council's senior director for the Western Hemisphere, according to two individuals briefed on the visit on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. policy. He was accompanied by Ambassador James Story, the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas when the Trump administration broke off relations with Maduro in 2019 and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate president.

But it was the presence of another State Department official, Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, that had stirred hopes that Maduro may be willing to release American prisoners as a show of goodwill toward the Biden administration.

Carstens previously traveled to Caracas in December and met in jail with six oil executives from Houston-based Citgo, former U.S. Marine Matthew Heath and two former Green Berets arrested in connection with a failed raid aimed at toppling Maduro staged from neighboring Colombia.

The Biden administration has been considering for some time easing tough oil sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for a commitment by Maduro to return to negotiations with his opponents that he broke off last fall when a key ally was extradited to the U.S. on corruption charges, according to a U.S. official on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

One alternative is to let Chevron, the last American oil company in Venezuela, boost production and possibly resume oil exports to Gulf Coast refineries tailor made to process the country's tar-like crude, the official said prior to the weekend's shuttle diplomacy. Under U.S. sanctions, Chevron is banned from doing all but basic upkeep on wells it operates in connection with PDVSA, the state run oil giant.

Maduro has shown little sign he's willing to abandon Putin in his hour of need. He spoke by phone with the Russian president last week in a show of support and attended a rally in Caracas where Putin's ambassador received a roaring ovation from ruling socialist party stalwarts

"It's a crime what they're doing to the Russian people, an economic war," Maduro said at an event where he railed against the decision by the U.S. and its allies to kick Russia's banks out of the SWIFT payment system and impose a flight ban on its airlines. "It's craziness what they're doing."

But such lofty rhetoric aside, the West's sanctions on Russia, and bipartisan support for an all out oil embargo, represent a major threat to Maduro's ability to maneuver as successfully as he has until now.

Russia emerged as the top buyer of Venezuela's crude oil in the wake of the U.S. sanctions. Last year, PDVSA sold around $2.5 billion in crude to Russia, according to an industry expert on the condition of anonymity to discuss non-public trade data. That's the equivalent of about a quarter of the South American country's entire foreign currency reserves.

While some of those sales were used to pay down debt, more than $1 billion was ferried back to Caracas to cover the operations of struggling state-run oil giant PDVSA, the industry source said. With its own accounts in the U.S. and Europe frozen, PDVSA also receives payments for oil shipments at Moscow's Promsvyazbank, one of the state-owned entities sanctioned by the Biden administration for its ties to Russia's military.

Less clear is how any U.S. flexibility would alleviate pressures at the pump. Despite sitting atop the world's largest petroleum reserves, oil production in Venezuela plunged to the lowest level in a century last year. Although output started to rise toward the end of 2021, the 755,000 barrels per day it said it produced in January represents just a fraction of the more than 10 million barrels a day pumped by Russia last year.

[mongers]

So, the problem is Ukraine's decision to leave the USSR in the early 1990s.  That was nationalism.  It means in your mind, there is never a valid justification for the independence of a country, only for the joining, willingly or not of two countries.

What the fuck?

And I ask that sincerely. 😄

Yeah likewise, though maybe I'm a bit slow today.

Perhaps her was referring to another post and not yours??

[Admiral Yi]

It's a continuation of his discussion with Squeeze on the pros and cons of nationalism.