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How close are we to war breaking out in Europe?

I was trying to lighten the mood a bit...

To answer your question..I dont know. But I doubt an Oligarch is a listed profession?
The term "oligarch" derives from the Ancient Greek oligarkhia meaning "the rule of the few"
Then they would use the usual terms 'politician' or 'businessman'.
 
Yesterday an otherwise Banned Russian owned Il76 was allowed to overfly Poland en route to Bratislava and back to Moscow, looks like its doing it again today, supposedly delivering Nuclear fuel.
A couple of Turkish Airliners seem to be likewise overflying Poland En-Route to Moscow Today.

I doubt of course that the flights are linked.
 
But what is an oligarch?

It's just someone who is in a small group, or in a small group of individuals, who rule. It doesn't come with any ideology. I don't know why we specifically apply it to rich Russians but the word does imply a bit more than 'lobbying' (that you might get here for example). It doesn't mean rich and has nothing to do with oil. It's just the Russian oligarchs are rich oil people in the main.

They have untold wealth, generally stolen from the people with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This wealth gives them influence. Whether that means actual 'ruling' power in the literal sense I'm not so sure. Putin seems a bit of an autocrat to me. And Russia has 100 billionaires apparently. But for some of them at least their wealth gives influence beyond what normal 'lobbying' might do in say the U.K. If that's oligarchy, then maybe the word applies to some other countries too, like the USA.
 
ye but Oligarch? Who have you seen that applied to not even Musk or Bezos right?

Doesn't get used so much because their power did not come from kleptocratic proximity to centres of power during a massive collapse and theft of state owned assets.
Is def applicable to China imo, and I'd say we don't use it much in the West for the same reason they don't openly use the term so much in Russia.

Like planetgeli says, there about a hundred of them. I'd hardly call something 'Russophobic' when it applies to 100 people out of 258 million, any more than it is anti-British to call James Dyson a cunt.
 
I know many have a good grasp of how Zelensky became president, but this is a great article about his life.

Zelensky’s unlikely journey from comedian to Ukrainian hero​


Listened to a colleague's rant about the backhanded compliment of calling Zelenskyy a comedian unlikely to become president. He's acted in all kinds of genres, theatre, comedy, serious stuff. Basically an intellectual. And building something from scratch, with a tight-knit team for years.
 
8ball nailed it

“kleptocratic proximity to centres of power during a massive collapse and theft of state owned assets.”

Billionaires who stole from the breakup of the ussr. With ties to the man in charge of russia.
That's only its recent usage though, the word doesn't originally have any suggestion of theft following a collapse.

I remember someone I knew studying politics A level 40 years ago saying that we in Britain were governed by an elected oligarchy, which was correct then and it's obviously still correct now.

But yeah, the word oligarch now does tend to refer to those who gained enormous wealth and power very quickly and by dodgy methods after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are also eg Ukrainian oligarchs as well as Russians though.
 
Moving back on Topic, recent chatter of letting Poland give a large number of Mig 29s to Ukraine (to be picked up by Ukrainian Pilots and replaced in Poland by US Supplied F16s) might escalate matters if it happens.

I was hoping NATO would throw bundles of Combat drones at Ukraine F.O.C. in the first few days but that didnt happen.
IMO Yes there is War in Europe already and Im not sure if the current NATO position of no direct conflict is sustainable.
Putin has flipped yes, but NATO's expansionist reality certainly helped prod him.
I believe that unless someone can bump off Putin and cooler heads replace him then Russia has to be militarily defeated in Ukraine or War will spread
 
Russia and the US both threatening to use nuclear weapons...in Europe.
So Europe would end up what? A wasteland?
And since when has a nuclear war ever been anywhere close to logical?

Fucking terrifying
 
Russia and the US both threatening to use nuclear weapons...in Europe.
So Europe would end up what? A wasteland?
And since when has a nuclear war ever been anywhere close to logical?

Fucking terrifying
Most people's mental image of nuclear war - understandably enough - tends to be based around the idea of a maximum nuclear exchange. I think that, if (hopefully not when) a nuclear attack occurs, we may well find that the outcome is not quite as apocalyptic as we imagine it is going to be. Which is not in any way to suggest that it won't be anything less than appalling, but I really could see a situation where a tactical nuclear weapon was employed and the whole thing didn't escalate to a full-on MAD scenario.

But a red line would have been crossed, and I am certain that such a use would prompt NATO to seriously escalate its (conventional) response - indeed, I would hope that it did, because failing to do so would only encourage Russia to up the stakes even further). Which, in turn, could eventually become a strategic nuclear exchange, but I don't think that is guaranteed at all.

Cold comfort, perhaps, and no consolation to those in the vicinity of the nuclear explosion, but perhaps not as overwhelmingly bleak as we might imagine.

It's also worth noting that the nuclear threat we're all terrified of tends to be perceived as a situation where an entire nation is flattened by the detonation of nuclear weapons. But the reality is somewhat less apocalyptic, at least generally. A typical 50kT tactical nuke (roughly the size of the weapons in Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal) would break windows (light blast radius - 1psi overpressure) over an area of some 170 sq.km - for comparison, the land area of Ukraine is somewhat over 600,000 sq.km. Locally, the effect would be devastating, but we'd be a long way from turning Europe into a wasteland.

This is meant to be encouraging.
 
It was a question, not a quip

Did you hear a rich Russian dude on BBC4 R4 PM last week? I've looked for it but can't find it. The Russian was claiming that he was the victim of xenophobia and that he was simply a UK citizen paying UK taxes living in a UK house, running a UK business generating UK jobs that pay UK income tax and UK NI.
 
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