They would surely be telling us all about it wouldn’t they.?
After all, we need to know 
Then there’s the question of “What would be the point ?”. At the simplest level
I fear also that the Russians who like Putin like him despite his bad behaviour. They’re like Trump’s base, only they’re in the majority. It’s going to be very hard to turn them against him. And the people who dislike him have had a century of authoritarian media manipulation and are going to be cynical about any ‘information’ pushed at them.
Not so sure the plucky Ruski’s like a rebellion nearly as much as the French. I know VPN downloads were huge in Russia so alternative information is available but as noted their ‘Web Wall against the west seems’ rather more effective than anything we have in place to deflect their bullshit.
We need to build a wall ! oh wait.
I was going to say that they’re not as enslaved to their phones as most of us are, so we’d struggle to reach them, but a quick Google said that actually they are, so I was wrong about that. Every day’s a school day.
The other issue is that their economy, or at least the export/trade side of it, seems to be based very largely on fossil fuels and minerals. I had a mate who went to work for Schlumberger in Libya during the days of Gaddafi. I asked him how the place operated given the leader’s already (start of the 1980’s) relatively unhinged behaviour. He said “Oil. The economy is basically unsinkable almost no matter how deranged/thieving/clueless the leader is.” As long as someone buys the stuff they pump/dig out of the ground there will be money to keep the populace warm (or in Libya’s case, cool), fed etc. When those things are taken care of it’s harder to get an uprising going.
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A relative was dispatched with a hush hush American diplomatic team to Libya around 2010 to meet Gaddafi’s son’s.
They were there to look at the practicalities of creating (buying) a more western oriented infrastructure and reproachment. Gaddafi was dead within a year or so, in no small part due to western intervention.
A shit but stable governance or shit and unstable, wonder which the Libyan people would choose in retrospect.
Also works for the West and why Saudi Arabia is as it is today, all goes back to the deal Roosevelt cut with Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in 1945
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All of this and your prior observations are why a full 2-way embargo of all Russian trade was essential to nip the Ukraine thing in the bud way before the second invasion in '22. Only empty shops and stomachs would have turned Russia against Putin.
Instead, most nations half-arsed it by leaving it to the moral compass of their businesses to decide! Resulting in this rather shocking situation still prevailing:
https://www.ft.com/content/88b047e9-8cad-426a-b649-265ff6582db0
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China. India. Plus the domestic market and a few small clients. =3bn people.
I guess he can get by without the rest of us (article’s behind a paywall I think - if I get the time I’ll Google the title later).
Fucks sake, this labour govt are just doing their utmost to put out the worst possible optics.
the Metropolitan Police’s special escort group had initially been reluctant to give Swift the kind of protection normally reserved for senior royalty and politicians.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Khan and Nandy were given free tickets to Eras Tour shows.
“I utterly reject that there’s been any kind of wrongdoing or undue influence in this case,” Nandy told Sky News.
Yep, BRICS made from 
Behind the paywall:
More than half of foreign [Western] businesses in Russia have remained there since the war began
@murrayjohnson At least your MP didn’t vote for the frozen granny policy while he was sunning himself in Mauritius
Never seems to get work in Alaska, Iceland or Patagonia for some reason. Curious that.
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Good to see Johnson’s new book getting the marketing push it deserves in the supermarkets & bookshops.
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For a man who has attempted to model himself on Winston Churchill (and mastered only the flaws), he’s beginning to take-on quite the resemblance to a more hirsute Ted Heath 
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Somewhat overmarried for that.
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The resemblance being physical, tho’ who knows what dark perversions* the mask of the cheerful philanderer may hide…
*By which I mean Heath’s numerous unexplained visits to Haute de Garenne, not his curiously loverless alleged homosexuality…
Looks like Labour read my post and responded with a “hold my beer”
It’s mind boggling just how naive, uncontrolled and frankly fucking stupid the Labour Party is at the moment with their ‘writing’ or statements.
The complaint comes after a since-deleted post on LinkedIn from a senior Labour Party official which reportedly said: “I have nearly 100 Labour party staff, current and former, going to the US in the next few weeks, heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of [North] Carolina - we will sort your housing.”
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Easy to forget (until insane shit like this reminds us) that politics is very much a sport for amateurs…
Still, it’s not like they’ve got multiple overlapping crises to deal with in the UK.
Mind, Trump’s hypocrisy is - as-ever - astounding, given he has entire Russian bot-farms doings his campaigning for him…
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