> Another notable spot is Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave. It looks relatively normal on some days, like today, but on others like yesterday it's solid red.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot that was a thing, and that explains that spur of red in the Baltic. I'd (probably incorrectly) assumed it was some kind of spillover from jamming in Ukraine.
I didn't realize you could look at it over multiple days. One interesting thing about that blob is the outline of red seems to always be there, in the same shape, but the middle is often green. Maybe that's some artifact of their agreement algorithm? More overflights around the edges than through?
It also looks like there's some jamming in Estonia? Or maybe that's just the edge of jamming around St Petersburg?
Estonia definitely is not Russia, but it is close to Russia.
So close that Estonian policeman Eston Kohver is on trial in Moscow; according to Estonians, he was abducted from Estonia where he was investigating cross-border crime; according to Russia he was spying in Russia. The border is not so clearly marked that outsiders could reliably prove what happened.
This resembles the case of Ukrainian female pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was arrested by Russian forces/proxies in Ukraine and is to go on trial in Moscow.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28249884
> I never understood why Russia’s coast land north of China isn’t more populated?
Because of its harsh climate? It's why mongolia, yukon, scandinavia, etc are sparsely populated.
> The surrounding areas are so hugely populated and it’s a coast.
No it's not. The two chinese provinces ( heilongjang and inner mongolia ) bordering RFE are two of the least populated chinese provinces. And north korea has a small population compared to south korea.
Even before the russian stole the territory from the chinese, koreans, japanese, siberians, etc, that region was never heavily populated because of the harsh climate.
One of the reasons why russia was able to take the land was because it was inhospitable and sparsely populated.
The real question is why it's so heavily populated right now? Why are there millions of russians on the other side of siberia when russia proper is thousands of miles away. The answer is that the tsars and then stalin forcibly moved millions of russians to the region. At one point, the russians wanted to "deport" all their jews to this region.
>There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it.
You are saying that a military invasion is before the red line, and taking away TLDs is across the red line?
> Having lived in Russia for 6 months in the past, it's is not as bad as western media makes it seem. Unlike China, their internet is still open.
That would be great, if Russia were not actively working on closing off its Internet as China did and for similar reasons. [1][2] The Russian firewall is being put into place now. It's obvious what they will do with it. The sole reason it's still relatively open is because the Russian state is incredibly backwards technologically, it is operated top down by very slow fiat, and so it has taken a long time for the Russian authorities to implement total Internet control within their territory. They've been working that direction for a decade.
> Also, internet access is much cheaper there than in the west.
I fail to see how that's a good point. Russia is a very poor nation, with incomes less than 1/3 the median of the EU and less than 1/6 the median of affluent Western nations. Of course their services cost a lot less than in Denmark, Sweden, Germany or the US. As one example, Romania's Internet (famous for fast speeds at low cost) costs a lot less than it does in the US as well, appropriately so, their incomes are 15%-20% that of the US. The median Russian is poorer than the median Romanian now. To adjust to US income standards for Russian Internet costs, they should not be paying more than roughly $8 to $12 per month.
I also struggled there, perhaps that's the wording for Russia doing some flagpoling without claiming 1st place at any point of time.
There's three awfully huge flag poles in St. Petersburg erected last year, perhaps these are the culprits of that sentence. For the curious, these exhibit Emperors' flag, Soviet hammer-sickled and Russian tricolor.
> a main highway between Russia's two largest cities
It is not.
Moscow and St. Petersburg are 900 km apart and they never had a highway between them. Instead it's a patchwork of provincial roads most of the way. He could've chosen any city 900 km away from Moscow and his cherry-picked story would've stayed absolutely the same.
> A border state to Russia has its elected government toppled and a group of various opposition powers (including neo-nazis) comes to power with strong anti-Russian sentiments. This state has areas with huge populations of Russian ethnicity that don't like the new situation and feel threatened. Russia moves in to those places to protect them.
Sorry, I've not realized before, that your job is to spread Russian propaganda.
And talking with Kremlin people is pointless, since they're on the payroll and they need to push their agenda.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot that was a thing, and that explains that spur of red in the Baltic. I'd (probably incorrectly) assumed it was some kind of spillover from jamming in Ukraine.
I didn't realize you could look at it over multiple days. One interesting thing about that blob is the outline of red seems to always be there, in the same shape, but the middle is often green. Maybe that's some artifact of their agreement algorithm? More overflights around the edges than through?
It also looks like there's some jamming in Estonia? Or maybe that's just the edge of jamming around St Petersburg?
reply