MEGATHREAD: whatever the hell is going on in Russia right now

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to World News@beehaw.org – 629 points –

please post any subsequent updates here unless they're huge happenings. i just woke up and half our news front page is updates which is nice but also A Lot and most of these don't have to be their own thread

270

You are viewing a single comment

This is the second collapse of a nuclear power in 30~ years

Except that with the USSR falling the transition of power for Russia was a bit more peaceful than this seems like it could go since in 1991 Russia didn't have a complete power vacuum due to Boris Yeltsin was accepted as the legitimate leader of the succeeding Russian Federation. It's looking like the shit going on in Russia now makes the August coup attempt look like a peaceful misunderstanding

Except that with the USSR falling the transition of power for Russia was a bit more peaceful

At the time that wasn't a given. Gorbachev was under a lot of pressure from hardline communists within the party to crack down on the uprising and no-one really knew where the loyalties of the military lay. As it turned out Yeltsin won the day and the transition went peacefully but it could very easily have turned out differently.

What are you talking about? Yeltsin literally bombed congress and killed many congress peopleā€¦ the transition to capitalism from the USSR was and is still one the worst humanitarian crisis ever.

This ones different because we don't have a "smooth" transition of power to another government. This is the total collapse of Putin's autocratic government which he set up over 20 years of ruling. We had randos on twitter talk about how Wagner forces were talking over nukes. During the soviet collapse, Russia's military had complete control of it's nuclear arsenal. We get front row seats to the collapse, an analogy would be the train wreak in East Palestine whereas the World is the town and the train is Russia.