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Bullshit Financial Times propaganda. China has no intention of turning the RMB into a new global reserve currency, that would make it impossible to have the kind of capital controls and monetary policies that China prefers to have on its currency which give it a lot of advantages domestically and as a manufacturing and export economy. Having global reserve currency status only makes sense if you are a neoliberal empire like the US and even then it's as much a shackle on you as it is on those you use it to coerce/exploit.

Please link the article anyway, i assume most of us know how to use technology to translate a web page.

This is a ludicrous suggestion, Russia has ruled out use of nuclear weapons in this conflict, even so-called "tactical" ones (and i could go on about how stupid this concept is that westerners seem so enamored with, because there is no such thing as "tactical" use of nuclear weapons no matter how low yield since they would lead to an escalation spiral that can only end in all out nuclear war, but anyway...), especially because they don't need to use nuclear weapons to wipe out NATO air bases. Their conventional missiles are more than enough for that and they made a point to demonstrate early on in the conflict what it looks like when they use their serious hypersonic weapons when they struck that NATO merc camp in western Ukraine. That was a big wake up call for the West and probably contributed to them deciding not to intervene directly. The West may yet change their minds about that as they get more and more desperate, but if they do then Russia will respond appropriately and in a proportional manner that does not lead to global nuclear war.

Indeed, they cleared up most of my confusion.

That really explains a lot, thank you!

Your suggestion to listen to google pronounce those two different conjugations actually helped more than all of the lengthy explanations i've read so far.

It's still a bit confusing because i thought that the function of that sign was just to soften the consonant or vowel immediately before (or also after? i'm not entirely clear on this yet because i've seen frequent use of the "ы" combination), but it seems that it actually has effects throughout the entire word.

For instance, two things i noticed, and i don't know how correct google's pronunciation is but that's the only one i have to go by right now:

Firstly it seems that by adding this sign it also changes the pronunciation of the "о" earlier in the word from an "o" to more of an "a" sound. Secondly it appears that not only the stress shifts from the first syllable to the second, additionally the "и" just before the "т" at the end also becomes slightly softer. Is this correct and is this a usual thing to happen? If so then i suppose there are some words that you just have to learn how to pronounce by hearing them a few times. Still miles better than English though which is a non-phonetic spelling nightmare.

Thanks but that didn't help at all.

I agree with this take. Also Russia is not obligated to retaliate in the same way. They can respond asymmetrically by causing problems for Estonia in other ways and at a time of their choosing.

I think the people on the "pro-Russian" side who are always at the slightest provocation calling for some big escalation need to cool their jets, that kind of emotional response is just what the West wants.

They do these things because they aren't getting anywhere on the actual battlefield, in either the physical or the economic dimension. Psychological operations of little real consequence are all they have left.

I've been practicing reading Cyrillic lately, let me see if i can transliterate this correctly, i believe it says something like:

Mif o dobrovolnom prisoyedinyenyi

My soglasny - My soglasny - Ya nyet

Vy nikogo nye zabyli sprosit?

Someone who speaks Russian can tell me, is that about right? I can guess the jist of the meaning cause i know the meme format but in terms of actually recognizing the words there are only a handful in there that i know: My, ya, nyet, vy, nikogo (seems related to "nikto" which i know means nobody), zabyli (sounds similar to "zabudyet" which i think is to forget)...oh and myth of course.

Yes i know i could use google translate but i want to be able to eventually at least read Russian and understand approximately what it's trying to say even if i won't ever be able to speak it.

Also can someone explain to me the use of the little "b" looking letter, when is it used and why because so far i just know i'm supposed to ignore it and not pronounce it. The problem with that is i won't be able to properly spell if i pretend it doesn't exist.

Whether Estonia launches the drones itself or whether Ukraine and NATO launch drones from Estonia it makes no difference to Estonia's culpability since Estonia is responsible for whatever happens on their territory. We still have the same problem. Wherever attacks are launched from, Russia has every right to strike back at, and if they do that NATO's bluff will be called. The majority of its members will say they have no obligation to defend a country that provoked retaliation by attacking first. The Polish and the other Baltic chihuahuas will be the only ones who would be dumb enough to try something in the same kind of erroneous belief which Ukraine had, that big daddy USA would come to bail them out. But they missed the memo about what happened to all of the US's other so-called allies throughout history, from South Vietnam to their Afghan puppets and even the Kurds. Oh sure the US would send "aid" in the same way they have for Ukraine because that makes their military industrial complex money, but even that is now starting to hit a wall as their stockpiles are running dry and their production can't keep up even with just the Ukraine conflict, and can't be expanded any time soon either. And Western Europeans are all talk, none of them are prepared to actually go to war and especially not their comfortable, pampered populations.

Inb4 "China is genociding golf courses!"

Not only is the information itself false, the actual first line of defense has not been broken, unless you count the screening zone as the first line, but the whole premise on which the predictions are built is backwards: with a doctrinal defense-in-depth the lines of defense actually become consecutively stronger the deeper you go, and the first lines are actually expected to be penetrated.

The purpose of defensive lines in this paradigm is not to rigidly prevent all penetration but to dissipate the energy of the attack in a flexible manner and get it progressively more bogged down the deeper it goes. At Kursk the Nazis also punched through several layers of Soviet defenses but they eventually lost momentum and their pincers got stuck and became firebags where they took horrific losses forcing them to call off the entire offensive.

The fact that Ukraine in this case during several months of their most hyped offensive has not even managed to go any further than the first couple of villages in the grey zone bodes very bad for them. And it's not only the lack of penetration, it's also that the advance has happened on a very narrow front creating essentially yet another killing zone where they are on the low ground, in villages that are completely leveled and offer little to no protection anymore, surrounded on three sides by fortified enemy positions on the high ground.

I repeat: with a defense in depth the lines actually get stronger the deeper you go because you are expected to achieve some penetration. It is absurd to think that Russia put in all that time and effort to build those second and third lines just to dump all their combat power in front of the first line. The whole bit about having to deal with less mines going forward is just wishful thinking, and also it's not the mines that are their biggest problem, it's the actual enemy army.

What has caused the biggest setbacks to Ukraine and the West is that they consistently look down on and underestimate the Russians. Someone needs to sit them down and tell them, guys, your delusions of racial and cultural superiority are literally getting you killed.