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I'm not sure Poand wants to inherit the most backwards part of Ukraine. That would be a costly bet, and I'm speaking finances here, not only geopolitics.
other than that :
Let's imagine you're the president of Ukraine, in November 2013. the country is nearing bankrupt & you're seeking for outside help. EU offers you 800M, with a lot of conditions. Russia offers you 15B, with only one condition : saying "no" to EU. You need more than 10B to finish 2014. Do you say "yes" to EU?
Let's imagine you're living in Crimea. You feel as much russian as ukrainian, and russian is your mother language. Russia offers 15B to save your country from bankrupt. All of a sudden, some people overthrow your properly-elected government(for whom you did vote), reject russian aid, and banish your mother language from being an official language. Would you agree?
Of course Putin didn't make things "clean". Not its style. Plus originally, Crimea was Turkish, not Russian. Yet, there is a logical path in those events. EU was not really interested in Ukraine, and made a fake proposal - and was somewhat happy to see Putin take care of the mess. Suddenly, massively pro-EU people take control of the situation, & act as assholes in the hope of be part of the "good guys club". Is it really surprising to have Putin applying its own logic to clean up the mess anyways, its own style?
[i]"I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation."[/i] (Alistair Cockburn, Oath of Non-Allegiance)
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Regarding the no-politics rule, I'm taking a libertarian approach and saying that anyone who thinks that politics shouldn't be discussed can simply choose not to discuss it. People do have a fundamental right to be wrong, after all.
-Josh
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Tom, what gives "sovereign" states the "rights" to particular areas of land, *especially* when most people there don't want to be part of that state? If Texas voted to become an independent country, would you support sending the US Army there to make sure they can't?
Terraformer, put yourself in their shoes. Lets suppose you are a Ukrainian Nationalist, and you just happen to live near the Polish border. Now lets suppose The Russian Armed Forces are invading your country, bombing your cities, and you looking at a Map of Europe dating to the 1930s, you notice that on that map, your home would be located on Polish territory. Now assuming Ukraine is losing the conflict with Russia and NATO is too cowardly to help, and then The Polish Army moves past your home to guard its pre-world War II borders, are you going to argue with them? The Poles offer you Polish citizenship, and a chance to vote in he next Polish elections, with Putin, you only get a chance to vote for Putin. So with your country about to cease to exist and be occupied and be subsumed by Russia, are you really going to fight the Polish Army just so the Russians can move in and occupy your territory and perhaps send dissidents like yourself to a Siberian Labor camp? Seems to me that being a part of Poland would fall under the category of the lesser of two evils, if Ukrainian Independence is not one of your options. Putin for his part may decide that that little sliver of land that Poland took back is not worth fighting NATO and risking nuclear war over.
Just one of many reasons why the state is a terrible idea - it's not just horribly immoral, but it's also horribly illogical and fuzzy.
You need a state to fight off another state and prevent that other state from sending you to Siberia. I'm afraid the Russian government just won't let you get by without a state, if it sees no state, it will rush in to fill the power vacuum and give you governance whether you want it or not! If you want less government, you still need a government to protect you and prevent another government from moving in and givingyou more government, which is what Putin is wont to do!
Just have an agreed upon law - personally, I support natural law theory, but there are many different ways to arrive at a similar law, and then let anyone who wants to set up a court to enforce it.
problem is Putin won't let the Ukrainians decide what kind of government they can have, so your theory is nice, but the Russians just won't allow it, Putin wants them to pay taxes to his government, not their own, and he wants to take their tax money and make all of this friends rich with it!
The courts can keep each other honest - you *could* let off criminals and accept bribes, but then you'll find yourself on trial at another court for your crimes. How do we discern what the law should be? Well, I propose a constitutional convention, attended by anyone who wants to make the effort to contribute, and with each article being ratified by a supermajority (90+%) or, ideally, consensus. If more than 90% of people are in favour of something that is fundamentally evil, then we've already lost, and encoding it in a constitution won't make things any worse. Maybe even make it 95%, as a nod to science. Or 99%, as a nod to the occupy movement. Enshrine as one of the base rules that everyone must be equal before the law. Have a new convention every decade or so, or perhaps every 25 years, to revise and, if needed, update it, but with the possibility of calling an emergency one (for if, say, we manage to create sentient AI, or prove that pigs are sapient beings and thus bacon is murder).
As an aside, this reminds me why the no-politics rule was put in in the first place...
No politics is not an option if you live in the Ukraine. Ukraine just wanted to join the EU, and Russia said NO, and sent in its army to enforce its decision, so Putin is trying to dictate to whom Ukraine can do business with, that is basically what it comes down to.
Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-03-21 06:27:21)
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I'm not sure Poand wants to inherit the most backwards part of Ukraine. That would be a costly bet, and I'm speaking finances here, not only geopolitics.
other than that :
Let's imagine you're the president of Ukraine, in November 2013. the country is nearing bankrupt & you're seeking for outside help. EU offers you 800M, with a lot of conditions. Russia offers you 15B, with only one condition : saying "no" to EU. You need more than 10B to finish 2014. Do you say "yes" to EU?
Let's imagine you're living in Crimea. You feel as much russian as ukrainian, and russian is your mother language. Russia offers 15B to save your country from bankrupt. All of a sudden, some people overthrow your properly-elected government(for whom you did vote), reject russian aid, and banish your mother language from being an official language. Would you agree?
Of course Putin didn't make things "clean". Not its style. Plus originally, Crimea was Turkish, not Russian. Yet, there is a logical path in those events. EU was not really interested in Ukraine, and made a fake proposal - and was somewhat happy to see Putin take care of the mess. Suddenly, massively pro-EU people take control of the situation, & act as assholes in the hope of be part of the "good guys club". Is it really surprising to have Putin applying its own logic to clean up the mess anyways, its own style?
Before the Crimea was Turkish, it was Byzantine, I think I'd rather the Russians hold the place, since they are living there anyway, than have it given to Turkey. I don't think the Turks would want it anyway if all it did was give the Russians an excuse to invade their country! As the say, "Beware of Russians bearing gifts!"
Um Glandu, if Ukraine is so backwards, why does Russia want it? I see your from France, you know how Poland lost that territory in the first place? Poland had an alliance with France, the purpose was to contain Germany. What France did not count on was Russia and Germany together invading Poland, France did not send troops to help Poland and in a month Poland was split between Germany and Russia. The Germans then invaded France and then bombed Britain, turned on Russia invading it. In 1944-45 The allies and Russia beat back the Third Reich, but when Russia got to Poland, it decided to take some Polish land for itself and add it to the Ukraine. When Germany was defeated it took some land from East Germany and added it to Poland. Poland was not consulted about these subtractions and additions to its territory. I don't really think Stalin had a right to take land from Poland and add it to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Later one Khrushchev took some land from Russia and added it to Ukraine. So I ask the obvious question, if Russia gets to take some land back, why shouldn't Poland get some of its land back before Russia takes all of Ukraine back by force including the territory that Stalin took from Poland and gave to Ukraine? I figure if Ukraine is going to cease to exist, why shouldn't Poland take back some land that it considers unlawfully stolen by Stalin? And if it does that, Poland can find an even older map of Poland that gives it more land, and in the map I showed you Poland was so big that it actually included the city of Kiev. Kiev is the the Ukrainian part of the Ukraine, what Putin says he wants is to protect the Russian minorities in Ukraine, after he takes the land where those Ethnic Russians live, I think it just makes sense for Poland to incorporate the Ukrainian part of Ukraine before Putin decides to take another bite. Ukrainians, if they are smart won't fight the Poles if they try to do this, if NATO membership is not in the offing, but if you don't want Poland to double in size, then you as a French citizen should lobby your government to extend NATO membership to what's left of Ukraine immediately!
Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-03-21 06:45:55)
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Tom;
I'm french & my wife is polish(she grew up under a communist dictatorship, therefore). In other words, I perfectly know the events you are speaking of. What you don't say is that 1945 has been a big, massive move of people. Lv'yv area used to be polish, but all polish people has been relocated to modern day Poland, many of them in Silesia. All germans from Silesia, at the same time, were expelled more to the west. My german neighbour was born in west-germany, soon after his parents were expelled. My father-in-law family was ethnic Silesian(neither polish nor german) & therefore didn't move - but they were not numerous.
In those conditions, Poland has more to lose than to win annexing Western Ukraine. Locals are not Polish, by far. Russia, OTOH, has a lot to win taking eastern Ukraine - and only eastern Ukraine - as the more you go to the west, the less Russians you'll find. History shows that invaders are welcome only in 2 circumstances :
(1) they leave quiclky after kicking some bad guy's bottom.
(2) they share common identity feelings with locals.
Old methods of forced cultural shift are out-of-fashion(and would not work well in an internet-infested world anyways). Rome made Gaul Roman, but it's no more possible to imitate them(unless you kill everyone, which has several drawbacks; notably diplomatic & moral ones - even Putin does not do so). Putin himself limited its actions to Crimea because it was the easier choice. Even in the rest of eastern Ukraine are too many ukrainians.
[i]"I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation."[/i] (Alistair Cockburn, Oath of Non-Allegiance)
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I'm fairly certain that the area is known as the Ukraine? Much as you'd say "the Americas" when referring to Canada, the US, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil etc together.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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The Ukraine refers to the Soviet Socialist Republic, e.g. the province of the USSR. Ukraine refers to the country. If for whatever reason you would like to refer to the land area as a separate entity from the country (an increasingly amorphous concept...) I suppose you would use "The land of the country of Ukraine" or something similar.
That's interesting, regarding a Free Ukraine. Did Makhno himself publish any manifestos, particularly ones translated into a language that I can read?
-Josh
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I believe so, but I don't have any links to hand.
As for the system I proposed earlier, the closest humanity has come to it was probably the Icelandic Commonwealth. Though I'd replace the Althing with with a consensus/suppermajority system, of course. But the Commonwealth managed to last for over 300 years. Compare that with the USA, which managed to survive for less than a century after establishment...
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Tom;
I'm french & my wife is polish(she grew up under a communist dictatorship, therefore). In other words, I perfectly know the events you are speaking of. What you don't say is that 1945 has been a big, massive move of people. Lv'yv area used to be polish, but all polish people has been relocated to modern day Poland, many of them in Silesia. All germans from Silesia, at the same time, were expelled more to the west. My german neighbour was born in west-germany, soon after his parents were expelled. My father-in-law family was ethnic Silesian(neither polish nor german) & therefore didn't move - but they were not numerous.
In those conditions, Poland has more to lose than to win annexing Western Ukraine. Locals are not Polish, by far. Russia, OTOH, has a lot to win taking eastern Ukraine - and only eastern Ukraine - as the more you go to the west, the less Russians you'll find. History shows that invaders are welcome only in 2 circumstances :
(1) they leave quiclky after kicking some bad guy's bottom.
(2) they share common identity feelings with locals.Old methods of forced cultural shift are out-of-fashion(and would not work well in an internet-infested world anyways). Rome made Gaul Roman, but it's no more possible to imitate them(unless you kill everyone, which has several drawbacks; notably diplomatic & moral ones - even Putin does not do so). Putin himself limited its actions to Crimea because it was the easier choice. Even in the rest of eastern Ukraine are too many ukrainians.
But what about the Czechoslovakian precedent? Czechoslovakia was a country formed by two separate countries that got together for common defense. A Poland which included Ukraine would have more people and resource with which to defend itself with than either one alone. If Ukraine stays separate, it risks Russia invading and NATO not helping, as it didn't help when Putin took the first bite. Now if Poland and Ukraine were one country, the Polish government would do something if the Russians decided to invade and since it would be a much larger country, it would have a larger army to contend with, and I'd rather that army be part of Poland than part of Russia. If Ukraine is part of Russia, then Russia can add those resources and use them to threaten Poland with. Poland doesn't have nuclear weapons after all, so Russia might chance invading it thinking that the rest of the NATO alliance would chicken out and let it take back Poland Deny Russia all of Ukraine then you deny Russia the tax base of all those citizens from which Russia can fund its military with. Bottom line, I don't want Russia getting too big and threatening the rest of Europe, including Poland. I don't one Putin doing a Hitler, picking off countries one-by-one while other European countries find an excuse not to help. Since NATO's promises to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity were empty, all the more reason for Poland to try to get bigger and deter Russian aggression by that means. Also since Ukraine has had nuclear weapons before, and Poland that included Ukraine might feel legally entitled to get nuclear weapons again, since they can't count on NATO and Western Allies to risk a nuclear war with Russia on Poland's behalf. There are two visions of a United Europe, one is under the EU with all member countries participating in it and the other one is Under Russia with Russia telling all the member states what to do as they did when the ran the Warsaw Pact. Ukraine can best preserve its culture by joining with Poland, as this would more or less be a union among equals, Joining with Russia means becoming a minority within a larger Russian country. Ukrainians don't want to be a region o Russia anymore and be referred to as "The Ukraine".
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Clarification on a point of terminology, Tom, the country is known as "Ukraine", not "The Ukraine".
of course, because I am old enough to have lived through the Cold War and remember the Soviet Union, I got used to calling it The Ukraine, sometimes I forget out of habit. I think if Ukraine becomes reabsorbed by Russia, it will become "The Ukraine" once more, and Ukrainians will end up speaking a sort of Pidgin Russian in stead of their own language, much like Scots do today in the UK. This is probably Ukraine's last chance to survive as an independent Nation. A Union would Poland need only be temporary until Russia learns to become civilized and less of the threat that encourages such enlargement. Czechoslovakia broke up peacefully after all Poland-Ukraine can do the same, when the Russian threat goes away. one thing we've learned with the whole Crimean episode is not to trust the Russians, and I think the Russians will find that from now on, we'll be much more reluctant to sign agreements with them, cause they can't be trusted and they do not honor their word. Reputation once lost cannot easily be recovered once again. Poland is probably going to increase its military budget in reaction to what Russia did, adding more taxpayers from Ukraine would certainly help to pay for that military.
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The Ukraine refers to the Soviet Socialist Republic, e.g. the province of the USSR. Ukraine refers to the country. If for whatever reason you would like to refer to the land area as a separate entity from the country (an increasingly amorphous concept...) I suppose you would use "The land of the country of Ukraine" or something similar.
That's interesting, regarding a Free Ukraine. Did Makhno himself publish any manifestos, particularly ones translated into a language that I can read?
Ukraine inherited the borders of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which really wasn't a republic at all, just what the Soviets chose to call it for propaganda purposes. The USSR really was an Empire of Lies, its title was false and ends up just being an alias for the old Russian Empire, everything was run by the Russians, the Russians considered The Ukraine as part of their country.
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Regarding your first post: Nothing wrong with being wrong now and again. Politics aside (Where, if you're asking me, and of course you're not, I think you're always wrong ) it's just a slight terminology thing that matters to Ukrainians.
Regarding your second post, it was not in any way a reply to what I said
-Josh
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I still don't understand what the problem is with a country voting to become part of another country... I think, if Crimeans really didn't want to be part of Russia, there would be a lot more civil unrest there. They definitely don't want to be part of Ukraine...
Use what is abundant and build to last
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I believe that the objections have to do with the presence of Russian troops and the options on the ballot, as well as the unfair elections themselves. The presence of Russian troops specifically constitutes an illegal invasion of the independent country of Ukraine.
But it's probably none of our business.
-Josh
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I still don't understand what the problem is with a country voting to become part of another country... I think, if Crimeans really didn't want to be part of Russia, there would be a lot more civil unrest there. They definitely don't want to be part of Ukraine...
What did Lincoln have to say about that? That is voting for secession, he had to deal with that during his administration. If someone invades another country and then conducts an election to validate the results of that invasion, then I think the election is suspect. Was there much unrest in the Sudetenland of Germans in Czechoslovakia? Did those Germans fight the invading German Army because they didn't want to be part of Hitler's Germany? A lot of those Sudetenland Germans died fighting the Russians when Germany invaded Russia, some of those Germans joined the SS and were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust, and some of those Germans were shooting at American soldiers when they landed on the beaches of Normandy. Seems to me that those Sudetenland Germans led peaceful lives until they became part of Germany! So what happens to the "Sudetenland Russians" Will they be allowed to live peaceful lives or will they get drafted into the Red Army and be used as shock troops for the invasion of Lithuania or perhaps Poland?
Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-03-22 05:55:56)
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I believe that the objections have to do with the presence of Russian troops and the options on the ballot, as well as the unfair elections themselves. The presence of Russian troops specifically constitutes an illegal invasion of the independent country of Ukraine.
But it's probably none of our business.
Was Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia any of our business? Would we have been better off trying to stop the Germans then as opposed to waiting for the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor and waiting for Germany to declare war on us after they had already conquered most of Europe? I would rather we tried to stop Germany in 1938, then it would not have been a World War, the Soviets would not have ended up occupying Eastern Europe, but we waited because we considered it none of our business, and when it became our business, we lost 250,000 soldiers to World War II!
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Crimea wasn't "invaded". The Crimean government asked Russia for assistance; Russia rendered that assistance. Much like they did in 2006, when Georgia invaded South Ossetia.
Don't try to argue that Crimea couldn't become independent without a referendum, or I will ask you to point to the referendum in 1776.
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JoshNH4H wrote:I believe that the objections have to do with the presence of Russian troops and the options on the ballot, as well as the unfair elections themselves. The presence of Russian troops specifically constitutes an illegal invasion of the independent country of Ukraine.
But it's probably none of our business.
Was Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia any of our business? Would we have been better off trying to stop the Germans then as opposed to waiting for the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor and waiting for Germany to declare war on us after they had already conquered most of Europe? I would rather we tried to stop Germany in 1938, then it would not have been a World War, the Soviets would not have ended up occupying Eastern Europe, but we waited because we considered it none of our business, and when it became our business, we lost 250,000 soldiers to World War II!
Because the US is the world's policeman and everyone is Hitler.
-Josh
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Crimea wasn't "invaded". The Crimean government asked Russia for assistance; Russia rendered that assistance. Much like they did in 2006, when Georgia invaded South Ossetia.
Don't try to argue that Crimea couldn't become independent without a referendum, or I will ask you to point to the referendum in 1776.
Putin signed an agreement to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes. Since Putin went back on his promise, since he is violating Ukraine's territorial integrity by supporting an independence movement, then that agreement is null and void, and as a successor state to the Soviet Union, Ukraine has the right to get nuclear weapons under the UN treaty. Lets see there were 5 powers officially recognized as nuclear powers USA, The Soviet Union, China, United Kingdom, and France. Since Ukraine was just as much a part of the Soviet Union as was Russia, it has a right to get nuclear weapons, So I suggest we give them some out of our surplus stockpile, while the Ukrainians build their own! We don't have to invade anyone, we only have to give nukes to an already recognized nuclear power. Russians are helping the Iranians develop nukes anyway. So as long as Russia is behaving badly, lets proliferate away, until the Russian citizens get concerned about their cities being destroyed by nukes, maybe they won't be feeling to imperialistic then! I think we could sell the nukes to Ukraine at cost, it wouldn't cost us anything. Maybe when Russia starts worrying about nuclear war, they'll come back to the negotiating table. We did promise to protect Ukraine's territorial integrity and we went back on our word. So why did we lie to Ukraine? Answer me that?
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Tom Kalbfus wrote:JoshNH4H wrote:I believe that the objections have to do with the presence of Russian troops and the options on the ballot, as well as the unfair elections themselves. The presence of Russian troops specifically constitutes an illegal invasion of the independent country of Ukraine.
But it's probably none of our business.
Was Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia any of our business? Would we have been better off trying to stop the Germans then as opposed to waiting for the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor and waiting for Germany to declare war on us after they had already conquered most of Europe? I would rather we tried to stop Germany in 1938, then it would not have been a World War, the Soviets would not have ended up occupying Eastern Europe, but we waited because we considered it none of our business, and when it became our business, we lost 250,000 soldiers to World War II!
Because the US is the world's policeman and everyone is Hitler.
We agreed to protect Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes, this was signed by President Clinton and Boris Yeltsin and was reaffirmed by Vladimir Putin. So there is an agreement in place, we are not simply acting as the World's Policemen, it was an agreement signed by our President!
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Why should the people of Crimea be bound by an agreement that they had no input to?
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There are people in the United States that would rather be part of Mexico, they are hoping that their state would seceded from the Union and join Mexico, they have legs but don't want to walk to the Mexican border. There are a lot of people in the United States that don't like this country, but they don't make up the majority. When you don't have an absolute majority throughout the country, you can always achieve a local majority and vote for secession, but the problem is the absolute majority in the country doesn't have to let local majorities secede, unless some outside power like Russia imposes its military to enforce the secession, to do that, it has to first invade! There are "blue state" and "red states" but they don't become independent countries. The South tried to do this in 1861, but the rest of the country wouldn't let it. The Brits could have come in and fought on the side of the South to gain Southern Independence, but the rest of the United States would have viewed that as in invasion. I think the rest of Ukraine will likely become a NATO member and be the most hostile member country toward Russia because of this theft of land. As Obama has said, this is sort of 19th century behavior and has no place in a world with nuclear weapons! Poland had no input in being pushed Westward, the Soviets simply occupied them and did it. I'd say if Russia tries to take the rest of Ukraine and it falls, Poland should try to et some of its old territory back, at least if nothing else good comes out o tis conflict, it can get that.
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I challenge you to find a group of people with at least one hundred members in this country who would like to become part of Mexico. (Hint: If a person came to the US, either legally or illegally, then they don't want to become part of Mexico).
-Josh
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One by that same reasoning could wonder why anyone would want to become part of Russia. The advantage of not being part of Russia is you get democracy, being Russian today is a lot like being German in 1938. So lets put yourself in this situation, your an ethnic Russian living in the Ukraine, You live in a city where the majority of people are ethnic Russians, the mayor is ethnic Russian, you get to vote for President of Ukraine and you have contested elections. Now some Russian troops move into your neighborhood and they want you to vote that all away, just so your neighborhood can become part of Russia. Now they mayor you voted for, he's not allowed to run anymore, because Putin doesn't like him, instead Putin substitutes his own candidate.
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