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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   870 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 26, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Russian (Chechen) AA has shot down another airliner, this time a small Azerbaijani one. Its ethnic Russian pilots managed to crash land it in Kazakhstan, saving the lives of those in the rear part of the fuselage.

Kudos to the pilots. Allegedly russian ground directed the plane over the caspian sea, where if it had crashed there would have been no immediate evidence of the AA.

Yes, they have been denied emergency landing in every Russian airport.

The reason why it has been shot is likely that when it was about to land in Grozny, there was an attack by Ukrainian drones (not on the civilian airport itself, AFAIK, and Ukrainians probably had no idea what if anything was flying there). Since the previous drone attack on Grozny, which infuriated Russians and Chechens beyond description, they installed a number of air-defense systems, and they were running them in the "shoot everything in sight" mode once they learned about the new attack. Of course, they neglected to warn the civilian dispatchers in advance, because nobody bothered to think about it, so when the plane has been about to land, there was a kind of "oh shit!" moment, and they denied landing to it at the last moment, but it was too late, the plane already have been hit. Since it was an anti-drone missile, it did not destroy the plane, so if they shot the system down and allowed it to land right there it likely would have survived. But they did not, since nobody ordered that. And then they switched into the common Russian coverup mode, in which dropping the plane into the sea and claiming it probably hit some birds or Ukrainian drone destroyed it would be the best solution. Unfortunately, the pilots managed to land it - so there's an proof it has been hit by a Russian missile.

I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?

I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?

Could go either way; it would be an incredible own-goal by Russia to have pushed away Armenia and then also push away Azerbaijan. I could see Russia making at least a token effort to smooth things over instead of doubling down on denial.

A token effort has been made and Putin has apologized for the accident.

Reuters article

Feliz navidad all! I've appreciated your comments over these past months.

French military is withdrawing/being ousted from more African country

Chinese AI lab Deepseek releases a model on par with the previous generation, trained for "just" $5M

Nigerian media is up in arms after a survey-based report estimated 2.2M kidnappings in the past year. The report estimates this through a survey-based method: 3.2% of households reported a kidnapping in the last year. I'm not convinced by the methodology—consider lizardman's constant—though they do interview 12K households. Though a friend with Nigerian family says these numbers are plausible?

Protests in Mozambique after election results, now over 100 deaths.

Conspiracy theory that Israel exploded a small nuclear bomb in Syria.

Trump Reportedly Offers To Hold High-level Nuclear Talks With Iran

Putin says Russia is ready to compromise with Trump on Ukraine war

Putin meets Slovak PM over gas imports

UK anti-corruption minister accused of taking £4bn bribe for Russia-funded nuclear plant in Bangladesh

FEWS.net removed a famine warning for Gaza after pressure from Israel and the US (which funds FEWS).

Famine continues in Sudan

Outage between undersea cable that connects Finish and Estonian power grids

Syrian opposition factions announce that they will dissolve and merge under the authority of the Ministry of Defense.

Guatemalan police rescue at least 160 children and 40 women held by a Jewish sect

Outage between undersea cable that connects Finish and Estonian power grids

This is not the first, or the second, cable that's gone out in the Baltic. It seems quite obvious that Russian and Chinese ships are cutting these from time to time deliberately.

This has been huge news in Finland, the Finnish Border Guards did specops to detain the suspected ship and the news have indicated the ship's been used for spying purposes. There's a wider discussion about Russian "shadow fleet", ie ships flying under third-country flags used for circumventing sanctions, operating in the Baltic, and increasing NATO presence in the Baltic to counteract this.

Looks like Ukrainians also starting to do something about the Russian fleet: https://maritime-executive.com/article/sanctioned-russian-ship-was-sunk-by-terrorist-attack-owner-claims

If so, we can expect more Russian-connected ships developing sudden mechanical problems and going under on high seas.

Nothing to discuss here, but found a 5 part deep dive podcast on the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war by Conflicted-History. Probably 7-8 hours long.

Dan Carlin-esque in the best way possible. I was well-versed with the war, and it passed my sniff test. I recommend.

Link - https://www.conflictedhistory.com/the-1971-bangladesh-war-part-1-land-of-broken-maps/

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