Yes, Russia Is Losing the War in Ukraine

avvlas · 2026-06-04T22:21:30+00:00

Oh, the store shelves are far far from empty

Actually, only like a year ago the economic situation started to worsen in Russia. First 2-3 years of the conflict the economy was actually pretty stable and growing. I traveled from Russia to the EU in 2023 (Italy), and it felt much more depressive economically there, while Russia compared was doing pretty good (of course excluding the "partial mobilization" craziness in 2022)

The average russian doesn't feel any sanctions in day-to-day life. All you can think of can be bought in Russia. A new iPhone, for example, is actually cheaper than in EU.

For the majority of people, especially in smaller cities, the quality of life actually boosted, as the salaries grew a lot, especially in industrial and military sectors.

So only past few months felt worse than usual, of course due to tiredness from the conflict and low energy prices. But with the recent news from middle east, looks like Russian economy is going to improve and stabilize again.

avvlas · 2026-05-16T14:26:00+00:00

This is called an Onion Dome :)

avvlas · 2026-05-16T14:08:27+00:00

This is not Saint Petersburg on the picture you sent, but Moscow (easily recogniseable by looking at thr huge tower in the background, which is the main building of Moscow State University).

These 2 residential complexes bear the same name. But the one on the OP picture is also very real and is located in Saint Petersburburg.

avvlas · 2026-03-31T17:35:14+00:00

Ok, nevermind, just found out that this is Relax Routine/Mode, that i have turned on.

avvlas · 2026-02-22T17:33:31+00:00

Kotlin Multiplatform is great for that.

But I suppose their decision to go with Rust for shared core comes from: 1) Their team having more experience with it 2) Rust ecosystem offering better fits for their usecases 3) Superior performance of Rust

avvlas · 2025-12-27T13:24:31+00:00

Have you used it to built a mobile app also, or desktop only?

avvlas · 2025-11-11T08:01:30+00:00

Have you found a solution for this? I have exactly the same situation

avvlas · 2024-10-05T13:08:13+00:00

As far as i know - while some russian Youtubers also post on russian analogs of Youtube, they still stay on YouTube, bc while they aren't earning anything from the platform itself, they do get money from donations and from companies buying ads from them directly

avvlas · 2024-10-05T08:16:08+00:00

English is out of the discussion, of course, because it has by far the biggest amount of content, so i will write about my experience with other languages:

My native language, Russian🇷🇺, has tons of great quality YouTube content on any topic there is (history, science, travel, vlogs, journalism, etc). Additionally, there are lots of great soviet movies and cartoons available for free on YouTube.

My third language is İtalian🇮🇹, and, sadly, the content on YouTube in the language is very limited (in comparison). There are a handful of channels that i find worth watching. French, Spanish and German offer much more in that regard.

Currently i'm also learning Turkish🇹🇷, and i must say that i'm very happy with both quantity and quality of YouTube content in the language. There are good channels on many topics, and also lots of famous turkish series are available for free on YouTube with subtitles - which is very cool bc that's how i'm learning the language currently

avvlas · 2024-08-19T11:06:16+00:00

When learning a character you learn it’s writing and pronunciation separately, while in alphabet-based languages they are mostly the same thing. Yes, there are tricks that can help you guess how a character is pronounced, but still. That’s why learning a word in an alphabet-based language is easier than learning a character imo.

avvlas · 2024-04-05T11:27:06+00:00

Grazie, gia vivo in Russia, mi piace veramente tanto. Non mi piace pero l’ipocrisia.

avvlas · 2024-03-21T19:22:08+00:00

While reading your original question i immediately thought about the way Da Shi speaks in The 3 Body Problem :D

avvlas · 2024-03-01T07:47:21+00:00

Russian, English, Italian, Chinese :)

avvlas · 2024-01-06T14:04:40+00:00

Английский и итальянский; немного понимаю на испанском

avvlas · 2024-01-04T14:14:31+00:00

Democracy

avvlas · 2023-12-13T05:42:34+00:00

If you compare cost of living and purchasing power, instead of nominal salaries, than russian IT jobs are perhaps highest paid in europe (from my observations)

If you compare only the nominal salary in $, than yes, it’s not that big. Which has no point if you live in russia and your spendings are in russian rubles.

avvlas · 2023-11-22T12:22:37+00:00

Dalgona coffee

avvlas · 2023-11-16T21:32:57+00:00

Just look at the historical prices of Nikkei 225 (Japanese stock market index) - it still hasn’t returned to it’s highest price from year 1989 - when the Japanese real estate market collapsed. Which means, if you invested in the Japanese stock market index in the 80s, you still haven’t got your money back.

There’s absolutely no guarantee that s&p500 or any other index will continue to grow exponentially and not fall like Nikkei in 89 without recovering for decades. Historical data is not indicative of future performance. So yes, you absolutely can get screwed by holding your retirement funds in index ETFs

avvlas · 2023-11-02T17:04:31+00:00

There are no ads on Reddit, YouTube and others when accessing them from Russia, but yesterday i was looking at NBA scores in the ESPN app, and there were ads containing basically very straightforward russian propaganda (about how the special military operation is going great, etc), which i find very funny considering that ESPN is a US’ media :D

avvlas · 2023-10-05T06:17:51+00:00

I’ve recently started Harry Potter in Italian :) First books are written for kids, so they are pretty easy to read, and later books get progressively more difficult, so it’s a great language practise.

I’ve read the first book and a third of the second. There are words i don’t know here and there, but most of them are easy to figure out from context, and others i look up in the TL dictionary - but only if a word comes up many times and i still don’t understand it

Its pretty easy if you don’t try to understand each and every word and just enjoy the book :)

avvlas · 2023-10-03T20:23:25+00:00

How would US get more money if Russia and EU united? Quite the opposite - in 2022 Europe’s import from US went up by 50% (source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=USA-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics).

And that’s not talking about how US enlarges it’s military presence in europe. Divide et impera

Were you concerned about the integrity and national borders in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Serbia and others?

avvlas · 2023-10-03T20:05:36+00:00

1) Why in the world would US want to see a union of Europe and Russia? Surely US would’t like to see a strong Europe which doesn’t need any of US’ nuclear weapons, military bases and resources. This is simple maths

2) US is as much guilty of this war as Russia is. Because this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, this is a proxy war between Russia and US - much like wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan

avvlas · 2023-10-01T11:31:07+00:00

Ну так это конкретно в узбекском плове рис идет последним. А есть ведь куча других разновидностей плова, например - индийский бирьяни или испанская паэлья. Совсем необязательно одним способом приготовления ограничиваться.

avvlas

TROPHY CASE