Made in 🇷🇺 assembled in 🇺🇸
Trader and BD since 2017. Thinking in public about agency, markets, the world and consciousness.
To be, not to seem.
Let her rip.
1/15
I’m Gleb. I’m 32, born in Russia, a citizen of Russia and the United States, with a Ukrainian father and family across all three countries. I work in crypto and finance, and spend a lot of time thinking about human potential and our future. A little about me:
Михаил, меня здесь беспокоит гораздо больше, чем интеллектуальный уровень отдельного политика. Сама идея, что распад России автоматически сделает Европу безопаснее, кажется мне чудовищно безответственной.
Я гражданин России и США. Почти двадцать лет прожил в Америке. У меня украинский отец и семья во всех трёх странах. Я люблю Россию и Америку, переживаю за Украину и совершенно не хочу, чтобы мои близкие стали расходным материалом в чьих-то геополитических фантазиях.
Когда кто-то рассуждает о разделении России на маленькие государства, у меня возникает простой вопрос: вы следующие пять шагов вообще продумали?
Кто будет контролировать ядерное оружие? Кто определит новые границы? Что произойдёт там, где разные народы живут вперемешку? Кто будет отвечать за возможные вооружённые конфликты, беженцев и борьбу за ресурсы? И главное: самих жителей кто-нибудь собирается спросить, какого будущего они хотят?
Или предполагается, что достаточно убрать большую Россию с карты, а дальше всё как-нибудь само устроится?
Меня поражает эта лёгкость, с которой чужую страну превращают в материал для политического эксперимента. За линиями на карте стоят семьи, предприятия, города, инфраструктура и человеческие связи. Их нельзя произвольно разобрать, а последствия списать на издержки исторического процесса.
Причём подобная риторика вполне может укреплять именно ту логику, против которой её авторы якобы выступают. Если людям говорят, что желаемый результат противостояния состоит в распаде их страны, почему они должны воспринимать это как ограниченный спор о конкретной политике? Зачем помогать убеждать их, что на кону само существование государства?
При этом я не стану по одному ролику объявлять расчленение России официальным планом всего ЕС. Для такого утверждения нужны доказательства. Но саму идею можно и нужно разбирать по существу, независимо от того, кто её озвучивает.
Я хочу видеть Россию сильной, благополучной, научно развитой и открытой миру. С институтами, которые способны признавать ошибки, пресекать коррупцию и отвечать перед собственными гражданами. Любовь к стране для меня включает требовательность к её руководству.
И я хочу, чтобы Украина имела безопасное будущее и реальный голос в переговорах. Если кто-то предлагает использовать её ради гораздо более масштабной задачи ослабления или распада России, он обязан честно объяснить украинцам, какую цену предлагает им заплатить.
Поэтому одного сарказма в ответ тоже мало. Нужна внятная работа над условиями мира: конкретные обязательства, проверка исполнения, гарантии безопасности и ответственность за нарушения.
Меня, честно говоря, заебало, что разговор о будущем наших стран так легко превращается в соревнование, кто эффектнее представит чужую катастрофу. Я хочу, чтобы наши дети получили возможность жить и строить. Вот по этому результату и надо оценивать политиков.
I support your commitment to preventing a direct NATO-Russia war. European leaders owe their citizens a serious explanation of how their policies lead to lasting security, what risks they carry, and where diplomacy fits.
As a Russian-American with a Ukrainian father and family across all three countries, I want leaders who can defend their people while keeping negotiations possible. There is nothing cowardly about demanding an achievable objective before committing people’s lives.
Credible defense and serious diplomacy belong together. A durable settlement needs Ukrainian participation, verifiable commitments, and security guarantees that hold even when the parties distrust each other.
The willingness to ask “Where does this lead, and how does it end?” should be a basic qualification for leadership.
Mike, I agree with your point about diplomacy. Every decision needs to account for the response it could provoke and whether it brings a settlement closer.
I’m Russian-American, with a Ukrainian father and family in all three countries. I want them to have a future beyond this cycle of destruction.
We need reciprocal, verifiable commitments and credible security guarantees. Leaders should be judged by whether their decisions make a lasting peace possible. Another burning facility, in either country, cannot be the measure of success.
A society in which large numbers of people want children but feel economically, socially or psychologically unable to have them has a serious flourishing problem, even if other numbers on the screen are ok.
Yesterday Moscow had a pretty interesting coincidence.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew in with no public announcement. First known visit by a CIA chief to Russia in almost five years. At basically the same time Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s top diplomat, is also in Moscow.
I’m not a political, military or spiritual expert, so this is just my own speculation and a few possible scenarios.
What would the CIA director even come to talk about?
Most obvious: Ukraine and whether things escalate further. Mobilization, deep strikes, where the actual red lines are right now.
Ateo was pushing the version that the Americans came specifically to talk Putin out of mobilization. I have no idea if that’s true. I treat that channel accordingly. They’ll post almost anything, they hate Russia, and if someone pays them even better. I wouldn’t treat it as confirmed.
Side note: when Peskov says something “won’t happen,” I now hear it the same way I hear certain crypto counter-signals. Not because the opposite is guaranteed, but history has taught me not to treat those statements as ironclad.
There’s a much more cynical option too.
Maybe they came to discuss how to eventually sideline Zelensky and leave him out of part of any deal. In the darkest version, arrange things so his political or even physical future stops being an obstacle, and find a way to close the war.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised.
In big politics allies stay allies only while interests line up. When the cost of continuing the war exceeds the cost of a deal, yesterday’s loud statements get forgotten fast.
I personally don’t believe Russia ever had a rational plan to start a war with European countries. That idea always sounded like complete nonsense to me and never looked like the original goal.
When some Western officials keep inflating the “Russia is about to attack Europe” story, I keep coming back to a much simpler explanation: create a convenient external enemy, distract from domestic problems, justify new spending. Around huge budgets there are always plenty of people who want a cut.
Second obvious topic: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Too many overlapping Russian and American interests for that not to come up.
Third, more conspiratorial: U.S. intelligence got something they considered important and sensitive enough to deliver in person. Kompromat, info on key people inside Russia, something about a planned operation, or something else entirely. Who knows. You can invent scenarios forever.
Fourth option, the one I like most: they wanted to talk UFOs and how to handle possible disclosure from both a military-political and a spiritual angle. Then having the Vatican’s chief diplomat in town at the same time becomes a nicely weird plot twist in my head.
As for Gallagher, it’s simultaneously obvious and uninteresting. Officially the Vatican talks peace, dialogue, humanitarian issues, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, ending the war. All correct, of course. Very touching.
But friends, you can talk about tenderness, love, repentance and reconciliation as much as you want. At some point you also need actual, earthly decisions, not just nice words.
And honestly, I suspect Lavrov wasn’t particularly interested in the conversation.
If consciousness eventually becomes technologically modifiable, dignity cannot simply become:
IQ = value.
A cognitively enhanced person wouldn’t possess more moral worth than an ordinary person.
You are taking a snippet from history and leaving out the context. The Chechen - Russia affair is not a case of Putin randomly attacking Chechnya because he got accepted. The Ukrainian woman @DevanaUkraine fails to see is that the Chechnya conflict could easily have become what is now going on in the Ukraine. Actually the Ukraine was always the priority plan but it required training and practice. The same “shaking of the boat” happened in many post soviet states.
Did you know the following: American political infrastructure backed the exile government. American-regulated charities moved money and supplies to the men with guns. Gulf networks did the heavy lifting. After 9/11 Washington designated Basayev and pretended the two pipes were unrelated.
That is not “the US invested in Chechen freedom.” It is the late 90s method: bless the politicians, look past the foundations, let Russia bleed, keep deniability. Do you think the cold war stopped? Putin tried to stop the cold war and all of this nonsense.
1997 Yeltsin–Maskhadov was a ceasefire on paper. 1999 Basayev Khattab walked out of that same territory into Dagestan. If your story of that decade has treaties and mentions none of what I did just to leave Russia looking like satan land, you are not connecting dots and doing your duty as a human being to think. You are deleting them and molding it to fit your context.
Fun fact: Catherine the Great rejected Britain’s request to provide Russian soldiers to fight on the British side during the American Revolution.
Britain specifically requested around 20,000 Russian troops.
For an 18th-century war, that was an enormous force. Had Catherine agreed, those additional 20,000 troops could have very seriously shifted the balance of power in North America - especially during the early stages of the war, before France fully entered the conflict.
It’s entirely possible that the war would have dragged on longer, ended differently, or that American independence would have been achieved much later. In a more radical scenario, the United States as we know it today might never have existed at all.
Imagine a world without McDonald’s? Brutal.
My personal combo: Quarter Pounder with Cheese, 9 nuggets, biiiiig fries, cheese sauce, and a Coke Zero.
And those 20,000 troops could have been only the beginning.
Even more interestingly, a few years later Catherine initiated the League of Armed Neutrality, which limited Britain’s ability to pressure neutral maritime trade during the war.
Russia never formally fought on the American side, but Catherine certainly did not give London the support it wanted.
In general, I highly recommend reading up on the history of Russia x Great Britain.
There are things in motion in this world that you wouldn’t even believe ~
I am surprised that through his long time on this planet Bernie Sanders did not come to an understanding that you do not accumulate success and influence like Elon Musk if you are not virtuous. I do not see evil or deceit in Musks eyes. But I give it a 50% chance that Bernie is lying about what he actually thinks and wants.
Berni, imagine a reporter asking Khabib to explain his next combination while Conor stands there listening. You wouldn’t expect him to reveal his strategy.
That analogy has limits: concealing tactics and making false public assurances are different things. Russia’s denials followed by invasion give people a serious reason to distrust its promises. Any settlement has to account for that.
But where does my argument require trusting Putin?
I’m arguing for arrangements that can function despite distrust: independently monitored commitments, verifiable steps, credible security guarantees for Ukraine, and consequences that the guarantors are actually prepared to enforce.
Those safeguards need scrutiny. Saying “verification” doesn’t magically make an agreement workable. We have to establish who monitors it, what constitutes a breach, and who responds.
Your screenshot explains why those questions matter. It doesn’t answer them or establish that negotiations cannot achieve anything.
If you believe no workable arrangement is possible, explain why and what alternative offers a better prospect of lasting security. “Do you know what a lie means?” gets us precisely nowhere.