World Map of Putin Derangement Syndrome

Based on a December 22, 2015 WIN/Gallup International poll:

world-map-putin-approval-2015-details

[Click to enlarge].

Note that this indicates net approval, that is, the percentage of people with a favorable view of Putin minus the percentage of people with an unfavorable view of him.

global-putin-approval-2015One immediately striking thing is just how how uniform Western attitudes are. Note how countries where net approval of Putin is below -20% are almost exclusively Western countries, while the only two notable countries in the Western geopolitical bloc to approve of Putin are Greece and Bulgaria. Both of which happen to belong to Orthodox civilization, going by Huntingtonian definitions.

Really, Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule. Although Putin’s approval rating of -38% is considerably negative and far worse than before 2013, one has to admit – regardless of his particular opinion on the Maidan and the Donbass conflict – that most Ukrainians have no obvious cause to love Putin and plenty to hate him. Nonetheless, remarkably, far more people the US (-44%) and especially Europe (-50% to -70%) dislike or hate him.

What all this says about the agenda and central management (if any) of the Western MSM I leave as an exercise in speculation to the reader.

Incidentally, Americans dislike Putin considerably less than Europeans. This is a lot less surprising that it might seem at first glance because there is a powerful socially conservative but counter-culture demographic that is cool with Trump and spawned NRx and the Red Pill, admires the cartoons of the real Ben Garrison and makes counter-signal memes for fashy goys, provides an audience for The Unz Review, etc. This demographic is much less prevalent in Europe, where the Right tends to be crusty old Cold Warriors and the Left has been more comprehensively hijacked by Social Justice than even in the US. This reaches a symbolic apogee in second-to-last Sweden Yes! which gives Putin a -77% net approval rating.

Incidentally, this is not a new development, I wrote about it half a year ago and Russia watcher Patrick Armstrong presaged its appearance even earlier:

It’s a fun and counterintuitive fact but Putin is more popular in the US (21%) than he is in any major NATO country bar Germany (23%). Moreover, the US takes the lead if only West Germany is counted (19%), since the overall German score is influenced by the unusually Russophilic attitudes of the East (40%). Maybe because Americans respect manliness, at least marginally more so than limp-wristed Europeans if dank memes on the Internet are anything to go by?

Most of the rest of the world outside the West either couldn’t care less about Putin (e.g. Latin America, Africa) or continue to be positive towards him (e.g. India, China). Incidentally, this just goes once more to confirm that at least from a global demographic point of view, talk of Russia’s “isolation” from the international community is complete and utter nonsense. This is rather obvious but even – especially – obvious things need to be repeated when they are so strenuously and regularly denied by the media.

There are a few countries where Putin is even more popular than he is in Russia itself. The highest on the list, giving him a 79% net approval rating, is Armenia. This is also unsurprising since relations between Armenia and Russia more than passingly resemble those between Israel and the US when it is run by Republican Presidents, down to the influence of powerful ethnonationalist lobbies. On that front, they have recently integrated their air defense systems. Another prominent member of that crowd is Serbia, where Putin is as popular as in Russia. No surprise there, and they certainly have no reason to love NATO.

Comments

  1. Pseudonymic Handle says

    Given the submarine scare the attitude of swedes is not surprising, but I wonder why Spain and Portugal hate him so much.

  2. Bao Jiankang says

    that most Ukrainians have no obvious cause to love Putin and plenty to hate him. Nonetheless, remarkably, far more people the US (-44%) and especially Europe (-50% to -70%) dislike or hate him.

    Could’t this be partially explained by the number of ethnic Russians in Ukraine? There are however some high profile ethnic Ukrainians that support Putin. Fedor Emelienko, Sergey Karjakin to name a few.

  3. Columbia and Mexico have higher approval of Putin than Brazil and Argentina? That’s a surprise.

  4. Anatoly Karlin says

    People who identify as ethnic Russians were 17% of the Ukrainian population according to the 2001 census, and today that figure would be even lower.

    Naturally, far from all those Russians are positive about Putin.

    If we are to guesstimate the Ukrainian figures they would still be within the Anglo and West European mainstream but well below that of Finland, Sweden, probably the Netherlands.

  5. Лечба Свидомости says

    Note that Latvia has a more favourable view of Putin than even Ukraine.

  6. georgesdelatour says

    A debilitating consequence of the European Union coming to be seen as the legitimator of European-ness is that it stops most Europeans thinking of Russia as a European country. This would have shocked Metternich, whose “Concert of Europe” depended crucially on Russian involvement.

    I suspect those Europeans who are most keen on a federal EU will also be the most strongly anti-Putin. If individual EU nations started to think that, on key issues, they might have more in common with Vladimir Putin than with the supposed EU consensus, that might undermine the drive for “ever closer union”.

    At least in the UK, euroscepticism has always tracked with a more pro-Russian attitude. The historian A.J.P. Taylor opposed British membership of the EEC/EU, and also advocated a revival of the Anglo-Russian alliance forged in WW2; Enoch Powell took virtually the same line. Present-day eurosceptics such as Nigel Farage and Peter Hitchens have both spoken positively about Vladimir Putin.

  7. Interesting how high Vietnam’s approval ratings are. Presumably that goes back to the Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam War era? I recall reading that the Soviets were the major allies and backers of the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War, while relations with the PRC were less good and led to a minor border war between Vietnam and the PRC.

  8. Also surprising is Turkey’s relatively moderate score, especially compared to the other NATO countries and the West, despite the Ottoman’s long history of rivalry with Russia.

  9. Anatoly Karlin says

    Vietnam seems to view everybody positively apart from China/Xi Jinping. Of course the Chinese/Vietnamese rivalry stretches back not just centuries but literally millennia.

    It is curious to see Bangladesh rate Putin so highly. The Soviet Union of course helped greatly in ensuring its independence, but that help was mediated through India, so its a bit strange to see Bangladesh so much more positive towards Putin than India (especially considering also that Bangladesh is Muslim and Islam is sooner a negative than a positive factor so far as opinion of Russia is concerned).

  10. Incidentally, Americans dislike Putin considerably less than Europeans. This is a lot less surprising that it might seem at first glance because there is a powerful socially conservative but counter-culture demographic that is cool with Trump and spawned NRx and the Red Pill, admires the cartoons of the real Ben Garrison and makes counter-signal memes for fashy goys, provides an audience for The Unz Review, etc. This demographic is much less prevalent in Europe, where the Right tends to be crusty old Cold Warriors and the Left has been more comprehensively hijacked by Social Justice than even in the US. This reaches a symbolic apogee in second-to-last Sweden Yes! which gives Putin a -77% net approval rating.

    I wouldn’t say that the counter-culture demographic is necessarily bigger in the US than Europe. Even in the US it’s largely an internet based thing that’s thin on the ground in meatspace. There’s a reason they characterize themselves in opposition to “normies”. If you spend a lot of time on certain sites it can seem like they’re ubiquitous but it’s less the case in general.

    I think Sweden and Europe’s relatively higher scores have partly to do with greater proximity and territorial rivalry and conflict.

  11. I love the way these maps always give French Guiana its own mainland-matching colour, as though some Gallup gumshoes had paced the mean streets of Cayenne asking the locals their opinion of Vlad Pootin. In that vein, those results which are absurd on their face, like that for Bangladesh, are almost certainly just due to the vagaries of sampling with inadequate tools.

  12. japan , korea, israek, brasil, turkey, south africa, argentine , pakistan are west ?? He is highly unpopular according to the map also in countries of far east such as japan and, korea and also in turkey, israel. pakistan, brazil, argentine, pacific and in some african countries too etc if it were and IQ question of course you were wrong . he is useful to the chinese. certain he is hated also in SA, UAE etc omitted here

  13. Japan and Turkey are definitively part of the West.
    SA does not seem to care.

  14. He must mean KSA.

  15. China approves and yet China is a natural rival (as India is a natural ally) of Russia. Perhaps China thinks Russia under Putin is wrecking any possiblity of a future alliance with the US. If Russia had thought it through with a view to retaining major power status, it would be looking to get close to Japan. China is destined to be a megapower, an overlord.

  16. Japan is too tied to the superpower.

  17. It will take the US plus Russia, Japan, and India to contain China.

    If there is no rapprochement with the US, Russia will be relegated to being sidekick of China.

  18. The USA-led West is a greater threat to Russia than China.
    It is better to be a sidekick than a colony.

  19. Concerning Vietnam,

    there are a couple of factors:

    1: There is the traditional huge rivalry vs. the Chinese. Russia, in Vietnamese conciousness, is that “big fat blob north of the Chinese arch enemy, with whom we have joint interests in containing China!”. Geography is destiny.
    2: Russia is basically the big “major power” that has not screwed Vietnam over.
    3: The Vietnamese see the current “evul Russian support for Ukrainian seperatists” through the prism of their 1979 war with China. The Soviet Union supported Vietnam with intel data, conducted major maneuvers at both Soviet-Chinese borders, and there are credible allegations of quite considerable cross border firing from the Soviets on the Chinese. There even is a Vietnamese joke about it, “How did our Soviet brothers react to Chinese aggression against us?” “They have greatly and brotherly increased the speed, frequency and total mass of ammunition delivery into Chinese territory” “But is this not treachery?” “No, it is satisfactory”. In Ukraine, Vietnamese identify considerable with the Seperatist, because that kind of struggle was something they are familiar with.
    4: Soviet “influence” over Vietnam was very “laid back” for Soviet standarts. First, the Moscow politburo genuinely respected the Vietnamese (which was not the case with f.e. North Korea) leadership, second, Vietnams objective condition was such that it generally receives more from the “internationale” then it contributed.
    5: Some Vietnamese did try to view the Russo-Ukrainian relationship as akin to the Chinese-Vietnamese relationship, as a thought experiment. It fell because Vietnamese view power as land and military strength (and in terms of territorial size and military strength, Soviet times were pretty good for Ukraine). During Soviet times, Russia made repeated contribution to Ukrainian territory, which for a Vietnamese is an instant “breaker” for viewing something as “colonial”. As are the 3 more or less Ukrainian general secretaries. A big reason why Vietnam never truely submitted to Chinese/Han rule is that no Viet ever became Emperor of China (or at least reached top tier positions in the administration), or had any realistic chance of becoming one. This is a meaningfull difference compared to f.e. the Manchu or Mongols, or to Ukrainians in the Soviet context.

  20. That line of thinking does exist in Russian foreign policy circles, although it’s in conjunction with hostility towards the US:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

    The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia is a geopolitical book by Alexander Dugin. The book has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites[1] and was allegedly used as a textbook in the General Staff Academy of Russian military.[1]

    China, which represents a danger to Russia, “must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled”. Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet-Xinjiang-Mongolia-Manchuria as a security belt.[2] Russia should offer China help “in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia” as geopolitical compensatation.[1]
    Russia should manipulate Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan and provoking anti-Americanism.[1]

    The book emphasizes that Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere: “the main ‘scapegoat’ will be precisely the U.S.”

    In the United States:

    Russia should use its special forces within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism. For instance, provoke “Afro-American racists”. Russia should “introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.”[1]

    Japan is still largely an appendage of the US, and there are still some territorial disputes regarding the Kuril Islands and general wariness from the geopolitical conflict and rivalry between Japan and Russia from the last century. So any sort of serious alliance is not really likely at this point.

    At any rate, these sorts of alliances shift according to geopolitical circumstances and exigencies. China may become a megapower, but for the time being the US is still preeminent. If the relative power of the US, China, et al shift then the various alliances will shift as well, and China will be balanced by a new alliance.

  21. The rapprochement and alliance would happen if relative power shifts enough that the US is no longer strong enough independently and needs Russia. At that point it would no longer be a serious threat to Russia, Russia would be in a stronger and more independent position vis a vis the US, and China would be the bigger threat.

  22. Japan and Turkey are definitively part of the West.

    They’d be committing suicide with the rest of them if they were part of the West.

  23. Anatoly Karlin says

    I appreciate this might be hard for some people to grasp but actually most Russians don’t particularly want to fight China to the last Russian for the benefit of America.

  24. It does not matter that USA might not be a serious threat in the future.
    What matters is that the USA is a major threat to Russia in past and present and China’s cooperation is necessary for Russia to have a chance resisting the greedy superpower.

  25. Unless the Japanese manage to find a technological solution for their demographic problems, the Japanese nation is going to commit a slow, but inevitable suicide in this century in any case.

  26. unpc downunder says

    Kind of trivial question, but can anyone explain why Putin’s daughter is taller both her parents?

    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/07/25/1406273643933_wps_1_Maria_Putin_Father_Mother.jpg

  27. Drapetomaniac says

    “It will take the US plus Russia, Japan, and India to contain China.”

    Why in hell would Russia want to cooperate with a lying sack of shit country like the US? A course for Russia, India, and China to take would be to contain the US by undermining the dollar. Besides enabling the US to terrorize the world, the dollar provides the US with a large brain drain vs. the rest of the world.

    Of those countries, Russia would be the last to make it to the bone factory and they may not even get there. The US implodes when the dollar does. Ditto for Japan.

  28. I think it’d be more accurate to say that geopolitically, Turkey and Japan are part of the contemporary, postwar America led Western order.

  29. Europe has the same demographic problems. At least the Japanese haven’t given up on remaining Japanese.

  30. All abrahamic ideologies work together against the natives in the subcontinent.

    Muslims still view Russia as Marxist ussr ie anti hindu

  31. Original Vietnamese Kingdom was actually in South China Yunnan I think. They still remember being kicked out,

    China has actually been on a demographic expansion since 700s.

    Islam + the White huns forced indias traditional north & east focus west so China allied with mongols & took advantage.

    Han are bigger threat than people realize. http://www.oocities.org/somasushma/tarim.html

  32. National Public Radio never broadcasts anything that’s not part of a political agenda. Putin and Russia are a couple of their bêtes noires. I’m constantly amazed by the BS. For example, a few minutes ago, Joanna Kakissis gave Russia’s bombing of Syria as the prime motivation for the European refugee crisis. She didn’t list a single other reason. There are millions of Americans who just heard this and will assume it’s true.

  33. China is looking for allies too and Russia could be faced with Chinamerica. Russia is a near neighbour of China and thus a natural enemy, and because countries on the far side of a enemy are natural allies, India is a natural ally of Russia. Pakistan is China’s ally against India. It was Chinese weapons that enabled Srilanka’s defeat of the Tamils.

    Allying with China is a strategy for the US (which China cannot get at) but an alliance with a natural enemy is hardly an option for Russia any more than it was in WW2 (Nazi -Soviet pact).Trying to pass the buck and let others do the fighting did not work out very well for Stalin.

    Even if China is in a conflict with the US, China may be too much for the US, just as Germany was too much for Western Europe. Britain is already sidling up to China economically by letting them build a UK nuclear power station and backing Chinese international monetary pretensions.

    Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nukes only makes sense if it is intended to cope with the Chinese army. The US will not be able to influence events in Asia unless it has allies.

  34. Russia is a near neighbour of China and thus a natural enemy, and because countries on the far side of a enemy are natural allies, India is a natural ally of Russia. Pakistan is China’s ally against India.

    But China borders India and Pakistan.
    Shouldn’t it be a “natural enemy” of both according to your logic?

    Trying to pass the buck and let others do the fighting did not work out very well for Stalin.

    Thanks to the West European allies being full of fail.

    Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nukes only makes sense if it is intended to cope with the Chinese army.

    And not the more threatening NATO armies?

    The US will not be able to influence events in Asia unless it has allies.

    Unfortunately, the USA has many allies in Asia.

  35. Pakistan had a link with China over the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khunjerab_Pass

    India didn’t like that, hence the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_conflict

    About tactical nukes, they are for halting overwhelming conventional forces and there are a lot of soldiers in the Chinese army.

    US allied countries bordering China need to be strong in their own right. A decade or so ago the US threatened China with nukes (“incalculable consequences” is diplomatic code) when Taiwan was warned if it it declared independence China would invade. The US is reduced to idly threatening such an unbelievable act because it can’t really protect Taiwan, which is surrounded with sea, from China even with the vastly expensive US navy. By the way China responded to the menaces by noting nuclear weapon would be exchanged, as China as had the ability to hit the US with nukes.

    Being an ally of the US against China is something that countries bordering China will become ever less keen on because everyone know the US would not blow it’s own brains by starting a nuclear exchange. Russia has it’s own nukes and a big army so it will be an indispensable ally of the US.

  36. Mark Eugenikos says

    Trivial answer #1: better nutrition.

    Trivial answer #2: heels.

  37. The phony submarine scare. Of course back in the 80s Britain and the US used to stage fake Russian submarine incursions and landings. Ola’s wikipedia article has a good statistic on this effect; In 1980, 8% of the Swedes viewed the Soviet Union as a direct threat and 33% considered the Soviets as hostile. After a stranded Soviet submarine in 1981 and primarily after a dramatic anti-submarine operation in 1982 with midget submarines inside Swedish naval bases, these figures changed to 42% and 83% respectively.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Tunander
    Of course Sweden and Russia have been geopolitical rivals for centuries, my mother was always told never to trust a Russian, which also explains the negative scores in Sweden.

    To be fair the demonisation campaign against Putin has being going on for years now, the more interesting question is why. Ethnic resentment, historical memories, clash of real geopolitical interest, culture wars… Never really been fully explored and explained in my opinion.

    I wonder if we will hit diminishing marginal returns. I would like to believe propaganda has diminishing marginal returns when not supported by real world evidence, and the intensity of the anti Putin propaganda oft strays into the ridiculous.

  38. Here’s hoping that Trump and Putin together put an end to the Neocon World Order, to the globalist leftist forces and to militant Islam. Too bad Berlusconi was sacked a few years ago. I’m sure he would have got along well with those other two. They’re far from perfect, but they’re the only leaders standing against the utter chaos of globo-liberalism.

  39. Seamus Padraig says

    If you follow Sean’s posts for any length of time, you will begin to realize that the dude lives in a proprietary universe. When I read him now, I do so merely for amusement.

  40. In 1985 Sweden was turning out 50000 conscripts per year, had 350 fighter aircraft, 650 tanks, over 200 tank destroyers, more than 200 pieces of artillery, over a dozen submarines, 30 fast attack crafts, plus numerous coastal artillery, minelayers, and submarine hunting helicopters, now Sweden has about 100 fighter aircraft, 100 tanks, 24 artillery pieces, 9 missile boats, and 3 submarines.

  41. Sven doesn’t need many toys once he’s safe in his cuck shed.

  42. …the only two notable countries in the Western geopolitical bloc to approve of Putin are Greece and Bulgaria. Both of which happen to belong to Orthodox civilization, going by Huntingtonian definitions….Really, Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule.

    Something Russians and Huntingtonians sometimes forget is that Ukraine, alone among Orthodox nations, spent centuries as part of the West in Poland/Poland-Lithuania (Russia was under the Mongols and then independent, while the Balkans were under the Ottomans and then independent). This is clearly the case for Galicia but also for central Ukraine. Poland ruled the Right Bank region (everything west of the Dnipro river, including most of Kiev oblast) until the 1790s. This region was integrated into Tsarist Russia for only about 120 years before it became the Ukrainian SSR. Kiev itself was autonomous in the 19th century and heavily Polish until then (last ethnic Polish mayor served until the 1880s).

    Examples of Polish (and thus, Western) influence on central Ukraine include cultural (the famous Orthodox Kiev Academy where generations of local Orthodox elite studied was based on a Jesuit model, with Polish and Latin as languages of instruction), linguistic (in terms of pure vocabulary Ukrainian shares more words with Polish than it does with Russian, for similar reasons why the Germanic English language has more words in common with French than with German), and familial (about 10% of the Polish-era central Ukrainian population were ethnic Poles; most of these were absorbed by the Ukrainians). Ukrainian baroque reflects this:

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BA%D0%BE

    It is thus natural and unsurprising for central Ukraine to move westward. Recent events have accelerated or strengthened this process but it seems to have been inevitable anyways. Central Ukrainians have become like Galicians were, but even before they were clearly pro-Western in terms of EU support, political party support, etc.

    Southern Ukraine was settled by central Ukrainians moving south as well as Russians and others, under the Russian Empire. It is thus a battlefield in terms of historical loyalties. It looks like Dnipropetrovsk and the rural, more-Ukrainian south (Kherson) are pro-West, Odessa still ambivalent (but cut off from pro-Russian Crimea and Donbas by pro-Ukrainian territory).

  43. I cite experts. Russia acted predictably, Mearsheimer’s pre-Putin prediction was proved correct about Russia and Ukraine. Simms has an explanation for the relative lack of interest Germans have in confronting Russia:
    http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/germany-s-triumph-ruins-war-how-new-european-empire-was-built

  44. Actually all the major parties are in favor of restarting conscription.

  45. Russia still supports Vietnam. When I was there I went scuba diving with a mix aged group of Russian naval consultants or something who were there for work. Their English was awful, so their ability to get around the place was quite impressive.

  46. Why didn’t the USSR see massive immigration from nonwhite African countries that had Soviet bases and places like Vietnam? I mean the standard of living in Moscow in 1980 was still better than Hanoi or Conakry or Brazaville, and by the 80s the TFR in places like Ukraine or Moscow was near 2.0.

  47. If you follow Unz.com IQ supremacist logic, why doesn’t Russia and the Ukraine simply fix its population situation by simply inviting 100 million Chinese and Koreans to repopulate Siberia and other parts of Russia and the Ukraine? I mean according to the Asian and high IQ boosters crowd at Sailer’s (who most probably have East Asian inlaws), the decrease in drunken stabbings, wife beatings, and the tremendous increase in PISA test scores would be totally worth it, sure the Slavic population of Russia and the Ukraine would be General Plan Osted but then you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs right?

  48. Because the USSR was not soft on crime.

  49. Slavic russians murder rates are comparable to blacks and mexicans. Russia’s murder rate is sky high right?

  50. White Russians commit murder more frequently than white Swedes, sure. So do white Finns. I don’t see the relevance to my point.

  51. Anatoly Karlin says

    You’re addressing this to the wrong person.

    http://www.unz.com/akarlin/limits-to-cognitive-elitism/

  52. I’m not sure most Koreans and Chinese would want to live in Ukraine, even eastern Russia is questionable. Perhaps if we’re talking North Koreans but as a general rule they ain’t going nowhere.

    Poland for its part is taking in Ukrainian migrants, and that certainly is not IQ supremacist as East Slav PISA averages are clearly below Poles. We won’t see the possible effects for some time, but that should not deter speculation.

  53. Huh? Rural Ukraine is not much colder than Mukden or Harbin.

  54. I’m not speaking about temperature but general level of development and opportunities in the country. I’m sure many Chinese who would refuse Ukraine now wouldn’t refuse Yukon.

  55. Talking about China, importing 100 million China with an iq of 125 plus their descendants will result in the annihilation of the Slavic peoples (just like Hitler wanted), but maybe the Fields medals will be worth it? To further your point, Vancouver was already around 3% chinese in 1970 due to mass immigration in the 19th century.

  56. Look again, the HDI of Western Ukraine is way above even places Chekiang, Kwantung, or Guangxi if you factor in things like water and air quality, or even things like food safety. And a lot of mainland chinese have disgusting habits in a communal setting/area compared to say, Swedes, like peeing and spitting in swimming pools.

  57. Does Putin trade deals with China include free movement of labor?

  58. I have been to Saint Petersburg, no Chinese city is even capable of getting close to its beauty. A lot of wealthy Chinese would buy property there and bring their families there if they can be assured that their money/investment is safe, plus the good Russian schools are very good. And unlike Western universities their children will not be seduced by liberal ideas.

  59. HDI isn’t a metric that translates into opportunity well. Even Pakistan has many districts with higher HDI than certain areas of China but that doesn’t mean it’s in any way attractive to Chinese migrants compared to the alternatives they have.

    People in poorer Chinese regions can expect their future economic situation to be superior if they stay home if Ukraine is the alternative.

  60. No, there is no need for that.

  61. Here is a serious question, are Eastern Slavs some type of Eurasians? I have heard the phrase the Asia begins at the gates of Budapest, and that Hungarians are somewhat Asiatic. About neuroticism, personally speaking East Asians are a lot more neurotic then Northwest Euro White people. White people seem to be a lot more let it all hang out type of people. I mean there is no nudist colony in China, Korea, or Vietnam.

  62. You are a ridiculous moron.

  63. Ukrainians, Hungarians and Russians are genetically closer to Northwest Europeans than Iberians, Italians and Balkan folks. The main cline of European genetic diversity is North/South, not East/West.

    Now culturally speaking, things may be quite different.

  64. Sardinians have the least ANE (Eurasian admixture), therefore the purest whites?

  65. If that’s your metric. Maghrebis have even less though.

    Still, the mainstream definition after all these years is closer to Benjamin Franklin’s (English and Saxons are the only proper whites) in many ways.

  66. Concerning Russias choices (China or the west).

    Faced with people making it choose between “China and the west” the natural Russian reaction would be “neither, we make our own coalition as a third party/pole”.

    If this is, for some reason, not or no longer possible, they will choose against whoever is responsible for the impossibility of a Russian pole. In the current context, they would fight not for China but against the west.

    Other then that, Russia does its threat perception based on capabilities and intent of potential threats. The Chinese are capable of threatening Russia, but have displayed no intent to do so.
    The west is considerably more capable of threatening Russia then China is, and is very broadly and obviously displaying hostile intent. In addition, Russian attempts of appeasing the west during the 90s and during Putins early presidency did not yield results despite the very considerable costs of doing so. China (and Russia btw.) however can be appeased, and unless you happen to be Vietnam, the costs of it are not that high.

    Lastly, Russia is by far Chinas strongest neighbour. There are plenty of “canaries in the coalmine” (more colloquially known as other nations bordering China) that some hypothetical hyperexpansionist China would gobble up before even considering a Siberian adventure.

    Concerning Vietnam, they are in the unique position that what a reasonable Vietnamese goverment could do to appease China would not be enough. Accepting Chinas claim on the Spratlys means that Chinas economic zone extents all the way to Hue, deep inside what Vietnam considers its heartland. This would give China the power to interdict eastwards Vietnamese shipping, it would give it excellent jump off points for naval shows of force, and it would give China easy access to Naval invasions of Vietnam while also allowing it to interdict potential aid deliveries from third parties to Vietnam in the event of a Sino-Viet conflict.
    Add the enourmous intel opportunities vs Vietnam that the Spratly zone would give China, and you can see why no Vietnamese government would accept this.

  67. The birthrate in Russia and Ukraine is rising. War has counter intuitive effects on population growth.

  68. You’re guessing as usual, and you’re wrong. It hasn’t risen since the war, such as it is, started.

  69. The lowest birthrate was in 2000, when no one (apart from Mearsheimer) dreamt there could be war with Russia. The rate of decline has progressively slowed and fertility is higher than it was. I think it is reasonable to say that war discourages immigration. Moreover it stalled integration of Ukraine into the EU, which would have led to an exodus of qualified Ukrainians. The Ukrainian nation has benefited from the war. Germany has never been safer from external threats than it is now, need I say more?

  70. Anatoly Karlin says

    This is simply incorrect. Birth rates have fallen by about 15% since 2013 from a not very high base.

    Sure they are higher than in 2000 but that was around the absolute nadir pretty much everywhere in the post-Soviet Slavic world. In Ukraine as in Russia a substantial part of the rise in fertility rates since then has been women gradually beginning to have second children they had “postponed” (to use the demographic term) until then due to economic circumstances. The renewed economic collapse in Ukraine has put paid to that trend.

  71. Ukrainian birth rate change varies widely by region and has started to recover:

    http://pollotenchegg.livejournal.com/224427.html

    Outside Donbas the rates have not been catastrophic. May 2015 was the low point in comparison to 2014 (minus 15%), but:

    1. It was a bit of an outlier. The previous month was only 5% lower than in 2015 and the next month was 9% lower. September 2015’s birthrate outside Donbas was 4% lower than in September 2014.

    2. The first half of 2014 had been an improvement over 2013 and was close to a historical high.

  72. 1. It was a bit of an outlier. The previous month was only 5% lower than in 2015 and the next month was 9% lower. September 2015′s birthrate outside Donbas was 4% lower than in September 2014.

    2. The first half of 2014 had been an improvement over 2013 and was close to a historical high.

    That is only confirming that:

    The renewed economic collapse in Ukraine has put paid to that trend.

  73. Here is data for birth rate by oblast for the first 4 months of 2015 (second chart):

    http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2015/ds/pp/pp_u/pp0415_u.html

    It varies from 13.6 in Rivne (northwest) to 2.4 in Luhansk.

    Outside Donbas, birth rate has fallen to somewhere between 2011 and 2012 levels. Not much, historically speaking. You don’t have to go back to 2000, it’s higher than the 2000s.

  74. Martin van Creveld says ‘however unpalatable the fact, the real reason we have wars is that men like fighting, and women like men who are prepared to fight on their behalf’. http://uatoday.tv/society/injured-soldier-weds-girlfriend-in-traditional-ukrainian-wedding-ceremony-553026.html

  75. Funny how this map brings out certain reactions in people.

    A neocon looks at China having the highest approval rating of Putin and says “Wait a minute, they are supposed to be natural rivals and are supposed to hate each other. What is going on?”

    The inner drive of the imperial Westerner, appeals to the notion that you should be able to exploit divide and conquer opportunities when you want to topple a rival. Even better is when you have two main rivals, and you are able to manipulate them to go to war with each other. Add in Iran to this imperialist milieu of divide and conquer, by saying that Iran is a natural rival because they are Muslim or they are rivals to export gas to Europe, and all the imperialist has to do is sit back and wait till its enemies ruin each other.

    That may have worked with lesser societies who were too weak to defend itself, but I think the remaining powerful countries see the game and know better.

  76. Seamus Padraig says

    AP, doesn’t a birthrate of 13.6 strike you as just a little bit implausible? I mean, that’s more six times replacement level (2.1 children per woman). Or was this a typo on your part?

  77. Well, this Chinese guy did even though he claimed he failed getting into Chinese college. With girls like this, many guys might want to.

    https://youtu.be/EaqqDnblUMI

  78. It’s 13.6 per 1000 population, a birth rate not a fertility rate.

  79. AP, doesn’t a birthrate of 13.6 strike you as just a little bit implausible? I mean, that’s more six times replacement level (2.1 children per woman). Or was this a typo on your part?

    That’s birth rate per 1000 people, not fertility rate. I don’t have fertility rate stats for 2015 by oblast.

    Rivne’s 13.6 places it above every European country other than Ireland. As does Zakarpattia oblast’s 13.3. Despite the drop from 2014 when the figures for these provinces were 14.2 and 13.8, respectively, they are still good.

    As I wrote, outside of Donbas which has seen a collapse in birthrate, Ukraine – particularly western Ukraine – is demographically okay. Better then western Europe.

  80. Reg Cæsar says

    Actually all the major parties are in favor of restarting conscription.

    For males, or both sexes? Sweden and Germany both suspended conscription in 2010 (do they maintain a registry, though, like the US does?), and I wondered if the conflict with officially-promoted sexual egalitarianism got to be too much for them.

    In 2013, Norway decided to conscript both sexes equally. This has never been tried before, anywhere, as far as I can tell. And it only went through because feminists themselves initiated the change. What are people drinking in that country?

  81. Reg Cæsar says

    I mean there is no nudist colony in China, Korea, or Vietnam.

    There’s Wreck Beach in Hongcouver.

  82. I trust before long svidomite territory will indeed be reduced to just Rovno oblast. More bragging rights for you! As it is, if you had realised that births in the DNR/LNR are not reported to the US puppet authorities you could have accurately claimed a higher birth rate for the territory they control, but you were too dim to see that.

  83. I didn’t mention DNR/LNR territory. Does your Russian nationalism cloud your ability to read?

    Nor do I have data for DNR/LNR territory. Do you? Do you think that the birth rates in DNR/LNR territory are substantially higher than the 2.4/1000 in Ukrainian-controlled Luhansk oblast or 4.1/1000 in Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk oblast?

    Birth rates across western Ukraine, not only in Rivne oblast, are okay. In addition to Rivne’s 13.6 and Zakarpattiya’s 13.3, , there is Volyn’s 12.5, Ivano-Frankivsk’s 11.5, Chernivtsi’s 11.4, Lviv’s 10.7. This – with a completely European population.

    It must hurt you that the west is the most functional part of Ukraine and among the most functional parts of the Slavic ex-USSR.

  84. Retard, you still haven’t understood that 2.4 per 1000 is the result of a numerator containing only a small proportion of the births in a territory and a denominator containing all the former population of that territory, even though I spelt it out for you once already.
    The birth and fertility rates of whites in the Ukraine are behind those of whites both in Belarus and in Russia.
    Functional -LOL. By that measure the black-hats are the most functional part of Israel.

  85. you still haven’t understood that 2.4 per 1000 is the result of a numerator containing only a small proportion of the births in a territory and a denominator containing all the former population of that territory

    You seem desperate to believe this. 2.4 per 1000 is the birth rate within the region controlled by Ukraine. It’s about 1/3 of that oblast’s pre-war population. If what you claim is correct then this warzone has a higher “real” birth rate close to that of some war-free oblasts, which is not realistic.

    Functional -LOL. By that measure the black-hats are the most functional part of Israel.

    Judging by demographics (birth and death rates) , education (at least, in Galicia) , crime rates, HIV rates, post-Soviet economic improvement, and quality of life, western Ukraine is the most functional part of Ukraine and one of the most functional parts of the Slavic ex-USSR. So sorry that this hurts you so badly.

    An example of western Ukrainian functionality:

    http://varlamov.ru/1085938.html

    Certainly no Russian city close to Lviv’s size is as pleasant and successful as Lviv.

  86. you still haven’t understood that 2.4 per 1000 is the result of a numerator containing only a small proportion of the births in a territory and a denominator

    There were 1788 recorded births in Ukrainian controlled territory in Luhansk. This is territory has about 1/3 of that oblast’s pre-war population (thus, about 760,000 people). So 2.4 births per thousand people.

    The birth and fertility rates of whites in the Ukraine are behind those of whites both in Belarus and in Russia.

    Certainly not in western Ukraine though. And probably not in Ukraine minus Donbas either.

    Functional -LOL. By that measure the black-hats are the most functional part of Israel.

    My other reply went into moderation, probably because I linked to a blog post by a Russian visitor. By functional I mean a combination of education (Galicia specifically), birth rate, death rate, life expectancy, HIV rate, crime rate, and overall quality of life. No city in Ukraine and no city in Russia of Lviv’s size is as pleasant or successful as Lviv. Your angry posts and mental lapses surrounding this topic suggest that this really burns you up.

  87. 2.4 per 1000 is a lower birth rate than in the Warsaw ghetto during WW2. Apparently you would rather inculpate the svidomite authorities in a monstrous crime than admit the idiocy of your previous comments.
    Based on those monthly figures that have been published, the birth rate in Belarus in 2015 will be 12.5 per 1000, that in the Ukraine 9.4 per 1000. Weak indeed must be your grasp of arithmetic if you cannot see that whatever the situation with the 3% of the population or less in the svidomite-occupied parts of Donetsk/Lugansk, this implies that whites in Belarus have a much higher birth rate than whites in the “Ukraine minus Donbas”, and even according to your own figures, a higher birthrate than whites in “western Ukraine” as well.
    I’ll grant that Lvov, or Lwów, or Lemberg, has some pleasant architecture. This is because no svidomite had a hand in designing it. Monkeys in a Hindu temple.

  88. Anatoly Karlin says

    Not too wade in too particular a way since I am not qualified on said topics – have never visited Ukraine, and now it seems I likely won’t for a rather long time – but… but…

    It would have been good to mention that Varlamov (incidentally not just any Russian visitor but classic liberal hipster so you can hardly accuse him of being a vatnik) also had another post immediately before the one you cited called “Bad Lvov”:

    http://varlamov.ru/1085062.html

    My quick translation of part of it for non-Russian readers:

    Due to the European historic center the denizens of Lvov for some reason consider themselves real Europeans, unlike the residents of other Ukrainian cities. This is of course just the usual snobbism. To the Europeans the Lvovites are as far away as the residents of Donbass. To realize this, it is sufficient just to leave the historic center and look at the sleeper suburbs where most of the population lives. It is amazing but modern Lvov is no different from Vladimir or Tver [AK: i.e. middle sized Russian cities both of which indicidentally are half Lvov’s size]. In this respect they are similar to residents of Saint-Petersburg. Both consider themselves cultured European capitals just because Stalin’s hands never got round to knocking down half their city centers, unlike Moscow. Just like the Saint Petersburgers they are quick to take offense on this account. Try to say that Lvov wasn’t built by ancient Ukrainians and they will hang you on a lamppost… Typical Lvovite spits on everything, parks like a faggot, couldn’t care less about the common courtyard. In other words, typical denizen of any former Soviet republic. To justify this state of affairs they invented the “ragul”… who are now responsible for everything wrong with Lvov [AK: Goes on explain ragul as a kind of Ukrainian version of gopnik]

    Considering both posts my cursory impression is that Lvov is not any noticeably better than a similary medium sized city such as Yaroslavl when I was there in 2004. Vladimir (which Varlamov references) however was admittedly a dump, but then again, that was a decade before Varlamov went to Lvov. Long time by Russian standards. I would not be overly surprised if Vladimir has caught up (as Varlamov says Lvov is comparable to Vladimir and Tver) while the more prosperous Russian middling cities such as Yaroslavl have if anything surged ahead. Of course this is all Pending Further Investigation.

  89. Simon in London says

    “Incidentally, Americans dislike Putin considerably less than Europeans. This is a lot less surprising that it might seem at first glance because there is a powerful socially conservative but counter-culture demographic that is cool with Trump and spawned NRx and the Red Pill, admires the cartoons of the real Ben Garrison and makes counter-signal memes for fashy goys, provides an audience for The Unz Review, etc. This demographic is much less prevalent in Europe, where the Right tends to be crusty old Cold Warriors…”

    Well there are a few of us… the anti-globalist Right here is at least sceptical of anti-Putinism. Nigel Farage & UKIP for instance, the journalist Peter Hitchens, a few others. But yes there is probably not a broad mass of people as in the USA. Usually the Daily Mail comments section (which broadly reflects the IQ 100, bloke in the pub demographic) is reliably anti-Liberal, but they did buy into the anti-Putin propaganda at the time of the Ukraine coup.

  90. 2.4 per 1000 is a lower birth rate than in the Warsaw ghetto during WW2. Apparently you would rather inculpate the svidomite authorities in a monstrous crime than admit the idiocy of your previous comments.

    I don’t have stats for Warsaw ghetto birth rates; if they were higher this might have to do with the lack of modern birth control, the nature of the population (how many victims in the ghetto were Hasids?), and the inability of young people having kids from leaving the ghetto.

    At any rate the birth rate in Luhansk is 2.4/1000. And the denominator isn’t based on the total population as you stupidly claimed.

    Based on those monthly figures that have been published, the birth rate in Belarus in 2015 will be 12.5 per 1000, that in the Ukraine 9.4 per 1000. Weak indeed must be your grasp of arithmetic if you cannot see that whatever the situation with the 3% of the population or less in the svidomite-occupied parts of Donetsk/Lugansk, this implies that whites in Belarus have a much higher birth rate than whites in the “Ukraine minus Donbas”, and even according to your own figures, a higher birthrate than whites in “western Ukraine” as well.

    Thanks for looking up the Belarus figures. Any link for your source? Here, it is claimed 11.6 for Belarus:

    http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/belarus-population/

    I note you conveniently forgot to mention Russia;s ethnic Russian birth rate.

    I’ll grant that Lvov, or Lwów, or Lemberg, has some pleasant architecture. This is because no svidomite had a hand in designing it. Monkeys in a Hindu temple.

    Many of the architects were Italian. So? Ukrainians were a founding population and were about 15-20% of the city’s population prior to World War II.

    The architecture was the same in the early 90s when the place was a dump. The locals have done wonders with their city.

  91. I’ve been to Urals cities a few years ago and there is no comparison to Lviv. Lviv in 2013 when I was last there was much like Krakow when I was there in 2004. Indeed, Polish friends who visited the city recently say it’s very much like well-developed parts of Poland 10 years ago. I wasn’t in Vladimir in 2004 but I doubt it was comparable to Krakow. Lviv hasn’t changed or declined noticeably since 2013.

    Varlamov’s previous post involved cherry-picking, which he more or less admitted in his second post where he stated there was basically nothing bad about Lviv.

  92. Reg Cæsar says

    Finland is clearly world champion at this game. But they’ve had a few hundred years’ head start.

  93. Belarus

    http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/app/DataView.aspx?tid=2&cid=112&yearfrom=2000&yearto=2015&p=A

    The Ukraine

    http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/app/DataView.aspx?tid=2&cid=804&yearfrom=2000&yearto=2015&p=A

    Russia

    http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/app/DataView.aspx?tid=2&cid=643&yearfrom=2000&yearto=2015&p=A

    Russia has a more substantial non-white population than the other two, so I don’t doubt that you will continue to claim its overall birth rate projected at 12.6 per 1000 in 2015 could be compatible with a lower white birth rate than Ukraine. But no intelligent person will think so.

  94. The Finns were very glad to have Russia until the 1880s.

  95. Anatoly Karlin says

    Dat fall 9 months after.

    2015JAN 9.6
    2014DEC 9.9
    2014NOV 9.3
    2014OCT 11.4
    2014SEP 11.6
    2014AUG 10.3
    2014JUL 12.5
    2014JUN 10.9
    2014MAY 10.8
    2014APR 10.9
    2014MAR 10.0
    2014FEB 11.6
    2014JAN 10.7

  96. Vicki “Nuland” Nudelman should come in a plain packet with only a gruesome health warning on it.

  97. Northwestern Ukraine is actually somewhat near 2.0 in TFR.

  98. have never visited Ukraine, and now it seems I likely won’t for a rather long time – but… but…

    Given that you write about the place a lot, it would make sense for you to visit it some time. It’s strange be some sort of an expert about a place you have never actually seen. I can’t imagine you, an American citizen, getting into trouble while there as long as you don’t publically praise Putin or DNR/LNR. I’ve traveled there with Russians and even in Lviv we never had trouble (though it was prewar) – Quebec City was more hostile to Anglos than Lviv to Russians.

  99. Wiki has the most recent TFR data by oblast but it’s for 2013. Rivne has 2.0, next-door Volyn has 1.86. 2012 seems to have been the high point.

    Here’s a map of natural population growth by oblast in the former USSR; it’s from 2012:

    http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/natural-population-growth-ussr-2012.png

  100. Jaakko Raipala says

    Indeed. The entire history of Finns is about getting screwed because some Western power wants to confront Russia or because Russia wants to confront some Western power and the Russian Empire was the only long break from all that. The end of the Cold War brought us a brief hope of no longer being stuck in the middle of great power conflicts and it’s hardly surprising that the leader who seems most eager to shatter all those hopes is extremely unpopular.

    Besides that, we are neighbors so we get to watch Russian policy specifically meant for us and Russia’s current attitude is so bizarre that Putin has a lower approval rating than Stalin did. After all, this country had plenty of Reds who would have been happy to end our nightmare of geography by simply joining the Soviet Union. Moscow seems to be trying to resurrect their support by reviving their support for Finnish Reds but our Reds have almost entirely converted to the EU, LBGT and multiculturalism and it’s comical to watch Russia try to find friends among the only faction that actually wants to take an actively hostile stance on Russia.

    Meanwhile the tiny handful of old fashioned Reds who still work for Moscow to repeat Civil War propaganda about Finland being an evil White state of capitalists, landowners and Tsarist aristocrats is a complete turn-off for right-wing Finns and entirely negates all the propaganda about Russia’s “traditional values” that seems to have found listeners in more distant countries. Russia wants Reds to be their side and clearly wants to have nothing to with the rest of us but since our Reds don’t want Russia anymore, well, that leaves with us with nothing at all in common.

  101. Well I have been there, so AK can take it from me, since he knows Russia he knows its feeble reflection the Ukraine. The line from some movie about creating a male character, then taking away reason and responsibility comes to mind.

  102. Anatoly Karlin says

    I don’t actually disagree but my resources are not unlimited (translation: They are actually quite meager at the moment) and I’m afraid there are a few places higher up on my To Visit list – China is far and away #1 and has been for a long time; quite a few places in Russia itself, including Crimea for that matter (kek)…

  103. Yes, you indeed ought to visit China first, given that you write much about it. Although I suspect flights to Ukraine are dirt cheap now (as they are to Russia).

    Aeroflot has unlimited-length layovers so I used to visit Ukraine for a week by flying through Moscow and spending a couple of weeks in that city as a layover, for the price of one (cheap) ticket. Closing the airspace between the two countries has made this impossible now.