Thread by @TrentTelenko

When I talk about 'Economic incentives in the Russian economy.'

This is a good explanation of what it means, further expanded in a 🧵 below👇

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https://twitter.com/OscarNMFranklin/status/1512817519383519233

It is also a an explanation in a tweet why Ukraine is less corrupt than Russia.

And that the DC & EU Defense analysts who said it was the reverse showed they were idiots

Look, the Euromaidan revolution heavily disrupted the Donbas Russian speaking predatory wealth extraction
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...mafia around then-president Viktor Yanukovych.

They lost the ability to do further predatory wealth extraction.

This is one of the reasons why Ukraine became such a force on the world grain markets.

Ukrainian businessmen could import foreign capital equipment with the
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expectation that the predatory wealth extraction wouldn't happen when they improved their grain harvest & export infrastructure.

Since then-president Viktor Yanukovych was a creature of Putin. The wealth extracted by the Donbas Russian speaking Ukrainian Mafia was shared

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...with Putin.

This, I think, is the real reason Putin is so mad with the Euromaidan Ukrainians.

They stole from him his 'rightful predatory wealth extraction mafia graft' that Yanukovych was delivering.

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This, BTW, doesn't mean all predatory wealth extraction was removed from the Ukrainian economy. The election of Zelensky in 2019 shows it was not.

The thing is, Ukraine was building it's non-corrupt 'civic virtue' in that 2014-2022 time period which, in the end, was the

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...biggest threat to Putin's Russia.

Freedom anywhere is a threat to tyranny everywhere.

And the fate of Yanukovych was something Putin could not let stand. Hence, the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine.

7/end