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Russian Official Proposes Road That Could Connect London To NYC
An anonymous reader writes There's great news coming out of Russia for epic road trip lovers. Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed building a highway that would reach from London to Alaska via Russia, a 13,000-mile stretch of road. "This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project," the Siberian Times quoted Yakunin. "The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies."
Vodka kills. Stay OFF of Russian roads!
They don't have the funds for that also that part ak does not really have a year round road link to the lower 48 as well.
It's a nifty idea, but the major problem is that it would have to go through Russia.
Why would anyone drive East when going West is a shorter distance?
Summation 2
Actually, they may even have the money. They just have to put Yakunin in jail and get back what he stole -- for himself, and for his boss. http://navalny-en.livejournal....
I don't understand what they are trying to do. Can someone give me a car analogy?
Seems like a logical first step.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The US would of course have to block the road where it hits NYC to prevent trade with them... leading to a 13-thousand mile traffic jam ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Why not go all the way around? After all it's not much further from there.
"/." - A true I.T. standard where articulation trumps good ideas.
Let private corporations find the money. Keep your dirty hands away from my wallet.
this is a fine idea as long as there are well separated bike lanes along the whole of it. aftert all, the age of the car is coming to an end and we have to plan for this road to eventually handle mostly bicycle traffic.
So...a train company president is suggesting a road be built...
Couldn't be that he's waiting for someone to suggest that it would be better to build, oh I don't know...a train line instead?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
a 13,000-mile stretch of road
The article:
A theoretical drive (as fancifully calculated by CNN) from London to Alaska via Moscow might cover about 12,978 kilometers (8,064 miles).
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
Now I know where the movie inspiration came from.
I can imagine my kids sitting in the back at mile 500 asking 'are we there yet'... no kids, only 12,500 f*ck'n miles to go
In the plus column:
It does mention Yakunin is considered a likely successor to Putin, so if you consider the excursions of the current Russian leader, perhaps this dreamer is still an improvement.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Great, just need Autobahn-esque speeds to make the journey in less than 5 days!
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Snowpiercer!
The headline says NYC, the summary says Alaska, but even that's not another 5k miles. And there might already be a road there.
I think I'm almost as confused as the author.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm worse at geography than I thought...
It's only 58 miles. I'm sure a tunnel could be built. We have the engineering know-how, machinery and so on from the Channel tunnel (which is much shorter of course).
Russian roads across the bulk of the country are shit. And they haven't even built a decent interstate system going across the country. And they can't even properly maintain the shit roads they already have. And the country is NOTORIOUS for intentional accident scams (why do you think that they have those dash cams?). And a sizable percentage of drivers there are drunk and/or crazy.
In short, who the fuck would want to drive across Russia if the alternative of even a slow boat is available?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
... and they're talking about bridging Alaska and Siberia....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Highway
The Russian's don't give a damn about connecting London to North America.
What would be of more importance to them is better transport infrastructure between European Russia and the Russian Far East. Across much of thet route, roads are simply non-existant even today. If you drive from Moscow to Vladivostok then you're not taking a journey, you're mounting an expedition
Why would they want this infrastructure? Well large numbers of Chinese are moving north to settle in Russia. There's speculation that Chinese will be a majority in the Russian Far East few decades. See:
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat... http://newobserveronline.com/r...
Better commincations across Russia will help them counter this and help tie the country together.
I see someone dusted off this old boondoggle again.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I like the idea of being able to drive from LA to Tokyo.
And occasionally somebody proposes a space elevator too (which, based on current technologies, is only slightly more infeasible.)
The economic benefits of such a road would be minimal. Seriously, somehow transporting goods from Russia to the US via truck, (but only during the parts of the year when the road isn't blocked due to snow) is supposed to make sense, when we have perfectly good trains and container ships that can do the job just as quickly for far less money?
This makes the fanciful "Hyperloop" project look like a cost-effective means of transportation in comparison. That takes talent.
While still ridiculously expensive, a high-speed (or even regular-speed) rail line linking Asia and North America would at least be a little more practical. No need to build (and man, and resupply) gas stations/rest stops/etc every 50 miles or so across thousands of miles of frozen tundra. I'm not sure how far a train can go without needing to refuel, but they never have to stop to pee.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Submerged Floating Tunnel. Eventually, this is how we are going to span long distances of water.
This is by far one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard.
It takes about 30h to drive from London to Moscow.
Not to mention thousands of cars doing the same thing would make the carbon footprint higher. It'd be quick, and sadly more CO2 friendly to fly.
There's a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it's all right, baby it's all right
And it's very far away
But it's growing day by day
And it's all right, baby it's all right
Would you like to come along?
You could help me sing this song
And it's all right, baby it's all right
They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you
And it's all right, baby it's all right
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
Every damned fool who was lucky enough or criminal enough to make oodles of money thing they are visionary thinkers too and come up with grandiose projects. Let us award Vladimir Yakunin, the Wannabe-Elon of the Year award.
BTW China just demonstrated the Steel-Silk Road, a rail link between China and Spain via old Orient Express route via Samarkand. Trans Siberian railroad links to Chinese network. Chunnel connects London to European network. There is a railroad in Alaska, but not sure it connects to Canadian national network. Building rail links and putting a roof over them to keep out the snow and and fence to keep out the animals, to provide overhead electric power, to make it an year around service would be a lot more practical. Steel-on-steel rolling friction is much lower than steel hull on water drag. Done correctly, it could peel off a huge chunk of ship borne Pacific freight, reduce the over reliance of West Coast ports. Essentially it would become a conveyor of 40 foot containers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
.. soil (so it is scam)
some things we may not have considered:
1. Having to learn the phrase "can i have the key to the bathroom" in 7 languages.
2. understanding, yet never being entirely certain, when left or right lane driving applies but being totally sure your wife is probably wrong.
3. switching road trip snacks from potato chips, to Kotlety, to pea pats, to landjager, and finally back to potato chips but now you have to call them crisps while youre stuck in gridlock piccadilly traffic.
4. having to keep multiple bribe currencies for various checkpoints and rolling infractions.
5. The phrasebook doesnt have anything to get hungarian insurance scammers off the bonnet of your car at 3 am
6. GPS may not be capable of routing you safely around a drunken and somewhat bloated Jeremy Clarkson as he hurls homophobic remarks at you from the doorway of a run down pub in leeds.
Good people go to bed earlier.
No one is going to get involved in a big project like that unless they're comfortable with the Russians remaining reasonable.
We're not seeing that. So... yet again, russia is fucking themselves out of fiancial opportunities.
Think of where Russia is... the land. It is extremely valuable. And do they use it effectively? Are trains running from China to Europe over Russian rail? Not really. Everyone bypasses them because they're too crazy and stupid to realize that their behavior damns them to being a backwater even though they're in the fucking middle of everything.
We trust the fucking Saudis more than we trust the Russians... and they are basically funding most of the crazy terrorism we're dealing with. That's how little we trust the Russians.
And amongst that, the Russians want to know if we want to build an expensive road through their territory? Why would we do that? That would just give them leverage. They already give us shit about the generally meaningless space launches. They try and exert leverage everywhere. Especially where it is extremely stupid to do it.
I'd love for the Russians to not be fucking retards. I really would. I'd love for us all to be happy hands across the universe. But who is holding their breath for that to happen?
Till then... what evhs.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Obi-Wan Kenobi already did this: Long Way Round (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-0uBcnmE2M&safe=active)
The connection between Russia and Americas at the closest point has been suggested many times before, from tunnels to bridges.
Here is a rough tunnel design suggested
The part that will be the one of the hardest is getting America connected to America, because the road system up North is hilarious.
And likewise, getting Russia connected to Russia, since a lot of the middle is empty and hardly road-filled.
Creating new roads could be a good idea to create new areas to build towns and cities around, or re-use current routes which would lead to massively more traffic and almost certainly more accidents on ageing roads.
Both of those options are a nightmare, one budget, one health.
Of course, if Russia has no public health service, the increase in accidents could be a good thing, free money!
Initially the best idea would be starting off with a 4-lane toad, keeping empty space for expansion to 6-8 in the future. Hell, even a 2-lane road would be useful, but no.
They're taking a page out of the Roman Empire's book: build the roads the army will use to conquer far away lands. Impressive!
We have dealt with tougher obstacles for engineering before. China is going to face far harder engineering problems with their Panama Canal replacement than bridging the US and Russia.
Realistically, this might be a very good thing, although the ideal would not just be a roadway, but several rails (freight and passenger), communications, maybe even oil pipelines. There was a proposal a few years back of having these form of super-duper-highways criss-cross the US.
As for detractors, other than the cost of engineering, what harm would this do? Almost none. On the other hand, a road or railway that could get someone from NYC to well into Russia can be useful. It would benefit the US because it would give Russia and Canada easy avenues for tourism, especially to get people to visit cities other than Moscow [1]. It would only improve trade, maybe even keep US-Russia relations at a usable level.
[1]: Places like Murmansk, Akademgorodok, and even Vladivostok come to mind, as well as Saint Petersburg.
Russian made cars might get 13,000 miles to a tank of gas, but us capitalist pigs have to stop every 400 miles for gas. Even if it was a train tunnel, no train on this planet can go 13,000 miles on one load of fuel. Then you have the pesky problem of ventilation.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hopefully it will have Tesla superchargers along the route :-)
Occupation and annexation of Crimea already a staggering success, Russia must be looking into organizing a referendum in Alaska.
Peace-loving Americans will not be objecting — a referendum conducted under occupation going in favor of the occupying power? What "conflict of interest"?
The knuckle-dragging haters will be neutralized by polite men with Russian accents wearing indiscernible uniforms...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
it would be better to build, oh I don't know...a train line instead?
There is a 16,000 mile train link from China to Spain. It takes 4 months for goods to arrive and they are subject to extremes of weather that make a lot of shipments impractical. It's also slower and more expensive than sending goods by sea. Any fixed link is going to be subject to delays, breakdowns, politics and difficulty in "overtaking" slower vehicles ahead of you.
It sounds like a neat idea, but we've already got better solutions: depending on whether you want speed or low cost.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Has this guy not seen the Russian dash cam videos?
https://www.youtube.com/result...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Who would pay for that? The US and Russia can't even maintain the existing roads they have.
At least Sarah Palin would not only see Russia from her house but be able to drive there for the family vodka.
OTOH, the Crimea was a gift while Alaska was just a cheap sell, but nonetheless, one should be careful with infrastructure supporting tanks.
Every one color revolution begins from requests to punish corruption and ends in total chaos. I don't need a color revolution in Soviet Russia.
They won't have to worry about spilling their vodka when they all have Google(tm) self-driving cars. Of course, they'll have to add additional collision avoidance code to miss hitting the occasional bear, moose & flying squirrel.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Someone is going to drive 3/4 of the way around the world to avoid a 6 hour flight? Very efficient.
I think they played way too much Ticket to Ride. There's no bonus points for the longest route in real life.
First we have to figure out a way to make ship captains not drag their anchors behind their ships constantly. The number of undersea cables cut by these bozos is just depressing.
I read the internet for the articles.
And they haven't even built a decent interstate system going across the country. And they can't even properly maintain the shit roads they already have.
Wikipedia don't seem to have caught up with reality:
"Total 17,098,242 (Crimea not included) km2"
" - 2015 estimate 143,975,923[4] (not including the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol) (9th)"
8.42 people / km^2.
Spain is supposed to have good roads?
"Total 504,645[2] km2 (52nd)"
"2014 estimate 46,464,053[3] (30th)"
92 people / km^2.
As cool as this would be, this guy throws this idea out in one form or another every few years and it never goes beyond some pie-in-the-sky "plan". Call me when the construction begins on the bridge.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
1. Build road through Russia
2. Rob people traveling between Europe and the US.
3. Profit
Russia relies not on roads but on railways.
This would be cool. You could make it the automobile equivalent of hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The goal is to export Russian drivers, to scam accident foreigners. They want to become the Nigerian scammers of the roadways.
Presumably this road would need to provide access to filling stations along it's length.
Never before has everyone on /. agreed that a proposal couldn't possibly be any good. When do the shovels hit the ground?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Floating? The Bering Strait's maximum depth is only 49 meters. Remember, recently it was land bridge. Resting on the bottom, or buried in a trench looks like a much better option.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
He was probably drunk when he suggested it.
I mean seriously, a road?!?!?!
What is this, the Twentieth Century?
And what is your point here? That the population density of Spain is higher than the one of Russia?
New York City is now in Alaska? No wonder this winter was so nasty.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
When a headline says a road is proposed to connect "London to NYC", it's hard to imagine that could possibly mean anything else but the truly mind-bogglingly dumb idea of creating a road all the way across the Atlantic ocean. Which would be hilarious, but rather monumentally unlikely.
The actual proposal, which I've seen before, so it's not like it's a totally new idea, would connect Alaska with Russia, thus connecting the western US with Asia. Would still be stupidly expensive, but not *impossibly* so, and would be fantastic for shipping. But I can't imagine it would be the best way to ship something from NYC to London or reverse? They're both basically coastal on the Atlantic, and we're talking about connecting the *Pacific*. It would connect London to NYC in the same way that it would connect Denver to Zimbabwe.
I don't think it's a terrible idea, though.
Have gnu, will travel.
Considering that Russia has so far failed to build a 600km highway connecting its two biggest cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg), this doesn't even rise to a level of a sad joke.
I didn't realize putting thieves and liars in prison for their crimes is 'revolution'. In my dictionary this is called 'due process' and is a function of a properly functioning government.
You guys are missing the obvious solution: make like the Japanese and their artificial islands. Fill in the Bering Strait and just build a paved road on top of the ridgeline you just created between SIberia and AK.
WCPGW?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It's an f-ing road! What's with the BS corporate buzzwords?
I didn't realize putting thieves and liars in prison for their crimes is 'revolution'. In my dictionary this is called 'due process' and is a function of a properly functioning government.
Yes, but in these cases it is less about due process and rule of law and more about a shift in power between rival factions. Sort of like one Chinese Communist party memeber being kicked out of the party and then tried and convicted of corruption that all the other party members are also part of. Or Hitler having somebody executed for murder when he was probably the one that gave the order to do the killing in the first place.
My point was that if there's lots of places where roads possibly could be needed in Russia and it's a small country with a worse economy then that will be harder to do.
Sure anyone can still argue "so how should they be able to do / afford this project then?"
Well it's just supposed to be one road isn't it? One road along whole of Russia I think they could manage ..
Also I would assume their will to be part of it is to be more connected to the world and have better communications and transportation which could help grow their economy and pay for it. .. possibly also road taxes.
OK boys.. We need $3000 for gas, 6 oil changes en route and a new set of tires when we get home.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
... And in the Arctic Bind them.
surely an underwater journey would be measured in leagues.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Pretend you wanted to drive 8000 miles. The IRS expects that the cost per mile allowance is $0.50 based on gas, oil, tires, vehicle depreciation.
To drive those 8000 miles the apportioned cost would be $4,000. You can get 10 round-trip tickets London-NY off-season and 5 on-season for that.
During your trip if you follow your manufacturer's recommendations you'd need to change your oil three times. So would everyone else. At equal intervals. What a pile up at the mechanic at 3000m, 6000m, and just past it. Yuck!
If you have average street tires then the trip there and back would kill half your tires (so they only have half left on them you need to replace them on this trip).
If the speed limit was set at 100MPH and there were no stops you'd actually maintain that, but given that you will stop to stretch your legs, etc. that average goes down to about 80. That's 100 hours of driving, which with two drivers and sleeping in the car is 5 solid days. What's the value of 10-man-days lost?
Finally even if all those things were true, the largest cargo that could be transported is a triple-tractor trailer -- 3 containers. This ship can do 18,400 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.... You'd need 6,133 trucks to equal that and it would take them 5 days. The cargo ship can make it in 3-4.
This is a nonstarter from every possible fiscal angle for the end-users, even if the road magically arrived today.*
E
* note that I didn't address at all that by the time your European car reached the US, it would not be homologated for street use by the DOT so you'd need to rent a car here anyway, and vice versa.
See the rusting Soviet navy! Fish for Salmon.
You realize that everything Siberia has (except for a rusting navy) Alaska and Canada also have? The world has no shortage of cold wilderness.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
...where it takes a couple of oil changes to go from point A to point B. Great thinking, people.
Assuming they can even afford to do such a thing, what idiot in their right mind would willingly travel through Russia when it's run by psycho madmen?
in these cases it is less about due process and rule of law and more about a shift in power between rival factions
Not quite, there is a nuance, at least on some levels.
In China, corruption scandals are a tool of power redistribution, because China still has a collective system of government and public opinion matters, albeit not quite like it does in the West. Hence, a systematic corruption fighter is a nuisance, but not an enemy of the state by definition, at least on the face of it.
In Russia, things have gone the other way, towards a very authoritarian regime where the system is based on shameless corruption, by design. Speaking against corruption there is speaking against the system and hence a crime against the 'stability', the Motherland and the 'Russian world', all synthesized in the image of the all-powerful, America-crushing superhero Putin, who provides 'order' and helps the country to 'rise from its knees', where it was put by its eternal enemies -- the evil jews and the Americans -- in the early 90s.
Therefore the institutions of the state (and sources of corruption), the state media and the 'public' opinion are always by definition against the corruption fighter. The latter isn't the occasionally useful nuisance, but an outright enemy that has to be destroyed. Of course, as an enemy, he/she's also in league with the 'foreign enemies' and is on their payroll and so a traitor.
Hence the GP's comment about not wanting a 'revolution' -- the fight against the state of corruption is presented (and apparently perceived by many) as a threat to the government and the order, and this line of thinking has gained a significant traction in Russia, at least on the surface.
We'll see how it will survive the economic hardships that Russia unleashed on itself starting the war in Ukraine.
Snowpiercer for real
Yeah, and did you SEE the "roads" he encountered trying to do it?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And you've probably reduced the value of a new vehicle by more than 15%. Another $4500 for a $30,000 car.
I think it would be one HELL of an epic trip to drive from my home state of New York to London! However, traveling through the rural areas of Russia and some what near the "...stan" countries with NY license plates would scare the crap out of me. Thing is, I think when in Europe, driving around with NY plates would be one sweet conversation starter!
Never going to happen.
1. Who would want to drive that far?
2. Siberian weather.
3. Russian drivers (have you seen their dashcams?)
4. Different driving laws.
5. Giving up control to Russia
Sounds like an invasion strategy to me. This strategy always worked well for me in the game Civilization 2!
There's a reason why civilized countries have something called statutes of limitations. That is, even if you commit a crime, after a certain period of time you're guaranteed not to be prosecuted. This provides certainty, and also prevents the state, which didn't see fit to prosecute something earlier, from using their abstention as a lever to manipulate people. Heck, in Common Law there's a defense called latches, which takes into account not only time but other considerations, and can be used to defend yourself long before any statutory limitation period has expired.
This is especially important in Russia. Yes, lots of people ended up accumulating a ridiculous amount of wealth by illegally or corruptly appropriating state assets. But those days are gone. What's done is done. Now you have an established business community. And the government is quite clearly using the threat of prosecution to manipulate and cajole people. It's a corruption of not just state power, but of the very function of the law.
What's the function of law, fundamentally, but to provide consistency and order in the relationships among people. It's a corruption of the law for it to be used to create uncertainty, doubt, and fear, regardless of the culpability of any criminal.
Your dictionary wasn't written in the US, I take it.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Love those Alaskan earthquakes. Might make that tunnel/trench interesting to travel. How much pressure is 49 meters of water anyway?
You should keep this in mind -- Russians embraced dash cams well before the US did, and in considerably greater numbers (mine is still the only one I've seen in my smallish town of 3000 people to this very day.) There were motivating insurance / liability / responsibility issues -- even some fairly widespread scamming. This inevitably means that more accidents have been and are being recorded, and of course, to make the video, the most sensationally fucktarded ones are chosen. Don't you believe for a moment that US drivers don't do similarly crazy things. On a drive back from Billings, Montana to my home, about 300 miles, on a snowy, icy day, we counted over fifty cars in the median, one- and two-car accidents, plus one really serious multiple-vehicle one involving a semi. There were actually more people in the median, having slid there, than there were on the road with us (I drive a 3/4 ton 4WD drive pickup, and you'd better believe I was in 4WD and going s...l...o...w... Horrific accidents make the news fairly often too, here and elsewhere -- but no dash cams. I have yet to "run into" dash cam footage for a US accident on the news though there must be some out there somewhere.
Face it. If Russians were as crazy as that video makes them seem, there wouldn't be very many Russians left.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The US would of course have to block the road where it hits NYC to prevent trade with them... leading to a 13-thousand mile traffic jam ?
I see you are not familiar with the Cross Bronx "Expressway". The US would simply need to make the highway end on the Cross Bronx. Formal trade barriers are unnecessary.
Unless the thieves and liars are the government, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
First we have to figure out a way to make ship captains not drag their anchors behind their ships constantly. The number of undersea cables cut by these bozos is just depressing.
mines.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
In the "New Cold War" climate? This is just trolling to keep your mind off the invasion of Ukraine.
Also 95% of that imaginary road runs thru absolutely nowhere anybody cares about.
Take a plane. Sheesh.
I'd like to think that there were 3 stages of Russian capitalism:
1) Wild capitalism where everybody wanted to steal. It ended about 2000.
2) The bureaucratic system where the task to sell Russia and transfer money to USA was a priority, and Putin being not an absolute dictator would give bureaucracy a limited right to steal in exchange to loyalty. It ended with Magnitsky affair when USA gave a clear signal that Russians will not be allowed to incorporate their money to the Western economy. We Russians should be thankful to USA for this signal.
3) The bureaucratic system with the task to entrench itself in Russia.
It has been successfully shown that ALL so called "corruption fighters" are not independent entities. All they have got some money from Uncle Sam. They may be innocent old women that fight the corrupt local major and don't know who helps them with some petty money but all these transactions are traced to Uncle Sam.
And the last; Ukraine. It was NOT Russia who began a Donbass war. It was a local Russian movement that falsely believed that Russia will do for them what she did for Crimeans. And Putin possibly had not enough balls to help them with anything except humanitarian convoys. (My opinion is that Putin simply waits the USA-induced transformation of Ukraine goes to the logical end. It's his style).
Way to redirect attention to something stupid instead of something else that is going on. Good Try Russia.
till south tip via mouth of med sea..then truly inter civilization.
It was NOT Russia who began a Donbass war.
Yes, it was Russia. The war in Eastern Ukraine was started by a Mr. Igor Girkin, a Russian, allegedly ex-military, a war criminal from the Yugoslavia wars, who also participated in several of Russia's armed conflicts (Chechnya, Georgia, etc.), and who entered into Ukraine across a Russian border, on orders from Russia.
He had done the same thing just two months before that, in Crimea. The only difference between his first and second marches was the changed attitude of the international community, which made Putin reconsider and change his plans.
Along with him came a group of Russian soldiers and officers, allegedly 'on leave' and a lot of serious firepower: large guns, tanks, armored vehicles. The Russian regime has tried to deny this, but the evidence that a huge amount of Russian military equipment and military are pouring through the border is overwhelming, the confessions of Girkin notwithstanding.
Girkin's activities in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were financed with Russian money, partly by a Mr. Malofeev, a Russian oligarch with ties to the regime, who got his initial capital from state banks.
Mr. Girkin himself addressed your theory about this non-existing local Russian movement long ago. Here are the relevant quotes from his interview in the Zavtra newspaper:
Q: What about the phases of war: A: At first, nobody [neither Ukraine's armed forces nor the separatists] wanted to fight. The first weeks went with the two sides talking to each other, trying to get the other side to change views. In Slovyansk, the separatists and the army were very careful using arms... The Ukrainian army wasn't eager to fight at all.
Q: Your role wasn't only military, you were the source of ideas for establishing a government, right? A: At the time, I understood well that the [regions of] Donetsk and Lohansk can't fight on their own. We went in with the understanding that the Crimea situation will be repeated, and the Russian army will enter [openly]... My task there was not to take the power, my task was to guard the [separatist] republic
Still, it was me who squeezed the trigger of war. If our team hasn't crossed the border [to go into Ukraine], it would have ended like it did in Kharkiv or Odessa, a few people shot, burned or imprisoned. It would have stopped there. The pendulum of war, which is still going was released by us.
. But those days are gone.
Bullshit, Yakunin's offshore companies are syphoning money off the Russian Railways with his blessing as we speak.
Now, if London accepts the challenge, they should propose to build a bridge to NYC across the Atlantic.
"There's a reason why civilized countries have something called statutes of limitations"
There are a number of crimes so serious that there is no statute of limitations.