Russia-Ukraine battle newest information: assaults intensify round Kyiv; battle at ‘strategic turning level’, says Zelenskiy – stay | World information

After an preliminary honeymoon interval with the west, Russian president Vladimir Putin later soured on it. He has clawed again Russian relevance by tearing up world norms, writes the Guardian’s world affairs editor Julian Borger.

When the primary McDonald’s in Moscow opened 32 years in the past, the road of Russians ready outdoors was a whole bunch of metres lengthy, and there have been lengthy queues once more this week for a final Completely satisfied Meal and a slice of historical past, because the fast-food big closes its doors in Russia.

The shuttering of 850 McDonald’s franchises across the nation is meant to be short-term, however nothing concerning the battle in Ukraine and the resultant exodus of western corporations suggests the rift will probably be healed any time quickly.

McDonald’s’ departure, like its arrival, is about much more than burgers. The golden arches of historical past, that when gave the impression to be bounding ahead, now look like turning full circle and threatening to take Russia again in time.

An city shopper tradition constructed round Visa and Mastercard, Ikea, Nike, Apple, Zara and Netflix has evaporated in a number of days.




Russians queue outside a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Moscow, 1990.

Russians queue outdoors a McDonald’s quick meals restaurant in Moscow, 1990. {Photograph}: Nameless/AP

“There’s simply this sickening feeling that they’re going to return, to not the Nineties, however to the Seventies whenever you didn’t have entry to those issues, and whenever you had been residing remoted from the remainder of the world,” mentioned Prof Angela Stent, a former nationwide intelligence officer for Russia on the Nationwide Intelligence Council, now at Georgetown College.

The looped trajectory of the previous three a long time has been pushed by numerous disparate forces, inside and outdoors Russia, financial and political, and in the end very private: the ambitions, fears and impulses of Vladimir Putin.

When the primary McDonald’s opened in Russia, the Soviet Union nonetheless existed. “We didn’t know what quick meals was,” wrote Mitya Kushelevich, a photographer, in a recollection in the Guardian. “We thought it in all probability tasted like freedom and we needed to pattern it.”

To many individuals, it tasted like the tip of the chilly battle, if not the tip of historical past. However whereas Russians needed to eat capitalism, they had been cautious from the beginning to not be consumed by it.

“Folks misunderstood: Russians didn’t need to be Individuals, and so they didn’t need to be like America, however they needed the identical stuff: the denims, the cigarettes, the chewing gum, the burgers,” mentioned Fiona Hill, who was an change pupil in Russia within the late Eighties and went on to turn into an intelligence analyst on Russia after which senior director for Europe and Russia within the White Home.

Nautilus Pompilius, a Russian rock group, had successful music on the time known as Goodbye America, with lyrics that mirrored that scepticism, about being “taught for thus lengthy to like your forbidden fruits” however discovering that “your ripped denims have turn into too small for me”.

The honeymoon with westernisation was short-lived. The shock transition from communism to a market financial system, shepherded by a liberal authorities with western consultants, was a catastrophe, producing oligarchs, lawlessness and poverty.

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