Yeah, and they would use them if they had foreign armies pushing into their territory.
But no efforts were made to really democratise and modernise Russia - they let oligarchs rise up from criminal gangs, etc., it'd have been better to have a more controlled process like Glasnost.
Armenia never relied on the EU's support lol - the West has always supported Turkey (even back in the Cold War), which supports Azerbaijan.
That is why Armenia is in CSTO.
No-one in Europe is going to war over Taiwan, it's thousands of kilometres away. Whereas Russia has carried out multiple attacks in the UK, and shot down a civilian airliner full of Dutch nationals, and borders many EU nations to which it is hostile.
Spain and the UK have no real digital ID (Spain has some horrible Java certificate based system, but you can't use it for much). I think Germany's digital ID is in a similar position too although it's been many years since I lived there now.
The UK is in the same position as the US with no national ID or residence registration at all.
Only the Netherlands, Finland and Scandinavia really have it sorted out for banking and government services.
I can't vote anyway, because I never voted back in my passport home country. Despite holding EU citizenship and living in the EU.
It sucks that voting rights aren't just tied to paying taxes - the EU should really sort that out, so it functions more like a whole citizenship wherever you live, like the USA is.
Yeah, my ex was scammed this way too - exactly like Cory describes, they happened to ring right as she was going through the whole visa and tax process and pretend to be regarding the IRS, etc. and since she was dealing with a lot of similar calls it was an easy mistake to make.
More services available online and e-mail communication makes this a bit better.
Just a few countries like the US are really backward in terms of accessible banking - mainly due to having no federal ID, residence registration, etc. too on top of outdated bureaucracy.
For BankID it somewhat does, because only registered services can make the request - so they'd need to register a scam service and then use that. Which also makes it an easier job for anti-fraud police.
They could hold the current borders for peace. That is the most likely outcome.