The thing that always fascinates me is something Yuval Noah Harari wrote in one of his books: Russia has no ideology beyond a corrupt oligarchy. So basically what they're 'selling' to the rest of the world is a hatred of the West but that really doesn't amount to much if you've nothing to replace it with in terms of an ideology that people can believe in. It's like ok, you think the West is horrible, fine, so what do you believe in and how will it appeal to people?
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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As I mentioned, long time ago here, with the Russian population dwindling, low male expectancy and the Ukrainian war making a huge dent to their 20-40 years old age, in 20-30 years Russia will have problems to defend their territory, not only for the lack of people in their borders but economically speaking. China would have the resources to recover via combination of pressure/historical reasons/economic exchange. Russia would lose territories that they would not care that much and China would claim "historical territories" that it could use to give to their huge population (though they will be dwindling too).
So as long as someone is not filmed doing war crimes, they are good. Let's ignore the fact that Russia's goal of the entire war is essentially doing a genocide and every solder involved in that is part of it.
According to this Putin himself could compete. Not a great look.
Out of interest what do you think the consequences from NATO would have been?
The rumors last summer were, that Nato threatened to create a no-fly zone in Ukraine if Putin would have decided to use tactical nukes.
Mind, it may very well be a deepfake but interesting rhetoric nevertheless...wonder if this is the kind of conversations among the Russian elites and celebs.
Fair enough these are the rumours I heard. I guess other than more sanctions NATO wouldn't dare to do more otherwise it could start WW3
Irrespective of the NATO reaction, I reckon China would drop Russia instantly if it were to use a nuclear weapon in Europe.
Who knows, but once it happens the other side isn’t exactly incentivized to be tame.
Challengers are also in Ukraine. Seems like most of the western armor is in Ukraine already, apart from the Abrams of course. Now it'll depend on Ukraine to use them as efficiently as possible because it doesn't look like that they can expect another delivery soon. Even a 10 to 1 ratio wouldn't be good enough for the MBTs probably. And Russia will definetly use their air force to destroy those tanks, because they have also a big propaganda value to them.
The upcoming offensive will be probably the most important one in this war, for it will determine how long the war will continue. If it's successful, Putin would be under heavy pressure to start negotiating. If not, Kremlin gets enough propaganda material to keep brainwashing their people into continuing this war for the foreseeable future.
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As probably some of you have seen the insane footage of the ukranian soldier Ruslan Zubariev who defended his trench together with his partner with all kinds of weapons against a russian assault, killed 4 and destroyed a BMP in the process. He got recently the golden cross for his heroic action.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/03/27/7395253/
For those who don't know the video, I put it in a spoiler because he shoots one russian attacker in more or less close combat. (If it's not allowed, please delete it then)
Absolutely insane footage. One man rambo and his personal squire!
And here is the full 30 min video:
The upcoming offensive will be probably the most important one in this war, for it will determine how long the war will continue. If it's successful, Putin would be under heavy pressure to start negotiating. If not, Kremlin gets enough propaganda material to keep brainwashing their people into continuing this war for the foreseeable future.
edit:
As probably some of you have seen the insane footage of the ukranian soldier Ruslan Zubariev who defended his trench together with his partner with all kinds of weapons against a russian assault, killed 4 and destroyed a BMP in the process. He got recently the golden cross for his heroic action.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/03/27/7395253/
For those who don't know the video, I put it in a spoiler because he shoots one russian attacker in more or less close combat. (If it's not allowed, please delete it then)
Absolutely insane footage. One man rambo and his personal squire!
And here is the full 30 min video:
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What assault rifles and submachine guns are UA soldiers using?
Russia have lost 1900 tanks which are visually confirmed so I would think the count provided by Ukraine (3600) in their daily updates is likely realistic or not that far off considering that obviously not every loss is visually documented, especially if it's further into Russian occupied territories. Crazy.
Politico really dug itself a hole there, with this terrible obvious smear campaign article.
Check all the replies, how our people debunked it in matter of seconds
No cancel culture (except for when we ban free speech and prosecute regular people and artists alike for daring not to support the war)
Traditional values based on Christianity and heterosexual marriage (with Putin initiating a genocidal war, having multiple "illegitimate" children and semi-openly cheating on his wife for many years)
Focus on promoting Russian history and culture (historical fakes like 28 Panfilov's men get put into schoolbooks while things like Molotov-Ribbentrop pact or Stalin's repressions gets excluded; most decent contemporary Russian authors fled the country and Russian culture, unsurprisingly, is at its (all-time?) low in terms of popularity abroad)
Two of those aren't things that you can export to other cultures and 'offer' them to other peoples through conquest or aspiration, unlike for instance; Western Liberal values (democracy, free speech etc.) , an economic ideology (be it communism or capitalism), religious fundamentalism (an Islamic state for instance): all of those have a key ideological core that, whether people like them or hate them, is a set of beliefs people can understand. Modern Russia has nothing like that. It's kind of ideologically bankrupt.
I'd say Russia's appeal to the world is more defined by what they're against, which is the US, "the West", etc. And there's maybe a bit more receptiveness to this around the world than you might think, mainly because there are a lot of people in developing countries that are resentful of the larger, richer countries, some of which were their former colonizers.
I'm not at all arguing it's a great pitch (it has no overarching coherence) or that it's widely received well, but I just wouldn't fully dismiss how much resentment there is out there.
Yeah, that’s also my point. Original idea was to aim for the “good old Europe”, meaning mostly nationalistic conservatives, with the anti-liberal anti-immigration pro-religious system, but it kinda blew up after the beginning of the invasion where the Europe (or, rather, the “West”) ended up being Russia’s main antagonist.
https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/panzerwa...in-der-ukraine-beim-rechten-sektor-ld.1731862
Kind of a crazy story and illustrates quite well how complicated some things can be and how rules can be circumvented. As it's in German I give a very short summary:
There are sightings of Eagle armoured reconnaissance vehicles in Ukraine - Switzerland produced them, but never allowed export of these to Ukraine. How did they end up there?
It seems likely that these vehicles (possibly only one, only that single unit is confirmed) was originally exported to Denmark and after the Danish army got rid of it in 2013 they sold 27 of them to FWW in Neubrandenburg/Germany. FWW is a company focused on refurbishing military hardware. It roots back to being a part of the East German army, it was a repair center for (Soviet-made) tanks etc. FWW at the time was owned by an ex-Bundeswehr officer who owns quite a bunch of companies.
Later on he sold FWW to General Dynamics European Land Systems, but according to GDELS the Eagle vehicles weren't part of the deal, so here the official track got lost on them. It's possible that he kept them privately or by using another company and then sold it without permission of either Switzerland or Germany to Ukraine fighters.
So now Ukraine has armoured vehicles made in Switzerland because a shady German businessman (ex-soldier active in the days of the Cold War and probably quite motivated to finally deal some damage to the Russians) doesn't care about the law.
Kind of a crazy story and illustrates quite well how complicated some things can be and how rules can be circumvented. As it's in German I give a very short summary:
There are sightings of Eagle armoured reconnaissance vehicles in Ukraine - Switzerland produced them, but never allowed export of these to Ukraine. How did they end up there?
It seems likely that these vehicles (possibly only one, only that single unit is confirmed) was originally exported to Denmark and after the Danish army got rid of it in 2013 they sold 27 of them to FWW in Neubrandenburg/Germany. FWW is a company focused on refurbishing military hardware. It roots back to being a part of the East German army, it was a repair center for (Soviet-made) tanks etc. FWW at the time was owned by an ex-Bundeswehr officer who owns quite a bunch of companies.
Later on he sold FWW to General Dynamics European Land Systems, but according to GDELS the Eagle vehicles weren't part of the deal, so here the official track got lost on them. It's possible that he kept them privately or by using another company and then sold it without permission of either Switzerland or Germany to Ukraine fighters.
So now Ukraine has armoured vehicles made in Switzerland because a shady German businessman (ex-soldier active in the days of the Cold War and probably quite motivated to finally deal some damage to the Russians) doesn't care about the law.
What are the chances this shady German businessman gets sued or something?
Not to be too conspiracy minded, but this does seem like something right up CIA's alley. Even potentially letting Switzerland know what they're doing but keeping it all deniable.
Politico really dug itself a hole there, with this terrible obvious smear campaign article.
Check all the replies, how our people debunked it in matter of seconds
Shows that we have been doing things right. Pushing the right buttons and someone is pissed off enough to run this info operation stated before. I fecking love it!
It was a terrible job enough that everyone threw them under the bus.
The man is fecking sick, but so are those many still willing to follow into the bullshit.
Over 7,000 US service members were killed in post-9/11 wars and over 30,000 more died by suicide. Go figure what the numbers of KIA and suicides will look like in comparison in Russia.
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Very little I think. Switzerland of course is investigating this now, as the delivery clearly was in breach of existing contracts which require Switzerland to approve further exports from Germany for another country. In principle it would also be in breach of German law as Germany needs to approve such exports as well (but likely would have without problems), but the thing is the lack of proof. There is no proof that the Eagle spotted in Ukraine really is out of FWW stock and Ukraine is unlikely to support any investigation on this by handing over details about the vehicle.
So as long as there are no such details available for prosecution there simply is a lack of proof, Thomas Bockhold can simply claim "well that's not my Eagle" and that's it and everybody in Germany would likely be happy if there just isn't much talk about this. It seems to be a Swiss issue, not something Germans really care about, or if they do might silently approve of this action anyway.
The eternal war between Oceania and Eastasia. Or was it against Eurasia?
Its the same story for any authoritarian state. They are absoloutley dependant on some external threath, real or imagined. If you look back you see that this conditioning has gone on for decades in Russia. They've been fed nonsense about western "degeneracy" for years, its just after the invasion it got ramped up to child eating, peadophile, satanic nazis.
As ridiculous as it sounds, this kind of propaganda is depressingly effective. It builds a narrative of "us and them" and it makes people forget how shite their own lives are
Between 40,000 and 60,000 dead according to UK estimates.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64685428
Other than those already KIA and the ones to come, the larger problem will be the upcoming wave of suicides should those soldiers come back home with survivor's guilt and other PTSD symptoms while VA are non-existent.
The more desperate Russia becomes on the battlefield, the more they talk about nuclear weapons. Prepare for daily nuclear threats when Ukraine launches its offensive and starts to liberate regions.
I am not sure about that one. There are quite a lot of reports about Russians getting really close to the city centre and the general staff confirming their progress.
Interestingly though, just recently (today or yesterday I think) Zelenskyy spoke how important it is to hold Bakhmut which if the situation was really getting bad, I would expect him to do the opposite and downplay the importance of it.
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-zelenskyy-russia-putin-bakhmut-2334ec3a5b74d3cc3c4e012db71920e5
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