In videos from the war a lot of the Russian troops are using civilian sneakers indicating that the Russian army isn't able to provide them with proper boots. Coming from a country with 6 months of below freezing temperatures and having spent a winter in the military, I'd say one of the most important factor in winter warfare is keeping your feet dry and warm, by the looks of things the Russians won't be able to do that.
what's with these villains and their leather jacket and gloves. Just missing a SS pin. He does look like one from the movie.
They don’t have any power at all, it’s a weird misconception about Russia from the West.
Did they ever? Because 15 years ago the media was definitely saying so, though it's pretty clear now they have none.
I wouldn’t say that Russia was ever an oligarchy but yeah, in mid-to-late 90’s some oligarchs like Berezovsky or Gusinsky held a notable amount of political power. One of Putin’s main political actions at the beginning of his reign was to rob them of any remaining power (the case against Khodorkovsky’s Yukos being the most well-known example).
Must be the Old Testament Yahweh, that guys an a$$hole to be fair. Pretty sure he tells people to murder and rape if I remember correctly.
While threatening everyone thinking about getting involved with nukes
Exactly... against Hitler's Reich the whole civilised world needed to mobilize all possible industrial and military capabilities. Against Putin it seems so far mostly to be enough to just dump old garbage that's already replaced or going to be replaced soon.
Imagine the PTSD levels of these brave soldiers after this is all over, huge resources will need to be put in place to work with their mental health.
Good point, war is a disaster for everyone involved. It's often overlooked sadly.
Are they not feeding their soldiers horse doses of meth? Crucial element of Nazi tactics.
Why would it put NATO in a more difficult position? No one relevant to NATO’s decision-makers would care about this artificial switch from defending to “attacking”.
I think he is right that the formal annexation is a try to prevent NATO from supporting attacks on these areas. It simply hasn't paid off as it was already confirmed that no one accepts these annexations as legal. Basically what is happening at the moment is that NATO doesn't believe that Russia is going to defend these oblasts like they would do their true own territory. But that is a gamble on both sides. Putin is bluffing (is he really?) and NATO/Ukraine is calling his bluff.
De jure it has bit in reality there aren’t any significant reserves left. One of the theories was that the newly mobilized recruits would replace regular army on secure military objects, borders etc. which would free those up to be used in Ukraine but in reality it looks more likely that the mobilized are going to be sent directly into battle.
Not really, as not everyone of them is a fighter. They need backroom staff for organizing things etc, also they can't use the Pacific and Arctic naval fleets, neither the nuclear missile bases and their troops (or they can only transfer a limited amount of them as we have already seen dead soldiers who usually serve at Plesetsk Cosmodrome). They can't use a huge part of their aviation (strategic bombers can't be used safely in Ukraine, they can't retreat all troops from "interesting" borders (be sure that Georgia is just waiting to take their territory back from Russia...).
But the thing is - significant parts of what he is claiming to be russian territory now are not only Ukrainian under international law but also controlled by Ukraine and a part of that territory was even not under Russian control at any point in time. He did it in a way that is too ludicrous to accept even if NATO were super eager to freeze the conflict for the fear of nukes - since otherwise you are basically accepting that any nuclear state can indiscriminately just declare a part of any other "non-nuclear" state to be its territory and threaten with nukes if this state and does not comply and/or NATO etc intervenes.
In Russia everything is on paper, their active armed forces amounted to around 250k pre-invasion or at least in that ballpark according to many sources, the rest probably have never held a gun in their lives, this is what they’re actually mobilizing right now.
Again, NATO can't end the war. A deal can only be made between Ukraine and Russia and everyone else might assist in talks, but that's it.
