Tomi on 8/9/2022 at 19:31
That shows how desperate the Russians are. I can't see this ending well for them. Hopefully those people will turn against their new masters.
mxleader on 9/9/2022 at 05:03
It's wild to me as to how this whole war is going so badly for Russia but it really shouldn't surprise me or anyone else. The whole thing seems like a half-baked plan with halfhearted effort on Russia's part. All in all it's a complete waste of lives and resources.
lowenz on 9/9/2022 at 07:33
Welcome, welcome! Have your life destroyed and now taken away for Mother Russia.
The whole thing, to me, it's so '800 era.
Cipheron on 9/9/2022 at 21:50
(
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/09/europe/russia-officials-fined-for-putin-impeachment-call-intl/index.html)
Quote:
(CNN)Several elected officials in Russia have been summoned by police after they called for the impeachment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a rare display of dissent in the country, local deputies from the Smolninskoye municipality in the St. Petersburg area appealed to the Russian Duma to impeach the President, for what they called crimes of high treason.
The author of the appeal, Dmitry Palyuga, posted it on Twitter, alleging Putin was responsible for "(1) the decimation of young able-bodied Russian men who would serve the workforce better than the military; (2) Russia's economic downturn and brain drain; (3) NATO's expansion eastward, including adding Finland and Sweden to "double" its border with Russia; (4) the opposite effect of the "special military operation" in Ukraine."
Palyuga and fellow Deputy Nikita Yuferev later posted on Twitter a summons issued to them by the St. Petersburg police for their "discrediting of the ruling establishment".
So these "anti-Putin" politicians in Russia are still basically fascists, but they're just upset that Putin isn't winning.
None of the things they're upset about point to the fact that the entire administration is a corrupt murdering kleptocracy. The government = the mafia.
However they're not smart enough to know how things work and will soon discover how many faulty windows there are in Moscow.
mxleader on 10/9/2022 at 01:03
Mafia is right. The Russian government is probably considerably more corrupt now than it was before the wall came down.
For the life of me I can't figure out why Russia really started this campaign other than more immediate access to resources and coastal line. Honestly I think that it would not be that difficult for the US to get directly involved and kick Russia backwards without a nuclear war because I doubt Russia has any decent nuclear capability at this point. I mean they sold off so many warheads to other countries that they probably don't have much usable inventory left. I could be wrong though.
Tomi on 10/9/2022 at 19:42
Quote Posted by mxleader
For the life of me I can't figure out why Russia really started this campaign other than more immediate access to resources and coastal line.
They probably didn't expect much resistance, and thought that the "special operation" would be over in weeks. What is happening right now must be much worse than any of their worst case scenarios before the war. That'd be one hell of a miscalculation from their part, but then again Putler seems to be a delusional megalomaniac.
Quote:
I doubt Russia has any decent nuclear capability at this point. I mean they sold off so many warheads to other countries that they probably don't have much usable inventory left. I could be wrong though.
The problem is that even just one nuclear missile is one too many though. When you push back Putler hard enough, he might resort to something awful. It's his war (not that there are many others to blame) and he'll do anything to save his face. Laws and ethics have never stopped the fucker before, so if the war is going "too well" for Ukraine, it's also a bit worrying in a way!
And indeed, the strength of the Ukrainian counterattack seems to have caught pretty much everyone by surprise. Even though there's hardly any verified information available and we have to rely on rumours that are coloured by some propaganda, there must be at least
some truth in those rumours. Wouldn't it be great if the Ukrainians marched all the way to Crimea and took back what belongs to them? Or at least took back some of the areas that they've lost during the last six months. Hell, at this point I wouldn't mind if they marched all the way to Moscow and blew up the Kremlin, now that the Russians have shown their real face, but even that first scenario isn't realistically going to happen I guess.
However, it seems that the war isn't going well for Putler's boys at the moment. Their army is too strong and big to just totally collapse, but having to retreat and give back some occupied areas must be humiliating. The propaganda machine will have to work at full steam to cover that up again, and hopefully one day soon it'll crack and blow up on Putler's face.
mxleader on 10/9/2022 at 21:25
Quote Posted by Tomi
However, it seems that the war isn't going well for Putler's boys at the moment. Their army is too strong and big to just totally collapse, but having to retreat and give back some occupied areas must be humiliating. The propaganda machine will have to work at full steam to cover that up again, and hopefully one day soon it'll crack and blow up on Putler's face.
Depending on how the war goes we could end up with a similar situation like North and South Korea. Nobody really wants the war to escalate into something bigger but neither of the two sides will back down and with the Ukraine getting outside backing Russia will have a long fight much like they did in Afghanistan.
Pyrian on 11/9/2022 at 04:31
Russian propaganda sold supporters on the notion that the battle of Kyiv was a diversionary tactic (it wasn't), but now their daily briefings have literally just not mentioned the northern conflict and the fact that the Russian lines got blitzed. A lot of Russian-war-supporters are very upset about things and blaming Putin - the one thing a strongman can't do is show weakness.
I imagine Russia will soon claim that the north isn't important to their stated territorial goals (East and South), and they're probably waiting to see when and where a new front line manages to form before declaring what territory they never really meant to hold.
Cipheron on 11/9/2022 at 04:46
Quote Posted by mxleader
Depending on how the war goes we could end up with a similar situation like North and South Korea. Nobody really wants the war to escalate into something bigger but neither of the two sides will back down and with the Ukraine getting outside backing Russia will have a long fight much like they did in Afghanistan.
I'm not too sure about that.
Russia has failed to gain strategic air superiority over Ukraine, which the US did in Vietnam or the USSR did in Afghanistan.
Russia is bleeding material and forces far faster than those other wars. Newsweek says
(
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383)
Quote:
Russia Spending an Estimated $900 Million a Day on Ukraine War
At the very least, they need to match and exceed Ukrainian war inputs, and it was estimated Ukraine is spending $10 billion a month around the time of that Newsweek article. Plus I assume vast amounts of material sent to them by allies.
So let's say $30 billion a month in war spending is actually the amount Russia needs. That's $360 billion per year. But their entire GDP is only $1.4 trillion, so $1400 billion, or 25% of GDP. How long can they sustain that at the same time as their GDP and ability to purchase supplies has taken a real beating?
Well they COULD through deficit spending, keep this up. but then *Hyperinflation*. So see this as one possible outcome: total collapse of the Russian economy through mass printing of rubles for the war. Clearly, Russia is really struggling with inflation 15+% since the war, but they have balked at just printing money outright, so far. But they might get to a point where they literally can't fund the war or their other commitments without money printing.
(
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276323/monthly-inflation-rate-in-russia/)
Also, unlike a nation of 25 million people who can recruit an army, as in North Korea, Donetsk and Luhansk only account for less than 1.5 million residents.
So the war literally comes down to whether the Russian army alone can hold that *specific* patch of dirt or be pushed back into actual Russia. So if the Ukrainians are able to "push back" Russian forces as they have been, there's literally no reason for that to stop at any specific line on the map.
We'll see. There's a big counter-offensive underway which has already recaptured over 1000 sq km of territory. Will the Russians dig back in with a new line or will big chunks of their war effort just crumble?
Meanwhile don't neglect the efforts of Ukrainian partisans in disrupting supply lines, communication and Russian headquarters over weeks and weeks, that was all for this effort too.
mxleader on 11/9/2022 at 05:07
Quote Posted by Cipheron
I'm not too sure about that.
Russia has failed to gain strategic air superiority over Ukraine, which the US did in Vietnam or the USSR did in Afghanistan.
Russia is bleeding material and forces far faster than those other wars.
That makes sense. There's always the war equation of V=MD squared: Victory to the one who can throw the most mass downrange.
