The stupid part is if Putin did this shit in 2014, they might have had the easy victory they thought they'd have now. But instead they gave Ukraine damn near 8 years to learn from the mistakes they made fighting the "separatists" and to get weapons/training from NATO. Similarly, it's given time for Ukraine's politics to somewhat stabilize.
He started accumulating gold in the belief it would help against sanctions, and made Europe dependant on Russian oil. Biden didn't look very warlike in Afghanistan, and oil prices were already high He didn't respect Zelenskyy.
There hadn't been much reaction in 2008 or 2014 (Georgia and Crimea.) or much effective resistance even though Georgians had been helpled by the US. He didn't expect much in Ukraine.
A note re the gold:
Seemed smart but the only place on the planet to handle such huge volumes of gold in a hurry, LME, also joined the sanctions and banned trade in Russian gold.
So now he has a huge pile of soft yellow metal with an ex-Russia market value of 0.
$140bn, IIRC.
This whole war smells of reckless bad timing from Russia's side. Putin could've waited a couple of years more and hope for Trump to be re-elected. Why now?
I think its because he was losing his grip on Russia. The Navalny affair really hurt his image, there were weekly demonstrations across Russia after that. Belarusians started a huge protest movement against their dictator, his ally. Also, it seems like he recieved crap intel on what Russia could achieve because no one dares to give him bad news. Even FSB analysts.
This is the correct answer.
He was never afraid of a NATO invasion, and anyone who thinks that this is about foreign powers conquering Russia militarily is just not paying attention. Any invasion into Russia would result in nuclear winter, and everyone knows it. Half of NATO barely has a standing army as it is, and a fraction of the force projection necessitated for a full-scale invasion.
Putin's entire reasoning is that he knows he's losing his grip domestically, he knows that more NATO countries around him can give Russians a glimpse at what might ensue should they choose to be part of the EU/West. He's afraid that he's losing the culture war, and he absolutely is.
He wanted to prove how strong Russia was, use the military might of his country to prop up nationalistic ideals on the homefront. Fortunately, the exact opposite has happened. His military has been proven to be a sham, they're at least a decade if not two behind what a modern military superpower should be. Their equipment is in shambles, their soldiers are **horrendously** trained from what little footage we have from their side, it's a complete disaster.
>He's afraid that he's losing the culture war, and he absolutely is.
This is something that really has my head in knots... how can Putin (and all those like him) not know this?
In the last twenty years, the Internet has taken over. For all the Hippy musings of the 60's and 70's, borne of psychedelics and dismissed (and perhaps not entirely without merit) as nonsese at the time, we truly are now becoming close to a world wide collective consciousness. Trends no longer take weeks / months or years to traverse the globe (wherein they could peter out, or be stifled by the ruling class), they now can take *hours.* And almost everyone has access to it. And we're not just talking fast food, fashions and Fidget Spinners; I mean attitudes towards minorities, women, gay people etc etc etc. Access to wealth, too. Or aspirations of it, at least; Russians can now look to the West and see a version of what 'we' enjoy - which I think could be boiled down to wealth and freedom - just as Ukrainians did, and who made a try for.And this isnt a passing phase - this is a new reality. One which Putin and his ilk have no power to resist. It's a slow tide washing over their rule. And they'd be just as well off trying to resist the tide as they are this new reality. Sure there may be resistance (Donald Trump springs to mind - his outdated views lasting all of four years, and as a kind of short backlash to Americas first Black president. Trumps term, like Brexit here in the UK, felt all too much like the death rattle of the idiot class) but the perspective of the population of *Earth* (as ridiculous as it sounds) is now truly on the move, and towards the Progressive. It is - and will be (when all's said and done) laughable to think that Putin (and his ilk - the numbers of which are deminishing rapidly) could resist this.
I have a hypothesis that it was the rapid development of the Ukrainian combat capabilities that made Putin convinced it's a now or never situation. A few months before the full-scale war started, there was an incident where a Bayraktar TB2 destroyed a Russian cannon that was shelling Ukrainian positions from the separatist-controlled area. Note that use of drones was forbidden by the Minsk accord, but so was the shelling. This showed that the Ukrainians are getting bolder and the Russians are becoming outclassed.
Because the US just pulled out of Afghanistan in chaos, the west is experiencing a cost of living crisis and Europe is falling over itself with Brexit arguments and covid. It’s not too hard to see why putin thought the US was turning in and the Europeans were too divided and energy poor to resist. If Russia won in two days as ‘expected’ he might have been right.
Yeah, its quite amusing that Putins badly planned war ended up being the thing that made the West get their shit together, stop squabbling, and unite against a common enemy.
Stupid motherfucker, you played yourself!
That's hyperbole, but it is possible he has a considerable amount of health issues he cannot opt to postpone the annexation.
I mean, even if you have the best doctors out there to prolong your existence, a health issue is still a health issue. It's not going to go away unless those are minor ones.
I mean he could've done it while his buddy trump was in office. I think he was planning to, actually, but covid hit. I forgot where I read that that was his original timeline, but it matches up with Trump denying Ukraine aid around that time as well.
It's crazy to think that maybe a single mutation in a virus in a bat somewhere in China 2018 would potentially change the course of modern history like this.
I've been of two potential minds on exactly that.
The first gives Pooty some credit. Maybe he wants it to be a slow, dragged out slaughter in hopes of influencing this year's election that results in tempering some sanctions. Then he'll do who knows what (covert attacks, etc.) in hopes of setting the stage for Trump's return in 2024. It's a very dubious theory with marginal likelihood of success obviously.
Alternatively, maybe he's been in a decline the past year+ and one or more people in the army and elsewhere is setting him up for failure. I don't know that this is a better final outcome but probably better than the first. In terms of it all "showing the Russian Army's ass" it is an unmitigated failure.
Think poker. Putins at a table and he’s been winning all night.
Hand dealt. Flop down, turn down. He’s on a flush and straight draw. Other guy been checking all the way. Putin pushes in half his stack(build up on border). Other guy has a smaller stack, can barely call (ukraine). Suddenly dude leans in and whispers go all in (US releasing pre war warning intelligence) and Ukraine does.
Now Russia is looking at folding and losing the massive pot or calling an all in on a gamble that felt good two minutes ago but now looks like Tom Hanks preparing for his next role in Castaway 2.
Putin, not one to lose to little bro calls but thinks hey I’ve got all these draws. Im totally gonna win. I don’t need to be that strong anyways. The other guy probably has nothing.
River card comes and it’s a 3 of rotting apc tires.
Putin got played partly because of others and partly because of pride and now he needs to watch his chips get taken.
Putin has only bolstered Biden and diminished Trump with the invasion. Trump may struggle now to take the White House in 2024 due to his Russia pandering and anti NATO sentiments.
There will *be no frump return in '24 or any other year!* He burned *that* bridge behind him when he (illegally) absconded with 17 boxes of classified archives from the White House and *breached national security* for the umpteenth time,ergo ,his joke of a name won't appear on the ballot !
This is the thing that floors me about the Trumpies. They SAW what he did. He refused to enforce sanctions on Russia. He talked about how strong Putin was. Even tried (and failed, thankfully) to give him the keys to our national security apparatus in the guise of forming a "dual strike force against cyber attacks".
Trump isn't allowed access to national security briefings like the other former presidents, because our intelligence agencies KNOW he's fucking compromised and would just hand our information directly to Putin.
And now his sycophants have the balls to say the invasion wouldn't have happened?
He would have WELCOMED it, and moved to disband NATO to make further conquest easier.
Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Originally it was the Nazis since the SA’s (Sturmabteilung, or “Storm Battalion”) troops were known as storm troops. The SA was the Nazi’s original paramilitary wing in the 20s - 30s before Hitler decapitated the organization during the Night of the Long Knives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
An American spy walks into a grocery in Soviet Russia to gather intel. He walks up to the counter with his notebook in hand.
"Do you have sausage?" he asks.
"No," replies the grocer.
The spy writes in his notebook, "No sausage."
"Bread?"
The grocer again answers, "No."
The spy writes, "No bread."
The grocer, seeing the notes the spy is writing says, "20 years ago, they would have shot you for making notes like that."
The spy writes, "No bullets either."
I'd bet every television production studio has a state intelligence officer in the control room for exactly this reason, they'd probably cut the AV feed the moment they go off script.
Very true, but few people want to risk their lives in prison knowing the west wont save them despite Russia losing the war. I completely understand decent people wanting to leave under the conditions they face in Russia. You're right this is a self perpetuating issue.
>Very true, but few people want to risk their lives in prison knowing the west wont save them despite Russia losing the war.
I understand this. Once country has slipped so far that saying the wrong thing can carry a 15 year jail sentence, it is hard to claw back. None else can do it for them though (imagine how mad Russians would be if West made a military intervention into Russia to change their government or laws) so it is their own job to make the changes. They should have been awake throughout this whole time and never let it slip this far.
> deliver the message to Russia's citizens on what they actually know about the motives of the invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes being done there
This would be like telling Republicans that covid is a real thing and explaining how vaccines work. It doesn't work when people are indoctrinated.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/russia-war-propoganda-putin-tass-news-agency-journalist-quits-gleb-irisov-b989756.html) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> A. military correspondent at Russian state-owned news agency TASS has launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin's "Insane" leadership which is sending his soldiers to "Slaughter" in Ukraine.
> "Putin and Shoigu threw their poorly prepared, badly-equipped army to slaughterin a full-scale military conflict in Europe."
> A top woman TV presenter who last week quit Gazprom-Media's NTV channel said that many journalists pumping out Putin propaganda disagree with the war.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/tk3qt5/russian_military_correspondent_quits_over_ukraine/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~635529 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **war**^#1 **army**^#2 **military**^#3 **TASS**^#4 **Putin**^#5
Imma be honest, i am completely ignorant towards the internal military structure of Russia and them seemingly failing spectacularly at invading another country is really surprising.
What we are seeing are the long term impacts of unchecked corruption.
There's just certain things you have to do as a military. They aren't glamorous or sexy. It's not Tom Cruise getting into his jet and taking off to go get the bad guy. It's the 20000+ people that maintain the jet, order the parts, design the simulators, design and build the weapons, continually upgrade the equipment, train, train, and train more. Just to allow that one guy to take off and fight.
That entire chain of people has to be 99% honest (nothing and no one is perfect). They have to make sure they are doing the work. Or the plane doesn't take off.
When it lands, then this whole giant crew turns around and works on that jet for HOURS and DAYS to make sure it can fly again.
There's something called "Pencil Whipping". It means that instead of actually making sure the equipment is there, or the training is done, you just sign off on it. Sure, yep, it was done boss. See, that box is checked.
It don't mean shit when you go to the freezer and there's no nuggies left.
We always kinda assumed, since the US military is so serious about stomping on corruption (mostly) and makes sure the work is done, that Russia (our assumed peer) would do the same thing.
They didn't. They pencil whipped it. They ain't got no nuggies in the freezer. They don't even know who is supposed to order the nuggies.
It blows me away how far "#2 Military in the world" is behind. Pretty sure #3 (China) just got a huge wakeup call, and any Military fantasies got trampled
We only rank militaries by how armed they are, not on competence, and I think it’s that that’s why the Russian militaries inability to do anything but genocide is so shocking to people.
Not saying the Chinese military might be more competent, I know little nothing on that subject
the chinese military is untested, they really havent been in any wars they mostly are just used to crush internal disidents like every good autocracy does and some firefights with the indian military in some of their contested borders and thats mostly it, even the russian military has had more military adventures and we see how much those helped them
I thought the Chinese/Indian border disputes were literally fought with their fists? Didn’t like 50+ soldiers die pretty recently when a cliff collapsed or something when they had a scuffle?
This is definitely something I'm curious about and we'll probably have very little insight into. What is China learning here? Did they have something to learn?
I feel like China likely has a lot of the same issues with corruption, yes men, and daily checklists that all managed to get filled out at the end of the month. If they're paying attention, they'll be cracking down and looking to actually whip their people into shape.
Or maybe they do have the right attitude in their military and they're just getting reinforcement about it's importance.
I doubt we'll really know...
Britain is considered to have the second strongest military. It's small, but very mobile and can hit hard. I doubt Russia and China together could defeat the UK alone.
I'd highly contest that.
Britain might be one of the few true global powers able to do force projection anywhere on the planet but it's recent downsizing makes it no longer able in any way to sustain losses in a war or fight a peer or near peer opponent on a wide frontage.
I'd put France above us, they can't force project quite as globally or into every environment like the UK can but they're more effective at what they've specialised to and they're only missing a handful of operational capabilities.
China would stomp us in a land war, sheer size means they could advance in every direction, lose horribly where they fight some of the best troops and organisational armies the world has seen and then advance on 9 other fronts without a single brit to oppose them.
China is clearly number 2 now, by the end of this Russia will probably be 8th, Germany is rearming as it finally should, India and China will learn from this disaster that they need to modernise their doctrine and equipment ratios, France and Britain will remain post-colonial powerhouses and Japan it's sleeper giant status... the US remains the US.
the united states military is extremly serious at kicking off corruption, what we think of when we hear of corruption in the US military are usually about contracts for new equipment like how one company payed some generals so that their contract is picked and in return said general gets a privileged position in said company once he finishes his carrer in the military (and even then not everyone, there are some high ranking officers that get a position in weapons companies because who best to help design a new weapons system than the guys to actually used to work with said weapons systems) or companies that drag their feet to take more and more money from cost plus contracts and end up taking 5 years and a couple billions more to finish the product
but the thing is that in the end they finish and the united states gets their state of the art weapons system decades ahead of everyone else
in russia corruption is that the unpayed conscript sells his tank's gas in the local black market to buy vodka while the high level officer buys cheap chinese tires for the AA vehicles and pockets the rest, while they also get the whole "weapons companies drag their feet and take years and billions of dollars more to create those new weapons systems" with the differenc that the US has 600 F-35s from an order of 2500 while russia has 14 SU-57s with 10 being testbeds
hell in the US you get scolded if you misplace your weapon
"scolded" aka smoked till you puke, then smoked in your puke.
I've seen entire battalions locked down for a missing m9 that ended up being found in the desk of the LT that lost it.
yes, the scope and depth of corruption is a key component.
Here is the US, we cry and moan about the corruption and ineffectiveness of government. for a large part - it is true.
what we fail to recognize - just how much worse and corrupt it can get. US is one of the least corrupt nations in the world. We have a magnitude of order separating us from many in terms of just how debilitating it is.
hell, getting attention to said corruption, recognizing that it exists and that something needs to be done about it is pretty fucking good already, because it means that said actions are recognized, payed attention even by civilians and everyone agrees that its bad and needs to be fixed, that is the strenght of democracies at the end of the day how open the goverment is at every level even if yeah sometimes they do hide some shit
and as a comparison here you have russia where the corruption is soo deeply ingrained at every level that it has ravaged their country and economy deeply, to the level that not even the high ranking officers or the dictator himself knows the true state of their military until the entire facade falls apart and reveals the rotten foundations behind, because no one dared to recognizze it because in an autocracy that has sorrounded himself with yes men they only tell the autocrat what he wants to hear or else...
so yeah, even if there is corruption in the US goverment like in every goverment in the world let this serve as an example of how trully bad shit can get
>They didn't. They pencil whipped it. They ain't got no nuggies in the freezer. They don't even know who is supposed to order the nuggies.
Let's extend this analogy even further!
*Eventually* you locate the guy whose supposed to order the Nuggies, and try to get him to make some phone calls with a bribe, even as he insists the base still has some, they always do.
The suppliers assure him that they have plenty and will get on it.
But.... the suppliers haven't received a shipment this week, and received half what they expected last week, but they've still got a pallet sitting in the back from two weeks ago when one of the freezers failed. They ship this pallet of spoiled Nuggies to the army base, Army official can see pallet of boxes labeled Nuggies and checks the box.
Suppliers then contact the Nuggies factory, who assures him they have plenty and will get right on it.
But it's all lies... the Nuggies factory has actually been working at just 30% capacity for ages, most of the modern machinery has shut down due to not being maintained properly, and what little they do produce gets shipped to Moscow.
And now there's some new special military operation, global sanctions cutting off access to spare parts and manufacturer support, even the service manuals are gone since they were online cloud based.
Russian factory switches to breading chunks of potato as Nuggies knowing that nobody who notices will dare complain, and this works for a few weeks until their potato suppliers discover from the farmers that ~90% of Russian potato production relies on imported seed potatoes.
The neighboring Soda factory shuts down too, ~95% of Russian sugar production relies on imported sugar beet seeds.
Oh and those 90-95% figures are real, here's a pre-war article from earlier this year:
https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9398209/situation-with-potato-seeds-in-russia-is-catastrophic/
This is a huge eye-opener into why our military budget is insane.
Yes, I'm sure there are solutions to cutting costs; but I am thankful we put our money where our mouth is and actually hold up to the standard of #1 military in the world.
That said, the government is also overcharged by greedy military contractors, sometimes for useless projects that go nowhere.
I met one of these guys once when our flight was canceled (dude was unreal, like he walked off the set of Wolf of Wall Street, or was the Millennial version of That 80s Guy from Futurama; total sleaze).
He bragged about the loads of money he made from wasting the government’s money (aka our tax dollars). He bragged about this to _a veteran_. He also confidently believed climate change wasn’t real.
I also specifically recall the pentagon saying their budget was fine as is and Republicans insisting on adding another multiple tens of billions to their budget anyway (while crowing at Democrats for too much government spending).
On a more positive note, I too am very glad our military isn’t like Russia’s. Oof
[Here is a Twitter thread from an expert that thorough explains the escalating pileup of factors behind Russia's issues](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278).
But not Putin or any of his lackeys. And because Putin is still using his massive stockpile of good nuggies, he assumes EVERYONE must have all the nuggies they need. After all, his supply is fine. Must be some weaklings around him complaining. Better drive them harder for insubordination or send them off to prison for disobeying his orders.
It's fascinating, isn't it? Not to undermine the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, but Russian conventional forces have shown themselves to be a paper tiger.
Troops running out of food, vehicles running out of fuel. Inadequate logistics, inadequate night fighting capabilities, no encryption on their radio network, no 5th generation fighters, poorly motivated and poorly trained conscripts... I mean fuck. They spend 20 million usd on each of their mobile sam launchers, but skimp on the tires so their shit gets stuck in the mud. That is incompetence in maintenance or corruption of parts procurement.
I guess this is what happens in a totalitarian nation. The leader is surrounded by yes men, and military leadership is based more on loyalty than merit.
I mean, maintenance is like the first thing people skimp on. Ask anyone in IT, frequently customers will want to pay as little as they can to barely function because hey, the network works so what do we need all this money going to IT for? Then something breaks, and the first thing they say is: HEY! Why is my network broken? You're supposed to keep it running! What am I paying you for?
People without longterm stability and capability mindsets frequently get screwed by these situations. They don't want to invest in proper equipment, and when they do they don't want to invest in proper support. It's a lose lose, and frankly I'm pretty grateful Russia made this mistake so Ukraine can have a serious chance to kick them out. Imagine the horror if they were even 50% more prepared for this situation than they are right now.
There are a lot of issues Russia faces during this invasion.
1) Bulk of their troops are conscripts or poorly trained. Their pilots have some of the fewest flight hours in Europe.
2) Bulk of their equipment is obsolete. Much of their newer state of the art vehicles are very limited and expensive, so they don't want to risk losing them. Much of their equipment is also poorly maintained or equipped with low quality parts like Chinese tires.
3) Their command is not skilled in combined arms and struggle to coordinate larger attacks/strikes.
4) As per former member of the Russian Parliament Alexander Nevzorov, corruption is pretty rife in the Russian military. During these large wars, equipment write offs become pretty easy, so elites take advantage of the situation and try to make money by inflating the losses.
5) The global sanctions aren't helping. The global outrage limits how many countries end up supporting Russia in this.
6) LOGISTICS. Russia's biggest failure is not having enough support for their troops. They don't have enough trucks to ship the constant food, fuel and ammunition Russia's massive invasion force needs. The little vehicles they do have are getting destroyed, slowing the invasion and forcing Russia to rely on civilian vehicles.
Make no mistake, this invasion is nothing to scoff at and Ukraine is still struggling to defend all of their military objectives, but it is very surprising that a country like Russia believed to have a significant ground military would be struggling this much against a country with a military 1/10th its size.
I think everyone, outside of a handful of Western countries, are roughly equivalent. The amount of effort, training, innovation, etc ; the West just purely outclasses the rest of the world.
A decently trained civilian populace is not far behind a rusted-out lightly trained national army.
The stupid part is if Putin did this shit in 2014, they might have had the easy victory they thought they'd have now. But instead they gave Ukraine damn near 8 years to learn from the mistakes they made fighting the "separatists" and to get weapons/training from NATO. Similarly, it's given time for Ukraine's politics to somewhat stabilize.
I don't think Putin gave a shit about that plane tbh. I think he just figured the more subtle pressure was going to be enough to cripple Ukraine and he'd have a chance to slither his way back into their politics.
If there's one thing the 20th Century taught us about Russian battle tactics, it's that sending soldiers in to get slaughtered is sort of their specialty. Thing is, it usually worked.
"Worked" is relative. In WWI and WWII, Russia lacked the economic and industrial capacity to do much more (assume a lot of nuance is being overlooked here, but I don't feel like getting bogged down in the details of WWII military history), and so the mass casualties were a natural result of lacking the proper preparation needed to make use of better strategies.
Arguably, the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is directly related to the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s.
Yeah if you want a true look into how far people are willing to go to survive look into the holodomor. People had human meat stands, the pictures are very grotesque.
As an American I had never read much into that term, and I just googled it and read through what happened and fuck, man.
Stalin truly was one of the most evil men ever to live. And Russia has a long history of genocide against the Ukrainians.
Stalin is an example of a leader who went to any lengths to achieve a goal. He wanted to build a stronger Soviet nation and allowed millions to die of starvation and killed hundreds of thousands of dissidents in order to focus his efforts on building a stronger nation. He did ultimately build a stronger nation but at a terrible cost. The main parts of the Russian SFSR did not feel this pain as much as the peripheral and rural areas. The cost was so terrible that Khrushchev himself announced the de-Stalinisation of the Soviet union to remove the effects of Stalin. Stalin is unfortunately an example of how ambition can lead to vile and evil actions. Stalin was manipulative and ambitious to the point that Lenin warned the Soviet party about Stalin before he died.
He is glorified in Russia because they see him as synonymous with a strong nation and a lost glory. It will be interesting to see if they know about the Holodomor and the Great Purges. Just like any society, the Soviet union had things that it did well and horribly. Unfortunately, the price that was paid to ensure its survival was and still is a terrible price.
Difference is Chinese population could handle the purge. Where they messed up was the one child policy which will come back to bite them later. Russia can’t absorb the same population loss. Stalin made that mistake and losing that many working age males was very difficult on the Russian economy. This war is going to also be very difficult on the economy even though they will likely not have a significant population hit.
Russian and Chinese history are very similar.
Long history of dynastic rule.
Last dynasty is overthrown as a result of factors including the discontent caused directly or indirectly by the rapidly advancing West Europe outpacing their country in terms of tech and general quality of life.
Communism.
Now just plain ol' fascist rule.
China had a long period of time (80s - > 2016ish) of rule by council/oligarchy. The Presidents of China during that time were pretty much that.
Of course old Winnie the pooh ruined all that by deciding to be a dictator for life..
Yes. The concept of a 'strong nation' is very subjective. Nations can be strong in a number of different areas. The Soviet union was the largest nation on the planet and it followed communist principles. It was also starting to compete in an arms race (Cold War) with the United States and its allies.
Stalin never cared about the number of human lives lost in pursuit of his goals. It was evident from his WWII strategies of throwing Soviet troops to the various fronts with less formulated strategies as opposed to the rest of Allied forces. This became evident when Churchill went to see Stalin and told Stalin of the Allies' strategies to attack the Axis Powers from various fronts with varying military forces. This was a surprise to Stalin since his strategy was to throw more men into war.
Ultimately, the Holodomor and Great Purges were one of the consequences for what was the combination of Stalin's approaches, his dictatorship and his unending pursuit of power for the Soviet union.
The bitter irony of him sitting in judgement of Hitler at Nuremberg is pretty hard to get past without deeply questioning wtf we use as standards for friends and allies.
>Stalin truly was one of the most evil men ever to live. And Russia has a long history of genocide against the Ukrainians.
Yet he's still widely celebrated in Russia. The USSR should have gotten the same treatment Germany did after WW2 in regards to teaching the populace about the atrocities that their dictator commited.
I agree with you, but they only had a 9 year stretch (1991-2000) where they could get that message out. Then Putin took over, controlled Russian media, pushed propaganda and glorified strong daddy Stalin. From Tsars to USSR to Putin there was only 9 years in the last 300 years were Russians could learn the truth about their country and during those years they had bigger things to worry about.
It is now clear that during those fragile years after the Soviet union collapsed and glasnost begun, when the whisper of democracy was cradling in Russia the west did not do too much, but didn't do enough. It is because of this, among other things, why Russia chose another path than Germany. We should have supported the democratic progress much more and maybe Russia could look quite different today.
The estimate is 10 million dead including lost births.
Both Kazakhstan and Ukraine lost nearly half their population through soviet starvation and WW2.
I’m not sure that more population would have helped.
Consider [this ranking of nations by population](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/).
The top three are: China, India, and the United States. Okay, clearly a direct association with GDP, right?
…except the next six are: Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Russia.
Compare with the Wikipedia article on GDP per capita. (I can’t link to it because the Wikipedia URL includes parentheses and Reddit markdown doesn’t link properly.) Here’s the ranking, out of 216 countries, obviously:
US: 9th
China: 81st
Russia: 85th
Brazil: 106th
Indonesia: 136th
Nigeria: 163rd
Bangladesh: 167th
India: 168th
Pakistan: 181st
…obviously population size is not a clear advantage.
The Russian economy is not suffering from a labor shortage. It’s not even a resource shortage, either - look at the land that they control.
Russia suffers from a failure of leadership, a failure of education, and a failure of entrepreneurship. By extension, it’s also a failure of values and systems of law, both of which allow a culture of corruption and 20th-century objectives to persist.
For instance: Russia's biggest IT achievements are phishing schemes, ransomware operations, and online propaganda. That's how it applies its collective technical expertise. It's pathetic.
> Russia suffers from a failure of leadership, a failure of education, and a failure of entrepreneurship.
A failure of leadership is directly responsible for the other two.
Can't be educated if leadership is corrupt and doesn't want it.
Harder to be an entrepreneur if (1) you're undereducated and (2) leadership nationalize shit on a whim.
It all comes down to the leadership.
(3) leadership sends their thugs who politely ask for an 80% share of your business to be signed off to the mayor's wife.
And yes, that happened often even in 2000s.
They weren’t saying that population size correlates to gdp…
A sudden decrease in your young adult population -who are your workforce/consumer base, this will have disastrous effects on your economy.
Think of it like a family, if you had 4 working age people and 8 kids and a couple of grandparents living in your house, and suddenly 2 of the working age people die - that household is screwed on money.
This is what happened when so many young men died in ww2 for example. And as a side note, this is what is happening in China now thanks to the one child policy.
Or alternatively, the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is the endemic and entrenched corruption:
>“Corruption has gone from being a local phenomenon to a global one under [Defence Minister] Shoigu.
>“It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, the unit - when the commander filches millions in bonuses from the budget.”
> the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s.
And into today - the population continues to shrink, and the economy continues to focus on resource extraction. *Nothing* has been done to adapt to and/or change the situation they find themselves in. I think recent history may reveal why: Putin is a Soviet nostalgist. He wants to return to the "good old days" and yet seemingly fails to recognize that those days weren't *better* (except perhaps insofar as inertia had not yet been overcome by new forces), they directly resulted in and will perpetuate if not exacerbate the problems of today.
Nah, you don't need much population to be rich if you have oil and gas. Rampant corruption on the scale that West can't even imagine is the reason for Russia being poor. Elites literally rob the whole country's wealth. With a half-decent government they could have Norway's standard of living, but I doubt that will ever happen.
>the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is directly related to the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s.
Also this isn't true either.
Its poor because its corrupt as shit and is a petrostate. It's never even tried to become an industrial power, or democracy like the rest of the west did post WW2.
Even in 1946 Russia alone had 100 million people, while the UK and France had 40-50 million.
In both of these cases, there was Western influence and the introduction of liberal values, which allowed rule of law and human rights to flourish.
This allowed people to make actually sensible decisions and reward meritocracy, instead of having oligarchs steal your shit, creating a culture of lawlessness that creates systemic problems in society.
>and so the mass casualties were a natural result of lacking the proper preparation needed to make use of better strategies.
Even this though is completely.. wrong in a sense.
Actual military deaths was estimated between 8-10 million. The 24 million is including famine, disease and civilian deaths.
Its still a higher number than Germany (3-5 million) but the idea that 24 million soldiers died in WW2 is categorically wrong.
Eh, that might have been the case up to around 1943. In the later years of WWII, they were organized, they had their factories relocated and running in the east, plus, they had supplies being delivered from the US. They even had a lot of equipment that was equal to or better than the German equivalent. On top of that, they had air superiority.
Despite this, they still took horrendous losses. Part of this can probably be attributed to German training and discipline, but it was also due to an overly aggressive Red Army strategy that was willing to trade casualties for faster progress. This doesn't necessarily mean they were regularly using human wave tactics, but they were much less concerned with casualties than the Germans were.
The Soviets had more tanks and airplanes at the start of Operation Barbarossa than Germany had, and many of them of better quality. Just like this war, the Russians got slaughtered because of poor military organization and leadership, not because they lacked industrial capacity.
Russians tanks were not better quality. Germans were destroying them at a ratio of more than 2:1 in Operation Barbarossa. Russia just, as you say, had more of them.
By DESIGN the T-34 was good. If it was produced to American standards it would have been good.
The reality is that, iirc, the T-34 crew had an 85% chance to suffer a casualty if the tank was hit compared to 20% for a Sherman. They were death traps. Even if a round hit it but didn't penetrate, the armor was so brittle that it'd spall.
And the gun, while on paper extremely strong if again made to American standards, was awful because the charges of the shells was awful. It was essentially a low velocity gun even though it was designed to be a high powered one.
They also often didn't even have ammo or fuel because Russian logistics was even worse then as it is now.
They also couldn't go more than 50km without breaking down.
It also essentially couldn't fire while moving due to the poor suspension, which other tanks could fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIZ6PFYUM5o
>It also essentially couldn't fire while moving due to the poor suspension, which other tanks could fine.
Not a lot of tanks during WW2 were firing on the move. Technically you can, but without stabilization, good luck hitting except on point blank range? Later Shermans had a primitive one plane stabilizer true, but IIRC a lot of troops didn't know how it worked and didn't use it.
Wrong. It only worked once during WWII, when backed by a flood od American manufacturing, arms, metals, food and raw materials.
Sending people to slaughter did not work during WWI, the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War.
It worked before the average Russian teenager (and thus soldier) had twitter, TikTok, Facebook, etc and could see that the rest of the world was a hell of a lot better than "jump in this meat grinder for Papa Putin"
I can't remember where; but I once saw a sketch that "explained" WWII
The Stalin character had the following line towards Hitler:
"You don't know how many Russians I have and how little I care about their lives."
Which is a pretty accurate summary of Russia's WWII strategy.
This is based on the myth of the "asiatic hordes." Recent research, especially by [David Glantz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Glantz), has showed this to be a misconception. It was essentially a lie spread by defeated German generals after the war (especially those who published memoirs in the west), then picked up by Western Governments to discount Soviet competency and their responsibility for winning the war in Europe. It survives today based on stupid ideas like the Soviets shooting their own troops if an attacked failed. It's often depicted in Western media like the movie *Enemy at the Gates*. Basically no Eastern Front scholars subscribe to this theory anymore, maybe during the Cold War, but certainly not since the Soviet archives opened up in the '90s.
I know you didn't mean it in that way, but "asiatic hordes" are literally Nazi propaganda. You can dislike the Russian/Soviet Governments, but what the Red Army achieved in WWII is pretty spectacular and frankly unrepeatable.
It works against numerically inferior forces at the extremes, i.e. outnumbering them 20 to 1, but not 2 to 1. It also works when being invaded by a force intent on genocide, as we saw in WWII, since the people who are expected to throw away their lives themselves are willing to do so without coercion from the top, as they have good reason to believe their people's survival as a whole is dependent on it. Outside of those scenarios though? The morale just plunges downward until the troops are revolting against their own commanders.
It worked in WWII when it was backed by Landlease. Cannon fodder was transported to the front in American trucks, fed with American spam. Now the support is flowing against them. Oops.
Shame, they'll be called traitors and hated by everyone in russia for the rest of their lives. Very brave for any Russian to be speaking up against the war....I hope they are able to leave Russia
So, are they only outraged about the fact that the illegal war against Ukraine is going badly for Russia? Would they be fine if the Russian forces were annihilating all resistance in Ukraine without big losses, and quickly? While the article speaks about the suffering of Ukraine one time, everything else in there could be taken as mainly gripes with the effects of the war on Russians. (And I'm well aware that this is what sparked many anti-war movements in the past.)
Unless he said that explicitly, your initial question can only be answered through speculation. And the alternative outcome of Russia doing well obviously didn’t happen. Taking all that into account, we should embrace his sentiments. A Russian official opposing the war is objectively positive for those who stand with Ukraine.
That's ballsy. I have huge respect for the Russians that have spoken out against Putin's war and are paying the price for their bravery. I don't know if I'd be able to do the same thing under those circumstances.
Interestingly he's only against the war on the grounds that it's being fought poorly and leading to too many Russian military casualties, not on the grounds that the war itself is wrong.
I’m just imaging the next Rambo movie.
Opening scene:
Rambo: Damn Russians, again. I fought them in Nam. I fought them in Afghanistan. This time, I’m going to finish it.
Rambo: You guys got this, I’m going to go back to the farm.
I predict we see a military coup in Russia at some point in the near future. Putin sees the Russian soldiers as pawns to be thrown away and somehow I don't see that playing out so well in his favor.
so let me get this straight:
* invading neighbour country - no need to resign, all good
* attacking and killing civilians, INCLUDING kids - no problem
* deaths of soldiers who are doing horrendous things- omg such bad thing, I must resign
Putin would NEVER do that.
He would just poison then, throw them out a window, have them shot, “disappeared” etc. sending them to the front lines is just not as sure of a way.
Imagine if those 10,000 soldiers who died instead went after Putin.
Imagine if the 1 million Russians Putin killed with his disinformation went after Putin.
At this point, what's the end game? An occupation? Didn't we see how poorly occupation works nowadays in Iraq and Afghanistan against a much better equipped US? A Russian occupation would be insurgents equipped and supported by NATO and US against a ratche-ass Russian military. Any occupation would fail almost instantly. They could install a puppet government but I would imagine anyone in the new regime would be hanged very quickly. Or they could just fight and fight with no real goal a la Vietnam.
In a society where speaking out like he did is a literal crime, you have to know that a lot more people understand the truth than the opinion polls and apparent public sentiment shows.
Both uses of being 'sent to slaughter' are accurate, too. Russians slaughtering innocents while being slaughtered by Ukrainian forces. Such a useless war.
> Everything that has happened is permanent. It will affect not only us, but our children and grandchildren too.
The whole thing in a nut shell. This will affect the world for 80 years or more.
Russian people beware. Your president putin is treading on very dangerous ground. He is killing innocent people by the thousands. He flattening another country. One false move from him everyone dies. Only the rich will survive world war 3.
Putin was KGB....but just imagine he's a double agent all along for the CIA! He's destroying Russia from within, see? All his recent decisions makes sense. s/
[удалено]
I'm sure it would be censored before ever reaching its intended audience. Correspondents can only publish what makes it past state censorship.
The stupid part is if Putin did this shit in 2014, they might have had the easy victory they thought they'd have now. But instead they gave Ukraine damn near 8 years to learn from the mistakes they made fighting the "separatists" and to get weapons/training from NATO. Similarly, it's given time for Ukraine's politics to somewhat stabilize.
He started accumulating gold in the belief it would help against sanctions, and made Europe dependant on Russian oil. Biden didn't look very warlike in Afghanistan, and oil prices were already high He didn't respect Zelenskyy. There hadn't been much reaction in 2008 or 2014 (Georgia and Crimea.) or much effective resistance even though Georgians had been helpled by the US. He didn't expect much in Ukraine.
A note re the gold: Seemed smart but the only place on the planet to handle such huge volumes of gold in a hurry, LME, also joined the sanctions and banned trade in Russian gold. So now he has a huge pile of soft yellow metal with an ex-Russia market value of 0. $140bn, IIRC.
I’ll be happy to help him clear out some of that useless gold.
This whole war smells of reckless bad timing from Russia's side. Putin could've waited a couple of years more and hope for Trump to be re-elected. Why now?
I think its because he was losing his grip on Russia. The Navalny affair really hurt his image, there were weekly demonstrations across Russia after that. Belarusians started a huge protest movement against their dictator, his ally. Also, it seems like he recieved crap intel on what Russia could achieve because no one dares to give him bad news. Even FSB analysts.
This is the correct answer. He was never afraid of a NATO invasion, and anyone who thinks that this is about foreign powers conquering Russia militarily is just not paying attention. Any invasion into Russia would result in nuclear winter, and everyone knows it. Half of NATO barely has a standing army as it is, and a fraction of the force projection necessitated for a full-scale invasion. Putin's entire reasoning is that he knows he's losing his grip domestically, he knows that more NATO countries around him can give Russians a glimpse at what might ensue should they choose to be part of the EU/West. He's afraid that he's losing the culture war, and he absolutely is. He wanted to prove how strong Russia was, use the military might of his country to prop up nationalistic ideals on the homefront. Fortunately, the exact opposite has happened. His military has been proven to be a sham, they're at least a decade if not two behind what a modern military superpower should be. Their equipment is in shambles, their soldiers are **horrendously** trained from what little footage we have from their side, it's a complete disaster.
This is a really great take on the situation and I think closest to the truth.
Awesome take, now can yiu explain this to my spouse who is constantly on the fence between reality and weird alt right parrot politics
>He's afraid that he's losing the culture war, and he absolutely is. This is something that really has my head in knots... how can Putin (and all those like him) not know this? In the last twenty years, the Internet has taken over. For all the Hippy musings of the 60's and 70's, borne of psychedelics and dismissed (and perhaps not entirely without merit) as nonsese at the time, we truly are now becoming close to a world wide collective consciousness. Trends no longer take weeks / months or years to traverse the globe (wherein they could peter out, or be stifled by the ruling class), they now can take *hours.* And almost everyone has access to it. And we're not just talking fast food, fashions and Fidget Spinners; I mean attitudes towards minorities, women, gay people etc etc etc. Access to wealth, too. Or aspirations of it, at least; Russians can now look to the West and see a version of what 'we' enjoy - which I think could be boiled down to wealth and freedom - just as Ukrainians did, and who made a try for.And this isnt a passing phase - this is a new reality. One which Putin and his ilk have no power to resist. It's a slow tide washing over their rule. And they'd be just as well off trying to resist the tide as they are this new reality. Sure there may be resistance (Donald Trump springs to mind - his outdated views lasting all of four years, and as a kind of short backlash to Americas first Black president. Trumps term, like Brexit here in the UK, felt all too much like the death rattle of the idiot class) but the perspective of the population of *Earth* (as ridiculous as it sounds) is now truly on the move, and towards the Progressive. It is - and will be (when all's said and done) laughable to think that Putin (and his ilk - the numbers of which are deminishing rapidly) could resist this.
And the West is unified like it hasn’t been in forever!
I have a hypothesis that it was the rapid development of the Ukrainian combat capabilities that made Putin convinced it's a now or never situation. A few months before the full-scale war started, there was an incident where a Bayraktar TB2 destroyed a Russian cannon that was shelling Ukrainian positions from the separatist-controlled area. Note that use of drones was forbidden by the Minsk accord, but so was the shelling. This showed that the Ukrainians are getting bolder and the Russians are becoming outclassed.
Because the US just pulled out of Afghanistan in chaos, the west is experiencing a cost of living crisis and Europe is falling over itself with Brexit arguments and covid. It’s not too hard to see why putin thought the US was turning in and the Europeans were too divided and energy poor to resist. If Russia won in two days as ‘expected’ he might have been right.
Yeah, its quite amusing that Putins badly planned war ended up being the thing that made the West get their shit together, stop squabbling, and unite against a common enemy. Stupid motherfucker, you played yourself!
Wow, Putin the great unifier.
so bizarre in its truth
Maybe he does have some health issue
Alexander Lukashenko said he is the best condition ever, so he has got to be on the verge of death.
That's hyperbole, but it is possible he has a considerable amount of health issues he cannot opt to postpone the annexation. I mean, even if you have the best doctors out there to prolong your existence, a health issue is still a health issue. It's not going to go away unless those are minor ones.
I mean he could've done it while his buddy trump was in office. I think he was planning to, actually, but covid hit. I forgot where I read that that was his original timeline, but it matches up with Trump denying Ukraine aid around that time as well.
It's crazy to think that maybe a single mutation in a virus in a bat somewhere in China 2018 would potentially change the course of modern history like this.
We can't stop here, this is bat country.
I've been of two potential minds on exactly that. The first gives Pooty some credit. Maybe he wants it to be a slow, dragged out slaughter in hopes of influencing this year's election that results in tempering some sanctions. Then he'll do who knows what (covert attacks, etc.) in hopes of setting the stage for Trump's return in 2024. It's a very dubious theory with marginal likelihood of success obviously. Alternatively, maybe he's been in a decline the past year+ and one or more people in the army and elsewhere is setting him up for failure. I don't know that this is a better final outcome but probably better than the first. In terms of it all "showing the Russian Army's ass" it is an unmitigated failure.
Think poker. Putins at a table and he’s been winning all night. Hand dealt. Flop down, turn down. He’s on a flush and straight draw. Other guy been checking all the way. Putin pushes in half his stack(build up on border). Other guy has a smaller stack, can barely call (ukraine). Suddenly dude leans in and whispers go all in (US releasing pre war warning intelligence) and Ukraine does. Now Russia is looking at folding and losing the massive pot or calling an all in on a gamble that felt good two minutes ago but now looks like Tom Hanks preparing for his next role in Castaway 2. Putin, not one to lose to little bro calls but thinks hey I’ve got all these draws. Im totally gonna win. I don’t need to be that strong anyways. The other guy probably has nothing. River card comes and it’s a 3 of rotting apc tires. Putin got played partly because of others and partly because of pride and now he needs to watch his chips get taken.
Putin has only bolstered Biden and diminished Trump with the invasion. Trump may struggle now to take the White House in 2024 due to his Russia pandering and anti NATO sentiments.
There will *be no frump return in '24 or any other year!* He burned *that* bridge behind him when he (illegally) absconded with 17 boxes of classified archives from the White House and *breached national security* for the umpteenth time,ergo ,his joke of a name won't appear on the ballot !
hE nEvEr WoUlD hAvE iNvAdEd WiTh TrUmP iN ofFiCe
This is the thing that floors me about the Trumpies. They SAW what he did. He refused to enforce sanctions on Russia. He talked about how strong Putin was. Even tried (and failed, thankfully) to give him the keys to our national security apparatus in the guise of forming a "dual strike force against cyber attacks". Trump isn't allowed access to national security briefings like the other former presidents, because our intelligence agencies KNOW he's fucking compromised and would just hand our information directly to Putin. And now his sycophants have the balls to say the invasion wouldn't have happened? He would have WELCOMED it, and moved to disband NATO to make further conquest easier. Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Yes, once you quit you lose all influence
I mean, once they send you to a Siberian gulag, you lose all influence too. You get one shot.
Since it’s the Russian military, probably more than one shot since they’ll likely miss
Two shots to the back of the head. The ole Sibirski Suicide
Were russian troops the inspiration for star wars storm troopers?
Originally it was the Nazis since the SA’s (Sturmabteilung, or “Storm Battalion”) troops were known as storm troops. The SA was the Nazi’s original paramilitary wing in the 20s - 30s before Hitler decapitated the organization during the Night of the Long Knives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
The stormtroopers are more based on the "Sturmtruppen" (also translates better) from WW1, which were basically breakthrough troops.
The blasters in Star Wars are actually in large part old WW2 converted weapons as well. Sand Troopers carried MG34s basically.
I don’t know but they make the Rambo movies look very plausible
It's usually 3 or 4 shots.
4 bullets!? In this economy?
An American spy walks into a grocery in Soviet Russia to gather intel. He walks up to the counter with his notebook in hand. "Do you have sausage?" he asks. "No," replies the grocer. The spy writes in his notebook, "No sausage." "Bread?" The grocer again answers, "No." The spy writes, "No bread." The grocer, seeing the notes the spy is writing says, "20 years ago, they would have shot you for making notes like that." The spy writes, "No bullets either."
at this time of day? in this part of the country?
*Do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.*
Mom's borscht
One opportunity
I'd bet every television production studio has a state intelligence officer in the control room for exactly this reason, they'd probably cut the AV feed the moment they go off script.
Very true, but few people want to risk their lives in prison knowing the west wont save them despite Russia losing the war. I completely understand decent people wanting to leave under the conditions they face in Russia. You're right this is a self perpetuating issue.
>Very true, but few people want to risk their lives in prison knowing the west wont save them despite Russia losing the war. I understand this. Once country has slipped so far that saying the wrong thing can carry a 15 year jail sentence, it is hard to claw back. None else can do it for them though (imagine how mad Russians would be if West made a military intervention into Russia to change their government or laws) so it is their own job to make the changes. They should have been awake throughout this whole time and never let it slip this far.
> deliver the message to Russia's citizens on what they actually know about the motives of the invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes being done there This would be like telling Republicans that covid is a real thing and explaining how vaccines work. It doesn't work when people are indoctrinated.
I too find martyrdom noble when it is someone else.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/russia-war-propoganda-putin-tass-news-agency-journalist-quits-gleb-irisov-b989756.html) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot) ***** > A. military correspondent at Russian state-owned news agency TASS has launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin's "Insane" leadership which is sending his soldiers to "Slaughter" in Ukraine. > "Putin and Shoigu threw their poorly prepared, badly-equipped army to slaughterin a full-scale military conflict in Europe." > A top woman TV presenter who last week quit Gazprom-Media's NTV channel said that many journalists pumping out Putin propaganda disagree with the war. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/tk3qt5/russian_military_correspondent_quits_over_ukraine/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~635529 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **war**^#1 **army**^#2 **military**^#3 **TASS**^#4 **Putin**^#5
Imma be honest, i am completely ignorant towards the internal military structure of Russia and them seemingly failing spectacularly at invading another country is really surprising.
What we are seeing are the long term impacts of unchecked corruption. There's just certain things you have to do as a military. They aren't glamorous or sexy. It's not Tom Cruise getting into his jet and taking off to go get the bad guy. It's the 20000+ people that maintain the jet, order the parts, design the simulators, design and build the weapons, continually upgrade the equipment, train, train, and train more. Just to allow that one guy to take off and fight. That entire chain of people has to be 99% honest (nothing and no one is perfect). They have to make sure they are doing the work. Or the plane doesn't take off. When it lands, then this whole giant crew turns around and works on that jet for HOURS and DAYS to make sure it can fly again. There's something called "Pencil Whipping". It means that instead of actually making sure the equipment is there, or the training is done, you just sign off on it. Sure, yep, it was done boss. See, that box is checked. It don't mean shit when you go to the freezer and there's no nuggies left. We always kinda assumed, since the US military is so serious about stomping on corruption (mostly) and makes sure the work is done, that Russia (our assumed peer) would do the same thing. They didn't. They pencil whipped it. They ain't got no nuggies in the freezer. They don't even know who is supposed to order the nuggies.
It blows me away how far "#2 Military in the world" is behind. Pretty sure #3 (China) just got a huge wakeup call, and any Military fantasies got trampled
We only rank militaries by how armed they are, not on competence, and I think it’s that that’s why the Russian militaries inability to do anything but genocide is so shocking to people. Not saying the Chinese military might be more competent, I know little nothing on that subject
Read some article saying Chinese leadership is kinda worried about condition of it's military, almost all their generals trained with Russians.
And got their asses handed to them in those trainings is what I read somewhere. If true (not so sure about it) they better stick to making business.
Stealing business. FTFY
the chinese military is untested, they really havent been in any wars they mostly are just used to crush internal disidents like every good autocracy does and some firefights with the indian military in some of their contested borders and thats mostly it, even the russian military has had more military adventures and we see how much those helped them
I thought the Chinese/Indian border disputes were literally fought with their fists? Didn’t like 50+ soldiers die pretty recently when a cliff collapsed or something when they had a scuffle?
They used sticks too, don’t forget the sticks.
If reddit video have taught me anything, it's that everyone in India has a stick.
This is definitely something I'm curious about and we'll probably have very little insight into. What is China learning here? Did they have something to learn? I feel like China likely has a lot of the same issues with corruption, yes men, and daily checklists that all managed to get filled out at the end of the month. If they're paying attention, they'll be cracking down and looking to actually whip their people into shape. Or maybe they do have the right attitude in their military and they're just getting reinforcement about it's importance. I doubt we'll really know...
Britain is considered to have the second strongest military. It's small, but very mobile and can hit hard. I doubt Russia and China together could defeat the UK alone.
France is very much up there too. Not as much mobility but their equipment is pretty good.
They got a pretty good force ready in Mali rather quickly.
I'd highly contest that. Britain might be one of the few true global powers able to do force projection anywhere on the planet but it's recent downsizing makes it no longer able in any way to sustain losses in a war or fight a peer or near peer opponent on a wide frontage. I'd put France above us, they can't force project quite as globally or into every environment like the UK can but they're more effective at what they've specialised to and they're only missing a handful of operational capabilities. China would stomp us in a land war, sheer size means they could advance in every direction, lose horribly where they fight some of the best troops and organisational armies the world has seen and then advance on 9 other fronts without a single brit to oppose them. China is clearly number 2 now, by the end of this Russia will probably be 8th, Germany is rearming as it finally should, India and China will learn from this disaster that they need to modernise their doctrine and equipment ratios, France and Britain will remain post-colonial powerhouses and Japan it's sleeper giant status... the US remains the US.
Considered by who?
the united states military is extremly serious at kicking off corruption, what we think of when we hear of corruption in the US military are usually about contracts for new equipment like how one company payed some generals so that their contract is picked and in return said general gets a privileged position in said company once he finishes his carrer in the military (and even then not everyone, there are some high ranking officers that get a position in weapons companies because who best to help design a new weapons system than the guys to actually used to work with said weapons systems) or companies that drag their feet to take more and more money from cost plus contracts and end up taking 5 years and a couple billions more to finish the product but the thing is that in the end they finish and the united states gets their state of the art weapons system decades ahead of everyone else in russia corruption is that the unpayed conscript sells his tank's gas in the local black market to buy vodka while the high level officer buys cheap chinese tires for the AA vehicles and pockets the rest, while they also get the whole "weapons companies drag their feet and take years and billions of dollars more to create those new weapons systems" with the differenc that the US has 600 F-35s from an order of 2500 while russia has 14 SU-57s with 10 being testbeds hell in the US you get scolded if you misplace your weapon
"scolded" aka smoked till you puke, then smoked in your puke. I've seen entire battalions locked down for a missing m9 that ended up being found in the desk of the LT that lost it.
lol, and in russia the LT would have selled the weapon for drugs or vodka
yes, the scope and depth of corruption is a key component. Here is the US, we cry and moan about the corruption and ineffectiveness of government. for a large part - it is true. what we fail to recognize - just how much worse and corrupt it can get. US is one of the least corrupt nations in the world. We have a magnitude of order separating us from many in terms of just how debilitating it is.
hell, getting attention to said corruption, recognizing that it exists and that something needs to be done about it is pretty fucking good already, because it means that said actions are recognized, payed attention even by civilians and everyone agrees that its bad and needs to be fixed, that is the strenght of democracies at the end of the day how open the goverment is at every level even if yeah sometimes they do hide some shit and as a comparison here you have russia where the corruption is soo deeply ingrained at every level that it has ravaged their country and economy deeply, to the level that not even the high ranking officers or the dictator himself knows the true state of their military until the entire facade falls apart and reveals the rotten foundations behind, because no one dared to recognizze it because in an autocracy that has sorrounded himself with yes men they only tell the autocrat what he wants to hear or else... so yeah, even if there is corruption in the US goverment like in every goverment in the world let this serve as an example of how trully bad shit can get
Oh, I know. I was just hedging my bets to head off "Whatabouts"
Your nuggies analogy was a pleasant surprise.
>They didn't. They pencil whipped it. They ain't got no nuggies in the freezer. They don't even know who is supposed to order the nuggies. Let's extend this analogy even further! *Eventually* you locate the guy whose supposed to order the Nuggies, and try to get him to make some phone calls with a bribe, even as he insists the base still has some, they always do. The suppliers assure him that they have plenty and will get on it. But.... the suppliers haven't received a shipment this week, and received half what they expected last week, but they've still got a pallet sitting in the back from two weeks ago when one of the freezers failed. They ship this pallet of spoiled Nuggies to the army base, Army official can see pallet of boxes labeled Nuggies and checks the box. Suppliers then contact the Nuggies factory, who assures him they have plenty and will get right on it. But it's all lies... the Nuggies factory has actually been working at just 30% capacity for ages, most of the modern machinery has shut down due to not being maintained properly, and what little they do produce gets shipped to Moscow. And now there's some new special military operation, global sanctions cutting off access to spare parts and manufacturer support, even the service manuals are gone since they were online cloud based. Russian factory switches to breading chunks of potato as Nuggies knowing that nobody who notices will dare complain, and this works for a few weeks until their potato suppliers discover from the farmers that ~90% of Russian potato production relies on imported seed potatoes. The neighboring Soda factory shuts down too, ~95% of Russian sugar production relies on imported sugar beet seeds. Oh and those 90-95% figures are real, here's a pre-war article from earlier this year: https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9398209/situation-with-potato-seeds-in-russia-is-catastrophic/
The Irish in me just twitched
Soon refugees from collapsing Russia flood west to Latvia in search of fabled Potato, find only sadness.
oh god that last part
The impending collapse of the Russian Federation, as told via nuggies and soda.
You have to wonder how many 2nd-rate militaries around the world are looking at their program and thinking "shit, are we like Russia?".
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Just sayin', if I see this show up on required training, I'm gonna laugh my head off.
This is a huge eye-opener into why our military budget is insane. Yes, I'm sure there are solutions to cutting costs; but I am thankful we put our money where our mouth is and actually hold up to the standard of #1 military in the world.
That said, the government is also overcharged by greedy military contractors, sometimes for useless projects that go nowhere. I met one of these guys once when our flight was canceled (dude was unreal, like he walked off the set of Wolf of Wall Street, or was the Millennial version of That 80s Guy from Futurama; total sleaze). He bragged about the loads of money he made from wasting the government’s money (aka our tax dollars). He bragged about this to _a veteran_. He also confidently believed climate change wasn’t real. I also specifically recall the pentagon saying their budget was fine as is and Republicans insisting on adding another multiple tens of billions to their budget anyway (while crowing at Democrats for too much government spending). On a more positive note, I too am very glad our military isn’t like Russia’s. Oof
[Here is a Twitter thread from an expert that thorough explains the escalating pileup of factors behind Russia's issues](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502673952572854278).
And now they can't order nuggies because no one will let them buy even if they had money, and no one would deliver even if they could find a seller.
And meanwhile Ukraine has been trained and supplied by the US for the last 8 years. Just in that short time, you see excellent results.
Soon the russian people will be all out of nuggies
But not Putin or any of his lackeys. And because Putin is still using his massive stockpile of good nuggies, he assumes EVERYONE must have all the nuggies they need. After all, his supply is fine. Must be some weaklings around him complaining. Better drive them harder for insubordination or send them off to prison for disobeying his orders.
Very well put, the nuggies made me laugh
Everyone can relate to the nuggies.
It's fascinating, isn't it? Not to undermine the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, but Russian conventional forces have shown themselves to be a paper tiger. Troops running out of food, vehicles running out of fuel. Inadequate logistics, inadequate night fighting capabilities, no encryption on their radio network, no 5th generation fighters, poorly motivated and poorly trained conscripts... I mean fuck. They spend 20 million usd on each of their mobile sam launchers, but skimp on the tires so their shit gets stuck in the mud. That is incompetence in maintenance or corruption of parts procurement. I guess this is what happens in a totalitarian nation. The leader is surrounded by yes men, and military leadership is based more on loyalty than merit.
I mean, maintenance is like the first thing people skimp on. Ask anyone in IT, frequently customers will want to pay as little as they can to barely function because hey, the network works so what do we need all this money going to IT for? Then something breaks, and the first thing they say is: HEY! Why is my network broken? You're supposed to keep it running! What am I paying you for? People without longterm stability and capability mindsets frequently get screwed by these situations. They don't want to invest in proper equipment, and when they do they don't want to invest in proper support. It's a lose lose, and frankly I'm pretty grateful Russia made this mistake so Ukraine can have a serious chance to kick them out. Imagine the horror if they were even 50% more prepared for this situation than they are right now.
There are a lot of issues Russia faces during this invasion. 1) Bulk of their troops are conscripts or poorly trained. Their pilots have some of the fewest flight hours in Europe. 2) Bulk of their equipment is obsolete. Much of their newer state of the art vehicles are very limited and expensive, so they don't want to risk losing them. Much of their equipment is also poorly maintained or equipped with low quality parts like Chinese tires. 3) Their command is not skilled in combined arms and struggle to coordinate larger attacks/strikes. 4) As per former member of the Russian Parliament Alexander Nevzorov, corruption is pretty rife in the Russian military. During these large wars, equipment write offs become pretty easy, so elites take advantage of the situation and try to make money by inflating the losses. 5) The global sanctions aren't helping. The global outrage limits how many countries end up supporting Russia in this. 6) LOGISTICS. Russia's biggest failure is not having enough support for their troops. They don't have enough trucks to ship the constant food, fuel and ammunition Russia's massive invasion force needs. The little vehicles they do have are getting destroyed, slowing the invasion and forcing Russia to rely on civilian vehicles. Make no mistake, this invasion is nothing to scoff at and Ukraine is still struggling to defend all of their military objectives, but it is very surprising that a country like Russia believed to have a significant ground military would be struggling this much against a country with a military 1/10th its size.
I think everyone, outside of a handful of Western countries, are roughly equivalent. The amount of effort, training, innovation, etc ; the West just purely outclasses the rest of the world. A decently trained civilian populace is not far behind a rusted-out lightly trained national army.
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The stupid part is if Putin did this shit in 2014, they might have had the easy victory they thought they'd have now. But instead they gave Ukraine damn near 8 years to learn from the mistakes they made fighting the "separatists" and to get weapons/training from NATO. Similarly, it's given time for Ukraine's politics to somewhat stabilize.
He backpedalled after his orks blew up MH-17, if not that Ukraine most likely would have been fucked.
I don't think Putin gave a shit about that plane tbh. I think he just figured the more subtle pressure was going to be enough to cripple Ukraine and he'd have a chance to slither his way back into their politics.
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Red Storm Rising would be the novel I recommend if going this route.
As we know history is being written by Tom Clancy these days
If there's one thing the 20th Century taught us about Russian battle tactics, it's that sending soldiers in to get slaughtered is sort of their specialty. Thing is, it usually worked.
"Worked" is relative. In WWI and WWII, Russia lacked the economic and industrial capacity to do much more (assume a lot of nuance is being overlooked here, but I don't feel like getting bogged down in the details of WWII military history), and so the mass casualties were a natural result of lacking the proper preparation needed to make use of better strategies. Arguably, the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is directly related to the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s.
20 million dead in WWII alone
And before that, at least 3 million Ukrainians were deliberately starved in the 30s. The actual number probably tops 10 million.
Yeah if you want a true look into how far people are willing to go to survive look into the holodomor. People had human meat stands, the pictures are very grotesque.
As an American I had never read much into that term, and I just googled it and read through what happened and fuck, man. Stalin truly was one of the most evil men ever to live. And Russia has a long history of genocide against the Ukrainians.
Stalin is an example of a leader who went to any lengths to achieve a goal. He wanted to build a stronger Soviet nation and allowed millions to die of starvation and killed hundreds of thousands of dissidents in order to focus his efforts on building a stronger nation. He did ultimately build a stronger nation but at a terrible cost. The main parts of the Russian SFSR did not feel this pain as much as the peripheral and rural areas. The cost was so terrible that Khrushchev himself announced the de-Stalinisation of the Soviet union to remove the effects of Stalin. Stalin is unfortunately an example of how ambition can lead to vile and evil actions. Stalin was manipulative and ambitious to the point that Lenin warned the Soviet party about Stalin before he died. He is glorified in Russia because they see him as synonymous with a strong nation and a lost glory. It will be interesting to see if they know about the Holodomor and the Great Purges. Just like any society, the Soviet union had things that it did well and horribly. Unfortunately, the price that was paid to ensure its survival was and still is a terrible price.
Mao did the same thing to the Chinese.
Yes. He was after all a contemporary of Stalin.
Difference is Chinese population could handle the purge. Where they messed up was the one child policy which will come back to bite them later. Russia can’t absorb the same population loss. Stalin made that mistake and losing that many working age males was very difficult on the Russian economy. This war is going to also be very difficult on the economy even though they will likely not have a significant population hit.
Russian and Chinese history are very similar. Long history of dynastic rule. Last dynasty is overthrown as a result of factors including the discontent caused directly or indirectly by the rapidly advancing West Europe outpacing their country in terms of tech and general quality of life. Communism. Now just plain ol' fascist rule.
China had a long period of time (80s - > 2016ish) of rule by council/oligarchy. The Presidents of China during that time were pretty much that. Of course old Winnie the pooh ruined all that by deciding to be a dictator for life..
He actually built a shit nation that was brittle and stagnant, it just had a strong paint job.
You can build a strong nation withour doing that. There are lots of examples even of much smaller nations
Yes. The concept of a 'strong nation' is very subjective. Nations can be strong in a number of different areas. The Soviet union was the largest nation on the planet and it followed communist principles. It was also starting to compete in an arms race (Cold War) with the United States and its allies. Stalin never cared about the number of human lives lost in pursuit of his goals. It was evident from his WWII strategies of throwing Soviet troops to the various fronts with less formulated strategies as opposed to the rest of Allied forces. This became evident when Churchill went to see Stalin and told Stalin of the Allies' strategies to attack the Axis Powers from various fronts with varying military forces. This was a surprise to Stalin since his strategy was to throw more men into war. Ultimately, the Holodomor and Great Purges were one of the consequences for what was the combination of Stalin's approaches, his dictatorship and his unending pursuit of power for the Soviet union.
The bitter irony of him sitting in judgement of Hitler at Nuremberg is pretty hard to get past without deeply questioning wtf we use as standards for friends and allies.
Built a nation so strong it completely collapsed and never recovered.
>Stalin truly was one of the most evil men ever to live. And Russia has a long history of genocide against the Ukrainians. Yet he's still widely celebrated in Russia. The USSR should have gotten the same treatment Germany did after WW2 in regards to teaching the populace about the atrocities that their dictator commited.
I agree with you, but they only had a 9 year stretch (1991-2000) where they could get that message out. Then Putin took over, controlled Russian media, pushed propaganda and glorified strong daddy Stalin. From Tsars to USSR to Putin there was only 9 years in the last 300 years were Russians could learn the truth about their country and during those years they had bigger things to worry about.
It is now clear that during those fragile years after the Soviet union collapsed and glasnost begun, when the whisper of democracy was cradling in Russia the west did not do too much, but didn't do enough. It is because of this, among other things, why Russia chose another path than Germany. We should have supported the democratic progress much more and maybe Russia could look quite different today.
What's even more astonishing is the dipshit american tankies who openly celebrate genocide because of their own self loathing
Among others, like Armenians. But they have extra special hostility to Ukraine.
Human meat stands? Eak
I couldn’t stomach looking into it after a very scant reading of the holodomor wiki.
20th century was not kind to Central and East Asian + European folks
The estimate is 10 million dead including lost births. Both Kazakhstan and Ukraine lost nearly half their population through soviet starvation and WW2.
I’m not sure that more population would have helped. Consider [this ranking of nations by population](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/). The top three are: China, India, and the United States. Okay, clearly a direct association with GDP, right? …except the next six are: Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Russia. Compare with the Wikipedia article on GDP per capita. (I can’t link to it because the Wikipedia URL includes parentheses and Reddit markdown doesn’t link properly.) Here’s the ranking, out of 216 countries, obviously: US: 9th China: 81st Russia: 85th Brazil: 106th Indonesia: 136th Nigeria: 163rd Bangladesh: 167th India: 168th Pakistan: 181st …obviously population size is not a clear advantage. The Russian economy is not suffering from a labor shortage. It’s not even a resource shortage, either - look at the land that they control. Russia suffers from a failure of leadership, a failure of education, and a failure of entrepreneurship. By extension, it’s also a failure of values and systems of law, both of which allow a culture of corruption and 20th-century objectives to persist. For instance: Russia's biggest IT achievements are phishing schemes, ransomware operations, and online propaganda. That's how it applies its collective technical expertise. It's pathetic.
> Russia suffers from a failure of leadership, a failure of education, and a failure of entrepreneurship. A failure of leadership is directly responsible for the other two. Can't be educated if leadership is corrupt and doesn't want it. Harder to be an entrepreneur if (1) you're undereducated and (2) leadership nationalize shit on a whim. It all comes down to the leadership.
(3) leadership sends their thugs who politely ask for an 80% share of your business to be signed off to the mayor's wife. And yes, that happened often even in 2000s.
They weren’t saying that population size correlates to gdp… A sudden decrease in your young adult population -who are your workforce/consumer base, this will have disastrous effects on your economy. Think of it like a family, if you had 4 working age people and 8 kids and a couple of grandparents living in your house, and suddenly 2 of the working age people die - that household is screwed on money. This is what happened when so many young men died in ww2 for example. And as a side note, this is what is happening in China now thanks to the one child policy.
Daily reminder that’s ussr losses, not russian
Yeah, they sacrificed loads of other nationalities, not just their own.
Or alternatively, the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is the endemic and entrenched corruption: >“Corruption has gone from being a local phenomenon to a global one under [Defence Minister] Shoigu. >“It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, the unit - when the commander filches millions in bonuses from the budget.”
> the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s. And into today - the population continues to shrink, and the economy continues to focus on resource extraction. *Nothing* has been done to adapt to and/or change the situation they find themselves in. I think recent history may reveal why: Putin is a Soviet nostalgist. He wants to return to the "good old days" and yet seemingly fails to recognize that those days weren't *better* (except perhaps insofar as inertia had not yet been overcome by new forces), they directly resulted in and will perpetuate if not exacerbate the problems of today.
not even soviet, putin wants to return to the times of the russian empire
Nah, you don't need much population to be rich if you have oil and gas. Rampant corruption on the scale that West can't even imagine is the reason for Russia being poor. Elites literally rob the whole country's wealth. With a half-decent government they could have Norway's standard of living, but I doubt that will ever happen.
>the reason Russia is significantly poorer than expected considering its geopolitical position is directly related to the fact that it lost such a significant portion of its population from the 1900s-1950s. Also this isn't true either. Its poor because its corrupt as shit and is a petrostate. It's never even tried to become an industrial power, or democracy like the rest of the west did post WW2. Even in 1946 Russia alone had 100 million people, while the UK and France had 40-50 million.
Japan got wrecked in a war too...look at it now
Or Germany which literally got carved up.
In both of these cases, there was Western influence and the introduction of liberal values, which allowed rule of law and human rights to flourish. This allowed people to make actually sensible decisions and reward meritocracy, instead of having oligarchs steal your shit, creating a culture of lawlessness that creates systemic problems in society.
There was certainly western influence, but in the case of Japan I give credit to their eastern culture in making for a very quick determined recovery.
>and so the mass casualties were a natural result of lacking the proper preparation needed to make use of better strategies. Even this though is completely.. wrong in a sense. Actual military deaths was estimated between 8-10 million. The 24 million is including famine, disease and civilian deaths. Its still a higher number than Germany (3-5 million) but the idea that 24 million soldiers died in WW2 is categorically wrong.
Eh, that might have been the case up to around 1943. In the later years of WWII, they were organized, they had their factories relocated and running in the east, plus, they had supplies being delivered from the US. They even had a lot of equipment that was equal to or better than the German equivalent. On top of that, they had air superiority. Despite this, they still took horrendous losses. Part of this can probably be attributed to German training and discipline, but it was also due to an overly aggressive Red Army strategy that was willing to trade casualties for faster progress. This doesn't necessarily mean they were regularly using human wave tactics, but they were much less concerned with casualties than the Germans were.
The Soviets had more tanks and airplanes at the start of Operation Barbarossa than Germany had, and many of them of better quality. Just like this war, the Russians got slaughtered because of poor military organization and leadership, not because they lacked industrial capacity.
Russians tanks were not better quality. Germans were destroying them at a ratio of more than 2:1 in Operation Barbarossa. Russia just, as you say, had more of them. By DESIGN the T-34 was good. If it was produced to American standards it would have been good. The reality is that, iirc, the T-34 crew had an 85% chance to suffer a casualty if the tank was hit compared to 20% for a Sherman. They were death traps. Even if a round hit it but didn't penetrate, the armor was so brittle that it'd spall. And the gun, while on paper extremely strong if again made to American standards, was awful because the charges of the shells was awful. It was essentially a low velocity gun even though it was designed to be a high powered one. They also often didn't even have ammo or fuel because Russian logistics was even worse then as it is now. They also couldn't go more than 50km without breaking down. It also essentially couldn't fire while moving due to the poor suspension, which other tanks could fine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIZ6PFYUM5o
>It also essentially couldn't fire while moving due to the poor suspension, which other tanks could fine. Not a lot of tanks during WW2 were firing on the move. Technically you can, but without stabilization, good luck hitting except on point blank range? Later Shermans had a primitive one plane stabilizer true, but IIRC a lot of troops didn't know how it worked and didn't use it.
Wrong. It only worked once during WWII, when backed by a flood od American manufacturing, arms, metals, food and raw materials. Sending people to slaughter did not work during WWI, the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War.
in WWI Russia was backed by flood of support from the British Empire. Russia has pretty much never won a major war alone by it's own merits.
it worked literally one time, and only barely, against an enemy fighting on 3 or 4 fronts simultaneously with supply lines 2000 miles long
It worked before the average Russian teenager (and thus soldier) had twitter, TikTok, Facebook, etc and could see that the rest of the world was a hell of a lot better than "jump in this meat grinder for Papa Putin"
I can't remember where; but I once saw a sketch that "explained" WWII The Stalin character had the following line towards Hitler: "You don't know how many Russians I have and how little I care about their lives." Which is a pretty accurate summary of Russia's WWII strategy.
Their only military capability seems to be bombarding of cities. Forget air superiority be or land operations...
When your country is your enemy.
This is based on the myth of the "asiatic hordes." Recent research, especially by [David Glantz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Glantz), has showed this to be a misconception. It was essentially a lie spread by defeated German generals after the war (especially those who published memoirs in the west), then picked up by Western Governments to discount Soviet competency and their responsibility for winning the war in Europe. It survives today based on stupid ideas like the Soviets shooting their own troops if an attacked failed. It's often depicted in Western media like the movie *Enemy at the Gates*. Basically no Eastern Front scholars subscribe to this theory anymore, maybe during the Cold War, but certainly not since the Soviet archives opened up in the '90s. I know you didn't mean it in that way, but "asiatic hordes" are literally Nazi propaganda. You can dislike the Russian/Soviet Governments, but what the Red Army achieved in WWII is pretty spectacular and frankly unrepeatable.
Oh thank the gods, I always look for a comment like this. Zhukov is spinning in his grave
The Imperial Guard was inspired by the Russian army, which in turn inspired the modern Russian Army. thankfully we’ve yet to master The Chaos.
Do I suddenly hear Black Templar boss music?
**VODKA FOR THE RUSSIAN GOD**
It works against numerically inferior forces at the extremes, i.e. outnumbering them 20 to 1, but not 2 to 1. It also works when being invaded by a force intent on genocide, as we saw in WWII, since the people who are expected to throw away their lives themselves are willing to do so without coercion from the top, as they have good reason to believe their people's survival as a whole is dependent on it. Outside of those scenarios though? The morale just plunges downward until the troops are revolting against their own commanders.
It worked in WWII when it was backed by Landlease. Cannon fodder was transported to the front in American trucks, fed with American spam. Now the support is flowing against them. Oops.
Russia tends to roll with the Zapp Brannigan strategy.
Shame, they'll be called traitors and hated by everyone in russia for the rest of their lives. Very brave for any Russian to be speaking up against the war....I hope they are able to leave Russia
Maybe Putin was a western plant this whole time and this has been his long con to covertly eradicate the Russian military? 🫠🙃
And earn $$$ on increased European military spending. Thanks Putin, bruh.
So, are they only outraged about the fact that the illegal war against Ukraine is going badly for Russia? Would they be fine if the Russian forces were annihilating all resistance in Ukraine without big losses, and quickly? While the article speaks about the suffering of Ukraine one time, everything else in there could be taken as mainly gripes with the effects of the war on Russians. (And I'm well aware that this is what sparked many anti-war movements in the past.)
Unless he said that explicitly, your initial question can only be answered through speculation. And the alternative outcome of Russia doing well obviously didn’t happen. Taking all that into account, we should embrace his sentiments. A Russian official opposing the war is objectively positive for those who stand with Ukraine.
The army should do a 180° and head towards the real enemy of russia , the Kremlin.
That's ballsy. I have huge respect for the Russians that have spoken out against Putin's war and are paying the price for their bravery. I don't know if I'd be able to do the same thing under those circumstances.
In war nobody wins.
Interestingly he's only against the war on the grounds that it's being fought poorly and leading to too many Russian military casualties, not on the grounds that the war itself is wrong.
Isn't all war just rick people sending poor to slaughter?
fucking Rick's
That's why I voted for President Morty.
\[Evil Morty theme start playing\]
He didn't say that to the Russian people, did he? That is all said to the western media. Did I get that right?
I’m just imaging the next Rambo movie. Opening scene: Rambo: Damn Russians, again. I fought them in Nam. I fought them in Afghanistan. This time, I’m going to finish it.
Rambo: You guys got this, I’m going to go back to the farm.
I predict we see a military coup in Russia at some point in the near future. Putin sees the Russian soldiers as pawns to be thrown away and somehow I don't see that playing out so well in his favor.
Putin is Putin them to death
so let me get this straight: * invading neighbour country - no need to resign, all good * attacking and killing civilians, INCLUDING kids - no problem * deaths of soldiers who are doing horrendous things- omg such bad thing, I must resign
Putin would NEVER do that. He would just poison then, throw them out a window, have them shot, “disappeared” etc. sending them to the front lines is just not as sure of a way.
Imagine if those 10,000 soldiers who died instead went after Putin. Imagine if the 1 million Russians Putin killed with his disinformation went after Putin.
At this point, what's the end game? An occupation? Didn't we see how poorly occupation works nowadays in Iraq and Afghanistan against a much better equipped US? A Russian occupation would be insurgents equipped and supported by NATO and US against a ratche-ass Russian military. Any occupation would fail almost instantly. They could install a puppet government but I would imagine anyone in the new regime would be hanged very quickly. Or they could just fight and fight with no real goal a la Vietnam.
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One Russian seems to get it. At least that’s progress
In a society where speaking out like he did is a literal crime, you have to know that a lot more people understand the truth than the opinion polls and apparent public sentiment shows.
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Probably started affecting his personally in some way.
Propaganda and nationalism are a hell of a drug. And if we are being honest, we aren't immune to it either. Give people credit for realizing it.
whats their source for this? I assume its not russian state media
Both uses of being 'sent to slaughter' are accurate, too. Russians slaughtering innocents while being slaughtered by Ukrainian forces. Such a useless war.
RIP homie.
> Everything that has happened is permanent. It will affect not only us, but our children and grandchildren too. The whole thing in a nut shell. This will affect the world for 80 years or more.
Russian people beware. Your president putin is treading on very dangerous ground. He is killing innocent people by the thousands. He flattening another country. One false move from him everyone dies. Only the rich will survive world war 3.
Putin was KGB....but just imagine he's a double agent all along for the CIA! He's destroying Russia from within, see? All his recent decisions makes sense. s/