Russia’s traditional war fighting MO has been “keep dying and surrendering in huge numbers until something major happens”.
Crimean War, Russo Japanese War, WW1, Polish-Soviet war, Winter War, WW2, Afghanistan, Chechnya 1.
If not for Lend/Lease giving Russia food, oil, guns, vehicles, bullets, boots and clothing, they would have been rolled back to middle Siberia. For all their hypermacho chest thumping, they’re shit at war.
Per childhood fairy tale monster Lavrov, it is time to acknowledge facts on the ground. The enemy must accept these realities.
Of course. How do you investigate harassment and identify site-killing lunatics without keyword searching.
It’s all stored and anyone who needs to see stuff their site hosts can get it. Plus - you’d be surprised how much criminal activity people are willing to discuss with strangers.
That there is already a good self deprecating joke. Don’t sell yourself short. Unless you ARE short, then may I recommend entering the priesthood
Yes, that's exactly it. Their most advanced weaponry is being made and used instantly, as opposed to being drawn down from older stockpiles. This is suggestive that those initial stockplies are gone, and that they're having to use things as fast as they can make them.
It paints a picture that they are struggling to keep up, that they're not capable of further quick escalation, and that they'd be very sensitive to a disruption in the delivery of components required to make these things when they're using them as fast as they can build them.
Yep. no doubt. Imposssible to quantify, but reports at the time were at least a million men fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.
I make no claim that the 575k number is dead. Even UA says that's their estimate of dead and wounded. And to be extremely generous, let's say 30-40% of those wounded are probably so disabled, amputees or worse, that not only can they not fight anymore, but they can't work jobs at their full pre-invasion potential. That would still be hundreds of thousands of lost labor force participants in a country who relies massively on heavy industry and resource extraction manned by able bodied, if often drunk, raw manpower. They won't be shifting war amputees to service sectors desk jobs and call centers.
These newly disabled veterans will become burdens on a state that probably won't honor the support agreements to their full extent, making them worse than simply unproductive - it will make them bitter living testaments to the stupidity of this war and it's broken promises. In the cold caclulus of Russian brutality - these people are better off dead telling no tales and drawing no pension than they would be alive. Russia's interal ethnic cleansing and useless mouth disposal of their own people sometimes gets lost in the ocean of wickedness that this entire war has been.
Definitely off topic, and suggestive of decades old axe-grinding whataboutism. But - since it's a topic of apparent interest to you, let me counter in good faith with another OpEd angle for "why was iraq invaded", beyond the simple motive of vanity revenge. Pure speculation, no claim this is fact.
In the initial months and years Post 9-11, there were dozens of AQ cell attacks across the globe, including inside the US and Europe. Gunman squads, workplace murders, bombings across the globe, Spain, Belgium, France, etc. Stopping them all is essentially impossible. The US is also in a position of having to "respond" to deal with the american electorate's bloodlust. You can't just do nothing and bleat on superlatives about moral superioirty. Someone has to die. They are unable to find and stop AQ cells from carrying out attacks on soft targets against civilians, in areas only protected by local law enforcement. So - what do you do? Deploy your army everywhere in your own country to try and interdict attacks after they're already happening? Well, that's not a great plan.
Maybe the conscious decision was to create a global flashpoint in someone else's backyard, which would draw in the irrational hatred of global jihadism, where they could fight directly against the US military, instead of against civilians, and where collateral damage would be the lucky host country's problem. Put simply - invite the jihad inclined global population to come to Iraq and die fighting the US Army instead of having them come to you and kill people in malls, airports and gas stations. Of course the idea is morally reprehensible - criminal even. But it's also logical. That is not the same as saying it was a good idea, before you go down the ad hominem route. Offered only as a possible line of thought of "why was Iraq invaded at all". But - brought up only because of an incongruity with your assertion that Iraq was a vanity revenue project and therefore(?) at least somehow comparable to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine because of it's ongoing insistence on being an independent country.
Now, perhaps you're doing what you seem to be - trying to equate the US actions in Iraq as a moral equivalent to what Russia has done to Ukraine. If that's your angle, well - you be you, i wouldn't try to change your mind. I would only, in that case, say that Russia invaded Ukraine, first in 2014 and again in 2022, without any pretext 9/11 style attack. Russia's simple, naked imperial genocide was not provoked by any Ukrainian-spawned outrage, but if you'd care to make the case that even that is not true, but all means, let's hear it.
Nation of cynical thieves who don’t even have a word for empathy eating themselves at the first hint of trouble? I’m shocked. SHOCKED.
Well - not that shocked.
I worked for one of the major dating sites about a decade ago. Let me assure you, that people act like debased hyperhormonal chimps in heat when they think nobody is watching. Oh, and by the way - someone is ALWAYS watching.
If you're a male who has some combination of a steady job, are remotely reliable, not drug or booze addled, have most of your teeth and hair and can tell a joke and hold a conversation - you're golden. It is UTTERLY unfair to ladies, but just being able to hold that low bar will get you much farther than you might think.
It's a strange dilemma - for a dating site to suceed, you have to protect the women. From the guys' perspective, it's shouting into the void, on the off chance you might EVER stand out enough to get a reply a week. From a woman's perspective, it's like the ozone layer protecting a constant bombardment of radiation and lethal rocks from space. A cornucopia of typically BAD CHOICES that manage to slip through the various cracks that the sites/apps put up to protect them.
But - the women ARE the site. If you have the WOMEN, then the men would follow you buck naked through the flaming tar pits of hell to get to them. But - the average male is a monosyllabic goblin with skeletons in his closet and bad intentions much more often than you'd think. It's why Bumble tried female-only communication initiation. The women on dating sites have an invisible shield tbey don't even realize exists around them to prevent bots, unsolicited dick pics, one word messages, repeat-offense harassers, and wide-net-casting quagmires who have more deeply held mysoginstic beliefs than they do good pick up lines.
".... and THAT'S why it's totally justified for me to have murdered thousands of my own citizens, rather than behave like a democratically elected leader".
Trump has become an unfunny version of Eric Cartman come to life. A petulant, shameless, poopy pantsed little boy who could never fill the inky black waste void in where was supposed to have a heart, brain and soul with enough of anything.
This was a branding exercise that truly got out of hand, and he was a simple fluke. But of course, that’s impossible for him to accept.
It gets really, really interesting now that he can’t be of any use to anyone and all the stupid plans and bad loans come due at the end. Jail would be the best outcome.
They seem to be feasting on Russia's ham fisted attempts to bring reinforcement columns along main roads. Russia was completely unprepared for this, and Ukraine obviously was. There is almost no mention of Russian air power operating in this area, and reports that Ukraine brought their own substantial AA assets in case they did. So - you have Russian infantry and armor moving along main roads, in slow convoys, being surveilled by Western satellites the entire time, getting slammed by drones and artillery before they can even get to Kursk.