Of the many ridiculous things Russia has done to humiliate and debase itself in this stupid vanity revenge project, making no provision at all for serious border defense may not be most manically immoral, but it may be the most militarily stupid.
For all their bluster about nukes - how are you going to use them exactly? On the Ukrainian territory you claim is yours, or on the Russian territory that is currently occupied by Ukraine.
They’re just so fucking stupid.
Capital punishment, by other means
Incompetence of their side is definitely a perpetual factor - but the excellent intelligence and satellite surveillance intel of the Ukrainians is the real cause here.
Read between the lines - this means the US is providing satellite intel inside Russia, of a moving target, in addition potentially to authorized use of HIMARS inside Russia along with that SitRep
Welp. Russia historically only responds to strength and their overall strategy has always been “keep dying in massive numbers until something big happens”. Usually that something is a crushing defeat that leads to revolution, but - they like to count their hits and ignore their misses. So - carry on.
Help a brother out. What is the significance of Lgov? There are likely soft targets all over Kursk. Is it a railway hub?
Rogan is the great litmus test for our society. He's what a stupid person thinks a smart person is, just like how Trump is what a moron thinks a rich, successful person is.
So obviously such a complete dope grifter for anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size, and yet he serves a purpose by being the standard of who should bother to talk to in life. If anyone you know says "you know, Joe Rogan said something interesting the other day...", well - then you know you can nod politely, and ignore everything that person saiys going forward.
The problem is, everyone THINKS that they're the woman in this meme.
Oscar Klefbom formally retires. How different might the Oilers look if his shoulder injury hadn’t taken him out? You don’t depend on Nurse as much, good skating 40 point pace player, you may not get Ekholm and Broberg trying to REPLACE Klefbom. Take Care, Oscar. To what might have been
Is the real play here to try and make account sharing more difficult? Encourage more membership purchases?
Been a shopper there for 30 years - they're not a company that makes changes willy nilly. Even if you can get into the store without a card, you can't buy anything without one. Surely the cost of sneaky samplers isn't the main thrust of this.
Reddit is a media company now, they're not a community. Tons and tons of ads, thin skinned moderators with God complexes running completely out of control, and they now have platform profit responsibility.
Will cost them - this is a significant change to, by definition, some of their most popular content. Many people go to Reddit purely to find non-paywalled versions of content.
Trained eye liner wearing monkey follows orders with absurd publicity stunts, showing exactly what sort of performative clown show you'd get if they're elected, instead of actual policies and governance.
So - systems check time.
Made yourself a global pariah
Destroyed your primary export market.
Pissed away your Soviet stockpile inheritance
Blew your 30 year war chest of blood oil/gas, leaving your future extraction reserves of only the harder, more expensive to get variety.
Made yourself the permanent junior vassal to China, to whom you can now never refuse any demand for resources or concessions.
Destroyed any wisp of diplomatic credibility you’d had since even Stalinist times. Your remaining crop of fourth rate allies run only on bribes, and are comically useless compared even to the rogues gallery of corrupt tinpot dictators and thin skinned, low functioning mob bosses you propped up in Soviet times.
Pissed away your irreplaceable war stockpiles of missiles, attack helicopters, advanced fighter bombers and AWACS planes. Oh, and - the entire Black Sea Fleet. And the use of the Sevastopol Harbor that hosted it.
And - 575,000 working and breeding age males. So far. For a country with brutal demographics way below replacement rates. They would have been very useful to rebuild your society, rather than being slaughtered trying to establish a land bridge to a region that can no longer safely support military facilities
And for what? To be within visual range of territory you already controlled for a decade. Put this in perspective - so far through 2/3rds of 2024 alone, Russia have lost 180,000 casualties and masses of antiquated equipment, and taken the net sum of territory equivalent to the size of New York City. And your losses are RAPIDLY accelerating to higher than at ANY point in the war. You're driving soldiers into the front lines with scooters, ladas and golf carts.
Oh, and the small neighbor of 'racical inferiors' you set out to commit national genocide against have claimed more of YOUR territory in 72 hours with 3 brigades than you have with 300 in 2.5 years.
And that’s to say NOTHING about what it would take to actually hold that ground long term with occupation forces and settlers despite a permanent insurrection of drones, snipers, IEDs, sabotage, assassinations, car bombs and other goodies that would keep your army bleeding indefinitely and make the American experience in Iraq seem like child’s play.
Also to say nothing of making an eternal enemy of your most powerful former abused client state. There is Absolutely. No. Cooperation between the malignant petromafia kleptocracy you've built and a sovreign Ukraine going forward. Your 1,000 year project of abusive cruelty against Ukraine is drawing to a close - that divorce is final, we're just settling up the final bill, and neutering your sadistic tendencies as the same time
This has all been a GREAT idea. History is not going to be kind to the black hearted gangster ghouls who make it happen.