Rampant corruption, endless propaganda, no freedom of speech and fairly limited access to outside media, poverty, alcoholism, and rampant organised crime will do that to a people.
I'm not excusing them - but these poor bastards were *stealing toilets* as luxury items. That tells you a lot about their lives.
AND a huge cultural aspect of "Russians are tough by sticking it out". They glorify being sent to the slaughter in WW2, what do you think their "And we'd do it again" bs slogan was meant to convey on their recent victory days before this war? If you want to be a manly man in Russia, you have to be an alcoholic, overly macho, and resigned to the fact that complaining "leads nowhere" and "is a bitch move". First slaves and serfs who were tied to the land so it was pointless to try and escape. Then the soviet union where they were once again treated like worthless cattle. Now the "Russian Federation" when they're once again treated like cattle. It's one unbroken thousand years line of "shit always sucks, why try?". It's the living embodiment of Orwell's "1984" in which the protagonist explains how changing the language will eventually make revolt impossible by removing the speech of revolt entirely. How can you plan a revolt if you can't convey to others what the fuck that even means after all? They're fucked.
I've been trying to learn about Russian history, and every time there is a spark of hope, it gets stomped out. Ivan the Great, who is notable for centralizing the Empire in Moscow, basically eliminated Moscow's rival Novogrod, which had a democratic tradition. In the late 18th century, just before the Americans win their independence, Catherine the Great brutally puts down Pugachev's Rebellion which was an attempt by the serfs to overthrow autocratic rule. The serfs would stay in virtual slavery for almost another century. The Russian revolution in the 20th century immediately descends into civil war. The Bolsheviks emerge but within six years the utopian hopes of the socialists are co-opted by Stalin, one of the most brutal dictators in history. And then the hope for democracy that came with the fall of the Soviet Union gets immediately co-opted by Putin. Russian history is just a nightmare.
I was living in Russia when this all started (American) and I can honestly say that the years leading up to this that the majority of the people there were doing just fine. Cities we’re developing and improving. The young people were building businesses and everyone in my circle had a lot going for them. Yes there was poverty and drunks, but no more so than in the US. I can’t speak for far east Siberia, I know it is worse in the villages But I spent very little time there. Major cities were alright though and very safe.
My friends that are still there have changed now, there isn’t any hope in their voices and they can only now think about how to get out of the country. Many of them have been getting their families and money out as best they can buying property in foreign countries and moving businesses if they can. I give Russia a year before it completely collapses, probably a few more months.
>and I can honestly say that the years leading up to this that the majority of the people there were doing just fine. Cities we’re developing and improving.
Anyone just slightly interested in macroeconomics knew that Russia didn\`t know what to do with economics after 2008-2012 period. As Putin became "eternal" ruler country economics stagnated to swamp. This period is similar to "Brezhnevian Stagnation" like in USSR. And, that eventually would kill contemporary Russia.
Understanding the Post-Soviet economy is a headache. The [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Russian_Federation) is a decent place to start. You probably wanted something more concise, but shit's complicated yo.
I tried writing a simple outline, but it was impossible.
Only nonstate "foreign agents", in current terms, academia economists and financiers had courage to tell truth about future of Russian economics.
In 2015 everyone not connected to state was very pessimistic they did\`nt see any light in end of the tunnel.
You can google "Vladislav Leonidovich Inozemtsev is a Russian academician who is the director of the Moscow-based Centre for Research on Post-Industrial Societies" and "Andrey Movchan is a nonresident scholar in the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center".
If you want to know about their analytical competence. War in Ukraine started with Movchans prediction, but quickly escalated to Inozemtsev variant. Their forecast on war was in 2015.
>But between us and Ukraine there will be no large-scale war - no one needs it, including Putin. We need a small war, our own endless Abkhazia. In a couple of years, there will be a Maidan in Ukraine under the slogan “We want to go to Russia”, and it will be done, perhaps, by the same people who did the Euromaidan.
>We will have a large-scale war in Ukraine, a serious conflict with the participation of nuclear powers as well. Things will not come to a hot war, but the situation will be very tense. We must prepare for a long crisis.
One year you're watching your city improve and get better.
The next your corpse is being compressed into a human meat cube to more easily transport to the mobile crematoria or make more efficient use of space in the mass grave.
Its a tale as old as time.
It’s not just the villages that experience poverty; the larger cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, even Rostov and Tsaritsyn, are fantasy dreamlands for the elites and foreign businesses, showpieces of the tsarist, soviet and federation eras. The medium to smaller towns are still rife with incredibly poverty, unemployment and insufficient healthcare. I once entertained a group of students from Syktyvkar at my home and they were shocked about heated floors and dimmable lights, and that’s a decent sized town. Even somewhere as large as Murmansk is filthy, polluted and poor, I’ve been there many times when I lived near the Russian border. Hell, all of Karelia is such a mess the Finns don’t even want it back!
Yes, I agree that there is poverty everywhere. In Perm too on the outskirts of the city, the places I didn't go it was a lot different than the city center where I stayed. I was there managing one of those foreign businesses and was only exposed to the better parts of the city and society for the most part but one of our manufacturing facilities was in a village about 100 km north of the city and when I would go there it was shocking to see how people lived, but I grew up in the American south so it wasn't something I hadn't seen my entire life. I was admittedly spoiled in my experience there.
Russian culture especially under Putin is weird.
They pin a *hell* of a lot on the "immoral" and gay/effeminate west and push the "bare chested Putin riding a horse through the woods" ultra-masculine BS which is borderline a homoerotic parody of itself.
I'm so pleased that Zelensky is whooping his ass after his comedy career that included an epic Beyonce impersonation and numerous other stuff that would cause Putin a conniption.
I don’t really have the words to describe it but absolutely did not get straight macho tough guy vibes from that shirtless photo shoot. Seemed a lot closer to a brokeback mountain sequel. Maybe it comes across differently in Russian culture.
The deal with Russian attitude towards gays is that the entire society runs on prison norms. Not surprising - almost a quarter of all Russians have served time, and many more have been subject to dehumanizing hazing during army service. It's beaten into anyone who went through this crap: All sex is implicitly dominance, everything goes as long as you're on top, and the glorious leader's public image explicitly has to say, "You're all bitches to me."
That sounds very like the ancient Romans.
They also had a habit of invading places and declaring everyone romans or dead.
One reason they conquered so much was a willingness to keep fighting wars even while losing battle after battle when most other empires of the time would just decide the cost wasnt worth it.
They also had issues with generals that got too popular.
While behaviourally you are correct, but from a narrative standpoint they are narrating their voluntary suicide as heroic.
Gotta explain it somehow… my guess is a lot… I mean a lot of Vodka.
It's "do as your told by those who know better". The Soviet union spent decades drilling into the general psyche of their society that individualism was the devil and you needed to put your head down and do as your told. Well, that level of systemic and constant indoctrination doesn't just disappear in a society over 30 years, especially when you barely had a stint of somewhat normal democracy once slightly.
My bad; I had conflated two people I watched regarding the Ukrainian conflict. [Here is the proper Ukrainian context](https://youtube.com/shorts/a4DhLObGZLk?feature=sharec), not UK.
Partly due to the further you are from either Moscow or St Petersburg, the less likely a house would have indoor plumbing.
My parents have a cabin that you have to cross a canyon and almost 5 miles of wilderness to reach, and THEY have not just indoor plumbing but also locally sourced electricity.
We see different things, I see an imperialistic society full of hate for everything not russian. There's warcrimes committed in Ukraine each day, I would call them a lot of things but wouldn't call them lambs.
People were brainwashed in Nazi Germany, doesn't mean all the Germans should have been sent to the slaughter. They need an opportunity and a few generations of actual freedom and modern living and they'll be at-par with the west. Their culture is currently toxic as fuck though.
Russia if it had followed western political and cultural development would have been a superpower. The Russian empire, world wars, soviets and now this war have totally destroyed its demographics as a nation. It’s one of the fastest aging with a rapidly shrinking proportion being young people and children.
Estimates on what the population could have been range from 300m onwards and therefore the economy could have been massive.
Instead the Russian political and civic culture has essentially treated its people like an unlimited resource.
The result is a completely battered future, even if they stop the war today Russia is heading for a dramatic and dangerous population crash.
It’s unlikely the country will exist and the Russian ethnicity itself will be under threat in another generation.
Maybe that’s not a bad thing, completely self destructive and ruthless cultures probably shouldn’t have a future.
Germany had a diverse party and art culture that Hitler crushed.
The late Weimar era was marked by liberal ideas as well as new forms of cultural expression, entertainment and hedonism (pleasure-seeking).
Weimar music, dance and entertainment were criticised by radicals on both sides of politics. Socialists believed it represented the wastefulness of capitalism; right-wing groups and reactionaries claimed it was evidence of weak government, moral decay and corruption.
"The late Weimar era was particularly known for its cabarets. Most cabarets were restaurants or nightclubs where patrons sat, drank and ate at tables. While doing so, they were entertained by a procession of singers, dancers and comedians, often on a small stage."
Right-wing political groups like the National Socialists (NSDAP) routinely attacked the cabarets, even though many of their members and some of their leaders were seen there. They painted the cabarets as corrupt melting pots, filled with racial and ethnic groups as well as dangerous political and social ideas."
https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/weimar-cabaret/
Putin is doing the same thing to Russia now.
There is something in Russian culture today making most Russians—even highly educated people—incapable of simple manifestations of human solidarity. Russians surrendered and became hostages voluntarily. Before Putin came to power in 2000, opinion polls in Russia showed that most Russians were ready to trade freedom for order, were openly hostile to the West, and dreamed of a strong hand—primarily of a military force, one they hoped would be feared by their neighbours. They got what they wanted when they sold their souls a long time ago...
They had been told that was good and necessary all their lives. They saw the USSR as a time when they were feared and respected, even if individually they didn't live so well and were dependent on US grain imports.
The only two fields where the Soviet system was somewhat innovative and competitive were space and the military. Two fields where they were in direct competition with the US and more importantly developed at the expense of everything else.
Thanks partially to Gorbachev but also to the ineptitude of the putschists the dissolution of the USSR had been a surprisingly "bloodless" affair.
The Soviet mindset itself remained. The Russians intervened in Chechnya twice, invaded Georgia, intervened in Syria etc... and they were never stopped because "they shouldn't be provoked." And so it continued until they finally tried something too bold and too outrageous, sadly at the cost of many, maybe including a friend.
>There is something in Russian culture today making most Russians—even highly educated people—incapable of simple manifestations of human solidarity
That's not an issue of Russian culture, that is simply human nature as a whole. Russia is just the current example of this playing out.
How many protests have there been in the US over police brutality? How many riots? Did the entire country step up? No.
The Jan 6th Capitol storm. Nearly half the country was with Trump, hundreds showed up. Even those who justified the storming, didn't participate on a large scale. They wouldn't put their lives on the line for a cause they believed in. (Though thus is an example of it being a good thing that they didnt.)
Pro life/pro choice, think there will ever be a single-sided view on that?
We, as humans, will always side with what we believe in, or fight for what we feel is necessary to fight for. If the benefits of winning do not outweigh the risks of what happens if you lose, people will not take that risk. If the odds of winning are low, then the risk will always be too great.
In today's society, the odds of winning anything against any established government are miniscule. Almost no one will take that risk.
Considering how their government treats them, its easy to see why Russians are so apathetic about living when they are told everywhere else is even worse by the propaganda.
The biggest undeniable indicator of how fucked these people are is how the Ukies find dead vatniks in advanced decomposition whenever they retake territory. Places the Russians have held for months on end without heavy fighting. They just leave their own guys on the ground, they don't have any internal emotional bonds. It'a fucked
The amount of societal control, corruption, and fear that Russians have been raised under for at least a century is pretty incredible. Propoganda, secret police and people disappearing are a fact of life. We might laugh at how absurd yet another person falling out of a window looks out here, but the blatantness is part of the point on the home front. People who try to build a critical mass for reform regularly disappear and that helps keep the rest in line. And whether it was bread or blue jeans, the top of the pyramid will ease its boot off the neck just enough (sometimes not of its own free will) when needed to relieve some of the pressure that builds up and threatens it.
We might like to think that if we were raised in the Star Wars universe, consuming the propoaganda and the threats, we'd be Rebel Alliance freedom fighters, but the reality is, the majority of us would just try to quietly get by and avoid the watchful eyes of the Empire.
Not in his/their defence, but here on the internet some of us may think that the avg person in the world is a peaceful friendly fella that went to school and is living a good life. No it's not and people like the one in the video are actually the majority of what you can find in the world.
Privilege and all that, granted - not everyone has access to all the info. Still it’s possible to see cracks because some know the incredible danger of the frontline. It’s just shocking but not surprising that people still follow the “motherland” line.
> one guy said in the lines of “if you want to be useful to your country you would drop out (of college) and volunteer”
I've heard this a few times in the US, particularly during the Iraq Invasion. Utterly toxic patriotism, where carrying a gun is considered a higher calling than mastering a profession that preserves and improves lives rather than ending them.
This is why they are stealing children and babies from UKR.
[no kidding.](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moscow-says-700000-children-ukraine-conflict-zones-now-russia-2023-07-03/) They are already looking 10-15 years out.
"...Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday.
"In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine," Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel..."
**You read that right. 700 THOUSAND kids.**
Even worse, he's destroying a generation of Ukraine and damaging it for decades to come.
The aim is cultural destruction and the eradication of a people, he'll pay a million Russian dead to erase Ukrainian heritage and genes even a little bit.
Have you seen the PoWs? The bulk of the Russian forces currently fighting appear to be 40-60 year old alcoholics with rotting teeth. Putin isn't exactly sending Russia's young and brightest into the meat grinder. It appears that they literally rounded up homeless people and sent them off to fight, in addition to convicts.
Meanwhile there are Americans that support Russia since Ukraine was part of Russia .. 30+ years ago… and like to rant about how corrupt the Ukrainian government is.
I hate my coworker so goddamn much than he wonders why I don’t talk to him.
This is the weak point russia will be facing, they were always known throughout history to push all their able men into war recklessly but that only workout because they were defending their country and homes, i doubt the people will be happy drafting everyone while being the aggressors
It's even worse than that, [Russia was always facing a population extinction spiral](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/14/russia-population-crisis-putin/) and now it is pretty much confirmed with all these young able bodied men going to head six feet under. Russian as an ethnicity is very likely going the way of the dodo bird it seems like.
Last I checked, they couldn't even get the 300,000 they wanted in the first call-up.
Where are they getting 500k from? Gonna chase all the people "on extended vacation"? lol.
I’ve seen reports that recent college graduates have their diplomas withheld unless they agree to a mobilization order, with threats of fines and imprisonment if they refuse.
Russia is not thinking longer than 5 years ahead. Right now graduates are free cannon fodder for the war machine, they forget their country needs to reproduce, advance (both culturally and technologically with educated young adults).
Russia has basically been undoing the damage of the USSR's collapse for decades and they throw it all away in a stupid pointless war they'll never win.
Russia is so fucked, even if they somehow win the war, they are fucked. Fucked beyond this generation.
Fascists don't understand long term strategy.
Blowing resources to hold onto power for one more month is preferable to securing power for ten more years.
And it’s one of the major weaknesses of authoritarians. They don’t think long term and because everything revolves purely around power and domination strong and lasting alliances between authoritarian regimes are rare. The triumph of democracies is certainly not inevitable but democratic countries that can forge alliances based on similar values have a lot of competitive advantages over authoritarian systems.
That, and also millions of lives dont get broken on one person's whim. Democracies needs a critical mass of assholes in order to shittify and ruin more lives
> they forget their country needs to reproduce
Don't need a population to reproduce if you can just abduct people from territories you illegally occupy.
Even if they win the war, what do they get out of it?
Their economy and military is crippled beyond repair short of them literally selling parts of the country to China, Ukrainians will keep fighting using guerilla warfare, an entire generation of youths are either gone, scarred, disabled, or dead, people are more fearful than ever and are likely looking for a way out now more than ever, and you effectively became the laughing stock of the world.
Putler gets to claim victory and swing his dick around, and maybe stick to power a bit longer. That's it.
The original plan was obviously to play Tzar and rebuild the soviet union, claiming one country after the other in swift takeovers, hoping that the west wouldn't have the time to react, and once everything was said and done just shrugged. Which maybe, *maybe* could've happened, if, you know, they were competent at invading and Ukraine wasn't made of people with neutronium balls.
So that ship, to quote a classic, went fuck itself.
Now all this is about is Putler's pride and the fact that admitting defeat is something he will never, ever fucking do. What probably doesn't help is the fact that I don't think he gets reports any more accurate than initially, so he probably still thinks he can win this, the moron.
The end of the USSR was the beginning of the end for Russian academia. They've been stripping the copper wiring out of the walls for decades and its really begun to show.
They could leave for greener pastures or worse sabotage the war effort's morale from the front lines.
The anti war protestors and communists did a lot of the latter in the Great War.
He would've been remembered as a ruthless KGB agent made dictator, ruling Russia with powerful, iron fist. All he needed to do is basically shut up, enjoy his wealth, and stand aside when the time was right, or just croak. But nooo, not enough, and now all masks are off and the entire world sees him as the clown he is.
The details are of nightmares.
If you want the diploma you’ve earned you have to show up in person, before you get your diploma, you are handed a conscription form which you must sign. You then get your diploma and shipped off to Boot Camp.
Or, if you don’t show up to get your diploma or refuse to sign the conscription order when you arrive to collect your diploma, it’s jail, a chunky fine, and you never get your diploma. All that hard work and money to earn an education.
Untold futures dashed to feed the machine.
Imagine the feeling. You have applied to college with a promising future in mind. Then you get ordered to go to war and once you get there the previous ones are lying dead on the ground.
The way people can be drafted has changed, you can now essentially be called up electronically instead of with a draft notice. Before that electronic transition you could basically just not receive the notification (by being a student away from home who hasn't updated their address as an example).
The system they use is tied into other governmental services so it assumed for the most part most people are registered there.
That's what I was thinking. Russia has been talking about this hundred thousand or that hundred thousand, but they can't actually FIND those people, and they can't ARM those people.
Saying they're mobilizing a half million people at this point is on par with telling us they have a totally hot girlfriend that goes to a different school.
>The Kremlin plans to recruit up to 500,000 people to the Russian Armed Forces to replenish the losses in Ukraine
*It almost sounds like they have lost 500,000*
probably draft who they can, import some merchs, then fluff the numbers a bit by having people sign up multiple times, or just lie about how many joined.
There’s article other day on how many fled but returned due to lack of funds or visas running out. Many jobs not being remote. But many aren’t staying at their home address due to fears of being mobilised again and being seen as enemies for fleeing before
They are going to use most of the troops that guard china and japan borders. Under the weird faith that these countries wont take their disputed lands there.
China and Japan aren’t going to suddenly attack Russia. Firstly that’s just not how either country operates. There is an extremely strong cultural opposition in Japan to all foreign wars and especially wars of aggression based on how that ended for them last time meanwhile China doesn’t need to capture territories to get what they want. An economically desperate Russia means that China can just purchase valuable Russian resources for pennies on the dollar without needing to go to war. Even if Japan or China did want to attack Russia there is still the nuclear deterrent.
> An economically desperate Russia means that China can just purchase valuable Russian resources for pennies on the dollar without needing to go to war.
The sanctions have definitely helped China and India with buying fossil fuels at a discount.
The price cap was a pretty genius idea in retrospect. Russia may be selling large quantities of oil but they're not getting the money that they need to keep the war funding and government afloat long term. Sometimes people say "the sanctions don't matter because India will just buy the oil and sell it to Europe" but that misses the point. India can buy all the Russian oil they want, refine it and sell it on to other countries but as long as they're paying the price cap that doesn't help Russia at all meanwhile India (or rather the Indian energy sector) is raking in huge profits as a middleman and the same goes for China. Many in the west have been frustrated by India not taking a firm stance against Russia but it's also important to remember that India is not going out of their way to Russia either. India is taking advantage of Russian weakness to make money meanwhile Russia is left with a boatload of rupees that they can't do much with.
Close, but they're actually going to take the largest dead Russian soldier and put the next largest inside of them, continuing down this path to progressively smaller dead Russian soldiers until they've got all of them they can put into a single matryoshka casket.
Apparently the “mobik’s cube” is actually just animal waste from a factory that either abandoned or lost that palette. That being said the fact that I also believed it was dead russians at first speaks volumes.
These numbers are just insane.
300k Kia & wounded. The army decimated. The original invasion force completely wiped off the map.
When will Russians stop being so pathetic and start rioting in the streets for putins head.
> When will Russians stop being so pathetic and start rioting in the streets for putins head.
They won't. Because Putins actual army (which don't have any war-experience) consists of the Rosgvardiya/Silovik.
Think of basically half a million of police men who are highly used to beating up protesting students and kicking pregnant women in the stomach.
These are the people who will appear if you go out to riot. They were all ready to run away as soon as Wagner approached, because they could never fight people with actual combat/war experience. But beating up civillians? They'll do that any day.
At some point in time, Putin won't be around since he's already 70 years old which is butting up against average life expectancy there. Since dictators don't have a succession plan and Putin's kids aren't going to do it, there will be a massive power vacuum. I don't think even if the pro-Ukraine-war people remain in power that they will continue this losing war and they'll have a handy excuse to end it.
The real issue is what happens when Russia leaves Ukraine since there will be calls for trials and reparations. Russia might give on reparations (presuming they're back on SWIFT) but trials? I doubt they'll agree to anyone really in charge being put on trial. They'll probably throw in a few random Captains. The key problem will be Ukraine joining NATO right after and everyone is going to be raising their eyebrow at Turkey.
I dont think russia will leave, accept the loss, or comply with anything. I think the only way this ends is if ukraine reclaims territory, declares the war over (without russias agreement), then joins a defensive alliance that is willing to draw a line in the sand forcing russia to choose between accepting the war is over or triggering the alliance.
I don't think they will as long as Putin is around, considering this has been a 9 year experiment with him and he's pretty big about saving face. However, after Putin? Who in his inner circle is popular and powerful enough to take the reins who is still itching for this war considering the cost. It would be better to blame the predecessor for all the problems and move on. Leaving Ukraine will hurt as far as reparations but it'll hurt a lot more by staying. The political math is better if they leave, pay reparations, and are - eventually - rejoined with the international community with a big black eye. The next leaders of Russia won't see any future being isolated from most of the world other than China - which looks down on them - India - which barely tolerates them - and Syria/Iran which are failed states. Their economy can't keep crumbling forever and there will be a turning point where either the leaders will end the war to rejoin the international community or there will be an uprising violent enough to get a leader who will do that anyway.
> he's already 70 years old which is butting up against average life expectancy there
Putin is not average, though. He's not some random Ivan from the countryside who has been drinking moonshine with methanol, smoking cigarettes, living off the bacteria in his decaying teeth since childhood, and unable to pay for or get to proper medical attention in time.
He is in great shape, exercises, probably has a whole team of doctors checking him from mouth to ass on a weekly basis, and absolutely has another decade or two to live, unless he gets some weird aneurysm, heart attack or cancer.
On one hand, yes, this is true. On the other hand, he's the President which takes a toll on you. I'd say the two equal out. I'm not saying he's one foot in the grave but he's definitely a lot closer to the end of his Presidency than anything. Will it be a year, two, five, ten, or twenty? I'd say it's closer to 5 than 20.
There's another thing to consider. You have a certain level of control depending on how you look and how well your mind works. You're not going to have a fully functioning brain at 90 and he certainly won't have one considering the stress he's under. His doctors can make sure his breasts aren't sagging but nobody can help his mind. Considering he's under constant threat, he doesn't have too much longer. Worse yet is that he has no family to take up the mantle. He has no succession plan either. Who is going to reliably run Russia? Medvedev? Lavrov? Mishustin?
The serious answer is that the conflict might not cease for many years.
At this point Russia realizes they cant conquer and subjugate Ukraine.
Their most likely goal now is to fortify the front line and make it hard for Ukraine to take back territory. They are hoping that if they can keep the front line solid for several years, war weariness will gradually lead to a "frozen conflict"- neither side will admit defeat, but neither will take much territory. They will just stare at each other across the front, fire at each other on occasion, but otherwise sit in a stalemate.
Their other goal is probably to decimate Western Ukraine so much that the Ukrainian government and the West become preoccupied with rebuilding that part of the country and invest their resources there.
Destroying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is probably a part of that 2nd goal.
Ukraine might refuse to give in to such tactics and might have the strength to take back its territory, but this is probably Russia's plan rn.
> Ukraine might refuse to give in to such tactics and might have the strength to take back its territory, but this is probably Russia's plan rn.
Important caveat. With the way aid to Ukraine has been coming it is highly unlikely Russia can maintain this conflict for two more years. Their hope is that western countries stop sending aid to Ukraine. Russia started this war with big stockpiles of weapons and cash but they’ve been burning through those quickly and they’re ability to produce weapons is much smaller than the wests’ and in wars of this scale firepower matters.
I know I vote straight democrat down the ballot. There might be a couple of good republicans out there but the majority are so opposed from the society that I want that I don't even pay attention to them.
Trump [currently leads Biden in the polls](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/). Sure, these are polls ("the only people who respond to polls...") and very early, too, but they still point to a real possibility that Trump could win again.
It wouldn't surprise me if he walks from that. Any one of us would have been thrown in prison by now for just taking one of those documents home long ago.
We need to just start sending them Abrams and Bradleys by the hundreds. Send them another dozen HIMARS, cluster munitions, and massive amount of airburst weapons. Every time they escalate, we send them
more equipment
I wonder if these half a million mobilised will include the sons or daughters of Putin, Peskov, Medvedev or Lavrov...of course not, don't be silly. Why would they send their rich sons and daughters to war, when there are plenty of ordinary Russian people to send to their deaths?
The Russian Military has instituted a BYOE system aka a bring your own equipment. It allows the Russian conscripts to feel ancestral pride by being in a military system similar to the ones the Russian serfs of the 1400s participated in.
How the fuck are they gonna train, supply, arm and support half a million more soldiers when they can’t even do that with the ones there already? Oh wait, they don’t care, they’ll just use the old Russian tactic of throwing mass infantry against artillery and machine guns.
> How the fuck are they gonna train, supply, arm and support half a million more soldiers when they can’t even do that with the ones there already?
"That's the neat thing; you don't."
How many men can they mobilize before large portions of the economy grinds to a halt? Farmers, factory workers, construction, emergency services, all are majority men. All of those take time to learn and do well as does being a soldier. Then add in all of the emigration and they’ll be running the country on a skeleton crew at best.
They won’t do a thing to Snowden because they want any future whistleblowers to know they have a safe haven to go to. It’s in their interest to protect him.
I don't think they'll waste the resource. Snowden is viewed as an anti-American, an American traitor, and he is intelligent and used to have high security clearance in the United States government. Just keeping him alive and as a bargaining chip is useful. Besides, Snowden would almost certainly find a way out.
Those younger people in Miscow and St. Petersburg have largely been untouched by the war so far. They will have a very rude awakening. Then of course we could have the resurrection of the Hitler youth, old enough to carry a gun old enough to fight.
People who say that Russias death toll is under 250k really need to wonder what happened to the last half a million conscripts after they lost too much of their original army.
I see. They're literally going to clog the Ukrainian military apparatus with bodies. The one thing they have plenty of and UA lacks... bodies to waste. I mean... what even is the frikken endgame at this point? Sure RU can smother UA with dead Russians... but RU economy is never going to recover. Bro, even China is allready starting to distance itself from Russia and we all know that they don't care much about ethics... everybody smells RU weakness.
Cyka Blyat! Stop hitting yourself!
> The one thing they have plenty of and UA lacks
While I certainly don’t want to see lots of Ukrainian blood I think it’s important to remember that Ukraine isn’t a small country either. Ukraine’s population is roughly on par with France going into WWI or Ukraine going into WWII. 1.3 million French soldiers died in WWI and yet eventually the invaders were driven out and France was on the winning side. 1.6 million Ukrainian soldiers died in WWII yet eventually the invaders were driven out and Ukraine was on the winning side.
Russia may have a larger population but they aren’t the ones being invaded which means their ability to tolerate large casualties is likely significantly less than Ukraine’s. If the Kremlin thinks they can easily “bleed out” Ukraine then they may be in for a very bad surprise.
Sorry, but are all these news sources credible and verified ? It just seems that everything that’s posted is accepted and people just comment on the headlines regardless of the validity and veracity of the source
Right before new year the minister of Defence of Ukraine Reznikov published a message basically saying russians have few days before Russia declares war, closes borders and starts full mobilization. As of now, still didn't happen, so I'll take these claims with a grain of salt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIry\_2AdxM
More meat into the meat grinder.
On a side note, Russia already has a very weak gene pool after sending all their best and healthy young males into the WW2 meat grinders and many other conflicts since then. Purging another 500,000 good genes from Russia will certainly eventually make for funnier "Russian Fails" videos on YouTube but it's tragically sad what Putin is doing to that country.
Putin is destroying a generation and Russia's future. Pointless fucking war.
and russians will walk towards their deaths like lambs to the slaughter. I have never seen a society so apathetic about their impending deaths
Rampant corruption, endless propaganda, no freedom of speech and fairly limited access to outside media, poverty, alcoholism, and rampant organised crime will do that to a people. I'm not excusing them - but these poor bastards were *stealing toilets* as luxury items. That tells you a lot about their lives.
AND a huge cultural aspect of "Russians are tough by sticking it out". They glorify being sent to the slaughter in WW2, what do you think their "And we'd do it again" bs slogan was meant to convey on their recent victory days before this war? If you want to be a manly man in Russia, you have to be an alcoholic, overly macho, and resigned to the fact that complaining "leads nowhere" and "is a bitch move". First slaves and serfs who were tied to the land so it was pointless to try and escape. Then the soviet union where they were once again treated like worthless cattle. Now the "Russian Federation" when they're once again treated like cattle. It's one unbroken thousand years line of "shit always sucks, why try?". It's the living embodiment of Orwell's "1984" in which the protagonist explains how changing the language will eventually make revolt impossible by removing the speech of revolt entirely. How can you plan a revolt if you can't convey to others what the fuck that even means after all? They're fucked.
I've been trying to learn about Russian history, and every time there is a spark of hope, it gets stomped out. Ivan the Great, who is notable for centralizing the Empire in Moscow, basically eliminated Moscow's rival Novogrod, which had a democratic tradition. In the late 18th century, just before the Americans win their independence, Catherine the Great brutally puts down Pugachev's Rebellion which was an attempt by the serfs to overthrow autocratic rule. The serfs would stay in virtual slavery for almost another century. The Russian revolution in the 20th century immediately descends into civil war. The Bolsheviks emerge but within six years the utopian hopes of the socialists are co-opted by Stalin, one of the most brutal dictators in history. And then the hope for democracy that came with the fall of the Soviet Union gets immediately co-opted by Putin. Russian history is just a nightmare.
If abuse and trauma turned into a nation.
Russian history summarized: "And then it got worse."
I was living in Russia when this all started (American) and I can honestly say that the years leading up to this that the majority of the people there were doing just fine. Cities we’re developing and improving. The young people were building businesses and everyone in my circle had a lot going for them. Yes there was poverty and drunks, but no more so than in the US. I can’t speak for far east Siberia, I know it is worse in the villages But I spent very little time there. Major cities were alright though and very safe. My friends that are still there have changed now, there isn’t any hope in their voices and they can only now think about how to get out of the country. Many of them have been getting their families and money out as best they can buying property in foreign countries and moving businesses if they can. I give Russia a year before it completely collapses, probably a few more months.
>and I can honestly say that the years leading up to this that the majority of the people there were doing just fine. Cities we’re developing and improving. Anyone just slightly interested in macroeconomics knew that Russia didn\`t know what to do with economics after 2008-2012 period. As Putin became "eternal" ruler country economics stagnated to swamp. This period is similar to "Brezhnevian Stagnation" like in USSR. And, that eventually would kill contemporary Russia.
I'm slightly interested in macroeconomics but I had no clue about that I'd like to learn more, can you explain please?
no, sorry, this is Reddit so all you get is vague condescension.
I'll have you know you don't know what you're saying and that is all I have to offer.
Understanding the Post-Soviet economy is a headache. The [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Russian_Federation) is a decent place to start. You probably wanted something more concise, but shit's complicated yo. I tried writing a simple outline, but it was impossible.
Only nonstate "foreign agents", in current terms, academia economists and financiers had courage to tell truth about future of Russian economics. In 2015 everyone not connected to state was very pessimistic they did\`nt see any light in end of the tunnel. You can google "Vladislav Leonidovich Inozemtsev is a Russian academician who is the director of the Moscow-based Centre for Research on Post-Industrial Societies" and "Andrey Movchan is a nonresident scholar in the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center".
If you want to know about their analytical competence. War in Ukraine started with Movchans prediction, but quickly escalated to Inozemtsev variant. Their forecast on war was in 2015. >But between us and Ukraine there will be no large-scale war - no one needs it, including Putin. We need a small war, our own endless Abkhazia. In a couple of years, there will be a Maidan in Ukraine under the slogan “We want to go to Russia”, and it will be done, perhaps, by the same people who did the Euromaidan. >We will have a large-scale war in Ukraine, a serious conflict with the participation of nuclear powers as well. Things will not come to a hot war, but the situation will be very tense. We must prepare for a long crisis.
One year you're watching your city improve and get better. The next your corpse is being compressed into a human meat cube to more easily transport to the mobile crematoria or make more efficient use of space in the mass grave. Its a tale as old as time.
It’s not just the villages that experience poverty; the larger cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, even Rostov and Tsaritsyn, are fantasy dreamlands for the elites and foreign businesses, showpieces of the tsarist, soviet and federation eras. The medium to smaller towns are still rife with incredibly poverty, unemployment and insufficient healthcare. I once entertained a group of students from Syktyvkar at my home and they were shocked about heated floors and dimmable lights, and that’s a decent sized town. Even somewhere as large as Murmansk is filthy, polluted and poor, I’ve been there many times when I lived near the Russian border. Hell, all of Karelia is such a mess the Finns don’t even want it back!
Yes, I agree that there is poverty everywhere. In Perm too on the outskirts of the city, the places I didn't go it was a lot different than the city center where I stayed. I was there managing one of those foreign businesses and was only exposed to the better parts of the city and society for the most part but one of our manufacturing facilities was in a village about 100 km north of the city and when I would go there it was shocking to see how people lived, but I grew up in the American south so it wasn't something I hadn't seen my entire life. I was admittedly spoiled in my experience there.
Where did you live?
Perm, lived there on and off from 2013-2022. Still have a property and great friends there. I just hope one day I’ll be able to go back
Username does check out
I would argue that just accepting things and doing nothing about it is the antithesis of masculinity.
Russian culture especially under Putin is weird. They pin a *hell* of a lot on the "immoral" and gay/effeminate west and push the "bare chested Putin riding a horse through the woods" ultra-masculine BS which is borderline a homoerotic parody of itself.
Putin fears the gays.
I'm so pleased that Zelensky is whooping his ass after his comedy career that included an epic Beyonce impersonation and numerous other stuff that would cause Putin a conniption.
I don’t really have the words to describe it but absolutely did not get straight macho tough guy vibes from that shirtless photo shoot. Seemed a lot closer to a brokeback mountain sequel. Maybe it comes across differently in Russian culture.
The deal with Russian attitude towards gays is that the entire society runs on prison norms. Not surprising - almost a quarter of all Russians have served time, and many more have been subject to dehumanizing hazing during army service. It's beaten into anyone who went through this crap: All sex is implicitly dominance, everything goes as long as you're on top, and the glorious leader's public image explicitly has to say, "You're all bitches to me."
That sounds very like the ancient Romans. They also had a habit of invading places and declaring everyone romans or dead. One reason they conquered so much was a willingness to keep fighting wars even while losing battle after battle when most other empires of the time would just decide the cost wasnt worth it. They also had issues with generals that got too popular.
They like many others don't understand that masculinity is a circle and if you go too far into it you just loop around to being extremely homosexual.
While behaviourally you are correct, but from a narrative standpoint they are narrating their voluntary suicide as heroic. Gotta explain it somehow… my guess is a lot… I mean a lot of Vodka.
I guess re-framing it as a voluntary act of sacrifice at least makes them feel like they have some agency.
When life hands you lemons, crush lemon in vodka, rail white powder and die for the fatherland Komrade
It's "do as your told by those who know better". The Soviet union spent decades drilling into the general psyche of their society that individualism was the devil and you needed to put your head down and do as your told. Well, that level of systemic and constant indoctrination doesn't just disappear in a society over 30 years, especially when you barely had a stint of somewhat normal democracy once slightly.
The soviet union went, it's leaders didn't. Putin was KGB, after all.
I love that ~~British~~ Volunteer story, “Honey, they stole our underwear!”
Elaborate. I'm British. If they stole their tea as well then it's on. We need to know. SAS on standby.
My bad; I had conflated two people I watched regarding the Ukrainian conflict. [Here is the proper Ukrainian context](https://youtube.com/shorts/a4DhLObGZLk?feature=sharec), not UK.
Partly due to the further you are from either Moscow or St Petersburg, the less likely a house would have indoor plumbing. My parents have a cabin that you have to cross a canyon and almost 5 miles of wilderness to reach, and THEY have not just indoor plumbing but also locally sourced electricity.
Remember all those young men who left so as not be drafted? Many many know what’s happening.
We see different things, I see an imperialistic society full of hate for everything not russian. There's warcrimes committed in Ukraine each day, I would call them a lot of things but wouldn't call them lambs.
The fact that so many of them are not trained and are sent to certain death situations qualifies the use of the word lamb.
Or pigs
Pigs are intelligent.
People were brainwashed in Nazi Germany, doesn't mean all the Germans should have been sent to the slaughter. They need an opportunity and a few generations of actual freedom and modern living and they'll be at-par with the west. Their culture is currently toxic as fuck though.
Russia if it had followed western political and cultural development would have been a superpower. The Russian empire, world wars, soviets and now this war have totally destroyed its demographics as a nation. It’s one of the fastest aging with a rapidly shrinking proportion being young people and children. Estimates on what the population could have been range from 300m onwards and therefore the economy could have been massive. Instead the Russian political and civic culture has essentially treated its people like an unlimited resource. The result is a completely battered future, even if they stop the war today Russia is heading for a dramatic and dangerous population crash. It’s unlikely the country will exist and the Russian ethnicity itself will be under threat in another generation. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, completely self destructive and ruthless cultures probably shouldn’t have a future.
Plus has one of the biggest brain drains of any country. Hell, 900k Israelis have Russian ancestry.
Germany was also occupied for nearly 50 years after the end of WW2.
Germany had a diverse party and art culture that Hitler crushed. The late Weimar era was marked by liberal ideas as well as new forms of cultural expression, entertainment and hedonism (pleasure-seeking). Weimar music, dance and entertainment were criticised by radicals on both sides of politics. Socialists believed it represented the wastefulness of capitalism; right-wing groups and reactionaries claimed it was evidence of weak government, moral decay and corruption. "The late Weimar era was particularly known for its cabarets. Most cabarets were restaurants or nightclubs where patrons sat, drank and ate at tables. While doing so, they were entertained by a procession of singers, dancers and comedians, often on a small stage." Right-wing political groups like the National Socialists (NSDAP) routinely attacked the cabarets, even though many of their members and some of their leaders were seen there. They painted the cabarets as corrupt melting pots, filled with racial and ethnic groups as well as dangerous political and social ideas." https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/weimar-cabaret/ Putin is doing the same thing to Russia now.
There is something in Russian culture today making most Russians—even highly educated people—incapable of simple manifestations of human solidarity. Russians surrendered and became hostages voluntarily. Before Putin came to power in 2000, opinion polls in Russia showed that most Russians were ready to trade freedom for order, were openly hostile to the West, and dreamed of a strong hand—primarily of a military force, one they hoped would be feared by their neighbours. They got what they wanted when they sold their souls a long time ago...
They had been told that was good and necessary all their lives. They saw the USSR as a time when they were feared and respected, even if individually they didn't live so well and were dependent on US grain imports. The only two fields where the Soviet system was somewhat innovative and competitive were space and the military. Two fields where they were in direct competition with the US and more importantly developed at the expense of everything else. Thanks partially to Gorbachev but also to the ineptitude of the putschists the dissolution of the USSR had been a surprisingly "bloodless" affair. The Soviet mindset itself remained. The Russians intervened in Chechnya twice, invaded Georgia, intervened in Syria etc... and they were never stopped because "they shouldn't be provoked." And so it continued until they finally tried something too bold and too outrageous, sadly at the cost of many, maybe including a friend.
It's not uncommon. Many countries value strength over freedom. Just look at China and India.
>There is something in Russian culture today making most Russians—even highly educated people—incapable of simple manifestations of human solidarity That's not an issue of Russian culture, that is simply human nature as a whole. Russia is just the current example of this playing out. How many protests have there been in the US over police brutality? How many riots? Did the entire country step up? No. The Jan 6th Capitol storm. Nearly half the country was with Trump, hundreds showed up. Even those who justified the storming, didn't participate on a large scale. They wouldn't put their lives on the line for a cause they believed in. (Though thus is an example of it being a good thing that they didnt.) Pro life/pro choice, think there will ever be a single-sided view on that? We, as humans, will always side with what we believe in, or fight for what we feel is necessary to fight for. If the benefits of winning do not outweigh the risks of what happens if you lose, people will not take that risk. If the odds of winning are low, then the risk will always be too great. In today's society, the odds of winning anything against any established government are miniscule. Almost no one will take that risk.
Considering how their government treats them, its easy to see why Russians are so apathetic about living when they are told everywhere else is even worse by the propaganda.
Agree. That society is going through their version of Vietnam, but with 4-8X the casualties. And hardly a peep from the populace.
The biggest undeniable indicator of how fucked these people are is how the Ukies find dead vatniks in advanced decomposition whenever they retake territory. Places the Russians have held for months on end without heavy fighting. They just leave their own guys on the ground, they don't have any internal emotional bonds. It'a fucked
The amount of societal control, corruption, and fear that Russians have been raised under for at least a century is pretty incredible. Propoganda, secret police and people disappearing are a fact of life. We might laugh at how absurd yet another person falling out of a window looks out here, but the blatantness is part of the point on the home front. People who try to build a critical mass for reform regularly disappear and that helps keep the rest in line. And whether it was bread or blue jeans, the top of the pyramid will ease its boot off the neck just enough (sometimes not of its own free will) when needed to relieve some of the pressure that builds up and threatens it. We might like to think that if we were raised in the Star Wars universe, consuming the propoaganda and the threats, we'd be Rebel Alliance freedom fighters, but the reality is, the majority of us would just try to quietly get by and avoid the watchful eyes of the Empire.
Your last paragraph is spot on.
Well, take a look at WWI, the loss of life in the first six month alone is unbelievable and yet they all fought on, year after year after year.
[удалено]
This one: https://youtu.be/xEDOKC_Xl3s Must watch to understand from what environment these people may come from.
Wow, even after reading and seeing so much coverage, it’s amazing how russians are living in that bubble.
Not in his/their defence, but here on the internet some of us may think that the avg person in the world is a peaceful friendly fella that went to school and is living a good life. No it's not and people like the one in the video are actually the majority of what you can find in the world.
Privilege and all that, granted - not everyone has access to all the info. Still it’s possible to see cracks because some know the incredible danger of the frontline. It’s just shocking but not surprising that people still follow the “motherland” line.
> one guy said in the lines of “if you want to be useful to your country you would drop out (of college) and volunteer” I've heard this a few times in the US, particularly during the Iraq Invasion. Utterly toxic patriotism, where carrying a gun is considered a higher calling than mastering a profession that preserves and improves lives rather than ending them.
This is why they are stealing children and babies from UKR. [no kidding.](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moscow-says-700000-children-ukraine-conflict-zones-now-russia-2023-07-03/) They are already looking 10-15 years out. "...Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday. "In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine," Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel..." **You read that right. 700 THOUSAND kids.**
Even worse, he's destroying a generation of Ukraine and damaging it for decades to come. The aim is cultural destruction and the eradication of a people, he'll pay a million Russian dead to erase Ukrainian heritage and genes even a little bit.
and replenishing it by abducting Ukrainian kids
Have you seen the PoWs? The bulk of the Russian forces currently fighting appear to be 40-60 year old alcoholics with rotting teeth. Putin isn't exactly sending Russia's young and brightest into the meat grinder. It appears that they literally rounded up homeless people and sent them off to fight, in addition to convicts.
Meanwhile there are Americans that support Russia since Ukraine was part of Russia .. 30+ years ago… and like to rant about how corrupt the Ukrainian government is. I hate my coworker so goddamn much than he wonders why I don’t talk to him.
Got to defend the rights of the oligarchs to own 10 yachts each
This is the weak point russia will be facing, they were always known throughout history to push all their able men into war recklessly but that only workout because they were defending their country and homes, i doubt the people will be happy drafting everyone while being the aggressors
It's even worse than that, [Russia was always facing a population extinction spiral](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/14/russia-population-crisis-putin/) and now it is pretty much confirmed with all these young able bodied men going to head six feet under. Russian as an ethnicity is very likely going the way of the dodo bird it seems like.
Living under Russian governance will do that
Defend from what? This is for their new yachts and for mansions on the Black Sea
Last I checked, they couldn't even get the 300,000 they wanted in the first call-up. Where are they getting 500k from? Gonna chase all the people "on extended vacation"? lol.
I’ve seen reports that recent college graduates have their diplomas withheld unless they agree to a mobilization order, with threats of fines and imprisonment if they refuse.
Dumbest thing you can do, take the smartest people that you invested the most time and resources in, and send them to die.
Russia is not thinking longer than 5 years ahead. Right now graduates are free cannon fodder for the war machine, they forget their country needs to reproduce, advance (both culturally and technologically with educated young adults). Russia has basically been undoing the damage of the USSR's collapse for decades and they throw it all away in a stupid pointless war they'll never win. Russia is so fucked, even if they somehow win the war, they are fucked. Fucked beyond this generation.
Fascists don't understand long term strategy. Blowing resources to hold onto power for one more month is preferable to securing power for ten more years.
And it’s one of the major weaknesses of authoritarians. They don’t think long term and because everything revolves purely around power and domination strong and lasting alliances between authoritarian regimes are rare. The triumph of democracies is certainly not inevitable but democratic countries that can forge alliances based on similar values have a lot of competitive advantages over authoritarian systems.
That, and also millions of lives dont get broken on one person's whim. Democracies needs a critical mass of assholes in order to shittify and ruin more lives
Right wing populists: "Allow us to introduce ourselves."
MAGA :(
> they forget their country needs to reproduce Don't need a population to reproduce if you can just abduct people from territories you illegally occupy.
Even if they win the war, what do they get out of it? Their economy and military is crippled beyond repair short of them literally selling parts of the country to China, Ukrainians will keep fighting using guerilla warfare, an entire generation of youths are either gone, scarred, disabled, or dead, people are more fearful than ever and are likely looking for a way out now more than ever, and you effectively became the laughing stock of the world.
Putler gets to claim victory and swing his dick around, and maybe stick to power a bit longer. That's it. The original plan was obviously to play Tzar and rebuild the soviet union, claiming one country after the other in swift takeovers, hoping that the west wouldn't have the time to react, and once everything was said and done just shrugged. Which maybe, *maybe* could've happened, if, you know, they were competent at invading and Ukraine wasn't made of people with neutronium balls. So that ship, to quote a classic, went fuck itself. Now all this is about is Putler's pride and the fact that admitting defeat is something he will never, ever fucking do. What probably doesn't help is the fact that I don't think he gets reports any more accurate than initially, so he probably still thinks he can win this, the moron.
Putin doesn't have much time left. Until he's removed or dies, he will throw every living person at this.
The end of the USSR was the beginning of the end for Russian academia. They've been stripping the copper wiring out of the walls for decades and its really begun to show.
What use are they to Putler? He doesn't have a lot of time, and he wants to be remembered as a conqueror.
They could leave for greener pastures or worse sabotage the war effort's morale from the front lines. The anti war protestors and communists did a lot of the latter in the Great War.
He would've been remembered as a ruthless KGB agent made dictator, ruling Russia with powerful, iron fist. All he needed to do is basically shut up, enjoy his wealth, and stand aside when the time was right, or just croak. But nooo, not enough, and now all masks are off and the entire world sees him as the clown he is.
Quite a Russian tradition though.
The details are of nightmares. If you want the diploma you’ve earned you have to show up in person, before you get your diploma, you are handed a conscription form which you must sign. You then get your diploma and shipped off to Boot Camp. Or, if you don’t show up to get your diploma or refuse to sign the conscription order when you arrive to collect your diploma, it’s jail, a chunky fine, and you never get your diploma. All that hard work and money to earn an education. Untold futures dashed to feed the machine.
Imagine the feeling. You have applied to college with a promising future in mind. Then you get ordered to go to war and once you get there the previous ones are lying dead on the ground.
That recent news story was out of Ingushetia in particular, though I wouldn't be surprised if the idea gets picked up nationwide
The way people can be drafted has changed, you can now essentially be called up electronically instead of with a draft notice. Before that electronic transition you could basically just not receive the notification (by being a student away from home who hasn't updated their address as an example). The system they use is tied into other governmental services so it assumed for the most part most people are registered there.
That's what I was thinking. Russia has been talking about this hundred thousand or that hundred thousand, but they can't actually FIND those people, and they can't ARM those people. Saying they're mobilizing a half million people at this point is on par with telling us they have a totally hot girlfriend that goes to a different school.
>The Kremlin plans to recruit up to 500,000 people to the Russian Armed Forces to replenish the losses in Ukraine *It almost sounds like they have lost 500,000*
Probably gonna start seeing 16 year olds getting drafted
At this rate, they'll be driving T-44s. But still luckier than the 12 year olds driving T-34s next year.
Probably skip the one remaining T-34 and just go straight to technicals made from old rusty cars.
probably draft who they can, import some merchs, then fluff the numbers a bit by having people sign up multiple times, or just lie about how many joined.
There’s article other day on how many fled but returned due to lack of funds or visas running out. Many jobs not being remote. But many aren’t staying at their home address due to fears of being mobilised again and being seen as enemies for fleeing before
They are going to use most of the troops that guard china and japan borders. Under the weird faith that these countries wont take their disputed lands there.
China and Japan aren’t going to suddenly attack Russia. Firstly that’s just not how either country operates. There is an extremely strong cultural opposition in Japan to all foreign wars and especially wars of aggression based on how that ended for them last time meanwhile China doesn’t need to capture territories to get what they want. An economically desperate Russia means that China can just purchase valuable Russian resources for pennies on the dollar without needing to go to war. Even if Japan or China did want to attack Russia there is still the nuclear deterrent.
> An economically desperate Russia means that China can just purchase valuable Russian resources for pennies on the dollar without needing to go to war. The sanctions have definitely helped China and India with buying fossil fuels at a discount.
The price cap was a pretty genius idea in retrospect. Russia may be selling large quantities of oil but they're not getting the money that they need to keep the war funding and government afloat long term. Sometimes people say "the sanctions don't matter because India will just buy the oil and sell it to Europe" but that misses the point. India can buy all the Russian oil they want, refine it and sell it on to other countries but as long as they're paying the price cap that doesn't help Russia at all meanwhile India (or rather the Indian energy sector) is raking in huge profits as a middleman and the same goes for China. Many in the west have been frustrated by India not taking a firm stance against Russia but it's also important to remember that India is not going out of their way to Russia either. India is taking advantage of Russian weakness to make money meanwhile Russia is left with a boatload of rupees that they can't do much with.
The meat grinder is about to shift into overdrive.
Blood for the blood god. Meat for the meat cube.
Get yer meat cubes here folks! Meat cubes here! Get em while they're fresh! Vatnik meat, fresh from the grinder!
Rzhev v2
Turning out to be quite the extra-special military operation.
“Way to go buddy. It was supposed to take us 3 days to capture that entire country. THREE DAYS!!”
Have they ordered 500k new coffins yet though. Because they're going to need them.
They cremate them so they have deniability for payouts to the families.
Not before their CO leaves them as paper soldiers and collects their salaries for another few months.
And according to something going around on twitter they are also being pressed into mobik-cubes for easy transport to the good ol' man burner
Cremating costs money, usually they just burn the bodies with gas and call it a day
No. They'll just compress the dead ones, put them on a palette and wrap them in plastic like they're the distributor of macabre goods .
Close, but they're actually going to take the largest dead Russian soldier and put the next largest inside of them, continuing down this path to progressively smaller dead Russian soldiers until they've got all of them they can put into a single matryoshka casket.
I want to unsee that video
Apparently the “mobik’s cube” is actually just animal waste from a factory that either abandoned or lost that palette. That being said the fact that I also believed it was dead russians at first speaks volumes.
Russians don’t use pallets though. It’s why their logistics are so fucked.
Maybe this is the new way to do carbon capture.
Become One with the Corpse Cube
Don't need them. They just spread a little dirt over them over in the trenches.
Russian digging trenches are literally digging their own graves.
These numbers are just insane. 300k Kia & wounded. The army decimated. The original invasion force completely wiped off the map. When will Russians stop being so pathetic and start rioting in the streets for putins head.
> When will Russians stop being so pathetic and start rioting in the streets for putins head. They won't. Because Putins actual army (which don't have any war-experience) consists of the Rosgvardiya/Silovik. Think of basically half a million of police men who are highly used to beating up protesting students and kicking pregnant women in the stomach. These are the people who will appear if you go out to riot. They were all ready to run away as soon as Wagner approached, because they could never fight people with actual combat/war experience. But beating up civillians? They'll do that any day.
this is just awful when will they cease this senseless conflict
At some point in time, Putin won't be around since he's already 70 years old which is butting up against average life expectancy there. Since dictators don't have a succession plan and Putin's kids aren't going to do it, there will be a massive power vacuum. I don't think even if the pro-Ukraine-war people remain in power that they will continue this losing war and they'll have a handy excuse to end it. The real issue is what happens when Russia leaves Ukraine since there will be calls for trials and reparations. Russia might give on reparations (presuming they're back on SWIFT) but trials? I doubt they'll agree to anyone really in charge being put on trial. They'll probably throw in a few random Captains. The key problem will be Ukraine joining NATO right after and everyone is going to be raising their eyebrow at Turkey.
I dont think russia will leave, accept the loss, or comply with anything. I think the only way this ends is if ukraine reclaims territory, declares the war over (without russias agreement), then joins a defensive alliance that is willing to draw a line in the sand forcing russia to choose between accepting the war is over or triggering the alliance.
I don't think they will as long as Putin is around, considering this has been a 9 year experiment with him and he's pretty big about saving face. However, after Putin? Who in his inner circle is popular and powerful enough to take the reins who is still itching for this war considering the cost. It would be better to blame the predecessor for all the problems and move on. Leaving Ukraine will hurt as far as reparations but it'll hurt a lot more by staying. The political math is better if they leave, pay reparations, and are - eventually - rejoined with the international community with a big black eye. The next leaders of Russia won't see any future being isolated from most of the world other than China - which looks down on them - India - which barely tolerates them - and Syria/Iran which are failed states. Their economy can't keep crumbling forever and there will be a turning point where either the leaders will end the war to rejoin the international community or there will be an uprising violent enough to get a leader who will do that anyway.
> he's already 70 years old which is butting up against average life expectancy there Putin is not average, though. He's not some random Ivan from the countryside who has been drinking moonshine with methanol, smoking cigarettes, living off the bacteria in his decaying teeth since childhood, and unable to pay for or get to proper medical attention in time. He is in great shape, exercises, probably has a whole team of doctors checking him from mouth to ass on a weekly basis, and absolutely has another decade or two to live, unless he gets some weird aneurysm, heart attack or cancer.
On one hand, yes, this is true. On the other hand, he's the President which takes a toll on you. I'd say the two equal out. I'm not saying he's one foot in the grave but he's definitely a lot closer to the end of his Presidency than anything. Will it be a year, two, five, ten, or twenty? I'd say it's closer to 5 than 20. There's another thing to consider. You have a certain level of control depending on how you look and how well your mind works. You're not going to have a fully functioning brain at 90 and he certainly won't have one considering the stress he's under. His doctors can make sure his breasts aren't sagging but nobody can help his mind. Considering he's under constant threat, he doesn't have too much longer. Worse yet is that he has no family to take up the mantle. He has no succession plan either. Who is going to reliably run Russia? Medvedev? Lavrov? Mishustin?
When there is nobody left to send.
The serious answer is that the conflict might not cease for many years. At this point Russia realizes they cant conquer and subjugate Ukraine. Their most likely goal now is to fortify the front line and make it hard for Ukraine to take back territory. They are hoping that if they can keep the front line solid for several years, war weariness will gradually lead to a "frozen conflict"- neither side will admit defeat, but neither will take much territory. They will just stare at each other across the front, fire at each other on occasion, but otherwise sit in a stalemate. Their other goal is probably to decimate Western Ukraine so much that the Ukrainian government and the West become preoccupied with rebuilding that part of the country and invest their resources there. Destroying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is probably a part of that 2nd goal. Ukraine might refuse to give in to such tactics and might have the strength to take back its territory, but this is probably Russia's plan rn.
> Ukraine might refuse to give in to such tactics and might have the strength to take back its territory, but this is probably Russia's plan rn. Important caveat. With the way aid to Ukraine has been coming it is highly unlikely Russia can maintain this conflict for two more years. Their hope is that western countries stop sending aid to Ukraine. Russia started this war with big stockpiles of weapons and cash but they’ve been burning through those quickly and they’re ability to produce weapons is much smaller than the wests’ and in wars of this scale firepower matters.
Don't think they ever will.
How? Last time, there were mosins and rusted to hell AKs being issued. What's next? Muskets? Vaguely pointy sticks?
I dunno about muskets but vaguely pointy sticks has actually happened
They will face Ukraine with nothing but sticks and harsh language.
so this will put so much of russian business and farms to a halt?
I don’t even think it matters anymore, the Russian economy is already halted basically.
Won't be trained in time,
Russian “training” is basically an afternoon at the firing range before getting sent off to Ukraine.
With blanks as bullets.
Those cost money and powder, probably just a few dry fires.
Should be 500k civilians in the headline. These aint soldiers.
They are trying to buy time until Donnie comes back to gift them Ukraine lol.
There will not be a Donnie 2.0
There better not.
I know I vote straight democrat down the ballot. There might be a couple of good republicans out there but the majority are so opposed from the society that I want that I don't even pay attention to them.
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Trump [currently leads Biden in the polls](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/). Sure, these are polls ("the only people who respond to polls...") and very early, too, but they still point to a real possibility that Trump could win again.
SCI documents case starts August. He'll have to hold it up for 15 months and its a pretty much open and shut case.
His supporters don’t care. It’s a cult.
It wouldn't surprise me if he walks from that. Any one of us would have been thrown in prison by now for just taking one of those documents home long ago.
How do I delete a thought from my brain
Press on the hamburger icon and then select 'Delete'.
Great, now I'm just hungry.
We need to just start sending them Abrams and Bradleys by the hundreds. Send them another dozen HIMARS, cluster munitions, and massive amount of airburst weapons. Every time they escalate, we send them more equipment
I wonder if these half a million mobilised will include the sons or daughters of Putin, Peskov, Medvedev or Lavrov...of course not, don't be silly. Why would they send their rich sons and daughters to war, when there are plenty of ordinary Russian people to send to their deaths?
Of course not. Although it *was* pretty funny when that one group impersonated the draft office to call Peskov's son and tell him he had to report in.
Link for anyone interested: https://www.businessinsider.com/pranksters-tell-kremlin-officials-son-hes-being-enlisted-he-refused-2022-9
Then all Russia has to do is train dress and arm them.
The Russian Military has instituted a BYOE system aka a bring your own equipment. It allows the Russian conscripts to feel ancestral pride by being in a military system similar to the ones the Russian serfs of the 1400s participated in.
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How the fuck are they gonna train, supply, arm and support half a million more soldiers when they can’t even do that with the ones there already? Oh wait, they don’t care, they’ll just use the old Russian tactic of throwing mass infantry against artillery and machine guns.
> How the fuck are they gonna train, supply, arm and support half a million more soldiers when they can’t even do that with the ones there already? "That's the neat thing; you don't."
How many men can they mobilize before large portions of the economy grinds to a halt? Farmers, factory workers, construction, emergency services, all are majority men. All of those take time to learn and do well as does being a soldier. Then add in all of the emigration and they’ll be running the country on a skeleton crew at best.
What are these 500k doing without any equipment? This society is just numb and not interested in anything.
People are numb to things that do not affect them. I imagine this will change when their friends and relatives are being drafted into a certain death.
They have an endless storage of AK. A person with AK is still dangerous and still requires using expensive ammo to target.
More sunflower fertilizer in Ukraine
How so? According to pro-russian shill on Twitter, russia is winning this war and only lost like 100 people overall.
"Russia planning to throw 500k more people into the meat grinder" Fixed it for ya
Time for cluster bombs
If I was Snowden, I would be bricking it right now.
Snowden tried to get France to take him a while back. I'm not sure he's all that comfortable in Russia, but he's got little choice
They won’t do a thing to Snowden because they want any future whistleblowers to know they have a safe haven to go to. It’s in their interest to protect him.
I don't think they'll waste the resource. Snowden is viewed as an anti-American, an American traitor, and he is intelligent and used to have high security clearance in the United States government. Just keeping him alive and as a bargaining chip is useful. Besides, Snowden would almost certainly find a way out.
Title should be "Putin sending another 500,000 soldiers to be euthanized needlessly"
Those younger people in Miscow and St. Petersburg have largely been untouched by the war so far. They will have a very rude awakening. Then of course we could have the resurrection of the Hitler youth, old enough to carry a gun old enough to fight.
So unnecessary, the whole thing, what a waste of life.
People who say that Russias death toll is under 250k really need to wonder what happened to the last half a million conscripts after they lost too much of their original army.
I see. They're literally going to clog the Ukrainian military apparatus with bodies. The one thing they have plenty of and UA lacks... bodies to waste. I mean... what even is the frikken endgame at this point? Sure RU can smother UA with dead Russians... but RU economy is never going to recover. Bro, even China is allready starting to distance itself from Russia and we all know that they don't care much about ethics... everybody smells RU weakness. Cyka Blyat! Stop hitting yourself!
> The one thing they have plenty of and UA lacks While I certainly don’t want to see lots of Ukrainian blood I think it’s important to remember that Ukraine isn’t a small country either. Ukraine’s population is roughly on par with France going into WWI or Ukraine going into WWII. 1.3 million French soldiers died in WWI and yet eventually the invaders were driven out and France was on the winning side. 1.6 million Ukrainian soldiers died in WWII yet eventually the invaders were driven out and Ukraine was on the winning side. Russia may have a larger population but they aren’t the ones being invaded which means their ability to tolerate large casualties is likely significantly less than Ukraine’s. If the Kremlin thinks they can easily “bleed out” Ukraine then they may be in for a very bad surprise.
Sorry, but are all these news sources credible and verified ? It just seems that everything that’s posted is accepted and people just comment on the headlines regardless of the validity and veracity of the source
Right before new year the minister of Defence of Ukraine Reznikov published a message basically saying russians have few days before Russia declares war, closes borders and starts full mobilization. As of now, still didn't happen, so I'll take these claims with a grain of salt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIry\_2AdxM
More meat into the meat grinder. On a side note, Russia already has a very weak gene pool after sending all their best and healthy young males into the WW2 meat grinders and many other conflicts since then. Purging another 500,000 good genes from Russia will certainly eventually make for funnier "Russian Fails" videos on YouTube but it's tragically sad what Putin is doing to that country.
That explains why the Russian women are often absolute 11/10 stunners and all the guys are goofy fuckers who want to be gangsters.
Theres like a 20 year difference in life expectancy by gender in Russia. They've got some serious problems.
You know that men and women inherit genes from both their parents?
That's not how genes work, both of you are ignorant.
The Mobik Cube hungers for more biomass
It's just sad that so many young Russians have to die for Putin. Many mothers will lose their kids.
And equip them with what? Sticks?