Comments by "George Carty" (@GCarty80) on "Russia Struggles Going into Second Year of War" video.

  1. Especially given that in a future war Russia's economy would be tightly coupled with China's and thus less vulnerable to western sanctions...
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  2. I suspect the Salisbury chemical attacks are a big reason why UK support for Ukraine is so strong, just as the shootdown of MH17 is for the Netherlands.
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  3. Although it's ironic given that the aircraft manufacturer Antonov is Ukrainian.
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  4. I'd prefer to quote the March of Ukrainian Nationalists: "Солодше нам у бою умирати, як жити в путах, мов німі раби." ("It is sweeter for us to die in battle, than to live in chains like dumb slaves.")
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  5. This desire for secrecy may be one reason why Russia's initially invaded with an inadequate force.
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  6. The Arabic script omits most vowels (while it does have the harakat diacritics to fully specify vowels, they're only generally used in the Qur'an and children's books) and while this isn't much of a problem for the Arabic language itself, it makes that script ill-suited to Turkish: because of these issues 19th century Ottoman reformers were already considering Latin script for Turkish. A famous example of the deficiency of the old Ottoman Arabic script is that محمد پاشا اولدو corresponded to both Mehmet Paşa oldu ("Muhammad became a Pasha") and Mehmet Paşa öldü ("Muhammad Pasha died")! By contrast, the Cyrillic script was designed with Slavic languages in mind, and (given that it was used in Kyivan Rus) the Ukrainians will likely be reluctant to ditch it, as they arguably have at least a good a claim to it as the Muscovites do. Of course Turkic countries formerly ruled by Moscow (such as Kazakhstan, or should we now be spelling it Qazaqstan?) are mostly in the process of adopting Latin script, with correspondence with Turkey itself likely being at least part of the inspiration.
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  7.  @ArmedSpaghet  Zaporizhzhia
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  8. Putin was Germany's dealer (of a drug called "methane"), not their friend.
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  9. Putin has funded climate change deniers in the West (because it's in his interest, given that he's the ruler of a petrostate): I guess though actual climate change isn't working to his advantage now though!
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  10. ​@@ristokempasHow do Finns keep warm without burning fossil fuels? Do they do it the low-tech way (by burning wood from their abundant forests) or the high-tech way (electric heat pumps and/or nuclear-powered district heating)?​
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  11. They probably would be doing that already were it not for Russia's huge nuclear arsenal.
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  12. I suspect that's why there's so much sympathy for Russia in African countries, as they tend to be either commodity exporters (and thus coining it in from the high commodity prices caused by Russia's war) or extremely poor (and thus desperate to get their hands on some discounted Russian oil or stolen Ukrainian grain).
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  13. Europeans are a lot less hostile to Ukrainian refugees than they are to Middle Eastern refugees, largely because historically the latter tended to be overwhelmingly young men, with a tendency to sexually assault local women. Although Russia has of course abundantly weaponized Middle Eastern refugees against Europe too: first by bombing Syria into rubble, then by getting their stooge in Minsk to fly refugees in and then push them across the Polish border, and finally in this current war by plotting to cause a famine in the Middle East by cutting off its food supplies with a naval blockade in the Black Sea. That last dastardly act would (in my book at least) be a moral justification to help Ukraine not just take back its internationally-recognized borders, but also take the Kuban as well, establishing the Ukraine "від Сяну по Кавказ" described in the March of Ukrainian Nationalists.
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  14.  @idpro83  Kind of an aside, but it's weird how the tankie left is pretty much the only part of the political spectrum whose attitude (anti) to the Ukrainian national cause is the same as it was during the Cold War. Even a moderately conservative President Bush in 1991 was still sceptical of Ukrainian independence: think of what later became derided as the "Chicken Kiev" speech!
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  15. Probably pumped on Theodor Morell's drugs...
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