Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "The World's Last Colonial Empire: Collapse or Survival?" video.

Is it so different in the USA? The coastal elites call the Midwest "flyover country".
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Russia has enormous economic resources and an enormous advantage in armour, artillery and air power. For every Russian casualty there are several Ukrainian casualties. The only reason it's advancing so slowly is because it's trying hard to conserve infantry. If you think Russia will be defeated by Ukraine then you're in for a bad surprise.
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@TheOffkilter I certainly agree there's bad inequality in Russia but again, the USA is not really much difference. I don't think Russia has such a homelessness problem as the USA.
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@wanderer2925 In six months' time you're welcome to reply to this message and laugh at me at how badly Russia has lost. And I'll humbly admit how deceived I was by Russian propaganda is that's what actually happens. Bookmark it now.
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@dasbubba841 I don't know for sure what the Russian strategy is but they probably think time is on their side. 1) Ukrainian casualties are horrific. More and more, Ukrainian units are refusing to fight - yes this has also happened to a few LPR and DPR units too but it's usually Ukrainians putting out videos criticising their officers and abandoning positions. 2) As inflation and economic problems start to bite, the Western capacity and enthusiasm to support Ukraine is diminishing especially over the past two weeks. 3) Much of the EU is going to have a catastrophic winter, electricity blackouts, factory closures etc. Governments collapsing. Maybe even hunger. The political will to oppose Russia will evaporate then in Germany at minimum probably many other countries. Additionally, the Russian government is very sensitive about casualties. It never uses its own armour or infantry to storm anywhere now. It shells the Ukrainians until it thinks there's nobody left and sends in an infantry patrol to see. If the patrol takes fire the Russians retreat and shell some more. It's very slow - but the casualties are very one sided too. What's really interesting about all of this is that it's pretty much the exact opposite of the Western media narrative.
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@samg.5165 You might want to consider that Putin is vastly more population in Buryatia than Biden is in Iowa.
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@TheOffkilter I'd say the comparison between rural Appalachia and rural Russia is probably quite close. The Appalachians are richer in theory but the cost of living in Russia is so much lower. In either case, they're poor but they can live. They have food, housing and heating. And they probably have mobile phones and TV too. Where there's real poverty is in cities like Los Angeles where thousands of people are living in cardboard boxes and tents. Even many people with jobs in California live in their cars because housing is so expensive. So far as I'm aware there's nothing comparable in Russia.
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@DerDop The cost of potatoes is not the problem. How much does an apartment cost in small town Russia? Because in Netherlands, I was paying 2000 Euro/month. In 2014, Ukrainian pensioners were taking Russian citizenship because Russian pensions were several times higher. Whereas poor Californians can not afford to pay rent. And in Texas you'd have to work over a hundred hours at minimum wage just to pay the rent on a one room apartment. So sure, it's hard to compare. But being poor is going to be hard whether you're in America or Russia.
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Dennis Estrada Actually Russia isn't using conscripts in Ukraine, you are misinformed. HIMARS strikes deep inside Russia is likely to start WWIII. Russia has the biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world and Russian cities have deep nuclear fall out shelters for millions of people like the bunkers under Mariupol. Their population is spread over eleven time zones. What are the nuclear bunkers like in the city where you live?
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@dasbubba841 1) casualties - the BBC made a major effort to assess Russian casualties a couple of months ago and could identify only 4000 Russians killed. Obviously it will have increased slightly since then and does not include LPR/DPR/Wagner casualties. In contrast a leaked Ukrainian government report mentioned over 190,000 casualties (not broken down into killed/wounded). 2) Inflation isn't going away any time soon. Biden just signed the inflation reduction bill which is actually going to contribute to inflation because it spends lots of printed money. Inflation has already claimed the scalp of Boris Johnson in Britain and Draghi in Italy. There have been large protests in France, Italy, Germany and especially Netherlands. Canada and the USA look to be politically fragile. Heavy spending on Ukraine isn't sustainable. 3) EU countries have made only token preparations. Germany is now talking about needing to make a 20% reduction in electricity consumption over winter. That's impossible without throwing millions out of work. Fertiliser and aluminium production in Europe is already shutting down and we're still in the summer. Electricity prices in much of Europe are already up to seven times higher than two years ago and gas prices similar. Many people won't be able to afford to heat their houses in countries which get cold enough for the sea to freeze. Poles have been told to gather firewood because there won't be enough gas, you're wrong that Poland doesn't depend on Russia for energy. LPG imports to Europe aren't anywhere near enough to offset Russian gas. US LPG exports to Europe are already dropping because of the high LPG price in USA. I agree that the USA will not be directly affected except by higher prices. Unemployed Germans freezing and hungry over the winter will notice the unequal burden borne by the NATO effort to sanction Russia.
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@legrandliseurtri7495 Video proof? Where from? Are those the calculations which assume every APC is full of infantry whereas it may have actually been empty? Probably Russian casualties were higher in the first month. Ukrainian casualties have definitely been much higher every month since. Why would the Kiev regime surrender after 200k casualties? Are you French? Then you must know that in la grande Guerre, France took around 6 million casualties with a population something similar to modern Ukraine's. That's about 30 x the Ukrainian casualties so far.
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Moving shells is not a problem. It's by older guys with military experience who return to the army for fixed length contracts at pretty good pay. Likewise, distributing ammunition into smaller dumps and hiding them is hardly on the harder end of military problems. A couple of weeks ago a lot of big Russian ammunition dumps were hit. It lasted for a few days until the Russians changed their practices. As for running out of shells... well according to the Western media, Russia was supposed to run out of missiles, tanks, shells, pilots, generals, soldiers, even food back months ago. Don't hold your breath...
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CrimeaIsUkraine You're getting confused. AFU = Ukrainian armed forces. That's almost 200k Ukrainian casualties, not Russian casualties. A leaked internal Ukrainian military report. Also look at prisoners taken. Less than 1000 Russian POWs taken by Ukraine, well over 10k Ukrainian POWs taken by the Russian side. Lastly, consider that according to the Kiev regime's own logic, half of the Russian side casualties are actually Ukrainian citizens. DPR/LPR forces do most of the close in infantry fighting.
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This is a typical Russian offensive. And it's in the most heavily fortified part of the entire front. https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Nevelskoe.mp4 Bombard the Ukrainian positions until defenders are either casualties or retreat. Attack with armour and artillery support. Infantry mops up. It's slow but it results in very low casualties on the Russian side. Some Ukrainian units report taking 60% casualties without even seeing an enemy soldier. Anyone who still thinks the Russians are going to be defeated is a victim of NATO and Ukrainian propaganda. Look at the Ukrainian Kherson offensive and the propaganda about thousands of Russian soldiers being trapped west of the Dniepr without supplies. The reality is that over the past couple of days, the Russians made a big advance along the coast towards Mikulayev and another advance around the north west.
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@DerDop I speak Russian
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@drsgme69 Russia certainly has poor people. But almost all countries do. I'm not seeing much difference in the quality of life of poor people in USA, Britain and Russia. Possibly of the three, the poorest people have it harder in USA. You don't really have a lot of people living on the street in Russia like you do in say Los Angeles.
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@leme5639 I realise that - but equally, poor people in the USA are literally living in their vehicles because they can't afford rent, even people who work full time. And the really poor people live in tents. They don't have indoor plumbing either. In addition, poor people in the USA have no healthcare. There's no comparison with Russia where all people have the right to free healthcare. This is why a like for like comparison of official GDP gives a very misleading impression of the actual standard of living.
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This "moderate regional power" has not even mobilised but nevertheless took over almost a quarter of Ukraine and is shelling the next largest army in Europe to shreds even though Ukraine has received so much Western money and armaments that France for one warns that it is no longer ready to fight a war itself. It's doing all of this while protecting the living standards of its population in the face of sanctions, in fact sanctions by NATO and EU countries threaten to create a severe energy and economic crisis in the EU itself.
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@alexandermackie7621 If I'm "whining and crying", it's because the West is so deluded and it's destroying itself. I've been following the war closely from the start and I've never seen the Western media serve up such outrageous propaganda.
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@alexandermackie7621 The big picture is that before the war, America was the only superpower, the threat of devastating sanctions constrained other great powers like Russia and China. 1) America created this proxy war in Ukraine, Russia got pushed into an intolerable position and has now broken out of the post cold war era. Most of the world outside of the West is now detaching from the American order. 2) Armaments to Ukraine have prolonged the war but are straining Western economies already stretched from lockdowns. Inflation is out of control and even raising interest rates won't help as much as usual because much of the inflation comes from energy costs. Armaments to Ukraine have severely depleted Western militaries e.g. French generals warned their government they're currently too depleted to fight a war. 3) Financial and energy sanctions against Russia have backfired, we're looking at economic collapse in much of Europe this winter when the gas runs out. Energy intensive industries are already closing, just today Slovakia shut down aluminium production - aluminium will have be imported from Russia instead. Financial sanctions on Russia have pushed non Western countries into developing alternatives. China and Russia are now setting up international competition to SWIFT and a new BRICS currency for international transactions. Huge own goal by America there. For the first time, large amounts of oil and gas are being traded in a currency other than US dollars. 4) The totally insane timing of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan antagonises China and contributes to China's orientation away from the West and towards Russia. Far from Russia being isolated, the rest of the world is pivoting away from the West. Obviously there are plenty of small ones but that's the big picture. It'll be clearer by spring next year after Europe has had an economic meltdown, many current Western leaders have gone and Western solidarity against Russia is broken.
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@alexandermackie7621 I'm neutral I'm not pro-Ukraine. I may have been pro-Ukraine when the war started. I've learned a lot since then. Yes I do watch Russian propaganda sometimes, 1) it's entertaining because it's bad 2) you need to hear both sides to question your assumptions 3) it's language practice. I assume anything either the Ukrainian or Russian government says is outright propaganda. If there's any particular point you're interested in I can give more details or point you to good source.
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@alexandermackie7621 I largely agree with your estimation of China. I don't think they're confident they're ready militarily to confront America either - but the trajectory is obvious. For sure, China has some severe economic problems just now, their huge housing bubble is starting to burst. So being able to sell to America is important and valuable to them - however they sell to the whole world - and their domestic market is huge now too. And a real trade breakdown with America will hurt America almost as much as China. The problem is, the totally unnecessary confrontation over Taiwan (because America could have just kept the status quo at no cost) puts China in the position where it feels forced to pivot away from the neutral position it had on the Ukraine war up until a few weeks ago. It has always wanted to dismantled America's financial hegemony but America's own move has given China urgency. Some concrete numbers. China is getting rid of US treasuries. Its holdings are now lower than any time in the past twelve years.
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@alexandermackie7621 Yeah that's basically the Peter Zeihan viewpoint on China. I think it's massively overstated but we'll see. The thing is, economically, Russia and China are perfect matches. Russia has the food production, metals and energy, China has the manpower, size and manufacturing. Given China's rising position and Russia's recovery, it was essential for the USA to do anything possible to drive a wedge between them. Antagonising Russia and antagonising China at the same time just drives them together and is an inexcusable strategic blunder. Fairly recently China and Russia patched up a decades long border dispute and have already opened some new bridges across the Amur. As well as China, Russia is making strategic partnerships with Turkey and Iran - even though Turkey is still nominally in NATO. Hard to see how the West could have prevented that though. The USA nowadays is like a great super tanker with nobody at the helm. The USA has lost Turkey and China, the big question coming up for next year is whether it loses Europe too.
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@alexandermackie7621 Yeah a tight military alliance between China and Russia is unlikely but closer economic and military co-operation - for sure. They're currently doing a big military exercise together. This is a major win for Russia because until recently they needed to keep large forces on their huge border with China. Yeah Turkey is playing both sides for sure but step back and think about how profound this is that they're actually moving closer to Russia just a few months into a war which is going to end with Russian dominance over the Black Sea. That's really not a good sign for the West. As for Israel - well if Turkey and Russia manage to resolve their differences in Syria (big if) then Israel is starting to look very isolated. I don't know so much about Middle Eastern politics but my understanding was that close Russian ally Syria and Israel were in a low intensity war, Israel bombed a Syrian airport just recently. BTW, Michael Kofman is already talking about having to put Ukraine on an "ammo diet" - because the supply of armaments to Ukraine is unsustainable and is already falling off.
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@alexandermackie7621 "a pack of self serving wolves out for themselves first and foremost with at best minimal concern for their so called allies" That could describe both sides in WWII :) Well I agree neither Russia nor China will want to be subordinate. But it doesn't really matter, they have such strong synergies provided they're both secure about their long shared border. Given them a few years to build more pipelines and rail links and China's maritime vulnerability largely disappears. Likewise, Turkey has so much to gain economically from cooperating with Russia. Access to cheap Russian gas and wheat. I think Turkey is looking at what's happening in Ukraine and wants good relations with the winning side. Kicking Turkey out of NATO completely would be a seriously stupid move for NATO. Here's another Western own goal. The EU is busy trying to make it harder for Russians to get travel visas. Meanwhile, Turkish banks recently started allowing the Russian mir cards. So that will be a lot of rich Russians spending their tourist money in Turkey instead of Europe.
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@enriqueperezarce5485 Ammunition dumps are typically in buildings and there are villages all over the front line areas. Both sides will continue to successfully target each other's ammunition dumps but at the current rate of success, there's no reason to think it will be anything more than a minor inconvenience for the Russian army. The Ukrainians did get some spectacular successes a few weeks back but we've seen nothing big since other than the Saki airbase attack.
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@Ophaganestopolis It's highly unlikely this war will last for two years but if the Russians decide there's a serious chance they'll run low on ammunition, that's more than enough time to scale up production. They can also buy ammunition from North Korea and China if they really needed to, both of which have huge stockpiles of shared calibres. On the other hand.... America has already expended a third of its Excalibur rounds in Ukraine.
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@geheimnis8187 missile strikes - for sure the frequency has dropped off but still happens whenever Russia considers a distant target interesting. Missiles are extremely expensive and can't be produced quickly. Air strikes - actually more so now. The VDK are flying further behind Ukrainian lines than they were two months ago and only rarely get shot down. Air assets are precious and the gains from air strikes are limited so this says more about the degradation of Ukrainian air defences than anything else.
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@GeneralBlackNorway You're going to be pretty disappointed when those 25,000 Russians "trapped" west of Kherson start advancing to the the north east of Mikoyalev. If you pay attention to the fighting day by day you'll see every day Russian advances. They shell the defenders until the survivors retreat then they send in an infantry patrol. It's really slow because they're dealing with mine fields and they don't do expensive assaults. But it's relentless. And the casualties are very one sided.
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@GeneralBlackNorway I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter that the Russians are taking territory slowly, time is on their side. The Ukrainian economy is on life support and won't survive the winter. The Ukrainian army is taking unsustainable casualties from Russian artillery and despite ever more draconian discipline, units are refusing orders and abandoning their positions. At the start of the war the Russians tried grabbing lots of territory without defeating their enemy first and it was expensive in losses. That's not how the war is being fought now. Actually rapid advances are impossible anyway, the entire front line is well protected by minefields.
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@GeneralBlackNorway Back in the real world, sanctions on Russia are being relaxed and circumvented. Russian economic contraction keeps getting revised downward. Their economy was supposed to have collapsed months ago according to predictions the West made at the start of the war. Their exports were supposed to have collapsed already, in reality oil and coal exports are actually up. And it's the Western world especially German, Poland and the Baltics who are heading into what's going to be the worst economic crisis since 1946. When the Russians start struggling, DM me and tell me how wrong I was because all I see is the Russian army slowly grinding forward, inflicting 200k casualties on the Ukrainians so far and few ongoing losses to themselves despite all this military and economic aid for Ukraine.
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@Zandonus Is that so? Inflation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are the highest in the EU. According to Fitch, in July, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia recorded inflation of 21.0%, 20.8% and 22.7% respectively. Go and tell Fitch their economics is "imaginary".
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@Zandonus 20% is overall inflation, not just some things. With 20% inflation, your claim that the "economy in Baltics is doing just fine" makes no sense.
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@GeneralBlackNorway Remember how you were telling us 25,000 Russian soldiers are trapped west of the Dniepr? In the past couple of days, those "trapped" Russian soldiers are advancing along the coast to Mikulayev. You really need to read sources wider than Ukrainian propaganda
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@GeneralBlackNorway I don't know whether the Russians seriously intend to take Mikulayev, I'd guess not. But the fact is that these soldiers whom Ukraine claims are cut off and unsupplied are able to advance at all. The most recent information is the Antonovsky bridge is open again (see Defense Politics Asia youtube channel, I can't remember his source) and the new pontoon bridge is directly under it so it should be at least partially protected. The Russians have destroyed Ukrainian bridges many times so far and bridges are repaired quickly including that high value rail bridge south of Odessa. Even with no bridges, supplies can be brought across the river with barges. To actually interdict supplies successfully on the scale required would require Ukraine gets within artillery range and brings artillery superiority to bear. They're too far away and their artillery is badly outnumbered by Russian artillery. The whole idea that the Russians west of Kherson are going to be cut off from supplies and stranded was highly optimistic when Russian forces in the south were much weaker, now Russia has reinforced there, it's totally unrealistic. For a short overview of the war so far see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfywR6HpDeA NATO aid to Ukraine is dropping off. They're still fighting but they're slowly losing ground and time is not on their side.
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@GeneralBlackNorway Most Ukrainian artillery is already out of range of the bridges. That's why Ukraine was wasting HIMARS rockets attacking the road bridge. The defender has a huge advantage in this kind of war. Attacking the Russian logistics is not about Ukraine retaking Kherson. It's about slowing down a Russian advance.
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@enriqueperezarce5485 Russia is winning. An artillery war takes time. Who's taking 80% of the casualties? Whose army has units retreating without orders after weeks of shelling? Which army is only still in the field because it's wages are paid directly by the American tax payer?
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CrimeaIsUkraine Is there evidence the Russian side has lost as high as 70k casualties? That's the approx. US estimate but the US is obviously not impartial in this war so we have to assume that's a propagandistic number. Plausible calculations I've seen are much lower. It's certainly not possible they're losing 500 dead every day. OTOH a recent leaked internal AFU document talks about 191k AFU casualties, not even including non official military groups, foreign fighters etc. It could turn out to be fake... but those kind of numbers are congruent with other evidence e.g. Ukrainian soldiers talking about causalities in their units.
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The USA is a colonial empire just as much as Russia is.
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