Comments by "Philip B" (@philipb2134) on "TLDR News EU" channel.

  1. Accept this as you might, but est. over a quarter of Russia's initial forces engaged in its attack on Ukraine are no longer (killed, wounded , missing, captured, PTSD) available for operational service. The assault on Ukraine was the most incompetent genuine military operation since WWII. Finland's armed forces are well staffed, highly motivated to defend their homes, and are equipped with the best equipment available, which commanders in Ukraine hold in their dreams. Don't mess with the Finns, especially because now it has security from Britain. Then again, Putin is obviously deranged, so we might see possibly even worse aggression initiatives against common decency,
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  2. North Korean trade representatives tried to get our company (in France) interested buying metals and minerals from them. They invited us to dinner at a high-end restaurant.... and made us pick up the tab. Needless to say, that didn't work in their favor.
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  3. Germany lived under an understandable cringe for a lifetime after WWII. But Germany is Europe's biggest economy, and was shy to adopt a stance of principled force. Putin changed that permanently, and he might come to regret what he provoked.
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  4.  @nicobruin8618  It's nice to get an occasional point of view based on nothing more than vapour.
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  5. Aside from the rest, the Russians failed to deploy infantry to protect their armour.
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  6. Fair comment. Russia had effectively expelled many of its brightest and young. Might we ponder: will Russia's meat grinder tactics in Ukraine encourage more volunteers to become meat?
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  7. While the USSR had an incentive to mess around with its economic data, a better understanding is that they didn't really know what the figures should be. In general, GDP was based on gross output figures (number of units, tonnage, etc.) which were expected to meet production targets specified by the Gosplan (or else!) Factory managers who struggled to meet their targets could often get out from under their sword of Damocles by fudging the figures, by letting production standards slip, or both.
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  8. Not any time soon. Even before the war/"special military operation", Ukraine was deficient in governance capacity to meet even minimal criteria for joining EU.
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  9. And in what way is that different from PRC or Russia?
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  10. Putin went vicious / nuts when Ukraine sank his Black Sea Fleet capital ship, the Moskva. How viciously will he punish non-combatant civilians (supposedly Russian brothers and sisters) in the lands that the Russian Federation had conquered?
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  11. Soviet difficulties in the Winter War might be less than a catastrophe, absolute or less. Their logistics were horrid, the morale of the troops was weak, even before the Party messed with their minds. The Winter War debacle forced reforms which bolstered the fighting ability of the Red Army. Ting were bad at the front opposing Barbarossa, but would have been worse with a political commisar second-guessing and even applyig a veto to an experienced field commander's direction. The Soviet military's poor performance in the Winter War likely had precipitated Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarossa.
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  12.  @karl-erlendmikalsen5159  The effect of UK's leaving the EU was not drastic in similar a time period as since Russia launched its 2022 invasion of the rest of Ukraine. Something you might care to remember, is that the topic of this video is the unreliability of Russian statistics; British stats are widely held to be credible and reliable. Comparing apples to oranges is usually not considered reasonable.
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  13.  @goodgame3374  Finland has a modern, well equipped, military - although not numerous. An out-manned; out-gunned, Finnish army stopped the Soviets in the Winter War. A difference now is that they can be reinforced by friendly troops, which was problematic back then. There is no way that EU members might let democratic Finland fall to Russian brutality.
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  14. 01:56 the map indicates that Luxembourg is not a member of NATO. This is false.
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  15. 0:33 "whether it could led to WIII." Go fish. In every category, Russian military strength is but a shadow of core-member NATO's capabilities. - except in the fields of weapons of applied mass destruction. It remains an option at his disposal to threaten worldwide incineration unless he whines loud enough and then gets his toys. If he is allowed to get away with this, he will do it again, and again, until he make (conventional) WWIII inevitable. Putin had repeatedly expressed his expansionist and imperialist desires. Stop such a travesty from happening.
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  16. "winning" here is an abstract concept. Ukraine still existing as an independent nation. Russia has become whatever is in Putin's twisted mind. He launched the largest-scale military offensive since WWII to "denazify" a government... headed by a Jew, most of whose family was murdered by Nazis. Putin is a war criminal, plain and simple.
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  17. No.
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  18. How severely do you consider PRChina's construction dysfunction,?
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  19. Bullshift.
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  20. 4:37 your map is signally inaccurate. It's rather obvious when it misses the "tongue" containing Iskenderun - where the east-west axis of Turkey's coast turned 90 degrees south to become part of the levantine seaboard. Please try to do better.
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  21. Love the concept of a "waste line"
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  22. China's political process seems to lack an acceptable diversity of thought which better might serve their political purpose.
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  23. There is a similarity, in that Serbia had dominated what had been Yugoslavia - until it disintegrated; Russia had dominated what had been the Soviet Union - until it disintegrated. Both share a revanchist loss of status which can be hard to stomach.
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  24. "La France" refers to the country. There was a beautiful ocean liner named 'France', and she was "le France" because a ship is masculine.
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  25. Might you recommend a book?
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  26. It's not flattering; but when you a can have anybody murderered with a mild gesture, you my be successful.
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  27. ID ten T
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  28.  @nicobruin8618  The Russian occupation forces only need , if they so desire, to staff manpower to conquered land; the legitimate government has an obligation to provide education to all.
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  29. When it takes 541 days to form a government, it is the Deep State which keeps things from collapsing. BTW, Brussels is officially bilingual, but in fact is overwhelmingly French-speaking.
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  30. Big talk... where? European NATO forces, plus the US deployed component, are the most potent military assets on this planet. Russia can't even deal with Ukraine!
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  31. It is proper and necessary for France and Germany to increase their military capabilities.
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  32. @PEter Harrald Sweden and Finland are potential candidates. Both have equipment and organizational structures fully compatible. Assuming their domestic legal requirements had been met, they likely shall join just as the ink on the signatures dry.
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  33. @TheFastAndThe Dead "Taiwan" is the remnant of the internationally recognized Republic of China, and continues to style itself as such, A fully bizarre development has been that mainland China's victorious rebel armed seizure of the mainland casts the remaining elements of the overthrown legitimate government as somehow "rebel". Weird.
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  34. @TheFastAndThe Dead Neither had I; there are also many equally irrelevant contentions I might bring up. Why had you found it exigent to introduce Taiwan into this realm of discussion?
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  35. Russia is at least as vulnerable to nuclear weapons as it is able to use them. Even in a limited exchange, taking out Ekaterinburg or Omsk would effectively sever Russia's Far East from its Euro-Ural heartland
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  36. 4:00 Brent crude is, in fact, the benchmark for European oil. The benchmark for American crude is West Texas Intermediate.
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