Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "The Ukraine War From Russia's Perspective" video.

In that point it did make some sense since everyone around them was a world power as well so the only way to survive was to also become a world power. In its current position it's also a world power as it drives the entirety of the EU along with the French. So really right now it achieved that goal.
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Because it is. Russia is absolutely in its death throes with this situation which is why it's important for them to get a handle on their borders now so they can at least ATTEMPT to survive. Most nations just don't come back from this deep of a hole though however if there is any one which can it would be the RUS. I do say the Rus because that includes Belarus and Ukraine who are realistically about as different from Russia as Canada and Australia are from Britain but with time spent under different rulers more often. And to that extent Ukraine probably could come back and become the new elite to lead Russia once again if Russia itself does not. Russia resisted the Mongols, the other Steppe nomads, Central Asian Muslims, Germans, Swedes, and the French. Russia has pulled so many Hail Marys that it basically exists via complete refusal to die. If anyone can pick themselves back up and form a coherent nation again it would be this one.
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@farzana6676 There have been some attempts at it and they've realistically all failed. Hell Japan is currently still trying it and still getting nowhere. The biggest thing is that the ideology which has taken much of the west is that of pure comfort. Child making does not translate to that. Military strength does not translate to that. The only thing which does translate is welfare spending. Think of all of the people who are unwilling to have children if not for climate change reasons then reasons like "I don't want to bring someone into this terrible world" or "It's just too hard and uncomfortable I don't want that" with a lot of focus on abortion if things go wrong. The West just doesn't want to and incentivizing it only convinces those who really don't care either way which with child making just isn't a large portion of the populace. Isreal doesn't really incentive fertility via government but more so via culture in that they're very religious and very devoted to their religion. Their government is a reflection of this and so rewards it. They're also de-facto expansionist with their pushing into Palestinian controlled areas. These are all factors of a growing population and a people who believe in themselves. The west largely does not.
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Realistically this is true due to their location. They're on the Steppe. It's flat in that direction too. Before now they were conquered from there and constantly sold into slavery in Central Asia until they controlled the region. They're also the cap on China. If Russia dies what happens is that it becomes a rump state in the middle of the continent vunerable on all sides completely unable to defend itself. Before now Russia's greatest strength was its birth rate and large population relative to who it was fighting. This is no longer the case and it's approaching a point where it will simply be unable to compete and just die. Unless it somehow starts having families of 7 kids per woman again it'll realistically just die with other peoples populating where it is on the continent.
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Germany proved that twice lol
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@krasavchik8714 This is incredibly unlikely. People REALLY overestimate the strength of these oppressive governments. Oppressive governments are never and have never been able to order its population this way. Any and all loyalty is bought and as soon as they're forced too much they either revolt or get conquered by an outside power as people refuse to defend it. People don't like being oppressed and once oppression reaches too much of the populace the frustration builds too much and they're replaced. The core of what lets these states survive is that they're built on oppressing only those who don't comply at first with reasonable and then increasingly unreasonable demands to continue to comply. Once that tips over a certain point, you start to get revolts and rebellion because people genuinely can't take it anymore. There's a reason that Qin China (the dynasty we get its name from and that united China) died within 20 years. Loyalty has to be maintained by something other than by buying it. There has to be some genuine goodwill or love for the institutions. Tzarist Russia maintained control via the church, military, and national pride. The military was an institution which people were able to have immense pride in and one of the key triggers of the animosity towards the Tzars were Russian military failures. Their repression also ended up fairly local and the repression generally took a trajectory of being less repressive. It was only after that started to reverse that we got the seeds of the Russian revolution.
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@rhalfik Their fertility rate is under replacement rate and their population pyramid is growing smaller at the bottom. It doesn't matter now it matters in future.
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@rhalfik I believe it may have been mentioned or simply not have crossed their mind mainly because this type of thing doesn't really like to get talked about. It's really convenient to kind of ignore. But yeah the point is that the population pyramid should be a pyramid going up for growth or stability. Even a rectangle is stable. What is not, is an upside down one on the demographic chart. The birth rate is what determines demographics are okay because those matter in future. It doesn't matter if you have a growing population right now, if in 50 years people are too old then in 50 years you're going to have a population decline (which is what a lot of Europe and East Asia are facing). And at that point it can't be fixed. You're done and you're in for a demographic crunch.
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@deadrose007 That's honestly a topic still debated to this day in many respects. Realistically by the time the lend-lease had kicked in the German tide had already been stemmed and Russian industry was starting to activate again from beyond the Urals so whether or not it was completely decisive is still pretty inconclusive.
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@farzana6676 Actually yes with the exception of Africa barring the EAF, maybe Ethiopia, and if west Africa continues to be led by the French. The rest of Africa is just too poorly integrated into the global economy, their borders make no sense, and on top of that largely rely on capital from Europe and Asia. The Middle East will rise once again likely under the Turks since they're already industrialized and can follow their track or their lead. There's also a lot of Muslim nationalism which transcends the political and even ethnic borders which could make an empire. India is also basically the place of Russia during the first world War with a massive young population and actively and rapidly industrializing. This will likely pull all of south Asia into its economic and cultural orbit. Europe and East Asia will face a crisis in the coming demographic crunch and after the recovery probably be go back to the world of the 16th century with strong politically split civilizations which sometimes work together for broader and smaller goals.
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@farzana6676 Well honestly the US replacement rate has only JUST started to dip and part of that has been because we've entered some hard times which historically pushes down the birth rate. Also the creeping of an anti-natal ideology that everyone is growing to hate and will likely eradicate within a decade as things get too hard to sustain such an ideology so the birth rate will likely climb back up afterward.
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@markmuller7962 I think you're the one who is really uneducated on this. Demographies around the world are incredibly unequal such as the rapid birth rate in the middle east and throughout much of the Muslim world compared to the incredible collapse in East Asia and Europe. This has applied very heavily to Russia and to ignore what have historically been the strengths of Russia (large population and birth rate which allowed them to grow to their current borders in the first place) and how those strengths are no longer around and overall showcased better in countries such as China in regards to population and central Asia and other ethnic minorities in birthrate. This also paired with the very poor geography that comes from an incredibly flat terrain with few natural borders means that the only way to survive is by military strength. You seem to lack understanding of the mindset of the historical Russian state and its goal above all else: secure the borders of the Russian heartland. This has dictated the actions of Russia since its unification under the rise of Novgorod and has largely dictated its foreign policy since. It's also idealistic to view the modern world as a status that will continue onward and specifically this commitment to peace from all of Europe which is not followed by much of the world outside of it. People want to be represented in their governments and often identify with their own groups so Want their groups as part of the government. In many instances they also want their own land and this is the start of the nation-state model: a core desire for your people to have a state. Empires have largely dominated this by being a larger state which can defend all of the territory but the groups within either united and part of the larger identity or subjugated and maybe sometimes represented if that empire cares to. Now within all of that context there needs to be something here to address in my statement: Russia is either a world power or a rump state. The reason is because the only defensible borders that it has are found THOUSANDS of miles apart. It has the Pacific in the East, some mountains north of Manchuria and Mongolia, used to have mountains south and east of Kazakhstan, the Caucuses in the south, used to have the north pole in the northwest (now it's just Finland), used to have the Carpathians (now Moldova), used to have the black sea (now Ukraine, and used to have the Baltic sea. These all pushed into mountains and uncrossable water to the North, East, and South, and pushed far into the north European plain in the west. This prevented any force from pushing in once it got its military in order but Russia had to be powerful enough to control all of this land and also had to have the population which populated it to be truly Russian to maintain control. This was lost when Russia weakened. If Russia doesn't grow back it loses Siberia to China as climate change makes the region more temperate and loses the region just East of the Urals to people who out populate Russia in that area as the Russian heartland is in Eastern Europe and if Russia becomes weak enough to lose the area past the Urals to other groups it'll never have the ability to keep itself protected at its Western border. This leaves Russia completely indefensible as the only areas around it are flat grassland perfect for invading from. Btw world powers do not have to be exclusively from military ability and most often wield very strong cultural and economic influence over many regions.
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@markmuller7962 I'm sorry... WHAT? Did you just accuse me of in ANY way defending Russia? I'm sorry but I in no way defended Russia however to not understand demographics is to not understand their situation. Central Asia is not the developed world and has a fertility rate of 2.75 births per woman and a population of 74.3 million people. The excess people can literally move north and out populate the Russians in the region of Siberia. They simply have more people in the region and if they want to migrate and settle the region then Russia can't stop them. If Russia is too weak to keep it then they lose that territory. China has an incredible demographic problem which will halve their population yes. However their population is still MASSIVE and by the end of the century will still be 7x that of Russia. And all of that Russian population is in Eastern Europe and not in the far East which means once again that they can just move in and take territory by settling the region. This is because in the local area Russia is out populated not because of its pure population. Once that demographic crunch kicks in both Russia and China will be weakened but Russia much more heavily than China. And thus Russia would lose out in any contest over territory. Will any of this happen? Not necessarily. Can it happen? Yes. The key thing to understand is that either Russia is strong enough to hold its territory or it becomes so weak that it can lose it. Which is why it's important for the sake of Russia to be a world power. And World powers involve things other than military might.
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@markmuller7962 To be a superpower you have to fundamentally be able to project power far beyond your borders and make it so that no-one will touch you. To that end military power makes it so that no-one will touch you. It also allows you to stave off issues like migrations if you have successful control of people so they either don't enter or if they do you have the means to keep them from either seceding or causing issues in your government. But your question misses something and if you've watched this channel long enough you'd realize: these wars aren't random. Not by a long shot. These wars are for one very specific goal: a return to the defensible borders of the Soviet Union. The least defensible border of pure plains needs to be reduced as much as possible so they're trying to push into the Carpathian mountains and the Baltic sea. The wars in Chechnya and I want to say Georgia were to push to the Caucasus mountains. And Russia currently holds de-facto control over Kazakhstan which allows it to push to the mountains on the west of Xinjiang in China (the heavenly mountains), and the mountains in the south of Kazakhstan. This is literally just Russia trying to secure its borders. However the issue is that no-one really wants to be in Russia's sphere of informer and it lacks the institutions to be liked and actually good at its economy (mostly thanks to the length of communist rule) for much of those states. So it goes to hard power and invades. The point here of why Russia needs to be a world power is that it needs to be strong enough to hold all of this land and keep others from coming in so it can be secured on as many sides as possible.
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@JudeMalachi The US largely doesn't face a demographic problem. Unlike other countries who are decades into this the US only dipped VERY recently into this in a way other countries just haven't.
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@rhalfik Nah France will probably be okay as realistically it controls west Africa and is rooting out Islamic extremists in the region. The French identity is also somewhat malleable as you don't have to actually have a certain look. Just be French by being as French as any other Frenchman which means that much like a religion, you can convert to being French, it just takes a lot more effort than like becoming American or anglophone. However that buts up against Islam which is very much NOT a part of French identity and as a different and ingrained culture means Muslims integrate poorly overall.
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For Russia it's an attempt at future survival. For much of Eastern Europe it is the same. Sometimes one's survival comes at the expense of another.
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That's not so easy though. Although it's very nice to try to get them to be allies realistically there are a lot more cultural differences between Russia and the rest of Central and Western Europe which make that integration very difficult. Also would prevent them from obtaining defensible borders in Central Asia and leaves them vunerable to a backstab from the west. Also with so much animosity toward them from the rest of Europe it wouldn't be very easy at all.
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@yglnvbrs Well they got to keep what was stolen from the Russians. Before the Mongols the Russian princedoms were fairly free and advanced arguably more so than western Europe at least socially in things like legal court and parliaments. Russia went down that road to survive and push back against the Mongols. Ukraine was however ruled by Poland who were much less oppressive being not the Mongols. So Russia basically turned into as militarized a state as possible to Keep from anything like the Mongols ever happening again.
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The economic and technological prowess are simply things which augment the geopolitical. Geopolitics is the source. If the US suddenly pulled out militarily and economically from the world system but still managed to be the largest economy with the most technological development then it wouldn't be a superpower anymore just an isolated state who no-one wants to mess with but also has no point in bothering. Similarly if Luxembourg suddenly managed to be the largest economy on earth and the most technologically advanced, since literally everyone around it would be able to just roll in and take it, it'd be a shrimp with no influence. Geopolitics is world power. Geopolitics is defense of your population and world order. That is what guarantees whether or not you get conquered and reduced to a region in someone else's state.
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aa K0stic What do you think is the Russian position?
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@markmuller7962 Let me sum it up easier then: The area east of the Urals is so empty that it takes such a small amount of people to move in and simply outpopulate the native Russians and then do something like split off. Would Russians be replaced at all in their heartland? No. They would simply lose territory. But on flat grassland of the Steppe that territory is their defense and without it there are no defensible borders for the Russian heartland.
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@mark9099 If you're referring to Russia most of that rate is being grown by non-russians and the reason it's not aging faster is because their men drink themselves to death which is killing the older population.
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@hstad100 To be fair the reason it's having a difficult time is that it isn't allowed to mobilize its population and it isn't at war. It's not treating this as a war and conscripts are only allowed in defense of the homeland. Due to also weak communication and coordination it can't pull off what the US did in the middle east. But yeah realistically Russia either exists as a world power and somehow gets back on its feat to stop its demographic collapse or it becomes a rump state in the middle of the Steppe vulnerable on all sides. Russia defended itself by growing big and either it can secure its borders by re-establishing the old borders of the Soviet Union, or it loses everything East to ethnic minorities from central Asia and China leaving its Heartland even more vunerable.
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@rhalfik Honestly the only country which seems to genuinely admit it is Japan which realistically can't try to bury it due to reality hitting it too hard to ignore. Many other countries are trying to turn to immigration but their political and social systems don't really allow for very good integration and the sources of immigration are really not conducive to that such as trying to integrate Muslims into countries which have very rigid national identities and have had national churches for a very large part of their history. This is compared to countries like the United States trying to integrate Hispanics who's differences largely come from language or sect of Christianity and have had a long history of many sources of immigration and a malleable national identity.
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