Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Russia Calls Up More Troops" video.

@protorhinocerator142 The vast majority of Russians support Putin though, and able-bodied males in significant numbers are willing to fight, no matter how incapable they are at fighting effectively. Putin can't afford to be seen as weak, so he doubled down on calling Ukraine "nazis" and blaming the West for helping Ukraine. He rallies Russians by portraying them as the victims of NATO aggression, even though he invaded a sovereign nation and initiated a brutal murder campaign against civilians. People in the West think Russians consume news and information in the same way, able to think independently if they just would try. Russians see people in the West as victims of mass propaganda from capitalist enterprises. Neither side has good insight into the other due to geographic and political isolation of Russia.
2
There's a really great article written by 3 former Soviet professors basically explaining in great detail how the collapse of the USSR wasn't a singular event, but a massive series of trends that began decades prior to 1991, and continues decades after. Key points include: * Planned economy failure * Black market allowed it to function under the table * Major industrial initiatives were utter disasters, like Chernobyl * Their spending on military was excessive and still failed to come close to matching the West. Bekaa Valley 1982 humiliated their fighters, for example. * Soviet-Afghan War * One of the only things that kept the Soviet economy afloat was massive revenue from oil and NG. * Orders from Moscow to all the mines, production facilities, and plants dropped in free-fall mode once the government collapsed. * Workers, technicians, scientists, and engineers left their more remote cities to gather in large cities or fled the country if they were smart. * Education had already been suffering, then went into free-fall in the 1990s as well with so many professors, engineers, and researchers moving internally or leaving the country for Western Europe, US, Canada, Australia, etc. Putin was put in place to right the ship in people's minds as a strong man, even though everything was still in collapse.
1