Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Anders Puck Nielsen"
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Wars is about handeling limited resources in the best, most effiecent way.
And for a long time have the west been fighting wars with overwhelming amounts of resources, so much so that we could afford to be lazy and wasteful and still win a war. The war in Ukraine has been a wake up call in this regard. Ukraine does not have the luxury of taking out an enemy with air support and wasteing 10 times more artillery shells than their enemy. One can say that the opposite has been the case. Here can we see how we must fight to win a war when we lack air superiority and have to rely on artillery instead. And a war when we do not have control over the skies but have to rely on SAMs, manpads and AA guns to keep enemy planes away.
As sound technician I think that human creativity works best with limited resources, when you have to be as creative as possible with the little tools that you have. If you only have a limited number of synth sounds in your music program you quickly think out ways you can use those and create music pieces.
Same goes for warfare. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. It have a very few good artillery pieces which it needs to use effectivly to win against a stronger foe. And attacking the logistical system with HIMARS turned out to be a very effective way of doing just that. They have managed to find a chink in the armor of their much stronger foe and ruthlessly exploit it.
And the Ukrainians have inflicted higher losses on their enemy than they have suffered themselves. How much larger is hard to tell.
But even if they would be close to even, is it still a job well done by Ukraine as Russia have launched a surprise attack, they are stronger in the air, and they have much more tanks and artillery... and access to artillery shells and spare parts for russian made weapons is much less critical.
Ukraine have been clumsy in the propaganda war, and one could say that Russia allowed Ukraine to win it by walk over. Zelensky have been visiting his frontline troops and begging the west for weapons and help saying about the Russians: "they are killing my people".. which they have done at Bucha, Irpin and with all terror bombing. All the daily videos of destroyed Russian tanks, drone attacks on soldiers, exploding ammunition dumps and such have also managed to convince public opinion that Ukraine is doing well on the ground and that Russia suck. All those huge losses on paper that Russia have suffered do have some video evidence to back it up.
The daily unseen and Warthog, are like the modern day version of die Wochenschau.
I think Putin expected his net trolls to be more effective, but it turns out that there are lots of even bigger trolls on the internet - like myself - that can fight back. So their attempts to manipulate western public opinion have largely been unsuccesful. And meanwhile are Ukraine winning the meme war. Comment sections are like a self-playing piano now unlike the first weeks of the war. Now people do not need any encouragement to make jokes on Russias expense.. about "smoking accidents", "vodka related foolishness" and Kremlin hypocrisy. People do that job all by themselves and have fun reading each others jokes. And it does of course feel good to give each other a pat on the back.
For the Ukrainians it have also been important for fighting morale to feel like the world cares about them, and that they are not alone and left out to be eaten by the sharks. They know that the entire free world is behind them. All of Europe and North America. Even Switzerland and Hungary are sanctioning Russia. Iceland with its extremely tiny population send warm clothes this winter. Japan and Korea send military uniforms, hospital equipment. Taiwan send drones. Jordan sends military equipment, and Morocco sends spare parts from their best T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Also Australia and New Zeeland send lots of help.
The war in Ukraine have in many ways picked up the best parts of the world community. And Ukraine is in the worlds spotlight for the moment. And meanwhile are Russias allies getting tired of her brutality, her disrespect for law and the international order, and her clumsy disruptive behaviour. So even Serbia refuses to recognize Russias annexation of the stolen Ukrainian provinces. And also Kazaksthan, Mongolia and Armenia are beginning to speak up against Putin and publicly humiliate him.
And China is less and less interested in backing Russia
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The deal also benefitted Russia. Ukraine could ship out its food to sell and get some cash. But Russia could also do the same and also get some well needed money in the same way by this deal. Furthermore did it get some of the economic sanctions lifted by lifting the blockade of Ukraines wheat.
Russia had also lost the grip of southern Ukraine when this deal was struck. The arrival of Nato anti-ship missiles to this area such as Harpoon, Robot 17, Brimstone and others also made it impossible for Russia to keep up the naval blockade in the western black sea. Ukraines land forces also held the momentum in this area, and the loss of the cruiser Moscow, and the painful pyrrhic victory of taking snake island and the shaky control of the western black sea coast made life very dangerous for the Russian marine.
The original plan of occupying the east and south of Ukraine, blockading all the ports and thereby strangle Ukraines economy had failed. Ukraine got money from the west to stay alive. The landmass was contested, the control over the western black sea would probably have been impossible to upheld in the long run without danger of suffering heavy losses due to new anti-ship missiles and drones.
And the west was angry on Russia. Blocking the ports and cutting off 800 million people from their food source would have caused riots, revoultions, chaos and gigantic refugee waves around the world. This shows what a terrorist nation Russia is, that is prepared to deliberatly starve 800 million innocent people to death. Putin is prepared then to kill more people than Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. But that is another topic for itself, so lets go back to the grain deal...
A refugee wave of a tens of millions of north africans coming to Europe would create large problems for the EU and thereby the war effort in Ukraine. This destabilization of Africa, the middle east and the EU made governments worried and angry. So much so that the west even considered direct military intervention into the black sea if the Russians continued to try to sabotage the grain shipments and cause global starvation.
Those problems were avoided with the grain deal. Russia and Ukraine was allowed to ship their grain. The Russian terrorist state gained concessions by some lifted sanctions by the EU - which for example provided them with some spare parts for all those 500 passanger planes that Russia had stolen from western countries.
Global starvation was avoided and Ukraine got some cash. Russian terrorists had won a small victory. But Putin had probably hoped for much more sanctions to be lifted, but to his dissapointment was there not much change.
As the typical liars and terrorists russians are did they fire missiles on Ukrainian ships the day after the deal was struck.
The purpose was probably to drive up insurance premiums for western ships that transported Ukraines grain to make it economically unprofitable to ship all that grain from Ukraine and to ruin the country.
Had the war turned in Russia's favor again, and the control of southern Ukraine been taken back by Russia, then do I not feel any doubts that Russia would break all its promises - like it always done in the past - and started to attack Ukrainian ships again to try to strangle Ukraines economy to death again.
But now since Russias navy is weakened and the Russian army is losing, do Russia not yet dare to do anything about this Black sea shipping deal. If Russia moves to the west of the Crimea with their ships they will get in range of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and get wiped out. So they are therefore unable to effectivly make a naval blockade as I sees it.
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Most of those lessons are not new in any way.
Countries underestimate consumption of artillery shells
- No shit Sherlock, havn't that been the case ever since World war 1? The great powers ran out of artillery shells early 1915. And Germany ran out of bombs during the invasion of the Soviet union. And USA had to buy back World war 2 bombs that it had sold off to scrapping, because it had begun running low on bombs during the Vietnam war.
Staffs and ammunition depots needs to be dispersed
Once again nothing new. This is what the Vietnamese did to counter the American air power. They did disperse their fuel and ammunition dumps. And they did it so much that it because economically unsubstainable for the Americans to send up a plane to drop many bombs to hit a very tiny target of for example a small diesel tank.
You must have training capacity
Well captain obvious, we all already knew this. But the politicians just wanted to slash the military budgets after the Cold War and no one forced them to take responsability for their reckless decisions. So now have we all got what we deserve. We have too few conscripts to fight forest fires, too little hospital equipment to deal with a mild pandemic, and our anorectic armies have nearly nothing - and not even basic supplies that they can spare to help Ukraine now once a real war has started.
Indeed the entire idea of running the military according to neoliberalism is stupid.
The military is not like a car company that you run for profit. A car company just wants to make money. And it can make money by for example minimize storage costs for spare parts and products that it rarely uses. Lean production, and slimming down the organization to the bare minimum and having as few workers as possible is a way to cut down waste and maximize the profits for a company.
But for a military would it be a stupid thing to do that way.
A military needs a gigantic ammount of supply in storage. If a big war happens you might need hundreds of thousands extra uniforms and gas masks. And you might need a million artillery shells in storage, so that your troops do not need to die because your guns have runned out of ammunition. But instead will you have enough ammunion in storage that you military can keep on fighting til your industry have managed to gear up for war and increased the production of ammunition so it can fill the monthly demand at the frontline.
So a military should be runned at an economic loss if need be. A military is fighting in a very competative enviroment called a battlefield which puts much higher demands on an organisation, than a little economic competition on a market place.
There is little surprise that the military have created so many innovations and new products, as the military is a very highly competative enviroment that is not obsessed about profits, keeping down costs and other economic constraints like the private sector.
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Battleships ruled the seas. Then came the torpedos and ruined everything, and having ships with big guns and thick armor was no longer fun. Battleships like Repulse, Prince of Wales, Yamato, Bismarck, Tirpitz, USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma were sunk by submarines and airplanes. By 1945 was no country interested in building any more battleships because torpedos on planes and submarines have made them worthless. Instead did countries build smaller ships instead like motor torpedo boats, destroyers and light cruisers.
And if the torpedos had not yet killed all dreams of big warships, would the next disaster soon come to them that would cause their final extinction: The cruise missile.
From now on would no navy in their right mind keep on wasting money on building new battleships or even upkeep old ones. The battleship was a dinosaur that was going extinct.
The Soviet union was first out with mass producing 200 new small fast boats equipped with nothing but anti-ship missiles. And thus had a new class of warships been born: The missile boat.
And since the 1960s have that meant the end of all big warships like Battleships, and Cruisers. At least when it comes to try to gaining naval dominance in the small Baltic Sea.
Now it seems like stealth and a clever use of the terrain are more important for the survival of a warship than what thick armor is.
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I think the continuation war between Finland and Russia in the summer of 1944 is even more impressive by the Finns.
Russia was a great industrial power that was pumping out thousands of IS-2 tanks, 152mm artillery pieces and military planes. Finland on the other hand was the poorest country in Europe and its army lacked everything except uniform buttons . Its industry was non-existent. And even with Swedish help and captured Soviet equipment did their military lack heavy artillery, and it extremely few aircrafts (and most of them were old and outdated) and they had almost no tanks, aside from a handful of StugIII and some captured Soviet junk that was little more than soapbox cars with a machine gun. By 1944 was all captured T-26 tanks and BT-7 hopelessly obsolete if they were to face thousands of T-34/85 and IS2 tanks Russia had put along the border.
The Finns still inflicted gigantic losses on the Russians. But the artillery fire, air bombs and big tanks proved too much even for the brave and skilled finns. The situation was desperate. Hitler thought that he could not afford another diplomatic blow by losing another member of the axis so he did decide to help the finns quickly.
JU87 stuka bombers, StuGIII and thousands of panzerfausts and panzershrecks were sent. And Russian tank losses quickly went sky high. The Finns had no armor of their own, but they were good at using their forests to hide and surprise the russian tanks and using the terrain for taking cover. And the russian military was incompetent and it often got drunk.
So its attacks were not that effective despite gigantic numerical superiority and enormous amounts of heavy weapons.
The climax of the campaign happened when the russians advanved through a narrow corridor. They did not know that the finns had prepared a big surprise for them. Every artillery piece in the finnish army had been massed around the area.
And calculations had been made so all the hundreds of guns would fire in an order so that all shells landed at extactly the same moment to reach maximum surprise.
A finnish officer told a Swedish soldier: "come and see here"... and he handed over some oculars to him and pointed in a certain direction to show him where to look. And then he said: "Now you will see how you will cause much harm and pain".
And a gigantic thunder came. And in the glass he saw things being thrown up into the air... trees, soldiers, horses tanks, trucks everything was randomly thrown around in a gigantic pile of smoke.
Probably many thousands of russians died that moment. And their last push to break through the finnish defences had been crushed.
In the long run did Finland realize that they could not win, so they started to negotiate peace with Stalin.
And Stalin was very eager to make peace with the finns. The country did not have much to offer Stalin if it were conquered.
And its military was good, so it would be good if Stalin could get that army out of the war as quickly as possible so he could focus on the Germans instead. He had learned to respect the finns. And he feared that a war with them would cost him too many losses that he could not afford. The German army was still strong and Operation Bagration which destroyed 100 German divisions had still not yet happened, so the outcome on the eastern front was far from certain. And Stalin was a 100 times more afraid of Germany than of the finns. So making peace with the Finns was a no brainer from Stalins point of view. Stalin quickly agreed to a peace with Finland so he could take his massive army and throw it towards the Germans.
So ironically did Hitlers panzerfausts to Finland probably do more to keep Finland out of the war, than in it.
Without his help would Finlands defensive lines probably been broken, and the Russians would have pushed through and would probably tried to follow through on their success and try to conquer the entire country as a result.
So one can feel a bit pity for the Germans for how ungrateful they were treated.
Stalin also demanded in his peace terms that all German troops on Finlands territory must be kicked out. So the Germans had to flee the country, and those who didn't were fired at by the finns. Stalin now finally feel some relief for Leningrad, and he could not unleash gigantic forces towards the Germans instead.
Once again had the Russian army proven itself to be large and mighty, but also utterly incompetent and careless in how it wasted thousands of men and equipment.
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There is this game that Russia wants to show the 3rd world that it is strong and does not back down and put hard against hard in its struggle against the west. Maybe Russia is afraid to look weak and useless for the third world?
But this is a vanity project a 3rd world country cannot afford. So a Potemkin phasade needs to be created, but this is not a substainable solution in the long run. So what Putin hope to achieve with this move is beyond me, it just seem idiotic like painting oneself into a corner, and then climb up on a branch on a tree and then put out the saw and start to cut down the same branch he is sitting on.
This is just so foolish. A desperate mans wishful thinking. Perhaps is he betting everything on that his boyfriend will become president in USA again. But it seems more likely that Biden will win to me.
And no this war have nothing to do with Nato agression. If that was true that Russia indeed felt threatened by an attack from the west, then why did that SU-57 fighter jet not sit protected inside a thick bomb shelter where it would be safe against drones and missile strikes?
All other countries in eastern Europe got protected hangars everywhere, so why not russia? Its almost like they do not fear any Nato invasion at all.
Vatniks also mock us Europeans that we are so unprepared for this war, with tiny armies, tiny military stockpiles and no artillery ammunition stored for a big war. So if they brag about how much stronger russian artillery is, then why do they feel threatened by their pathetically weak western foe?
And if the west is so dangerous to russia that it starts proxy wars and threatens russia with an invasion at every moment, then why do
the russian military pull out troops from Kaliningrad and send them to Ukraine? Isn't Kaliningrad super-important and needs to be protected at all costs as a top priority for the russian military in a war with Nato? Kaliningrad is enormously important, just as important as Moscow and St Petersburg. Kaliningrad have an important port, but that place is also an excellent starting point for a blitzkrieg against the Baltics, Its a place for missile attacks against the west (perhaps also with nukes).
Its also for defensive reasons enormously important for russia if Nato went to war with russia. It would tie up large Nato forces that could threaten russia elsewhere, and it would protect russias missile shield and help russia control the Baltic sea. So why then would russia ever move all Kaliningrad troops to fight in Ukraine? That just seems enormously reckless and dangerous to me, if Russia truely is under threat from the west.
And after the drone strike at Engels airbase did Russia move all its strategic bombers out of reach of Ukrainian drones. They were moved far north. To an airfield close to the border of Finland, just a few kilometers away and not more.
And I think that would be an extremely reckless move if Russia sincerly feared a western invasion. Would USA ever put all their B-2, B-1 and B-52 bombers in one place just a few kilometres from the Warsaw pact border during the cold war?
- I don't think so because that would be stupid and reckless. The entire nuclear capability of the US airforce could just have been destroyed in just one big air raid that could easily be done cross the border without much warning or time to react. No one would ever position their strategic bombers close to enemy territory unless they felt extremely safe and sure that they would never be attacked from the west.
So for all those reasons do I think Putin never feared any western invasion
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"From day one Ukraine never had a chance of winning the real war."
From what military school did you get that knowledge? From Russia Today evening show propaganda?
Look at history. Russia have lost almost every war it have fought the last 170 years. It lost the Crimean war. It lost the Russo-Japanese war. It lost World war 1. It lost the Polish-Bolshevik war. It failed to conquer all of Finland in 1939 and in 1944. It suffered catastrohic defeats against nazi-Germany despite it fought a 1 front war against Germany that had to fight a 5 front war without any lend lease help. And then in the 1980s did russia lose the war in Afghanistan. And it lost the first Chechen war.
"Now that Zelensky and Biden fed a half a million Ukrainians into the meat grinder"
I bet you do not have any credible source for that claim. And clowns like Gonzalo Lira, Scott Ritter, Tucker Carlson, Russia today are all fake news so they don't count.
"Zelensky & Biden supporters ARE STILL promoting the war!"
They did not start the war - it was russia that started the war.
And a peace deal at any cost will not create peace. Putin have broken every promise he have made... the Budapest agreement, the 2003 border deal with Ukraine, The Minsk agreement, the peace deal with Chechenya, the deal with Prigozhin. So I do not think a ceasefire will hold a year longer then when Putin think he have a realistic chance of invading and succesfully take Ukraine again.
So making a peace deal is therefore pointless. It is also morally wrong. Russia should not be given anything.
Ukraine have all the right to defend itself according to international law and the UN charter. They defend themselves against genocide, wars of aggression, russian tyrranny and opression, ruscism and raschism.
Ukraine fights stands for truth, independence, freedom and democracy. Russia only stands for evil, manipulation and lies.
And if rewarding russian terrorists will only send the wrong signal to terrorism sympatizers around the world, and encourage future acts of terrorism also from other states and organisations when they see that russia gets rewarded for bad behaviour.
Appeasement simply doesn't work. Its just a dangerous strategy. The least bad option is therefore to kick russia out of Ukraine by force, as it refuses to leave stolen lands voluntarily.
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I read in one major newspaper (I forgot which one) that Germany have fixed its fossile fuel dependency problem for the next year, and the years to come. So Putins energy blackmail will therefore not likely succeed in the long run as the west can just get their energy from other sources.
This game of shutting of all the energy more looklike a game of desperation by Putin, he is playing out his energy card while it is still worth anything. It will cause harm and pain and scare some people in the west. But after this winter will this game stop having an effect, and things will improve in the EU while Russia suffers more and more pain and see its energy revenues go down and get problems with financing the war.
The Russian people are used to a shitty life and hardships and will tolerate more pain than west Europeans, but I still think Putin greatly overestimate Russias own abilities and underestimate Europe.
To me all this looklike the crappiest and most idiotic economic warfare strategy a country have used since the Confederate States during the American Civil war. The Confederates did then stop all export of cotton and destroying in the hope that lack of cotton and high export prices would make England eager to support the South's struggle for independence.
But the opposite did happen. The South did not get any desperatly needed foreign money to help its struggling economy, and England just started to grow cotton in India, and also Egypt started to grow it, as clothes producers were forced to look for other sources for cotton. And so the South was no longer as important for the world economy as in the past.
It never raised any war taxes and thereby lacked the funding for its military and the war had to be singlehandedly paid for by other means which raised inflation and interest rates, and thereby made the war financing very ineffective.
Russia now do the same thing. It refuses to export energy and food and thereby lose export revenues. And as it isolates itself it is becoming more and more irrelevant for the world economy, until no one any longer cares if they lose all economic ties with them.
Capital controls work. But they only work if you got a strong economy with demand for your currency. Once the energy dependency on Russia goes away.. then it can no longer prop up its failed currency and the house of cards falls apart.
And the law of supply and demand will press down the value of the ruble as there are no foreign demand for that junk currency once people starts to buy their energy from other countries..
So no, I think Putin is only going to lose the long game.
As losses piles up and Russias lack of success becomes more and more appearant will the war lose some of its popularity.
The Russian military lose its best men and equipment, and all that is left are junk. Putin will finally have welded togheter the world against him, as even France, Germany and Italy now their energy from other countries and have no reason to hold back on their support for Ukraine. And traitors like Salvini and Le Pen can no longer camouflage their support for Putin behind fake concerns about the sanctions that they say harms the wallets for ordinary people.
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Ohh please, the Wehrmacht were warcriminals... but comparing them to russian federation is an insult they dont deserve.
Wehrmacht was competent at all levels, had good modern equipment, good training, good dicipline, the troops were willing to fight, their command structure was best in the world, and their strategic and tactical thinking had been refined after all campaigns in Europe and the previous world war.
The Russian military by contrast is rotten junk at all levels. Filled with corruption, old poorly maintained rusty equipment and outdated food rations, the men lacks training and williningness to fight, the command structure is one of the crappiest in the world, dicipline is non-existent as soldiers post internet videos of mutiny and russian positions looks like waste dumps with garbage everytwhere and everything is disorder, and the russians military thinking is based around ideas that are as outdated now as they were a century ago.
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@John_Smith_86
"What other country has all these factors? Population, economy, and military"
Glad you asked.
Because russia does not have those things. 8 countries have more people than russia do.
10 Countries do have a higher GDP than Russia. 13 countries have more Fortune 500 companies than Russia.
And I would rank USA, India, South Korea, China as all being stronger than russia militarily due to more men in uniform or more money spent on the military. However if a force mobilization was done, then I would consider Japan, Germany, France and UK also as militarily superior.
Russia do still not have a 5th generation fighter aircraft. Its most modern air defence cannot even deal with American HIMARS missiles from the 1990s.
And comparing Admiral Kutzetzov with a Catobar aircraft carrier, is like comparing F16 fighter with a Mitsubishi Zero in terms of capabilities.
Its artillery is also inferior to its western counterparts in everything - range, precision, reload time, time to set up the system to be read to fire, and inferior because it takes longer time from firing to moving away.
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I guess that things will be like it was with the Iraq war in 2003 which the American people strongly supported.
Most americans were okay with a an unprovoced war of aggression, they were okay with torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, they were okay with their government behaving like an a$$hole towards European countries. They were okay with a government that took away one human right after another... they were okay with the government spying on the American people. They were okay with suspending habeas corpus and that the government could keep a person in detention for unlimited time. They were bullying any anti-war protestor and calling them "anti-american", and if you protested the government for any reason - even for things that did not have to do with the Iraq war, you could get labeled as "anti-american" or "unpatriotic" and lose your job as a school teacher.
This was what USA was like in the years 2003-2006. The American people even voted for the fascist idiot George W Bush to become president for 4 more years after all the evil shit that he had done. He had jacked up USAs national debt with trillions. He had started a war that killed 600.000 innocent Iraqis. He was the first president in US history that never used a veto to block a government project to keep government spending down - and unsurprinsingly did he spend more dollars than all other presidents before him had done combined!
He was wasteful with money. He was bloodthirsty. He was fascist towards Iraqis, but also to a lesser extent also towards Europeans which he treated arrogantly with the belief that USA was the worlds only superpower and could treat anyone else how they liked. He was also a believer in American exceptionalism, so per defintion was America always a power for good in this world according to his mind - even when it did bad and evil things.
He silenced any anti-war sentiments by labeling them as "unpatriotic". So either you were for George W Bush, or you were an anti-american traitor. So most people did choose to fall in line.
And in most opinion polls did the war in Iraq remain popular among the American people. People were ignorant. Many could not even point out where Iraq was on a map. Truth to be told, most Americans did not care. They did not care about foreign policy and the things which were going on outside their own country. It did not matter to them. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis could die and they did not care. Instead did they feel self-pity about all Americans who had died in this stupid pointless war.
And instead of blaming Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Powell for this mess did the warmongering American right-wingers spew their hatred on muslims instead. And one American rightwing politician suggested that Arabia should be nuked and that the sand should turn into heat from the nuclear bomb. And on TV you could see Fox news pumping out lies and pro-war propaganda nonstop, and rightwing media personalities like Ann Coulter who strongly supported "The war on terror" in Arabia and the middle east delievered the following statement: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
I think that quote well sum up the worldview that almost all Republicans had back then.
Not just Bush and his government was pro-war, but so was also the rightwing media such as Bill O'reilly, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and others. And the opposition were silent and afraid to say a single word.
But then this all came to an end.
The fall of the Republican party government did come. But it did not come because of the Iraq war.
Nope. People were upset about things in their own home country instead. They were angry about the governments handeling of the hurricane Katrina and the devestation it had brought to New Orleans.
Finally was someone allowed to criticise Bush's government. And that led to the fall in popularity for the Republican party. And that did allow for the democrats to win the next election. And in 2008 did the financial crisis come and people were tired of all wars and Obama promised to fix those things
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Så har det varit ända sedan 1914. Torpeden gjorde slagskeppet omodernt redan under första världskriget. Många vägrade att acceptera faktum under 1920 och 1930-talen. På 1940 talet blev det dock uppenbart att slagskeppen var dinosaurier dömda att dö ut, en efter en slogs de ut av torpeder och angrepp från ubåtar och flygplan. Som Royal Oak, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Yamato, Musashi, Repulse och Prince of Wales, flygangreppen på Taranto och Pearl Harbor.
Så efter andra världskriget var ingen stormakt längre intresserad av att bygga stor artilleriskepp. Amerikanerna tog till och med och avbeställde sitt gigantiska Montana klassen slagskepp mitt under brinnande världskrig. Maktbalansen var rubbad. Alla insåg det. Sjökrig var inte längre något som bara en liten klubb länder som USA, Japan, Tyskland, England, Frankrike, Italien, och Ryssland hade råd med.
Slagskeppens tid var nu förbi och mindre länder kunde nu ha råd med att bygga massvis av små fartyg. Torpedbåtar, korvetter och sånt. På sin höjd kunde någon kryssare få finnas kvar, men då endast för att ge skyddande eld åt torpedbåtarna när de skulle genomföra sina anfall. Men inte ens några nya kryssare ville man bygga efter kriget. På sin höjd kunde stora skepp som jagare kanske ses som användbara.
Men på 1960-talet så ändrades allt igen med nästa stora teknologiska genombrott: missilbåten. Sovjet började som första land att bygga små snabba båtar som kunde bära missiler som huvudbeväpning. Dessa kunde lätt sänka stora krigsskepp. Och att ha stora kanoner och tjockt pansar blev alltmera värdelöst. Torpeder kunde göra massiv skada på krigsskepp med att träffa dom när vattenlinjen eller under skeppet så att fartyget klövs itu. Nu kunde däremot missiler färdas otroligt långa sträckor - längre än vad den största kanonen på ett slagskepp kunde skjuta - och missilen kunde orsaka massiv skada och sänka det mäktigaste slagskeppet i världen med bara en träff.
Pansarskydd har blivit helt värdelöst. Ett slagskepp på 60.000 ton är numera inte mycket mera värt än en liten missilbåt på några hundra ton. Stealth och snabbhet ger bättre skydd och överlevnad än 2 meter stålplåt.
Vill man så kan man så klart se historiska paralleller till tidigare i historien som till 1700-talet när den stora mäktiga svenska flottan tappade kontrollen över Östersjön till den ryska flottan som massproducerade billiga fartyg av lågkvalitéts träd. Ryssarna byggde i rask takt mer än hundra galärer som med sina åror snabbt och lätt kunde röra sig på grunda vatten där de stora kraftfulla svenska segelfartygen med sina hundratals kanoner inte kunde röra sig utan fastna.
Sverige var totalt oförberett för denna nya typ av krigföring. Stora slagskeppens tid i Östersjön tog slut, och istället blev det bättre att ha många små snabba fartyg istället.
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Its our way or the highway. What is there really anything we can or should compromise about? If someone breaks into your house, kills your dog and destroy paintings and furniture, and then he claims ownership over your living room should you give that barbarian anything? I think not. He should go to jail. And if that is not possible, then he should be outright killed on the spot.
I think it is good that we steal all frozen russian assets and give them to Ukraine as a form of war reparations. I also think that the west should give the green light to an Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria - that could remove the russian military force which prevents democracy in that country, and the land strip could be a bargening chip in a peace negotiation.
And Yes I absolutly think that the west MUST humiliate Russia. That is the only way they will learn to make peace with their neighbours and stop trying wars of aggression against their neighbours. Right now they can always try a war against their neighbours since there are no downsides of trying and only upsides - If you win a war you expand your land, and if you lose you don't have to pay anything.. no land ceded, no war reparations, no war criminals punished...
All this has to stop.
Russia should not be above the law. And we should destroy their grandious megalomaniac self-image they have of being more than anyone else. They should be treated just like any other country period.
So if Russia goes out from this war with their money stolen, and with no land gained but only land in Transnistria lost, and being an international paria, embaressed for its military failings that could not prevent a loss of territory.. and a destroyed economy and military.. then Russias self-image has to change. They have to realize that they are not Superpower anymore.
And thats the end of it.
Russias history is filled with losing war after war. The lost 10 times more soldiers than the Finns, and Finland was able to keep their independence... but in Russian propaganda is the Winter war and Continuation war not portraid as humiliating lost wars for Russia.
Same goes with their pathetic failures against Nazi-Germany and enormous losses, and that their country was saved by lend-lease is totally left out in Russian history books.
And that Russia lost 19 out of 20 battles against Sweden in the Great Northern War is also something Russia likes to forget and only talk about the battle of Poltava.
So it is therefore time that we in this war leave no doubt which side is the loser, and which side is the winner. Russia must suck it up that they lose this war and get humiliated. They need to wake up. Wake up like dumb child who think he is a great hockey player and musician because his mom told he so... but now that stupid child needs to hear the painful truth and find a new hobby that he actually got some talent for.
The Russian people is like this child with an unreaslistic worldview. From education and from media have they been taught that russia is a great military power that have never lost a war, and never started any unjustified wars and had any evil intentions and commited genocide.
I think it is time that russians learn that their military sucks. And that they should get another hobby than militarism.
Fix their own economy in their 3rd world country, instead of destroying other countries for example...
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The East Bloc collapsed and the Cold war ended with people in Germany took to the streets and protested and the Berlin wall was torn down.
And all regimes are weak and have to bow to the people. Hitler was very scared that the German people would rise up against his war, like the German people had protested against world war 1 in 1918. So he always listened to public opinion and tried to avoid a total mobilization for war of German society for as long as he could. Only in early 1943 was Germany mobilized for total war... and that was like 3 years after Britain, a year after USA, and one and a half year after Russia.
So it was too little, too late to win the industrial war against the allies.
And even if his brutal regime was capable of killing approximatly 12 million people in the holocaust, was this regime still pathetically powerless when it feared a backlash from public opinion. The protests at Rosenstrasse was a battle that protesters won against Hitlers regime that wanted to take away all jewish husbands from women in Berlin and deport them to Auschwitz to be gassed to death. So had the German people only protested more, its possible that the holocaust would never have happened.
And also Communist China today are fearful of public protests. It had to bow down and abandon its zero-covid policy with its brutal consequences for ordinary people out of fear of backlash from protestors. And this protest was anti-Covid restrictiosn, but it also started to become anti-regime protests, and pro-democracy protests... and this scary development
could not be crushed by brutal force alone. So the Chinese government quickly scrapped all Covid measures over a night, and Covid began to spread like a wildfire in China among a population which previously been totally unexposed to the disease and lacked the natural immunity which could be seen in other countries such as Sweden.
And the result became an over-burdened healthcare system as hundreds of thousands catched Covid, and the shocks to the Chinese economy became severe. This was not what the Commie dictatorship regime had wished for, but this is what they got.
And all this shows that public opinion matters. But then of course you need to break a threshold and have much willingness to fight among the population and a large part of the population must be against the regime. It didn't help that tens of millions of people protested against the Iraq war in 2003.
Preferbly do I also think it helps if the population is armed, so that the police is fearful of using force to break up a protest. Or even fearful of trying to break up a protest peacefully.
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"I think that Putin was probably even more surprised than the rest of the world when he realized that he (and Russia) is at war with the Ukraine."
I think he is as surprised as Hitler was in 1939 when he invaded Poland and didn't expect that other countries would suddenly jump into the war and start helping the country that he just invaded. Hitler had invaded the Rhineland, Austria, Sudetenland, and Czechia without any military resistence from the west. And likewise was west doing nothing when Putin started wars in Chechenya, Georgia, Dagestan, and Crimea.. so he thought that invading Ukraine would be easy.
Ukraine would be demoralized with the lack of western support and quickly give up, even if it would fight bravely the first few days Putin thought. And regardless would the west be able to do too little too late to save Ukraine. And Germany would remain passive as Russia have a knife pressed against its throat with the gas weapon which could kill the German economy.
So Putin did certainly not expect that taking Ukraine would be this hard. The war has become a nightmare for him.
And when it comes to Russian propaganda do I think many Russians have fallen victim for it. Putin himself is on one hand considering the west as weak, decadent, lazy, materialistic, dumb, and overly interested in comfort so beating them in a war would be easy for the more practical minded Russians that are used to hardships.
But then do Putin fall victim to doublethink. One time do he feel contempt for the west as see it as weak. And in the next moment he feels great fear from it. He is paranoid and thinks that the USA is out after him. He constantly fears being poisoned. He sits at long tables because he is afraid of sitting close to someone who might be sick and have Covid or some other disease. He is a coward hiding in his bunker the entire war. He was even so afraid of an western air raid that he did not allow any military planes to fly on his victory day parade on May 9th, as he wanted his military planes to be ready to protect the skies over Moscow from a sudden attack instead. Things are getting silly 🙄
And what George Orwell called "doublethink" is really what is typical of Putins Russia. And of Russian propaganda in particular.
It is filled with constant contradictions towards its own talking points. First they say there is no war in Ukraine, and in the next moment they accuse the west of a proxy war. First they always say they are winning in Ukraine, and in the next moment they mobilize the reserves.
The laugh at USA and say its military is worthless and just leave equipment behind and flee from Afghanistan and say that USA and the west have the most worthless military in the world. And in the next moment they say that Russia is only losing in Ukraine because it is not just fighting Ukraine, but they are also fighting Nato 🙄
Russia is in that regard the first post-modern state in history. It doesn't care about truth. It holds no values.
In the propaganda does Russia try to appeal to everyone and not just a few. To the leftist they say that they are the inheritors of the Soviet heritage and that they are a counterpart to USAs imperialism and capitalism. To the rightwingers do they say that Russia is a bastion against progressivism and a defender of christian family values.
To the westerners they pretend to be an European modern country and an attractive large market. While to the Africans they say that they are the fighter against the west and their imperialism and the defender of the 3rd world.
The Russians are prepared to lie about anything. They lie if they think if that it is going to suit them.
And telling the truth is of course illegal in Russia. Calling the conflict in Ukraine for a war will get you into jail. Criticising the military will also give you severe sentences. Indeed, I have even heard that such a small thing as saying that the T-34 tank
had many serious construction flaws is a criminal offence in Russia.
And with such a lack of diversity of opinions and lack of critical discussions - then of course you do get a stupid ignorant population. And maybe one can say that Putin is one such idiot that that the Soviet education system have produced.
He is either completly ignorant of Ukraines history as an independent country. Or he is lying.
Or he is both lying and being ignorant.
And with such a fool in power, it is perhaps not a surprise that Russia makes bad decisions. And the country have never dealt with its dark Stalinist past the same way as the Germans have dealt with their Hitler
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Probably. Tanks from the cold war had most of their armor put at the front and a little to the sides while the rest of the tank was weakly defended to save weight - and that made sense when the biggest threat to tanks was other tanks that were most likely to shot at them fron the front or sides. But today this is not the best choice. Now would it be best to have the thick armor in the front and on the top of the tank, as the biggest threat from enemy fire still comes from the front, but now are the threat from flying drones a much more dangerous threat then enemy fire from the sides.
And no in the world tank is prepared for this new threat from drones. Not even Leopard2A7, M1A3 Ambrams, Merkava 4 which are the worlds best tanks.
The same goes for warships. The torpedo and anti-ship missiles hunted Battleships into extinction like humans did to the mammuths. And for the last 60 years have warships seen missiles as their biggest threat. And counter-measures have been developed against them. Patriot missiles can now shot down other missiles. And Phalanx CIWS can spray defensive fire to protect a group of ships against incoming missiles.
However drone boats are a new type of threat against ships. They are not easy to detect, and not all ships can lower their guns to protect against a wolfpack of drones coming their way. The drones are cheap, they carry large payloads, they are hard to see becuase planet earth is round and prevents radars at surface levels from seeing far. And even if they could see far would it be hard to see a drone boat with a low siluette that is hiding much of its body underneath the surface. The electric engine for the small boat is very silent and hard to detect in an ocean filled with noise - especially at longer distances. So neither sonar or radar will therefore be easy to detect. Seeing the heat from the boat will also be difficult as it is such a small target and will therefore produce very little heat, and the little it produce will be hidden under water and you will not see the warm heat from the engine since it is only watchable from the rear, and the ship is driving towards you and you can only see the front instead.
The low siluette on the drone makes it also hard to see in the evening, and impossible to see in a dark night.
And even if you use massive search lights and fire lots of cannons with tracer rounds would it still not be easy to take out a drone boat as water effectivly curtails the power from machine gun rounds, and the extremely well sloped armor on those low siluette boats will bounce off most low calibre fire. And probably especially so when the boat is partly under water.
And even if defenders would be lucky and one or two boats would be destroyed, would there still be other boats around there that could cause massive damage if they just score one hit.
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A large number of russian units within FSB's territorial defense, Spetsnaz, the presidents own national guard Rosgvardia and the regular army commited mutiny during the weekend and joined Prigozhins coup. This includes some of Russias best remaining military units, and the consequences of that should not be estimated. The source of the list Denis Zelenko:
Military unit 11659: Command of the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade (RosGvardia),
411th Detachment of the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade
108th Bataysk GRU Spetsnaz Detachment
387th Object “C” of the 12th Main Defence Ministry Directorate (nuclear), Voronezh-45.
FSB Border guards at Bugaevka
FSB Federal Border Service of the regional command center for Voronezh region
FSB Border Service at Chertkovo
Unit 7437: RosGvardia Spetsnaz motorized regiment.
Unit 3677: RosGvardia Separate Battalion
Unit 63453: Separate Tank Brigade in Boguchar
HQ from the 22nd SPF (SF) brigade
The last unit mentioned are fighting togheter with the 45th brigade on the Ukrainian front against the Ukrainian counter-offensive, and it is considered as Russias best military unit.
When those units will get purged by Putin it could become a bloody affair, aside from Russia loses some of its best remaining special units. And if those units take up arms to not get slaughtered like pigs - then there will be another civil war. Worth noticing on this list is that one of those units is a nuclear weapons unit.
Putin gave a problem, far larger than just Prigozhins trip over the rainbowbridge to the big potato field in Belarussia. No amnesty has been declared for all the units which have switched side, but only for the troops in the Wagner group. And a large number of special units and entire regiments of the presidents national guard have switched their loyalty, and they will likely not bend down to Putins will
- unless he crush those who have joined the rebellion.
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That problem is already here. Russia now lacks counter-battery radars and skilled crews, skilled artillery observers and they doesn't seem to bother sending up drones to direct their artillery fire. Their gun barrels are wearing themselves out so they put old tanks like T-55 and T-62 into service to fill the role of artillery when there is a lack of artillery pieces.
In the past one could see a battery of four guns lined up on a field in Ukraine firing on one and the same target. But now that it no longer the case. Now you only see 1 gun on the field. The Russians are spreading out their guns for an unknown reason. Perhaps to avoid getting hit by artillery as easily? Regardless is this tactic extremely ineffective from a logistical standpoint when you have to transport artillery ammunition to 4 different locations to feed your guns with ammo.
And a single gun firing a shot at a target every 45 seconds is not effective either. Preferbly one wants to fire all guns at once at a single target, but not the Russians. They only use one gun at one target independently.
And nor do they bother to correct their artillery fire when it misses, by say 200 meters. But instead it fire again and again at the same spot, like they are more interested in hitting a spot on the map rather than targeting a specific enemy object on the ground which they want to destroy.
So not only are Russian guns firing 5 times less shots per day than the last summer - 12.000 today vs. 60.000 shots per day last summer. Their artillery fire is also more inaccurate. And the heavy losses lately suffered in counter-battery radars have rendered the Russian artillery unable to now fight off the Ukrainian artillery.
The Ukrainians have since a few months back in time become very relaxed with positioning their own artillery and have been concentrating many guns at the same spot and have been sitting on the same place for weeks. And Ukraine got counter-battery radars like Cobra sent from Germany, they got better guns (Archer, Caesar, Panzerhaubitze, HIMARS, M270 M777), more high precision ammunition such as BONUS rounds sent from France or Excalibur sent from Canada. And they correct their artillery fire with drones. So their artillery is very precise and deadly and got a better range.
Russian losses in armor have been heavy. Both for their tanks and for their APCs/IFVs.
Their usage of old T-55 and T-62 tanks can reflect upon that fact as well. And they lack tank skilled crews, or at least that is the impression I get from their stupid noob mistake manouvers in the minefields around Vuhledar. Russia does also not seem to possess any mechanized infantry that are trained to assist their tanks. So if their armored offensives was a failure last year and got slaughtered by the Ukrainians, then I think this year and the coming year will be worse.
Now Russia use older crappier tanks with even less survivability against modern weapons. Its crews are even more unskilled than the troops used last year. And the Ukrainians have learned a lot from the fighting last year how to deploy their anti-tank weapons. And now they got more options to choose among. They can now kill tanks with BONUS rounds from artillery, German anti-tank mines, and western tanks.
And you don't need a javelin, Panzerfaust-3 or NLAW to kill those older crappy Russian tanks that are now used. You can probably just as well kill them with an AT-4, RPG-7, TOW or even the old PV-1110. But Russian tankers also have to fear drones and other anti-tank weapons that Ukraine uses, such as Matador, MILAN, Stugna-P, Carl-Gustaf, and Soviet made anti-tank guns.
Ukraine got a broad spectrum of anti-tank weapons with all kinds ranges, penetration power, attack modes and production costs. They can easily rip even T-14 armata tanks to pieces with DPU ammo, javelins and panzerfaust-3 if the need emerge.
While lighter APCs are food for Leopard 1's, French armored cars and CV90.
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This war is not about Russia and has never been about it. Right now it is about Putin. If he lose this war, then his career is over and he might get a trial as a war criminal, get forced into exile, or get murdered by a russian bloodthirsty shark like himself. So he wants to avoid that.
He also have this ideological view that russia must be strong and never allow it to be humilitated. Dictatorships like Russia and China don't mind being seen as evil, and what scares them is to be seen as weak and unsignificant.
A Chinese bot gets more offended about a "Made in China" joke about junk quality plastic toys, than he is about fact based arguments and moral indignation about severe human rights abuses against the Uighurs. And the same goes for Russia.
The worst thing that could happen in their view would be that the west laughs at their incompetent outdated military and
mockingly do not take their nuclear threats seriously. Being seen as bad guys making nuclear threats and terror bombing civilians on a daily basis are things that bothers them much less.
Hencefourth do I think we should aim for a historical humiliation of Russia.
Make them accept the unaccepatable: A humiliating defeat.
Let them know that any attempts of Russian imperialism could lead to Russia getting worse off after the war than before it.
That will make them think twice the next time they consider starting a war of aggression.
The little child needs some spanking so it learns to know its place. It can do whatever it wants within its countries own borders. But if it tries to steal things from other kids, then it should have its teeths kicked in.
And since empathy and sympathy are arguments which have obviously not worked on the Russian people to make them stop - as 90% of the Russians still supports this war of aggression and genocide. Like 90% of the Russians supported the war of aggression against Chechenya and theft of Crimea...
So is my suggestion that we replace argument of sympathy and empathy with something else since they don't work on bullies. Empathy and sympathy works on normal people, but not on psychopaths like Putin who is prepared to make nuclear threats, a man who lies and breaks international laws, kidnaps childrens, and makes a hitman list over the Ukrainian intelligentia which he wants to murder to destroy Ukrainian opposition to Russias illegal occupation.
So my suggestion is simple:
We should not try to convince Russia with sympathy and empathy. We should force them to abide by international law and make them respect international borders by *fear*. Our superior military, economic strength and our diplomatic influence and soft power should be 100% dedicated to totally destroying Russia unless they back off.
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@toms169
But couldn't that be because German industry is dependent on russian gas and therefore want to go back to buisness as usual as soon as possible and is fearful to burn all bridges with russia? And then there are German politicians who (probably?) are in the pockets of FSB... like Schröder, Wagenknecht, AfD, the socialdemocrats and so on.
So of course are they against a hardline against russia. And then you got a million strong russian decendents who are pro-russia. And many east Germans have this confused views on Ost-Politik, appeasement, admiration for Putin/Orbans anti-LGBT conservatism, and so on. And then you got stupid pacifists, and women who sincere uncontrollable fear of a nuclear war.
So a consensus is hard to reach. And it is hard to combine new policies with old German political tradition.
And this could explain why Germany is hesitant to send Taurus.
However Germany is not the main problem in Europe. I think the Italian and French indifference to Ukraines fate is more worriesome right now. And Slovakia and Hungary are openly hostile to Ukraine, and USA have even recently held a Nato meeting (togheter with Sweden) where the issue of Hungary was discussed, as there are a concern that this country is acting like a pro-russian Trojan horse inside Nato.
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and a few other East European countries do care more about their own farmers than helping the wartorn Ukrainian economy to stay afloat.
I also think that russian FSB have infiltrated our media and is pumping out russian propaganda talking points: "The war is over", "Ukraine cannot win", "Ukraine is forgotten now coz Israel", "The counter-offensive was a massive failure", "Ukrainian losses are heavy and unsubstainable", and such nonsense.
Especially New York Times have pumped out pro-russian garbage throughout this war, with all kinds of lies. They claim that USA destroyed the Northstream pipeline according to an anonymous source. Or that allies are trying to force Zelensky to make peace right now.
Personally I think Ukraine has done pretty well this year. Russian artillery have been dealt a severe blow with losing 5000 pieces this year. They have lost their most modern pieces and now more and more use old D1 artillery pieces from WW2 as a replacement. Ukraine now almost have a monopoly on counter-battery radars. And Ukraine now fires more artillery shells per day than russia despite EU have failed to give more than 30% of the 1 million artillery shells it have promised to give to Ukraine. And now russia also lacks experienced artillery crews.
This is devestating I think. A much more hard blow to russia than if they had lost Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces this year. Think about it. This is an artillery war. And russian artillery is nearly extinct because of Ukraines systematic hunt for their artillery pieces. And imagine having to fight this war for 10 years without artillery. That would be devestating for russia. You cannot fight defensive war effectivly without artillery, and even less so can you make any attacks.
So I think russia is doomed if we keep on supporting Ukraine.
Russian industry only produce something like 200.000 artillery shells per year (according to Ukrainian sources) or 1 million (according to russian sources). But when russia consumes 17 million artillery shells this year and 22 million back in 2022... then I think russia no longer can keep on fighting the war next year like they have the previous years. And 1 million artillery shells imported from North Korea will only shortly delay the coming starvation of artillery shells.
And without artillery shells will more infantry die and losses starts to go up. Ukraine knows what this hardship means, and soon will russia also begin to feel it.
I also suspect that the russian propaganda about their economy doing fine is just nonsense. Having a 15% interest rate is not what I call a healthy economy. When people have to pay more money to the banks for their homeloans, credit card debts, car loans, student debts and so on.. before they can start buying food, books, cinemas tickets and furniture.. then I think that the russian economy will slowly starve itself to death. If no one can afford to buy stuff anymore will factories be forced to shut down, or to lower wages or fire workers. And when people no longer get a wage, then they will be even more unable to buy anything - so factories have to downscale production even more and lay off workers.
And that means less taxes coming in to the government, and more people that needs unemployment benefits and welfare to survive when they cannot work and support themselves.
I also think it is difficult for companies to earn a 15% profit per year so they can afford to both repay their loans and make a profit. And on top of that they also need to pay for wages, repairs for machines, and for material inputs for production.
So I think the desperate measure of raising interest rates to prevent the ruble from falling will become very harmful to the russian economy. And they will probably have to raise interest rates even more in the future.
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@frankhusel5033 The Wehrmacht was tactically excellent, and it was strategically capable of understanding how to conquer for example a city. Germany did some stupid grand strategy mistakes - but that is another matter.
And the German troops were willing to fight, while the russian military have always been plauged with mass surrenders. And while the SS behaved like swine on the eastern front, would I still say that the Wehrmacht were much more civilized. More civilized than the red army which were always firing on ambulances, and had the habit of gangraping little girls, killing wounded soldiers at hospitals and mutilating captured enemy soldiers, beating them and starving them to death - a tradition which Putin seems to have preserved.
The Wehrmacht did however by contrast usually obey the Geneva convention. At least on the western front.
The Clean Wehrmacht is a myth, but on the other hand is it a myth that all men in the army was evil bastards. Most of the men who served wanted to treat russian civilians well and captured red army soldiers with the same respect as soldiers captured in the west.
But because of the commisar order from Hitler did the German army also partially participate in the killing of communists and jews.
However, I will still say that the red army was worse and did more war crimes than the German army.
And from a historical perspective is the russian army the most barbaric of all. With warcrimes against Swedes, Finns, Poles, Germans, and brutal occupation of Czechs, slovaks and Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and more warcrimes and terror bombings in Syria, Chechenya, Georgia, Dagestan and Afghanistan. Genocide on hundreds of thousands of jews during world war 1.
And warcrimes by the Wagner group in Africa.
Warcrimes against civilians is built in into the Russian way of war. That differs it from other European armies who do not deliberatly kill civilians and use rape as a war tactic.
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@ulrikschackmeyer848
They have been fighting a war and maybe they are fully busy with that. So maybe I don't blame the pilots as much as I would blame the Ukrainian government for not thinking a single step ahead. This language problem was completly predictable and could have been foreseen and solved months ago. Realizing that they need to learn english in the middle of the summer of this year seems a bit dumb 🙄
I mean the west have talked about giving Ukraine fighter jets since at least january.
Ukrainians take credit upon themselves and blame the lack of aid from the west for all military failures instead of being honest and admit that not everything is the wests fault.
Dumb incompetence like this do certainly cause some problems fighting this war as well.
Ukrainian propaganda is extremely dumb sometimes. They say that they will continue to fight regardless if the west helps them or not, and take the last years succesful defense of their country as an example of that.
But that are lies. And I demand honesty and gratefulness to its allies instead of using them as scapegoats for ukraines dissapointments on the battlefields.
Fact remains that Ukraine would have lost this war by now if it was not for the west. Without western artillery would the stocks of 152mm shells have runned out and the ukrainian military would have been forced to fight without artillery support - which would definatly made Ukraine lose the war regardless how brave their soldiers may be.
Javelins, stingers, HIMARS, Patriot, Gepard are also system which Ukraine could not have done without.
And the economic aid from USA and EU have been vital for propping up an economy suffering from enemy occupation, sea blockades, destruction, refugees, young men in the military, landmines on farmlands, energy blackouts, rationing...
So giving west blame for everything is unfair. I sympatize with the Ukrainian cause as my web history the last 1.5 years bare witness of. I think it have taken 8 full months for just the training to get started. That is poor performance by both Nato and Ukraine.
We should have started training instantly. Which aircraft would be delievered, in what amounts, with what modifications and what nationality of those planes and such details could be sorted out later while the pilots are training. But for some reason do people at Nato to be very inflexible in their line of thought 🙄
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@evgeniya7853
Explain how Russia is a great power then?
Is it the size of the population? No because Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia and Brazil all got more people than russia. And none of those countries are a super power.
Is it because russia got nuclear weapons?
No, because North Korea and Pakistan also got nuclear weapons.
Is it because Russia got an aircraft carrier?
No. Thailand, Spain, Turkey and Italy also got weak aircraft carriers like Russia and none of them are considered a Super power.
Is it because the Russian economy is strong?
No. Because Brazil, Italy and Canada all got a higher GDP than russia. Russias standard of living is low. Its manufacturing is weak. The country have no Fortune 500 companies that are not related to oil & energy, or banking related to energy - and to me this is great sign of economic weakness.
I would not even rank the country among the 20 most important economies in the world. Add to that all problems that harms long term economic growth such as corruption and enviromental pollution that destroys public health, kill fish stocks and wild animals and plants and trees.
Is russia a super power because of its military?
Not really. Given the levels of corruption, outdated doctrine, ineffiecent logistics, outdated equipment, poor training and lack of dicipline would I feel much more afraid of going to war against Japan, South Korea or India than I would be against Russia.
Is Russia a great power because of its global cultural influence?
No, I have never bought anything made in Russia, aside from some IKEA glass that said made in Russia. But IKEA is a Swedish company and I am a Swede.. so allow me to not be so impressed.
I cannot say that Russian culture have left much impression on me. Its not like I watch any Russian TV series like I do with CSI from USA or Black Adder. I buy Nintendo from Japan and Heineken beer from the Netherlands, drive French cars, listen to ABBA from Sweden, play with Danish Lego. But what everyday item do I get from russia? I dunno.
So for that reason do I not regard russia as a cultural super power either.
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@jeffmorris5802 Your spelling is terrible for being an american.
1. I think you are mostly correct.
2. Nope. Hamas got 20K-25K members. While the russian military could probably field 1-2 million men or more if they wanted to. Russia got submarines, fighter jets, tanks and weapons of mass destruction while Hamas don't.
Russia spams the west with corrosive propaganda, bribe politicians, media figures and Generals. They manipulate university research to prevent military bases and training for western armies for "enviromental reasons" and other BS.
They do make cyber attacks and use their global influence to smear and spread lies about the west. That is what the 3rd largest oil producer in the world do with its income. Its not giving its population tap water, increasing wages for teachers or building libraries. It use its money on propaganda in foreign countries instead and wasting it on the military.
3. USA promised to help Ukraine secure its independence with the Budapest agreement. So it is obliged to help Ukraine.
Breaking that promise will have far reaching negative consequences for trust in America and her allies for decades ahead.
And as I sees it can both Ukraine and Israel be helped. Israel will mostly need bombs dropped from airplanes, and not so much artillery shells. While the opposite will be the case for Ukraine.
4. Ukraine have a close cooperation with western militaries. And they have won battle after battle in this war so far: Hostomel, Kyiv, Sumy, the 4 battles at Siverskyi Donets, Charkiv, Snake island, Khersun, Vuhledar, Avdiivka and so on.
Ukrainian troops do get too little weapons and too late, but still have they managed to kick russian ass in battle after battle.
So your comment is simply based on complete ignorance and is towing a false russian narrative.
And that is another reason I do not think you are an american. Because americans do not like to listen to losers. Russians are losers 😂😂
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"we don't wanna meet the slightest Russian demands in order to obtain peace"
Did giving Crimea to Russia in 2014 give us peace? No it didn't. Can the Putin clowns stop being so historically ignorant?
You are tiresome. We should not give anything to a criminal terrorist state.
Crimes and terrorism should be punished, and not rewarded.
If you reward this behaviour, then you will only get more of it.
Russia have invaded neighbour after neighbour the last 20 years. Its time for this to stop.
And I prefer Zelensky and Boris Johnson over Putin any day. Putin commits genocide in Bucha, Irpin and other places. He deliberatly bombs kindergardens schools, maternity hospitals, and civilian homes. He let his troops get away with rape, torture, murder, and looting. His troops kidnap civilians and use them as human shields. He steals 500 aircrafts from other countries and threatens to steal buildings and machines from foreign companies.
He threatens innocent people with nuclear weapons. He tries to starve 800 million people to death in his game of blackmailing the world to lift the sanctions on Russia. And he starts unprovoced, unjustified, illegal wars. He kidnaps Ukrainian women and children and transport them to concentration camps in Siberia. He commits genocide. He spread lies. He pay for internet trolls that spread lies and tries to poison the public in foreign countries. He have utter contempt for democracy and throws people in jail for barely calling the conflict in Ukraine for a war - something that a hypocrite like himself does not have to go to jail for. And Putin ignores promise after promise and treaty after treaty that Russia have signed in the past... everything from the Budapest agreement to the promise to not use nuclear weapons as a way to disturb world peace, or when he fired missiles on Ukrainian cargo ships the day after the naval blockade in the black sea was lifted.
I think that you should just leave the western world. You simply does not belong here. Go to Ukraine and fight in the mud for your genocidal Russian Hitler. I happily pay for the ammunition that the Ukrainians will send in your way.
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Some points that I think are interesting regarding this topic are:
1. Russian missile attacks against hydroelectric powerplants, which could signify a repeat of of the Novo Kahovka dam collapse. That was a defensive action, but perhaps is it also a move russia want to make to save troops in one are to move to another area for an attack.
2. Russia do not care about training, or smart use of their resources. They rather just wanna create a flow that they hope somehow would push the Ukrianians back and make them lose ground and manpower. This is of course not a smart way of using resources. But Putin doesn't seem to care. Trading land for lives is something that he is willing to do. He do not value the lives of convicts, ethnic minorities, mercenaries, and Ukrainians forcefully conscripted into DPR and LPR amies.
So he happily continues to make meatwaves.
3. Putins strategy is winning the war by Trump. And if Trump wins, then he hopes that Europe just gives up and throws in the towel as well.
And that is possible, and especially so if rightwing populists wins seats in the EU election. Putin is therefore not hoping the counter-offensive to break the Ukrainian defensive lines. But rather just to keep the pressure up to show the world that he holds the iniative to demoralize people in the west that are sitting on the fence, and to give a morale boost to the pro-russians around the world.
Russias real offensive will not come now. It will come after the west have given up their support for Ukraine.
And when Ukraine lose their access to patriot missiles and 155mm artillery shells, then will russia attack with full force and force Ukraine to sign a catastrophically bad peace deal.
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Ukraina har steg för steg vunnit sjökriget. Ukraina har tagit tillbaka hälften av den mark de förlorade 2022, vilket jag ser som ett tecken på att kriget går dåligt för ryssland. Statistiken talar också sitt tydliga språk att ryssland förlorar. Man kan också bara notera alla dagliga videos på ryska skepp, tanks och flygplan som förloras för att se att ryssland inte har en kompetent militär och att en seger är avlägset för ryssland. Enda sättet ryssland kan vinna är genom lögner och förräderi som blockerar västs militära stöd till Ukraina. Mike Johnson har hittills varit rysslands största militära seger i detta krig, vilket säger en del om ryska krigsmaktens patetiskt usla prestationsförmåga i detta krig.
Att stödja Ukraina är en moralisk plikt. Angreppskrig och folkmord ska aldrig accepteras, belönas och uppmuntras - punkt!
En vapenvila med ryssland är inte heller samma sak som fred. Precis som att Tjetjeniens fred med Ryssland aldrig var en riktig fred, och stridigheterna mellan Ukraina och Ryssland slutade inte efter rysslands aggressiva annektering av Krim. Appeasement
är inte lösningen. Det blir troligtvis bara fler krig i framtiden. Hittills har Ryssland inte brytt sig i att hålla några ingångna avtal, så ett fredsavtal är inget annat än ett värdelöst papper.
De lär bara angripa Ukraina igen så fort de har återuppbyggt sin armé efter alla tunga förluster. Och under tiden kommer ockuperade delar av Ukraina utsättas för våldtäkter, tortyr, kidnappade barn, och Ukrainare fråntas rätten till deras eget språk, kultur och nationella identitet och mördas i fall dom bara ens viftar med en Ukrainsk flagga eller talar sitt eget språk.
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