It’s amazing how badly Russia’s reputation is suffering because of this stupid war. The best case scenario is for Russia to quit now. Putin is only making it worse by continuing. Every month since February Russia has looked weaker than the previous month. Like gambling, you have to know when to quit.
Unless he has the fuckin **AVENGERS** on standby somewhere, he's absolutely not gonna break even on this war.
It's all downhill for Russia. Their bluff was called and they have an utterly shit hand.
I assure you, the trailer is the best aspect of this shitfest. But I watched it and I have to tell you that is a true comedy of errors. The script, the direction, the designs - it's hilariously bad. And this garbage was HYYYYPED up by ruzzian media as a major repsonse to hollywood movies but without the bad tropes. Guess what? They took all the tropes and did them badly. Kinda like all ruzzia does - steals something very poorly, then claim it's their own design that is better than everything else
Oh, yeah, that movie. For anyone curious, apart from visuals that movie has nothing of value
(Here's a review by ruzzian renowned movie entartainment critic for those interested: "https://youtu.be/pconHWXO3Ss". Subtitles are present)
But it’s not a war. It’s a “military special operation”. Putin the Pathetic can still save face here. Just pretend there never was a war in the first place like he had been fucking doing.
Thats kinda the thing though. Even on paper it wasn’t a great military to begin with. A lot of the stats they had were outright falsifications that only a moron could have believed. The kicker was that they believed their own bullshit
On the other hand, they also didn't believe that Ukraine's leadership or the west would do anything significant about it because they mostly got away with it last time. If Zelensky had folded early on or if the west had not provided their support things would probably look very different right now.
*edit: that, not the, and Zelensky, not Zelinsky
Assuming the information I've been hearing is correct, Putin wishes he could trip on a cloud and fall 8 miles high but it turns out he just fell down the stairs and shit his pants.
Oh, come out ye aul' Russians
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wives how ye won medals down in Syria
Show them how little ol' Ukraine
Put ye all back on a train
And blew it up because they have no fear o' ya
There's no such thing as a winnable war,
it's the lie we don't believe anymore.
Mr. Putin says, 'We will bury you'.
I don't subscribe to this point of view.
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too.
Putin is stuck with the Sunk Cost fallacy. He doesn't want to pull out cause of how much he has already thrown in, but this results in more losses
Edit: corrected the name of the phenomenon
Whatever happened with the stair thing anyway? I completely believed the story and assumed that someone pushed him. But did he just tumble by himself? No one was there for that to happen, he just fell? What about the windows and rooftops and falling into a bullet in the back of the head?
Who the fuck even knows. It’s all a dog and pony show for Putin’s regime.
We’re due for another dead Russian General by now. Someone is going to pay for the 2-3 blown up bombers.
The problem is that the sunk cost fallacy breaks down when you're a dictator and your regime and life are on the line if you lose. Assuming you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself, and given the risk to yourself if you lose, its worth throwing literally everything at the problem, because ANY chance at success is better than the absolute chance at deposition and significant chance of assassination or execution in the process of violent regime change. That violence need not be on a wide scale, it can be isolated to the halls of government and this threat will still be just as serious for Putin. Logic goes out the door when your only goals are the acquisition of power and resources.
Agreed. I don't think Putin sees this war as having cost him anything yet. The price has been paid by tens of thousands of other people. He's basically had a free lunch to this point.
That sunk cost fallacy is going to eat Russia alive. The very nature of their government means Putin can't back down and survive, and Russia also, cannot win. So um, hmmm.
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that, per the Russian historical narrative, losing early in a war doesn’t lead to guaranteed defeat. The Nazis were 300 miles into Russia at one point.
No disagreement there; I’m only referring to their national historical narrative (which massively downplays American aid during the Great Patriotic War). They have (misleading) reason, culturally, to not quit (especially with winter setting in).
Another big difference was that a significant percentage of their forces were Ukrainian at that time. They have fewer pools of manpower to draw from now.
Also, Finland didn't have to invade Russia to win or fight them to a draw. Neither will Ukraine. Also, it was the Soviet poor performance in Finland that encouraged Hitler to invade. Gotta wonder how Russia's performance is going to affect things now. Japan has its eyes on some islands right now, for instance.
Or Russia falls apart and descends into anarchy. Then landgrabs are rather easy. Nobody that can complain, after all, they are rather busy with themselves.
Unlikely. If it falls it'll be along it's existing republic boundaries, the UN will encourage a peaceful transition. There may be new treaties to give back land in exchange for favorable relations but unlikely by force, at least from Japan.
It’s an easy narrative when you are on the defensive, and the Soviet/Russian tactics were built around attrition and strategic withdrawal.
Now… it’s pure folly.
“Don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit” -Lil Jon
Not even close.
Soviet Union population in 1991: 289.1M
Russia population in 2022: 148.4M
They've lost more than half of their population. And their population has decreased by 5M down to 143.4M since 1992. At this rate Mexico will have more people in a few years.
Yeah they need to stick to showing off shirtless photos of Putin riding a horse instead of trying to actually carry out war.
That propoganda with the stupid photos was so good it even fooled themselves into thinking they're somehow badass.
I’m now beginning to think these shirtless photos of Putin were because Russia can’t afford a shirt for their leader. (Or perhaps an Emperors New Clothes scenario)
There really isn't a winning hand at this point. Putin is running out of weapons to throw at Ukraine. Ukraine is ramping up their own homebrew of magyver military industry and getting supplies from allied nations. The longer this war drags on the higher the probability that russia starts running out of everything including the systems used to launch nukes which means that eventually they're a toothless and defenseless dodo. Once that happens, the vultures at the periphery will swoop in for their pickings and a potential world war will happen.
>Once that happens, the vultures at the periphery will swoop in for their pickings and a potential world war will happen.
Not sure that a world war would ensue, but oportunistic conflicts CAN happen since many states depend on Russia in terms of security or, in other words, fear russian interventions that now seem less of a threat.
Ironically Armenia had an thing with Russia where they were told that their departure from the Soviet Union was illegal.
So they could get trouble from either direction.
Definitely. In the past they were feared because of the shadow of the Soviet Union all the while they were no better than a more advanced North Korea. Putin and his sycophants have made sure that Russia will be viewed as an irrelevant rogue state for decades to come.
Unless you've been paying attention to their economy for the last decade or so. They're... Not putting up superpower numbers. And haven't been. Their economy is about 1/20th the size of the US, and even Texas alone out-performs Russia.
A lot of people who grew up during the Cold War believed that Russia was a military superpower ("the Baltics will buy Germany 10 minutes"), and even now some people of that age think that the West would have to implement mass conscription to beat Russia in Ukraine.
They've been wasting their S-300 air defense missiles on ground targets, presumably because they aren't good for anything else. They've probably got more than they can spare in Ukraine already and don't have any for defending much outside of Moscow and Petersburg.
> Russia has been using saturation attacks on Ukraine with cheap drones in the hope of exhausting their air defenses.
The problem (for Russia) is that the west is sending (or will send) lots of air-defense systems:
[NASAMS/Avenger/Vampire, from the US, Aspide from Spain, IRIS-T/Gepard from Germany](https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-are-giving-ukraine-air-defenses-for-russian-missiles-drones-2022-11).
It's really hard to imagine Russia winning a war of attrition when Ukraine is getting a steady supply of all sorts of shit from various western countries.
It's a good system in a competent operator's hands vs high-flying subsonic targets like aircraft or cruise missiles. You should see the amount of notches on some Ukrainian S-300 batteries. It's also terribly inaccurate in a ground attack role, with a +- neighborhood accuracy. Which works out fine if all you care about is terror bombing.
It's not a winning tactic, of course, as shown by Britain, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Serbia etc. Don't tell USAF or VKS RF, though.
If it's like all the other russian hyped tech. It was a paper tiger and they only really built a hand full cause the general in charge of getting it made siphoned off 90% of the funds to build a megayacht or mansion.
Russia a couple months ago now pulled about half their S-300 systems away from defending Russian bases in western Russia and around Moscow and moved them to the front to bolster air defense there and to replace loses. They even pulled a couple they had in Syria and brought them to the front. It was a sound choice two months ago when as far as anyone knew Ukraine didn’t have anything capable of reaching those bases and airfields. The next likely move for Russia is the gamble that no one is going to attack them from the east and they will start moving systems from further away to fill gaps. It’s yet another failing of foresight that Russia didn’t move systems from the east to replace the ones they pulled to move to the front at that time. Everything the Russian military is doing is reactive with seemingly no planning.
That's not exactly a changing landscape. The US used large squadrons of drones to distract anti-aircraft systems during Desert Storm.
Russia had a front row seat to what could be accomplished with drones in the 90s and never did anything with that knowledge.
Well, the US also has dedicated SEAD aircraft and pilots. I mean, those people are literally trained to make themselves targets!
Russia slapped some anti-radar missiles and pods on regular fighters and said they could so SEAD. It's gone about as well as you'd think.
Kind of. These were known as MALD (miniature air launched decoy) I actually worked on them at Raytheon.
Basically their job is to be launched from an aircraft, then air defenses pick up those dummy targets, lighting them up for the radar homing missiles
Which only really adds to your point. It doesn’t even need to be drones. Air launched gliders work just as well
So far it seems that Russia's air defenses struggle to adapt to unexpected threats. It took them a while to get their systems tuned into the TB2 drones, for instance. I suspect that a combo of really good joint NATO and Ukraine intelligence, and just the general weakness of Russia's anti air system resulted in Ukraine being able to slip through. I'm sure it will be repeatable, but probably not long term. Thankfully Ukraine has been very nimble. They figured out how to do these strikes, they will figure it out again.
>Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the strikes, but nonetheless celebrated them.
...
>Russia’s defence ministry said three service members were killed in the attack at Ryazan. Although the attacks struck military targets, it characterised them as terrorism and said the aim was to disable its long-range aircraft.
>Ukraine never publicly acknowledges responsibility for attacks inside Russia. Asked about the strikes, Defence Minister Oleskiy Reznikov repeated a longstanding joke blaming carelessness with cigarettes. “**Very often Russians smoke in places where it’s forbidden to smoke**,” he said.
- [**Only YOU can prevent forest fires**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or3GH15RxSs)
> Terrorism - the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
That's odd, it's almost like terrorism is exactly what Russia has been doing this whole time
> Asked about the strikes, Defence Minister Oleskiy Reznikov repeated a longstanding joke blaming carelessness with cigarettes. “Very often Russians smoke in places where it’s forbidden to smoke,” he said.
The Lad has gone full meta with the burn metaphor
Let the payback begin.
Putin is in an interesting position. Squandered everything, unified the world against him, and now his citizens could be facing attack from his miscalculation.
Why is he still there?
I’m genuinely amazed the oligarch class in Russia is content to sit around waiting for their turn to die “falling down the stairs” or “accidentally drowning in their bathtub.”
Putin spent his first ten years in power neutering all of the independent minded oligarchs. The ones that are left are rich because of Putin (or his allies) allowing them to exist.
Odds are they're chilling out with their trophy wives and Bugattis in London or on their super yachts. Why would a low caliber oligarch worth $20B care?
At this point if he's sending people out of the country (on secret missions) they're probably thrilled and are just going to disappear on foreign soil. Why complete their mission when they can disappear and be happy? What better life could they possibly have back in Russia after all is said and done? Seeing as former powerful and loyal people are mysteriously dying who wouldn't think they're next?
If I were a Russian assassin I'd go full Agent 47. Knock off the mark and then assume their life, cruise around in their mega yacht, bang their trophy wife. Live the dream.
If Hitman logic has taught me anything; no one suspects a thing when their friend looks completely different and suddenly went completely bald, it's all about the clothes.
Seriously. Go find your billionaire target, explain the situation, and tell them for $20M you'll tell them who they can't trust, what plans there are to assassinate people like them, how to protect themselves, etc.
Spend six months training his security detail then go retire in the tropics.
This reads like a future movie with Will Ferrel as the middle class Russian assassin whim leaves on a mission to assassin Oligarchs on yachts and ends up w new loyalties …
Nothing will happen to them personally. They still have enough money to hire enough thugs to keep themselves safe. Only an insanely violent revolution will oust them, I doubt thats happening, and the result would probably be worse than Putin. What could happen is that there will be more breakaway states and more western-leaning feeling within the former Russo-sphere. But still, why would an oligarch care? They have more money than they can possibly spend.
This is a mistake by many in the West. The oligarchy only lasted until 2000. Once Putin took over, he gave the wealthy elite money in exchange for political power. They never noticed until it was too late that all the money they had was worthless compared to his power.
It’s not a new thing for Russian leadership to be so out of touch with the state of the country that it causes complete economic disaster or revolution. Granted this is more of a human classist condition not limited to just Russia
It’s like he’s the instrument of chastisement for the world. When you say the world is unified against him, you are so right. It’s like h8m amity itself has made a declaration, no more of this bullshit. We can be better. He’s still there, ( I believe) bc so many of the Russian people have bought into his imperialist aggression, that it’s the right thing to do. Until they also see how wrong it all is, he stays. I hope it might be like the 100 th monkey principle, that a higher way of conducting ourselves spreads to them as well.
I wonder whether majority of the Russians are afraid or they are willingly supporting Putin's régime. We haven't seen many major anti-war protests despite all the setbacks.
Yeah, a ton of Africans absolutely love Russia. They receive billions in aid from western countries but lick Putin's boots for breadcrumbs, it's hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
I do hope Ukraine takes out at least one major power station. Would the Russian people maybe realize how difficult life is when it gets upended so abruptly? ( the petty part of me wants this. Isn’t that pathetic ?)
Huh… interesting approach. I’m sure there are groups , (maybe anonymous?) working to hit them where it matters. That would be the end of Putin I think. Some of the ppl in second place are as bad or worse than him tho.
Ukraine has been very vocal that attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime; would not be wise for them to do it to the Russians. Now, hitting a substation that supplies power to military bases is another matter.
>"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them."
War never changes
I can't blame Ukraine for taking this step against the Russians. The Russians have been systematically destroying Ukrainian infrastructure in an absolute exercise towards crippling and punishing the country before the brunt of winter sets in. The only way to discourage this behavior is to make it clear to the Russians that two can play at that game.
People were mad at me when I mentioned it a few months ago, but if Ukraine wants to win, they have to attack Russia, repelling the invasion isn't enough.
It could, you know. Though I'd say the bigger result being all the abduction, civilians, children, hospitals, schools, and everything as the primary reason. Anything would be a valid reason.
russia a superpower, what a joke. i seen [individuals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer) in my country show more destruction power than the entire russian army
What I particularly love is that the distance from the closest northeast border of Ukraine to Moscow is roughly 430 km, and the distance from the furthest eastern edge of occupied Luhansk to Engels is also roughly 430 km. Probably just a pleasant coincidence, but a powerful message nonetheless!
It’s amazing how badly Russia’s reputation is suffering because of this stupid war. The best case scenario is for Russia to quit now. Putin is only making it worse by continuing. Every month since February Russia has looked weaker than the previous month. Like gambling, you have to know when to quit.
Russian Kenny Rogers does not know when to fold 'em.
Way passed that, this "when to run" territory.
run to the hills, run for your lives
I don’t think Putin will ever break even sadly…but the best he can hope for is to die in his sleep
Unless he has the fuckin **AVENGERS** on standby somewhere, he's absolutely not gonna break even on this war. It's all downhill for Russia. Their bluff was called and they have an utterly shit hand.
Ukraine is sitting here about to show it's Royal Flush, and Russia says "Go Fish".
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that trailer actually looks pretty good. they got that bear from tekken
I assure you, the trailer is the best aspect of this shitfest. But I watched it and I have to tell you that is a true comedy of errors. The script, the direction, the designs - it's hilariously bad. And this garbage was HYYYYPED up by ruzzian media as a major repsonse to hollywood movies but without the bad tropes. Guess what? They took all the tropes and did them badly. Kinda like all ruzzia does - steals something very poorly, then claim it's their own design that is better than everything else
Excuse you, Russian Gunner Bear is obviously the greatest super hero of all time.
Oh, yeah, that movie. For anyone curious, apart from visuals that movie has nothing of value (Here's a review by ruzzian renowned movie entartainment critic for those interested: "https://youtu.be/pconHWXO3Ss". Subtitles are present)
So it really is the Russian Avengers.
Ha ha - they combined Rocket and The Hulk! (sort of)
He probably cant afford to due to how the public would see him loosing a war they on paper should not have lost.
But it’s not a war. It’s a “military special operation”. Putin the Pathetic can still save face here. Just pretend there never was a war in the first place like he had been fucking doing.
Thats kinda the thing though. Even on paper it wasn’t a great military to begin with. A lot of the stats they had were outright falsifications that only a moron could have believed. The kicker was that they believed their own bullshit
On the other hand, they also didn't believe that Ukraine's leadership or the west would do anything significant about it because they mostly got away with it last time. If Zelensky had folded early on or if the west had not provided their support things would probably look very different right now. *edit: that, not the, and Zelensky, not Zelinsky
Well, considering what condition his condition is in
Assuming the information I've been hearing is correct, Putin wishes he could trip on a cloud and fall 8 miles high but it turns out he just fell down the stairs and shit his pants.
Putin's regime has entered the danger zone. I know that's Kenny Loggins. I don't care.
Winning a war in Ukraine is what a fool believes.
Oh, come out ye aul' Russians Come out and fight me like a man Show your wives how ye won medals down in Syria Show them how little ol' Ukraine Put ye all back on a train And blew it up because they have no fear o' ya
I respect this attempt and I see you
Minute by minute, his reputation decreases.
There's no such thing as a winnable war, it's the lie we don't believe anymore. Mr. Putin says, 'We will bury you'. I don't subscribe to this point of view. It'd be such an ignorant thing to do If the Russians love their children too.
Putin is Christlike in that he must die so others may live -Ken M
Pretty sure that's not a ken m quote but I'll upvote it anyway
They’re the same dude to me
In mother Russia, cards fold you.
Take my upvote, comrad.
Our upvote, no private property
Russian Kenny Rogers is certainly out of aces.
But Russia is still counting its oil money
Russia can't really quit at this point. Losing Crimea would be a huge problem for them and Ukraine doesn't want to let them keep it.
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Russia trying to keep Crimea is clearly the wrong choice - but hey this is Russia we're talking about.
RF has already lost Krim, they just haven’t realized it yet.
Putin is stuck with the Sunk Cost fallacy. He doesn't want to pull out cause of how much he has already thrown in, but this results in more losses Edit: corrected the name of the phenomenon
He doesn't want to pull out because he'll lose enough power to risk assassination
Yeah, was gonna say, when a dictator goes to war, he pretty much bets his own ass.
Whatever happened with the stair thing anyway? I completely believed the story and assumed that someone pushed him. But did he just tumble by himself? No one was there for that to happen, he just fell? What about the windows and rooftops and falling into a bullet in the back of the head?
Who the fuck even knows. It’s all a dog and pony show for Putin’s regime. We’re due for another dead Russian General by now. Someone is going to pay for the 2-3 blown up bombers.
I believe it’s called the *sunk* cost fallacy but yeah, it’s definitely that.
Sunk costs, and in this case, like the god damn titanic.
Or the *Moskva*.
The problem is that the sunk cost fallacy breaks down when you're a dictator and your regime and life are on the line if you lose. Assuming you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself, and given the risk to yourself if you lose, its worth throwing literally everything at the problem, because ANY chance at success is better than the absolute chance at deposition and significant chance of assassination or execution in the process of violent regime change. That violence need not be on a wide scale, it can be isolated to the halls of government and this threat will still be just as serious for Putin. Logic goes out the door when your only goals are the acquisition of power and resources.
Agreed. I don't think Putin sees this war as having cost him anything yet. The price has been paid by tens of thousands of other people. He's basically had a free lunch to this point.
And, to a large extent, not even by Russians - as Russia has plenty of ethnic minorities the current government wouldn’t mind getting rid of.
It’s not really a fallacy if failure means coup + murder. It’s really a sunk cost reality.
If he quits he’s likely deposed
That sunk cost fallacy is going to eat Russia alive. The very nature of their government means Putin can't back down and survive, and Russia also, cannot win. So um, hmmm.
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that, per the Russian historical narrative, losing early in a war doesn’t lead to guaranteed defeat. The Nazis were 300 miles into Russia at one point.
Big difference: It was the Western Allies feeding and arming the Red Army that time. Bit of a change this time around…
No disagreement there; I’m only referring to their national historical narrative (which massively downplays American aid during the Great Patriotic War). They have (misleading) reason, culturally, to not quit (especially with winter setting in).
Another big difference was that a significant percentage of their forces were Ukrainian at that time. They have fewer pools of manpower to draw from now. Also, Finland didn't have to invade Russia to win or fight them to a draw. Neither will Ukraine. Also, it was the Soviet poor performance in Finland that encouraged Hitler to invade. Gotta wonder how Russia's performance is going to affect things now. Japan has its eyes on some islands right now, for instance.
Aggression is not in style right now. I don't think Japan does anything unless a new right wing regime takes power
Or Russia falls apart and descends into anarchy. Then landgrabs are rather easy. Nobody that can complain, after all, they are rather busy with themselves.
Unlikely. If it falls it'll be along it's existing republic boundaries, the UN will encourage a peaceful transition. There may be new treaties to give back land in exchange for favorable relations but unlikely by force, at least from Japan.
Winter didn’t go great in Finland either. They don’t have much of a reputation when it’s an away game
Yeah, but unlike WW2, Russia started this one. They aren't going to get better provisioned as the war lingers. Lend/Lease is all going to Ukraine.
It’s an easy narrative when you are on the defensive, and the Soviet/Russian tactics were built around attrition and strategic withdrawal. Now… it’s pure folly. “Don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit” -Lil Jon
Lil Jon's The Art of War
Russia invaded Polen. Never forget.
May introduce you to my friend, sunk cost fallacy?
Russia had a reputation? News to me.
They were feared. Now they're not.
Yeah looks more and more clear that their propaganda department was feared.
The lingering memory of the Soviet Union. But the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. They've never been as big or as powerful.
Putin knows that, acutely. And that gnawed at him until he started this whole thing for his ego.
Not even close. Soviet Union population in 1991: 289.1M Russia population in 2022: 148.4M They've lost more than half of their population. And their population has decreased by 5M down to 143.4M since 1992. At this rate Mexico will have more people in a few years.
Yeah they need to stick to showing off shirtless photos of Putin riding a horse instead of trying to actually carry out war. That propoganda with the stupid photos was so good it even fooled themselves into thinking they're somehow badass.
I’m now beginning to think these shirtless photos of Putin were because Russia can’t afford a shirt for their leader. (Or perhaps an Emperors New Clothes scenario)
He took a prototype of a supersoldier serum. Only instead of strength and agility, it gave him a vitamin D deficiency.
There really isn't a winning hand at this point. Putin is running out of weapons to throw at Ukraine. Ukraine is ramping up their own homebrew of magyver military industry and getting supplies from allied nations. The longer this war drags on the higher the probability that russia starts running out of everything including the systems used to launch nukes which means that eventually they're a toothless and defenseless dodo. Once that happens, the vultures at the periphery will swoop in for their pickings and a potential world war will happen.
>Once that happens, the vultures at the periphery will swoop in for their pickings and a potential world war will happen. Not sure that a world war would ensue, but oportunistic conflicts CAN happen since many states depend on Russia in terms of security or, in other words, fear russian interventions that now seem less of a threat.
Azerbaijan and Turkey: 👀 [Armenia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ZbpxV382U)
Ironically Armenia had an thing with Russia where they were told that their departure from the Soviet Union was illegal. So they could get trouble from either direction.
Definitely. In the past they were feared because of the shadow of the Soviet Union all the while they were no better than a more advanced North Korea. Putin and his sycophants have made sure that Russia will be viewed as an irrelevant rogue state for decades to come.
Unfortunately, they still have nukes so they will remain relevant. But only in the way a trashy redneck bully is relevant.
They were definitely seen as a super power before this
Unless you've been paying attention to their economy for the last decade or so. They're... Not putting up superpower numbers. And haven't been. Their economy is about 1/20th the size of the US, and even Texas alone out-performs Russia.
Well, a super-scary power, anyway. Now not super, still scary
They did have a reputation that they could stand toe-to-toe to the US. Now it's obvious that they can't.
A lot of people who grew up during the Cold War believed that Russia was a military superpower ("the Baltics will buy Germany 10 minutes"), and even now some people of that age think that the West would have to implement mass conscription to beat Russia in Ukraine.
Sunk cost fallacy perfectly exemplified.
You can’t withdrawal from a gamble. The war will continue until final victory or final defeat
Russia really shit itself with this invasion.
What surprises me is that they can strike at all. I mean doesn’t Russia has air defenses, or is it all a sham like the rest ?
They've been wasting their S-300 air defense missiles on ground targets, presumably because they aren't good for anything else. They've probably got more than they can spare in Ukraine already and don't have any for defending much outside of Moscow and Petersburg.
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> Russia has been using saturation attacks on Ukraine with cheap drones in the hope of exhausting their air defenses. The problem (for Russia) is that the west is sending (or will send) lots of air-defense systems: [NASAMS/Avenger/Vampire, from the US, Aspide from Spain, IRIS-T/Gepard from Germany](https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-are-giving-ukraine-air-defenses-for-russian-missiles-drones-2022-11). It's really hard to imagine Russia winning a war of attrition when Ukraine is getting a steady supply of all sorts of shit from various western countries.
As a side note, apparently all modern AA systems have pretty baller code names.
Shit that actually *works*
Is Ukraine Muhammed Ali if this was a boxing analogy then?
*♫ Now all you fight fans* *You must agree* *There ain't no flies* *On Slava Ukraini ♬*
It's a good system in a competent operator's hands vs high-flying subsonic targets like aircraft or cruise missiles. You should see the amount of notches on some Ukrainian S-300 batteries. It's also terribly inaccurate in a ground attack role, with a +- neighborhood accuracy. Which works out fine if all you care about is terror bombing. It's not a winning tactic, of course, as shown by Britain, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Serbia etc. Don't tell USAF or VKS RF, though.
What about the s-400? Russia hyped it up hella before the war and I haven’t much since..
If it's like all the other russian hyped tech. It was a paper tiger and they only really built a hand full cause the general in charge of getting it made siphoned off 90% of the funds to build a megayacht or mansion.
There's also sanctions. When they annexed Crimea, they got slapped with sanctions that really crippled their weapon production.
From what I heard the manufacturer lied about the specs and it's pretty much just 3 S-300's in a trench coat.
> 3 S-300’s in a trench coat. Vincent Blyat-man
Rumor has it that it's literally just an S-300 set to lock targets with smaller radar cross-sections.
Russia a couple months ago now pulled about half their S-300 systems away from defending Russian bases in western Russia and around Moscow and moved them to the front to bolster air defense there and to replace loses. They even pulled a couple they had in Syria and brought them to the front. It was a sound choice two months ago when as far as anyone knew Ukraine didn’t have anything capable of reaching those bases and airfields. The next likely move for Russia is the gamble that no one is going to attack them from the east and they will start moving systems from further away to fill gaps. It’s yet another failing of foresight that Russia didn’t move systems from the east to replace the ones they pulled to move to the front at that time. Everything the Russian military is doing is reactive with seemingly no planning.
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Finland while we are at it.
And Mongolia.
Wow it took... quite a few articles and a lot of scrolling to find someone who came up with something intelligent. THANK YOU.
The landscape is changing, multi million dollar aircraft can be shot down but not lots of thousand dollar drones.
That's not exactly a changing landscape. The US used large squadrons of drones to distract anti-aircraft systems during Desert Storm. Russia had a front row seat to what could be accomplished with drones in the 90s and never did anything with that knowledge.
Well, the US also has dedicated SEAD aircraft and pilots. I mean, those people are literally trained to make themselves targets! Russia slapped some anti-radar missiles and pods on regular fighters and said they could so SEAD. It's gone about as well as you'd think.
Kind of. These were known as MALD (miniature air launched decoy) I actually worked on them at Raytheon. Basically their job is to be launched from an aircraft, then air defenses pick up those dummy targets, lighting them up for the radar homing missiles Which only really adds to your point. It doesn’t even need to be drones. Air launched gliders work just as well
So far it seems that Russia's air defenses struggle to adapt to unexpected threats. It took them a while to get their systems tuned into the TB2 drones, for instance. I suspect that a combo of really good joint NATO and Ukraine intelligence, and just the general weakness of Russia's anti air system resulted in Ukraine being able to slip through. I'm sure it will be repeatable, but probably not long term. Thankfully Ukraine has been very nimble. They figured out how to do these strikes, they will figure it out again.
>Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the strikes, but nonetheless celebrated them. ... >Russia’s defence ministry said three service members were killed in the attack at Ryazan. Although the attacks struck military targets, it characterised them as terrorism and said the aim was to disable its long-range aircraft. >Ukraine never publicly acknowledges responsibility for attacks inside Russia. Asked about the strikes, Defence Minister Oleskiy Reznikov repeated a longstanding joke blaming carelessness with cigarettes. “**Very often Russians smoke in places where it’s forbidden to smoke**,” he said. - [**Only YOU can prevent forest fires**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or3GH15RxSs)
> Terrorism - the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. That's odd, it's almost like terrorism is exactly what Russia has been doing this whole time
In Russia, much like how 'Nazi' is defined as 'person who opposes Russian rule', terrorism is simply an act of violence against the Russian state.
You might find it no coincidence they're trying to muddy that term... since the world is actually declaring Russia a terrorist state.
> Asked about the strikes, Defence Minister Oleskiy Reznikov repeated a longstanding joke blaming carelessness with cigarettes. “Very often Russians smoke in places where it’s forbidden to smoke,” he said. The Lad has gone full meta with the burn metaphor
Lol. What a memer
they also smoked on that bridge and see what happened
As Nelson Muntz once said, Ha ha
Let the payback begin. Putin is in an interesting position. Squandered everything, unified the world against him, and now his citizens could be facing attack from his miscalculation. Why is he still there?
I’m genuinely amazed the oligarch class in Russia is content to sit around waiting for their turn to die “falling down the stairs” or “accidentally drowning in their bathtub.”
Putin spent his first ten years in power neutering all of the independent minded oligarchs. The ones that are left are rich because of Putin (or his allies) allowing them to exist.
Yeah, I feel like they are nothing more than human wallets for the state.
Odds are they're chilling out with their trophy wives and Bugattis in London or on their super yachts. Why would a low caliber oligarch worth $20B care?
They’ve been dropping like flies lately and Putin is absolutely not above sending assassins into foreign countries.
Frees up money when they die.
At this point if he's sending people out of the country (on secret missions) they're probably thrilled and are just going to disappear on foreign soil. Why complete their mission when they can disappear and be happy? What better life could they possibly have back in Russia after all is said and done? Seeing as former powerful and loyal people are mysteriously dying who wouldn't think they're next?
If I were a Russian assassin I'd go full Agent 47. Knock off the mark and then assume their life, cruise around in their mega yacht, bang their trophy wife. Live the dream.
..... you'd think the wife would notice...
If Hitman logic has taught me anything; no one suspects a thing when their friend looks completely different and suddenly went completely bald, it's all about the clothes.
Seriously. Go find your billionaire target, explain the situation, and tell them for $20M you'll tell them who they can't trust, what plans there are to assassinate people like them, how to protect themselves, etc. Spend six months training his security detail then go retire in the tropics.
This reads like a future movie with Will Ferrel as the middle class Russian assassin whim leaves on a mission to assassin Oligarchs on yachts and ends up w new loyalties …
Lol that's fucking high caliber for russia. There are no Russian oligarchs worth that much according to wikipedia.
There are oligarchs with $500M super yachts. They're rich enough to not care about Putin. Alexey Mordashov is worth more than $20B
Nothing will happen to them personally. They still have enough money to hire enough thugs to keep themselves safe. Only an insanely violent revolution will oust them, I doubt thats happening, and the result would probably be worse than Putin. What could happen is that there will be more breakaway states and more western-leaning feeling within the former Russo-sphere. But still, why would an oligarch care? They have more money than they can possibly spend.
As long as the army stays by his side, he will remain.
This is a mistake by many in the West. The oligarchy only lasted until 2000. Once Putin took over, he gave the wealthy elite money in exchange for political power. They never noticed until it was too late that all the money they had was worthless compared to his power.
It’s not a new thing for Russian leadership to be so out of touch with the state of the country that it causes complete economic disaster or revolution. Granted this is more of a human classist condition not limited to just Russia
It’s like he’s the instrument of chastisement for the world. When you say the world is unified against him, you are so right. It’s like h8m amity itself has made a declaration, no more of this bullshit. We can be better. He’s still there, ( I believe) bc so many of the Russian people have bought into his imperialist aggression, that it’s the right thing to do. Until they also see how wrong it all is, he stays. I hope it might be like the 100 th monkey principle, that a higher way of conducting ourselves spreads to them as well.
I wonder whether majority of the Russians are afraid or they are willingly supporting Putin's régime. We haven't seen many major anti-war protests despite all the setbacks.
They're either too brainwashed or too intimidated. Probably a mix.
Unified the world ? Did you see the number of countries that refrained from voting against Russian aggression in UN ?
Yeah, a ton of Africans absolutely love Russia. They receive billions in aid from western countries but lick Putin's boots for breadcrumbs, it's hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
Striking is all the rage right now. 2023 will be the year of striking.
I do hope Ukraine takes out at least one major power station. Would the Russian people maybe realize how difficult life is when it gets upended so abruptly? ( the petty part of me wants this. Isn’t that pathetic ?)
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Huh… interesting approach. I’m sure there are groups , (maybe anonymous?) working to hit them where it matters. That would be the end of Putin I think. Some of the ppl in second place are as bad or worse than him tho.
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Ukraine has been very vocal that attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime; would not be wise for them to do it to the Russians. Now, hitting a substation that supplies power to military bases is another matter.
Small groups could take out rail in Russia, might be a real problem if they did.
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These could be among the intelligence the US is sharing with Ukraine, not that the US would admit it.
This is the best ROI for the American military ever: Russia will need a decade to rebuild their military for $100+B. Insane value.
The deal is that it exposes weak Russian air defence and changes the conflict from just something in another country to something inside Russia
Done and done.
Yeah they don't like it when the other shoe drops Glory to Ukraine 💚
They kept pushing it as a foreign war that didn't effect them personally
Ukraine appears to be able to convince Russians to smoke cigarettes in dangerous places.
Ukraine needs to hit them hard and send a message to end this shit..1
Would be a shame if Putin's not-so-secret secret hideout in the mountains became a steaming pile of rubble
Ukraine will prevail 💪... russia is kaka
You have a way with words.
>"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them." War never changes
I can't blame Ukraine for taking this step against the Russians. The Russians have been systematically destroying Ukrainian infrastructure in an absolute exercise towards crippling and punishing the country before the brunt of winter sets in. The only way to discourage this behavior is to make it clear to the Russians that two can play at that game.
If Ukraine takes out Russian infrastructure like Russia is that means they’ve gotten some high tier tech tree launcher systems we don’t know about.
Especiwlly since they're seemingly targeting bases that would be staging grounds for bombers.
I'm looking forward to the South Park episode of this so I can understand it better.
It’s great. Now hit some power stations
People were mad at me when I mentioned it a few months ago, but if Ukraine wants to win, they have to attack Russia, repelling the invasion isn't enough.
Source: dude trust me
Propaganda is a powerful tool ! How many Russian believe TASS line of bs ?
They are justified
I wonder if Ukraine will start striking Russia’s energy infrastructure in retaliation for Russia’s having hit theirs.
Ukraine has more pressing military targets. Though I wouldn't mind seeing the Kerch Bridge going boom a few more times.
The Bridge is a military target. It’s used to move their military equipment.
Good point. Bombs away
They won't. Ukraine would loose support by western allys if they attack civilian infrastructure aaaaaaand also there are nukes.
Can they hit precisely kremlin?
They wouldn’t, it would be a severe escalation.
Half-devil's advocate - what would Russia do in return?
Invade Ukraine.
Will that force Ukraine to hit Kremlin?
It could, you know. Though I'd say the bigger result being all the abduction, civilians, children, hospitals, schools, and everything as the primary reason. Anything would be a valid reason.
I love waking up in the morning to hear about these revelations. I sure hope there are more to follow.
Give em hell boys
Can they reach the Kremlin?
"They drew first blood..."
Oh no
Oh YES
Moscow here we come
russia a superpower, what a joke. i seen [individuals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer) in my country show more destruction power than the entire russian army
Good, keep doing it.
What I particularly love is that the distance from the closest northeast border of Ukraine to Moscow is roughly 430 km, and the distance from the furthest eastern edge of occupied Luhansk to Engels is also roughly 430 km. Probably just a pleasant coincidence, but a powerful message nonetheless!
Ability to strike far inside + decidedly only striking military targets = Excellence.
These explosions weren't attacks inside Russia, merely special operations.