I'm not saying they will, but I am noticing some attempts to change the goal posts or the subject. What do you think the response will be like?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (58)
sorted by:
Germany successfully conquered Norway quickly. They didn't conquer it partway and then were forced to retreat from large sections of it a month later.
Ukraine has gotten nowhere near $100 billion. The authorizations passed by the US Congress "for Ukraine" actually only earmarked a small portion of that money for Ukraine itself, with the vast majority of the money instead going to the US military and State Dept.
The way military aid is calculated is grossly inflated because it assumes the full sticker price for a brand new item, when what is actually being sent might be refurbished and 30 years old, and in actuality worth far, far less than the dollar amount indicated. Politicians lie, and one of the big lies has been to try to exaggerate both the aid given as well as the severity of the sanctions.
I'm not talking about whether "Russia cannot beat" or not in the text you're responding to. I'm talking about how pro-Russia types try to spin the status quo as already being a victory, which I think is silly.
Laughably low bar. It paid an absurdly high price for that territory, and that territory is only temporarily occupied with a large opposing army locked with Russia in a hot war aiming to take it back. The occupation and defense of that territory requires a cost many many times higher than that territory is worth.
It was. Everyone in the world outside of the Russian government puts the K:D ratio in lives and equipment strongly in Ukraine's favor. Russia was forced to retreat from the north of Ukraine in late March 2022, and then defeated in both the Kharkiv & Kherson sectors. And all Russia has to show for an enormous sacrifice around Bakhmut is that it took a handful of villages and a small amount of territory without being able to take Bakhmut itself.
I wouldn't gloat over CIVILIANS, but pointing to military losses is perfectly fine. Russia can't win this war if it keeps losing the war of attrition, and it has been losing that war the whole time with possibly a small exception during its peak artillery phase in May/June 22.
End Russia as a military threat, not as a country, obviously.
Only because the rest of the world helped the Soviet Union (not Russia, even though the USSR was actually just a Russian empire masquerading as something else) weaken and defeat Germany, which allowed the USSR to sweep through and conquer eastern europe. Over the long term it couldn't hold its empire together and this ended up being an unsustainable drain on Russian resources and prosperity. It is often true that holding onto an imperial possession can be unprofitable and cost you more than you can extract from it.
lol I never mentioned Trudeau, are you gay for him or something?
Germany wasn't stupid enough to invade with 160,000, in the hopes that Norway would see reason...
Who cares what it's 'worth'? If you send a 30 year old Mercedes that works as well as a new one, does that make a dime's worth of difference?
Also, doesn't seem to me that the pols are trying to exaggerate how much they help that shithole. Especially considering that they do nothing for their own country except allowing toxic fumes to engulf East Palestine. It's an embarrassment, and even your friend Eyepatch McCain was trying to downplay it.
I'm definitely not happy, but let's be real. Russia has more territory than it started with. Ukraine is in ruins. It's a clear Russian victory so far. Now, should they continue and end the mistake of Ukrainian statehood? Absolutely. But I'll grant a pro-Russian rump Galicia.
Who's lost more though? The prostitute of the West. So... still a good deal, as sad as I am that anyone has to die over Western machinations.
I'm sure those governments and OSINT cretins you believe credulously are very objective and impartial...
Ukrainian casualties in Bakhmut are said to be massive.
Pointing, yes. Gloating, no.
Like the Wehrmacht did. And at the end of the 4 years, despite staggering, unbelievable losses, the USSR was at the height of its power.
I can't believe you wrote a paragraph with which I wholly agree.
Too old. But you're bragging about how the corrupt West is defeating RUSSHER. So why are you taking pleasure in the supposed achievements of Trudeau the Tyrant?
The height of its mobilized power, yes. The height of its potential power? No. The USSR lost enormous amounts of manpower, enough to demographically warp the country for generations. Russia also suffered enormous GDP and economic damage: "As result of the German invasion of World War II, the Economy of the Soviet Union suffered punishing blows, with Soviet GDP falling 34% between 1940 and 1942.[3] Industrial output did not recover to its 1940 level for almost a decade."
Just because the USSR hit peak tank production in 1944, doesn't mean it was at the "height of its power". Mobilization is cannibalistic, it is the conversion of sustainable civilian economic power to temporary warmaking power. Communists are uniquely good at full mobilization. The United States was able to mobilize to a far lesser degree than the USSR, so its economy recovered faster.
Also worth mentioning (because its forgotten by many people talking about WW2 Soviet Union): They were a major recipient of Lend Lease. Over half of their locomotives and rolling stock, almost 3/4 of their trucks, most of their uniforms, and almost all of their aviation-grade fuel was made by the US. Zhukov is on record on multiple occasions saying that he could only do things like Deep Battle because his army was moving with American trucks. Hell, one of their most iconic weapons of the war was typically mounted on an American truck. Guess what Russia doesnt have anymore, and hasnt since 1945. And this is before we get to some of the heavier shit (like Soviet pilots preferring the American P-39/63, and loving the British Valentine and American Sherman tanks).
The simple fact of the matter is, A lot of people, on both sides of the old Iron Curtain, still base their view of Russia off of a combination of bad Soviet propaganda and misremembered facts. And considering that Russias latest attempt at a mobilization resulted in mass citizen flight and a failure to meet the mobilization goal, call me skeptical that Russia can do another "Throw bodies at the problem" solution to the war.
Excellent point! However, it shows what a juggernaut Russia/USSR is when it is mobilized. My only worry is that they will pussy out and not mobilize sufficiently to take down te West's prostitute as thoroughly as I'd like.
I mean, 34% is shockingly low, considering that the Germans controlled what were the most productive and populated areas of the USSR, even accounting for the insane transportation of factories to the Urals.
The US had nothing to recover from. It also had a little to do with not losing 27 million people and not having the entire West of your country devastated.
Putin's Russia 2022 is nothing compared to Stalin's Russia of 1941. Stalin had total, absolute power over the whole Soviet population. Putin's power is very weak by comparison. The dissent seen against Putin would be unthinkable under Stalin. Putin would have called for total mobilization from the start if he could. The reason he did not isn't because he was a nice guy, or because he was so overconfident, it was because he lacked the power to do so.
Putin was unable to call for mobilization until after Ukraine's successful offensives. This means it took clear proof Russia was losing before Putin could sell his elites on partial mobilization and obtain their consent to it.
They won't because they can't, not because Putin lacks the intent or will to do so. He doesn't do it because his elites are telling him that if he does, they won't support him, and if they don't support him, the people will begin to be allowed to rise up, cracks will appear in state propaganda, and so on. Putin is not Stalin. He cannot simply make a list of a million people he suspects and have them all Gulaged. His order to do so would not be obeyed if he tried. Putin sits at the top of a whole corrupt apparatus of oligarch elites who he needs and relies on to control the country. It's more like a weak King and his court of corrupt Nobles, than an absolute dictator.
Putin basically conned his Oligarchs into support for his war because he tricked them into thinking it would be an easy win, with tons of opportunities for profit. Instead, it's been a quagmire and the Oligarchs want off, but are stuck in the same mindset the US had under Nixon in Vietnam where they want it to be over, but they don't want to lose. So they agree to allow Putin to escalate just enough to stave off defeat, but not enough to win.
Well Germany took all the best agricultural areas, but not the best industrial & resource areas, never having taken the oil fields, mines, etc. And as you said, the Soviets did everything they could to strip the area under threat of all of its industrial resources (and a lot of its skilled population) before Germany could occupy it.
The US still have some mobilization which meant a lot of civilian factories got gutted and repurposed to military production, all of which needed to switch back after the war, which is expensive. But since the US had a far more limited transformation than the USSR (or Japan), it could switch back to a civilian economy much, much faster.