Good job, Ukraine! Russia must be destroyed in its current fascist form.
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Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
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Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
All countries distancing themselves from Russia and aligning with the EU have managed to reduce corruption. It's a winning formula, so will very likely happen with Ukraine too after the corrupting Russian influence is eradicated.
As someone whose worked as a consultant for the EU for years, eventually realizing who the sales people of my company were (... related to), I wonder what you mean. I really wonder what you mean. Government spending is how the Brussels economy works (there's technically 11 and in practice about 7 different governments, all of whom have similar needs), and you get government spending assigned to you by "knowing" gover…
It helps to understand how Russian-style corruption works.
The system there is entirely hierarchical. Think organized Mafia as seen in movies, but but much wider both vertically and horizontally.
In that system, as an individual, you have only two path in life: poverty no matter your educational level and talent, or having a patron within the corrupt hierarchy.
If you get a patron, your life is going to be good as long as you remain in his good graces, and he remains on the good grades of his patron, and so on, all the way up to Putin. If any link in the chain above you breaks, you're back to poverty. So you now have a whole set of duties toward your entire "clan", starting with your patron and going all the way up.
There's no justice or fairness anywhere in this system, only loyalty, and the ocasional disloyalty disputes as the upper layers fight for domination.
And there's no private property either. All property is Putin's, who grants access to slices of it to his immediate underlings, who in turn grant access to theirs, and so on, until you too get yours. That grant can be revoked at any time, for any reason whatsoever.
Compared to that, corruption in normal countries is extremely simple, generally having one layer or two, not being so comprehensive that it encompasses the whole of society, and not structured in such a way that your life depends on it, to the point that in most countries you can rise and prosper in society without taking part in corruption, even if it's harder to do so.
In Russia and its satellites this simply isn't the case.
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#83This is all good news, but one must remember that airpower alone does not win wars. > Overall then, the promise of strategic airpower, that it could win wars entirely or primarily from the skies, turns out so far to have been largely a mirage > Instead, efforts to use strategic bombing to coerce surrender have repeatedly shown that being bombed hardens civilian resolve to continue resisting. By contrast, bombing can…
The general point on air power is a real thing, but I don't think we can directly conclude that bombing will always harden civilian resolve. It very much depends on the population's pain tolerance. In Vietnam when the NVA attacked a chain of US military bases simultaneously they lost every single battle, by a huge margin. It wasn't even close, the USA suffered about a quarter as many casualties, yet it broke the back…
Your point about avoiding conscription and using contract troops (mercenaries) or undesirables is supported by War on the Rocks' reporting. And who knows, maybe setting the periphery of St Petersburg and Moscow on fire made the war very real to the otherwise insulated cities. One can hope.
And yet, the lower bound of Russian deaths (not casualties) is 230k [0], a speculated upper bound 500k. In comparison, the US counts 250k military deaths in the European theatre of WW2 and the UK 383k. [1] If true, those are staggering losses for Russia, even when controlling for population sizes. I am not convinced that Russia will buckle anytime soon, even under crippling long-term costs.
I wish for a swift and decisive victory for Ukraine.
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#84Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>is always the aggressor Well, lets's be honets: not always. But, yes, he's a your typical example of a paid bot or a genuine low IQ nationalist. Quite a few of them here.
Well, true, Russia has a long history so I was overly broad. Aggressor in almost all conflicts is more accurate. In WW2 it was the second major aggressor of course. WW1 Germany declared war before Russia invaded, so debatable. Wasn't an aggressor in the Napoleonic wars as far as my history knowledge serves me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_Troubles and Polish invasion it the most notable event I guess.
But - sure, in most other cases Russia in either an invader or a part of a larger conflict for influence, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War or Napoleonic Wars.
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#86This is all good news, but one must remember that airpower alone does not win wars. > Overall then, the promise of strategic airpower, that it could win wars entirely or primarily from the skies, turns out so far to have been largely a mirage > Instead, efforts to use strategic bombing to coerce surrender have repeatedly shown that being bombed hardens civilian resolve to continue resisting. By contrast, bombing can…
The general point on air power is a real thing, but I don't think we can directly conclude that bombing will always harden civilian resolve. It very much depends on the population's pain tolerance. In Vietnam when the NVA attacked a chain of US military bases simultaneously they lost every single battle, by a huge margin. It wasn't even close, the USA suffered about a quarter as many casualties, yet it broke the back…
> They seem utterly bewildered by the fact Ukraine is even attacking Russia at all, it doesn't seem to make any sense to them.
They have been propagandized to such extent that they just cannot accept the reality even when it becomes completely undeniable. Ukraine blows up something near them in Russia, and they go completely off the rails explaining how this has nothing to do with Russia nor Ukraine, but is some IMF-Blackrock-NWO scheme against Slavs, with references to the 1999 staged terrorist attacks in Russia that solidified Putin's rise to power. The war isn't real and a "third party" is in charge of both militaries and using them to play mind games on Russians to coerce them into accepting "globalist plans".
It's utterly fascinating to observe the breakdown of sense of reality in real time as lifelong propaganda narratives (like the might of the Russian army) turn out to be lies and the world they thought they lived in turns out to be a mirage. And it's remarkable that these conspiracy theories are not coming from central figures, such as a small circle of social media grifters (vaccine-autism, chemtrails, flat earth, etc), but appear from the grassroots, which is why there are so many variations. Many millions of people are still trying to make sense of these events within a propagandized worldview that they cannot let go of.
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
All countries distancing themselves from Russia and aligning with the EU have managed to reduce corruption. It's a winning formula, so will very likely happen with Ukraine too after the corrupting Russian influence is eradicated.
As someone whose worked as a consultant for the EU for years, eventually realizing who the sales people of my company were (... related to), I wonder what you mean. I really wonder what you mean. Government spending is how the Brussels economy works (there's technically 11 and in practice about 7 different governments, all of whom have similar needs), and you get government spending assigned to you by "knowing" gover…
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Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a civilian infrastructure target, which is being used by the military for storage, warehousing and distribution. Items such as drone parts, drone release mechanisms for payloads, fiber optic spools, body armor gear and the logistics network. If US was using walmart to supply troops, even if its mostly used by civilians it could make it a legitimate target
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This is war, not a slope. Escalations happen in every conflict this is the next step. And why bring Israel into this? Especially when they glassed Palestine...
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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It would be like calling Roosevelt a fascist because he said "Nazi Germany as a nation has no right to exist". It's ridiculous.
>It would be like calling Roosevelt a fascist because he said "Nazi Germany as a nation has no right to exist".
"Nazi" is doing all the heavy work in your argument, separating German people and Nazi ideology.
There is no such separation in Ukrainian defense minister's words.
Re: Russia's businesses under strain from Ukraine's attacks on Wildberries
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Europe provided the vast majority of the funding: https://www.kielinstitut.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukrai... Also, most recent developments on the battlefield are driven by Ukraine's own innovations - better drones, interceptor drones, their own cruise missiles, etc. All the lessons are being absorbed by Europe and the US. By far most credit should go to the Ukrainians. They are the ones under attack, they are t…
>by Ukraine's own innovations
Like this? "British coder who revolutionised Ukraine’s drone army on paternity leave" [0]
[0] https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/ru...