141–150 of 190 posts
> Bret Devereaux, "About the Pedant", "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", "PhD", "ancient and military historian", "intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military" https://acoup.blog/about-the-pedant/ > “I am not going to pretend to be neutral here. I am on the side of the nascent democracy which was ruthlessly and lawlessly attacked without provocation by a larger and more powerful foreign power.” I'm…
Business Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1] That leaves the central Russian government very vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements, of which there are rather a lot.[2]. Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Eston…
> Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Most successful independence movements are based on some kind of distinct ethnic/national/cultural/religious/linguist…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>its people mostly aren't Russian They basically are. They speak Russian and act like Russians. I doubt they'd mind being annexed.
>They basically are. They don't have russian passorts. How can they be russians?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is controlled by Russia. And Ukraine obviously supports the Moldovan government’s opposition to that condition, but Ukraine isn’t going to unilaterally invade Moldova to fight Russians while its got plenty of Russians in Ukraine to deal with.
Why are you so certain? Have you heard of the Cobasna ammo depot? It would be mutually beneficial to Ukraine and Moldova if Ukraine were to gain control of that depot and then cede back to Moldova.
https://www.arnika.org/en/hotspots/moldova/the-largest-illeg...
Cobasna is a huge problem in waiting but it's not an urgent problem.
The real solution is for Russia (as the Soviet Union's biggest successor state) to handle the cleanup and reparations when the region is handed back to Moldova.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Most successful independence movements are based on some kind of distinct ethnic/national/cultural/religious/linguist…
Obviously you’re not a fortune teller, but I’m curious of where you think Tatarstan falls into this, given it’s a majority Muslim republic too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an assumption.
It's the hypothesis that ascribes the least idiocy to Russian military command, compared to, say, deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle. As much we may think they're fools, they're probably not that stupid.
I don't understand how people expect anything different here. Even the US with all it's superpower fanciness spent years in Iraq and decades in Afghan. I am also skeptical over that whole "my opponent is more stupid than me" attitude. We can already see how people made fools of themselves spelling Russia's haste economic demise, while Russia is expecting an economic growth now according to the World Bank.
Idiocy would be setting unrealistic expectations and treating this like a computer game, when a well-fortified Ukrainian army at the Donetsk border (that Zelensky was inspecting a few times in 2021) would somehow de-spawn or vanish in case Russia would hastily take Kyiv.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zero war support across friends/colleagues but maybe up to 30% support on the streets (taxi drivers, cashiers, mechanics, neighbors, ...). In small cities there shall be more supporters (less Internet, more TV).
I really doubt it's "zero". I've quizzed many many people I had connections with and literally all of them support the war up to some extent. The most common opinion is "we shouldn't have started this but we should win this war and take over Ukraine and Poland". It would be really strange to count such opinions as "anti-war".
I remember the BBC News telling viewers it would all be over in 6 weeks!
Not many predicted that Ukraine would hold out so long, especially the Kremlin itself which believed that the most reasonable course of action at the time was to start the invasion even with such a small number of men.
The fact that NATO have been loading up the Ukrainian people with debt via forced if not compulsory purchases in all but name of military equipment tells me both sides will be winning out of this at the expense of the useful idiots going out to fight and the Ukrainian people. The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least. You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed, I see demolition for new shopping centres, car parks and other civil amenities taking place when its reported and spun in the news.
Didnt anyone learn anything from the Iraq war? Govt's especially the US spunking money everywhere like there was no tomorrow? How do you stimulate an economy? Got to war, and force change on people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've recently read that only about 30% identify as Russians.
Yeah, the largest ethnic group. The largest ethnic group in California is Latinos. What's the issue?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the hypothesis that ascribes the least idiocy to Russian military command, compared to, say, deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle. As much we may think they're fools, they're probably not that stupid.
> deliberately wading into a multi-year attritional struggle I don't understand how people expect anything different here. Even the US with all it's superpower fanciness spent years in Iraq and decades in Afghan. I am also skeptical over that whole "my opponent is more stupid than me" attitude. We can already see how people made fools of themselves spelling Russia's haste economic demise, while Russia is expecting an…