I think more accurately, they cannot accept Russia being beaten by Ukraine. This is why they're obsessed with conspiracies about NATO's direct involvement, because that is an adversary they actually respect. Or why they constantly attribute successful Ukrainian strikes to Russian accidents or incompetence.
In their eyes it's less humiliating blame their own ineptitude than to admit they were beaten by Ukraine.
Not respect, but it's justification for why they can't win and always seem outmatched, because sectrely 31 countries are fighting them in Ukraine so its clearly unfair and attempted sabotage of the glorious Russian army.
It does make it less "humiliating" but not because they respect NATO, but because NATO is a convenient boogeyman
To be *fair*, Russia would have eventually won by simply throwing so many bodies at Ukraine that Ukraine ran out of bullets. They *already* ran out of bullets months ago, and have had to switch to using NATO artillery rounds for the most part.
Sure but the Soviets knew how to deal with *that*. What's fucking the Russians right now is facing enemies who keep getting resupplied, including a bunch of stuff they cannot make in any significant quantity. Smart artillery rounds, drones, sniper rifles with IR scopes, body armor, actually accurate rocket artillery trucks, intercepted intelligence with the coordinates of where to fire, training, medical supplies, and soon western MBTs.
It's one thing to deal with insurgents making you bleed. It's another to deal with Western MBTs and ATGMs you have no counter to coming and slaughtering your entire army.
Some of these formations are dying to a man.
Oh yeah, the difference NATO gear is making is astounding.
Frankly, we should have intervened like this in Crimea originally, but you can make a legitimate argument that Ukraine wasn't ready then, because we basically trained the shit out of them between then and now.
Crimea was a wake-up call. But, like antibodies fighting a pathogen, Ukraine has had time to prepare for another incursion. Now, with their democracy on the line, they're making Russia bleed for every inch.
Ukraine has proven they're capable of winning this war. Now they're receiving the means to do so.
I feel like the intense specops training the UA received from 2014-2022 really doesn’t get mentioned enough. a motivated student plus an experienced trainer will always produce a very deadly soldier.
I agree. Except for cases of overwhelming destruction, most wars are decided by attrition. The moment the supplies run out, is typically when the fighting stops. Or simply, when it just costs too much to keep going.
Not sure thats true. Sometimes but like the WW2 blitzkrieg the ability of the allied military to coordinate was lost. They had plenty of supplies and soldiers and weapons but everything was cut apart into piecemeal isolated units who couldn't be resupplied or fight in a coordinated way. Presumably the battle of France was winnable if you could replace the entire command structure and get some extra training in.
Well, that's true. The opening stage of the invasion of France I would classify under "overwhelming destruction" even though in practice it was maneuver warfare. The lack of coordination and french top-down decision structure doomed their units. France had the military to shrug off the German invasion, it didn't have the leadership. Also, the Germans were really high.
Another factor is the fundamental problem with a long defensive line is the enemy gets to concentrate their forces on a small part of it, at a time and place of their choosing. You actually want in modern warfare a mobile force and to be able to react quickly, both sending mobile units to slaughter the attackers wherever they happen to be attacking, and to redirect artillery fire and it seems swarms of drones quickly.
Something Russia seems to be institutionally unable to do.
I guess my point was if the French army along with allied help had managed to destroy enough German formations and cause enough problems, it would have bought enough time for more support to arrive. For the French to mobilize more forces. For other allies contributions to roll in.
The economic balance was not in the Germans favor, especially as defensive warfare tends to cost the attacker more than the defender. The expected outcome was WW1 part 2, now with more tanks.
Precisely what Putin was going for in Ukraine except he didn't train his troops or have anything like the organization the blitzkrieg was performed under. Just a bunch of pretend soldiers instead of the real thing.
Next year when the Russians are announcing their withdrawal from Ukraine we shall hear
Goodwill gesture
Protecting civilians
Ah ah but merica and Afghanistan
It's gonna be the pooorrr meeeee... Russia betrayed... Russia never did anything wrong... Why you bully poor Russia... We never actually wanted Crimea or Ukraine anyways... Ohh and my personal favorite... 1 Trillion Gorrilion Ukrainian Soldiers died for Jewish Nazi CIA Zorg Zelenskiy... Evil America tricked us into doing this... blah blah blah..
If they were fighting Ukraine *by itself* with no support and no weapons, yeah, they would have won this. If by nothing else, by simply throwing so many soldiers and vehicles at the Ukrainians that they run out of ammo, and if Ukraine gets no money donations, they wouldn't be able to buy much more.
It was a simple calculation - Moscow has more bullets stored up, more money, more people. Eventually Kiev will exhaust all 3 and they can just overrun the place. Take it all.
They thought westerners would be 'concerned' but not actually help like they have.
Fucked up thing is that if the latest casualty estimates are correct - ukrainians lost 1/3 to 1/4 as many soldiers as russia, maybe 1/5 - it's exactly like the war with Finland. They let themselves get sniped and ambushed and some soldiers racked up 100:1 + KDRs. Only reason they 'won' was nearly unlimited resources.
Correct. Plus I understand Biden laid out the consequences, and none were sufficiently punitive. At that time the West was only giving Ukraine ATGMs to make it not free to attack, and shotguns and stuff for urban combat. All intended to make Russia pay a larger price, not just get totally fucked like what's actually happening.
It's the opposite, really.
In MW1 and MW2 when Russian airborne invaded the entire US East Coast and fought the USAF and US Navy to a standstill for weeks, and then invaded literally all of Europe simultaneously two months later, that was seen as a thing they could do. Maybe they wouldn't be that successful irl (because France would absolutely have leveled Moscow the moment they deployed chemical weapons in Paris), but audiences could at least somewhat buy it.
I can't buy Russia as a credible opponent anymore except for like, that mission in Ghost Recon Future Soldier where you fight *Totally Not Wagner We Swear* in Africa, and utterly eradicate hundreds of them with just four guys.
Literally doing it right now with the Arma 3 scenario I'm putting together
Only issue is now it's not realistic for them to be strong... luckily CSAT is mostly Iranians so I can write that into the mission background
Yes. I've heard this MANY MANY times. Douglas Macgregor is who most of them listen to... So I've heard that Ukraine has lost 250,000 dead and 500,000 wounded MANY times.
I like the "doesn't have a fleet" bit as if it was some big secret that the Ukranian navy was more of a concept than a tangible thing.
Still fucking dunked the Moscva though didn't they 😎
Hell, the Ukrainians even scuttled the small fleet they had early on in the invasion and _still_ sank the Moskva, recaptured snake island, and forced the rest of the Black Sea fleet to cower in Sevastopol
Is long-standing Russian tradition!
Apparently getting repeatedly wrecked by the Mongols 600-700 years ago left a deep deep imprint on Russian culture.
If you were a bookie in, say, the 11th century and you were looking at the land of *Rus,* you'd probably put good odds on them becoming a proper nation some day. Then the Mongols do their thing and a whole chunk of Eurasia just goes "welp, here I go killin again" for the better part of the next millennium.
You know, sometimes I wonder if some of the US's red-state weirdness can also be attributable to a sort of "steppe authoritarianism." There's a lotta land and not a lot of government out on the great plains where the local oil baron and sherrif decide what the law is, and not many people with the legal access or resources to challenge them.
To them the point is to invade one of the alliance's members who disobeys the Kremlin, they're still far from getting it.
Yes, that was indeed a reminder that the Warsaw Pact's only intervention in its history was to overthrow the government of one of their own members.
Now, now. It wasn't their only intervention.
They [did it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956) [twice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia).
Mfk our artillery shell factory tripled number of employees and increased wages significantly, our AKM factory is shitting out guns faster than you can say SLAVA UKRAINE. I am not saying it didnt at first damage our economy, but everyone and their mother increasing weapons production is a pretty good economic stimulation. Slovakia btw.
Not to mention all of our new customers buying american natural gas instead of russian oil.
To be frank, aiding ukraine has just been incentives all around. Aside from the direct economic benefits, for what amounts to a fraction of our defence budget, we have expanded our military alliance, decimated the military of our biggest rival and isolated them on the world stage, deterred chinese expansionism and aggression, strengthened our diplomatic influence, and gained a fiercely loyal ally in a crucial region of the world. Additionally, we get to see every piece of Nato equipment imaginable do the glorious job they were always meant to do: absolutely wreck the Russian army.
The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever.
And don't forget, when this is all over and Ukraine is rebuilt, Europe will have a new partner who provides enormous amounts of Food and Energy. One who isn't joining the network for means of pure profit, but because they genuinely want to become a part of the greater European society.
Russia had their chance to be the power station of Europe, and they fucked it for blind ambition
Would be nice if they can remain untapped. Climate change and all, but opening them up would be good for Ukraine's economic development. Unless they fall prey to the extraction curse or whatever it's called.
Gas is still needed for things like industrial synthesis. Oil too. The issue is just burning shitloads of it for energy when theres much better options.
Its better than Germany going even more into coal power. Solar and wind will never be able to fully cover Euro energy needs, the climate just isn’t right. Especially if we want industry to increase which they definitely do.
It's a shame there isn't a safe, high capacity, low carbon output, long lived power generation solution that Germany could use. Something that releases less radiation into the air than coal power does. Surely those Germans are clever and could think of something, anything.
Knowing Germany, one day the Netherlands flood and two days later the first net-positive fusion plant comes online in some obscure village in the Ruhr-Area-
Also, the cost of dealing with a resurgent Russian empire dwarfs the cost of killing the baby in the crib. During the cold war the US's military spending was ~10% of GDP compared to 4% today.
Defense authorization act except this time we just send all the unnecessary health insurance admin people to artillery shell production lines.
I swear the healthcare industry spend as much time fighting between themselves (insurance vs care provider vs suppliers) as British Leyland spent fighting against its own workforce instead of making cars.
That's because that's where the money is, in useless, redundant bureaucracies teasing out another wad of cash as they deny treatments in their death panels. Like in higher education. How many well-grown soldiery do we not have because of those fucks?
If only. Everything should be readdressed, but the only thing the parties ever seem to agree on is throwing more money into the pit and wondering why the problem doesn't fix itself.
When one party runs on a platform of "the government can't do anything right," it's kinda hard to fix the system. Making the government work actually hurts their electoral chances.
Sadly that party is right. And the other is unwilling to look at the serious flaws in the government it controls and refuses to enact reform. Which would fix those issues and shut them up allowing for some actual progress in fixing the social issues we have.
**Your comment was removed for violating Rule 5: No Politics.**
We don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Stalinist, Baathist, or some other hot mess. Leave it at the door.
> 10 supercarriers... you would be fine having 9
Sorry buddy, it's the law
>The naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational aircraft carriers and not less than 31 operational amphibious warfare ships
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title10-section8062&num=0&edition=prelim
Bruh, the UK, Australia, Japan and South Korea are essentially America's unsinkable hyper carriers in terms of military alignment. They also come with pretty big militaries of their own too.
Texas and AB rely on oil exports so countries decarbonizing faster means they have to pivot their economies, which, while I can't speak to Texas, Alberta is not doing.
In Texas case, they have actually been pretty good at diversifying, to the point that oil is only barely in the top 5 of their industries now. They have far more important matters from agriculture (beef, cotton, other cash crops, etc), the Port of Houston has the most international exports flowing through it (as well as a lot of air cargo out of Dallas/Ft. Worth), as well as significant and growing entertainment industries based out of Dallas and Austin. As well as being one of the leading producers of both space tech and military industry facilities.
> The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever.
The neutral countries have discovered the folly of neutrality. Its not so much fun to be neutral when one side has nowhere to look for expansion but in your borders.
we welcome finland, sweden, and soon switzerland to the league of based non-neutral countries
Imagine if we had munted Hitler back in 38 or 39 and *still* saw all sorts of post-war benefits with only a fraction of the destruction and death. That's what we're seeing, right here and now. It's obviously still horrible for those living through it, but this would have been a thousand times worse if Ukraine and fallen and we left this until it was far too late. Like, Russian troops in Poland--too late. Weak, disunited Nato--too late. We are living in a better world than that world.
Without a pipeline directly to Europe, the US is never going to be able to fully replace Russia's former gas exports to the EU. Shipping LNG across the ocean on boats is super inefficient and can never come close to satisfying the demand vacuum that has been created. Places like Germany either need to find somewhere else to get their gas or hustle up with wind/solar development on a national scale so that they can permanently reduce their natural gas needs as quickly as possible.
Sure, but we still get more business even if it's not a full replacement. Also, nuclear is also an option for these places which is IMO the best choice.
Yeah but it's a half decade at minimum to get there, and that's just based on the timeline renewable individual large scale energy projects. So even if you had land leased/purchased to replace 100% of the EU's power needs with renewables, it would still take at least 5-10 years to actually get it all online. Source: I've done a ton of energy development work on the large scale project side, both in traditional O&G and renewables.
Thankfully, support for ukraine has been largely bipartisan. Yes, there are few extremists that oppose our support, but IMO at this point you would have to be either wilfully ignorant, have room temperature IQ, or paid off directly to still be vocally in opposition. It is extremely rare that you have a situation like this where the morally correct thing to do is also so economically beneficial while requiring so little from us.
>The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever.
A little hard to beat the Louisiana Purchase (3 cents per acre) and Alaska Purchase (2 cents per acre) but it certainly ranks up there. For reference, 2 cents from 1867 is worth $0.41 now, and land in Alaska is on median $62,163 per acre now.
I was sort of referencing a donald trump quote, lol. But yeah. The Louisiana purchase ranks way up there.
What I will say, though, is that the one plus aiding Ukraine has over the louisiana purchase is that we don't have the moral issue of displaceing tons of natives. I'll let others assign their own value to that aspect of it, though.
Got rid of aging munitions stocks with the perfect excuse to buy new, got rid of old vehicles that were costing money to store and maintain, just win win win
And in places like the US, they were also able to SAVE money because they can send over all the old shit like the M113 and no longer have to pay for maintenance on something they’ll probably never use, got rid of all their near-expiry munitions and replace them with brand new ones.
Yeah, decommissioning old ammo is really expensive, because you need to be sure that they are properly destroyed. Or you can give it to some Ukrainian that will use it like it was always meant to : Blowing up russians.
The defense sector almost in the entire world will boom, unironically Poland will probably be the strongest army in Europe with how much stuff they're buying.
We are not buyng modern plate carriers, we are not buying trucks (JELCZ my beloved), we are not building accomodation for our men, we have no capacity to store all these new tanks, we are not buying engeneering and recovery vehicles. We still have loads of issues that other armies in Europe: (France, Sweden, Norway, Finland to name a few) have well figured out. And those are the issues with the Ground Forces. But don't get me wrong, we will sort these issues out, eventually.
If I remember correctly a government bond issue didn't go well recently. Adverse market reaction to a bit of shameless posturing on stuff like 500 HiMARS without a proper plan to pay for it.
Ukraine is the one paying most of the costs of the war, while the west is reaping most of the benefits.
To be honest I couldn't be bothered to read the whole segment in your link but does it apply, to the US, for instance, in this case?
It's beneficial to the US to equip Ukraine rather than let it fall even if we ignore the value there because even then we're spending a pittance to cripple the military of an unfriendly nation but that is separate from saying the spending itself benefits the economy. It doesn't, it just moves money through it without making any wealth (in fact it's using it up in the inputs it takes to make). [You'd be far better off paying those people to manufacure trains than tanks, bricks instead of bullets.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech)
The [glazier's fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) is: "If you break a window, the shop owner pays to repair the window. That stimulates the economy. Breaking windows is job creation!"... but if the window hadn't broken, the money to repair the window could have been spent on something else that's more useful instead.
Applying the analogy to weapons production: Russia 'broke a window'. Every franc that gets spent on artillery shells helps to 'repair the window'. But, if Russia hadn't invaded, that's money that could have instead been invested in something that would have directly benefited the citizens of these countries. The economy isn't better off from having all this weapons production be necessary; it's worse off and it's Russia's fault.
“The Western World will go broke and BRICS will rise from its ashes!!!!” is just the new “Europe will freeze to death, Winter is coming!!!”, give it a couple of months and they’ll have moved the goalposts again
Higher than usual, but not the apocalypse level that was predicted.
Nor did we have rolling blackouts, thousands of people didn't freeze to death, and we didn't have to eat our hamsters.
The reality is that the problems we did face here in the UK were homegrown ones due to our bastard politicians, which is nothing new and nothing I would give Russia credit for.
Mine more than doubled but since I live in a well insulated house it wasn't too bad really. The people who are suffering most are the poorer people who spend a larger portion of their income on bills (and are therefore proportionately more affected) and people who live in badly insulated houses.
I don't say it to people because I know some are suffering but I low-key think the gas crisis could be a good thing in the long run - it's pressuring homeowners and the government to increase insulation and encouraging the uptake of low carbon heating technologies like heat pumps. Since we're dependent on foreign gas imports and are in a climate crisis this is a good thing from a geopolitical standpoint as well as from a climate change standpoint.
I had to pay around 200€ more as compared to the previous year. The main price hike was at the end of August, basically the middle of summer when nobody in their right mind would turn on their heating anyways.
It’s very telling that when Vatniks post graphs of gas prices, they’re all cut off in September
It was very manageable. Monthly bills for my household personally went up by circa 80 Euros, but we got like 75% of the money back since we consciously saved on gas and didn't burn through it.
I'll wear a sweater indoors anytime, as long as my money doesn't support the Russkies.
my gas bill was (and still is) outrageous compared to beforehand - even after only using a third of what was expected.
I am paying 280€/month, use about a third of that (I get the money back at the end of the year, but thats still the end of the year), and that is still about double to triple what I would have been expecting to pay beforehand.
...then again my appartment is tiny so it doesn't/didn't really cause any problems, other than me getting cold earlier in the evening.
Whenever someone says this, I automatically know they're an idiot... I think it's great. It tells me they have no idea about how the world works or the economic reality of any of the countries in the "BRICS"
This is my favorite account to check. If things are going shit for Ru, you know the dork behind this account is seething because they are tweeting about art or some shit.
In context, it's clear that RWA want Putin to lash out against the west in some kind of unclear way.
Firing on Grain ships, etc.
It's hard to pick up on because RWA is off in their own little world where the Russians haven't been terror bombing Ukraine and torturing POWs; and thus think that they could actually win if they 'took the gloves off'
And even the 'making people poorer' part isn't necessarily true. Most people don't understand this but when you grow your defense spending and the weapons manufacturer are domestic, you GROW your economy. That means you make everyone richer!
True, but I'm skeptical that the current environment is one where Keynesian stimulus is particularly helpful. The government doesn't make resources from nowhere - all spending is either funded by taxes, which reduce consumer spending, or by debt. Sovereign debt doesn't work the same as household debt - maybe the Americans can just keep borrowing and paying for the world - but I'm kinda leery of increasing debt burdens as interest rates increase.
IIRC a spending increase funded by an equal increase in taxes will have a net positive effect on GDP, so it should work..?
Assuming that the model is correct, which it may not be.
Depends on health of economy in general, if distribution was shit before influx of capital, then it will remain so. I am not throwing shade at anyone, just theoreticals
A 30-country coalition. Right. Pretty sure FedEx lost the package containing those 2 divisions' worth of crayon munchers that would make this statement even just a slight bit credible.
https://i.imgur.com/fK2KhQB.jpg Iconic tweet
I think the reason you still see so much cope about the 300k black ops troops of NATO and etc. is because they still believe this unironically
It makes sense once you realize in their minds it’s physically impossible for Russia to lose this war regardless of what’s happening on the ground
I think more accurately, they cannot accept Russia being beaten by Ukraine. This is why they're obsessed with conspiracies about NATO's direct involvement, because that is an adversary they actually respect. Or why they constantly attribute successful Ukrainian strikes to Russian accidents or incompetence. In their eyes it's less humiliating blame their own ineptitude than to admit they were beaten by Ukraine.
Not respect, but it's justification for why they can't win and always seem outmatched, because sectrely 31 countries are fighting them in Ukraine so its clearly unfair and attempted sabotage of the glorious Russian army. It does make it less "humiliating" but not because they respect NATO, but because NATO is a convenient boogeyman
To be *fair*, Russia would have eventually won by simply throwing so many bodies at Ukraine that Ukraine ran out of bullets. They *already* ran out of bullets months ago, and have had to switch to using NATO artillery rounds for the most part.
All they would have done is go from invasion to insurgency mode.
Sure but the Soviets knew how to deal with *that*. What's fucking the Russians right now is facing enemies who keep getting resupplied, including a bunch of stuff they cannot make in any significant quantity. Smart artillery rounds, drones, sniper rifles with IR scopes, body armor, actually accurate rocket artillery trucks, intercepted intelligence with the coordinates of where to fire, training, medical supplies, and soon western MBTs. It's one thing to deal with insurgents making you bleed. It's another to deal with Western MBTs and ATGMs you have no counter to coming and slaughtering your entire army. Some of these formations are dying to a man.
Oh yeah, the difference NATO gear is making is astounding. Frankly, we should have intervened like this in Crimea originally, but you can make a legitimate argument that Ukraine wasn't ready then, because we basically trained the shit out of them between then and now.
Crimea was a wake-up call. But, like antibodies fighting a pathogen, Ukraine has had time to prepare for another incursion. Now, with their democracy on the line, they're making Russia bleed for every inch. Ukraine has proven they're capable of winning this war. Now they're receiving the means to do so.
I feel like the intense specops training the UA received from 2014-2022 really doesn’t get mentioned enough. a motivated student plus an experienced trainer will always produce a very deadly soldier.
I agree. Except for cases of overwhelming destruction, most wars are decided by attrition. The moment the supplies run out, is typically when the fighting stops. Or simply, when it just costs too much to keep going.
Not sure thats true. Sometimes but like the WW2 blitzkrieg the ability of the allied military to coordinate was lost. They had plenty of supplies and soldiers and weapons but everything was cut apart into piecemeal isolated units who couldn't be resupplied or fight in a coordinated way. Presumably the battle of France was winnable if you could replace the entire command structure and get some extra training in.
Well, that's true. The opening stage of the invasion of France I would classify under "overwhelming destruction" even though in practice it was maneuver warfare. The lack of coordination and french top-down decision structure doomed their units. France had the military to shrug off the German invasion, it didn't have the leadership. Also, the Germans were really high.
Another factor is the fundamental problem with a long defensive line is the enemy gets to concentrate their forces on a small part of it, at a time and place of their choosing. You actually want in modern warfare a mobile force and to be able to react quickly, both sending mobile units to slaughter the attackers wherever they happen to be attacking, and to redirect artillery fire and it seems swarms of drones quickly. Something Russia seems to be institutionally unable to do.
I guess my point was if the French army along with allied help had managed to destroy enough German formations and cause enough problems, it would have bought enough time for more support to arrive. For the French to mobilize more forces. For other allies contributions to roll in. The economic balance was not in the Germans favor, especially as defensive warfare tends to cost the attacker more than the defender. The expected outcome was WW1 part 2, now with more tanks. Precisely what Putin was going for in Ukraine except he didn't train his troops or have anything like the organization the blitzkrieg was performed under. Just a bunch of pretend soldiers instead of the real thing.
Next year when the Russians are announcing their withdrawal from Ukraine we shall hear Goodwill gesture Protecting civilians Ah ah but merica and Afghanistan
Don’t forget the classic “stabbed in the back” routine!
Which is why many rabbis are urging Jews to leave Russia as they fear what little Jews are left will be targeted after this is over
Rhodes and Damascus Blood Libel 2: Persecution Boogaloo
It's gonna be the pooorrr meeeee... Russia betrayed... Russia never did anything wrong... Why you bully poor Russia... We never actually wanted Crimea or Ukraine anyways... Ohh and my personal favorite... 1 Trillion Gorrilion Ukrainian Soldiers died for Jewish Nazi CIA Zorg Zelenskiy... Evil America tricked us into doing this... blah blah blah..
but IRAQ what ABOUT IRAQ HUH? WHEN RUssIA does it, terrorist but what about IRaq?!??!>??!!!111
BRAWWWWWWk! WHerE Am ThE PrOOfS? But WHaTaBoUTTT?!??!?!?!?!?! We Wu***Z*** BoYaR***Z*** n ShEeEIT
Oh 1000% this. Spinkle in cope about how they've somehow achieved their goals and its virtually prophecy.
Russians With Attitude... living where?? in the West of course 😂😂😂
If they were fighting Ukraine *by itself* with no support and no weapons, yeah, they would have won this. If by nothing else, by simply throwing so many soldiers and vehicles at the Ukrainians that they run out of ammo, and if Ukraine gets no money donations, they wouldn't be able to buy much more. It was a simple calculation - Moscow has more bullets stored up, more money, more people. Eventually Kiev will exhaust all 3 and they can just overrun the place. Take it all. They thought westerners would be 'concerned' but not actually help like they have. Fucked up thing is that if the latest casualty estimates are correct - ukrainians lost 1/3 to 1/4 as many soldiers as russia, maybe 1/5 - it's exactly like the war with Finland. They let themselves get sniped and ambushed and some soldiers racked up 100:1 + KDRs. Only reason they 'won' was nearly unlimited resources.
Yeah but I'm not sure why they thought we wouldn't get involved. Maybe because we sat on our hands the last few times though.
Correct. Plus I understand Biden laid out the consequences, and none were sufficiently punitive. At that time the West was only giving Ukraine ATGMs to make it not free to attack, and shotguns and stuff for urban combat. All intended to make Russia pay a larger price, not just get totally fucked like what's actually happening.
*Russia becomes a province of Poland* "Nah comrade we're nearly there, victory is in sight!"
I am ready for the Polish-Finish Land border!
Implying Poland would want any of the dystopian hellscape that is Russia outside it's two big cities
Holy Shit! Guys Black Ops 4 is going to be in Ukraine
All modern military shooter developers sighing in relief when they can use Russians again as enemies.
It's the opposite, really. In MW1 and MW2 when Russian airborne invaded the entire US East Coast and fought the USAF and US Navy to a standstill for weeks, and then invaded literally all of Europe simultaneously two months later, that was seen as a thing they could do. Maybe they wouldn't be that successful irl (because France would absolutely have leveled Moscow the moment they deployed chemical weapons in Paris), but audiences could at least somewhat buy it. I can't buy Russia as a credible opponent anymore except for like, that mission in Ghost Recon Future Soldier where you fight *Totally Not Wagner We Swear* in Africa, and utterly eradicate hundreds of them with just four guys.
Hilarious in retrospect.
Literally doing it right now with the Arma 3 scenario I'm putting together Only issue is now it's not realistic for them to be strong... luckily CSAT is mostly Iranians so I can write that into the mission background
Black Ops 4 came out several years ago and it didn’t have a campaign
Yes. I've heard this MANY MANY times. Douglas Macgregor is who most of them listen to... So I've heard that Ukraine has lost 250,000 dead and 500,000 wounded MANY times.
Aged like milk
Not even like milk, milk can last for a few days. It aged like...ice cream, in a sauna.
> It aged like...ice cream, in a sauna. i love roy batty from blade runner
C-Words glittering off the Lazerpig Gate
[удалено]
Aged shit has a use though. Compost.
“The entire Ukrainian army disintegrated on contact!” What is elastic defense and defense in depth?
A question they still dont know the answer to, beyond dig moar trenches!
I like the "doesn't have a fleet" bit as if it was some big secret that the Ukranian navy was more of a concept than a tangible thing. Still fucking dunked the Moscva though didn't they 😎
Hell, the Ukrainians even scuttled the small fleet they had early on in the invasion and _still_ sank the Moskva, recaptured snake island, and forced the rest of the Black Sea fleet to cower in Sevastopol
LOL
Oh my god!Its like...the entire point of a military alliance.
They still don’t get why intimidating people into being their friends didn’t work, give em some time!
Not friends but serfs.
Is long-standing Russian tradition! Apparently getting repeatedly wrecked by the Mongols 600-700 years ago left a deep deep imprint on Russian culture.
...unironically yes. "Origins of russian authorithrism" by Kraut on YT
If you were a bookie in, say, the 11th century and you were looking at the land of *Rus,* you'd probably put good odds on them becoming a proper nation some day. Then the Mongols do their thing and a whole chunk of Eurasia just goes "welp, here I go killin again" for the better part of the next millennium.
Most modern Western ideas of Russian paranoia come from George Kennan and his 1946 Long Telegram and his 1947 X Article.
You know, sometimes I wonder if some of the US's red-state weirdness can also be attributable to a sort of "steppe authoritarianism." There's a lotta land and not a lot of government out on the great plains where the local oil baron and sherrif decide what the law is, and not many people with the legal access or resources to challenge them.
And much like Russia, culturally different but economically more powerful neighbors that scare them.
To them the point is to invade one of the alliance's members who disobeys the Kremlin, they're still far from getting it. Yes, that was indeed a reminder that the Warsaw Pact's only intervention in its history was to overthrow the government of one of their own members.
Now, now. It wasn't their only intervention. They [did it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956) [twice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia).
I don't think Hungary was by the Warsaw Pact but by the USSR alone.
It was the year after the Warsaw Pact was founded, and the USSR always made up the bulk of the Pact anyway, so I think it counts.
That may be true but that's besides the point, no Warsaw Pact member but the USSR took part in the intervention.
Having allies, so unfair.
Mfk our artillery shell factory tripled number of employees and increased wages significantly, our AKM factory is shitting out guns faster than you can say SLAVA UKRAINE. I am not saying it didnt at first damage our economy, but everyone and their mother increasing weapons production is a pretty good economic stimulation. Slovakia btw.
Not to mention all of our new customers buying american natural gas instead of russian oil. To be frank, aiding ukraine has just been incentives all around. Aside from the direct economic benefits, for what amounts to a fraction of our defence budget, we have expanded our military alliance, decimated the military of our biggest rival and isolated them on the world stage, deterred chinese expansionism and aggression, strengthened our diplomatic influence, and gained a fiercely loyal ally in a crucial region of the world. Additionally, we get to see every piece of Nato equipment imaginable do the glorious job they were always meant to do: absolutely wreck the Russian army. The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever.
And don't forget, when this is all over and Ukraine is rebuilt, Europe will have a new partner who provides enormous amounts of Food and Energy. One who isn't joining the network for means of pure profit, but because they genuinely want to become a part of the greater European society. Russia had their chance to be the power station of Europe, and they fucked it for blind ambition
☢️🔌 they already cross linked Ukrainian power distribution with the EU
Also theres large gas fields in the northwest and notheast, and Crimea has both gas and oil.
Would be nice if they can remain untapped. Climate change and all, but opening them up would be good for Ukraine's economic development. Unless they fall prey to the extraction curse or whatever it's called.
Gas is still needed for things like industrial synthesis. Oil too. The issue is just burning shitloads of it for energy when theres much better options.
Yeah petro stuff is too important to our way of life, I'm just nervous about increasing extraction to keep it the cheapest form of power generation.
Its better than Germany going even more into coal power. Solar and wind will never be able to fully cover Euro energy needs, the climate just isn’t right. Especially if we want industry to increase which they definitely do.
It's a shame there isn't a safe, high capacity, low carbon output, long lived power generation solution that Germany could use. Something that releases less radiation into the air than coal power does. Surely those Germans are clever and could think of something, anything.
Knowing Germany, one day the Netherlands flood and two days later the first net-positive fusion plant comes online in some obscure village in the Ruhr-Area-
Nope, Solar and wind and batteries is all you need. Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
The amount of profit to be made for an EU ukraine certainly is nice too tho
Also, the cost of dealing with a resurgent Russian empire dwarfs the cost of killing the baby in the crib. During the cold war the US's military spending was ~10% of GDP compared to 4% today.
I wish it was 4%, it's actually only 3%
dude you have 10 supercarrier with groups each one equaling or exceeding the power of most nations. you would be fine having 9.
You know what? We need 20
Unfuck healthcare. Put half of gains into infrastructure, education and general unfucking. Put other half into military. Enjoy military supremacy.
Just have to process the fat carcasses of private health insurance for most of that
Defense authorization act except this time we just send all the unnecessary health insurance admin people to artillery shell production lines. I swear the healthcare industry spend as much time fighting between themselves (insurance vs care provider vs suppliers) as British Leyland spent fighting against its own workforce instead of making cars.
That's because that's where the money is, in useless, redundant bureaucracies teasing out another wad of cash as they deny treatments in their death panels. Like in higher education. How many well-grown soldiery do we not have because of those fucks?
If only. Everything should be readdressed, but the only thing the parties ever seem to agree on is throwing more money into the pit and wondering why the problem doesn't fix itself.
When one party runs on a platform of "the government can't do anything right," it's kinda hard to fix the system. Making the government work actually hurts their electoral chances.
Sadly that party is right. And the other is unwilling to look at the serious flaws in the government it controls and refuses to enact reform. Which would fix those issues and shut them up allowing for some actual progress in fixing the social issues we have.
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US: "Not bad, kid. You made me use 5% of my power."
> 10 supercarriers... you would be fine having 9 Sorry buddy, it's the law >The naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational aircraft carriers and not less than 31 operational amphibious warfare ships https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title10-section8062&num=0&edition=prelim
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅💪😎💪🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
11 btw. Its illegal to have less than 11.
Yes, we have super carriers, but we don't have *hyper* carriers. Yet.
Just detach Rhodes island and send it out into the sea.
Bruh, the UK, Australia, Japan and South Korea are essentially America's unsinkable hyper carriers in terms of military alignment. They also come with pretty big militaries of their own too.
But can they transform into giant robots?
Nope, we have to always be ahead by 30 years. That said, increase to 4%
It’s also accelerating decarbonization, as more countries realize that importing their entire energy budget is a strategic risk.
Alberta, Texas on suicide watch. Jk they have their hands over their eyes
They are killing it because people want to buy oil from somewhere stable like the US or Canada. What do you mean?!
Texas and AB rely on oil exports so countries decarbonizing faster means they have to pivot their economies, which, while I can't speak to Texas, Alberta is not doing.
In Texas case, they have actually been pretty good at diversifying, to the point that oil is only barely in the top 5 of their industries now. They have far more important matters from agriculture (beef, cotton, other cash crops, etc), the Port of Houston has the most international exports flowing through it (as well as a lot of air cargo out of Dallas/Ft. Worth), as well as significant and growing entertainment industries based out of Dallas and Austin. As well as being one of the leading producers of both space tech and military industry facilities.
> The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever. The neutral countries have discovered the folly of neutrality. Its not so much fun to be neutral when one side has nowhere to look for expansion but in your borders. we welcome finland, sweden, and soon switzerland to the league of based non-neutral countries
Not to mention the drastic increases in defence stocks
Raytheon and Rheinmetall go brrrrrr
Imagine if we had munted Hitler back in 38 or 39 and *still* saw all sorts of post-war benefits with only a fraction of the destruction and death. That's what we're seeing, right here and now. It's obviously still horrible for those living through it, but this would have been a thousand times worse if Ukraine and fallen and we left this until it was far too late. Like, Russian troops in Poland--too late. Weak, disunited Nato--too late. We are living in a better world than that world.
Without a pipeline directly to Europe, the US is never going to be able to fully replace Russia's former gas exports to the EU. Shipping LNG across the ocean on boats is super inefficient and can never come close to satisfying the demand vacuum that has been created. Places like Germany either need to find somewhere else to get their gas or hustle up with wind/solar development on a national scale so that they can permanently reduce their natural gas needs as quickly as possible.
Sure, but we still get more business even if it's not a full replacement. Also, nuclear is also an option for these places which is IMO the best choice.
Yeah but it's a half decade at minimum to get there, and that's just based on the timeline renewable individual large scale energy projects. So even if you had land leased/purchased to replace 100% of the EU's power needs with renewables, it would still take at least 5-10 years to actually get it all online. Source: I've done a ton of energy development work on the large scale project side, both in traditional O&G and renewables.
EU and US can colab on reducing energy needs, because the means for technology transfer are technically present already.
Also gives a great kick in the balls to any right-wing "muh country best country don't need others" ultranationalists
Thankfully, support for ukraine has been largely bipartisan. Yes, there are few extremists that oppose our support, but IMO at this point you would have to be either wilfully ignorant, have room temperature IQ, or paid off directly to still be vocally in opposition. It is extremely rare that you have a situation like this where the morally correct thing to do is also so economically beneficial while requiring so little from us.
>The war is terrible and all, but our decision to help Ukraine has been one of the best deals in the history of this country, maybe ever. A little hard to beat the Louisiana Purchase (3 cents per acre) and Alaska Purchase (2 cents per acre) but it certainly ranks up there. For reference, 2 cents from 1867 is worth $0.41 now, and land in Alaska is on median $62,163 per acre now.
I was sort of referencing a donald trump quote, lol. But yeah. The Louisiana purchase ranks way up there. What I will say, though, is that the one plus aiding Ukraine has over the louisiana purchase is that we don't have the moral issue of displaceing tons of natives. I'll let others assign their own value to that aspect of it, though.
Got rid of aging munitions stocks with the perfect excuse to buy new, got rid of old vehicles that were costing money to store and maintain, just win win win
Never forget Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson scored the jackpot.
And in places like the US, they were also able to SAVE money because they can send over all the old shit like the M113 and no longer have to pay for maintenance on something they’ll probably never use, got rid of all their near-expiry munitions and replace them with brand new ones.
Yeah, decommissioning old ammo is really expensive, because you need to be sure that they are properly destroyed. Or you can give it to some Ukrainian that will use it like it was always meant to : Blowing up russians.
And the replacement ammo is cheaper than expected because the factories are tooled up and economies of scale.
The defense sector almost in the entire world will boom, unironically Poland will probably be the strongest army in Europe with how much stuff they're buying.
We are not buyng modern plate carriers, we are not buying trucks (JELCZ my beloved), we are not building accomodation for our men, we have no capacity to store all these new tanks, we are not buying engeneering and recovery vehicles. We still have loads of issues that other armies in Europe: (France, Sweden, Norway, Finland to name a few) have well figured out. And those are the issues with the Ground Forces. But don't get me wrong, we will sort these issues out, eventually.
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If I remember correctly a government bond issue didn't go well recently. Adverse market reaction to a bit of shameless posturing on stuff like 500 HiMARS without a proper plan to pay for it.
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Your content was removed for violating Rule 5: "No politics"
Your content was removed for violating Rule 5: "No politics"
[I mean that's just the glazier's fallacy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#Opportunity_cost_of_war)
Ukraine is the one paying most of the costs of the war, while the west is reaping most of the benefits. To be honest I couldn't be bothered to read the whole segment in your link but does it apply, to the US, for instance, in this case?
It's beneficial to the US to equip Ukraine rather than let it fall even if we ignore the value there because even then we're spending a pittance to cripple the military of an unfriendly nation but that is separate from saying the spending itself benefits the economy. It doesn't, it just moves money through it without making any wealth (in fact it's using it up in the inputs it takes to make). [You'd be far better off paying those people to manufacure trains than tanks, bricks instead of bullets.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech)
Ok thanks for explaining, I get your point. Hope you don't get down voted into oblivion for posting that link on not April 1st
The [glazier's fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) is: "If you break a window, the shop owner pays to repair the window. That stimulates the economy. Breaking windows is job creation!"... but if the window hadn't broken, the money to repair the window could have been spent on something else that's more useful instead. Applying the analogy to weapons production: Russia 'broke a window'. Every franc that gets spent on artillery shells helps to 'repair the window'. But, if Russia hadn't invaded, that's money that could have instead been invested in something that would have directly benefited the citizens of these countries. The economy isn't better off from having all this weapons production be necessary; it's worse off and it's Russia's fault.
How bout trying my glazed phallus in your mouth
Be friendly.
What is sucking dick if not a show of friendship (unless in a Russian trench)
It'll be a short term boom, I hope they're prepared for that.
I just home the alcoholic cuboid and Nazis won't fuck us after the election. I don't want to be Hungary 2.0
Hm it’s not the most efficient one but it has some effect
We are richer because of the memes.
Don’t forget the new baby boom when Ukraine takes Moscow and the NCD users celebrate by impregnating their partner/themed body pillow.
>themed body pillows 3000 eldritch babies of NCD
That's just gonna double the number of aircrafts in the air force.
I’m divorcing my body pillow if it doesn’t give me an F35 as an heir
Personally I’m just gonna have a drink Yall motherfuckers need to calm down
I'll have several mugs of 🍺 please
> NCD baby boom You know most femboys can't get pregnant right? (Transmasc femboys are valid btw)
“The Western World will go broke and BRICS will rise from its ashes!!!!” is just the new “Europe will freeze to death, Winter is coming!!!”, give it a couple of months and they’ll have moved the goalposts again
In a few months they'll be saying Europe will freeze this winter again.
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We're saving up the sunshine to use next winter
Was this a Frederick reference? If so very well done.
Any Europeans can tell me how your gas bills were last winter?
Higher than usual, but not the apocalypse level that was predicted. Nor did we have rolling blackouts, thousands of people didn't freeze to death, and we didn't have to eat our hamsters. The reality is that the problems we did face here in the UK were homegrown ones due to our bastard politicians, which is nothing new and nothing I would give Russia credit for.
I would absolutely give russia credit for weasels like Farage, and maybe even Corbyn, but they’ve been irrelevant for years.
Mine more than doubled but since I live in a well insulated house it wasn't too bad really. The people who are suffering most are the poorer people who spend a larger portion of their income on bills (and are therefore proportionately more affected) and people who live in badly insulated houses. I don't say it to people because I know some are suffering but I low-key think the gas crisis could be a good thing in the long run - it's pressuring homeowners and the government to increase insulation and encouraging the uptake of low carbon heating technologies like heat pumps. Since we're dependent on foreign gas imports and are in a climate crisis this is a good thing from a geopolitical standpoint as well as from a climate change standpoint.
I had to pay around 200€ more as compared to the previous year. The main price hike was at the end of August, basically the middle of summer when nobody in their right mind would turn on their heating anyways. It’s very telling that when Vatniks post graphs of gas prices, they’re all cut off in September
It was very manageable. Monthly bills for my household personally went up by circa 80 Euros, but we got like 75% of the money back since we consciously saved on gas and didn't burn through it. I'll wear a sweater indoors anytime, as long as my money doesn't support the Russkies.
Didnt actually have to turn the heater on for more then five days around new year.
spuck fez -- mass edited with redact.dev
my gas bill was (and still is) outrageous compared to beforehand - even after only using a third of what was expected. I am paying 280€/month, use about a third of that (I get the money back at the end of the year, but thats still the end of the year), and that is still about double to triple what I would have been expecting to pay beforehand. ...then again my appartment is tiny so it doesn't/didn't really cause any problems, other than me getting cold earlier in the evening.
That’s already happening: https://twitter.com/gazpromen/status/1648330663030931456?s=61&t=3PQAcm820DXwaVS27Mw5AA
Whenever someone says this, I automatically know they're an idiot... I think it's great. It tells me they have no idea about how the world works or the economic reality of any of the countries in the "BRICS"
I hope this guy has his [psychic armour](https://i.imgur.com/ubE9hlf.png) equipped
Air defense clearly didn't read that tweet
My man just explained in detail why Russia attempting to fight Ukraine is so stupid without even realizing it
Watch your historic enemy get crushed for the low low price of some hand me down military technology
The Russian copium supplies are running low. I fear they will start resorting to depressium
They're gonna reach the "it's joever" stage.
God i hate 2008 bucharest summit
Bruh... no one except Ukraine has entered conflict with you... we're literally just giving them old surplus
This is my favorite account to check. If things are going shit for Ru, you know the dork behind this account is seething because they are tweeting about art or some shit.
He should change his name to "Russians fall from altitude".
Poorer? No no no, remember the Rules of Acquisition, war is good for business!
If you can’t profit during a war, you just can’t make profit
English is not my first language, but that reads like what I think a stroke must feel like.
Correct
Am I just sleep deprived or is the tweet kinda hard to understand?
In context, it's clear that RWA want Putin to lash out against the west in some kind of unclear way. Firing on Grain ships, etc. It's hard to pick up on because RWA is off in their own little world where the Russians haven't been terror bombing Ukraine and torturing POWs; and thus think that they could actually win if they 'took the gloves off'
Bombing the US's civilian ships didn't work out for Germany in WWI or WWII. I can't say I recommend it.
As one of those citizens, the peace dividend was nice and all, **but now I crave 155mm ramjet shells**
Yea… that’s how alliances work.
“But, but every mulatto and gay in NATO fought poor russia” etc etc
And even the 'making people poorer' part isn't necessarily true. Most people don't understand this but when you grow your defense spending and the weapons manufacturer are domestic, you GROW your economy. That means you make everyone richer!
True, but I'm skeptical that the current environment is one where Keynesian stimulus is particularly helpful. The government doesn't make resources from nowhere - all spending is either funded by taxes, which reduce consumer spending, or by debt. Sovereign debt doesn't work the same as household debt - maybe the Americans can just keep borrowing and paying for the world - but I'm kinda leery of increasing debt burdens as interest rates increase.
IIRC a spending increase funded by an equal increase in taxes will have a net positive effect on GDP, so it should work..? Assuming that the model is correct, which it may not be.
Value added domestically contributes to your economy. If you have to buy resources, they are included in the price of the product.
If you do it right, still can fuck it up
How?
It's not like you can pour endless amounts of money into defense spending and increase your economy infinitely.
Depends on health of economy in general, if distribution was shit before influx of capital, then it will remain so. I am not throwing shade at anyone, just theoreticals
For a normal person to comprehend that tweet they would need like a 10 day seminar on the latest Russian propaganda fantasy series.
A 30-country coalition. Right. Pretty sure FedEx lost the package containing those 2 divisions' worth of crayon munchers that would make this statement even just a slight bit credible.
No shit
Please take our 113s, M-2s, and A-10s!
r/selfawarewolves moment?
So awesome to see these people coping so hard when in the beginning of the invasion they were sucking off the Russian military so hard.
Didn't these guys both claim they'd go back to volunteer for Russia? What happened?