Interesting vid on US support to Ukraine.
Gives a bit of an overview of where the money goes.
Gives a bit of an overview of where the money goes.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Very gratifying to see those Bradley IFVs, Patriot missile systems, etc. saving Ukrainian lives!
I think all the pro-Putin Russians I've met have been men. My partner's law office partner married a Russian woman. She said her family pressured her to marry a Russian guy, but she saw most were unreliable and she married an American with no Russian ancestry. She's the only woman in her generation of her family who is still married.
My wife’s Russian friend told her that many russian men dump their wives after the wife gets older than 40. I guess keeping up appearances is all that matters kind of like we see with their messed up prosecution of their “Special Military Operation”.
DanCar
Active Member
One can theorize that due to many years of war, men maybe in short supply, so going for a refresh is an attractive opportunity. I know of rich guys in the U.S. that have done this, and know from second hand sources of Russians doing this.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
"[L]eadership class"?... You are referring to The Dictators enablers in the Military Dictatorship Mafia State here... And just because they tell you something you choose(?) to believe them(!)... And they say we Swedes are often naive to the point of being gullible... Dear World... Remember Maskirovka and the Russian 'national sport' of lying in X amount of ways?!?... Doesn't seem that way...
And?...
1) I read a couple of sentences before i figuratively threw up on my laptop keyboard!
From the first article:
"
...] This week, the world has been coming to terms with the latest round of conflict in Ukraine, a continuation of a conflict that began with the Russian invasion in 2014. There has been much negative comment about the lost opportunities for diplomacy in the intervening years. While this is true, it is also worth considering how recent events fit into historic Russian concerns about security issues along its western borders.
In a significant telegram in 1946, the US ambassador to the USSR, George Kennan, noted that "at [the] bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity". This was an extremely accurate summation and reflected the fact that Russia’s attitude to the West and its influence along its western borders had been informed over the preceding centuries. [My u.] [...
"
--> Sounds like blatant parroting of Kremlin Propaganda to me! The year is no longer 1946! As I and others have pointed out, Russia has NUCLEAR WEAPONS! NO-ONE – I REPEAT – NO-ONE is going to attack Russia!!!
From the second article:
"...] Does psychiatry have a constructive role to play in helping world leaders understand the psychodynamics of societal paranoia? [..."
--> Again: What "societal paranoia"!?! Seems like a perfect example of 'Garbage in, Garbage out'!
2) A lot of people in Academia are obviously complete and utter idiots! Case in point – this professor:
3) ~2-3% of Climate Scientists refuse to back up that humans are causing Global Warming. How do we know that the authors of the articles you posted aren't A) completely incompetent and/or B) bought and paid for by the Russian Military Dictator?...
Not applicable on a Military Dictatorship like Russia. Why? Because there is NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH, NO FREEDOM OF PRESS, NO RIGHT TO ORGANIZE, NO FREEDOM IN ACADEMIA AND NO FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS!!!
That means that we, nor anyone else can KNOW ANYTHING with certainty about Russian culture as a whole!
I'm going to go pretty much OT here so feel free to skip this part...
As I understand it you have had a relatively successful career in science and/or engineering. Seems to be reasonably within the American mainstream to me...
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OK, "ruling class" would have been a more accurate term.
Have you even known an individual with a serious paranoia problem? They can go to extremes to protect themselves from threats that really don't exist. My partner had someone renting a room from her some years ago who has a pretty severe paranoia/anxiety problem. She started unplugging the microwave at night because she was afraid the microwave was emitting dangerous waves when it wasn't running.
Despite her nuttiness they remained friends and she's just as nutty today. She's gotten to an age where she needs others to help her, but she's so paranoid about disclosing any of her information to anyone that she's making her life a lot more difficult. She's become a nightmare to deal with.
The Kremlin has never put out any propaganda that they are paranoid. Like an individual with paranoia and in denial about it, they try to put up the front they are a sophisticated and strong country. The analysis from the outside is nowhere near as rosy as the Kremlin wants to project.
A French man who traveled the world in the 1820s and wrote about his travels wrote about his experiences in Russia and noted a xenophobia then.
I know there is a push back against cultural relativism, and people have sometimes taken it too far to excuse bad behavior rather than use it as an explanation. The mistake people make with it is to excuse behavior based on a person's culture.
But I think it is important to understand the different cultural soups people grow up in. Understanding where another culture is can be a critical ingredient in weakening them and eventually bringing them down in a conflict. Ukrainian leadership understand Russian culture very well, they were under its thumb for decades to centuries (depending on the part of Ukraine their families are from), but the Russians have never bothered to even acknowledge that Ukraine is a different culture with different values. The Ukrainians have used this to lure the Russians into traps over and over again. They know how Russians will react when they do X, so they make sure the Russians pay dearly for their knee jerk reactions.
Cultural relativism - Wikipedia
2) A lot of people in Academia are obviously complete and utter idiots! Case in point – this professor:
There are a lot of idiots in academia and I can be quick to point out the idiots when I see them. There were quite a few people predicting a Russian victory in this war as recently as late last year and early this year. I pointed out their false thinking a number of times here.
Those things can cloud the picture somewhat, but it doesn't prevent understanding the culture. Most Ukrainians and especially the Ukrainian leadership understand Russian culture better than you or I ever could. Those who are old enough to remember the USSR lived inside Russian culture. A large percentage of Ukrainians have family living in Russia and have interacted with them quite a bit.
The world also has a large number of Russian ex-pats. Quite a few are unconscious of their cultural biases and stumble through the world reflecting the cultural values they grew up with while the more insightful ex-pats will be quick to tell you how their native culture differs from their adopted culture if you talk with them.
Just because I learned to mimic American culture to get along well enough to make a living and not scare the horses doesn't mean I'm not a weirdo on the inside. I haven't traveled the world, but I have seen clear cultural differences in the places I have traveled, both inside and outside the US. There are always individuals who are outliers in every culture, but the ones who don't stand out as the weirdo everyone avoids have learned to put on a veneer for whatever their local culture is.
I have a friend who was born and raised in the US Deep South. Born in Georgia and grew up in Alabama. When he came to this area for the first time (Pacific Northwest), he felt profoundly "at home" in a way he has never felt anywhere else. He said he feels a lot of armor he has to wear at home slough off shortly after getting here. He would like to move here, but the much more expensive housing market has prevented that. He's good at faking being a Southern "good old boy", but it's not him.
I have other friends who are fish in the wrong cultural pond too.
The Ukrainians are claiming a lot of artillery taken out this week. The Russian artillery losses for this month are already up to 868. The Ukrainians may take out 900 this month.
My Partner has been back to Kyiv twice since the war started to visit her parents, who still live in Kyiv.
She is also old enough to remember living under the rule of the USSR.
The one thing to understand is the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians WILL NEVER go back to living under Russian rule.
Makes you as normal as anyone.
We are all weirdo's...some just manage to keep the internal screaming down to a tolerable level better than others.
Which is why they are fighting so hard. Russia lost this war in February 2022. They just haven't come to terms with that fact yet. Just like the US lost Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan long before pulling the plug.
If a war doesn't resolve quickly with a clear winner, it will always devolve into a war of attrition. A war of attrition can have big wins for one side or the other, but a war of attrition ends when one side either runs out of the ability to keep fighting or runs out of the will to fight. In WW II the Allies wore down the ability to fight. Germany and Japan kept some manufacturing going until the end of the war, but their ability to make war goods was badly degraded by the last year of the war.
When neither side can really reach the other's means of production, the will to fight is probably going to become the deciding factor. Though an economic collapse could bring about the end of the war too. Losing the will to fight could come from the government, but it could also come from the people either through rebellion among the civilian population or among the army. Rebellions among the military is what brought about Russia's withdrawal from WW I and it ended the entire war when Germany started having rebellions among the navy which began to spread.
At this point, a lot of the Russian civilian population are just trying to ignore the war, but the army doesn't really want to fight. The people running the country are desperately trying to find a way to win the war, but it's too late. Ukraine is too strong at the point. If the US got a new president who wanted to cut aid to Ukraine, the war would continue. Ukraine's casualties would likely go up, and Russia may be able to gain a bit of ground here and there, but the war would grind on.
To actually capture Ukraine and hold on to it Russia would need an occupying force of at least 2 million and they would have to station that force in Ukraine for at least a decade. Russia can't arm the troops they have now. Their military industry can't equip 2 million men to fight and their economy can't handle 1/4 of the most productive age of men in their population serving as guards over a giant prison camp. Russia has a bigger population, but the economy is too weak to support the effort needed to conquer a country the size of Ukraine.
There is no path for Russia to win. Not all paths lead to a clear Ukrainian victory, but they have the only path that leads to a clear win.
There are no signs that Ukraine is going to give up the will to fight, so Russia losing the will to fight is the most likely outcome. It may take a while if the Russians want to be stubborn, but Russia is eating their seed corn at this point. The army is being burned up and the longer this goes on, the longer its going to take to rebuild.
Considering how corrupt Russia is, I doubt they will ever have an army of much significance after this. The only scenario where I think they may rebuild would be the giant North Korea post war Russia, but I don't think that's likely. The Russian middle class has seen the outside world and know what it's like. The people who left, who are their best educated, wouldn't return, and there would be a constant drain of the middle class left in Russia defecting. They would end up with a small ruling class and a bunch of peasants who don't know anything.
They will have to train the peasants to make things before they can rebuild the military. They will also have to rebuild a middle class of managers to oversee these workers because the current manager class would probably flee the country. Many already have their families in Europe.
No internal screaming here. My partner is one of the few people I've known who thinks close to the way I do and we do occasionally give the other the "mothership look" (someone looking at you like you are a space alien who just stepped off the mothership) from time to time. She was working with a life coach trying to organize one of her businesses. The life coach at one point asked her to just tell her what was in my partner's mind at that moment. So my partner told her the 4 or 5 tracks of unrelated things going on in there. The life coach sat there in kind of stunned silence for a while.
I learned at an early age that I see the world differently from most people and too often if I blurted out what was actually on my mind, it usually confused people. I write such long essays because when I try to be short and to the point, I usually have to write the long essay anyway because few people understand what I'm talking about. Usually they read into the short piece ideas that aren't my point at all. I'm by no means more often correct than someone equally knowledgeable about a subject, I just come at it from a different angle than most.
I have a friend who is great at writing quips. I wish I was as good as he at it. Sometimes he can be too brief, but often he can encapsulate a complex thought into a few words. One of his quips is "everyone is somebody's weirdo".
My wife was in that group and was active when we lived in the area. Here locally there is more of a split between Russians and Ukrainians. There was a huge amount of tension at first between them. There are still a lot of Putin supporters here but there is sort of a truce between both sides where mostly everyone agrees not to discuss it. It isn't going to change anyone's mind and if you are Russian, and not against the atrocities committed against the Ukrainians, you likely never will be.
The wars in Russia have clearly taken their toll on the male population. Of the about 10 years I spent in Russian over a 30 year span, I'll just say it definitely worked to my advantage. In some areas, there was almost like a time-sharing agreement between women for men. Think of a rooster with a flock of hens.
I don't really want to discuss the number of Russian and Ukrainian women I dated but it was more than enough to draw some conclusions. The thing I never tired of watching my girlfriends wear high heels regardless of how bad the winter weather was. High heels were like studded tires to them in snowy and icy sidewalks. None of them ever knew what sweatpants were. Well, they did, but they'd never be caught dead wearing them. I've never seen women work so hard to take care of themselves and dress nicely. I have to say it had a positive effect on me. I always dressed better too as a result. The Beatles song of "Back in the USSR" really came to life for me when living there.
I have to say something that really surprised me were the core family values, for the most part, were very similar to the US, but probably closer to the 50's. Most women wanted a strong, reliable man who would provide for the family while they made the house a cozy place. There is a very famous saying in Russia and Ukraine. "The man is the head of the family. The woman is the neck!" The neck turns the head where to look. I learned very quickly that Russian and Ukrainian women while very feminine were also very strong. Think of Anna Kournikova crossed with a honey badger. While they could be very emotional, they were incredibly pragmatic too.
A side effect of this war, is going to be further imbalance the male/female demographics. Even a small shift in the ratios of males to females has a huge effect. This could shift the ratio a percent or two in the 18-40 demo. Not to mention the number of men that will be wounded with serious lifetime injuries that aren't fit for work and can't support a family. I remember seeing all the Afghan vets clustering around the train and metro stations begging for money. Most of these guys were missing at least one limb or more. The roughly 15k dead in Afghanistan had an obvious impact on the dating scene. Now you have both Russia and Ukraine severely impacted and the demographic crisis they both faced will be even worse.
I imagine after the conclusion of the war we'll see a massive resurgence in the Russian and Ukrainian Women's dating sites. Especially since there will be a lot of women, with kids, who lost their husbands in this war. A bag of potatoes from the government isn't going to feed them for long. The kids are really going to suffer from this. The orphanages were already a mess. My wife and I spent a lot of time supporting them financially and providing our time and resources. The conditions before were bad enough, I can only imagine how they've deteriorated and how many more kids will end up there.
Preliminary reports of an explosion at or near the Kerch bridge (as always caveat of need to verify with other sources).
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Nothing beyond that one photograph so far. Russia stations warships around the bridge to defend it with their AD systems. It's possible a Ukrainian drone boat found one. Or it's possible a drone boat found another fuel tanker headed to Crimea.
It also appears that the Iranians are developing that same problem with careless smokers that plagues Russia.
navguy12
Active Member
(Paywalled):
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/XAPYZGYXJ5EHZP5QPQDZZU4DAM.JPG)
A Ukrainian teen fought to get her brother out of Russia. The boy she found was almost unrecognizable
In summer 2022, Russia began a program to bring children from occupied Ukraine to summer camps inside Russia. An unknown number of those children have since been adopted into Russian families
www.theglobeandmail.com
Anybody else missing petit_bateau’s contributions to this thread?
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
I still disagree on all the points where you and I see things differently. But I'm going to save some time and make this short.
You've made your points and I've made mine. Others reading this thread can draw their own conclusions.
The Russian Ruble again is closing in on the magical 100 to the dollar mark as their citizens are experiencing growing inflation that is subsiding in the West. That likely means yet another Russian Central Bank interest rate hike around the corner. Their most recent interest rate hike was to 13%.
The Ukrainian economy, meanwhile is improving significantly following last year’s pummeling GDP contraction of ~30%. Ukraine’s government announced last week that their GDP had grown 19.5% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023.
The Ukrainian economy, meanwhile is improving significantly following last year’s pummeling GDP contraction of ~30%. Ukraine’s government announced last week that their GDP had grown 19.5% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023.
Fine with me.
Ukraine has pivoted their economy to a war economy. They can't natively produce enough weapons and ammunition to meet all their needs, but they are producing a lot more of their own armaments. One advantage to home made stuff is there are no externally imposed limits on where its used. Western arms supplying companies could squawk if something they give the Ukrainians is used inside Russia, but they can't complain if a home grown weapon is used there.
Ukraine is claiming 902 artillery knocked out this month with one day left to go. Big jump from last month which was 691. Total Russian losses in artillery for the year is 4385 (according to Ukraine's numbers). This doesn't count the artillery that is out of service due to worn out barrels or other worn out parts. Ukraine is claiming 6409 guns taken out so far.
Russia started the war with around 14,000 guns between active service and reserve. Some percentage of the reserve guns were unusable between rusting out in storage and guns that were worn out in the Chechen wars. Russia doesn't really have many sources for more guns. They may get some from North Korea, but that's about the only place they can get any. Russia isn't making any new guns, though some of the rehab shops they have set up may be rehabbing some of the broken artillery. Without the means to make new barrels they are going to be limited to taking parts off one gun to rehab another which is going to limit their ability to put guns back into service.
Overall, Russia must be feeling a pretty tight pinch in artillery availability.
Russia started the war with around 14,000 guns between active service and reserve. Some percentage of the reserve guns were unusable between rusting out in storage and guns that were worn out in the Chechen wars. Russia doesn't really have many sources for more guns. They may get some from North Korea, but that's about the only place they can get any. Russia isn't making any new guns, though some of the rehab shops they have set up may be rehabbing some of the broken artillery. Without the means to make new barrels they are going to be limited to taking parts off one gun to rehab another which is going to limit their ability to put guns back into service.
Overall, Russia must be feeling a pretty tight pinch in artillery availability.
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