I just can’t help to speculate that Kremlin has something really incriminating against these two. But again this is just pure speculation without any proofs.
“Sometimes when I try to understand a person’s motives I play a little game. I assume the worst. What’s the worst reason they could possibly have for saying what they say and doing what they do?”
With Elon it could be as simple as Putin stroking his ego. Elon has demonstrably incredibly thin skin and is very susceptible to flattery. Same with Trump too, to be honest. Remember when Trump said he wanted his own big military parade like Putin gets in Red Square every year?
If someone throws a punch, stepping back a bit will not only reduce the force of the blow, but it can put the attacker out of balance.
If Russia wants to keep making these kinds of military expenditures for a few hundred square feet of gains, so be it. If Adviivka is so important, make them pay dearly for it. It’s been a great opportunity for Ukraine to start more aggressive actions in the south west, IMHO.
On a sympathetic note, Russia is literally just throwing people into the fire. War is hell, but for fucks sake, give people a reason to fight. I am just trying to step back an look at this from a humanitarian point of view, is all. While I have zero sympathy for the Russian leadership, I can’t help but see the recent actions by Russia as an even more pointless waste of human life.
If Russia wants to keep making these kinds of military expenditures for a few hundred square feet of gains, so be it. If Adviivka is so important, make them pay dearly for it.
This is something very different. Russia is clearly attempting to surround the city, but they don’t have the flexibility to use Wagner like they did before. Other PMCs exist, of course, but none that are as effective as Wagner was. It looks like it was supposed to be a Blitzkrieg style of attack, but it’s not moving fast enough and is not coordinated enough to work.
If I am not mistaken, this particular Russian attack has been much more costly than Bakhmut and it seems that Ukraine is not willing to get pulled into urban fighting like before. Ukraine has been attacking equipment before it even reaches the front and their artillery has been just been firing at the same spots, holding the Russians back.
The footage from the front is just weird. Russia is sending lines of armor and personnel via the same routes, time and time again.
You see this is Russian genius at work… If it fails try, try again. Eventually it will fail again, then the best option is to try again because the enemy won’t expect that!
Imma say something that could be considered a lil wild:
Clap him and take his shit.
The US has done it before and we could do it again. It’s a kneejerk reaction, but he’s a Nazi so Idgaf. I’d settle for black site detention and disappropriate his companies, but either way, where tf are the “intelligence” agencies when ya need them?
Edit: I used the wrong multisyllabic word. Subsidization means something totally different than “take Elmo’s companies and give them to someone else”
give his companies to a collection of other billionaires (still undeserving but perhaps not a threat to the relative peace we’ve enjoyed) and you’d probably only hear praise for the move
Sorry, just seen way to many trolls and astrosuffers. Never know when things are a joke or deliberate attempt at polarization or rage baiting ^^ Think it’s good to be more serious on a community surrounding world news, so I was.
This isn't specific to Russia. There was a story when Strava was first getting big about off map and secure military installations in the US being visible from the guard patrol routes.
I was just thinking I want a list of russia’s senior officers with the dead scratched out for visual representation. Their losses are insane…
I was just thinking about the Iraqi Most Wanted playing cards given to US troops, and that if there was one for russia, I feel like half the deck would be dead officers by now.
For context, Russia has been at war with Ukraine for almost two years. They have lost 9 Generals. The US was in Afghanistan for two decades. We lost 1.
It’s hard to get a good picture imo. Russia is from what I understand top heavy so has more. Wiki says 1000 in 2008. Granted I don’t think all of them are active and there’s sectors like logistics that have generals, as well as different types of general although the wiki list only mentions the two highest types.
I would love to see an article that goes in depth on what this means for their army.
The US military (all branches) has just over 600 flag officers. If Russia has 1000 that’s still a massive difference between the loss rate. (.16% vs .9% or 139% difference) Also the US military also has logistics generals, not sure where you were going with that, could you please expand on it?
I’m not a numbers person so my math may be a tad wonky but that still looks like a significant impact.
If your just saying the army then the US has 218 as a max number of generals. 1 loss is almost .5% (.45%) of their numbers in 23 years. Russia lost almost 1% (.9%) in 2 years. At that pace in 23 years they should expect to lose almost 103 generals or over 10% of their flag officers.
That’s a rate of .5% of generals a year. The US is averaging that in 2 decades.
I don’t care how top heavy they are; 1% is an impactful amount of flag officers to lose in a year. Even if the impact is only to morale.
“For refusing to deploy on pointless assaults or for other offenses, some officers would strip them naked in winter cold and hold them in cold pits, beating them and threatening them with execution.”
How does Russia even have defense lines with these kind of tactics?
If I was forced conscripted from my home, force to die in a snow white field, and then beaten/shot at if I chose life.
I'd be fully honest.
I'd just buy my time until I could shoot the torturer in the forehead. If I am going to die while not being recognized as a human being, I would just act like a human being when the chance came.
Yeah I'm constantly confused by the idea that they could conscript 500k people who don't wanna be there, give them training and weapons, and they DON'T just take their officers out on day 1.
But I don't pretend to know any of the gritty facts of the situation either.
If you’re prepared to kill others families to save your own instead of the people threatening your family, well I hope the war comes to their families soon.
Im going to be honest, unless you've been in the situation, I don't give a single fuck about what you think you should do. It's a helluva lot easier to say you'd do it than it is to actually do it. It's fucked. Everything about it is fucked.
Russians with a spine have been systematically murdered by the Kremlin. The millions and millions of brave, good people killed by the Kremlin during the Soviet Union changed the genetic makeup of Russia.
Don't forget the brainwashing - all it takes is one fuckwit to give away the whole plan, so even if YOU are not, so long as THEY are you're screwed. And also the very real terror of what they will do to your family - even by dying you protect them, but by living via mutiny (probably followed by defection) it puts them at grave (if not certain?) risk.
Plus do not underestimate the power of going along with the crowd, even if you know it is wrong - that pressure to conform is HUGE. Studies do things like ask people what 4+3 is, with the answer delivered as a raising of hands and a whole classroom of plants (people being in on the study, knowing they are intentionally giving the wrong answer) and people will give an answer like "6" (rather than the true of one 7), presuming that they somehow missed something somewhere (rather than assume that EVERYONE who gave the incorrect answer is an absolute idiot), and just not wanting to stand out. In fact, this effect is apparently so powerful that I cannot be certain that even you or I, having been forewarned by knowing about these studies, still would not fall prey to it in some form or another where we may not as immediately recognize it in some new context.
Russia has centuries millennia of practice at what it is doing now.
I find it interesting that the people ripping apart Biden for "supporting genocide" completely forgot about Ukraine. If Trump had won, there would be genocides in both Palestine and Ukraine.
Hell, they were mostly meaningless for the last few major elections. If I remember right, they predicted Hillary would win for months before the election. Then when Biden ran against Trump, they were inconclusive and changed week by week so were again useless. Definitely didn’t predict what we got there. Same thing with the recent midterm election. They got issue 1 in Ohio right but it seems they can only predict minor landslides at best at the moment.
Yeah But on Lemmy, that's not the take. I've stopped opening threads on the conflict after reading articles because it's so obnoxious. I absolutely agree with you for the record.
Russian military culture is uber-fucked. Broken cultures create broken people. It doesn't excuse their vile crimes, but it does explain the higher rate of occurrence - people rarely emerge from weeks of torture and rape by their comrades-in-arms as stable individuals.
This is a really dumb take. Yes, there’s plenty of psychopaths in Russia, and I’m cheering for Ukraine to kick them out. Still we know there’s plenty of people who don’t want to be fighting.
That's people in general, man. Civic society is something that has to develop. It's not inherent to the human condition - and if suppressed, people generally try to keep their heads down and accept the line of their 'superiors' to safeguard their own asses.
we are talking about reality right now, not theory.. Russian corpses piling up in Ukraine.. rotting in ditches.. only a land full of psychopaths would tolerate it.. Russians must be animals.. but they not only tolerate it, they expect sympathy.. it's amazing..
hundreds of thousands of dead Russians isn't bothering you apparently, but a few harsh words on the internet, that's too much to bear i guess.. it only makes sense, have to hold onto something..
Why hesitate? They went through the trouble to sow the seeds, tending to them carefully to ensure strong growth, and now that they're finally bearing the fruits of their labour they don't like the way it tastes? They want to take it back? Tough titties. Russia has sown a lifetime of hate, and that's exactly what they'll reap.
Russian government is not the Russian people. For the last 30 years or so, the only bad coming out of Russia was trade wars and proxy wars, all exclusively perpetuated by the elite. The general masses were innocent.
The problem now is that the general public is complicit with this war war. Those that haven’t fled or rioted.
And their soldiers are committing unspeakable horrors beyond the bare “necessities” of war. Torture, rape, genocide. It’s sadistic what they have done.
I felt compassion for the first wave of unwitting soldiers who suddenly found themselves in a war, many from poor rural territories where joining the military was the only feasible way to provide for their family.
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