i think the calculus is if they repel the attacks of 1/3-1/2 total pre-invasion force, that will be the biggest wave. it’s very risky to try it again. heavy casualties for ukraine can be replenished with local men. but heavy losses for RU is catastrophic in the sense they have as last resort indiscriminate bombings and siege for weeks, or launching a nuke at anyone and triggering an immediate multiaxes strike by NATO.
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Dear lord I am not looking forward to 2024.
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lol we are not making it to ‘24
you know what’s surreal? not how much this is like WW2, but how much this is like Tower Defense.
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I’m thinking Putin’s real power base has to be his ex-KGB spooks and minions that all have the same blood on their hands and can kill anyone in the country at any time. Those are the guys you have to neutralize if anyone is going to take him out internally.
In this live cam the sound is coming from Independence Square in Kyiv. Massive gunfire right now.
Lmao @ paratrooping at night to your fiery death for this psychopathic shit stain. He’ll keep reloading too but DB Cooper isn’t walking through that door.
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He’s been ambassador to every other place but not Japan.
I’ll use this as a jumping off point.
Theres a lot of “country x is like y” because of something I read about in old history books.
Firstly. Things change. To assume some kind of continuity has a bunch of implicit assumptions about national character or cultural character that many itt would not agree with if made explicit.
Second. Like here. It is often a lot of bias around what wars were famous or that you remember.
Russia in WW1 was notorious for not being able to send troops to their death continuously.
Russia in WW2 was very very different to now. In fact, Russian willingness to fight invading nazis probably has greater parallels with Ukrainian resistance rather than Russia ability to execute a similar strategy now.
Russia did a pretty poor job in Afghanistan. Again, because sending troops to die overseas is pretty consistently unpopular unless you have (or can manufacture) a really fucking good reason.
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I think Putin is pretty close to crossing the proverbial Rubicon. He’s a strongman and derives so much of his power from fear. He cannot afford to look weak, and some of his people back home are defiantly in the streets. If Russia has to tuck tail and retreat here, he’s going to be vulnerable to a coup or being otherwise deposed. He’ll also be personally responsible for unifying and strengthening NATO, and it will almost certainly expand.
Which is to say I’m gravely worried he’s going to engage in indiscriminate bombing, or worse.
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if anyone is interested in who these paratroopers are, they have their own holiday in russia, where they go to Groky Park in Moscow and drink all day. it’s seriously a thing.
Do you think it makes much of a difference if he takes Kyiv in 7 instead of 3 days?
Tons of gunfire on the Kyiv cams right now. I’ve been comparing two of them and it lines up.
i think that triggers nato response task force. essentially simultaneous cyber and rocket attack to take out as many nuclear assets as possible and deploying enough SAM for those that are still launched. like that conventional plan must be as plan D or whatever on the Nato commander laptop right now, right? right, anakin?
In terms of getting into trouble back home, I don’t know. I just think being the KGB Strongman Dictator Guy and launching a failed invasion of Ukraine is going to be very problematic for him. Succeeding but more slowly probably matters less than how many men he loses and how much the Russian economy is wrecked.
If it’s 7 days the things will have been worse for Russia generally. Would it make a material difference? Don’t know, but events and history are weird.
Man, I don’t know. I’d like to think we wouldn’t all stand by and watch a genocidal bombing on livestreams and TikTok, but if the alternative is nuclear war, I just don’t know. I think if NATO gets involved they would probably first try to limit it to Ukraine only and conventional weapons only.
Gives more time for the weapons reinforcements to arrive I guess.
7 v 3 days could be the difference between the entire country giving up and a prolonged occupation
yes. at the end of 7 days there’s 50k more dead (total) than at the end of 3.