Recent content by Sarin

NPC99 said:

IDK what Putin expects troops to do if they're surrounded and out of ammo. Banzai charges with bayonets?
Maybe it'll also be criminal for a soldier with his legs blown off, not to run away and avoid capture.

Click to expand...

They're expected to blow themselves, and their captors, up with a grenade.

ARK: Survival Evolved. Picked it up for free some time ago, now that I have a new laptop, I can actually play it.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

Both the Allies and the USSR dragged their feet and avoided directly confronting Hitler until 1941. Even after this, the British Empire hardly did anything in the grand scheme of the war, it could barely even protect its own colonies. The main belligerents were undoubtedly the USA and USSR, with the war in the west only progressing beyond small ground engagements after the US arrived. I don't know why you're highlighting tiny non-countries like Canada and Australia just to spite Russia when literally 90% of the Wehrmacht was killed by the Red Army. Anzacs and Canadians in contrast barely even entered Europe.

I get that you hate Russia, but deliberately trying to write them out of history like this is silly.

Click to expand...

Just like your exaggerations are silly. You totally forgot the whole Africa-ME theatre, for example, or SW Pacific. The former paved way to Sicily and Italy landings which knocked Italy out of the war, and SW Pacific was a significant drain on Japanese strength and production of strategic resources, mostly oil and rubber.

Should have embraced the Czech tradition of defenestration.

IIRC Zelensky was named in Panama Papers...along with pretty much everyone in higher political echelons across the world. That's all.

Compared to his predecessors, it's small stuff. Of course, everyone pales in comparison to Putin when it comes to corruption.

Sergio_Morozov said:

Today is 77th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, of the defeat of Nazi Germany by Soviet Union and Allies.

Congratulations!

Click to expand...

All I can comment is to paraphrase Horace:
"Conquered Germany captured its rude conqueror and brought its fascism to communist Russia."

Because present Russian government is undeniably fascist.

MadVader said:

Why don't you explain what exactly is the important difference, instead of repeating "no one understand us, we are special".
Social democracy (i.e. the moderate left) is a concept that's well known in former communist states and there are social-democratic parties in each country.

veever is kil

Click to expand...

The political compass is centered somewhat differently here. There's very little room in the "left" before it descends into controlling "nanny state", effectively authoritarian government. And the experience with Soviet control makes people be wary of that.

MadVader said:

Who said anything about the US understanding? I assume European understanding, because Ukraine is supposed to be in Europe and has European neighbors with political lefts.
Social democracy is a very old concept, even taught under communism (as being wrong for compromising, but still).

Click to expand...

US and Western Europe at best. You're not making an effort to understand that not the whole world-not the whole Europe, in fact-doesn't adhere to the same political compass, insult those who see things differently and consider different opinions to be inferior.

So much for argumenting in good faith.

MadVader said:

We are not talking about some babushka with no access to the internet, but about someone, who like many young(er) people in the world, participates in global forums and belongs to global communities, using good English.
There's little room for cultural differences there (like the word "liberalism" that has a different meaning in the US). "SJW" is not an old Soviet word and the Soviet world disappeared 30 years ago, making way for new political concepts brought by liberal democracies.
I know this as I grew up under communism and it didn't make me an Eastern European racist, anti-communist thug, who is merely culturally misunderstood.

Click to expand...

What makes you think that, especially in this discussion, the US understanding of political left is more appropriate than Ukrainian?

eddiemccandless said:

You are clearly saying that people who fall on the left side of the political spectrum are totalitarian. You were not talking about totalitarian left. You were talking about all the left. Your English is excellent, and you are capable of intelligent thought, so I have a hard time ascribing this to anything else but bad faith.

Click to expand...

You're quick to call it bad faith instead of looking for gaps in your understanding.

In former Eastern Bloc, the political compass is quite different, and what's called "left" here is very much authoritarian and collectivist leaning. In a similar way, those countries have no history of colonialism, no ingrained "systemic racism" and similar concepts that dominate such discourse in the west, and so what is considered racism is very different.

TimIZ said:

That is way more than I expected to learn today! Absolutely didn`t know that Hetzer, Marder III and Grille weren`t German made and always thought the 35(t) and 38(t) were either normally bought or Beutepanzer.

Click to expand...

LT. vz. 38 was excellent design for the time, and ended up serving in Peru until 1988. No wonder that the chassis became base for many armoured vehicles after the tank itself became obsolete due to war advancements.

Adorno said:

Danish news reports that Czech Republic (can we say Czechia now?) are helping repair tanks (such as T-64) and other military vehicles from Ukraine.

Click to expand...

Ukraine approached Czech Republic with this request, and it was approved today. Czech defense industry will now receive contracts to repair Ukrainian armoured vehicles, including reactivating the mothballed vehicles. First batch should be T-64, but it's expected that this cooperation will be expanded to other vehicles.

Source is press release of the Ministry of Defense.

Lord Grindelvald said:

Well, that ship has sailed, hasn't it. Putin's already lost the oligarchs, sanctions made sure of that. He's about to lose the people as well, sanctions will make sure of that. All he has left then is the military. And rumor has it that he's disappearing many high ranked officials.

He has cracked down so hard on the people with the new legislature, the banning of free press, the inflation rates. Sanctions are now just finishing it off, making sure that closed businesses, empty shelves in supermarkets and online restrictions drive home the point that something bad is going on, no matter what the press tells them.

If he loses the people as well he will only have the military. And how long can that go on?

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the effect of sanctions on people is different than you think. Russian people are quite willing to endure the economic hardships if they're convinced they're for the good cause, and the failures of pro-Western Yeltsin administration and 20 years of Putin's propaganda feeding the narrative about "good old days of USSR" and "Russia vs. west" were quite successful in convincing people of that. Many of those who saw through that emigrated, and the rest doesn't have the will or power to resist.

Right now, the strategy is to cripple Russian recovery from war with sanctions, hope that the defeats in Ukraine will turn the military against Putin, and that eventually, Chinese economic exploitation of Russia's weakness (which is yet incoming) will make the people realize that their time as superpower is over.

Ishapar said:

But can't Russia just use it's own resources to make up for their loss with international businesses? Russia is the largest nation in the world, and all that land does have several resources to be taken. Russia maybe hurting with international trade/revenue, but does it matter much if you have that much land resources at your disposal?

Click to expand...

This is actually what will really turn Russia into China's puppet.

Russia has a lot of resources, but most of them are in remote, inhospitable areas and were not exploited for various reasons. Especially with the sanctions in place, they don't have the means to build the infrastructure necessary for extraction and processing of those resources. So, China will happily lend them a lot of money, with the caveat that they'll be used to contract Chinese companies to build and run the whole thing, with tax breaks and so on. In a few years, they'll find out that because of all that, the actual profit will barely cover the loan interest, their very land is being held as collateral for the debt and all their resources are going to China without any benefit to Russian people.

MadVader said:

People may rightfully mock Russian military ineptness, but at the end of the day, they are still winning, at least in a military way. We are now entering the siege of Kiev phase which will be long and bloody, but would only slow them down (by a lot). I just can't see how the military situation can change in favor of Ukraine, because dictators can press on even with substantial attritional losses.
If Russia was a democracy, public opinion back at home may have forced Putin to accept he can't reach his war goals and negotiate a compromise from a strong position. But Russia is not a democracy and its citizens are brainwashed daily by government-friendly media, so there's not much internal pressure (yet?) to stop the war.

Click to expand...

They have extended land supply lines and rasputitsa-the mud season-will start soon. The troops trying to besiege Kiyv, Mikolaiv, Mariupol and Kharkov will start running out of food, potentially forcing them to attempt to storm the cities.That would be desperate, bloody move that will most likely result in tens of thousands of casualties. That might be enough for some real mass protests, and even though the people have much less influence on government than in civilized countries, the socioeconomic impact can still be significant.
But all this is aimed mostly on those who could remove Putin from power.

What I don't see is what benefit can he gain from the war now. Even if he manages some kind of military victory, there's no way Russia can maintain an occupation force even on part of the Ukrainian territory, where they'll face significant civilian resistance. And even if he manages to somehow hold on to the south Ukraine, the damage to the infrastructure and state of Russia's economy will make them only economic liability for decades.

By now, the war is just driven by one old man's tantrum, "if I can't have Ukraine, nobody can."