..on paper. In reality Ukraine is infested with paramilitary organisations funded and trained by the west, fighting with western technology.
Also calling Ukraine "western", is a bit of a stretch. This conflict and the subsequent propaganda has made us forget how backwards and corrupt Ukraine was, just to rally behind their support and not complain for freezing our assess to death this winter in Europe.
Of course Putin is a deranged lunatic that should let go already. But the idea of a powerless Russia, or even worse, a Russia that is a puppet of China, is terrifying.
Do you have any cites for this?
This is already the case. Everyone knows Russia's military prowess was a bluff - that's why we've seen another attempt in Armenia; fortunately USA came and filled the power vacuum there. And of course Kazakhstan used that opportunity to humiliate Putin once again.
Russia could theoretically balance between China and India. But it sounds like a complicated act, especially so for a failed state. I think it will end up with making sure Russia ends up being a puppet, but not a very useful one.
The performance of their regular army is not deciding, because they have an immense nuclear arsenal.
It seems to me that we’re sticking our heads in the sand and either like to joke that their nukes don’t work, or that they won’t dare use them.
China declared quite explicitly they don’t want this conflict. They also quietly joined western sanctions.
As for Russia - given how the rest of Russian army turned out to be a bluff, why assume their nuclear potential is any different?
The US and Russia were inspecting each-other’s nuclear stockpiles and are/were part of several disarmament treaties which are falling apart one by one. Is there any credible authority claiming that the Russian nuclear arsenal does not fulfill its deterrent role?
Reminder: Russia is not USSR, it’s USSR’s retarded offspring. It’s only got a minor fraction of capabilities USSR had.
Are you sure that you don't stretch and projecy a few international Chinese companies with substantial business in the West on the whole of China?
To China, Russia is just a mafia-owned gas station. Nobody's going to fight for that.
Wow, it did? Huawei brand shops are open though. You can even buy a RosTest certified Huawei P50 Pro, which was released in August.
In any case, this is just a fraction of Chinese business in Russia, the rest of which doesn't seem to go anywhere.
Currently this looks more like political fluff, rather than anything practical. Shutting down AliExpress in Russia would be indicative, but nothing even remotely similar had happened yet.
> To China, Russia is just a mafia-owned gas station. Nobody's going to fight for that.
Doesn't look that way when looking at Chinese propaganda, but in any case, why would China FIGHT for Russia?
What's to be gained by starting a nuclear war with the entire world? Or are you calling them stupid (China and Russia)?
Who says it would be the entire world? At worst, it will be with a nuclear-capable fraction of the Western world (a really small part of the world)
Besides, somehow I doubt that there won't be a very long and bloody escalation with tactical nukes - no one is going to press "end game for everyone" button until they themselves have lost completely.
Less than a year ago, the question was: What's to be gained by invading Ukraine? Putin is not stupid to start a war with nothing to gain.
From Russia's point of view it is a huge price to pay for preventing another Turkey-Cuba missile crisis, except this time it is Ukraine instead of Turkey (which Russia considers even worse, given the recent revolution and government apparatus stability) and this time Russia doesn't have as much influence on American continent to deploy its own deterrent.
Russia's point of view is that Ukraine must be destroyed, because when it becomes more successful than Russia it would prove how terrible the Russian government is. Except this isn't particularly convincing, so Russia dropped in the Nazi ideology of "inferior Ukrainians", which kind of fits given their approach of leveling entire cities (cf Mariupol).
An alternate theory would assume Russia for some reason _wants_ to lose. Because, honestly, it does look like that. If Putin wanted to make sure Russia remains isolated from the West for the upcoming couple of decades, "resetting" the situation back to late eighties to force its society to choose a different route instead... Except the whole idea seems too absurd even for them.
Then again, none of this matters: we've tried appeasing Putin before, and it only provoked him to escalate. It was a logical choice to try something different this time - and it appears it worked.
Is Finland as willing to deploy NATOs military infrastructure and become target/source of the first strike?
Consider that you are comparing stable countries with stable government and social institutions to a country that recently had a revolution and whose political drive is based on militant anti-russia rhetorics.
> Russia's point of view is that Ukraine must be destroyed, because when it becomes more successful than Russia it would prove how terrible the Russian government is.
That's not Russian point of view, that's western propaganda talking points. Moreover, this is just cartoonish, I really don't get how people older than teens manage to detach themselves from real life and humanity to believe it THAT literally.
> which kind of fits given their approach of leveling entire cities (cf Mariupol).
Mariuol is a singular case and the photos of it still don't look worse than Baghdad. Consider maybe getting some references before engaging in such rhetorics. Otherwise you might end up shilling for nazis yourself.
> we've tried appeasing Putin before
Uh-uh, sure, that famous dick-swinging bone-throwing lacking-any-reflection supremacist western diplomacy at its finest.
Just think of all it's successes. And the amount of love everyone in the world has towards that always willing-to find-common-ground, compromising, meeting-half-way -there, totally never-speaking-from-the-position-of-power diplomacy.
Oh wait... Oops.
I actually wonder if Russia somehow uses it as a part of it psyops. At least that clearly helped with the sanctions.
Where did you get these numbers from?
Russian army has 1 mil active personnel and 2 mil reserves.
Even the propaganda numbers are much less than 200k killed/wounded, and that's including LNR/DNR combatants.
What you are talking about are the fictional numbers found in Russian documents. This war wouldn't look anything like it did if those numbers matched reality.
(As for the numbers lost, see https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)
Ergo mobilization, that, among other things, changes the way the military and military industrial complex operates and allows allocating resources and setting priorities more freely?
> What you are talking about are the fictional numbers found in Russian documents. This war wouldn't look anything like it did if those numbers matched reality
Well of course, this war looks like it looks cuz the reality of involved force does not match the reality of total force, ergo mobilization.
> (As for the numbers lost, see https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)
Ugh, referring to some blog as a solid source is kinda wierd, but ok, I see
> Russia - 6202, of which: destroyed: 3844, damaged: 143, abandoned: 303, captured: 1911
So, does this mean that you imply that Russia's army is only like 13000 total altogether?
Except it's not total force, it's fictional force. Those new people will be less trained than real soldiers, will have worse equipment (all the newest stuff already got spent); Russia lost a lot of officer cadre, so their leadership will be (somehow) worse too, and most importantly, they are being sent there by force, so will be less motivated to fight.
Given the collosal failures in Kyiv and Charkov, the new corps, being even worse, will either become a low-grade meat for Ukrainian artillery, like the recent "Third Army" reportedly did, or realize their situation and change sides.
Ok, I see you didn't even bother to do a minimal research on the topic at hand. Sorry, but it's really hard to take you seriously when your reasoning is based on assumptions and imagination, instead of specifics and facts.
> all the newest stuff was spent
Yesterday's talking points were that there isn't new stuff at all and it's all old Soviet stuff. Doublethink at it's finest.
As for “new stuff” - the actually new stuff didn’t exist or was so scarce it didn’t matter. Here I mean the “new stuff” from Russian army point of view. This includes late Cold War. Note how Russia can’t manufacture Armata tanks or BMP3, so it’s switching back to manufacturing 80’s models instead.
As opposed to the strategy of appeasing Russia, which resulted in the war we have now?
Look at the numbers: half of Russia’s army is gone. Western armies, apart from Ukraine, hadn’t even entered the conflict.