And the US couldn't win against a few thousand goat farmers with Ak47s, or maybe there this is a bit more complex...
I don't think it's a convincing narrative that that's what Putin wants, and also that that's something he could reasonably accomplish. But I do hear it often as a powerful narrative to help Ukraine more, and I understand why, but from my point of view it's not very convincing.
At the same time I agree with the sentiment that heavier the losses in Ukraine, the more he will have difficulties in starting similar drama in other countries with large Russian communities.
The inconvenient truth is that such a policy didn't get any serious reversal during the reign of "pro-Russian, Donbass choice" Yanukovich. Nevertheless, Donbass only really went ballistic when the first action of post-Yanukovich Rada was to repeal the "language law" which half-assedly permitted the things I have mentioned in my previous comment.
russia is closing Ukrainian-language schools across Ukraine. Bad or Good?
What % of schools in russia are Ukrainian-language and are not closed?
You seem to be saying that this is bad when Ukraine does it, but good when russia does it. I don't understand this logic. Maybe you aren't saying so, and you ignored my "good or bad" question by accident. If so, here is where you can answer: good or bad that russia is closing Ukrainian language schools in not only russia, but Ukraine as well?
Are you five years old?
Or are the Baltics and her people immune to propaganda?
For a nice Baltic example, Lithuania: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-baltic-elves-taking-on-pro...
> Facebook is where the light skirmishes take place; the mortal combat is reserved for the comment sections of Lithuanian news articles, where the trolls loose a constant drizzle of falsehoods and complaints, each comment helping to construct an alternate reality version of life in this Baltic country of 3 million. Rather than a thriving and patriotic post-Soviet success story, which it is, the image the trolls cultivate is that of a demoralized and angry society whose people are ready for regime change, be it through internal democratic mechanisms or through “liberation” by a friendly neighboring army.
Russia will support and radicalize those.
If the Baltics dont react it will lead to unrest and Russia is forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
If the states react this will be seen as suppressing the Russian minorities and Russia will be forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
Realistically there's no (strategic) benefit to even defending Kaliningrad in case of a war (and the thing is surrounded by NATO so it would be taken immediately if not heavily defended), so stationing lots of troops there is just a pointless drain on resources. If the Kaliningrad secession movement picks up steam, then they might just let them leave.
Let's see how the situation in Avdiivka develops in the next few weeks. Ukraine is reinforcing the area, but it doesn't look good.
We've seen plenty of blunders by the russian army. But you should not underestimate your enemy.
Putin (and the Russian (leaderhsip) culture in general, see Stalin) is this:
What are a 100M (of our) people dead if we own Ukraine/Baltics/East Poland/Georgia/... for the next hundreds of years?
Stalin had the same blunders, thats priced in, the Red Army had meat wave attacks in WW2 and lost millions, but achived all it's war goals (Poland, Baltics, Eastern Europe including half of Germany - only the US achieved all it's war goals too, everyone else lost, sadly Poland had the biggest loss).
The fertility rate more than halved since then, they're not playing with the same cards anymore
Poor people had plenty of kids because they had no standards nor accessible birth control or they come from a conservative religious culture where having kids is the norm.
But once people taste the good life, like westerners had it so good a while a ago, they don't want to bring kids in economic conditions worse than before, so the poorer you make them, the less kids they'll have.
So to compensate, you don't focus on improving the conditions for the locals to convince them to procreate, but you open the immigration gates to people from poor places with no standards, happy to bring kids in conditions that are way better than what they have in their own country, even though they're worse than the locals had a few decades ago.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-urges-russians-ha...
Any success?
And I must remind that Russia is having an electoral event this March, so the repressions were temporarily put on a back burner - but unpopular changes will come shortly afterwards. Check back in May or June.
Exactly the same logic followed by US/Germany elites fuelling and capitalising on this war by selling weapons and preventing peace talks.
> Red Army had meat wave attacks in WW2 and lost millions, but achived all it's war goals (Poland, Baltics, Eastern Europe including half of Germany
This reads as if Red Army was aggressor and not Nazis, are you deranged ?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact#Backgr...
And for all the time Putin has to lay out his master plan..what did it buy him? A river of Russian blood in Ukraine?
The Ukraine war is a tragedy and I hope it ends soon.
But they have no economical & military power to really do any harm the Europe & the US. Putin makes a lot of noise but really can't even win a few km's in Ukraine.
But the real threat is further east. China is slowly building it's empire, and it's a scary one. Taking over parts of Africa. Migrating it's people. Integrating it's tech worldwide. Making the world dependent while building it's own full independence.