rocketman

If this is true, I need to buy these hackers some drinks!
 

Hi all, I am a new account on this forum, but I have been reading this thread every day for the past couple months after getting referred to it from elsewhere. This thread, the daily ISW reports and Perun's videos are my primary sources for keeping track of what's going on in this war and why. Thank you everyone for the great contributions.
My account took a couple days to get approved, so this comment is out-of-date relative to the comment I wanted to respond to, but there have been several times the topic of China came up so I thought it would be worth posting anyway. I hope it's still interesting to someone. If not, please scroll past, I don't want to distract too much from the excellent analysis you all are sharing.
This is an area where I have a personal interest and some first-hand experience, having lived in China for several years.
I don't think it is very helpful to describe China (or any authoritarian country) as merely left wing or right wing, in particular when that statement comes from partisans in a democratic country. All too often there is a cynical incentive to try to associate the policies of the authoritarian regime with opposing political factions in the democratic system. I think it's better to assess the policies on their own.
Xi has overseen several socially conservative policies - for example broadcast restrictions on media featuring tattoos, piercings, effeminate men, same-sex relations and so on. But this is only part of a larger scale censorship effort that has also seen arrests of local citizen reporters and foreign media not only blocked at the Great Firewall but also pushed out of reporting from inside the country at all. He also spearheaded a popular anti-corruption campaign that coincidentally targeted all the senior party officials that might stand against him. And, of course, he removed term limits and will likely get a third term in the upcoming national congress. These are suspiciously autocratic moves, which is worrying in a country that since Deng has at least made a pretense of winding back the power of figureheads and trying to build more of a loyalty to the party as an abstract entity.
Xi has also allowed a populist rise of nationalism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, and he has put a strong emphasis on increasing national security and modernizing the military. One aspect of this was a revision to the national defense law that expanded the justifications for military actions, and placed more power into a military commission headed up by Xi.
On the other hand, in the past few years the party has also strengthened government controls over business. Notably it halted the IPO of Ant Financial, often portrayed overseas as a punishment for Jack Ma (co-founder of Alibaba) commenting on excessive regulation, but more likely just because the party wasn't happy that some of these tech giants are a threat to its power. Since then it has also been using anti-monopoly guidelines and other means to regulate major players in industries such as finance, tech and education. It's also hit several high-profile individuals for tax evasion, and for a brief period the official messaging seemed to be that speculation on real estate and the pursuit of excessive wealth was inappropriate, although that seems to have been tempered somewhat due to the COVID-related economic slowdown.
But a key point running through all of these policies is this: 党政军民学，东西南北中，党是领导一切的 - government, military, society and education - east, west, south, north and center - the party leads everything. And who leads the party? Recently the phrase "with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core" has become more common in the state media. This political structure isn't comparable to democratic countries where there is no singular authority and it's normal to have spirited and open debates on the issues.
I think the main thing to take away from Chinese politics under Xi is not to figure out if he represents a version of the left or the right in a democratic country, but to understand that his primary motivation is to ensure that the party retains control over every aspect of society. All policies are designed with that goal in mind. In my opinion Xi does have generally nationalist and socially conservative views, but I think he is also mindful that wealth inequality can lead to unrest and the downfall of the party, and that would be the ultimate sin.
TLDR: what Steve said
On how this affects the war in Ukraine - both the state media apparatus and the prevailing chatter on social media (which is ultimately shaped by what the state chooses not to censor) is solidly in the camp of this war somehow being a result of NATO expansion and American hegemony. I don't think there is an easy way for the party to publicly roll back its support for Putin. The issue will probably just remain in the current limbo, with the party simply claiming to remain neutral or impartial.
On what it portends for Taiwan - it's definitely useful for the party to study and learn from this war, but I don't think it will have an impact on its timeline for taking Taiwan. The party has enough problems with zero-COVID and a teetering economy right now - I don't think it is in a position to fast-track any actions. I suspect we might see some more signaling after Xi is confirmed for a third term (second half of this year) and then after the 2024 presidential election in Taiwan, which is likely to be the first where 18-20 year olds can vote (referendum on that later this year). Either way, it's interesting to see how the party has built up the mythology of Taiwan as a wayward little brother who is temporarily misguided and will someday return to the fold. That has benefits in that it creates popular support for "unification", but it might also make a full-blown invasion unpopular. Annexation is surely off the table now, after the PR disaster of Hong Kong 2019. A naval blockade is often suggested as a way to strangle the island, but that might only strengthen its people's resolve. I think if the party is to succeed in its designs on Taiwan, it will need Putin's failed "take the capital in 3 days" strategy to actually work. I would be very interested in a wargame that tackles this scenario.
Anyway, back to my lurking hole, and thanks again for the fantastic thread.

Man, every time I see these stupid parades I think - 12 SPGs rolling past. That could have been 12 amazing, world class high schools. Or local hospitals. Or social housing.
But no.

Amen.  I have been skipping most of the posts on the last few pages.

I much preferred this thread when it was discussing the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

What I find most interesting here is that state TV is openly concerned about riots.  That is most telling.

Ukrainian M777s in action:
Close-up video of the knocked-out T-90M:
Someone is really intense with his aquarium: 

The ol' Crimea pinch-
 

I know you're kidding 😉, but the Germans have shown more stability in their foreign policy than your country has in the past decades. That many German politicians misjudged Putin and his intentions can also be said for many other countries and your country in particular. There's a lot of talk about 'bought' German politicians, but I miss a discussion about bought American and other politicians.
Apart from that Scholz knows how difficult it is to control the EU. Besides it always ends up with the Germans paying more than any other country to make things happen. The present mood of 'let take up Ukraine and even Belarussia into our big happy EU/NATO family' is very dangerous. First of all the EU/NATO has to force some countries (Poland, Hungary and Turkey) back into the ranks, before we can even start to think about the road to expansion. When that is done (if ever) the EU/NATO must learn to stand on it's own feet, without being depended on the US for our defence or economy. A very long road, on which lots of things can go horribly wrong.

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

This one is just odd.  So NATO only bombed Belgrade during the Kosovo War of '99.  The justification was, wait for it...war crimes!  See a trend here?  After Rawanda, we in the west kinda got sick and tired of 20th century genocides in the 90's (arguably we went back to not really caring a couple decades later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide) so when the Serbs began "doing that ethnic cleansing" thing again, it was a pretty short "nope" from the UN and NATO.
I am not sure why Russia would take that as an attack on them, they were on the UNSC that drafted resolution 1199 which kicked the whole thing off.  I am at loss at what either Chechen War had to do with us, but hey why not?
Look this whole NATO expansion thing was arguably a bad idea but the Russian's seem to think it was a deliberate plan.  Seriously, we should let you guys come work in NATO for a day and you would quickly see that "deliberate" and "NATO" are not mutually supporting concepts.  NATO is fine at blowing stuff up, but detailed strategic campaigning is not a virtue I think anyone could accuse NATO of being adept at conducting.  Finally, all those former satellite states came to NATO for a good reason...what is happening in Ukraine right now.  Trust me, it is not them or us, it is you.
Russia is acting like a drunken wife beater, pissed off because Ukraine "made you hit them" and blaming city council for all these damned "assault charges"; an entire nation in need of anger management counselling and couples therapy.
I got to believe Russians are better than this. 

You see, that's the fundamendal flaw in the whole Russian perception of the world. NATO is not moving to the east, it is invited, sometimes desperately begged to come, cause the alternative is living in ruski mir, which really really sucks, in any imaginable aspect.
Also, nobody is really there to get you. Nobody really cares, all we want is for Russian Empire/ USSR/ Russia to piss off and stop being a problem. 

Ya, can't let this one slide.  This was a really good post but it fails right about here because it misses a major point.  First off I do not subscribe to the "every able body Russian should take their suitcases of money and flee to a less inconvenient locale (i.e. "sunbelt)".  This is frankly insensitive and demonstrates a serious western bias: when the going gets tough, well just move to Hawaii in your yacht and sip Mai Tais...it will be fine.  What about the rest who cannot afford to move?..."oh I am sure they will figure it out".
You make a solid case for a fracturing of the Russian Federation as a result of this, and a severe risk of "significant civil violence".  I will simply state it, we are talking about a significant risk of another Russian Civil War here.  You note "lack of Moscow military power" as reason this will be avoided, well 1) Will is the primary determiner of civil war, not military power.  Savage civil wars have waged with a lot less than what Moscow will have left, and 2) the unfortunate reality of a civil war in a state that has the majority of the worlds nuclear weapons.  We came close to this during the break up of the Soviet Union but saner heads prevailed; we have no guarantees this time.
I very much think that a NATO v Russia global nuclear war is an extremely low probability.  However, a nation in a civil war, cannot guarantee the security of that arsenal and even a small nuclear exchange has global impacts (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00794-y).  So what?  Well, here we need to recognize a harsh truth - none of us are "safe at our keyboards" in this thing.  The stakes are much higher than the normal western ennuie of "war somewhere over there, donate to charity, feel bad and change the channel).  So, no, do not "move to the sunbelt", try and do something about it.
I am a veteran of two separate wars, both civil in nature, and know exactly what risks we are asking Russian's to take here. However, the risks of "not doing anything" is frankly what got them into this fix in the first place.  And there is a risk of a lot more than "trouble over there" at stake here.  This is why I keep coming back to "Russia needs to figure out how to lose this war and survive".
As to resistance, well simply coming on this board and being exposed to the truth, or at least "other facts" is a first important step.  DMS lives in a country where publicly saying "war" is outlawed and they are being lied to daily on their mainstream media.  My advice is to "get the word out" any way you can as an important first step.  There is opposition to this war in Russia, and there is opposition to the current regime...it needs all the help it can get.
We are a small little wargame forum in a great big dangerous world.  But it is a platform to exchange ideas and voice apolitical opinions freely (well we do have limits), which in this day and age is hard to find.  In a perfect world every Russian would read this website and what we did here and at least a few would go "huh?  Wait a minute."  That would be enough for a start.

@DMS, first, it takes some (stubborn Russian) courage to stand up here, so I will grant you that a least. It is also useful to discuss the likely postwar environment, which is in turn useful in understanding how the war should be ended militarily (e.g., at the 2002, 2014 or 2022 frontiers), so thank you for arguing your corner
(Denials of atrocities aside, and it is *pointless* to keep arguing that in this place, so please don't get yourself banned).
I'm also going to throw out some (more) controversial predictions, that will hopefully excite some wider comment from the superb commentariat here....
1.  I may be reading too much Galeev, but as someone who has spent his adult life on the front lines of the 'global economy' (energy business, first 'outsourced' in the 1990s and then 'offshored' to Asia in the 2000s), I find that Russia's time as a meaningful global, or even European, power is coming rapidly to a close.
2.  For all 'Great Russia's' nostalgic mythomania, it has let its industrial economy rot away or expatriate (they aren't the only ones). Its nukes and army aside, Russia is now just another resource + low cost IT service economy, one of a number of its population size and education level in the world, along with Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia among others. In a short while, it may be down to competing with Pakistan, South Africa and the Philippines (ask a Serbian merchant seaman how that feels). It has a (stagnant) population of 140M, of which at least 40M would be very happy to go their own way. And now have a very real chance to do so....
3.  I predict that a wounded, humiliated, isolated, postwar Russia will effectively partition itself over the next decade, with or without Putin. Victoria Nuland, Soros, MI6, the Mossaad and the Illuminati don't need to plan it. That doesn't necessarily mean multiple new sovereign states in the near term, although it might.
4.  Significant civil violence seems inevitable, as militias controlled de facto by the regional бояре shrug off the zero-value-added extortion of the Moscow gangster-courtiers and seize control of the exportable resource/revenue streams.
5.  Make no mistake, these resources WILL find buyers, overseas, heedless of sanctions. The Glencores of the world are quite skilled at such games, from Iran days and before. The 5 Eyes will wink at it, so long as profits flow to the 'decentralisers', not to Moscow. And I don't even need to mention the numerous 'Crazy Rich Asian' family office/traders whose Wharton/LSE trained scions do such business today with utter impunity (and often Chinese backing). The margins are just too good in a globalised world awash in low cost capital. Big business drools over opportunities to price arbitrage in huge volumes around an artifical barrier that is filled with loopholes....
[I'm not just talking oil & gas here, btw, but a raft of other strategic minerals critical to a 'decarbonising' world that Russia holds in abundance and where the alternative supplies lie in similarly awkward places like Congo, the Andes and perhaps the Hindukush... or else deep in the oceans. China is an obvious buyer, but it won't necessarily have an interest in propping up an ineffective Moscow as a middleman].
6.  Back to Russia, I find it unlikely that this strife and defederalisation escalates to full civil war, save for Transnistria style clashes around army bases where Slavic Russian minorities refuse to cede authority to.... non-Slavs (I shall not identify ethnic or religious groups).
Why? Simply because Moscow now has no potent armed force able to wage its side of such a civil war, enforce its writ and secure central control over the goodies.
7.  OMON, Rosgvardia, VDV are all broken forces now, thanks to Putin's misadventure. Their cadre will largely ignore orders from Moscow, and defect to the militias. The boyars can also expect support from across nearby borders, including China and the central petro-Stans, looking to cut deals for resources.
8. Moscow can expect only the regular army to try to obey it. But its command is now  discredited and in disarray, and any capable general is seen in Moscow as a threat to become a Napoleon.
....So TL:DR, Russia's legacy armed forces were up to 25 Feb 2022 the only thing that made that country 'special' in today's world, and hold its vast territory together as a going concern. That force is now punctured and deflating, except for the unusable nukes....
9. This is another huge topic in itself, but I view Russian denuclearisation as a likely part of a settlement to return a far more loosely 'federated' Russia to the community of nations.  It will take a few years, but I expect Russia to sell off [i.e. decommission, not sell to rogue actors] its strategic arsenal for cash aid, and to privatise the space-related stuff (Elon or Jeff or some tycoon in India following in the footsteps of the learned Jaipur maharajahs). Nukes are vastly more valuable to Russia as tradeable assets than as weapons.
10. So what does this mean for you and your countrymen, DNS? Others here have urged you to refuse and resist as much as you can, which sure, is very easy for us to preach from our comfortable keyboards, risking no harm to ourselves or our families.
...As an expat myself, I might suggest you and other highly intelligent and 'cosmopolitan' Russians to study which metro areas of your country (hint: not Moscow or Petrograd!) are likely to do well out of the next decade, and consider relocating there with your family, formally or informally. I'd personally head for the Kuban 'sunbelt' but that's of course personal choice and costs of living there are high. Karelia or Pskov, or maybe even Belgorod might also do well.
... I'd be very interested in your thoughts/ criticisms on the above, since you seem unafraid to express them here.
More widely, may this war end swiftly, and also with a Ukrainian victory on Ukraine's terms. But remember always, living well is the best revenge!

To lighten the mood a bit (not for DMS I'm afraid), Zelensky gave a hint about the expected future of Ukrainia Air Force:
 

The gap between perceptions is huge. One of them is much, much closer to perceiving the true nature of reality than the other. The facts are clear right now. While the Internet provides opportunity for lies, it also provides plenty of opportunity for corroboration, and the atrocities perpetrated are pretty close to 100% forensically established fact. The full extent of the war crimes and atrocities will probably take a few years to come out, but the fact that there are a lot, that they have mostly been committed by Russian forces and that they're as bad as any excesses of the SS is six-sigma clear right now.
Perhaps you can shed some light on the process of mental gymnastics that can reflexively deny the facts on the ground, in the context of the official (it's on the telly, so it's straight out of the Kremlin) propaganda that's spewing forth like acid bile. How is it inconceivable that Russian troops would commit atrocities when the mouthpieces of your leaders virulently encourage such treatment of your Ukrainian "brothers"?
Also, your immediate assumption that "derussification" might involve some sort of invasion and violence shows a massive, gigantic blind spot: the West has, since WW2 never wanted, nor believed it was feasible, to militarily invade and commit violence against the USSR or the RF. You've been told about this mythical threat for so long by the manipulative excrement you've had for leadership that you might even believe it. The correlation of forces has never supported the possibility (not for Napoleon, nor Hitler, nor NATO; some might argue that it might have been possible for the Western Allies for a brief moment, right at the very end of WW2, but the operation name for that endeavour is pretty much bang on...), and the most cursory inspection of military realities should allow you to reach that conclusion yourself.

Well you guys are in a tough spot, no doubt.  I am not sure you need to "de-russo-fy" to be honest but you likely need to work on what "Russia" actually means.  Perhaps an evolution as opposed to a revolution.  
Russia needs to work some things out, preferably while not invading everyone who pisses it off - I get the irony of the West saying this - but Russia needs to decide if it is going to be a mature member of the international community or join North Korea in the "contained whacko" box.
I do stand by my point that as far as the current crisis is concerned, Russia only real strategic play left is to remove Putin and his cronies and pin this entire mess on them on the way out.  Fully withdraw, beg for forgiveness, extradite war criminals (and seriously, those actions were not just really immoral, it was really, really dumb), and maybe in a few years after you negotiate oil and gas sales to pay for this mess, we can start thinking about normalization.  I get that this may very well break your nation, but you are in a hole right now that only gets deeper as this thing drags on, seriously the path you guys are on is worse. 
Russia lost this war about a week in.  Ukraine has already figured out how to "win and survive", Russia needs to figure out how to "lose and survive" and do it quickly.  
 

Step one for poor DMS and his country's future: kill Putin, lay all the blame on him, pull out of Ukraine, at least to Feb22 borders, make eternal peace treaty w all neighbors.  Then actually have real elections in a year or so.  That would be the necessary start to stop being an endlessly violent aggrieved 'victim' who seems to need to lash out all the time.  It's a lot better to be a nice family in the neighborhood, not the crazy psycho w the conspiracy signs in the yard and an arsenal in the basement.

I get the OPs point, we do need to be mindful of propaganda from all corners of this thing.  However, the facts and evidence are stacking so high at this point that it has changed the character of this war.
War crimes always happen in war, true.  But the frequency and intensity are a direct reflection of the fighting force perpetrating them, who are in turn a direct reflection of the society that produced, sent and supports those same soldiers.  Generally one can accept “anomalies” of abhorrent behaviour, but when it takes on a frequency and pattern of systemic organization, it crosses a larger line that speaks to the qualities of the culture that allowed this to happen - I have in-laws who are German, and they live with this even today based on WW2, these are stains that do not wash easily.
So what about this war?  Well it has become a stain on the Russian people.  You allowed this to happen, either by supporting the current government, or not doing anything to stop them.  This one is on you, each and everyone - of at least voting age and functioning mental faculty.  You can cry “lies” and persecution but you have earned every one of those as well.  Worse, your children, who do not have a voice in this, will live with this for generations.  It is costing a lot more than world opinion, as we have discussed at length and will continue to cost for years.
To the OP my advice is to not waste your time at a small niche wargaming site trying to defend what has become undefendable.  My advice is to resist this from without or within any way that you can.  And I mean resist the Russian government and work towards its downfall because it needs to fall.  You may not succeed but at least you will be able to look in the mirror and know you did what you could to preserve any shred of Russian dignity.
These types of wars can break nations, those attacked and those attacking.  I strongly suggest you spend your energies elsewhere in order to try and preserve what you have left as a nation.
 

Don't want to rehash what already been said. Look at the current and future demographics for China and you'll see a nation that's headed towards serious problems. A massive aging population and decline in birth rates.
China is not Russia. Russia is an exporter of oil and natural gas. China must import both in large quantities. Their economy would come to a grinding halt if that was disrupted.
China didn't steal the US manufacturing industry. US and multinational corporations willingly moved the manufacturing base to China to take advantage of cheap labor on a massive scale. The work is grinding, the pay is ridiculously low and the conditions are about a step or 2 above exploitative. Profits was the motive.
Even if we wanted to the US could never create the sort of manufacturing scale that exists in China and there is no way Americans would be willing to work for the same low wages or conditions that Chinese peasants migrating from the rural area are willing to endure.
If you think inflation is bad now, just imagine what it would be if the manufacturing was being done in America with the wages and benefits America workers would demand. That cost would get passed down.
People talk about Russian propaganda. America has its own form of propaganda. Its called corporate media and politics. American media has changed over the years. Its now all about money. Stating boring facts doesn't sell. Creating outrage does. Same is true for social media.
The politicians who are concerned about getting re-elected and funding their campaigns are all to aware of the power of manufactured outrage. Its sells, it generates funding and its far more effective than just sticking to facts. The American public has a very short attention span, by and large they are not going to pay attention to complex facts, nuance and complex details. Add to that all the massive gerrymandering going on it little cause for optimism.
China is a problem. It's not just Taiwan or the treatment of Muslims, but the recent events in Hong Kong is cause for concern. Like Putin and his cronies the CCP is concerned about staying in power. Like Putin the internal security apparatus and forces behind it is massive. It has to be. China is composed of many ethnic groups and things could get out of hand quickly.
The US and China for better or worse have a mutually dependent relationship in-spite of the rhetoric. Much of the current economic issues in the US is related to the Covid lockdowns in China and the resulting disruption in the supply chain.
China is massively dependent on exports. If that gets cut their economy will collapse. They are trying to move away from that model, but China isn't there and if you look at the projected demographic trends in China, the future doesn't look good.
How the US and the West manages the complex relationship with China will determine what happens. China has seen the unified West response to Russia's actions and knows any similar response to any perceived hostile actions by China could lead to sanctions that would destroy their economy in short order. China is more vulnerable to economic sanctions that Russia.
Like China its also going to be a challenge for America and the west to manage Russia, Ukraine and Europe if and when the conflict ends. Its easy now. America and the west just sends money and weapons to Ukraine and the Ukrainians kill Russians by the bushel.
Managing the peace could end up being the real challenge and given the broken state of American politics, the media and social media where most American consume and get their information, that is driven by the profit motive that knows manufactured outrage sells and boring facts don't, doesn't give many cause for optimism. You have to dig deep to get to the facts and most Americans would rather just have it spoon fed to them by whatever outlet matches their leanings.
 

Some scholars define denial as the final stage of a genocidal process. Richard G. Hovannisian states, "Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment of recollection and suffocation of remembrance. Falsification, deception and half-truths reduce what was to what might have been or perhaps what was not at all."
Crisis actors, Jewish Nazi soldiers, Mi-6 planted bodies, Chechens sending pics of dead sons that were captured alive on TikTok, countless cases of at best complete disregard for human life and at worst openly hunting civilians on video,..
but yes, as we have already seen with your Bucha comments every video is a fake, every picture constructed, every testemony read from script, I am sure there are also explanations about all the mass graves verified by countless international observers
The glorious Russian soldier does no wrong, as has been proven time and time again in history. Take care not to overdose on the copium.

Must be hard to be a Russian  and   watching this thread  DMS  . Your attempts to rationalize  or explain away the behaviors of your countrymen is a Herculean task indeed - I don't envy you it .

No, Russia is being judged by it actions, not what it says.  We have a saying in the west.  "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck.... therefore it is a duck."   The acts of Russia in Bucha, Maruipol, all over Ukraine are in full display for the world to see.  Ergo, if Russia troops acts like uncouth, uncivilized barbarians, we are within our rights to call them out for it.

It is all good.  If I ever find the time, I need to write up a piece on the phenomenon of this thread itself.  We have a bunch of people who are largely only connected via a small wargame, but who are also a collection of expertise in a lot of different fields.  We coalesced here and have produced assessment and analysis that frankly compares to the paid stuff out there in the world.  We even became self-regulating, without - I hazard - becoming too much of an echo chamber.
And all this time no one has really posted their bona-fides.  I mean a few were already known going in, but a lot of this has really just been the quality of discussion and opinion.  Not sure what to call this "emergent analysis", "organic" but it has been really fascinating to watch and participate in.