sburke

No way, never!
Oh wait I was just watching Shogun....
Not sure if you are old enough for this @The_Capt
 

No way, never!
Oh wait I was just watching Shogun....
Not sure if you are old enough for this @The_Capt
 

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

Come now...be honest...was it really "the cat" peeing all over the place?

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

I agree with much of this which is why I disagree with the way in which the 'election' has been framed both as the thing itself and the interpretation of the result. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in the last day or so, much of Western media actually pretended that it was a plebiscite in the way we understand voting to mean. It clearly was not but rather a propaganda exercise in both legitimizing Putin at home and to a lesser extent delegitimizing voting abroad. To my mind, that's virtually the only real conclusion one can take from the event. 
What we do know about Russia is that it is an autocracy that suffers from the crisis of legitimacy that all autocracies labor beneath which is both why the war began and why, so far, it hasn't ended. But we also know that every Russian revolution has been the child of an unsuccessful war. If we are going to look at deep rooted cultural mores, I think I'd start there.

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

“Why didn’t they just fly the Giant Eagles all the way to Mordor?”
”ISR Billy, ISR”.

I wouldn't call it a sham election either...because I wouldn't call it an election. It was a propaganda exercise. As to fair, well...

The ground war may have hit defensive denial primacy or whatever @The_Capt is calling it, but the UA is definitely hitting Russia where it hurts.  If the RA doesn't figure out how to defend against this, there will be a few more "window incidents" in the near future. 😎

The ground war may have hit defensive denial primacy or whatever @The_Capt is calling it, but the UA is definitely hitting Russia where it hurts.  If the RA doesn't figure out how to defend against this, there will be a few more "window incidents" in the near future. 😎

The ground war may have hit defensive denial primacy or whatever @The_Capt is calling it, but the UA is definitely hitting Russia where it hurts.  If the RA doesn't figure out how to defend against this, there will be a few more "window incidents" in the near future. 😎

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

Well kudos for trying to wrestle with it.  There is a lot in the wind with respect to warfare right now. All of my theories could easily collapse tomorrow.  I spent the first year of this war, mouth agape, trying to figure out what was going on.  The second year, things started to form, but they are nothing more than shadows we can see from the outside.
Now into the third year, I am convinced of some things, which if wargaming has taught me anything, is about the time Bil H drops the bomb and blows up my entire plan.

I think you are mixing a lot of themes here to the detriment of objective analysis.  The Soviet system was designed to create as much mass as possible and project it at an opponent.  It may appear "cruel and uncaring" but in reality it was built on the brutal lessons of the Eastern Front and how a quick violent short war was far better than a drawn out one.
We vie for the same aspiration of short wars, we simply lean on technology instead of human capital.  And frankly we have no real proof either system is truly superior.
The Soviet system is a poorer fit for modern democracies; however, before we sit too high on that horse, lets not forget democracies fought in WW1 too, and were very able to throw human capital at a problem at great loss.
The reality is that there is nothing inherently "wrong" or "evil" about the Soviet military system - talking political ideology out of the equation - so long as one asks that system to do what it was designed to do.  The exact same thing goes for the Western military system.  In this war, both sides have tried the western approach...and it did not work.  Now they are in a grinding war of attrition for which the western systems is also a very bad fit.
Nor is there proof that democracies can't do attrition either.  We have proven that we are very capable at spending a lot of lives to win.  What I oppose is this reoccurring narrative that somehow all the problems all sides are having are "Soviet legacy" and any successes are somehow western modernization; this is simply not proven by what we have seen.
Russia has fallen back onto a more Soviet-like approach to force generation and employment...and clearly it is working for them.  They are able to hold ground and even conduct tactical advances even with appalling losses.  The UA is moving much farther to the western doctrine, and frankly some of it is working for them too.  They are able to hold, strike deep and have very high precision.  
The weaknesses of either system are also on display for all to see as well.  For the Soviet system it is rigidity and logistical weight, which is untenable on the modern battlefield.  For the Western system it is the serious lack of depth and capacity.
I suspect that each side is evolving to some sort of hybrid, or at least trying to.  Either way, it does us little good to point at every problem and go "difficulty upscaling due to Soviet legacy"  which frankly does not even make sense based on what Soviet legacy really was.
As to that last part I highlighted - well yes and no.  The Mongols created smart fast mass and took over half the planet, so not entire a new idea.  The Soviet system could generate modern mech and armor forces like no one else.  Their operational art was very advanced on how to employ that mass.  In many ways they really are a defining school of modern warfare, the counter-point to the western schools.  We have no actual war to try and decide which system was better to worse to be honest.  The Gulf War was the closest but it really was a poor analogue.  This war has shadows of the Soviet system but overlapped with other schools.

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

The Boeing guy in charge of doors just got a job there.

The Boeing guy in charge of doors just got a job there.

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

The Boeing guy in charge of doors just got a job there.