kraze

In their state news on the biggest channel they report heroic deeds of their now sunflower fodder, which literally include one guy destroying 5 tanks with one shot, another guy single-handedly shooting down a "flock of Bayraktars" in a single battle and the third guy stopping a barrage of Smerch rocket arty with his bare hands. Literally. So them capturing whole squads consisting of nobody else but US admirals shouldn't be surprising. Them planting a Z flag on the surface of the Sun is just one North Korea away.

T62 wouldn't be tossing many turrets as it doesn't have an auto-loader. But it would tossing around bits and pieces of its turret because ammo is stored all over the tank, incl the turret.

it's almost as if someone in Hungary literally CtrlC CtrlV russian playbook because it literally sounds the same. Guess they just decided that this half-assed excuse would've cut it if Hungary invaded Ukraine to grab some land as per that "peacekeeping" deal Orban and putin reportedly (have) had.

Restoration money in exchange for reforms works wonders, always. Plus, unlike Afghanistan, which is a very alien culture and is, indeed, more than happy to have hardcore muslims running the show (no insurgency can survive for 20 years without local support - and then take over the state) - Ukraine is still closer in mentality. Although admittedly still quite Stockholm-syndrome traumatized by pre-1991 russian occupation. And yeah - our military guys are the ones that people trust the most right now. For the first time they have a very heavy voice and if NATO pushing reforms will support and rely on people like Zaluzhny - people will actually pay attention this time. In fact our military having an all-time high respect among people already makes a lot of corrupt politicians extremely uncomfortable and yet impotent to do anything about it. So at least in terms of military / security reforms - it will be very different from Afghanistan.

There's only a single country in the world that threatens NATO and it's Russia. There's also a country that's fighting Russia alone against all odds and it's Ukraine. Ukraine already knows how, but most importantly - is willing to defend against Russia. The math is blunt here. Not accepting Ukraine into NATO will be a net loss for an alliance. Because it's the only way Ukraine (and whole Europe) gets true peace, while NATO gets an experienced, battle hardened force that will be more than happy to play ball with all the NATO requirements and demands once this is all over.

Ukraine was a neutral state up until 2019, 5 years into the war, a war Merkel made sure to swipe under the rug over those years. I wonder if those many realize that Ukrainian neutrality is off the table forever.

Nothing unites us like a bunch of guys, that just sent another dozen bil $ to Russia, telling us that we must quickly give up, calmly load ourselves into trains to concentration camps somewhere in Siberia, while leaving our homes for "liberators" to live in - so that business can go on as usual and a face of tzar of war criminals looks attractive.

Doesn't matter though. Whoever comes after putin will not be better. It's Russia. The only question will he be more barbaric or less barbaric. The war will not stop, but it may just give certain western governments an excuse to lift sanctions and be friends with russians again.

Nothing will happen to any russian that will give true feelings on this matter. Hence why they give true feelings on this matter. It's almost 90 days since the full scale invasion began and we still see zero opposition to war or warcrimes. You could've argued that "good russians" exist in the first week or two - but now it's time to be realistic. Because really it's been 8 years and 90 days.

Why not just have a single "just give up already so we can get back to trading with insane dictator and his gang of war criminals as before".

I was commenting on stats that Moscow has a GDP of South Korea and Petersburg has GDP of Netherlands, which they most certainly do not have. So friendly fire.

Moscow and Petersburg GDP PPPs are just as paper weight as their army. Netherlands? South Korea? Lol no. Dagestan most likely has it even worse than states on paper. Remember - dollar is 62 rubles now. Lowest since 2014. In reality it's 300.

Eh I don't think a smart guy would change anything for the "better" for Russia. At the end of a day your typical russian invader is still an uneducated nazi, who believes he's exceptional and can't be touched by untermenschen and cares only about looting toilets and maybe some rape and torture on the side. Russia has always been extremely corrupt and anti-humane, russian soldiers were always barbaric. Their history is non-stop genocides and concentration camps. Their military successes were because only half a century ago wars were won by the numbers. Apparently things have changed a lot when technology and education among officers started to matter. So the only way for russians to be effective is by being run by educated people. But educated people cannot exist in authoritarian states that celebrate genocides and warcrimes and make warcriminals state heroes. Educated people get killed in those long before they mature enough. So some Girkin, himself very uneducated and having the same imperialist-communist mess in his head, running the show won't change the rest of the officers and soldiers. And if Russia is to become educated and start celebrating intelligence... it will cease existing, because other enslaved peoples will start asking questions like it was in late 80s.

Sadly that's not the wording. They write "if US would ever wish to provide himars and patriot - they now can". Not that they will

yeah it's the new thing that every single russian propagandist repeats now, from "pro-putin" to "anti-putin". They are losing because they are fighting a civil war. Obviously can't be losing to Ukrainian "untermenschen". Of course that's also where another failure comes - "same mentality". Our soldiers aren't insane violent looters, rapists and torturers. Maybe that little fact makes the difference.

It's that question of do they not realize that while Russia exists - there will always be wars and genocides on the continent? Or do they seriously hope that next time Russia will be ground to a halt somewhere near Warsaw or Riga and they will sigh with relief for another 5-10 years, before Russia comes back again? Or somebody just gets a bright idea that sacrificing Baltic states for "lasting peace" and prices not rising isn't a bad deal.

Equaling a single guy to a country is a bad idea. You know where that leads. Also British Queen isn't calling the shots. Steinmeier isn't some nobody, he still bears a ton of responsibilities and strings to pull - and he pulls them. Even then the Queen already did a lot of good in the past few months (and never, ever did anything bad to Ukraine), whereas Steinmeier decided to act all insulted, instead of, I dunno, apologizing (which changes nothing but at least would've showed some accountability). Or at least telling it how it is, like Merkel did - "I regret nothing". Ukraine is past trying to swallow deaths for 8 years and pretending like nothing bad happens. Rape, looting, mass executions and forced deportation to concentration camps deep in Siberia - all while Steinmeier was tight-lipped - happened before he got his well-deserved "insult". I mean Germany pours money into a country that runs concentration camps in 2022 - what are we even talking about?

Steinmeier did a lot of bad things to Ukraine, his and Merkel's direct support of Russia and successful attempts to sweep the war under the rug in 2015 with billions poured into a Russian warmachine since - has caused suffering for us for 8 years, resulting in the current warcrime-filled escalation - so naturally he isn't welcome here. Can Zelenskyy be blamed for finally acting like we should've acted towards German political establishment many years ago? And it's not only us, who suffer. Remember Georgia? Merkel & Co are absolutely horrible human beings and should be treated as such. They wouldn't be held responsible if they didn't basically help Russians kill for all these years with lots and lots of money. Money Ukraine now turns into burned out husks. Wouldn't your poorer people need that money that went into Russian tanks and airplanes that our army is now forced to turn into junk?

Dunno about France, but Scholz certainly ground any military support to us to a halt. We got nothing of what was promised. No Gepards, no Pzh2000. Even though we were going to pay for it.

Of course they "go along". Because propaganda isn't the reason anything happens. Propaganda simply gives convenient excuses for why something happens. Russians can simply feel good about their crimes / inaction by just repeating things from TV that exonerate them. It's only how they truly think and act that counts.

Aye, russians will be exploiting that for psyop. But, as usual, follow official statements by the army and the actual commanders. Of course russians are completely untrustworthy - but we'll see how it goes.

And in the past few days for the first time since Feb 24 there are more people returning than leaving. Guess home is home and it's better to build Europe here, now that more people seen it and have an idea what personal ideas they want to bring here from abroad.

Make no mistake, Sobchak is just as evil and fascist as her godfather. Recently she made an hour long propaganda video blaming NATO (and US in particular) for the war and claiming that poor putin simply was forced to defend himself. It's just that she managed to jump off the sinking ship in time and now spreads anti-ukrainian and anti-western propaganda from Israel, a luxury even putin's oligarchs don't have, as they are forced to stay home. And that's what made godpa upset.

Exchanging heavily wounded soldiers for russian POWs most likely. But let's wait for an official statement.

Because to russians surrendering equals high treason. Not because it is some kind of disgrace, but because it shows weakness. You can't be weak in underdeveloped barbaric societies like Russia is. During WW2 russians were killing POWs released from German captivity, "lucky" ones went to Gulag