kraze

USSR made thousands of those. And russia made sure to pressure countries into giving those to them. But it doesn't matter. What matters is how many operators proficient enough to ride those they have left. Considering that most capable ones have already turned into the sunflower fertilizer.

You are correct

This isn't WW2 and Russia isn't USSR. Defending your own homeland and defending something you aggressively stole from others is two vastly different things. Soviet army had a lot of Belarusians and Ukrainians fighting for it. In fact Ukrainians suffered the heaviest casualties during WW2, which should explain a lot of things.

Pretty sure any road in Ukraine can be checked out using Google maps. The real issue for an invader is that Polissya region (of which Volyn is a part) is quite swampy - which again can be checked out using Google maps. You can see how few roads there are and how much of the territory is a forested wetland.

In case you were wondering

kadyrovites are scared of coming anywhere near Kyiv at this point.

It's the reason Iskanders and Kalibrs are now in 24/7 production mode. Considering they had about 200 of each without absolutely baring their other borders - that's it and they aren't fast to build, as well as entirely dependent on western technology

My above post answers that. Russian moms are not normal moms. They send millions of their children into "yunarmiya" aka putinjugend to prepare them for aggressive wars since as early as 8 years old, where those children are indoctrinated to die for putin if putin wishes so. They even have a song that literally goes like: "And when supreme commander calls us into the final battle... Uncle Vova, we are with you". https://youtu.be/N1UN0hWNQA4 So as they have it in one of the recent intercepted calls home: Mom: "so basically they sent you out there to die?" Son: "turns out yes, I guess" Mom: "understandable. We have a shortage of sugar here, can you believe that?"

Apparently a 2 day special operation is going so well - putin is preparing to use his underage putinjugend (yes, they have that) to replace casualties, as they are the most idealistic, strongwilled, other fascist BS blablabla

South Korea was no better than North Korea in terms of corruption (and many other bad things) in the 50s and even decades to follow. But nothing fixes the corruption problem like a constant existential threat.

Just a nationalized capitalist Z letter

Actually just checking Wikipedia and making some extrapolations is enough. Their whole standing army is about 50k, which includes support personnel, and those are predominantly conscripts that serve for 18 months before moving into reserves. Since Belarus is already de facto annexed by Russia - in the best case scenario they can send 2/3 of those, leaving russian borders completely bare (but they need the rest at EU borders) - which would amount to about 35k mostly conscripts maximum. That's the best case, in reality they will have less than that. So unless putin (through his talking head of lukashenko) orders full mobilization of Belarus - they will be attacking Volyn with 20-25k of low motivation, no experience troops. And ordering mobilization in a country freshly annexed and thus still unpredictable, especially considering that it had no fascist indoctrination in the past 30 years, may be a bad idea.

That's standard for russians. They did massive deportations of Donbass population to the deep north, Syberia, etc. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly moved to far regions of Russia over 8 years. Which is the same thing they were doing 100 years ago

Nah. Those generals - they are all relatives/childhood friends of other very high ranking government members and other generals. That's how russian corruption works. It's a very tight clan with ties over skills. If putin was to ever order the killings - he'd face a real chance of a military coup. Because killing one guy is one thing, but whacking 5 is just walking the edge of the razor.

No.

Are you saying that some kinda russian black ops, who always completely and royally mess up every thing they do (see literally anything in Europe) - would they suddenly be that smooth in killing their own high profile commanders, who are surrounded by troops at all times?

Their main mistake was thinking they can occupy and hold a 40 mln country with 180k troops. Especially when they had to plug holes in those 180k with conscripts and cops. Even USSR had to keep a 500k occupation force here in 1920s and do three country-wide genocides (1921, 1932, 1947) to finally break the resistance.

Russia never ever fought smart. Remember - for 30 years russians fought only civilians or lightly armed fighters. They never fought a real army, yes even in 2014 in Ukraine the army was mostly units chaotically put together, some coming to war with their own hunting weapons. Ukraine however fought the war against a real army and in 8 years learned how russians operate. Russia came to war expecting to fight like they always do - throw cannon meat in metal boxes at the problem until the problem is resolved. The sole fact that looting food is an official order should tell you a lot about how they adapt to sudden issues. E.g. they don't. And, hopefully, will never learn how to.

They have two in Belarus. The one with 2500 mentioned is in Gomel, there is another big soldier morgue in Mozyr.

Ukraine has no "ethnic exclusivity" BS that Russia stands on. But our extreme tolerance and forgiveness for all the evils russians did to us is what led us to this. And it can be resolved strictly politically: The way it should go is hopefully either forbidding everyone with a russian passport to enter Ukraine for at least next 5 years after the victory or selling them visas for a few thousand dollars, kind of a "reparation tax" to enter. It will be a good start. All that russians have destroyed with their support for war or silence will be expensive to rebuild. Lives they destroyed can never be rebuilt though.

Of course. NATO is a strong guarantee that nothing bad happens to its members because that guarantee comes from nuclear countries. And the sole fact that no NATO member was ever attacked is a solid proof of that. Plus being neighbors with a country that wants to murder all of us for the sole reason of some made-up delusions means there is no alternative to NATO that will guarantee our survival. If we were in NATO to begin with - this war would have never happened. And naturally being part of EU is a great thing too. Because civilization is about making money, lots of money - at least for the foreseeable future. And EU is about making money. War is bad for money. Peace is good for money. So EU found a way for its ever warring countries to peacefully co-exist and resolve all the issues through hard cash.

No, what I'm saying is that for whatever reason "good russians" certainly seem to appear exclusively in russian state propaganda.

Another psyop to give the world a false impression that there are "good russians" and ease off on sanctions. Why? Because every russian astronaut is military. They are ideologically screened because, just like in USSR, they represent their country. And it's obvious those uniforms were given to them by higher-ups. Add to that the massive russian "stop hating russians" campaign they launched in blocked social networks (meaning all that stuff is staged and organized by the FSB) - and you get the picture. "Why should poor russians suffer if it's only putin's fault?"

Wasting expensive strategic missiles designed to battle the best of NATO on Ukraine and having no way to restock them due to sanctions is certainly a stunt

Putin (and russians as a whole) thinks no such thing. He is perfectly aware of what NATO is. And he is perfectly aware that it's impossible to drag NATO into aggressive wars of any kind because of all the safeguards. Furthermore russians are fully aware that no NATO country is interested in expansion because civilized world is all about trying to outrun other countries in money and money loves peace. This all has to do with the fascist ideology of russians as a whole. Their ideology is that Russia is "a third Rome" (which is highly delusional in itself for oh so many reason), that their empire should spread to former USSR borders in the middle of Germany once again. Likewise "Warsaw pact" was never any pact - USSR just couldn't say "this all belongs to us now" so soon after 1945 because they would look like an occupier, not unlike Nazi Germany, to the rest of the world and that's a bad idea in the aftermath of WW2. But make no mistake - all those countries were fully occupied. So naturally NATO prevents the restoration of "former glory" (aka occupying half of Europe) and that's the only reason Russia opposes NATO. And that's why they wage wars since as early 1992, occupying parts of countries to use NATO safeguard about "countries with ongoing wars not able to join" against those countries. And that's why they can't invade Baltic countries because those got protection. With Ukraine it's an even more hardcore story, totally tied into faux russian greatness mythology, that was already discussed.