Letter from Prague

Isn't there a (significant) part of US far right who care about Israel because "Jews living in their promised land" is one of the requirements for Apocalypse, and that's what they want?

The hypothesis I heard is that the inteligence failure is because Netanyahu in his quest to become dictator replaced a lot of competent people in various agencies with loyal people. Might be just a spin to throw it on him, but this is truly historic failure. Especially since it happened on anniversary of when it happened last time.

It seems there's been a decade or two when everyone learned the pros and cons of the West (but mostly US) playing the World Police. Lots of people didn't like it. Now we seem to live in a decade where the West doesn't play world police, or at least is seems to be doing it a lot less. Lot of people also don't like it. Seems every way is wrong.

I wonder which way the politics will swing. Will this destroy Netanyahu or will this make him ruler for life?

... nevermind

I think as for "why not earlier", if I remember correctly, some of the documents suggested they wanted to do this on 2020 while Trump was still in power, but the pandemic threw them off. Then suddenly Trump lost the second term and white house was full of familiar faces. As for "why not wait a little more", no idea. My best guess is that Putin was born in 1952 and his age starting with 7 was the symbolic thing that made him go "wait if I want to have greater empire as my legacy, I need to do it soon".

I mean its missiles, they are supposed to go fast edit: sorry

The global world is so connected, that in case of war between China and some other power, most of countries would barely exist as countries anymore. You think the supply chain impact of COVID was bad? This would be several orders of magnitude worse. Think "famine only killed 20 % of population of US and EU counts as a win" kind of situation. Almost the same goes just for Taiwan, by the way. Most of modern high performance microchips are made there. Remember when chip shortage made new cars unavailable and prices of used cars went up like crazy and never went down since? That's nothing, I hope your computer, phone, car, AC unit, fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, elevator, ..., power plant, water tap control and all of industrial machinery lasts next 20 years, because you're not getting new one any sooner. Also, blowing up the Three Gorges (also known as "doing the funni" on reddit) is projected to kill like 400 million people. That is not "strategic bombing" scale, that is a scale of destruction world has never seen.

Just "Breaking Red Army" isn't going to work. The Red Army is Russia. These aren't separable from each other. Russians love Putin. Russians want the war. Millions of Russians can turn into mobiks on moments notice. Millions of Russians are fine with working in factories to make tanks and artillery shells and most importantly drones for terror strikes. Red Army is Russia and Russia is Red Army. There is no breaking the Red Army without breaking Russia. (And of course China is always willing to sell them what they need, and Iran is always willing to exchange drones for nuclear secrets.) The deeper and more fanatic Russia gets, the less realistic it is that there are any other options than 1) Ukraine capitulates 2) Forever war in different degrees of frozenness 3) Destroyed Russia in free fall. The world will have to chose, sooner or later.

I think you mean the Anglo-Saxons? Anyway, this guy's problem is more that he's an organized crime figure who had journalists investigating his corruption murdered and controlled Slovakia with a corrupted police leadership, than his communist past.

The internets are reacting already: (This one was made by an actual Czech newspaper, by the way, not just some randos.)

Seems Russia's political manipulation and propaganda is finally paying off for them. Serbia stirring **** on Kosovo borders, US cutting support thanks to Republicans, now Slovakia. All designed to remove Ukraine's support and all great successes. edit: this of course goes back to the whole Western strategy of trickling support, not helping too much and thus giving Russia both ample time to dig in physically, and work the infosphere.

So the hypothesis that Ukraine will get US support at least until 2024 elections seems to have been disproven.

We've seen them do literally from day one.

Lavrov talking about stalemate and being "ready for talks." Makes me think there's something to the breakthrough rumors.

Based on my experience, the Bangkok Tuk-Tukers are already experts at that.

I would say this sword has two edges. The apathy and misery is what allows Russians to still wage the war. But it is also what prevents them from waging it well. There are pockets of competent Russians - we hear about some units using drones well and other things - but these are only a pockets because while they are capable of learning and innovation, the apathy makes them incapable of scaling it up. That is also why the drone strikes on Moscow are important - I even feel like Russians closing the Moscow airport due to drones has bigger impact than some explosions. If your flight to Paris get cancelled because of Ukrainian missiles, it is harder to pretend there is no war, while some burning building in a city that has more people than my country just gets lost in the noise.

The whole nordstream discussion is very strange. I read (maybe in this very thread) that you need specialized training and specialized equipment to pull something like that off. A group of random divers operating from a tiny boat won't do, because it is too deep, etc. Does Ukraine have that capability? Unlikely. Does Ukraine have a reason to do it? Not unless you do a lot of mentsl gymnastics. Does Ukraine have a history of messing with other countries' underwater infrastructure? Nope. Were any Ukrainian assets seen around? One suspected boat according to "anonymous sources" and the link to Ukraine seems to be some "Ukrainian" but actually Russian lady who visited Crimea maybe? Does US have the capability? Probably, I'm sure SEALS can do some crazy stuff. Does US have a reason to do it? I'd say not much but it can be discussed (it seems the relationship impact would be very much not worth it even if US really didn't like the project). Does US have a history of messing with other countries' underwater infrastructure? Not that I know. Were US assests seen in the area? Not that I know of. Does Russia have the capability? Yes. Does Russia have a reason to do it? Very much yes. Does Russia have history of messing with other coutries' underwater infrastructure? Yes. Were Russian assets seen in the area? Yes, specialized ship for underwater works was seen nearby before and after. I mean, it is definitely possible Ukraine is behind it, or the US. But if you say "it's not the guys with the means, motive, history of doing something like it and who was seen around, it is actually the guys who had no reason, unlikely means, no history of doing it!" then I would expect a lot very very clear evidence. But we really don't have that, from what I've seen. Everything is pretty spotty.

I think you could plausibly claim that both sides on the Eastern front were fighting against empire of evil. No good guys there.

The more I see Ukrainians blowing up the command chain all of a sudden, the more I believe we are closing to breakthrough and this is attempt to bring even more chaos to Russians. edit: it's probably just wishful thinking.

All of the above - but also the whole reason we are even now talking about Poland relations is because Russian fleet makes it difficult for Ukraine to export grain via the sea. Ane the fleet will be important part of the occupiers supplying themselves if Ukraine manages to blow up the Kerch bridge, cut the rail connection, etc

I mean I enjoy Germany-bashing and Poland-bashing about as much (normal are neighbour relations, I think) but that chart with contributions should definitely be per-capita. Then the whole discussion would probably be "why are we giving so much money to Hungary?"

Consider in US small coke is like half liter and small car has six tons, I hope it's at least a thousand.

Ukrainians now have domestic drones that can hit Russian power grid - which will not have Patriot protecting it and bunch of donated generators from EU propping it up. If they were smart, they would not dare touch Ukrainian power grid. Of course if the Russians were smart, we would not be reading this very thread.

Yeah, I have not seen any election predictions but I really hope you all succeed at getting rid of these guys, whether soon or in years.