• Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      In the run up to the invasion I kept thinking that it was all a giant bluff and that Putin would stop at the last minute and make Biden look like a crazy old man shouting at clouds.

      • bluGill@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        You are not the only one. Any sane military analysis showed it was a.bad idea. Where you (and everyone without access to classified information) messed up was assuming Putin was sane.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          11 months ago

          Ah, let’s slow down a bit.

          The war is still going on, Ukraine is still bleeding, the Ukrainian military is losing some of the more qualified personnel they had prepared before the start of the war, and the Russian military is gaining experience and becoming a bit less shit.

          Which means Ukraine’s qualitative advantage is becoming smaller. Even the casualty rates have changed accordingly.

          And Russian economy is not crumbling and doesn’t seem to even be on that track.

          Putin and others are afraid of competing civilized polities in the ex-USSR. They very clearly don’t intend any “imperial restoration”, because their actions are inconsistent with that. They are more of a mafia group gotten very high.

          They hurt Georgia so that it doesn’t become a prosperous country, they also were strangling Armenia in various forms, even with it being an “ally”, and since 2010 started supporting Azerbaijan. With Ukraine their actions were not unlike those with Armenia before government change, and then various gradations of war.

          See, even if Ukraine sort of “wins”, it’s inevitably going to be more authoritarian than in an alternative reality where this war didn’t happen. If it “loses”, then, well, there won’t be such a civilized polity, just another Belarus, bigger and poorer.

          Almost a win-win situation.

          It’s not a sport.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I hoped he wouldn’t, but at the point where he was massing troops at the border it was surely a sign of what was coming.

          “We’re not planning on invading, just putting all our troops here for shits and giggles!”

          • galloog1@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            It wasn’t the massing of troops. It was the massing of blood and other perishables. You don’t do that for drills.

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            When the analysts found that there were massive stores of blood bags on the border, that was when it really dawned on me it was going to happen.

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Russia needs to be permanently humbled and put in its place. Tired of their idiotic Chinese-riddle-threats. Go fuck yourself, and keep your gross old man mouth away from boys’ tummies baldie aha :)

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        make Biden look like a crazy old man shouting at clouds

        I mean, he does anyway. I wish we could get a president that can string together a coherent sentence.