First they were the second most powerful army in the world.
Then they were the second most powerful in Ukraine.
And now they are the second most powerful in Russia.
I like they way this is going 🤗.
Would be wild if they took over Russia and Zelenskyy became the president of Russia.
And now they are the second most powerful in Russia.
I think it’s been that way for longer than people think. Remember when Wagner just rolled through Russia without any resistance? Putin’s might has always been false promises/ blackmail, but it’s obvious now that Russia hasn’t had the means to back itself up for a while now
Prigozhin should have waited to betray Russia until Ukraine was in a position like this.
Seems like he was an idiot, though. IDK what level of delusional hubris one needs to be on to travel to Moscow after an attempt such as that.
With how it went down he was mainly an idiot for standing down. Idk how he imagined that ending
Nazis have now assumed marching on Moscow would work out for them twice, maybe it’s just a related mental defect.
they made a classic blunder- the one slightly more well known than getting into it with a scillian when death is on the line! Getting into a land war in Asia!
Russia is. (ukraine may not be. Usually the distinction is a bit further east of Ukraine- around the ural mountains.)
but.
Russia definitely are asian. So. given that they picked a fight on their border… I’m gonna go ahead and say “close enough” to make fun of them.
Most of productive thoughts throughout the pre-soviet russian history was wasted on that exact question. No joke. That long-going identity crisis even caused a divide within the elites about the choice of following either the european footsteps (westerners) or going on their own (slavic-philes).
In Asia? Ukraine isn’t in Asia, even western Russia isn’t considered to be in Asia…
Go Ukraine, fuck Russia.
A not very wealthy country of about only 120 million people wanted to play superpower.
They were offered peace, cooperation and prosperity, but instead they chose corruption and confrontation.
Russia could very possibly have been the biggest economy in Europe by now, if they had chosen cooperation. That would have made them more powerful and influential than all the bullshit they’ve pulled to undermine the west and their neighbors.
I totally agree.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were handed everything they wanted on a silver plate.
They could have been Poland on steroids.
But they chose to reject it, so stupid.
Russians have been brainwashed for centuries by their elites to thinking corruption is the natural order of things.
They can’t believe that western nations can have shows of wealth and quality of life standards they do, because that means the way they and their ancestors have lived for decades isn’t how people are supposed to live.
Their elites steal everything, ensure education standards are low as possible so their workers can just barely manage to operate in a factory, on a farm or in a mine, and then encourage them to stay drunk as possible during their waking hours.
And then they wonder why Russians who manage to emigrate west never go home and sooner or later cut all contact with their backwards motherland.
Frankly if it hadn’t been for the advent of Nuclear Weapons, and Soviets stealing designs for them from America, Russia never would have been a Superpower at all and probably collapse in on itself in the 60s.
Their elites steal everything
You think the western elites don’t? It’s just slower…
Russians have been brainwashed for centuries by their elites
Meanwhile western have been brainwashed for centuries by their elites to thinking russians are the bogeyman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Elites steal everything everywhere not just in russia
wanted to play superpower
As someone who is from that region, it’s not even that. A whole lot of countries want to play superpower, and they are only mildly hated for it. The US, the French, even the Chinese are an abstract economic threat. The Russians want to play 18th century superpower and that makes them a concrete military threat.
The stupid thing is, just by looking at the state of the world right now, they totally would have won the long game if they went soft power only. Putin is a failure that way as well I guess.
At some point we’ll probably have to admit that they’re culturally not inclined to do good. That and the rampant alcohol abuse is holding them back.
How quickly we forget the first satellite, first man in space, first nuclear power plant, first fusion reactor, and the MIR space station.
Something has indeed been holding them back since those things were created, and their culture hasn’t significantly changed since then.
Russia could very possibly have been the biggest economy in Europe by now,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
Countries are at war with each others.
What’s your point? It clearly states the cold war ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Most of eastern Europe chose to democratize, and they are way better off today than in 1991. But Russia chose to undermine the west and the countries around them, instead of cooperation.
Countries are at war with each others.
That’s not a law of nature by any means.
But Russia chose to undermine the west and the countries around them, instead of cooperation.
West and russia have been at war since WWII and even before read the article on cold war carefully.
To my knowledge, it’s the first time in history that a non-nuclear power invaded and occupied territory belonging to a nuclear power.
So, that’s even more dubious history Putin played a part in.
Serious question: was Israel really occupied at any point in time during, this or past, post maybe nuclear power times?
I don’t think a short term raid that’s immediately repelled necessarily counts as occupation in this sense.
My Israel history is also very limited
I don’t know much history either. Maybe Sinai in the Yom-Kippur war (1973)?
My preferred fictional outcome is Putin orders a full launch, but almost all the missiles just do a small fart in their tubes as no maintenance was done, and the ones that launch end up reaching escape velocity and disappearing because the people in charge of the silos had long since sold the payloads for yacht money…
Unfortunately, the US has a launch on warning policy.
So even if every warhead Russia has is a dud, or doesn’t even re-enter the atmosphere, they’ll still be nuked into a fine mist of concrete and carbonized human dust about 20 minutes after we realize their bombs don’t work.
And then the rest of us get to live through nuclear winter.
Putin is finally making history, his legacy will now be remembered forever. What a great accomplishment! They said it would be over in 3 days, over two years later and now Ukrainian troops are in control of Russian territory.
Amazing what Ukraine has managed to pull off here. Watching closely to see how this unfolds.
Another chance to use my new Ukrainian Riker!
(He’s Rikrainian.)
He’s going to struggle to perform the riker manoeuvre with a horn of that size…
It’s about the commitment to the leg throw, not the size of the hog in the hedgerow
Only the characters below are Cyrillic, the rest aren’t pronounceable
Р_ду_и_ д _о_я иоте
I don’t speak RU/UKR but my best approximation of the sounds are
R_du_i_ d _o_ya iote
Writing this out has caused me 5 psychic damage.
