Russia’s war in Ukraine is already in its 17th month. In that time, President Vladimir Putin has clearly demonstrated that he is not bothered by losses — whether they be financial, material, or human. His war will go on as long as he needs. And, judging by how the authorities have woven the so-called “special military operation” into Russian life, that will be a long time.

  • blanketswithsmallpox
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    2211 months ago

    I see the Russia shills and trolls have finally started to move on from reddit now lol. LarkinDePark, Yogthos. RIP.

    • @psilocybin@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2111 months ago

      You joined one month ago

      Yogthos’ account is 4 years old.

      At least this indicates that he is a human with an opinion that he stated on a highly nieche community and not a paid actor that only joins and starts to influence consensus after a community grows.

      You on the other hand…

      Jk, but think before you misrepresent a community and people as being shills.

      For sake of completeness: account dates can be manipulated by the owner of the instance the account is registered on

        • @OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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          611 months ago

          We haven’t come to a mutually agreed definition and it doesn’t seem to be worth my time to do so with you.

          I am simply pointing out that you’re trying to claim that you were here first, when this website was created by a leftist and populated by leftists, and you only came over here when reddit being a shithole started to effect you personally.

          • @pinkdrunkenelephants@lemm.ee
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            711 months ago

            In other words, you don’t have an answer, you’re defending shitty pro-Russia astroturfing and propaganda smearing.

            Why do the admins tolerate this?

            • AEHNH
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              511 months ago

              The admins are probably also what you would consider “Russian shills”. They explicitly announced they wouldn’t ban people with different ideologies which is why you’re allowed to spout your western propaganda here

                • @OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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                  11 months ago

                  Oh no, please don’t isolate yourself further and prevent us and everyone else in the fediverse looking at this instance from being exposed to your opinions, that would really own us.

                  You’ll note how this communist designed open source fediverse structure is less coercive than capitalist reddit while still applying incentives to discourage reactionary behavior. If you entirely isolate yourselves, you’ve just recreated the structure of reddit.

  • @sndmn@lemmy.ca
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    2111 months ago

    Russia is so weak and pathetic. I’d call them a joke but their war crimes aren’t funny.

  • wildncrazyguy
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    1511 months ago

    So they’re raiding their welfare fund to sustain the war. Thing is, according to the newsletter, the fund will go from 6.8 to 2.5 trillion rubles in 1 year. And this is to be an eternal war? What do they do once everyone’s pensions are wiped out?

    • nitrolife
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      11 months ago

      no one is counting on pensions here. even if you have worked all your life in 2 companies at the same time with salary near 4000$ at mounth, you will receive pension only $160 per month.

        • nitrolife
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          11 months ago

          No one would understand what the amount in rubles means here. I suspect that even in dollars it is difficult to understand.

          For example, is it possible to survive in Russia on $ 160 a month? The answer is - if you have a living space in a property or a country house, then yes, although this will make you save a lot on food, and in some cases you will starve a little.

          In general, if you are interested in delving into the topic, there are a lot of social benefits for pensioners in Russia. For example, you can not pay land tax if you live outside the city, do not pay tax for a car, do not pay for public transport and in some cases for train tickets. Medical care is also free, although queues usually line up for several weeks in advance. But almost all of these benefits are provided not by the pension fund, but by other.

          I can’t speak for everyone, but many of my friends pensioners who have suburban plots are engaged in gardening to save on food. In any case, in the western part of Russia, where the climate allows.

          In any case, in numbers, the situation is still exactly like this. My father has not worked officially for half his life and receives a pension of 13,000 rubles. 143$. My mother worked almost all her life at two jobs with a high salary and receives 18,000 rubles. 197$. Almost all pensioners rely on children to provide money or work to death.

          And proof for you:

  • @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    611 months ago

    The Russian economy is set to completely reverse last year’s slump – something Putin has recently highlighted. Manufacturing and construction lead the way, alongside retail. In a broad sense, all three sectors are beneficiaries of the war. The defense sector, working in three shifts, is boosting production: in June, for example, the biggest increases were in finished metal products (+45.8% year-on-year); computers, electronics and optics (+71.6% year-on-year), radar equipment (+75.4% year-on-year) and electrical equipment (+32.1% year-on-year). Production capacities are running at their maximum.

    • @Vilian@lemmy.ca
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      611 months ago

      something Putin has recently highlighted

      so, we now know it gonna do the opposite nice

        • athos77
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          811 months ago

          Any Republican, really. Just listen to Fox or the Republicans in Congress.

        • kingthrillgore
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          411 months ago

          This is the long game, because if Trump wins, he can get the US out of NATO and that’s a constitutional crisis at home, and a serious flashpoint to drive Europe back into squabbling.

        • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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          311 months ago

          This fucking clownery must end with Trump being Putin’s doggy or whatever you liberal lot conjure up. Trump is an incompetent right wing asswad and simply showed the true nature of American society, which is why Americans/Westerners hate him. Nobody hated him when he was genociding Yemen and going “for the oil” in Syria, just after Obama/NATO bombed the fuck out of spread democracy and liberated Libya.

          Trump is a joke and he has no relation to Putin in any form or shape, besides the fact that Trump happened to lead Republicans, and in the Deep State, Republicans are the China hating publicly racist party while Democrats are the Russia hating institutionally racist centre-right party.

        • FaceDeer
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          311 months ago

          America is far from the only country providing support to Ukraine.

            • FaceDeer
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              411 months ago

              No, it really isn’t. The rest of eastern Europe’s countries remember what it was like to live under the Russian thumb and they have plenty of modern weapons and well-trained soldiers salivating to ensure Russia is going to be a crippled husk for the next few generations. Western Europe is none to fond of Russia either. And if America stops helping because an obvious Russian puppet president has taken power, that’s only going to make it worse.

              America may be the sole “superpower”, but bear in mind that that means Russia is not a “superpower”. They’re a peer to the various countries of Europe at best, and by this point I would not even call them that. Ukraine has more tanks than Russia does now. America’s already done a lot of the heavy lifting in breaking Russia, if they bowed out now it’s not like everything resets to the way it was in 2021. Russia is still on the ropes.

                • FaceDeer
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                  511 months ago

                  Surveys conducted in 2013.

                  Gee, I wonder if anything might have happened from 2014 to present that would have changed those numbers a bit.

                  Also, to dig up an old favourite, you forgot Poland. And a bunch of others. More countries were “living under the Russian thumb” than just literal members of the USSR. Here’s 14 former Soviet republics that joined NATO, whose primary purpose is to defend against Russian attack.

            • FaceDeer
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              711 months ago

              There’s a vast difference between America ceasing to support Ukraine and America supporting Russia. Simply never going to happen, that’s a loonie scenario.

              NATO is not officially supporting Ukraine. It just so happens that all the various NATO member countries are all individually deciding that it’s in their interests to support Ukraine. If America drops out that’s not going to change whether it’s in the interests of those countries to continue supporting Ukraine. Indeed, it becomes all the more important for many of them to make sure Russia’s strength is broken if they don’t feel they can rely on America to support them.

      • TWeaK
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        211 months ago

        The plan is to profit from war, and that’s the thing, it never ends.

        • @jonne@infosec.pub
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          411 months ago

          Russia’s committing way more resources into this conflict than they ever did for previous similar operations though. Ukraine is claiming they killed/wounded over 200000 Russian soldiers. That’s not anywhere near comparable to previous post WWII conflicts.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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            811 months ago

            Ukraine claims a lot of things, it’s called war propaganda. We won’t know what the actual losses are on each side until the war is over. It’s certainly absurd to take Ukrainian numbers uncritically. In fact, it doesn’t even match up with Ukraine having done multiple mobilizations now while Russia has only done one. If Russia was losing anywhere close to manpower Ukraine claims, then they would’ve had to do multiple mobilizations by now as well. Also, as many military experts have pointed out, this is primarily an artillery war and Russia has a huge artillery advantage over Ukraine. That’s where vast majority of casualties comes from.

            • @Rinox@feddit.it
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              511 months ago

              Russia never really stopped mobilizing men. They started the mobilization back in autumn, then passed several reforms to allow them to keep mobilizing men in a less conspicuous way, like making the delivery of the mobilization letter electronic and without receipt, adding restrictions to those who don’t go the conscription office and other laws. All these were done in the winter and thousands of reports of electronic mobilization letters surfaced during these months on the internet. It’s a steady stream conscripts rather than big batches, but the result it’s the same.

          • @wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            Human resources yeah, but financial? I’m not sure. The Iraq war cost 3 trillion dollars.

            And mind you, you’re talking about the victors (mostly) the Korean war cost the lives of 2 million people. As did the Vietnam war.

              • @Noughmad@programming.dev
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                211 months ago

                The thing about corruption is that it’s very inefficient. Spending a trillion dollars on weapons translates to only a couple of billions in the pockets of profiteers, the rest is used to actually make the weapons, move them in place, and to pay the people using them.

                So with a useless war, you waste far more than you would if you just have the money to the profiteers.

                • WalrusDragonOnABike
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                  011 months ago

                  The money would be wasted on things like super yachts anyways. At least a good chunk of this waste goes to things like feeding and housing soldiers and contractors and paying those people and all the people who make the food, supplies, etc. Seems less wasteful than just giving it to billionaires. Granted, the weapons, when they actually function at all, can be used to cause harm to many people…

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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                  611 months ago

                  A lot of western oligarchs are making very good profits off this war. Here’s an undercover interview with a Blackrock recruiter who openly says Blackrock is making money and they want the war to keep going https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOhAgYonAY4

                  Anybody who thinks that the west is there to protect Ukraine and defend democracy is brain damaged.

          • nitrolife
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            11 months ago

            that is, 0.6% of the total number of people who can be drafted into the army.

            The current political regime is not particularly concerned about military losses. even if we take into account the 2 million Russians who left, 200,000 people still make up about 1% of the number of conscripts. Even if we assume that half of them will somehow manage to escape from the Ministry of Defense, 15 million people can still be called up into the army.

            • @Rinox@feddit.it
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              411 months ago

              You can’t really send every man able to hold a gun directly to the front without your economy completely collapsing. Even 1% of your abled men being suddenly dead is very serious in terms of the economy. Plus all the injured coming home from the war now suddenly being a burden rather than a productive asset to your economy.

              Definitely not good for either country

              • nitrolife
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                111 months ago

                Well, that’s right. But already now the business is starting to hire women more willingly than men who can conscripted. And just recently, a law was passed that those who could refuse the draft after entering the institute would still serve after the institute. Government introduced new much stricter laws against draft evasion. Look like preparation for the beginning of mobilization.

            • @BitPirate@feddit.de
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              211 months ago

              You can call a lot of people, but the reality is that the Russian army gradually shifts from trained soldiers with tanks and artillery to Igor with a gun.

              Their losses will skyrocket the moment they can’t provide sufficient counter-battery fire and air defence for their troops anymore.

              • nitrolife
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                11 months ago

                the Russian army has never been well trained. Almost the entire composition of the army below the officers are forcibly conscripted civilians. the number of contractors is ridiculously small.

                the Russian army has never been contracted. And a year of training of a forcibly conscripted person always gives approximately the same result.

                UPD: if we lived in the world of starcraft, Russia would undoubtedly be Zerg. In general, the command and tactics are applied accordingly - a swarm of Zerg. I am generally surprised that conscripts are at least given weapons.

                when I served in the army on universal conscription for 2.5 years of compulsory conscription many, years ago, I fired from a machine gun about 2 times. This is the average level of training of a Russian soldier.

                • @Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  11 months ago

                  True, technically the Russian government proclaims that everyone who can stand straight for a moment is a potential recruit. But if the previous mogilisation attempts showed us something, that even the most loyal putin’s dogs would prefer making war efforts from the comfort of their own homes.
                  I don’t have anything other than gut feelings after extensive reading of telegram channels to base this on, but my personal estimation that they could probably get another half of a million of meatbags or so, but after that the whole shit will just collapse in on itself.

  • This is one of the things I pointed out in the post on the permanent war. Russia since the beginning dumped into the war old and outdated equipment. They sent to the front those who they considered the less valuable soldiers at the same time initially they avoided to send recruits from the draft to minimise the political backlash within Russia.

    Since the beginning they handled it as a long term attrition war.

    • @yata@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      That’s not true. They lost most of their so-called “elite” units at the beginning of the war, thinking it would be a very short war and that these units would just walk into Kyiv. Units which they are incapable of replacing in any meaningful way.

      The mobilisation only came months after their initiation of the war, when they realised it would not be a short term affair.

      • @OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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        311 months ago

        Yup, and the US military-industrial-complex has been frothing at the mouth for another long-term war they can profit off of, and they’ve got their wish.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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          511 months ago

          Yeah, NATO will now force all the European countries to up their military spending and do austerity. The oligarchs running the war industry are going to be swimming in cash while people are gonna starve. Now that they have a credible enemy to scare people with, it’s going to be an unlimited tap.

  • @Omidov@lemmy.ml
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    411 months ago

    It’s great to have a new perspective on this conflict and I personally welcome your work and effort here. Thank you!