As a Russian, I have nothing against this. Actually, screw it, just send all of them. Russian MoD’s probably going to put bounties on them, like they did with Leopards. This way, the US finally get to decommission that meme of an aircraft, some AA crew is going to get an easy payday of like $10k each, and the MoD gets to report that they’ve inflicted $20mil worth of damage for only pennies, while in reality only lifting the burden of maintenance of those planes from the US budget. Sounds like win-win-win to me. The only losers here are those few poor Ukrainians who will have to pilot the damn thing.

This is absolutely bizarre and a disgrace to the Russian military that this was even a thing. Like, Russia has complete in-house comm systems, all the way down to the silicon. They’re as elegant as charcoal clothing iron, but at least they’re secure. In fact, they’re so paranoid about NSA plants that they even force businesses to use in-house encryption to submit accounting reports. And then the same idiots allow risking lives of officers by using random software in a command center…

Though I feel like the response is also far from best. There are numerous alternatives they can switch to, so the ban is mostly going to only hit innocent gamers. It’d be much more impactful if they just silently handed access to those channels over to Ukrainians.

with no modern appurtenances like internet service and smoke detectors. One electrical outlet per room, small windows, no irrigation in the yard, just a hose. Plain telephone service to one jack. Rabbit ears for TV only. No microwave or dishwasher and only clotheslines for drying laundry

Bruh. All that is like pennies, comparatively speaking.

Also, pretty sure you’ve described is like every other property on sale right now, so no need for calculations - just check the local zillow or something.

It’s all worhless bullshit used exclusively for money laundering and feeding lies to aspiring artists. Burn the entire place down for all I care.

Here ya go.

Before you go on to tell anything,

A military parade is a formation of soldiers whose movement is restricted by close-order manoeuvering known as drilling or marching […] parades may also hold a role for propaganda purposes, being used to exhibit the apparent military strength of a country.

The United States Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is a 24-man rifle platoon led by a Captain and Platoon Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Often referred to as The Marching Twenty-Four, the unit performs a unique silent precision exhibition drill. The purpose of the platoon is to exemplify the discipline and professionalism of the Marine Corps

This is definitely a parade. Don’t think I need to argue that synchronously throwing rifles at each other counts as pass juggling.

It’s called tradition, you silly bitch, and you are correct to laugh at it because it indeed looks stupid as fuck

I think this applies to all ceremonial military stuff: The queen’s guard, the India-Pakistani border guards (at least they own it), the french foreign legionnaires who go out with a fucking axe and an apron, the US also has a tendency to flash ancient rifles on parades and then… juggle them? And so does Russia, aside from whatever that shit in the OP-post is, always brings out an old WW2-era tank on parades, alongside with the only available prototype sample of a new one, which then proceeds to stall in the middle of it and has to be towed out with said WW2-era tank.

what’s preventing China from just taking ALL of Russia

What for? Russia is already drifting into becoming a China’s satellite state. Besides, there’s another resource-rich, sparsely populated, 99.9% Asian country right by their border, with barely any security and which would’ve been part of China already if not for some weeb. If they are going for conquest, Mongolia would be the second target right after Taiwan, but attacking it would tip off Russia to go all in on defense.

Russia would never threaten China with nukes, because 1) China ALSO has nukes, and 2) China has been the only thing keeping Russia afloat recently.

The problem here is the amount of them and population density. Just one bomb dropped randomly somewhere in China would probably cause more casualties than the entire Chinese nuclear arsenal targeting the most populous Russian cities. And Russia has an order of magnitude more…

As long as there are no troops under the NATO flag inside Russian territory, I think we’re in the clear. They can be deployed to defend Ukraine no problem because Putin claims that they already are. Any country can also join under their own volition - I’m pretty sure Russian military had already had direct engagements with French troops in Africa and nobody even batted an eye.

My concern is based on the assumption that nobody actually cares about Ukraine enough to send their military in. Under this assumption, Ukraine is massively outnumbered and the only reason it isn’t steamrolled yet is because Russia can’t really deploy their entire military under the risk of massive draft dodging and revolts. Everybody who gave any shit about Donbas is already on the frontline. The only way for Russian government to gather more is by inviting Ukraine to bomb civilian targets in it’s own territory. By doing it, they can draft more troops under the pretense of defending the motherland, rather than just dying in a pointless conquest.

I keep getting told they’re broke, they’re out of supplies, and its game over for them by EOY

Oh no, it’s just that there is a market for such “news”. Russia pumps out exactly the same kind, but in reverse, about how Ukraine’s going to fall any moment now for the past two and a half years. But reality is that the situation is at a stalemate, with Ukraine getting infused with boatload of weapons once in the while, while Russia has a steady and self-sufficient production but is short on soldiers willing to fight in unjustified conquest.

It seems like the goal is to terror-bomb major civilian centers in hopes that Russians will revolt against the war

Oh nooo… This is going to have exactly the opposite effect. I was previously writing a huge comment detailing how even if targeting out only the military targets, there’s always a risk of collateral damage and how each mistake can result in even more Russian troops in the trenches, but then threw it all out to clarify what you’ve meant. If going full Israel was the plan all along… well… are you sure you want to support that?

You mean by disrupting the supply lines? Because Russia has a shitton of supplies, it’s just that they’re nowhere near Ukraine.

As a Russian, I am surprised that this is still a question. Like, duh, it’s a war, not a hockey game, bomb right away, what the fuck are you waiting for. I have serious doubts about it turning the tide of war, though, but who am I to tell them what to (not) do.

Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to exert influence and project power on a global scale

Still is, technically.

You’re resorting to personal attacks against an argument which doesn’t take a lot of effort to check the validity of. Get out of your bubble.

At first I was going to say “сука бля, nyet, we have enough shitheads already”. But then I realized that they would honestly just fit right in. So you have yourself a deal… as long as you could also find a safe place for Snowden - the dude does not deserve to be in this hellhole.

This is indeed correct. No need for LLM’s as there are plenty of Russians on lemmy who can just tell. As one myself, I can tell you, it’s still mostly business as usual. Kursk incursion sparked less bang than, say, the Orenburg flooding or Krokus shooting. Economically speaking, the inflation is fucking insane, everything jumped about 2X in the last couple of years. Though still somewhat manageable as society is undergoing a major shift where some salaries, particularly those related to military complex have jumped even more than that, while others remained the same, which put many people way below poverty line. There isn’t really a deficit in anything, some things, like coca cola, were replaced by locally sourced substitutes, while in other cases, if you’ve got money, there’s always gray imports - e.g. I’m getting my monster cans smuggled from Poland at X4 the usual price. Surprisingly, some good things came out of it, too - I freaking love SBP. Visa and Mastercard can suck a big one. As for coffins on coffins, none of my direct friends or relatives went voluntarily or got drafted. The ones who stayed surprisingly got extremely desensitized of the whole situation, seemingly turning to support the regime, or at least so in public. A couple of relatives of a spouse of a relative went in for the money. As far as I’m aware, both are alive, one is fighting right now, and the other returned, already spent it all, and now considers going back again for a round two. All in all, compared to the state of things before past revolutions, as I read about them, not even Ukraine is at that point yet, much less so for Russia.

What? That’s the strategy for threatening people in exile. Those people, he can just torture and imprison right away. But he doesn’t need to, he just silenced them. Believe me, as someone who has endure being in Russia and having TV running 24/7 beside me, that none of it is seen on TV, or any publicly accessible websites for that matter.

Clowns, these guys, as well as those at RDK. They’d be much more useful if they were just sitting in Nizhniy Lars and did absolutely nothing. As is, it’s just a bunch of token “Russians” used by Ukraine for PR reasons.

It is already, from both sides. There’s massive censorship from the inside, with a killswitch already in place waiting for a moment to actually disconnect Russia from the global internet. As well as sanctions and embargoes from every other site, no matter if they’re commercial or not, just because admins couldn’t be bothered implementing anything better than blocking the entire Russian IP range.

Fuck you for saying this, though. Don’t call to make the lives of anti-war people harder than it already is, you’d just be throwing more fuel into the fire by proving the Russian propaganda to be true.