And all because one botox-filled-plastic-surgery-riddled old little shit has his ego bruised. The fuck is wrong these days.
(Edit:) just fyi i do know whats wrong, its just all so tiresome.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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So basically nothing changed and its just more know due to internets. We wont learn.
What is wrong is we just had some very good decades in Europe and that might be coming to an end. Peace has always been the anomaly.
I mean, the term "attack" is being used kind of loosely here.
You could legitimately call the explosions that the GRU set off in Czechia back in 2014 an attack.
It wasn't an invasion, but it was members of the Russian military destroying a Czech military munitions depot.
Or the assassinations. Moscow wasn't off killing people on NATO soil during the Cold War the way they have been more recently.
and believe that Russian armed forces will need another five to eight years to restore the military strength they had before the invasion of Ukraine.
Honestly, that also depends on how you measure it.
I would imagine that they can rebuild the numbers in the military and build up expertise again in that period.
And they'll probably have newer and better weapons, and re-equip that military. In terms of, say, drones, I'd bet that they'll be a rather-more-capable military than they were going into the war. Probably longer-range artillery.
But I also do not think that Russia is going to rebuild the kind of huge stockpile of (older) arms from the Soviet era that they have used against Ukraine and lost. Not in five or eight years, at any rate.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-artillery-mlrs-losses-ukraine-shells-1868072
Moscow's troops have lost nearly 10,000 artillery systems in the more than 23 months of war, according to figures published by Ukraine's military. Russia has lost a total of 9,411 artillery systems since February 2022, including 24 in the past day, Kyiv's armed forces said on Thursday.
That's a lot of equipment to lose.
The Soviet Union had pretty hefty military spending. It's hard to estimate it with much precision -- non-market economy, so price data is missing. But you can get a ballpark:
https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-military-spending/
Given my chart, one would say that military spending was around 10-20% of Soviet GDP, so perhaps a compromise figure of 15%, around twice USA spending. However, Harrison 2003 leads some support to the idea that actual military spending was around 20%, at the upper range of the Cold War estimates. Being street bayesians, let's conclude that it was 18% for now.
And remember, that's peacetime spending.
For 2024:
Next year, the Russian defense budget will reach β¬107 billion, or 6% of gross domestic product.
This is a situation where Russia is engaged in an actual invasion and large-scale land war.
If Russia is spending 6% of GDP over two years into a war, I'm kind of skeptical that Russia is going to manage to spend 18% subsequent to the war. And even that level had to be maintained for a long time to accumulate that much hardware. And Russia was only about half of the population in the Soviet Union.
Yeah... idk if any fightable russian men or weaponry will be left. And besides that, I trust in Nato to bomb his ass if push comes to shove
NATO is only as effective as it is united. Moscow is waging a hybrid war, they are attacking NATO in the information space since years or decades. Till 2026 there are a lot of elections β the US, Germany and the UK could be led by proβMoscow governements in 2026, France's next election is 2027.
If Moscow wins the battle of the information space, it's absolutely possible that they will able to freeze the war in Ukraine this year and "rescue the poor Russians oppressed by the Baltic states" in 2026 or 2027.
There is no pro russian party in the UK, what are you on about. Even the right wing fascists are isolationists, they're not pro Russian, and they're also not going to win.
The next election in the UK will either be in 3 months or towards the end of 2024 or early 2025 - UK elections are weird like that. The next election after that won't be until 2030 and the outcome of the 2024/2025 UK election is practically a foregone conclusion, and it's going to a leftist government. By 2027 that government will be in charge there won't have been another election by then.
You're right, I oversimplified.
The key term here is isolationists. Regarding our topic β the question whether NATO is an automagically reliant deterrant β Moscow does not need to control the UK as a puppet state, it suffices that they promote isolationism to a degree that the UK would not intervene into "domestic matters of Latvia".
Yeah except the fact that the isolationists aren't going to win the election, so what they want is irrelevant.
There's always going to be isolationist groups in every country but their existence can be ignored unless they are politically relevant, and this lot are about as politically relevant as any other random fringe party.
That's great to know. Thank you for your assurance. I hope it stays this way.
The attack on Ukraine may have shaken things up, but before that, the Tories seemed quite close with Russia and, forgive this non-Brit for making assumptions, to me it looks like the entire Brexit thing was started and then heavily pushed by Russia as part of a larger plan to splinter the EU and cause infighting (from a quick web search: Wikipedia, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Guardian).
Russian interference is not the same as Russian sympathies. Russia have been meddling in European and American affairs for decades that's got nothing to do with being sympathetic to Russia and Russia's gold and objectives. Do you have any actual evidence?
Also please address your statement that a pro-russian party is about to win in the UK because not only is that definitely not possible because the right wing party are going to lose badly but the right wing party aren't even pro russian.
Do you have any actual evidence?
No, it's just me and my assumptions here, but you can find a lot of cases showing Russian financial backing, for the Brexit campaign as well as connections between the Tories and Russia.
Also please address your statement that a pro-russian party is about to win in the UK
Sorry, you lost me there. I have no idea what party is currently predicted to win.
So you know absolutely nothing and yet you're still commenting.
That is absolutely no pro-russian political group in the UK unless you're living in some parallel universe in which case I really can't help you.
Which UK party are you referring to as being pro-Moscow?
Yeah the guy is chatting air from out of his asshole. I actually don't know how these people come to these conclusions. UK is destroying itself without Russia that k you very much
It is such a profoundly uninformed opinion. Literally no one in the UK cares about Russia, they are utterly irrelevant to UK politics they don't even come up in discussion.
As I said the right wing group are essentially isolationists who want nothing to do with anyone and want to go it alone, they are literally less likely to be pro-russian than the liberals because at least the left want trade deals. Although probably not that much.
Jep, true
That's why Russia has been ~~kidnapping~~ recruiting men from India and other countries right?
For real?! Wow, never thought europe would someday be invaded by indians
That's what the Ukrainian and Indian conscripts are for.
It really depends on the US election results. Trump has demonstrated clearly he backs Russia. If that happens Ukraine will crumble without US support. If he's serious about backing out of NATO it will completely decimate NATOs power to the point that Putin will roll over into NATO while he has the initiative
The US backing out of NATO would be terrible for NATO, but it wouldn't be devastating like you think. Putin would have to be mad to do anything. NATO still has both the UK and France both of which have considerable ordinance, up to and including high-yield nuclear weapons. Fundamentally nothing has really changed.
Russia would be slightly less completely obliterated but given the fact that the level of destruction would be entirely disproportionate to what's necessary, that doesn't really make any difference.