KevinC
23753
Still waiting for corruption in Russia to be fixed. Any day now, surely. From ISW:
Post Stalin, the Soviet regime did a pretty good job of preventing any one person from gaining sole control of the party and therefore the country. Putin seems to be very much more a totalitarian dictator for life.
They were all knocked out during an assault. There’s drone video of them maneuvering and getting hit.
The experimental Abrams-X has an auto-loader in an automated turret, and moves all three crew into the hull of the tank where they are effectively operating “glass cockpits” driven by external sensors.
The farm boys’ days are numbered.
So corruption is subverting the law using your personal resources, but also having laws you consider bad? Using mental gymnastics like this it’s easier to prove that modern USA is like USSR rather than modern Russia is like Soviet Union.
Your argument seems to come down that it’s all an inequality in different ways. Well then medieval Venice and ancient Akkad were just like USSR too.
People like Civilization video game more than Humankind cause cultures in this game are persistent and easier to track. There’s a beauty in the idea that things always stay the same, only the masks change. Russian propaganda likes to pretend we’re still living in 19th century of spheres of influence and balance of power, other nations just pretend to have democracy, international law and stuff.
He’s lamenting the loss of prestige and global influence that goes with an empire, not wishing for the days when someone like him had to answer to the Politburo. He’s a king, not a general secretary, and the kingdom he’s made isn’t much like the Soviet state, and he doesn’t want it to be like the Soviet state. He wants it to be big and powerful and for other countries to fear it.
It’s a despotic kingdom where the national wealth and natural resources are essentially the property of the king and of a collection of related and unrelated people who make up a kind of nobility, that together with the king exists in a state not dissimilar to that of the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s a kind of feudalism, not any kind of Marxism or socialism, not even the Soviet kind.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for some to see that X might be bad, and Y might be bad, but that doesn’t make X and Y the same thing. Especially when they’re bad in essentially different ways.
Interesting piece by Phillips O’Brien about the disconnect in how some countries of Europe see the world in the wake of Russia’s invasion, and how the countries of the east and the north are winning the tug of war about the future of cooperation in defense in Europe.
jpinard
23761
What can we do to impede Iran’s involvement in this war?
We should sanction them even more, because that is surely the way to make them see reason.
Seriously, I’m stumped. Our national policy since 1979 is to keep Iran our enemy and try to isolate them from the entire world. There are lots of reasons for that, but the result is that they’re our enemy, isolated from most of the world, driven into the camp of our other enemies, and pretty much impossible for us to influence in any positive way.
Ukraine’s top general said two missiles fired from the Black Sea crossed Moldovan and Romanian airspace - something that could raise tensions, especially as Romania is a Nato member.
A better question is what can we do to make NATO members protect their own airspace from Russian attacks?
Strollen
23764
It is a reasonable question, but like you I’m stumped as to any practical way of doing this.
Diplomatically, I think we are much better off saying. “It is ok to supply weapons to your friends when they are at war”. Iran is a friend of Russia and therefore an enemy of the US. China understands that supplying weapons to Russia will hurt its relationship with the US.
But I think Ukraine is much better off if we say. "If Iran is supplying flying weapons to Russia allowing the attack targets in Ukraine then it is ok for the US to supply flying weapons to Ukraine which allows them to attack targets in Russia.
I was being somewhat facetious in the comparison, but I was mostly responding to the remark that bribery was common in situations where a person was not adequately compensated in terms of pay or salary. So a bribe may not be a part of the “menu” price, but it’s still expected/necessary.
meeper
23766
I want to believe that’s the case, but color me slightly skeptical.
Ukrainian PR was a master of storing up videos of successfully strikes on Russian equipment in the spring and drip-feeding them out over the summer/fall to make it seem like they were still having the same level of success. It’s reasonable to think they may still be sitting on similar footage from last winter.
Given their past behaviour, I’d like to see some level of corroboration on that footage before I accept it blindly. I want Ukraine to succeed, but it irks me that I can’t just trust them on something like this.
Janster
23767
I find Ukrainian propaganda probably more closer to the truth, but it’s still propaganda and they don’t disclose much really.
While I hope for their success it’s been a lot more rocky than media portrays I think
KevinC
23768
Sorry for the Reddit video link, but what the hell are the Russians doing?!
Multiple times over the course of this video you see the lead vehicle of a column hit a mine. And then the vehicle behind them just try to drive past the wreck, hitting mines themselves… and then they do it again!
KevinC
23769
We know Russia has seen serious losses just recently in Vuhledar. So there has been an opportunity for new video of this kind, at least.
Well, that’s one way to clear a minefield, especially if you have a million men and warehouses full of tanks. /s
The laughable hype Russia was putting into the media about how they’d soon be deploying automated “tanks” led to a younger family member asking my opinion on it. I asked if they’ve ever played an RTS, to which they responded they had. Then I asked if the pathfinding on those units was better or worse than their own after they’d had waaaay too much to drink and we’re trying to stumble home on a Friday night.
The reason I bring this up is I may need to find a better analogy after watching Russian tank drivers/commanders get super stupid.
