I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
‼️ White House announces new $1.1 billion weapons pkg for #Ukraine. It includes +18 HIMARS systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
That's a lot of freedom heading straight to where it's needed more. That package alone could guard the a massive chunk of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.
That seems like literally everything except tanks being shipped over... and it doesn't seem impossible that somebody's training up Ukrainian tank crews either (I'm assuming tanks are more complicated to operate than what's being sent in this package)
I believe Poland is working on a general purpose service depot near the border, such a thing would be needed as its not that Abrams are impossible to use or nearly as hard to train to use as a plane or whatever, it's that repairing and maintaining the things is a nightmare and why almost all of the Taliban's Abrams tanks are now giant heavy decorations
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
It's very much not. They're way below replacement levels and do not have spare people to burn up trying to take new territory.
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
I mean, “news” is always pretty sketchy these days, but I’m certainly prepared to believe it at this point.
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
I mean, “news” is always pretty sketchy these days, but I’m certainly prepared to believe it at this point.
It feels closer to the sort of thing people say when they simply aren't going to acknowledge being wrong because they're mad about something. Like the way people act when store employees are trampled to death on Black Friday sales.
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I watched the video and it really doesn't sound like she's saying that. She's starting a new sentence about her other son. The show cuts before she says anything else.
The twitter cut is a twitter cut, but i dont think these Russian mothers are like... insect queen logicing the loss of their children.
I mean... I cant accept that. They are human and since having children I cant imagine that. It hurts bad enough when its a miscarriage... (its ok its a tadpole that didn't work out, nature rejects unfit candidates) but someone you knew and raised and had sleepless night after sleepless night over and poured effort and sweat and tears and joy into.. and just be like meh whatever they can go die in a foreign land I've got spares.
I reject that as impossible, these Russian women cannot be that brain damaged. This is either a propaganda shoot or these women are broken in some fundamental way.
edit: And im just male, i cant comprehend being so cavalier about someone who was a part of your body for nine months who you then raised!
(just in case someone wants to jump down my throat I am pro choice 100%, apologies but i don't trust my own words to not be twisted into something i do not mean)
I'm slowly mulling over the blown up pipes and so far I've got two logical* things that might be possible. Going off raging_storm's description of the effort and stuff it takes to do anything like this it is very unlikely that this was some non-state actor trying to mess with stuff for no clear reason. Other states also would not make sense, as no one is excited to escalate this war. I mean, the biggest "escalation" was Estonia informing Russian draft-dodgers to fuck off. To me, this could only be coming from Russia.
1. The palace revolution in Moscow is further along than we imagined and a faction with access to some interesting red buttons decided to freak out Putin's faction.
2. Putin wanted to prove his nuclear threats are to be taken seriously, but he knows that launching anything will result in his death, so he figured he'd do the second most toxic and destructive thing.
I'm not sure how much sense of this will ever make. It is so utterly insane and there's so much happening worldwide that it feels surreal to consider the implications of this. There's a lot more tangible disasters happening that get more attention.
*as in, assuming madmen can be logical
A subsea pipeline or anything off shore far enough isn't just a thing you can yahoo a 10k cigboat for and detonate on your own. You'd need proper gear. And when you showed up someone would wonder what it is you are doing. And people here keep talking sonar but you are above surface while you go there. Nobody is hiding from anybody.
CONTRA a lot of the more liberal elements in the US pipelines and oil platforms do not go boom all that much and aren't leaky. That would be insane. The entire job is not to go boom. And nobody involved in underwater demolitions is running about off the books, unless they are on military books, blasting shit for shits and giggles. This is all well documented and cleared shit where you have the papers well before you boom anything. It's all very above board and regulated. And if you fuck up you get pulled that's your career and your company is done as well. You have to clear everything you build or make go away. They are serious about this.
I'm sure people are annoyed that I keep talking about it. But this isn't for nitwits and morons. They don't just train anyone up for diving operations and we don't just go blowing stuff up at random. If there is a boom a whole team of people cleared it, planned it, communicated about it, and executed it. Hell you don't just dive at random. You declare where you are doing it, why you are doing it, theres tons of paperwork. This prevents diver death. You file paperwork for ROV opperations as well.
If someone is doing something and you do not know why they are there and you don't get an instant "I am a XXXX warship I carry convetional and nuclear weapons" you know something smells like mermaid on a bad date night. Nobody would buy the bullshit for why you are there. Especially as your talking about an industry of oil and gas and defense contractors dominated by Navy veterans to start with. "I'm just sitting here blowing up pipes that you wouldn't know about" doesn't pass the bullshit test.
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
Easy answer or the one you don't want to hear? Let's go with option two. The reality is that Russia is largely the Russian Federation. What we think of "Russians" are largely a middle class prince class in Moscow and St.Petes. Everything else is a shit hole. So arms marching legions of these fucks into a wood chipper aint no thang! Conversely the kids from the more well off areas are officers or special missions units. For RU we mostly deal with the GRU, officially spetsnaz. This can mean anything from our rangers, SEALs, divers, intel, pararescue, or military intelligence. So the term does a lot of work. Spetsnaz are pretty good, spetz GRU are great, but there aren't that many of them. You can't rampage through a nation with them more than you can invade Saudi with DEVGRU. Offensive opperations tend to require mass, again and I keep saying thing logistics, to keep going. You can't James Bond this. Most people don't grasp how it all for lack of a term turns to gell. The name of the game is moving stuff from A to B. Most of our issues as a nation are moving stuff about. You can make like 300k a year if you are good at moving stuff about. The people that do stuff make less, cause the moving of stuff is the real issue. I'm one of the sub 1k people qualified in the US to do what I do but I have not value if I don't get my stuff. You want to make a killing, get into the moving stuff business.
Back to the RU, well the "Federation" they don't move stuff. They move people and there is a huge difference. A human is worthless with out rations, heat, fuel, supplies, and ammo. And all that stuff, takes logistics! To get there. So if you shuffle you some dead fucks about, and can't logistics! them doesn't do much good. On the other hand if you have supply chains you can move a small amount of people and they will do fine.
The twitter cut is a twitter cut, but i dont think these Russian mothers are like... insect queen logicing the loss of their children.
I mean... I cant accept that. They are human and since having children I cant imagine that. It hurts bad enough when its a miscarriage... (its ok its a tadpole that didn't work out, nature rejects unfit candidates) but someone you knew and raised and had sleepless night after sleepless night over and poured effort and sweat and tears and joy into.. and just be like meh whatever they can go die in a foreign land I've got spares.
I reject that as impossible, these Russian women cannot be that brain damaged. This is either a propaganda shoot or these women are broken in some fundamental way.
edit: And im just male, i cant comprehend being so cavalier about someone who was a part of your body for nine months who you then raised!
(just in case someone wants to jump down my throat I am pro choice 100%, apologies but i don't trust my own words to not be twisted into something i do not mean)
‼️ White House announces new $1.1 billion weapons pkg for #Ukraine. It includes +18 HIMARS systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
That's a lot of freedom heading straight to where it's needed more. That package alone could guard the a massive chunk of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.
That seems like literally everything except tanks being shipped over... and it doesn't seem impossible that somebody's training up Ukrainian tank crews either (I'm assuming tanks are more complicated to operate than what's being sent in this package)
I believe Poland is working on a general purpose service depot near the border, such a thing would be needed as its not that Abrams are impossible to use or nearly as hard to train to use as a plane or whatever, it's that repairing and maintaining the things is a nightmare and why almost all of the Taliban's Abrams tanks are now giant heavy decorations
I'm slowly mulling over the blown up pipes and so far I've got two logical* things that might be possible. Going off raging_storm's description of the effort and stuff it takes to do anything like this it is very unlikely that this was some non-state actor trying to mess with stuff for no clear reason. Other states also would not make sense, as no one is excited to escalate this war. I mean, the biggest "escalation" was Estonia informing Russian draft-dodgers to fuck off. To me, this could only be coming from Russia.
1. The palace revolution in Moscow is further along than we imagined and a faction with access to some interesting red buttons decided to freak out Putin's faction.
2. Putin wanted to prove his nuclear threats are to be taken seriously, but he knows that launching anything will result in his death, so he figured he'd do the second most toxic and destructive thing.
I'm not sure how much sense of this will ever make. It is so utterly insane and there's so much happening worldwide that it feels surreal to consider the implications of this. There's a lot more tangible disasters happening that get more attention.
*as in, assuming madmen can be logical
A subsea pipeline or anything off shore far enough isn't just a thing you can yahoo a 10k cigboat for and detonate on your own. You'd need proper gear. And when you showed up someone would wonder what it is you are doing. And people here keep talking sonar but you are above surface while you go there. Nobody is hiding from anybody.
CONTRA a lot of the more liberal elements in the US pipelines and oil platforms do not go boom all that much and aren't leaky. That would be insane. The entire job is not to go boom. And nobody involved in underwater demolitions is running about off the books, unless they are on military books, blasting shit for shits and giggles. This is all well documented and cleared shit where you have the papers well before you boom anything. It's all very above board and regulated. And if you fuck up you get pulled that's your career and your company is done as well. You have to clear everything you build or make go away. They are serious about this.
I'm sure people are annoyed that I keep talking about it. But this isn't for nitwits and morons. They don't just train anyone up for diving operations and we don't just go blowing stuff up at random. If there is a boom a whole team of people cleared it, planned it, communicated about it, and executed it. Hell you don't just dive at random. You declare where you are doing it, why you are doing it, theres tons of paperwork. This prevents diver death. You file paperwork for ROV opperations as well.
If someone is doing something and you do not know why they are there and you don't get an instant "I am a XXXX warship I carry convetional and nuclear weapons" you know something smells like mermaid on a bad date night. Nobody would buy the bullshit for why you are there. Especially as your talking about an industry of oil and gas and defense contractors dominated by Navy veterans to start with. "I'm just sitting here blowing up pipes that you wouldn't know about" doesn't pass the bullshit test.
You keep talking about this in the context of normal, everyday operations in industry. If the job is "blow shit up, ideally without getting caught" that goes out the window and you start getting into the wacky Cold War bullshit. Especially when the crew is now at least semi-expendable.
I mean at once point the UK used a sub to steal a towed sonar array from the ship towing it. With a fucking remote controlled industrial-sized pair of scissors! The US had a "mining ship" that was trying to steal USSR nuclear missiles from the seabed. The shenanigans that countries will get up to when they feel like it is incredible.
I'm slowly mulling over the blown up pipes and so far I've got two logical* things that might be possible. Going off raging_storm's description of the effort and stuff it takes to do anything like this it is very unlikely that this was some non-state actor trying to mess with stuff for no clear reason. Other states also would not make sense, as no one is excited to escalate this war. I mean, the biggest "escalation" was Estonia informing Russian draft-dodgers to fuck off. To me, this could only be coming from Russia.
1. The palace revolution in Moscow is further along than we imagined and a faction with access to some interesting red buttons decided to freak out Putin's faction.
2. Putin wanted to prove his nuclear threats are to be taken seriously, but he knows that launching anything will result in his death, so he figured he'd do the second most toxic and destructive thing.
I'm not sure how much sense of this will ever make. It is so utterly insane and there's so much happening worldwide that it feels surreal to consider the implications of this. There's a lot more tangible disasters happening that get more attention.
*as in, assuming madmen can be logical
A subsea pipeline or anything off shore far enough isn't just a thing you can yahoo a 10k cigboat for and detonate on your own. You'd need proper gear. And when you showed up someone would wonder what it is you are doing. And people here keep talking sonar but you are above surface while you go there. Nobody is hiding from anybody.
CONTRA a lot of the more liberal elements in the US pipelines and oil platforms do not go boom all that much and aren't leaky. That would be insane. The entire job is not to go boom. And nobody involved in underwater demolitions is running about off the books, unless they are on military books, blasting shit for shits and giggles. This is all well documented and cleared shit where you have the papers well before you boom anything. It's all very above board and regulated. And if you fuck up you get pulled that's your career and your company is done as well. You have to clear everything you build or make go away. They are serious about this.
I'm sure people are annoyed that I keep talking about it. But this isn't for nitwits and morons. They don't just train anyone up for diving operations and we don't just go blowing stuff up at random. If there is a boom a whole team of people cleared it, planned it, communicated about it, and executed it. Hell you don't just dive at random. You declare where you are doing it, why you are doing it, theres tons of paperwork. This prevents diver death. You file paperwork for ROV opperations as well.
If someone is doing something and you do not know why they are there and you don't get an instant "I am a XXXX warship I carry convetional and nuclear weapons" you know something smells like mermaid on a bad date night. Nobody would buy the bullshit for why you are there. Especially as your talking about an industry of oil and gas and defense contractors dominated by Navy veterans to start with. "I'm just sitting here blowing up pipes that you wouldn't know about" doesn't pass the bullshit test.
You keep talking about this in the context of normal, everyday operations in industry. If the job is "blow shit up, ideally without getting caught" that goes out the window and you start getting into the wacky Cold War bullshit. Especially when the crew is now at least semi-expendable.
I mean at once point the UK used a sub to steal a towed sonar array from the ship towing it. With a fucking remote controlled industrial-sized pair of scissors! The US had a "mining ship" that was trying to steal USSR nuclear missiles from the seabed. The shenanigans that countries will get up to when they feel like it is incredible.
Yeah but the point is nobody who can do it will do it, outside state military actors doing it on orders they cant refuse or ever talk about.
And even if they wanted to, it is mostly nakedly obvious what they are trying to do and will be immediately public and make them a pariah.
The Kremlin officially denies that they blew up the pipeline. Reuters:
Asked about claims Russia might be behind the possible attack, Peskov said: "That's quite predictable and also predictably stupid."
"This is a big problem for us because, firstly, both lines of Nord Stream 2 are filled with gas - the entire system is ready to pump gas and the gas is very expensive... Now the gas is flying off into the air."
"Are we interested in that? No, we are not, we have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe," Peskov said.
I thought the system had been broken, and not ready to pump gas.
Thus the whole thing where they weren't pumping gas.
No it was broken but not like broken broken just broken enough that they couldn't get the gas flowing but also not so broken that it wasn't ready to pump gas so it was broken but also not broken.
^this is how Russia talks about everything which is why no one should ever give a shit what they say and only ever pay attention to what they do
The Kremlin officially denies that they blew up the pipeline. Reuters:
Asked about claims Russia might be behind the possible attack, Peskov said: "That's quite predictable and also predictably stupid."
"This is a big problem for us because, firstly, both lines of Nord Stream 2 are filled with gas - the entire system is ready to pump gas and the gas is very expensive... Now the gas is flying off into the air."
"Are we interested in that? No, we are not, we have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe," Peskov said.
So, they 100% did it.
Yeah..."that would be stupid" says the government who as just recently fucking shelling near a nuclear power plant.
The Kremlin officially denies that they blew up the pipeline. Reuters:
Asked about claims Russia might be behind the possible attack, Peskov said: "That's quite predictable and also predictably stupid."
"This is a big problem for us because, firstly, both lines of Nord Stream 2 are filled with gas - the entire system is ready to pump gas and the gas is very expensive... Now the gas is flying off into the air."
"Are we interested in that? No, we are not, we have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe," Peskov said.
So, they 100% did it.
If it had been someone else they would be losing their shit and crying about how unfair it is that their assets are being attacked and so on
Instead it's the usual "Who, us? Noooo" that they pull every time they do something exactly like this
In short, not well; 73 Easting which was mostly against Iraqi T-72s and T-62s could only be accurately described as "hilariously one-sided". Granted the Iraqis were using mostly T-62s and even their T-72s would have been export models and not the "good" versions, but at this point I'm skeptical that would make much difference or that Russia has any truly "good" versions of anything. And of course the Abrams itself will have likely had considerable upgrades since 1991.
This graphic being shared around by news sites points out that the leaks are very close to the shiny new Baltic Pipe that goes through Poland:
So, "Russia did it, but they hit their own pipeline by mistake" is also a strong possibility.
That is an absolutely hysterical possibility.
"Mission success Colonel, I blow up pipeline!"
"Which pipeline did you blow up exactly, Boris?"
"I didn't know which was Polish one, so I just blow them all up to be safe."
Yeah that's the example where multiple direct T-72 hits on Abrams didn't penetrate armor and didn't even get mission / mobility kills. Old Abrams 30 years ago.
Again, nukes aside, this war makes pretty clear that if NATO opened up on Russia, we would have some injuries but aside from friendly fire most harm would be the psychological damage of just straight murdering your counterparts due to your insane superiority.
Generation Kill and similar books talked about night combat against enemies without night vision and how psychologically hard that was for them to fight such a helpless enemy. Front line NATO weapons with well trained forces would be a similar experience on an open battlefield based on Russian performance to now.
Edit - also remember Russia is using the draft to ethnically cleanse a lot of Russian territory. Sending the drafted untrained minority population to certain death is just outsourcing the camps to Ukraine.
If you are an absolute amoral monster who only cares about yourself and nominally full ethnic Russians it makes perfect sense. Ukraine kills the ethnicities you would like to murder yourseld. But on the battlefield, they will absorb Ukrainian resources in death or surrender.
‼️ White House announces new $1.1 billion weapons pkg for #Ukraine. It includes +18 HIMARS systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
That's a lot of freedom heading straight to where it's needed more. That package alone could guard the a massive chunk of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.
That seems like literally everything except tanks being shipped over... and it doesn't seem impossible that somebody's training up Ukrainian tank crews either (I'm assuming tanks are more complicated to operate than what's being sent in this package)
I believe Poland is working on a general purpose service depot near the border, such a thing would be needed as its not that Abrams are impossible to use or nearly as hard to train to use as a plane or whatever, it's that repairing and maintaining the things is a nightmare and why almost all of the Taliban's Abrams tanks are now giant heavy decorations
An Abrams uses jet fuel to go. It's a jet.
It's a jet turbine but the Abrams will run on just about anything, jet fuel, diesel, unleaded, vodka, hot sauce, whatever
The logistical infrastructure required to support it is the biggest hurdle
Who could ever have foreseen the country doing stupid irrational things at the behest of their seemingly insane leader would do something stupid like this.
Edit - the article really does go out of it's way to not directly accuse Russia but 'yeah of course Russia'
zagdrob on
+17
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Who could ever have foreseen the country doing stupid irrational things at the behest of their seemingly insane leader would do something stupid like this.
Edit - the article really does go out of it's way to not directly accuse Russia but 'yeah of course Russia'
Is anyone in the OSINT community compiling traces of known ship locations over this time frame? I feel like that info must be out there since it's not like surface vessel positions are really secret.
I’ve lived a few places around the world, so I generally do pretty okay with culture shock.
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
I watched the video and it really doesn't sound like she's saying that. She's starting a new sentence about her other son. The show cuts before she says anything else.
As a Russian-speaker (and, more relevantly, Russian-understander), I wondered if I could glean anything from watching the actual video. What I gleaned is that it's impossible to draw any conclusion at all about what her intent was in mentioning the second son. You are completely correct, she starts another sentence by bringing up her second son, and the video then cuts off. There is no context. She could have said "I have another son, so it's fine to lose this one, glory to Putin", or she might have said "I have another son, and I wouldn't want to lose either of them", or she might have said "I have another son, and he likes to eat his deli-meat sandwiches with peach slices on top, isn't that kinda weird? He's such a goofster."
Two tangential notes before going back to seriousness:
Saturation diving is fascinating and awesome and also completely insane, and if anyone ever has some time to kill there are some amazing documentaries about it. Just, you know, fuck nitrogen and p-diff.
Also now that I know the bells get Internet I have mental images of saturation divers playing Subnautica on Steam in their off time.
'You’re all just cannon fodder. You’re the third group of people to form this battalion. Do you know where the first two groups died? And you’ll die here.' Then he told my commander, 'Send in the meat.' [Us.]
Three soldiers talked to in the piece, a bit of a mix of perspectives. However, they all seem to agree that these conscripts are going to die for nothing.
+3
Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
Jesus, just revolt already.
+55
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
It’s really something when a bunch of conscripts are told ‘you’re all going to die, we don’t fucking care. Here’s some guns and ammo’.
And they’re still more scared of the few people that just gave them all guns and ammo.
+22
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
It really doesn't help that nearly every photo and video you see of the Russian refugees is almost entirely men, with the occasional woman/family.
It really doesn't help that nearly every photo and video you see of the Russian refugees is almost entirely men, with the occasional woman/family.
Well, there's not as much chance they'll get conscripted, as Putin is a misogynist, and warfighting is "man's work". The whole premise of the Russian military is it's (toxic) masculinity.
It really doesn't help that nearly every photo and video you see of the Russian refugees is almost entirely men, with the occasional woman/family.
Well, there's not as much chance they'll get conscripted, as Putin is a misogynist, and warfighting is "man's work". The whole premise of the Russian military is it's (toxic) masculinity.
Yeah but if you're running away, leaving everyone else behind is a little ?? unless you're expecting them to follow later. And that's just asking for reprisals.
I am reading about this war since it started, I thought that I am already desensitized to reports from Ukraine, and yet, after reading that Meduza article, I am still both terrified and furious at what is happening.
What an absolutely senseless waste of lifes.
+4
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
In contrast to Russian rapid training, here's what the Brits (and Canadians) are doing to get 10,000 troops trained in 120 days: https://youtu.be/CuFbfvEWDuQ
Notice where the British trainers are all standing when teaching the Ukrainians how to shoot.
Literally thousands of NATO (and Swedish, Finnish, Australian, Kiwi, etc.) trainers are dedicating themselves to getting Ukrainians ready to fight around the clock. Note that this includes the cost of transport, room & board, ammo, and equipment.
It really doesn't help that nearly every photo and video you see of the Russian refugees is almost entirely men, with the occasional woman/family.
Well, there's not as much chance they'll get conscripted, as Putin is a misogynist, and warfighting is "man's work". The whole premise of the Russian military is it's (toxic) masculinity.
Yeah but if you're running away, leaving everyone else behind is a little ?? unless you're expecting them to follow later. And that's just asking for reprisals.
There could be a couple reasons as why not. Blatant cowardice as you suggest, is obviously one of them. But other reasons could be, not wanting to abandon everything and hoping that your property doesn't get confiscated if the rest of your family is living there, and getting across the border with nothing but the clothes on your back is difficult alone much less with a family in tow.
A reminder that this latest batch of conscription came out of nowhere, and that even people that half expected it, were still caught by surprise.
While I'm hoping families were properly taken care of, having to make the decision of abandoning your family to try and make it across the border, and abandoning your family to be grist on the millstone that is Russian imperialism in Ukraine, aren't great choices either way, and the former has a likely greater survival chance.
Posts
“It’s fine if I lose one of my children, I have spares” is definitely shocking to me.
You think you're in luck, open it, and suddenly
I remember my mother taking about her mother having that mindset. But where that generation grew up, the world hadn't moved much from the medieval times. Out of 11 siblings my mother had, 6 died below the age of 4. Which can really fuck you up if you don't grow cold.
But it's not like that in Russia right now.. At least I'm reasonably sure it isn't. Is it?
I believe Poland is working on a general purpose service depot near the border, such a thing would be needed as its not that Abrams are impossible to use or nearly as hard to train to use as a plane or whatever, it's that repairing and maintaining the things is a nightmare and why almost all of the Taliban's Abrams tanks are now giant heavy decorations
It's very much not. They're way below replacement levels and do not have spare people to burn up trying to take new territory.
I mean, “news” is always pretty sketchy these days, but I’m certainly prepared to believe it at this point.
It feels closer to the sort of thing people say when they simply aren't going to acknowledge being wrong because they're mad about something. Like the way people act when store employees are trampled to death on Black Friday sales.
I watched the video and it really doesn't sound like she's saying that. She's starting a new sentence about her other son. The show cuts before she says anything else.
I mean... I cant accept that. They are human and since having children I cant imagine that. It hurts bad enough when its a miscarriage... (its ok its a tadpole that didn't work out, nature rejects unfit candidates) but someone you knew and raised and had sleepless night after sleepless night over and poured effort and sweat and tears and joy into.. and just be like meh whatever they can go die in a foreign land I've got spares.
I reject that as impossible, these Russian women cannot be that brain damaged. This is either a propaganda shoot or these women are broken in some fundamental way.
edit: And im just male, i cant comprehend being so cavalier about someone who was a part of your body for nine months who you then raised!
(just in case someone wants to jump down my throat I am pro choice 100%, apologies but i don't trust my own words to not be twisted into something i do not mean)
A subsea pipeline or anything off shore far enough isn't just a thing you can yahoo a 10k cigboat for and detonate on your own. You'd need proper gear. And when you showed up someone would wonder what it is you are doing. And people here keep talking sonar but you are above surface while you go there. Nobody is hiding from anybody.
CONTRA a lot of the more liberal elements in the US pipelines and oil platforms do not go boom all that much and aren't leaky. That would be insane. The entire job is not to go boom. And nobody involved in underwater demolitions is running about off the books, unless they are on military books, blasting shit for shits and giggles. This is all well documented and cleared shit where you have the papers well before you boom anything. It's all very above board and regulated. And if you fuck up you get pulled that's your career and your company is done as well. You have to clear everything you build or make go away. They are serious about this.
I'm sure people are annoyed that I keep talking about it. But this isn't for nitwits and morons. They don't just train anyone up for diving operations and we don't just go blowing stuff up at random. If there is a boom a whole team of people cleared it, planned it, communicated about it, and executed it. Hell you don't just dive at random. You declare where you are doing it, why you are doing it, theres tons of paperwork. This prevents diver death. You file paperwork for ROV opperations as well.
If someone is doing something and you do not know why they are there and you don't get an instant "I am a XXXX warship I carry convetional and nuclear weapons" you know something smells like mermaid on a bad date night. Nobody would buy the bullshit for why you are there. Especially as your talking about an industry of oil and gas and defense contractors dominated by Navy veterans to start with. "I'm just sitting here blowing up pipes that you wouldn't know about" doesn't pass the bullshit test.
Easy answer or the one you don't want to hear? Let's go with option two. The reality is that Russia is largely the Russian Federation. What we think of "Russians" are largely a middle class prince class in Moscow and St.Petes. Everything else is a shit hole. So arms marching legions of these fucks into a wood chipper aint no thang! Conversely the kids from the more well off areas are officers or special missions units. For RU we mostly deal with the GRU, officially spetsnaz. This can mean anything from our rangers, SEALs, divers, intel, pararescue, or military intelligence. So the term does a lot of work. Spetsnaz are pretty good, spetz GRU are great, but there aren't that many of them. You can't rampage through a nation with them more than you can invade Saudi with DEVGRU. Offensive opperations tend to require mass, again and I keep saying thing logistics, to keep going. You can't James Bond this. Most people don't grasp how it all for lack of a term turns to gell. The name of the game is moving stuff from A to B. Most of our issues as a nation are moving stuff about. You can make like 300k a year if you are good at moving stuff about. The people that do stuff make less, cause the moving of stuff is the real issue. I'm one of the sub 1k people qualified in the US to do what I do but I have not value if I don't get my stuff. You want to make a killing, get into the moving stuff business.
Back to the RU, well the "Federation" they don't move stuff. They move people and there is a huge difference. A human is worthless with out rations, heat, fuel, supplies, and ammo. And all that stuff, takes logistics! To get there. So if you shuffle you some dead fucks about, and can't logistics! them doesn't do much good. On the other hand if you have supply chains you can move a small amount of people and they will do fine.
An Abrams uses jet fuel to go. It's a jet.
You keep talking about this in the context of normal, everyday operations in industry. If the job is "blow shit up, ideally without getting caught" that goes out the window and you start getting into the wacky Cold War bullshit. Especially when the crew is now at least semi-expendable.
I mean at once point the UK used a sub to steal a towed sonar array from the ship towing it. With a fucking remote controlled industrial-sized pair of scissors! The US had a "mining ship" that was trying to steal USSR nuclear missiles from the seabed. The shenanigans that countries will get up to when they feel like it is incredible.
Yeah but the point is nobody who can do it will do it, outside state military actors doing it on orders they cant refuse or ever talk about.
And even if they wanted to, it is mostly nakedly obvious what they are trying to do and will be immediately public and make them a pariah.
So right back to state actors.
So, they 100% did it.
Thus the whole thing where they weren't pumping gas.
No it was broken but not like broken broken just broken enough that they couldn't get the gas flowing but also not so broken that it wasn't ready to pump gas so it was broken but also not broken.
^this is how Russia talks about everything which is why no one should ever give a shit what they say and only ever pay attention to what they do
I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't Shia LeBeouf.
EDIT: god damnit, now the song is stuck in my head
Yeah..."that would be stupid" says the government who as just recently fucking shelling near a nuclear power plant.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
With this kind of outside the box thinking, we might be onto something…
If it had been someone else they would be losing their shit and crying about how unfair it is that their assets are being attacked and so on
Instead it's the usual "Who, us? Noooo" that they pull every time they do something exactly like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting
In short, not well; 73 Easting which was mostly against Iraqi T-72s and T-62s could only be accurately described as "hilariously one-sided". Granted the Iraqis were using mostly T-62s and even their T-72s would have been export models and not the "good" versions, but at this point I'm skeptical that would make much difference or that Russia has any truly "good" versions of anything. And of course the Abrams itself will have likely had considerable upgrades since 1991.
That is an absolutely hysterical possibility.
"Mission success Colonel, I blow up pipeline!"
"Which pipeline did you blow up exactly, Boris?"
"I didn't know which was Polish one, so I just blow them all up to be safe."
Again, nukes aside, this war makes pretty clear that if NATO opened up on Russia, we would have some injuries but aside from friendly fire most harm would be the psychological damage of just straight murdering your counterparts due to your insane superiority.
Generation Kill and similar books talked about night combat against enemies without night vision and how psychologically hard that was for them to fight such a helpless enemy. Front line NATO weapons with well trained forces would be a similar experience on an open battlefield based on Russian performance to now.
Edit - also remember Russia is using the draft to ethnically cleanse a lot of Russian territory. Sending the drafted untrained minority population to certain death is just outsourcing the camps to Ukraine.
If you are an absolute amoral monster who only cares about yourself and nominally full ethnic Russians it makes perfect sense. Ukraine kills the ethnicities you would like to murder yourseld. But on the battlefield, they will absorb Ukrainian resources in death or surrender.
It's a jet turbine but the Abrams will run on just about anything, jet fuel, diesel, unleaded, vodka, hot sauce, whatever
The logistical infrastructure required to support it is the biggest hurdle
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/28/politics/nord-stream-pipeline-leak-russian-navy-ships/index.html
Who could ever have foreseen the country doing stupid irrational things at the behest of their seemingly insane leader would do something stupid like this.
Edit - the article really does go out of it's way to not directly accuse Russia but 'yeah of course Russia'
Is anyone in the OSINT community compiling traces of known ship locations over this time frame? I feel like that info must be out there since it's not like surface vessel positions are really secret.
That would require a level of self reflection that I'm pretty sure they don't have.
It's obviously inside the box
Giggling at the crazy saturation divers using the same gloves that I wore back when I worked in a Lowes garden center.
'Honestly, they're all going to die' What Russian soldiers who have already fought in Ukraine think about Putin's mobilization effort
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/09/28/honestly-they-re-all-going-to-die-there
(Rob Lee is an open-source record keeper on twitter, and part of Foreign Policy Research Institute.)
Three soldiers talked to in the piece, a bit of a mix of perspectives. However, they all seem to agree that these conscripts are going to die for nothing.
And they’re still more scared of the few people that just gave them all guns and ammo.
Well, there's not as much chance they'll get conscripted, as Putin is a misogynist, and warfighting is "man's work". The whole premise of the Russian military is it's (toxic) masculinity.
Yeah but if you're running away, leaving everyone else behind is a little ?? unless you're expecting them to follow later. And that's just asking for reprisals.
What an absolutely senseless waste of lifes.
Notice where the British trainers are all standing when teaching the Ukrainians how to shoot.
Here's urban warfare training:
Here's artillery training:
Literally thousands of NATO (and Swedish, Finnish, Australian, Kiwi, etc.) trainers are dedicating themselves to getting Ukrainians ready to fight around the clock. Note that this includes the cost of transport, room & board, ammo, and equipment.
There could be a couple reasons as why not. Blatant cowardice as you suggest, is obviously one of them. But other reasons could be, not wanting to abandon everything and hoping that your property doesn't get confiscated if the rest of your family is living there, and getting across the border with nothing but the clothes on your back is difficult alone much less with a family in tow.
A reminder that this latest batch of conscription came out of nowhere, and that even people that half expected it, were still caught by surprise.
While I'm hoping families were properly taken care of, having to make the decision of abandoning your family to try and make it across the border, and abandoning your family to be grist on the millstone that is Russian imperialism in Ukraine, aren't great choices either way, and the former has a likely greater survival chance.