Ukraine

Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)

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What is going on there? The whole region is on fire right now.
To put it bluntly, this was by design. much like Africa, and the Middle East the borders were drawn to make sure the ethnic groups couldn't unify making them Geography weak and unstable. Permanently making them subordinate to their Colonial masters. The Soviet Union may have collapsed but russia still had power over these regions but now that russia's army it's heavily suffering there's nothing to stop The Dominoes from falling
 

Seanchaidh

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Not quite sure what point is being made here. Russia's choice to launch revenge attacks on civilian infrastructure... makes Ukrainian self-defence an act of escalation? Does anything become an act of "escalation" if the opponent chooses to react to it in a wildly brutal and unreasonable way?
The intensity of fighting was less. Then it was more. That can be described how? Yes, that's right, it escalated.

Yet again survivor testimony is of the widespread torture and execution of civilians.
Yet again propaganda produced for your benefit paints a horrifying picture, whether true or false.

Given the Manichaean stakes, one wonders why the Zelensky regime has decided that 'collaboration' includes receiving Russian aid; you'd think they'd have greater concerns.

 

Hades

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The intensity of fighting was less. Then it was more. That can be described how? Yes, that's right, it escalated.
And if Russia just kept to itself then there'd be no fighting. You can't really blame Ukraine for fighting back harder against an entity trying to destroy it.
 

Silvanus

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The intensity of fighting was less. Then it was more. That can be described how? Yes, that's right, it escalated.
OK. So Russia escalates literally every time they attack a new town? And Iraq escalated the conflict by defending against US invasion, because if they hadn't done so there would've been less fighting?

Truly a moronic standard to apply. I guess countries simply don't have the right to defend their own borders, then!

Yet again propaganda produced for your benefit paints a horrifying picture, whether true or false.
Yet again you're happy to insinuate survivors and victims are crisis actors, solely because it would be convenient for your favoured narrative, echoing the familiar far-right tactic.

All the while swallowing propaganda that favours imperialist land-grabs completely uncritically.
 

EvilRoy

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Yet again propaganda produced for your benefit paints a horrifying picture, whether true or false.
This is something I want you to really sit back and think on because you're halfway there.

The adage is "if you're seeing it, it's for you." Isn't it interesting how you really want Ukraine to deserve this war and there are a bunch of things, conveniently professionally translated to English, a language you speak and they don't, that reassure you of exactly what you want to hear being fed directly to you? Where are these high quality translations of shitty cell phone videos coming from, and why do they always seem to say just what you want?

Well, not exactly what you want. For some reason the video cut before we saw the old man get grabbed. Odd given there was no camera movement to indicate filming was about to stop, but maybe the guy filming has good dexterity. He was definitely grabbed, and definitely executed as they claim, of course.

Everything else must be pure coincidence.
 
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Dalisclock

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Red Dawn owes me my money back because it has not aged well in the last 6 months.

I mean, the idea of the Russians somehow launching a full scale invasion of the US and holding it for years was kinda dumb even at the time and that was before the Russian army started getting it's shit kicked in hard in Ukraine, which is literally their next door neighbor.

A real life version of Red Dawn would have to show the 1st Tank Guards getting beaten up by a troop of girl scouts to be remotely believable.
 
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Avnger

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Red Dawn owes me my money back because it has not aged well in the last 6 months.

I mean, the idea of the Russians somehow launching a full scale invasion of the US and holding it for years was kinda dumb even at the time and that was before the Russian army started getting it's shit kicked in hard in Ukraine, which is literally their next door neighbor.

A real life version of Red Dawn would have to show the 1st Tank Guards getting beaten up by a troop of girl scouts to be remotely believable.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

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Red Dawn owes me my money back because it has not aged well in the last 6 months.

I mean, the idea of the Russians somehow launching a full scale invasion of the US and holding it for years was kinda dumb even at the time and that was before the Russian army started getting it's shit kicked in hard in Ukraine, which is literally their next door neighbor.

A real life version of Red Dawn would have to show the 1st Tank Guards getting beaten up by a troop of girl scouts to be remotely believable.
That was the Soviets. What we have now is what the fascists left after plundering and pillaging everything that wasn't nailed down after they took over the country.

I don't see any point in equating the Russian Federation with the USSR when it only exists as a framework in which to dissolve, subvert and sell out everything that defined the USSR.
 
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Hawki

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Red Dawn owes me my money back because it has not aged well in the last 6 months.

I mean, the idea of the Russians somehow launching a full scale invasion of the US and holding it for years was kinda dumb even at the time and that was before the Russian army started getting it's shit kicked in hard in Ukraine, which is literally their next door neighbor.

A real life version of Red Dawn would have to show the 1st Tank Guards getting beaten up by a troop of girl scouts to be remotely believable.
I'll raise you a Red Alert.

 

Eacaraxe

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What we have now is what the fascists left after plundering and pillaging everything that wasn't nailed down after they took over the country.

I don't see any point in equating the Russian Federation with the USSR when it only exists as a framework in which to dissolve, subvert and sell out everything that defined the USSR.
Man, you're gonna shit a whole-ass live bulldog if you ever figure out who's actually responsible for that.

That was the direct result of the Yeltsin administration collaborating with the US government, IMF, and American "economists" as a prerequisite for financial aid. It's awful funny how strongly US-directed "shock therapy" correlates to the rise of authoritarian and fascist regimes around the world.
 

Terminal Blue

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I mean, the idea of the Russians somehow launching a full scale invasion of the US and holding it for years was kinda dumb even at the time and that was before the Russian army started getting it's shit kicked in hard in Ukraine, which is literally their next door neighbor.
To be fair, the Russian army and the Soviet army are very different. The Soviet army was really good at the things it was designed to do, and was a credible peer to the US and NATO pretty much right up until the end.

The problem is, the Soviet army was built on the expectation of being in the Ukrainian position. It was designed to punch above its weight in a defensive war against a superior opponent. While NATO switched to professional volunteer armies, the Soviets kept conscription and focused on maintaining an absolutely massive strategic reserve which cost much less to maintain but could be mobilized extremely fast.

And it's still kept that basic form even as the USSR collapsed, military spending halved, corruption became rampant and the political character of the country changed.

The problem with conscript armies, as the US found out in Vietnam, is that while you can technically conscript people by force it causes a lot of problems. Conscription works best when people are motivated to fight, for example when they're defending their homeland as opposed to invading someone else's homeland. The population of the Russian federation today are not really ideologically motivated, in fact they're exceptionally depoliticized, and that doesn't make for a good population to conscript from. Hence, the force fighting in Ukraine is a weird mix of a handful of prestige units (that have generally been inadequately supported and underperformed), massively under-strength units who were meant to be filled from the strategic reserve but can't because limited conscription, people forcibly conscripted from the breakway republics with shoddy or ancient equipment, poor or desperate people on short-term emergency volunteer contracts (and another serious problem is that some of those contracts are likely to start ending soon), prisoners who have been offered reduced sentences for volunteering, mercenaries and volunteer militias representing fringe political movements (mostly nazis) and Chechens who seem to spend most of their time videoing themselves shooting empty houses in Belarus.

Again, it's interesting to make the comparison with China. China, unsurprisingly, used to have a very Soviet-inspired military until quite recently, but made a fairly difficult political decision to massively downsize the armed forces, switch to a more NATO-style volunteer model and use the money freed up by not paying salaries to focus on a massive modernization program. China doesn't pretend to be a military peer of the US, but it has made clear that it wants to be and has a clear and workable plan to get there within the next few decades.

The Russian army just seem to be a bit of a mess. It's a mess on a conceptual level, it's a mess because it's gutted by corruption and it's a mess because all its money seems to have gone on stupid shit and not fundamental things like making sure officers have encrypted radios and haven't sold all their fuel just before a war starts.
 

Terminal Blue

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I'll raise you a Red Alert.

It's hard to top Hell March, but the Red Army Choir x Mars Attacks vibes in Freedom Fighters always manages it for me.

Americans are really obsessed with this one specific scenario, huh. I know it originates in red scare propaganda films filtered through varying shades of sincerity and irony, but it still seems a bit weird to hang onto such a ludicrous premise.
 
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Dalisclock

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It's hard to top Hell March, but the Red Army Choir x Mars Attacks vibes in Freedom Fighters always manages it for me.

Americans are really obsessed with this one specific scenario, huh. I know it originates in red scare propaganda films filtered through varying shades of sincerity and irony, but it still seems a bit weird to hang onto such a ludicrous premise.
There's a wierd and sizable subset of Americans who really enjoy being in a comfortable position but also obsessed with the idea that someone and or everyone else is out to get them. I'm pretty sure the overlap with people who sincerely believe there is a war on Christmas/Christians is a circle
 

Eacaraxe

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Premier Tim Curry is best Premier and I will not take any questions.
You know, the funny thing about that is Tim Curry's performance pales in comparison to the stupid shit actual Soviet Premiers got up to (or caused) in actual history. Most people who know anything about Cold War history know about Khrushchev's shoe, but few people know about his ill-fated attempt to visit Disneyland, or having met Marilyn Monroe (and she apparently had no clue who he was).

Like, if you've seen Death of Stalin, that thing with the hockey team? Actually happened.
 

Dalisclock

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You know, the funny thing about that is Tim Curry's performance pales in comparison to the stupid shit actual Soviet Premiers got up to (or caused) in actual history. Most people who know anything about Cold War history know about Khrushchev's shoe, but few people know about his ill-fated attempt to visit Disneyland, or having met Marilyn Monroe (and she apparently had no clue who he was).

Like, if you've seen Death of Stalin, that thing with the hockey team? Actually happened.
It's funny, Death of Stalin did come to mind. The whole thing with the orchestra especially
 
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