Russia - threadbanned users in OP

In order for this to happen the west and especially European countries need to officially designate Russia as a hostile state and bring criminal proceedings up to and including treason charges against anyone working as their agent, especially politicians. Things need to get very serious, because for too long they were allowed to influence and sway western policies especially in strategic domains like energy and food.

Anyone hear about this?

Wagnerite gone

So the only two exceptions are Clare Daly and The Lion King himself?

Theres a hell of a lot of these east Siberian types showing up in connection to some of the worst atrocities of the war. In Bucha alot of the worst crimes were attributed to these guys and theres been a few other instances where they've been involved too. Now this guy. I know they come from a proper shíthole but they appear to be particularly savage.

Is there enough grain cars in all the world?

The bigger problem is lack of diesel so crops not sprayed , winter wheat planting isn't that far off.

Yes, I was wondering about that quote myself. I am thinking most likely CIA assets who were trained to use a variety of US hardware.

Poland constantly delivering

Although I don't really see this happening, if it did happen it would be massive. The potential data this could give to the Israelis on how this system would deal with real world peer missile systems would be immeasurable.

And if it worked as intended, imagine how this would blunt the Russians destructive tendencies.

Put1n in big trouble now

Russia will probably never adopt a Western attitude to things top to bottom. They can have McDonalds and Instagram and some of the superfluous trappings of the West, but all the little habits, ways of communicating, doing business, expectations of out of life, social hierarchies and so on, all the little things that truly make up a whole culture are a long time in the making and probably won't change that much, even on a generational scale. I don't look at it like Russia needing to adopt Western values in order to move forward. Not wholly, anyway. They just need to stay in their lane, first and foremost, and stop with the attempt to reduce eastern Ukraine to a pile of rubble and killing/deporting its civilian population.

I'm afraid even that won't happen. Back in the early days of this thread, there was talk about a "De-Putinisation" of Russia, using the Denazification of Germany as a model. This comparison falls apart when you look at the details though.

If you look back at German history, all the way to the creation of a unified Germany in 1871 and before, you'll see that even in the more totalitarian parts of Germany, such as the Kingdom of Prussia, there was always an active civil society. The merchant & middle classes in Germany were relatively prosperous even in the late 19th century, education was widespread and there was a rather widespread sense of civic responsibility. Political debate was lively, even when Ludendorff & Hindenburg effectively established a military dictatorship during WW1, so when the Nazi regime was finally destroyed, there was a significant tradition of civil service and civic discourse that German society could draw from, especially when you bear in mind that the whole time from the "Machtergreifung" in 1933 to the surrender in 1945 was barely twelve years.

This civic tradition is missing in Russia. The country does not have an engaged populace or civil society. Between the Czars, numerous communist leaders and now Putin, this has been "beaten" out of the population, for lack of a better word. This is made worse by the fact that the only time when any attempt was made to establish some sort of civic discourse coincides with the complete implosion of the economy and living conditions in the years of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Russia, in my eyes, does not only have a will for reform, but it lacks the very means to engage in such a reform, even if the will were there.