Poland? Poland is heading to a bankruptcy fast with the highest inflation and mad spending, which won't stop till election in the autumn next year...
Timing is really bad, that's why Putin started that war just after Covid knowing that world will be in a very bad state.
I agree that cracks are appearing, but the notion that any sort of "hell" will break lose in Russia is very much wishful thinking. Look at all the authoritarians still in power, Assad, Maduro, Lukashenko. Putin has a much stronger grip than any of them.
Yeah, but he has much more different ethnic groups to please, while he is mainly killing young men from these nations sending them to this war.
..
Russian excess deaths in Nov 2021 were 930,000, so their total Covid deaths must have exceeded a million. Maybe the war is all about stealing children to make up for the losses? They sure seem to be devoting considerable effort and prioritising the mass kidnappings.
Of course all that grain and gas would come in handy for adjusting the behaviours of many food importing countries, so a bonus.
I recently saw something about Ukraine finishing a natural gas production well that would save them $150m a year in imports, I'll try and find it. Another thing the Orcs no doubt want.
Aww... what a shame. So that test would be a fail, I'd imagine. 8-)
Well
Well this time last year, the world was a completely different place, and Putin's place in it much more secure. Ditto Lukashenko, Maduro and last but not least Assad. I was in Belgrade when the population rose up and removed Milosevic. They marched as one on Belgrade from all points if the compass and despite heavy military / police roadblocks, swept him aside. They had had enough of him. Putin saved Assads neck at the last minute (for a price, of course) question is, can Assad hold on to power without Putins support? We could be about to find out, the war is not finished yes, and Idlib still has a large rebel / resistance presence. The regime are still carrying out bombing missions there. As for Lukashenko,,,,,,another one whose position heavily depends on Putin. There was always opposition to Putins invasion of Ukraine, but it was heavily suppressed, but in the last few weeks, since mobilization it has become much more vocal, and as the living standards drop, and the death toll rises this opposition will increase. Not to mention the knives waiting in the wings, as his potential successors vie for dominance. I don't think that we will be waiting too long,, definitely not years anyway. I'd be surprised if he is still around in 12 mths. But we will see how it goes throughout the winter.
When Putins regime falls, Russia will need new governance, untainted by any connections with the present one, and ready to step in and act quickly to restore law and order.
What a pity... that's second such 'accident' in recent weeks. What does this point to? Just a statistical consequence of a far greater number of missions being flown or possibly poorly serviced aircraft, flown by inexperienced pilots?
Wish I shared your optimism. I've spent 10 years hearing about how Assad is about to be gone. Most of my life hearing about the Kim Dynasty. Xi in China has just consolidated so much power as to put him on practically the same level as Mao.
Putin is not going anywhere. If he does step aside it will be his choice and he'll be replaced by someone subservient to him (like his lap-dog Medvedev)
Yeah, I think honest foreign nationals are going to have to be imported to do the job too.
Priority in Ukrainian reconstruction and restitution will come before any kind of acceptance of Russia back into the fold once more. But the Interantional Community will let them stew for a long while first and make them prove that they have changed their ways. The International bailout terms we got here in Ireland, will pale into insignificance compared to what the financial markets will impose on Russia, assuming that the even get involved. When Russian history is written for this century, Putin will prove to be the most destructive individual, in how much destruction he has wrought on Russia itself.
It points to two things:
Fatigue- Both in reference to the airframes as many jets now have to perform a large number of sorties- but also for the pilots as they have to work their bodies around intense schedules.
Lack of maintenance- Preventative maintenance is a vital part to maintaining any aircraft. During a war the increased need for sorties means that preventative maintenance is now a secondary priority. For more modern aircraft such as SU-30 it can also be impacted by a lack of available western electronics.
Why shouldn't a government be formed by Russians, there are plenty in Russia who aren't for the Putin regime.
Love it.
?? What's that got to do with Russian warplanes crashing?
Because what worked for fixing Japan after WW2 was to have the country run by foreigners for decades until they got the message. It worked. Russia will revert to type, otherwise, which is authoritarian dictatorship.
But there is no ‘opposition’ in Russian politics…..???
There is no succession plan for after Putin as far as any opinion I've read on it. Seems he simply hasn't bothered to groom a successor. It's not not like when Yeltsin resigned.
There would probably be a power vacuum if Putin went now and all kinds of chaos.
Work their bodies.. well there sure is lot of that to work:
Japan during/after WWII is not comparable to Russia now, that is nonsense you are speaking. Back in the mid-40's it was acceptable for a state to take control of another for the good of the west, but that isn't the case now. You're tarring all Russians with the one brush here, and think they all need to get some sort of message?
You have your opinion, and I have mine. I find the idea perfectly acceptable.
Nikolai Patrushev, 70, head of Putin’s security council.
Just boards' messed up draft system doing it's thing.
I was reading an interesting article recently about how Baltic intelligence chiefs regard Russia as a dysfunctional basket case, perhaps one of the most dysfunctional societies on the entire planet. It would / will take one hell of a transformation to bring them even close to being a normal European country. They've had several hundred years of authoritarian rule with virtually no interruptions. The place is almost brutalised.
Lads there's no justification for invading Russia and foreign rulers installed unless they go on a nuking spree which they won't unless Russia itself is invaded. And even at that it would only be a last resort if they can't defend themselves.
There's no justification for invading Iran, north Korea or anybody to try instill your way of thinking. The best way to do this is economically. Cut all ties and refuse to do business.
If you do you're no better then Putin and what he's trying in Ukraine. I was never a fan of the yanks and Brits invading Afghanistan or Iraq.
And that's the problem right there JM. IMHO you're up against a deeply engrained culture, a "national character" if I were to use a sledgehammer generalisation, where things ebb and flow around the edges but has a core that remains remarkably consistent over time and that core seems to want autocrats and "Others" to blame. And of course the succession of autocrats have convinced them that's what they need. That's decades even centuries of conditioning.
So putin goes and then you'd have to remove all the minions he installed down the years including the head of the Russian Church. Good luck with that. You'd have to remove all the media pundits who've been shilling this "national character" and revisionist history. Then you'd have to change the school curriculum. You'd have to change the mindset of a lot of the population.
Before ever you had covid or war deaths in Russia, you had a seriously declining Russian population. Putin has managed to make life unlivable for the majority of people, and the reaction of women of childbearing age has been to have less children. It's some testimonial of a society when for every 1'000 births, there are 500 abortions. And all thanks to Putin. To try to maintain population figures, the monster is kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian Children.
Is this what you are referring to - former Finnish Intelligence evaluation of Russia. Really interesting. There is a transcript of the lecture lower down.
https://the-culture-shocks.blogspot.com/2022/03/evaluation-of-russia-by-finish.html
Really?
Russian state-controlled news agency Interfax reported, citing the Russian military, that more than 1.9 million Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to Russia since the start of the invasion, over 307,000 of them children — writes The Kyiv Independent.
And that's as of June 19th! If that rate had remained constaant, the number of kidnapped children in Russia would now be 643,365.
I reckon they would be worth going after.
😔Today, the occupiers took 16 children out of the Oleshkiv orphanage-boarding home.
No one knows what their future fate will be.
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