Russia - threadbanned users in OP

As I've mentioned peviously on the thread I know a couple of people who are all in on the Russian side and I let them talk about it. Why? Because I do want to hear how they're framing their narrative, especially as things have gone clearly arseways. From the horses mouth as it were. They can get quite giddy with this "audience" as they only talk to fellow travellers on this course and understandably they don't get to talk about this kinda thing for fear of more strident responses from the general public.

Anyway, I noticed a few basic things: They get most of their info from the interwebs and from a limited number of english speaking sources; the duran, ritter, some ex marine in the far east, the Lancaster guy, RT and other state conduits. Quite a few are Tucker fans. Of course. "Gay Trannies of colour are out for our children!, you know yourself. Other info comes from Russians who are the equivalent of the Man in the Pub. My brother knows a guy high up in the military and... There is a lot of talk of wonder weapons divised in closed cities that the Americans know nothing about etc(the same Americans who could take photos of Moscow at mach 3 and 70,000 feet without crossing the Soviet borders. In the 1960's). The same people(and more) were passing around Man in the Pub stuff when covid was in play. The "my mate's in the army and it's martial law lockdown coming next week!". Just before the last lockdown was lifted... They all have massive cases of amnesia after the fact of course.

Annnnnyway... One of the classics was when their front collapsed in the east a month or whenever ago, the Ukrainians flooded in and Russian forces had a Special Military Retreat. The explanation? Well they couldn't hide the defeat or the screwup, even Best Soviet Spin couldn't, so it was explained away thusly: Most of the troops there were top flight specialists, but they were on contracts and those contracts were all up at the same time so they decided en masse to just go home when their contracts had expired, leaving basic soldiers, and few of them, left. I did ask one guy, "but surely that's worse? That the command didn't spot this issue. That loyal Russian soldiers just left?". No answer to that, but back to stories of how they've so many reserves, they could just steamroller the place if they let rip like the Americans in Iraq, with added wonder weapons. My question "if so then was why do they need to mobilise?" That's to protect the homeland apparently. Questions like "if they're so powerrful why do they need to buy drones off Iran? Would America need to?". No answers, or they just get moody like stroppy teenagers and more talk of the world economic forum/hegemony/multipolar world/mainstream media.

Note how Forest frames the military situation of "it's mostly mercenaries and militia", the actual Russian soldiery has mostly gone back to Russia. For some magical future strategic reason. I've heard this too and it's not too far off the "reasons" given for the collapse of their Donbas front. The Russian military: Strong as iron and present when winning, while magically absent and weak when losing. Again that's worse. If that is the case then they're being led by complete and utter morons. This also plays into the Russian spin of course. The Czar is never blamed, his generals are. That's his line of disposable barriers to criticism, so he can avoid it. This was the case in the actual Czar anointed by God era too and was used by autocrats like Stalin to avoid direct blame. The Czar/Party Leader/President has wall after wall in the Russian psyche to avoid direct blame. Until he doesn't.

The fighting NATO forces doesn't cut it either. They were hammered by the Ukrainians in the first month of this war, special forces wiped out, general troops driven back, when they made their run, sorry "feint" for Kyiv. Long before HIMARs and all that. They took much of Donbas pretty quickly, though hardly a surprise as they had more support and more years of boots on the ground there. The drive to the land bridge to Crimea took longer and was far less easy even when "leveled cities to rubble".