Russia - threadbanned users in OP

You are mixing up the material world and the world of ideas.

Have reported you to the moderation team.

Good luck!

OK. Point taken. And the validity of the change of mind and the reasons for it?

Yes, I've already mentioned that the whole rotten construction has to be demolished completely, and rebuilt from the ground up. There's simply no other way. On a brighter note, the "cracks" that are starting to appear in the regime, the forthcoming offensive, the attacks by Russians ( real or not) on Russian territory etc. could well be the catalyst for change, hopefully!! The next 3-6 months will be critical.

Clare Daly doing God's work upholding Irish democracy for you all 😁

Nice uplifting quote from Gen D. Patraeus.

"I think that this counteroffensive is going to be very impressive.

My sense is that they will achieve combined arms effects in other words, they will successfully carry out combined arms operations where you have engineers that are breaching the obstacles and diffusing the minefields and so forth; armour following right on through protected by infantry against anti-tank missiles; air defence keeping the Russians aircraft off them; electronic warfare jamming their radio networks; logistics right up behind them; artillery and mortars right out in front of them.

And most important of all … is that as the lead elements inevitably culminate after 72-96 hours, physically that’s about as far as you can go, and they’ll have taken losses … you have follow-on units that will push right on through and capitalise on the progress and maintain the momentum and I think that can get the entire Russian defence in that area moving, then I think you have other opportunities that will open up on the flanks as well."

My view is a bit more pessimistic. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, the Russians went through the process of revolution and overthrowing the Tzar, but in the end it just ended up that they had a Tsar by a different name. Despite the dream of a socialist egalitarian Russia, they still had one guy living in obscene luxury relative to the ordinary person and his 'court' being the most well off. In their next revolution, their people hoped to cast off the shackles of authoritarianism once again, but it just brought about chaos, being poorly implemented with too many forces of corruption getting their piece and dooming the project to failure, such that it once again gave rise to an appetite for the old order in the form of Putin.

Point being that a desire to be ruled by basically a dictator seems deeply embedded in Russian culture and isn't something that would be rolled back in a generation because it's the product of centuries of conditioning. And I think that Russia is welcome to run itself how it likes, but not to try and export that to other nations who don't want it. They cannot handle the idea that Ukraine is going through a sea change of thought and lose influence there, but that is precisely what is happening, and they're failing to learn an old lesson that you cannot bomb a people into loving you.

I don't know why they're so busy talking this offensive up before it even starts. It's almost like they're trying to test the Russian willingness to negotiate. Surely it'd be better to let the action do the talking

Sounds to me like it is a deliberate move to ware down the moskovytes with nervous tension before the actual major moves of the counteroffensive are put into action. I don't think it is designed to test their willingness to negotiate but the willingness of moskovyte troops on the ground to run away to save their own lives rather than being turned into fertiliser serving putin.

I don't get the civil war argument. Who's going to fight against/for the current regime? When Putin goes, he will just be replaced - whether it's by a coup or an "election" remains to be seen.