From MR.
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ONE THAT IS THINKING
Reason
2022-09-12 23:10:07
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How much material has the West given Ukraine? Some estimates place it near 50 billion. The full Russian military budget is around 65 billion.
That seems to be âthe problemâ to me.
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I would tell him to look up âdark webâ and trace foreign bank accounts of Ukrainian oligarchs and generals.
One side is people literally fighting for their country, their freedom, their families, and their lives.
The other side is people fighting basically for no reason they can figure out for a nonsensical goal that doesnât matter to them and led by a combination of criminals, incompetents, and incompetent criminals.
Not hard to see which side will do better 
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Forgot - once you start losing, who wants to be the last to die for a mistake?
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You kinda start running out of âvolunteersâ too, even Wagner group realise you have to be alive to get paid, and on the winning side. You may also end up being tried for war crimes.
Putin should probably realise by now that the support for Ukraine from so many countries is not going to just end, and he canât stop it.
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Now why does that have such a sadly familiar ring to it?
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If the Wagner group was smart they would switch sides and ask for a big signing bonus
Iâve been saying this from day 1 of the invasion. The US/NATO/EU shouldnât spend a penny killing Russian soldiers. Instead of paying for bombs & bullets to kill Russians we should have given every captured Russian soldier $20,000US. Every captured Russian tank commander in possession of a tank should get a $100,000 bonus. Every crashed or captued MIG, the pilot gets a million. War would have been over in a month & we would have spent less.
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Worked in Afghanistan
Pay them to not fight
That would have upset the DoD contract mob and cut into the campaign funding of our corrupt political establishment.
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From WAPO today:
To address Russiaâs shortage of soldiers to send to war in Ukraine, the Wagner mercenary group seems to be making an offer that it hopes convicted criminals canât refuse: a get out of jail card.
âŠâAfter six months [at war] you receive a pardon, and there is no option for you to return to prison,â a man dressed in tan-colored fatigues said, addressing a crowd of Russian inmates standing underneath a poster that read âChoose life.â âThose who arrive [at the front line] and say on Day 1 itâs not for them get shot,â the man added.
⊠The enlistment approach was two-pronged: Some convicts were offered support roles, such as digging trenches and doing various construction work near separatist-controlled areas in the eastern Donbas region. Others were recruited for units of 12 people tasked with âspecial combat missions,â even though they often had little military training.
âIt all points to the fact that the Russian army has a personnel shortage, and they are trying to replenish it using prisoners whom they donât care about,â Osechkin [the head of Gulagu Net, a Russian human rights organization that helps convicts] said.
Another civil rights organization, Russia Behind Bars, which has long investigated horrific conditions in Russian prisons, estimated that approximately 7,000 to 10,000 convicts have already been sent to fight in Ukraine.
Except that the Russian convictsâ only superpowers are liable to be sadness and tooth decay.
And warts
Warts and cabbage grew really well in the old eastern bloc.
Ahhh, Wagner group doesnât want to use their own people, they have a choice.
Can you imagine what is going to happen to Russian criminals when they get captured in Ukraine ?
The Russian military is in the same state as the Russian economy for the same reasons, engineered by the same person.
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Not exactly. The Russian military gets a little the Russian people get less than a little. There is no âeconomyâ in a oligarchic state.
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The Ukraine formed prison brigades within the first few weeks of the war. Giving a guy freedom from the justice system in exchange for service to country isnât exactly unique to Russia, in fact I know several guys who whom a judge told âjail or the Army!â and they chose the latter.
Western analysts have consistently been telling me for the last six months that Putin was going to fold any day now and that it was only a matter of time before his campaign ends in utter failure, yet here he is. Meanwhile, Putinâs energy embargo is economically breaking down Europe. Iâd encourage anyone to Google âcost of living crisisâ if they are curious as to how things are working out over there, or anywhere for that matter. I truly believe that Ukraine is a side show and the real war is an economic on on the west.
Putin doesnât have to win for us to lose.
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The Ukraine has mobilized their entire population for war. All of it. Kids. Old men. Prisoners. About 22% of the Ukraine military are now women, some in frontline fighting capacities. But it is telling that a vaunted military unit of the âunbeatableâ Russian fighting machine is reduced to holding career-fairs in prisons (I wonder what kind of trinkets they give out? Shivs with GO RUSSIA printed on them?)
The Ukrainians are all-in. Why is Putin on the fence about a draft?
Which Western analysts? The analysts I read in WAPO/NYT/BBC/Guardian/AP back in February were not sanguine about Ukraine lasting long against the Russians. They were wrong. Now, many of those same analysts say the war will grind on for months. They use the grim phrase âwar of attritionâ. I can send you links to those articles. So when you say âconsistentlyâ I donât know which âWestern analystsâ you refer to.
Back in July I wrote:
You countered:
I think events have proved me right. Not that I am a military genius, but because the analyses I had been reading has been proven right by events. I also wrote:
If we agree on anything it is that the second part of the equation is as important as the first part. It is interesting that today PM Modi of India told Putin today he is against the war and wants it to end. The other day in meetings with Putin, Chinese president Xi did not endorse the war. So, Putinâs allies and friends are not exactly bolstering him. War for them is bad for profits.
Putin is buying military hardware from Iran and North Korea. Why isnât he making his own? Inflation cuts both ways. Russia is making billions from increased oil prices, but inflation is skyrocketing there too. Hence the need to buy war materiel elsewhere, some of it of inferior quality (and likely bought in dollars).
Putin, like Europe, is under pressure to find a way out. Remember WW1: Czars are all-powerfulâuntil they are taken to the basement for a bullet. Which gets back to my question: Why doesnât Putin start a draft? Answer: because itâs a step closer to the basement.
Who will blink first, he or the European public? I canât say.
I thought the Russians were commiting war crimes by targeting civilians.
You canât have it both ways.
Either one claim makes you a liar or the other one does
Which of my claims are you referring to?