There’s no evidence at all that the Putin regmine is even slightly moved by casualty numbers. Indeed - their losses may well be part of the plan - an expected and accepted trade-off. It’s not stated enough how internal ethnic cleansing of trading useless mouths for prime ukrainain lands and population is a perfectly logical conclusion. If you’re a completely depraved petromafia gangster ghoul…numbers mean nothing unless you’re talking about money and sq. km of stolen land. The numbers shock some people, but pretending the Kremlin cares is like throwing ice cubes at the sun.
You’ll get no argument here, mate. Their chest-thumping claims of inevitability and bottomlessness is only true if you’re referring to their cruel depravity.
The point i’m trying to make is while normal human beings from the 20th century-onwards mindset are apalled by a willingness to let millions die for nothing but the hubris of a rich old gangster who’s incapable of admitting he’s made a mistake…you kind of have to role-play as a Russian Imperialist to understand what conditions would cause them to change anything.
If you’re a petromafia gangser Russian politican - you live in a nest of snakes, all trying to steal from or kill each other. Death and fear are weapons. The weapons of ancient, and they would say rightly natural order inherited from a cruel history going even way past the Mongols that conqueured them. The organizing principle of Russia is “do as I say, or I’ll kill you”. They might say - that’s how the universe is - the strong abuses the weak, power exists to be used, and ruthlessness is a virtue. Diplomacy is a trick of the weak to keep down the strong, and the feckless pussies who don’t realise this fundamental truth are asking to be exploited.
So - you’ve put your Russian Leader mindset on. Then this statement makes sense:** It is PERFECTLY reasonable to trade idle, useless, and non-ideal ethnic Russian idiots for valuable ukraininan land.** You can replace your worthless lost bodies for ‘close-enough’ good Ukrainian genetic stock after the war. And their deaths don’t matter until you can’t make this formula work. Moving slowly is fine, as long as you manage internal threats and keep your opposition fragmented, or ideally - dead. These are absolute monsters we’re dealing with. Cynical, murderous beasts among the worst 1% of human beings to ever live.
There is no threat to Russia except personal ambition. When Putin dies, then things will go very badly for a while, as the Intellgience Services who REALLY run russia decide who the new Tsar will be. Things haven’t gone well - the Russian soldiers dying today were clearly supposed to be the reserve for taking back the Baltics, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania and eventually Germany. How ever far you could get without REALLY being confronted by anyone. But - the die is cast, there is no unringing the bell. The primary export markets are destroyed, the best of the soviet stockpile inheritance is spent, the finest troops dead or dismembered, the manufacturing primacy deferred to China, the corrosive anti-Western diplomatic blocs are reduced to a shitty alliance of mostly irrelevant goon states who only run on bribes. All that to say - Russia is pot committed, they aren’t going to stop because they reach ANY number of casulaties. This war ONLY stops when Putin dies and the regime collaspes. Even if the war pauses with him still alive - the war continues, in any form they can get away with to destabilize their neighbors and fuck around with their enemies.
How human beings ‘ought’ to be treated is no more relevant than a sparrow’s fart in a hurricane. This death festival continues until Putin dies, full stop. Whatever comes afterwards is the only chance for Russia to create a new direction and it’s neighbors to have any hope of a lasting peace. He is slitting Russia’s throat as surely as he is trying to do the same to Ukraine. But it won’t stop because of casualty figures.
My argument is specifically that Putin not valuing the lives of his people actually rapidly decreases the ability of Russia to sustain war, far more than if Putin actually visibly valued the lives of his soldiers and Russia had actually bothered to make armored vehicles and tanks that don’t suck so much that Russian infantry prefers to just ride on top of them rather then risk going inside a deathtrap anywhere near battle.
What I am saying is that for Putin there is no number of casualties that will be too much, but that doesn’t mean that for the effective war effort of Russia there isn’t a number of casualties that will be too much, there most definitely is. I don’t know what the consequences of that will be, I am not an expert on Russia, but the simple reality is that no matter what Putin thinks there is a limit and the more Putin throws away soldiers carelessly the faster Russia races towards that limit wherever it may be.
I’d like to add: Almost all Russians think the same as Putin regarding what is a number of casualties that will be too much. To the question “what is a number of casualities that makes you think the war is a bad thing instead something that hurts but will bring glory?”, their answer is: “There is no such number. Our leader will [read: should] only stop once we reach victory!”
But, they do care about a certain other thing: a number of casualties exists that will be too much for people to want to let their children be forced to the front.
They will not stop supporting the war no matter what the casualties, but they will stop going to the front once the casualities have reached their target number. And that will of course end the war.
Also, there’s another relevant number: How many percents of your salary is bread allowed to cost before you start opposing the war. This has to do with the death toll, because the more deaths, the more salary must paid to each soldier, and the more the other industries have to increase their salaries in order to remain in competition for the workforce.
No matter what anyone claims, almost everyone is against war once it truly touches them, war is awful.
Understood, thanks. And hopefully there is someone internal who wants to succeed him while there’s still a functional nation state to rule over.
I don’t really buy the “but - but - then someone WORSE will come along!”.
Worse than the genocide, corrosive fuckery and populist poison that’s going on now? A shrill, thrashing mafia butcher who enables death and mayhem across the world, poisons the planet in every way possible and threatens nuclear armageddon like it’s a bodily function, and you’re not willing to see what ‘new leadership’ might look like?
These people, from The Great Goblin himself on down, are pure evil. Best case - he dies, unnaturally and soon - and Russia collapses into fueding ethno corporate fiefdoms too individually weak to maintain a nuclear arsenal, who spend their time fighting each other instead of shitting hot cancerous diarrhea in every direction.
Guys, I really enjoyed your conversation. Deep, insightful and respectful. Given a chance, I’ll buy you a beer.
deleted by creator
For your information:
This community is operated on a server operated by a Finn and physically located in Germany. You are using lemmy.ca, but this community, ukraine@sopuli.xyz is not on lemmy.ca, but on sopuli.xyz, a whole different site on a different server in a different country :) Sopuli is a server operated by a Finnish person, and physically located in a country known as Germany.
Also, you were talking with supersquirrel, who is using this network through sopuli.xyz (which coincidentally happens to be the same instance this community is running on). Supersquirrel is not touching lemmy.ca in any way. The two server computers, those of Lemmy.ca and sopuli.xyz, tell each other what new comments have appeared, and then show each other’s comments.
I am very happy that your canadianness happens to be partaking in this conversation, because you’ve good plenty of knowledge and very good argumentational skills.
thank you for the clarification.
Never been to Canada. Must be rubbing off :)