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.
I keep writing this here and there, so I’ll reiterate it here.
When the Soviet war in Afghanistan ended, some 70 000 absolutely mental soldiers returned straight from the front, and there were another 400 000 or so that had been rotated away from frontline duty and were a bit less of lunatics but doing bad all the same. Those 70 000 + 400 000 were too much for the Soviet Union of 300 million people.One of the most important causes for Soviet Union’s collapse were those Afghan veterans who were accustomed to extremely violent way of doing things. The crazy years of 1990’s and the famously violent Russian mafia were a result of those 500-ish thousand madmen having been freed to roam the Soviet Union and later the Russia. All that instability eventually led to the total economical collapse of 1998.
So… Now there are some 700 000 soldiers more or less on the front, and another 700 000 doing other military duties. Those 700 000 + 700 000 will have quite an effect on the Russia of 140 million people. Once the war ends, ten times as many lunatics will return to the Russia of only 140 million as returned to USSR of 300 million. That will be absolute carnage and the 1990’s will look like a walk in a park compared to what’s coming up.
This is already unavoidable, but if the Russia is victorious, it can still avoid being ripped completely apart by that carnage. That’s the main reason the Russia cannot end the war. It will wage the war ad infinitum, unless made physically unable to continue. And if they some day cannot get any more soldiers, then that’ll finally the physical barrier they’ve been looking for.
Yep. And putting yourself in the shoes of a completely black hearted ghoul like Putin - it’s better off to have those monsters you created die at the front than come home and cause havoc. This war continues until (a) Putin dies or (b) manpower recruitment fails to keep up with the demand. And in either case - Russia is completely doomed going forward without MASS immigration. Having a century-long period of ethno-corproate warlordism in a post-war, post-putin russia might be a damper on the immigration levels they are going to need to sustain their heavy-industry, labour intensive workforce. It certainly isn’t likely to attract a modern, productive global workforce.
ne of the most important causes for Soviet Union’s collapse were those Afghan veterans who were accustomed to extremely violent way of doing things. The crazy years of 1990’s and the famously violent Russian mafia were a result of those 500-ish thousand madmen having been freed to roam the Soviet Union and later the Russia. All that instability eventually led to the total economical collapse of 1998.
numbers mean nothing unless you’re talking about money and sq. km of stolen land.
Not even that. Sanctions cost Russia a lot. So ending the war would give Putin a lot more money. He might even get away with some land from Ukraine.
The real problem is that ending the war in something, which might look like a defeat is a risk. The only ideological group in Russia allowed to operate somewhat freely are nazis. However they really like the war against Ukraine. So ending it is a risk.
However, the larger issue for Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a retired US Army Russian military analyst in Washington, is that “he needs a win somewhere. He needs some dramatic change in the disposition of the front line to somehow justify these casualty numbers,” he explained.
“His army is bogged down almost everywhere and the domestic situation continues to worsen as these Ukraine attacks on Russia’s oil industry have caused shortages of petrol and other disruptions of people’s daily lives,” he continued.
See here is the thing, yes Putin doesn’t care about the lives of his soldiers, yes theoretically this means if he can retain an iron grip that the war can continue indefinitely and yes that means english language publications can wax poetic about the unstoppability of Russia… however human lives ARE valuable, Russia and Putin not seeing the value in the lives of their own people is a WEAKNESS not a strength.
It should disturb all of us all over the world that even in our own countries there are rightwing people that similarly cannot see the value in human beings, who cannot see refugees or people with a different colored skin or ethnicity than them as having any generative potential rather than just being a burden. It is this ideology precisely that makes Putin weak and it is the same ideology that makes all rightwing ideologues weak.
Human beings are the valuable thing, it is the genius, strength and will of living breathing human beings that gives rise to power in this world, and to pretend otherwise is to participate in a delusion that makes you weak relative to those who treat human life as valuable and build coalitions based on that principle.
We should treat human beings as human beings because it is the right thing to do, but beyond that it is also the thing that powerful militaries do to their own soldiers. The more a military treats its soldiers as human beings and does not cast human lives away under a cynical delusion that shitty AI war machines that can do nothing but kill are more valuable than motivated, professional human beings, the more powerful that military becomes.
…so in my opinion, it is a tragedy, but let Putin continue to see no value in the lives of his soldiers, it will only doom his war effort faster.
Edit I also want to add another point that other than oil and just raw space all Russia really has is its military technology industry. With that in mind imagine for a second you are a leader of a nation looking to buy weapons for your nation’s military, for the purposes of this hypothetical let us say you don’t care about the Ukraine war either way you are simply looking to purchase military arms to equip your military and gain the political benefit that comes from doing so and advertising it to your people.
Imagine you look at the news and see Russian military equipment getting blown up one after another in rapid fire in humiliating ways where it is obvious that the Russian soldiers are basically walking into deathtraps given how badly suited the equipment and doctrine they are using is to the current war.
Even if you don’t care about the military equipment actually working and you just want to do business with Russia and get some PR for buying shitty military machines that don’t really do the job they advertise they do, the fact that there is footage ALL over the internet of these machines bursting into horrific flames and killing everybody inside makes any purchase of Russian arms actually a potential political liability because citizens could turn around and say something along the lines of “Wait, you got us tanks that are going to give our family members a false sense of safety and end up killing them from ammunition cooking off inside when they climb into them and defend our country? What the hell? Why?!? Are you corrupt? Do you want us to lose?”.
TL;DR Lack of empathy is not strength, it is admission of weakness and lack of vision.
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.
Human beings are the valuable thing, it is the genius, strength and will of living breathing human beings that gives rise to power in this world, and to pretend otherwise is to participate in a delusion that makes you weak to those who treat human life as valuable.
We should treat human beings as human beings because it is the right thing to do, but beyond that it is also the thing that powerful militaries do to their own soldiers. The more a military treats its soldiers as human beings and does not cast their lives away as if the shitty AI war machines they have are more valuable than motivated, professional human beings, the more powerful that military becomes.
…so in my opinion, it is a tragedy, but let Putin continue to see no value in the lives of his soldiers, it will only doom his war effort faster.
But it won’t stop because of casulaty 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 :)
