Straightforward. Nazis and soviets had a military pact, jointly invaded and divided Poland, thus starting the ww2.

Lol, so the soviets did not have a pact with Nazis and didn’t invade Poland just two weeks after the Nazis?

My friend, I understand your desire to see Soviet Union as some sort of dualistic opponent of the imperialist US (which the latter is), and use that to declare as the good side, but I’m afraid the USSR was just as imperialist and as terrible, just differently.

It was way more like two mafia gangs fighting each other. And the one that won is now finally showing its true colours.

The fundamental approach to equality in the early Soviet Union was via killing all those “not equal”. Lenin was very adamant about using extreme violence to “convince” the population. So was Stalin. The following ones were a little less blood thirsty, but simply because their predecessors did a great job killing millions.

Sorry, Soviet Union was a tyrannical oligarchy, as far from socialism as its great opponent the US of A.

By the way, your argument that you don’t know but I also cannot know because I was late to the party (pun intended) is… a very naive one. But I agree with you - you don’t know and fight rather hard to retain your faith.

As someone who lived in USSR, slow me to adjust your statement.

Everyone was declared to have equal rights, not dissimilar to the constitutions of other countries.

Contrary to those declarations the soviet passports had “nationality” in them.

On top of that, while it was reasonable for everyone to have a common language, it was a common understanding that if one is too progress in life and career, they should adopt russian and, better, become one. Which was actively supported. While I grew up in Ukraine, in school we had Ukrainian language and literature as a foreign language, maybe 10% of what we spent learning russian ones.

So yeah, everyone was equal, as long as they are russian. Every other nationality was at best mocked. Ukrainians are greedy, Georgians are brainless machos, Chukchas are stupid, Jews are sneaky thieves etc.

On top of that, there was systemic discrimination of women which culminated in the joke-proverb “woman, keep your mouth shut, your day is 8th of march”.

And of course the equality was topped by the oligarchy. See in a one-party system, people are either party members or not. The country was obviously ruled exclusively by the party members, which not only meant that the non-members had zero representation, it also meant that most members had equally zero representation.

Ironically, in that sense, there was equality since nobody had any rights.

So a small elite has formed, it was mostly replenished via nepotism and those were the “more equal” ones.

The patriotic movements you’re mentioning, while they naturally picked the flag after the collapse, had little to do with the said collapse. It crashed because it was resistant to change.

And the soviets were well aware of the “nationalist danger”, that why after causing holodomor they settled millions of ethnic russians into the emptied homes in Ukraine. That’s why after the second world war (which the soviets don’t call that because they actually started it together with the Nazis) they sent hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to Siberia and replaced them with… more ethnically and loyal russians.

So yeah, everyone was declared equal, but only male, russian and well-connected were.

Pretty much. The soviets have systematically cultivated political apathy and pootler has brought it to the next level. Imagine having access to millions of bodies and nobody cares when you expend a million or two. That’s dictator’s wet dream.

There will be no civil war in russia after their defeat. They were all conditioned into complete apathy (that’s why all other dictators and wannabes are paying attention). That’s why most of those who join today, do that simply for money.

So all that might happen is mafia clashes as they will establish new spheres of control and then it will come back to the rise of the next “great” leader.

Fuel is directly used in war. Electricity in the near-front areas is the same.

Heating in the cities that are not engaged in direct military activities is a terrorist tactic designed to kill or at least break the will of civilians.

That’s different.

I’m afraid if something is disturbing his sleep, it’s not the casualties, but the prospect of him personally losing this war. So if he needs to send another million, they are but cheers pieces. “Women will birth new ones” is the popular saying in that insane asylum.

Yup, I cannot find the original article, but I think you’re right. What’s more is that in Ukrainian, metastasis is virtually never used in a verb form (you can buy it’s awkward), so it’s indeed caused by the author knowing it has a verb form in English, but being somewhat unfamiliar with its use.

I hope there’s no gate

It’s the bigger more expensive ones

“some” as in “few”. A country which can afford to waste 1.2 million lives in a meat grinder is likely made of those who don’t mind the war. Especially if they’re winning and vodka and Coca-Cola are affordable. And when they say they want the war to end, they mean they want to get back to winning and affordable vodka, not that the war is a terrible thing.

I don’t think it’s a loophole. Surgeons hurt people in order to prevent a greater pain. ruZZia is just a cancer.

In case yours is not a retorical question, it’s a terrorist tactic.

While there are reports of people being sold into military slavery or fooled to sign the contract, majority are there voluntarily - whether following an ideology, desire to avoid prison or simply money.

As sad as it is that people have to make those choices, they still made them and given how pootin has weaponised political apathy, they also don’t care about their actions until they meet a drone.

As I’m slowly evolving my own flavour of spec driven development, I’m starting to think about the generated code as a secondary artefact where main quality criteria is that it’s doing what it needs to and it’s covered with tests.

I guess my current analogy is that I don’t care about how readable or dry is the assembly code generated by compiler.

I have the specifications and the working code with tests. I can always regenerate it if I need to.

But. I still read the produced code, steer the design and correct the obvious blunders. No vibes.

Nah, my original message was a quick braindump full of shortcuts. I’m glad you gave me the opportunity to formulate it orderly.

Bro. I have Ukrainian roots and I’m very confused about the Ukrainian stuff :)

All I know about Finland is that Soviets attacked it and, essentially, lost, so I guess Finland didn’t have much choice - it was the known evil of the Stalin and the who-knows-what with the Germans that weren’t even their neighbours.

I’m sure there were actual Nazis both in Finland and Ukraine, but I don’t see how Finland could have stayed independent and neutral in that situation.

But again, I know way too little about those parts.

so first things first. pogroms and volyn were terrible and seems like Ukraine is working through that.

the point i’m making here is that the binary “worked with nazis” leads nowhere, and we have to bring things into the historical perspective.

today we have the luxury of retrospective and know what fascism is and its dangers. which, ironically, doesn’t seem to stop us from sliding into it.

things were very different and slightly less binary in 1941. after all, the German American Bund (aka First US Nazi party) was dismantled only in December 1941. to make matters worse, germany, france and poland were all researching on the “re-settling” of jews to madagascar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

what makes a difference for me is that while the main nazis (germans, italians, japanese and soviets) were all about “we are better, let’s enslave the neighbor monkeys”, ukrainian nationalists in that time were about fighting against occupation. polish, soviet, nazi and then again soviet. in that order.

they lost, and as usual with history, it’s written by the winners but the fact that (the modern nazi) ruzzia appears to have inherited fear of bandera from the (fairly nazi) soviet union, tells me that it’s worth looking at him not only from the ruzzian perspective.

I’m afraid you are misinformed. Stalin and Hitler were Nazi mass murderers and best buddies. Bandera, while not an angel, was imprisoned by Hitler and murdered by Stalin.

“Bandera was a nazi” was soviet and now ruzzian line, this statement is neither true nor false, but repeating it helps spreading ruzzian propaganda.

This is why the military came up with the idea of force multiplication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication

In short, it’s something you can give a soldier or a weapon so that they become more effective. A gun in the knife fight is one example.

Ruzzian war doctrine, if I understand it correctly, was “shoot artillery until the area is flat, advance with meat”. So artillery is their force multiplier and matching and countering that is essential.

Add to that better training, cross-unit communication and cohesion, better weapons and you don’t need to match soldier per soldier. Especially if you are in defence - the attacking side usually takes greater losses.

So while staffing is a major issue for Ukraine, luckily it doesn’t automatically translate into their loss.