Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh absolutely, like a one day sale on a timeshare in a florida condo.

[Leonardo17]

Trump calls on Zelensky to act not to miss opportunity for settlement

February 13. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump has warned Vladimir Zelensky that he will miss an opportunity for peace if he is not moving toward the conflict settlement.

"Zelensky is going to have to get moving. Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky is going to have to get moving, otherwise he's going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move," he said.

https://tass.com/world/2086645

But...

Since last year, Zelensky has agreed to Trump's mineral deal, to cede territory, to hold elections, and to put off joining NATO.

Putin has made exactly zero concessions.

Yet it's Zelensky who has to "get moving?"

That’s what I mean by “Putin is eating him for lunch”.
 
Also, I have my personal doubts about Donald Trump’s intellect since the days he contradicted Dr. Fauci in front of all the cameras during the Covid pandemic. Sometimes he reminds me of the former president Nicholas Sarcozy who would also do things and say things as act as if the whole world owed him something. And the issue of Greenland reminds me of Hitler’s latest obsession that was the 1500 monster tank: https://www.historynet.com/hitlers-monster-tanks/
 
Any fool could have told him that such a machine wouldn’t even be able to move on land because of its enormous weight. But the Fuhrer had made up his mind and the P1500 thus had to be built
 
Also, Russia is not in a “strong” position right now. It made a mistake in 2022 that put it in a very problematic situation. Russia’s military is not as strong as they would have us think:
 
https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/s...ert-storm/
 
Above is an interesting article about the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam’s army back then is said to be the world’s fourth largest military. It operated accordingly with the Soviet military doctrine. It was quite a modern army with the latest Soviet military equipment. Yet the US army that had air superiority + NATO military doctrine + newer technologies dismantled the whole thing within days.
 
And that was in 1991. So how does anyone make the exact same mistake in 2022?
 
Answer: Someone who has no idea about anything and simply delivers to the Russian oligarchs, the Russian mafia or whatever entity is behind the current regime in Russia.
 
Also: We know that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned when he was in prison.

[Thumpalumpacus]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

Above is an interesting article about the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam’s army back then is said to be the world’s fourth largest military in the world.

It’s not enough to have a large army if you don’t know how the fuck to use it.

Boru

[Deesse23]

Ask the German High Seas fleet of 1916, having been the second largest fleet ever existed, how that went.

[The Grand Nudger]

 
Also, Russia is not in a “strong” position right now. It made a mistake in 2022 that put it in a very problematic situation. Russia’s military is not as strong as they would have us think:
 
https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/s...ert-storm/
 
Above is an interesting article about the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam’s army back then is said to be the world’s fourth largest military. It operated accordingly with the Soviet military doctrine. It was quite a modern army with the latest Soviet military equipment. Yet the US army that had air superiority + NATO military doctrine + newer technologies dismantled the whole thing within days.
 
And that was in 1991. So how does anyone make the exact same mistake in 2022?
 
Answer: Someone who has no idea about anything and simply delivers to the Russian oligarchs, the Russian mafia or whatever entity is behind the current regime in Russia.
 

The iraqi military was no better the second go around.  It's not so much that they'd failed to observe the change in modern warfare but that there was nothing they could do about it even though they observed it in the worst possible way.  The same is true of russia, which is not the soviet union, and is still relying on soviet era hardware and tactics.  What they need to do, if they wish to continue fighting, is difficult.  Rapidly adopt and roll out new hardware and tactics to turn the tide.  The romans adopted naval boarding during the punic wars.  The british introduced armored warfare in ww1.  The us replicated then perfected blitzkrieg.  Unfortunately for russia, it was the ukranians who made such a move in their current conflict, by fully integrating drones into the battlespace.  

So, yes, the culture around dear leaders is an obstacle for militaries under such systems - but it's not quite as trivial for them as doing this, this way, just because dear leader says so.  If they had other options they'd use them.  There's a ton of institutional inertia in the form of training, leadership, culture, and decades of defense spending, that act as a sort of enemy within.  They have become better at adopting ukranian tactics, though, as their soviet era defense stocks dried up element by element.  Russia might have an edge in wire guided drones right now, for example. Even so, they're still going to do The Thing they've been doing because that's the way their army was built.

[Thumpalumpacus]

There's a ton of institutional inertia in the form of training, leadership, culture, and decades of defense spending, that act as a sort of enemy within.  [...]  Even so, they're still going to do The Thing they've been doing because that's the way their army was built.

This is the crux. The side which can find the cheaper and more-efficient way to kill the other has the edge. And that depends upon the military leadership being able to see the cost-benefit analysis of new weapons-systems and steer them into utility. "How do we fit this into doctrine? What doctrine might we need to change?" Those are important questions which generals fighting the last war might not be well-equipped to answer.