3/ Ukraine is no stranger to counter-attacking. they've historically been informed by Soviet mil doctrine, also got the legs & intel to pull it off.
throwing all units in as the first-and-only-wave would've courted humiliating & stingy breaches of Russian's own territory.
4/ gracefully understated
5/ harsh, likely correct
6/ a lesson in here for fellow dissidents here:
the cultural & organizational territory where the socialist/marxist/woke mob truddles is not under their control - as long as you are ready to re-claim it.
don't cede a subject just because the woke mob tramples over it.
7/ the propaganda effort around the events is absolutely massive, and also quite skillful
8/ broader angle:
thewestern elites won't let the crisis go to waste: "we tighten up the belt for Ukraine" to explain & handwave away the massive inflation & economic fuckups in the west.
9/ i didn't realize it was this bad
10/ 👀
11/ the whole invasion is only possible because USA, Russia and UK pressured Ukraine into disarming itself. "thanks, Bush & Clinton" - Putin, probably.
12/ side note: Mearsheimer was correct.
sadly now people are trying to twist his subsequent warnings into weird directions. here's the baseline. also note proper word choice: *aggression*.
>The threat from Russia isn't existential
oh it absolutely is
whole *based* cultures - Chechens, Crimean Tatars etc., that were erased and remodeled by Russia would like a word with you. the west destroys the body and makes it fat; Russia destroys culture and makes it russialike
>observes wokeness destroying the west
>ascribes it to the west
>thinks Russia is immune
who do you think perfected wokeness? who do you think propped it up for *decades*? Yuri Bezmenov says "hi". his chinese counterpart (to be yet found) says "hi".
2/ "cashless society" is a trap: you are at mercy of both domestic and foreign governments.
cash is king for where you can use it. for long distance or electronic use, a decentralized cryptocurrency is better than "cashless" - centralized banking.
2/ peace requires honest understanding the circumstances leading to the invasion; otherwise any attempted solution would only obscure the conflict & the tensions. i'm going with "Russia is ultimately in the wrong here", btw.
3/ yes, the "madman Putin" is bare-faced propaganda from the west. both to create a cartoonish villain - and also to distract from pressing domestic issues.