The defence of Mariupol seems to be unprecedented in the recent military history. Some pro-Russian pundits claimed that defenders were "hiding" in the catacombs of the Azovstal. That's factually wrong. They repeatedly counterattacked ambushing Russian soldiers on the city streets
Mariupol is a key industrial center located almost on the Russian border. It was besieged on the very first day of the war and completely surrounded by the early March. Still, its defenders continued resisting till the late May in the deep rear of Russian forces
Defenders of Mariupol achieved two objectives. First of all, they deflected the Russian attention. Azovstal becoming an Alcazar-like symbol, Russians had to keep on attacking the plant which remained in their rear instead of just pushing forward. That helped Ukraine to buy time
With every new week of the war the balance of power is changing in favour of Ukraine, not only due to narrowly defined "military" but also due to material factors. Ukraine is getting lend lease, while Russia is getting sanctions burden which amount to an anti lend lease program
I'll cover the logic of sanctions (as I see it) later. For now I would like to say that they look like an almost exact reversal of the lend lease program of WWII. Russian industries are being turned off now roughly in the same order as they were turned on in the 1940s
Some perceive Hitler's decision to invade the USSR as madness. I'll however argue that it was a very well-thought decision. Hitler assumed that the German advance would break the Soviet supply & technological chains thus undermining their military capacities. That was correct
What Hitler didn't take into account however, was the gargantuan scale of the American aid, which specifically targeted all the gaps in Soviet supply chains created by the German advance. The US targeted bottlenecks in the Soviet supply chains turning industries on one by one
Right now Russian industries are being turned off one by one in roughly the same order as they were turned off in the 1940s. The effect of sanctions was very much visible since the 2014 (just read the interviews with engineers and technologists of the military plants)
Still, both the aid to Ukraine and the anti lend lease program for Russia need time to produce a significant effect. And the resistance of Mariupol was one of important factors in gaining this time for the rest of Ukraine
Defenders of Mariupol achieved one more objective. They destroyed a significant number of Putin's subjects: both the Russian regulars (possible to estimate) and the Donbass levy (impossible to estimate right now), depleting the quickly shrinking manpower that Putin can employ
The Russian advance slowed significantly. They retreated from the North (Kyiv, Cherhnihiv). Ukrainians are now successfully counterattacking in the Northeast (Kharkiv). Still, the war will continue and probably continue for long. So the material help is needed urgently
If you would like to donate, here you can find more links. You could contribute financially by Visa, Mastercard, Google Pay or Apple Pay (this is verified) fainemisto.com.ua/en/donate/
A bit later I'll publish a larger thread with links for donating to the specific detachments of the Ukrainian military, including the army, the territorial troops and the national guard. End of thread
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One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking
Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support
BUT
Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast
Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.
Purely good movements do not really exist
That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),
Let's have a look at these four guys. Everything about them seems to be different. Religion. Ideology. Political regime. And yet, there is a common denominator uniting all:
Xi - 71 years old
Putin - 72 years old
Trump - 79 years old
Khamenei - 86 years old
Irrespectively of their political, ideological, religious and whatever differences, Russia, China, the United States, Iran are all governed by the old. Whatever regime, whatever government they have, it is the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have the final saying in it.
This fact is more consequential than it seems. To explain why, let me introduce the following idea:
Every society is a multiracial society, for every generation is a new race
Although we tend to imagine them as cohesive, all these countries are multigenerational -> multiracial
In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed
Stalin shut up and said nothing
Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing
Which brings us to an important point:
Nobody becomes powerful accidentally
If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of
Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level
Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future.
And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike.
Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength
We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output