Random Rant Thread

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And congrats to both France and Slovenia on holding the election on a non-working day.

I mean, I know that's not something to celebrate, but there's a certain uncivilized country who insists that we should always hold elections on working days because reasons.

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People keep telling me that I shouldn't be able to make any reasonable guess on the war since I don't know the condition of the Ukrainian military - at this point it's a lot easier to guess the condition of the Russian military - but they seem to forget that unlike Russia, for whom this is still a "special military operation", Ukraine has been in the total national mobilization mode. The amount of manpower shouldn't be a problem, and that's pretty much all that matters now given the Western supplies.

OTOH, I don't think the Russians have enough troops. They would have to declare full-fledged war and start national mobilization to make up for the losses. But they are not going to do it soon enough.

I mean, it's possible - perhaps more than possible - for them to take the whole Donbas with what they have. But then what? As I've been saying for weeks, Russia has already lost this war as far as I'm concerned. The first week was everything, and they screwed it up royally. The way the Kremlin has been acting reminds me a bit of the way Imperial Japan did in 1942-43.

And the point is, that does NOT mean the war will end anytime soon. I don't think it will anytime soon. I think it will drag on and on and on and on, and I have NOT discarded the possibility of tactical nukes used in one way or another at some point. It's not impossible, however remote it is, precisely because I can't see Russia win this one.

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Freedom Fries Redux:

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This is pretty brutal.

Now, this isn't just a simple case of racism. There's more to it than that. That's the caveat. But given that Ukrainians, together with Moldovans, have been treated disgustingly in Europe and elsewhere for decades, as if they were some kind of sub-Russians who are only good at wheat farming, software piracy and prostitution - I mean, only good enough to be Alan Partridge's much younger girlfriend - this kind of stuff feels extra obscene.

Like, you always find people below you somewhere... until someone finds no one below them. I wonder who they are, at the rock bottom of the human hierarchy today.

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They keep saying that one of the pillars of the "Western value" is the sanctity of human lives, but I see its flagship country lose more than one million people to a viral disease despite the significant technological, logistical, even epidemiological (e.g. considerably lower population density and smaller household size than Europe's) advantages, and not even flinch over that.

I don't care if you are sick of hearing that. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no way back from this. I don't think people really understand how socio-politically damaging this is in the long run.

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I mean, it's definitely true, in a way, I can give him that, but this collective meltdown/hysteria is absolutely hilarious.

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This shit isn't working anymore, though. The "rigged election" crap has become background noise even among most MAGA voters outside the cultists. In fact they don't really want to hear about it anymore. Makes you sound like a loser.

But then Perdue *is* a fucking loser, so it just fits the purpose, I guess.

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Mariupol still hasn't fallen, and there are still 12(!) Russian/separatist/Chechen/etc. battalion tactical groups stuck there to deal with it.

If this were a Daisenryaku (old Japanese strategic video game from the 1980s) session in which I play Russia, I would've already pressed the reset button.

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This is pretty remarkable, and at the same time, potentially problematic.

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It's broken.

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It's been utter embarrassment since Day One, hasn't it?

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Of course most Russians under the age of 65 know they are screwed. They might desperately latch onto some fiction, typically "The truth is somewhere between what the Western media outlets say and what Channel One says", which is true in the same way it is true that I'm "somewhere between" the convenience store right across the street eastward from my place and, say, Madrid, but their brain does know that they are in deep shit.

Those poll numbers in Russia are completely meaningless.

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The Kremlin's steadfast refusal to call it a war and begin national mobilization is really telling.

They can move the goalposts as many times as they like, but at some point they will have to firmly place them somewhere to define what they will have gained/achieved. And I don't know where the hell they will be able to place them.

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This looks like a part of a serious Russian force, presumably accompanied by big infantry not seen in the footage. The Izyum-Slovyansk area is where the main battles have been taking place. The Ukrainian troops on that front must be nearly surrounded now, and having a hell of a hard time.

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It's amazing that there isn't even the pretense of "Sure, we did make our stance clear, which side we are on, but still it's your war, not ours!" anymore.