It is an empire of conquest, mostly in the 19th century and cannot become a liberal democracy without flying apart. Putin and the FSB's job, before he became the great leader, was to hold it all together, using the usual KGB bag of tricks.
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Why not just wipe them out with a few drones? Artillery is so WWII.
If they had enough, they might be able to do the job, but this is a slogging match and they know what is required and have been asking for it. Building your own killer drones is often easier than obtaining licensed technology and having lot's of drones makes artillery even more effective. It is interesting to note that most of the weapons and munitions the Russians are using is from the 1980's or even before.
They have enough motivated troops, they lack the proper arms in sufficient amounts. However we don't know the how much damage, what NATO guns, drones and counterbattery radars they have, have done to the Russians. If they have the claimed range, mobility and precision, then each M777 gun should be taking out a lot of Russian targets, including their guns. So far they've been burning out the barrels and sending them back for refurbishing and we have supplied around a half million 155mm rounds. The Ukrainians are firing 1/10 the rounds of the Russians, but say they are 5 times more effective, using counter battery radars, drones and higher precision, especially at extreme range? The Russians presented a target rich environment for the Ukrainian guns with their massed attack in the east, one of the reasons for their withdrawal could be, they burned out the barrels of their artillery and need to get them refurbished in the west.
NATO should allow any of their personal to resign and go fight in Ukraine. Maybe whole companies would volunteer together. Wouldn't hurt if a few of them took their fighter jets with them.
Well I imagine a Nazi like you can empathize with how those Nazi's felt, like you do with the downfall for your fuhrer Trump and his gang of fascist republican assholes.
well, i was trying to give them plausible deniability, if they took NATO aircraft with them, even the russians might figure it out...
But trumpf said you could just paint the planes and no one would know.
Do you root for Russia because you like fascism or because Ukraine refused to be blackmailed by Trump?
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Another oil and gas rich country fucked over by Russia and not allowed to develop it's resources because it competes with Russian gas and oil, it's the same for Ukraine and Belarus. Russia wants all the money from Europe, all the leverage and wields it against potential neighboring competitors using military force. If Finland suddenly found out it was sitting natural gas reserves, the Russians would go nuts trying to stifle or stop it's development. If they weren't tied down in Ukraine. they would have attacked Finland, before it was a NATO member over it. Oil and gas sales are everything to the Kremlin and cutting into their European markets means not only cutting their revenue, but their leverage over Europe.