One thing I find mystifying is how good russian propaganda is. To this day there are talking heads everywhere regurgitating the talking point "no point for ukrain to fight, better just surrender now and spare lives". How does this happen, is it actually as straightforward as the fsb has a budget to pay for pundits?
It is perplexing isn't it? Second best army in the world is struggling to make a headway for last 4 years on a much smaller neighbor. The difference between Russian propaganda and reality on the battlefield is so vast that every threat from Russia towards other neighbors rings more hollow every month.
The same thing happened in Afghanistan (to both Russia and the USA). Really has a David vs Goliath feel to it. Effectively the whole population is against you, so how do you win them over? No military strategy is going to be able to do that.
Russia, and all of the countrys that have full time military ataches in there command structure are not interested in loosing this conflict, as it represents the future of security and military actions. Accepting a pause or temporary truce is meaningless as 'violations' have become the norm, and as financial and other restrictions remain while further offensive capacity is fielded, it only creates a false sense of security for there population, so they will fight now.
The attack on the gas going to China from Siberia, is exactly that, and will prove to be a very serious misscalculation.
Nobody in EU, USA or China is interested in Russia winning the war because that would embolden them to further expand east to Moldova and Baltics.
And nobody in EU, USA or China is interested in Russia losing the war because that could turn into fracturing of Russia and civil war inside Russia with nukes.
Putin got Russia into impossible situation which will end badly either way.
One thing I find mystifying is how good russian propaganda is. To this day there are talking heads everywhere regurgitating the talking point "no point for ukrain to fight, better just surrender now and spare lives". How does this happen, is it actually as straightforward as the fsb has a budget to pay for pundits?
It is perplexing isn't it? Second best army in the world is struggling to make a headway for last 4 years on a much smaller neighbor. The difference between Russian propaganda and reality on the battlefield is so vast that every threat from Russia towards other neighbors rings more hollow every month.
The same thing happened in Afghanistan (to both Russia and the USA). Really has a David vs Goliath feel to it. Effectively the whole population is against you, so how do you win them over? No military strategy is going to be able to do that.
Russia, and all of the countrys that have full time military ataches in there command structure are not interested in loosing this conflict, as it represents the future of security and military actions. Accepting a pause or temporary truce is meaningless as 'violations' have become the norm, and as financial and other restrictions remain while further offensive capacity is fielded, it only creates a false sense of security for there population, so they will fight now. The attack on the gas going to China from Siberia, is exactly that, and will prove to be a very serious misscalculation.
It is lose-lose situation for everybody.
Nobody in EU, USA or China is interested in Russia winning the war because that would embolden them to further expand east to Moldova and Baltics.
And nobody in EU, USA or China is interested in Russia losing the war because that could turn into fracturing of Russia and civil war inside Russia with nukes.
Putin got Russia into impossible situation which will end badly either way.