u/yogthos — ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

On the other hand, encirclement of thousands of troops will be a huge bargaining chip in the negotiations with the US right now. It lets Russia drive the point home that they're winning and will not be making any compromises. That said, I expect we'll see a combination of allowing the cauldron to bleed out a bit, and then capturing the troops that choose to surrender. I don't really see the logistics of imprisoning 10k POWs would be a problem given the scale of the war. Russia is now supplying an army of 1.5 million, 10k people is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

I'm expecting we'll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing going forward. It's going to become impossible to hide the fact that Ukraine lost, so the shift in coverage will be to Trump somehow being a Russian asset.

The simple answer is that the regime in Ukraine is unapologetically proud of their ideology.

I love how libs will never cease doing mental gymnastic when faced with the fact that AFU is a fascist army.

PPP is good for measuring purchasing power domestically, but you can still have high purchasing power without having a strong industry. I find steel production is a good proxy to look at. The US produces around 80 million tons while Russia 70 million tons. In terms of military production, Russia is far ahead in key areas like artillery shell production pumping out 3x as many as the entire west combined. Russia also exports more raw materials by value. I'd argue these are the two main factors in terms of the war. Russia is able to hold its own in terms of military production and their massive commodity exports give them a lot of geopolitical leverage.

I'd argue even PPP doesn't paint the whole picture. Turns out what really matters is industrial strength and self sufficiency.

Are lobotomies a requirement for joining lemm.ee?

To be fair, the whole Ukraine fiasco shows that GDP is not a very good measure of the strength of an economy.

Yeah, they basically saw jihadists overrun Syria as a win over Russia and Iran.

It is painful no doubt, but I find the value in reading these articles isn't in their analysis. They give a glimpse into the mindset of western elites and the policies they intend to pursue. Seeing how they view the world is important for understanding how they're likely to act going forward.

The EU is firmly on the side of the jihadists in case anyone is wondering.


it truly is

I recall how so many chuds over at lemmy.ml were cheering this on because they saw it as somehow an own for Russia.

I think if the US thinks they can strong arm Russia economically than they're absolutely delusional. It's pretty clear that the west has already done all the sanctions they could think of over the past three years. There's nothing meaningful left to sanction at this point. Meanwhile, Russian economy has only been getting stronger this whole time.

Personally, I expect that after doing a bit of huffing and puffing, the US will ultimately accept Russian terms here. The reality is that Ukraine is very obviously a sunk cost now, and the longer this goes on the worse things get for US. Trump will try doing a few stunts like this, but ultimately he needs the war to end.

that seems very likely