I’m honestly fascinated to see how badly the ruble craters on Monday.
__________________
Pylon on the Edmonton Oilers:
"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to IliketoPuck For This Useful Post:
There is an historical kernel in this. In the early days of the Russian Revolution, the nascent Executive of Soviet Workers' Deputies issued Order 1 to the military. It basically instructed soldiers to disarm and ignore their officers, effectively dismantling all military order and forcing Russia to exit WWI.
__________________
Shot down in Flames!
The Following User Says Thank You to icarus For This Useful Post:
I’m hearing the first batch of Croatian volunteers are heading to Ukraine. They will assimilate into regular Ukrainian units.
Most have combat experience and are motivated to fight for the little guy.
Ukrajina jaka!!!
More, we need more of this kind of things. Russia cannot battle the entire globe on a military, political, and economic front. If everyone does a little something, they cannot last.
__________________
"You know, that's kinda why I came here, to show that I don't suck that much" ~ Devin Cooley, Professional Goaltender
France 24 reported that much of the initial ground force are from the less Orthodox and less ethnically Russian units from places like Chechnya.
Makes it even stranger. A Buffalo Soldier scenario. Where Putin is sending in soldiers who have no reason to be attached to him at all. You'd assume Putin would prefer a quick victory for propaganda purposes, but maybe this thins out the militaries of multiple less loyal populations?
More, we need more of this kind of things. Russia cannot battle the entire globe on a military, political, and economic front. If everyone does a little something, they cannot last.
Makes it even stranger. A Buffalo Soldier scenario. Where Putin is sending in soldiers who have no reason to be attached to him at all. You'd assume Putin would prefer a quick victory for propaganda purposes, but maybe this thins out the militaries of multiple less loyal populations?
Excuse my tinfoil hat for a moment …but is it possible we’ve got a dab of ‘global theatre’?
Putin sends in some star trek red shirts he’s willing to sacrifice. They cause some havoc, but don’t actually destroy any real infrastructure.
Everyone comes to the table. Putin walks away with key geography (political, security, and resource valuable) in the east and south?
All the major players call it a day?
__________________
I like to quote myself - scotty2hotty
Putin’s tactics in Ukraine strikingly resemble Milošević’s treatment of the so-called Greater Serbia region (the region with self-proclaimed pro-Serbian republics, partially located in modern-day Croatia) during the breakup of Yugoslavia. First, both Serbia and Russia fueled intense nationalism among Serbs and Russians against Croats and Ukrainians through mass media propaganda. Then they empowered the uprising of ethnic minorities within Croatia and Ukraine, and next, they engaged the military under a declared “need to protect minorities.” Finally, they established self-proclaimed, semi-independent republics in both Croatia and Ukraine. But the resemblance between Putin and Milošević’s cases is more than just a similarity in tactics—it embraces the fundamental myths and historical clashes between Serbs and Croats, and Russians and Ukrainians.
The story begins in the early twentieth century, when the USSR and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were established. In both cases, the metropolises of Russia and Serbia—both countries of Eastern Orthodox religion that considered themselves alternative, non-Western civilizations—imposed their rule upon the Catholic and much more pro-Western Croatia and Ukraine. Understandably, both Croatia and Ukraine resisted what they perceived as invasion, and in the 1940s, this resistance translated into substantive support for fascists in both countries. (Germans were viewed as liberators against the dominance of a foreign culture.) In Croatia, this support for independence led to the popularity of Ustaše—an organization founded by Ante Pavelić with an ideology that mixed fascism and ultra-conservatism. Likewise, in western Ukraine, Stepan Bandera, the son of a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest and a leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, tried to negotiate with Hitler in order to liberate Ukraine from communist invaders. By contrast, Russia and Serbia, respectively, viewed Ukrainian and Croatian support for the Nazis as a betrayal, which they never forgot. The echo of this story is still reflected in the narratives built by Putin and Milošević around Greater Serbia and Novorossia in recent conflicts.
Russian and Serbian propaganda referenced the old myths of Croatian (and Ukrainian) fascists. Just as Kremlin propaganda linked Ukrainian nationalists to fascists, Milošević portrayed Croats as new version of Ustaše, the World War II fascists who threatened the existence of peaceful ethnic Serbs. In the Croatian case, the role of the horrible fascist devil—played by “Pravyi Sector” in Ukraine—was assigned to the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS), who were portrayed as hardcore Nazis by the Serbian propaganda. To personalize the link with the Nazis, the historic character Ante Pavelić was used in Croatia, just as Stepan Bandera was used in Ukraine. And both the Serbian and the Russian official narratives went as far as to deny the very existence of Croatia and Ukraine as separate nations.
Excuse my tinfoil hat for a moment …but is it possible we’ve got a dab of ‘global theatre’?
Putin sends in some star trek red shirts he’s willing to sacrifice. They cause some havoc, but don’t actually destroy any real infrastructure.
Everyone comes to the table. Putin walks away with key geography (political, security, and resource valuable) in the east and south?
All the major players call it a day?
If it’s all just theatre, why does Putin walk away with territory?
Edit: political theatre is meaningless, there are no tangible gains, only perceptive. If what Putin is doing is theatre like you suggest, then why does he walk away with tangible assets (ex: Ukraine)?
