On the night of July 30, 2022, a special train of more than 40 cars with Russian troops, military equipment and ammunition, which arrived from Crimea to Kherson Region’s Brylivka Station, was destroyed with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
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“The enemy’s manpower losses were as follows: about 80 killed and 200 injured,” Bratchuk wrote.
According to the intelligence data, all locomotive drivers and engineers of Russian Railways, who escorted the cargo, were killed.
Watching for Russia’s ally Serbia to start something in Kosovo.
With NATO in charge of Kosovo defense, the active NATO garrison in Kosovo, Russia completely unable to help with their forces tied to Ukraine, and Serbia nearly surrounded by NATO....
This would be a very quick way for Serbia to loose its entire military and become a demilitarized state.
Reading on Twitter there is apparently a belief in Russia and Serbia that NATO has exhausted its supplies by giving so much to Ukraine, hence "Russia is fighting the entire NATO arsenal".
Serbia acting out may be a quick unfortunate way to prove how wrong this narrative this is.
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With NATO in charge of Kosovo defense, the active NATO garrison in Kosovo, Russia completely unable to help with their forces tied to Ukraine, and Serbia nearly surrounded by NATO....
This would be a very quick way for Serbia to loose its entire military and become a demilitarized state.
Reading on Twitter there is apparently a belief in Russia and Serbia that NATO has exhausted its supplies by giving so much to Ukraine, hence "Russia is fighting the entire NATO arsenal".
Serbia acting out may be a quick unfortunate way to prove how wrong this narrative this is.
Yup. Last time around Serbia got away with a lot due to a largely false "all sides many sides" -narrative, but in this climate they'd be pounded mercilessly with much of Europe cheering.
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It's not super long and we'll worth reading, but here's a couple of snippets.
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No less than four million people have left the country since the so-called “special operation” began. Ukraine reported that about seven to eight million people left the country, but about half of them have already returned. In that sense, the number of people who emigrated from Russia is approximately the same as the number of people who fled Ukraine. Given that nobody is being bombed here, it gives you an idea of the public’s attitude.
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Russian people are neither for the war nor against it. They do not react to the war.
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The whole spectrum of political opinion — including both loyalists and the opposition, whether leftist or fascist, liberal or conservative —# represents maybe 15 to 20 percent of the population, probably less than 10 percent. The rest are totally apolitical.
On the one hand, that’s a great advantage for the regime, but it’s also its biggest problem. Nobody moves against the government, but nobody moves in favor of it, either. That’s why the COVID vaccination campaign failed, and why Putin can’t announce a general mobilization.
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The economic situation is deteriorating and we will begin feeling that seriously by late August or September. It’s a gradual process.
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there is no plan. They know they made a terrible mistake and that it may be fatal, and that’s about it. The fact that there was a mistake is unacceptable for Putin and his team. The government never recognizes a failure publicly or even informally, but without recognizing there was a mistake you can’t move forward. No strategy can be developed.
Western analyses assume we are dealing with rational people making rational choices, or at least with people making choices. But there is no choice, nobody’s making choices! Even if there are proposals, no proposal works because none is accepted by enough people within the elite to make it real.
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Putin is the only one who makes decisions, even though he’s extremely isolated these days. Surrounding Putin is a small group who are also extremely isolated, even within the elite. It doesn’t seem like the military is happy. There are probably divisions within the military, we don’t know, but there are signs of big divisions.
What remains behind Putin is mainly the police force, and a group of the most privileged oligarchs. It’s a very small group within the capitalist class, and that’s why I don’t think they’re going to survive for very long, because it contradicts the long-term logic of capitalist society. You need a broader base, at least within the ruling class, to rule the country.
That explains the paralysis in government these last four months. This very narrow group, which doesn’t even represent the elite anymore, has been unable to establish a consensus around any initiative and take a decision.
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The local bureaucracy is so inefficient and corrupt that to make anything happen, the center has to pool ever more powers. The center does not trust local bureaucrats for the very reason that they undermine them systematically. It’s a self-perpetuating process that has become totally irrational and goes far beyond anything we saw during the Soviet period.
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If you speak to people close to the Russian military establishment, they’re extremely worried and sometimes even panicking.
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If they try to launch a general mobilization, or they expand the draft to new categories, then we’ll get a rebellion. We don’t know what the exact reaction will be, but it will be extremely negative.
Last edited by Itse; 08-03-2022 at 08:31 AM.
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Western analyses assume we are dealing with rational people making rational choices, or at least with people making choices. But there is no choice, nobody’s making choices! Even if there are proposals, no proposal works because none is accepted by enough people within the elite to make it real.
The sooner more people realize this, the better.
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The whole spectrum of political opinion — including both loyalists and the opposition, whether leftist or fascist, liberal or conservative —# represents maybe 15 to 20 percent of the population, probably less than 10 percent. The rest are totally apolitical.
This is important to understand. In societies like Russia, the vast majority of people are unengaged with politics. They don’t post on social media about politicians they like/hate. They don’t debate about ideology or how the world ought to be. They don’t talk with friends and co-workers about public policy. They feel neither loyalty nor opposition to the government. They just live their private individual lives.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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This is important to understand. In societies like Russia, the vast majority of people are unengaged with politics. They don’t post on social media about politicians they like/hate. They don’t debate about ideology or how the world ought to be. They don’t talk with friends and co-workers about public policy. They feel neither loyalty nor opposition to the government. They just live their private individual lives.
Russia also works as an example of dangers of political apathy.
Following politics at least a little should be considered a civic duty.
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I think the majority of Russians are just completely defeated at this point. The state has succeeded in its goal to remove the public from participation. It is one of the reasons why the existence of Ukraine is a threat. Ukraine, while not being a perfect democracy, was making strides in the right direction for things that measure freedom and public control. It was setting an example to the Russian people that it was possible to go in a different direction, and I think that scares Putin and others in high positions of power. They could no longer argue that totalitarian control was ingrained and necessary by historical circumstance when their sibling nation with a shared history was proving otherwise.
It's difficult to activate people once they defeated in the minds. I can't recall if it was here or somewhere else, but I watched a video with a young Russian who recently emigrated to Georgia and he grew up thinking that "Putin" was the same word for "president". He talked about how the concept of choice was something foreign to him and a lot of people. You just trust the leaders because that is all you know.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
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Russians have never had legitimate, responsive, representative government. We take it for granted, maybe because they’re white, that they have a similar civic culture to ours. They don’t, and never have.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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Russia also works as an example of dangers of political apathy.
Following politics at least a little should be considered a civic duty.
But what does following politics even look like in Russia?
Newspapers and broadcast news are muzzled.
They don’t have open online forums like this.
They don’t have Facebook or twitter.
They don’t have topical newstainment shows.
They don’t have political parties as we understand them.
Politics even at the grass-roots community level is utterly corrupt.
What exactly is there to follow?
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
They had a lot of those things prior to the invasion this year. The internet was pretty wide open, there was no great firewall like China. There was an interview with a Russian OMON POW early in the war, he stated he had read stuff online and had doubts about the internal narrative. The population traded politics for economic stability and the ability to travel, live comfortably. The bigger issue is the ardent nationalism they pump into school children about the great patriotic war, and turd polished Russian history..
Last edited by burn_this_city; 08-04-2022 at 03:09 PM.
