Julianus

I'm not advocating them, but anything is better than direct nuclear exchanges. I prefer space races, to be honest. You, my friend, need to take it down a notch, before you give yourself an aneurysm.

By relying on memetic warfare, like Brexit, rather than domestic reforms. They did the world a disservice by assaulting truth with the concept of fake news. Ironically, their anti-vax propaganda came back around to Russia and now they're trying to deal with it in a population cynical of what the government says already, so good luck with that.

Looting grocery stores because your expired rations ran out does not speak to an effective supply chain.

You are the one that sees reality as "The West" and the rest. It's an interconnected global economy, which makes your claims of Russia being able to be cut off from the society of nations hilarious. Even the US would struggle with that, today.

The US had air superiority in the first day or two of that war. So if it took a month to mop up the ground after that, what does this imply in the current context? Russia's aging and ill-supplied military is going to progress even slower against more modern weapons and better intelligence. While having their economy ground down, something the US didn't have to deal with then. When you paint it like that, this is looking like Putin's Waterloo.

No, no, no! Adversarial implies a match among equals. Look at France. They actually stood up to the US. And got shut out of middle east oil every time. So they took their lumps and went nuclear. Rather than cry about American hegemony, they formed their own economic block, for reals. Do they go around trying to destabilize the world with deceit in order to make themselves look bigger? No! They did the hard work and paid their dues to remain free and proud. Russia could do that, if they abandon their strategy of trying to win by cheating. You cannot deepfake success.

The very idea of a spaceplane is flawed. But Stalinist brutality hammers out anything but conformity. Even Korolev himself spent time in a gulag! So it's no surprise Soviet engineers simply aped whatever their spies said the Americans were working on. With better bells and whistles, because Capitalism is flawed! They could worked on something actually revolutionary, instead built a knock off they only flew once.

Consider that ridiculously long table in Putin's bunker today with meek generals at the far end. Isn't that the same mentality today? It wasn't a recipe for success then nor is it now.

You misunderstand. It's not belligerence. It's contempt. Putin imagines a much stronger hand than he actually has. Visions of the glorious CCCP still dance in his head. But that's long gone. If WW3 spills out of this, it's because the real superpowers of the world, not Russia, get dragged into this.

Only Putin's own paranoia forced him to invade his neighbors. Now, they get all the guns they want. Keep your troops in your own borders, if you don't a good old-fashioned proxy war.

Finally, a crack of truth! This might be the first thing we've ever agreed on. Of course, it was cynical realpolitik from the west that let the Russia wallow into mafia state it is now. America has it's own oligarchy to deal with. And the world has much larger problems to grapple with beyond that. It annoys me that Putin is acting up now, distracting us from addressing the issues that will define this century.

So you're saying Buran was a totally new concept sprung from the free thinking of the Soviet Union? "I'm just spitballing here, comrades... let's make an oversized spaceplane that's totally unlike the American one... but we'll add jets to it!" That sounds exactly like this nationalization of McDonalds, where they keep everything exactly the same, but just change the logo. Good luck getting a resupply on those seasonal McRibs, Yogi.

The war started not with air domination, but with cruise missile salvos. Those have petered off, too. Both of these indicate that even if Russia could produce chips, they can't replace them fast enough to risk their few modern jets or restock the smart missiles they had left over from bombing Syrian hospitals.

On the one had, you say the world will collapse without Russia, but on the other you say Russia will not collapse without the world. Despite all evidence to the contrary. A table with three legs will still stand, but a table with one... not so much.

It's the 3rd week of the invasion and you're waiting to see evidence of the invasion stalling? Ha ha! The plan was to take Kyiv within days. Russia's main issue now is that without air support, their supply convoys are vulnerable to drone and shoulder-launched strikes. Recall that the plan was not to sit around stranded tanks for weeks, so it's an open question of who will starve first, the besieged, or the besiegers?

Your BS about bombing civilians is straight up lies. Putin has been targeting civilians with bombs since he took power (Russians that time). Go find a Ukrainian maternity ward to hide in, if you trust him so much.

Lol, you're still projecting. You literally resort to name calling whenever the facts don't fit your narrative.

That, my friend, is straight-up projection. Yes, we shall see. But I doubt it'll be that long before the dust settles.