Indeed, the point is that despite a “small” percentage, it’s not 50 times, nor 40 times, but at best 0.5 times longer. Which is still too much damage to Ukraine, but we still can win.

While this might sound like ruzzia can continue like this 50 times longer, the reality is quite different. Let’s have a look. https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/unemployment-rate

Their unemployment rate hit the historic low in September 2023. Yes, they still have 1.8 million unemployed, but since the number stayed the same while there’s a demand for human force, those are actually likely unemployable ones.

Before the war they had roughly double of that amount of unemployed ones.

So looks like

1. They already employed everybody they could
2. They already sent to war (and lost) everyone who wasn’t bringing much value

Add to that about quarter a million (assuming only 25% are men of that age) of who left (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_during_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine)

So yeah, they only lost 2% of potential soldiers, but it appears that already since a year ago they lost all “spare” men and every single one they scrape now is a) likely not fit for military b) was involved in military economy

Yes, they can continue like this for a while, but the cost of each new soldier will be bigger and bigger, the quality and equipment lower and lower. And the system will snap way before all of them are “expended”. Ukraine says summer next year ( https://www.kyivpost.com/post/39020 ) given all this I tend to believe that forecast.

700000 O_O

In the other hand, if digging good and settling oil to India were enough, they would not need to raid their savings this hard.

So maybe it’s not that critical to demotivate India from Russian oil…

My impression is that it’s exactly what Ukraine is doing by attacking oil refineries and reserves - make russia decide wether to sell or use themselves for the war.

I do hope that the industry taking it will just slightly delay devaluation and boom! more inflation.

You mean they will go for printer go brr?

Yes, please!

They also held 293.189 tonnes of unallocated gold, compared with 298.84 tonnes on August 1, 303.579 tonnes on July 1 and 329.795 tonnes on June 1.

So they sold almost 40 tonnes of gold in 4 months? I approve that trend.

It’s good that they can just print more rubels to fill the gap! /S

The facts are:

• russia spent a lot of effort trying to ban it
• eventually they “convinced” durov to cooperate to fight terrorism and removed the ban
• in russia fighting terrorism is applied to anything

Yes, I don’t have evidence that the messages are accessed, only that the access is given and that all of that is happening in a country with a blatant disregard to law from the government.

I would be surprised if it’s not.

russia tried to take control over it for a while, until

On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to “help with extremism investigations”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html

Which means they have access to all messages.

They didn’t say which exactly human health is not threatened, so all is good and correct as I’m sure there’s at least one senile psychopath who’s safe from that smoke.

I think the main factor to the collapse as well as to why it was taking this long was the speed of communication. Those vassals had the luxury of 10 messages a year from the boss.

Interestingly, when it comes to (hopefully soon) collapse of russia, there are two parts to it. First are the instant communication channels that are useful to the crash and second is the human hierarchy that pootin uses (and has to) to get information. So he’s at the Ottoman speeds of processing information, but at the modern speed of attack.

As a protest, Hungary should sever all relations with the terrible totalitarian EU.

Also I think they should consider moving into russia - there should be enough vacant space.

These are fantastic artillery numbers. Iirc, russia is an artillery-first military - e.g. shoot a lot or artillery, pause and check with soldiers, repeat as needed.

So the fewer of those they have, the more they rely on guided bombs (which require planes, which are few, wear off and they are steadily losing too) and meat assaults.

They actually do. 70% of russians support the war.

That’s pretty much the point of banality of evil - you don’t need an extraordinary assembly of psychopaths to run a fascist regime. All it takes is a group of loud populists, generally discontent crowd and, boom, you have “make Germany great again”.

After ww2 finished, both Germanies discovered that they don’t really have enough people without Nazi past that could run the country. So most folks just went back to work to slightly renamed workplaces.

Does that mean they were not complicit? They were and the winners made sure Germans would learn about what they caused.

I guess the only excuse back the was that they didn’t know better. But we do.

Here’s some read for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Banality_of_evil

Yes, an average russian or Israeli person is not likely to have directly participated in the recent events.

The catch, though, it’s that by not opposing the actions of their governments, they DO contribute to the events indirectly. They pay taxes. They work at factories producing weapons. They make the food that the soldiers eat.

On top of that it’s not russian government who’s currently pulling the triggers and dropping bombs. Just regular folks who just follow orders.

Yes, protesting in russia is not easy, but the war keeps going on because the government sees that people aren’t worried too much about it.

And yes, in both countries there are people who actively oppose, but the majority doesn’t.

And that majority is complicit.

They started spending that money after starting the war, so it’s use is related to the war in question. Thus, when they will run out, whatever they were paying for (war related) will stop getting money.

It might not be a direct financing of the battlefield activities, but while the victory will be in the battlefield, the biggest chunk of the battle actually happens in preparation and logistics.

In other words, I’m hopeful that this will have a major impact on the invader’s ability to cause harm.

It would be 9 years, if only one linear factor was at play.

I believe it’s multiple factors, though.

One is that every plane taken out had its share of “work”, which is now distributed across the remaining ones. Which means they get worn out a little faster. Similar to how they have to cannibalise parts from one civilian aircraft to repair another.

Then I’m going they cannot maintain the usual production speed because if the sanctions. Add to that an increased need to repair since the plains are more heavily used. And I’d guess that repairs are fine at the same facility that produces them, this also reducing production speed.

In other words, I think it’s about snowballing and at this rate it could be way less than nine years.