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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27666 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I'm not an Atlanticist or a Putinist BUT I have played Paradox games, which gives me an intimate understanding of Putin's motivations and goals.

The endgame is to peel off those sections of Ukraine that Russia thinks are valuable/pro-Russian, and to neutralize what's left of Ukraine, rendering them a permanent non-threat and pliable diplomatically and economically. Russia appears to be (currently) attempting to reach this goal by conducting a war of annihilation, attriting Ukraine's combat personnel and equipment until it either accepts Russia's terms or is unable to resist Russia's de facto imposition of them.

Russia's war against Finland is a good historical example to look towards.

Attempting to reach this goal by conducting a war of annihilation

I'm going to get accused of being a "Putinist" surely, but Russia is not waging a war of annihilation. They are conspicuously avoiding civilian casualties.

As usual, the worst victims of war are the men actually doing the fighting, whose lives are treated as worthless by basically everyone.

I'm going to get accused of being a "Putinist" surely, but Russia is not waging a war of annihilation.

Well, except that they're both losing much of their youth to combat and emigration.

By "war of annihilation" I (perhaps unclearly) meant "destroying all their hardware and killing all their personnel to reduce their ability to fight" not "killing all their civilians."

I think the word you were looking for was "attrition".

Yes, I used that word in explaining what I meant. :)

That makes sense. It's definitely a war of attrition.

A guy in Kiev blews himself and the recruiter guy wrestling with him up with a grenade. It was a homemade one, looks like both survived.

At this point, I don't understand why Ukrainians simply refuse to move when 'recruited'. Unless they start killing them, getting a beating is preferable to getting blown up, and they can't maim recruits because that'd defeat the entire point.

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