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What keeps going through my mind, apart from worrying how this will end and what the geopolitical implications are, of course, is how embarrassing it would be a Russia Stronk shill type right now. No matter how this ends, this sort of shit does not actually happen in nations that are actually stronk.
I repeat myself from previous threads, but a continuous talking point for Z patriots and their scarce American/Western hype men has been that Ukraine is embarrassing, cringe, Reddit etc. "fake nation", unlike Russia with its 1000 years of history and a populace willing to give their lives for the Motherland. It certainly, once again, seems that Ukraine is dozens of times more "real" than Russia, in the sense that Ukrainians have (after 2022, at least) been relatively able to keep an united patriotic front instead of tearing each other apart in a madcap struggle for power.
Yup, Russian nationalists love to refer to Ukraine as the "country 404", the failed state that doesn't exist.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/страна_404
or "a temporary geographical misunderstanding".
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..has there been any 'madcap struggle for power' in Russia except for the one psychopathic caterer making a very abortive attempt at a coup ?
And as to Ukrainian 'united patriotic front', they've been extremely statist and punitive, and have long ago ran out of volunteers for the meat grinder, and resorted to ever more desperate searches for bodies to stop shrapnel with.
Any proof? I consider that an exaggeration on par with the rightist claim that the US is super oppressive because they imprisoned several participants of Jan 6. Just like the right claims that Ukraine is THE most (literally, the most, or one of the most) corrupt counties in the world. I mean, they are on the level of Peru or Indonesia. Rightist also don't talk a lot about descent of Hungary into corruption, which is curious (just 9 points above Ukraine in Corruption Perception Index).
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