Itâs not a bug, itâs a feature
Whom you associate with matters.
Oh to be clear, I wasnât accusing you of that, you posted to an article from 2015. It is well meaning people posting new memes that for some reason they want to distort when it was recently. 
It feels like each time Dmitry Rogozin makes the news his threats get a little less urgent. From his initial mafia-like You have a nice space station here, it sure would be a shame if it fell on the US or China. Moving on to threats that failure to remove sanctions would have consequences. Now he has stated that they have made a decision that they wonât talk about, but that âweâll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a yearâs noticeâ. This is it western nations Roscosmos has put the ISS on double secret probation!
So Biden is sending $33 billion to Ukraine. Rand says Russiaâs entire effective military budget is $150 billion?
Maybe we should spend a billion to hire away all the Wagner Group troops and take them off the field.
bonus points to have them dig trenches in the arctic or maybe at the bottom of the sea. by hand.
Buy all the Russian nukes on the black market?
The presence of such a high-ranking official on the front lines is highly unusual and comes amid what Western military analysts describe as increasing disarray within Russian forces.
Seems like Iâve been hearing about this increasing disarray for what, 6 weeks now?
How long does it take such forces to finally reach a critical state of disarray?
I imagine that depends on the baseline state of disarray. When the army is already a chaotic herd of hungry cats, then a bit more disarray here or there isnât going to be noticed until it hits some threshhold point.
The situation in the Horbonosesâ cellar was unique. Russians rarely have to confront reality or their victims so directly. But the Horbonosesâ experience points to a possible strategy to engage the Russian peopleâand speed up the end of Putinâs wars.
Counterintuitively, the war is not necessarily the topic to focus on. Instead, the issues that affect Russiansâ lives and define their behaviors are what really matterâmortgages, medicine, schools, their childrenâs future, and their desire to be part of the wider world.
President Vladimir Putin has successfully mobilized a sense of militant patriotism in the Russian public to wage war in Ukraine. The Kremlinâs propaganda builds on seeing Russia as both victimized by the West and entitled to regional dominance in the former Soviet territories. In such Russian imperial imagination, enforcing the Russian language, culture, and rule on non-Russian populations is not colonialism but a gift of greatness. Critics among intellectual and liberal elites in Russia condemn the regime but tend to shy away from questioning Russiaâs imperial identity. To solve Russiaâs antagonistic relations with its neighbors, both the Russian state and society need to confront their countryâs imperial identity.
I hope thatâs true, but, left to their own devices, itâs not that unusual for soldiers to start sympathizing with the other side and coming to peaceful arrangements. WWI had many such examples including a significant, unauthorized Christmas Truce that was dramatized in the movie Joyeux NoĂ«l.
The problem is that the damn military commanders come along and screw things up. In WWI they eventually started rotating troops in the trenches so that they wouldnât get to know the guys in the opposing side well enough to become friendly with them.
FTA:
The Horbonos family also got unusual insight into the Russiansâ motivations. When I asked Sergey what he thought drove them, he was unequivocal. The soldiers, he said, were propelled not by national pride or expansionary zeal but by money.
The soldiers all said they had debtâmortgages, loans, medical billsâand needed their army salaries. Even those wages werenât enough. Their job as mechanics was to repair tanks, but their skill set meant they were also proficient at taking them apart. During breaks in the shelling, they would find damaged or destroyed Russian vehicles and smelt down plates with gold wiring. One plate would get them 15,000 rubles, or about $200, back home.
Money.
For money.
FFS.
What an impressively shitty take
