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Well, there's a China politics thread if you want to continue that. Let's get back to Ukraine and Russia now.
Edit: Dmitrij Diomuszkin, Russian ultra-nationalist posted a video on X where he's talking to Dmitrij Potapenko (an enterpreneur) about the state of the Russian economy right now and it's all doom and gloom. They're expecting a deep crisis in industry, even among the defense infrastructure where companies are doing really bad and sub-contractors even worse, huge budget deficits, missed payments. Also banks are on the verge of breaking, some of the top national banks are reporting losses in revenue of up to 86% and on average around 60% of bank loans/mortgages are not being paid by the lenders.
They also said that sanctions are hitting really hard. Some of the sectors really need modernizing and investment (like coal mining) but it's impossible to do under sanctions as one example.
China will be pleased buying it all up for cheap to own the junior partner. while somewhere in hell Mao is having a laugh at Stalin's expense this time around.
On September 01 2025 19:54 Manit0u wrote: Well, there's a China politics thread if you want to continue that. Let's get back to Ukraine and Russia now.
Edit: Dmitrij Diomuszkin, Russian ultra-nationalist posted a video on X where he's talking to Dmitrij Potapenko (an enterpreneur) about the state of the Russian economy right now and it's all doom and gloom. They're expecting a deep crisis in industry, even among the defense infrastructure where companies are doing really bad and sub-contractors even worse, huge budget deficits, missed payments. Also banks are on the verge of breaking, some of the top national banks are reporting losses in revenue of up to 86% and on average around 60% of bank loans/mortgages are not being paid by the lenders.
They also said that sanctions are hitting really hard. Some of the sectors really need modernizing and investment (like coal mining) but it's impossible to do under sanctions as one example.
I really do not get Kirks point at all. So both are bad but Russia is worse, and only one of them is a threat to the US and only one of them has Nukes. I wonder which one you support? And I wonder if you should support them with equipment and or money so you never have to spill your own blood. Even his perspective makes less than zero sense.
His position is absolutely idiotic. I don't for a second believe it was a good faith argument. Just a talking point his Russian sponsors have given him. One (Ukraine) is corrupt politicians kind of bad. The other is waging a genocidal war kind of bad. It's also hypocritical, considering the Republicans are some of the most brazenly corrupt people in the world.
If anyone is wondering how the peace talks are going. Reminder that there is only one logical reason for Putin to not accept security guarantees, and that is if he plans to attack again after a short respite.
He is basically me playing civilization going "Tee hee, sure, I'll accept your 2 cities for peace!" only to immediately re-engage once my army is rebuilt. Under these conditions, Ukraine can never accept peace in any shape or form.
And now he and Trump are saying that the obstacle for peace is, somehow, Europeans.
Trump, who is somehow in the juxtaposition of being "tough on China" while he keeps saying how Xi is his friend, signals he won't do anything if they go after Taiwan, allows US companies to sell high end AI chips to them as long as they cut US a percentage is obviously siding with the world authoritarians and dictators against the "old world order".
I don't really see a different way to interpret this, his vision of the world is he and his progeny are going to rule the Americas (I don't think war in Venezuela is far, he already signaled wanting Canada, Panama and Greenland) while Russia and China can divvy up Euroasia, Israel can be the sheriff of the ME and they'll all continue exploiting Africa for resources.
In this whole thing, Ukraine is barely a side-note, he is not ready to do anything except help Putin stall, but he'll keep selling weapons to Europeans who will then give them to Ukraine because that is a huge export industry for the US. The added benefit of that is slow financial bleeding of EU and Ukraine, making them weaker and even more ineffective in their attempts at geopoliticking then they are now.
I don't really see a different way to interpret this, his vision of the world is he and his progeny are going to rule the Americas (I don't think war in Venezuela is far, he already signaled wanting Canada, Panama and Greenland) while Russia and China can divvy up Euroasia, Israel can be the sheriff of the ME and they'll all continue exploiting Africa for resources.
While that seems like a likely thing, and definitively something a world vision Putin might have, Trump simply doesn't strike me as the type of person who can do long-term planning like that.
He seems to just fly by the seat of his pants all day, doing whatever his gut tells him in any situation without ever involving any higher brain functions in the decision making process.
However, I still think he has some sort of a "overarching goal" in his mind, he has no idea how to do it exactly, he talks to people, they mention things like "unitary executive" and he likes it because he thinks it makes him more like people he looks up to like Putin or Xi.
I think that happened in the first term, he came in, had no idea what he wanted to do because he wasn't expecting to win and then he winged it, but started making plans as more really sinister people came along and started giving him ideas which align with their plans (Christian nationalists, broligarchs, Cryptofiends).
In the second term he has this broad idea that he wants to stay in power one way or another and he wants to expand the US, plus, of course, deal with grievances which is his main thing in life.
Unfortunately, in the first term one of the grievances was that sinister fucks who helped him get elected were in league with Russia, he wasn't personally but "the witch hunt" made him decide that he is aligned with Russia, then, Zelenskyy not playing ball with him agreeing to help him get elected for the second term made him firmly on the grievance list, and now Ukraine is fucked.
He also always hated Europeans because they were smarter then him and respected the rule of law in a way that is completely incompatible with the way he conducts his business, so, Ukraine and Europe are double fucked.
Of course, if EU had the balls to ignore the fuck and get over their fear of Putin they'd solve this thing a long time ago by enforcing a no fly zone + sending troops to the areas away from the front to allow Ukraine to fight without having one hand behind it's back, but, unfortunately, that's not going to happen because Russia holds way too much political power by having their grubby hands on the levers of propaganda and finances many European politicians.
Something I've been considering is the jamming Russia uses in the Baltic area. It impacts boats and planes over a large potion of the Baltic sea. Since that is thus hampering things inside the borders of other countries, those countries should be able to strike the jamming installations after giving due warning so it isn't confused with a first strike in a nuclear race.
Why aren't they putting pressure on Russia due to this to support Ukraine? Would make Ukrainian drone strikes easier if larger areas aren't under large scale jamming and is something that wouldn't be that controversial to put pressure on.
On September 06 2025 22:00 Yurie wrote: Something I've been considering is the jamming Russia uses in the Baltic area. It impacts boats and planes over a large potion of the Baltic sea. Since that is thus hampering things inside the borders of other countries, those countries should be able to strike the jamming installations after giving due warning so it isn't confused with a first strike in a nuclear race.
Why aren't they putting pressure on Russia due to this to support Ukraine? Would make Ukrainian drone strikes easier if larger areas aren't under large scale jamming and is something that wouldn't be that controversial to put pressure on.
The EU is tiptoeing around Russia in order to not give them any reason for potential escalation or ammunition for political debates.
I don't like it either but we already know that Russia is not a reasonable actor so suffering minor inconvenience for the time being might be preferable to them launching nukes or whatever.
The jamming wouldn't be a problem if Kaliningrad wouldn't be in the middle of 6 other countries... Maybe after the war if it goes bad for Russia this part would like to be re-integrated into one of those countries.
There are a lot of problems with taking Kalingrad even if it is free, two examples:
Russia is propping its economy up now. Anybody taking it over will run into the West vs East German problem.
It is populated by Russian people. Russia likes using excuses of how Russians are treated to invade them. Russian people are also not popular right now, thus nobody wants them as a part of their nation.
For it to be feasible you would have to move all the people living there out and into Russia proper, taking over a place without population. I think with that premise you could get takers to shorten their Russian borders.
Taking kalinigrad would be brainless since i don't see any russians there wanting to be part or forced to be part of another country. Anyways here's the latest from steve rosenberg and crazy peskov saying russia will stick to an agreement if its made. my question is how can we trust the current administration in russia when they've broken all other agreements and constantly lies.
I reckon it's doable if you have access to a sawmill. Or you hang yourself but instead of a rope, you use a garrot. In fact, a properly inventive person could probably find dozens of ways to decapitate themselves. You ruling out suicide so fast just shows you don't know the lengths the enemies of Putin will go to to make themselves seem murdered!
Russia sent 3-6 Shaheds over the Rzeszow airport (where the West delivers most of its arms for Ukraine, I believe). They were shot down. Looks like the fuckers are testing the waters.
On September 10 2025 15:11 maybenexttime wrote: Russia sent 3-6 Shaheds over the Rzeszow airport (where the West delivers most of its arms for Ukraine, I believe). They were shot down. Looks like the fuckers are testing the waters.
15 Shahed drones flew over Poland I think. Jets were flying over my city too at 4am, was wondering what it was all about and if I should be worried.
EPT
