Russia’s war in Ukraine is already in its 17th month. In that time, President Vladimir Putin has clearly demonstrated that he is not bothered by losses — whether they be financial, material, or human. His war will go on as long as he needs. And, judging by how the authorities have woven the so-called “special military operation” into Russian life, that will be a long time.

  • wildncrazyguy@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    So they’re raiding their welfare fund to sustain the war. Thing is, according to the newsletter, the fund will go from 6.8 to 2.5 trillion rubles in 1 year. And this is to be an eternal war? What do they do once everyone’s pensions are wiped out?

    • nitrolife@rekabu.ru
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      41
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      no one is counting on pensions here. even if you have worked all your life in 2 companies at the same time with salary near 4000$ at mounth, you will receive pension only $160 per month.

      • agarorn@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Are these the real Russian pensions? I am confused as you used dollars and not rubles.

        • nitrolife@rekabu.ru
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          21
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          No one would understand what the amount in rubles means here. I suspect that even in dollars it is difficult to understand.

          For example, is it possible to survive in Russia on $ 160 a month? The answer is - if you have a living space in a property or a country house, then yes, although this will make you save a lot on food, and in some cases you will starve a little.

          In general, if you are interested in delving into the topic, there are a lot of social benefits for pensioners in Russia. For example, you can not pay land tax if you live outside the city, do not pay tax for a car, do not pay for public transport and in some cases for train tickets. Medical care is also free, although queues usually line up for several weeks in advance. But almost all of these benefits are provided not by the pension fund, but by other.

          I can’t speak for everyone, but many of my friends pensioners who have suburban plots are engaged in gardening to save on food. In any case, in the western part of Russia, where the climate allows.

          In any case, in numbers, the situation is still exactly like this. My father has not worked officially for half his life and receives a pension of 13,000 rubles. 143$. My mother worked almost all her life at two jobs with a high salary and receives 18,000 rubles. 197$. Almost all pensioners rely on children to provide money or work to death.

          And proof for you:

  • sndmn@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    64
    arrow-down
    17
    ·
    1 year ago

    Russia is so weak and pathetic. I’d call them a joke but their war crimes aren’t funny.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        19
        ·
        1 year ago

        If Russia didn’t want more of their neighbors to be NATO allies, maybe they should stop giving their neighbors reason to join.

      • phar@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        Nah, NATO is definitely not weak. Russia showed the world they are weak. So much for Russian military might.

          • phar@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            So far Russia’s strategy has been terrible. And you just said if Russia and China or India join forces. So you admit Russia is failing? NATO is far more powerful than Russia. Hell, individual countries in NATO are far more powerful than Russia. The only thing Russia has going for it is the threat of nukes. You are also jumping to some weird as theories. NATO is not going to drop any nukes first. Regardless whether you think cluster bombs are somehow similar to nukes. You’re just talking out of your ass with moronic metaphors.

              • phar@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                You just said they really don’t have a chance without some weird conglomeration of the other countries. So yeah you did. Also Russia is the invader. You call it a proxy war and at this point it has turned into one. But it’s 100% on Russia. Russia is weak. Everyone thought Russia was the big guy on the field and it turns out they’re not. China may be although they haven’t fought a war in a long time so who knows what they can actually do. But it’s very evident now that Russia was not nearly as strong as everyone thought they were.

        • zephyrvs@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          How to say you’re a NAFO shill without saying you’re a NATO shill.

          • 100@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            arrow-down
            18
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Correct. I’ll happily shill for the defensive alliance formed to ward off (the currently on display) Russian aggression. NATO would not exist if Russia weren’t so nakedly attempting to rebuild the Soviet Union by force, an alliance that had already been litigated and abandoned by the smaller nations Russia pillaged for resources, this time without even pretending to be for the workers.

            Edit: no amount of tankie brigading will convince me that Russia isn’t the aggressor in the region. Imagine the brainrot required to think that the military that invaded Ukraine and is still currently there is the good team.

            • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              10
              arrow-down
              9
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              If you truly think this is a display of Russian aggression I genuinely doubt that you have any historic view on the geopolitics of the region. The conflict did not appear out of thin air in 2022. The situation is more complex than “Russian aggression”; in fact that’s not even a part of the picture. Russia is responding to requests for assistance after Ukraine began bombing its own people in 2014. Many of these people voted to join Russia after this disgusting display by Ukraine. Before 2022 most of the combatants against Ukraine were regular people fighting for their homes and families. These people realize that Ukraine wants to bomb their homes and Russia is offering to fight alongside them. On the weekend before the SMO began, there were 2000 ceasefire violations in the Donbass. Between 2014 and 2022, 1 million Ukrainians immigrated to Russia because of the abuse by the Ukrainian government. And since the operation began in 2022, another 1.3 million immigrated. The people in these territories that Ukraine has zero regard for view the support they are receiving from Russia positively: they invited Russia in to assist them, and they are somewhat reliant on Russia to protect them from Ukraine.

              I know life is a lot easier when you don’t muddy things with context. I know that it’s a lot easier to be righteous in your condemnation of a world power because they’re “evil” and an “aggressor” than it is to acknowledge that the situation is more complex. I know that it’s a lot easier to go along with what Western media says than to be informed and hold your own opinions. I know it feels nice to rally with everyone against a perceived enemy. I know it feels nice to feel that your country (and military) is finally doing something good for once. But you can’t let wanting to feel good stand in the way of reality. The Western media has done a hell of a job propagandizing this war, attempting to remove any historical and geopolitical context, in order to gather and maintain support. Think honestly: how much historical and geopolitical context have you seen, especially from popular media sources? How much more effort is spent on raging about current “evil deeds” than understanding the desires of the people in the actual territories that have asked Russia for help?

              Please read, and inform yourself. Life is less black-and-white than “Russia evil”.

              • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                8
                ·
                1 year ago

                Gee, i wonder what happened in 2014 to make Ukrainians start shelling parts of the donbas?

                Could it be a land invasion by a neighboring country?

                No, they must be Nazis, the extremely trustworthy people in the Kremlin say so…

                • Pili@lemmygrad.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I will copy paste this comment from Hexbear that explains how we reached that situation, because I believe it will be useful here for context:

                  The following three parts are absolutely crucial toward understanding the ongoing war in Ukraine from a materialist and historical standpoint:

                  One, the Maidan Coup happened in 2013 because the former president Yanukovych wanted to postpone signing the EU association trade agreement, which was an economic warfare against both Ukraine and Russia. First, it required that Ukraine take on IMF loans that required them to cut social spending and education. Second, it would allow European goods to flood Russian market due to the existing tariff-free agreement between Ukraine and Russia, without allowing Russia to do so in reverse. Putin did NOT oppose to Ukraine signing the deal, he offered a tripartite meeting to discuss this tariff issue, but the EU refused. Yanukovych did not want to lose the trade revenue with Russia, so he said he needed more time to talk this out with Russia - but it was already too late, merely postponing was enough to trigger the ultranationalists/fascists to launch a coup.

                  Second, the Donbass separatists rebelled because immediately after the coup, one of the first things the coup regime did was to initiate a ban on Russian language to lash out against ethnic Russians. Russia was forced into the conflict, because there would have been a massacre if the civil war was to allow the military to crush the resistance in Donbass.

                  Third, the Minsk agreements showed that Russia was absolutely willing to return Donbass (but not Crimea for obvious reasons) to Ukraine, although Ukraine has to give the Donbass local governments more autonomy to protect their local cultures (so that someone from Kyiv can’t just simply impose a national ban on language or culture without considering the local populations). They waited 8 years for Ukraine to start implementing the protocol, but instead what they saw was NATO openly arming Ukraine for 8 years - this showed that Ukraine wanted to take back Donbass and Crimea by military force, and the only reason for that is quite simply that they wanted to ethnically cleanse the Russian culture without having to adhere to the Minsk agreements. Both Merkel and Hollande, guarantors of Minsk II, have admitted publicly in 2022 that Minsk was simply to buy time for Ukraine to militarize, proving Russia’s intuition correct.

                  The war in Ukraine was inevitable. Russia still did the last ditch effort in 2021 to call for a security meeting with NATO, but to no avail. Under the new Biden presidency, Zelensky had been emboldened to talk about Ukraine joining NATO and rearming with nuclear weapons, prompting the invasion from Russia in February 2022. The rest is history.

            • Blursty@lemmygrad.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              9
              ·
              1 year ago

              You’re in a thread that’s showed you that NATO was a place to give jobs to high ranking Nazis. It’s the world’s most aggressive military alliance that Russia is defending itself from.

              • 100@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                5
                ·
                1 year ago

                Lmfao “defending itself.” Where’s the Russian military right now pal? I, too, defend my home by attacking my neighbors.

                • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  4
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Are your neighbours putting a nuclear missile in their yard and pointing it at your house, and you’re doing nothing?

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Russian economy is set to completely reverse last year’s slump – something Putin has recently highlighted. Manufacturing and construction lead the way, alongside retail. In a broad sense, all three sectors are beneficiaries of the war. The defense sector, working in three shifts, is boosting production: in June, for example, the biggest increases were in finished metal products (+45.8% year-on-year); computers, electronics and optics (+71.6% year-on-year), radar equipment (+75.4% year-on-year) and electrical equipment (+32.1% year-on-year). Production capacities are running at their maximum.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      something Putin has recently highlighted

      so, we now know it gonna do the opposite nice

      • SuspiciousUser@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        36
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        He can wait to see if Trump becomes president, because we all know how it will end with his BFF in charge.

        • kingthrillgore@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          This is the long game, because if Trump wins, he can get the US out of NATO and that’s a constitutional crisis at home, and a serious flashpoint to drive Europe back into squabbling.

            • FaceDeer@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              19
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              There’s a vast difference between America ceasing to support Ukraine and America supporting Russia. Simply never going to happen, that’s a loonie scenario.

              NATO is not officially supporting Ukraine. It just so happens that all the various NATO member countries are all individually deciding that it’s in their interests to support Ukraine. If America drops out that’s not going to change whether it’s in the interests of those countries to continue supporting Ukraine. Indeed, it becomes all the more important for many of them to make sure Russia’s strength is broken if they don’t feel they can rely on America to support them.

        • jonne
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Russia’s committing way more resources into this conflict than they ever did for previous similar operations though. Ukraine is claiming they killed/wounded over 200000 Russian soldiers. That’s not anywhere near comparable to previous post WWII conflicts.

          • nitrolife@rekabu.ru
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            that is, 0.6% of the total number of people who can be drafted into the army.

            The current political regime is not particularly concerned about military losses. even if we take into account the 2 million Russians who left, 200,000 people still make up about 1% of the number of conscripts. Even if we assume that half of them will somehow manage to escape from the Ministry of Defense, 15 million people can still be called up into the army.

            • BitPirate@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              You can call a lot of people, but the reality is that the Russian army gradually shifts from trained soldiers with tanks and artillery to Igor with a gun.

              Their losses will skyrocket the moment they can’t provide sufficient counter-battery fire and air defence for their troops anymore.

              • nitrolife@rekabu.ru
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                7
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                the Russian army has never been well trained. Almost the entire composition of the army below the officers are forcibly conscripted civilians. the number of contractors is ridiculously small.

                the Russian army has never been contracted. And a year of training of a forcibly conscripted person always gives approximately the same result.

                UPD: if we lived in the world of starcraft, Russia would undoubtedly be Zerg. In general, the command and tactics are applied accordingly - a swarm of Zerg. I am generally surprised that conscripts are at least given weapons.

                when I served in the army on universal conscription for 2.5 years of compulsory conscription many, years ago, I fired from a machine gun about 2 times. This is the average level of training of a Russian soldier.

            • Rinox@feddit.it
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              You can’t really send every man able to hold a gun directly to the front without your economy completely collapsing. Even 1% of your abled men being suddenly dead is very serious in terms of the economy. Plus all the injured coming home from the war now suddenly being a burden rather than a productive asset to your economy.

              Definitely not good for either country

              • nitrolife@rekabu.ru
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Well, that’s right. But already now the business is starting to hire women more willingly than men who can conscripted. And just recently, a law was passed that those who could refuse the draft after entering the institute would still serve after the institute. Government introduced new much stricter laws against draft evasion. Look like preparation for the beginning of mobilization.

                • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  True, technically the Russian government proclaims that everyone who can stand straight for a moment is a potential recruit. But if the previous mogilisation attempts showed us something, that even the most loyal putin’s dogs would prefer making war efforts from the comfort of their own homes.
                  I don’t have anything other than gut feelings after extensive reading of telegram channels to base this on, but my personal estimation that they could probably get another half of a million of meatbags or so, but after that the whole shit will just collapse in on itself.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        The plan is to profit from war, and that’s the thing, it never ends.

        • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          We haven’t come to a mutually agreed definition and it doesn’t seem to be worth my time to do so with you.

          I am simply pointing out that you’re trying to claim that you were here first, when this website was created by a leftist and populated by leftists, and you only came over here when reddit being a shithole started to effect you personally.

          • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            In other words, you don’t have an answer, you’re defending shitty pro-Russia astroturfing and propaganda smearing.

            Why do the admins tolerate this?

            • AEHNH@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              6
              arrow-down
              6
              ·
              1 year ago

              The admins are probably also what you would consider “Russian shills”. They explicitly announced they wouldn’t ban people with different ideologies which is why you’re allowed to spout your western propaganda here

                • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  4
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Oh no, please don’t isolate yourself further and prevent us and everyone else in the fediverse looking at this instance from being exposed to your opinions, that would really own us.

                  You’ll note how this communist designed open source fediverse structure is less coercive than capitalist reddit while still applying incentives to discourage reactionary behavior. If you entirely isolate yourselves, you’ve just recreated the structure of reddit.

    • psilocybin@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      You joined one month ago

      Yogthos’ account is 4 years old.

      At least this indicates that he is a human with an opinion that he stated on a highly nieche community and not a paid actor that only joins and starts to influence consensus after a community grows.

      You on the other hand…

      Jk, but think before you misrepresent a community and people as being shills.

      For sake of completeness: account dates can be manipulated by the owner of the instance the account is registered on

  • keyboardpithecus@lemmy.basedcount.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is one of the things I pointed out in the post on the permanent war. Russia since the beginning dumped into the war old and outdated equipment. They sent to the front those who they considered the less valuable soldiers at the same time initially they avoided to send recruits from the draft to minimise the political backlash within Russia.

    Since the beginning they handled it as a long term attrition war.

  • Omidov@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s great to have a new perspective on this conflict and I personally welcome your work and effort here. Thank you!