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Post by Jambowayoh on Feb 23, 2023 17:49:24 GMT
Yeah, they're just delaying the inevitable at this moment.
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Post by technoish on Feb 23, 2023 18:59:42 GMT
I've been flooded by snippets on my social media of some American economist on how Russia is fucked as a country (in ways I already knew about, but also more fundamentally demographically), but also similarly China. About how there is 0% chance they invade Taiwan as Russia like sanctions would devastate them in ways Russia manages to hold on against, and also its demographics, poor skills base, and similar to Putin small penis leadership by President Xi.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 24, 2023 8:30:13 GMT
Intriguing. Elaborate?
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 25, 2023 23:28:31 GMT
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Post by Leolian'sBro on Feb 26, 2023 0:16:04 GMT
He’s stopped wearing makeup, have you noticed?
Probably so they’ll let him into Tennessee.
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Whizzo
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Post by Whizzo on Feb 26, 2023 0:34:15 GMT
Even someone as moronic as Trump wouldn't say that, it's ridiculous.
Oh.
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Post by Resident Knievel on Mar 10, 2023 21:42:34 GMT
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2023 22:23:25 GMT
Big Short 2 : A Bigger Short
Probably won't be as good as the first one.
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Post by lukasz on Mar 13, 2023 1:03:43 GMT
Even someone as moronic as Trump wouldn't say that, it's ridiculous. Oh. The trump supporters were so amazed when he announced that he is going there on conservative reddit. And what good it did except to confirm that the guy is senile On other news Ukraine is still fighting over one crappy town. After russia made huge push towards river no real progress in a week. This is very similar to what happend to Germans in Stalingrad. Massive fighting slowly took parts of the city up to river and then stalled. And with more time USSR managed to reinforce their sides and germany kept losing soldiers and equipment. And then it was beginning of the end of German war effort. Eerily similar for russia now... just at smaller scale.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Mar 13, 2023 1:42:31 GMT
Given it's all Wagner troops, and they're basically convicts who probably didn't have much choice, I suspect that no-one on the Russian side really cares.
Though even convicts have families, and at some point you'd think the number of dead would start to have an impact in russia, as more and more families lose people.
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malek86
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Post by malek86 on Mar 13, 2023 6:18:17 GMT
I'm starting to wonder how exactly Wagner works. They are a mercenary army, ok, but when I think of mercenaries, I think of a capable but small quantity of professionals.
With these guys, they are mostly made up of convicts, and there seems to be no end to them. How can these people be any better than the regular army? If anything, they should be worse.
I also wonder if it's worth it for them. Prigozhin must be being paid quite a bit. Not so sure about the convicts though. Which again, wouldn't exactly work in their favour in terms of motivation.
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cubby
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Post by cubby on Mar 13, 2023 6:45:35 GMT
I've read that Wagner isn't technically a mercenary army, as they're not legal in Russia, they're just another arm of the Russian military that can do what ever the hell it wants by pretending to be a mercenary army. After all they're constantly complaining about not being supplied ammo by Russia, when surely a true mercenary army wouldn't be getting supplied by the government.
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Post by skalpadda on Mar 13, 2023 7:59:13 GMT
I'm starting to wonder how exactly Wagner works. They are a mercenary army, ok, but when I think of mercenaries, I think of a capable but small quantity of professionals. With these guys, they are mostly made up of convicts, and there seems to be no end to them. How can these people be any better than the regular army? If anything, they should be worse. I also wonder if it's worth it for them. Prigozhin must be being paid quite a bit. Not so sure about the convicts though. Which again, wouldn't exactly work in their favour in terms of motivation. They're even more disposable than the regular army and it sticks less to the Kremlin when they do things like recruit from prisons, kill their own people or commit war crimes. Since all their soldiers are contractors and don't go through the army it's a way to get more bodies on the battlefield without conscription (which they genuinely seem worried about) and it's easier to hide losses.
Private mercenary armies are supposed to be illegal in Russia. They used to deny that Wagner existed and pretend that Prigozhin was just a caterer and an entrepreneur, but with the war they've sort of loosely been baked into the armed forces, but still not under army command.
Russia is really weird when it comes to things like this. Rosvardia, basically the National Guard, isn't under military command, but reports to Putin. Putin also has his own "security service" with about 2500 members which is basically a mini military force. The defence minister Shoigu also has his own PMC called Patriot that's active in Ukraine, which is just bonkers.
I'm pretty sure Prigozhin is in it for power and money. He used to be some kind of low level thug in the 80s and spent a lot of time in prison for robbery and assaults. He doesn't exactly seem to have changed as a person, he's just been put in a position of huge wealth and power under Putin.
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dam
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Post by dam on Mar 13, 2023 9:42:26 GMT
My work friends in China tell me it's the mercenaries who are doing all the bad things in Ukraine. Which is an advance on the previous Chinese State TV line which was that the poor Russians were having to cope with being attacked by NATO and THE WEST for nothing.
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Post by JuniorFE on Mar 13, 2023 13:35:24 GMT
And obviously they're doing it all of their own volition just for fun, it's not like anyone's paying them to do it, they're not mercenaries or anything after all... Oh, wait...
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Mar 14, 2023 17:16:38 GMT
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Post by Fake_Blood on Mar 14, 2023 17:31:07 GMT
At approximately 7:03 AM (CET), one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters. Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner. This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.
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askew
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Post by askew on Mar 14, 2023 18:52:27 GMT
It would be a real pity if any damage the drone inflicted on the Su-27 were to cause some misfortune in the near future. A real pity.
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zephro
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Post by zephro on Mar 14, 2023 18:59:55 GMT
I'm starting to wonder how exactly Wagner works. They are a mercenary army, ok, but when I think of mercenaries, I think of a capable but small quantity of professionals. With these guys, they are mostly made up of convicts, and there seems to be no end to them. How can these people be any better than the regular army? If anything, they should be worse. I also wonder if it's worth it for them. Prigozhin must be being paid quite a bit. Not so sure about the convicts though. Which again, wouldn't exactly work in their favour in terms of motivation. They're even more disposable than the regular army and it sticks less to the Kremlin when they do things like recruit from prisons, kill their own people or commit war crimes. Since all their soldiers are contractors and don't go through the army it's a way to get more bodies on the battlefield without conscription (which they genuinely seem worried about) and it's easier to hide losses.
Private mercenary armies are supposed to be illegal in Russia. They used to deny that Wagner existed and pretend that Prigozhin was just a caterer and an entrepreneur, but with the war they've sort of loosely been baked into the armed forces, but still not under army command.
Russia is really weird when it comes to things like this. Rosvardia, basically the National Guard, isn't under military command, but reports to Putin. Putin also has his own "security service" with about 2500 members which is basically a mini military force. The defence minister Shoigu also has his own PMC called Patriot that's active in Ukraine, which is just bonkers.
I'm pretty sure Prigozhin is in it for power and money. He used to be some kind of low level thug in the 80s and spent a lot of time in prison for robbery and assaults. He doesn't exactly seem to have changed as a person, he's just been put in a position of huge wealth and power under Putin.
Various other oligarchs also now have private armies of a sort. Probably just helps to think of mercenaries as a subset of private army, where private army is any army not loyal to a state but an individual/other corporate entity. Mercenaries are that, but you can hire them as well. Also paying attention to what's technically legal in Russia at any given time doesn't really seem to be the way Russia works. As far as I understood it even the pardons they handed out to convicts are barely legal, but who's gonna argue with some arsehole with a gun?
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Post by Reviewer on Mar 14, 2023 19:00:56 GMT
I'm starting to wonder how exactly Wagner works. They are a mercenary army, ok, but when I think of mercenaries, I think of a capable but small quantity of professionals. With these guys, they are mostly made up of convicts, and there seems to be no end to them. How can these people be any better than the regular army? If anything, they should be worse. I also wonder if it's worth it for them. Prigozhin must be being paid quite a bit. Not so sure about the convicts though. Which again, wouldn't exactly work in their favour in terms of motivation. When I think of mercenaries, I think of the A Team.
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cubby
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doesn't get subtext
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Post by cubby on Mar 14, 2023 19:08:34 GMT
When I think of mercenaries I think of how lovely those collapsing buildings looked.
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Post by technoish on Mar 14, 2023 20:23:39 GMT
The oligarchs are getting private armies to protect themselves from the collapse of Russia.
That is why Putin has multiple units devoted to protecting him.
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Post by stuz359 on Mar 14, 2023 22:43:33 GMT
Big takeaway is billionaires questioning people about how they can control a security force once civilization has collapsed. They didn't like the answer.
There is a story about a certain Mr Peel (former PM). Anyway, he got tired of the regulations of the UK (this is mid/late 19th century). He has the idea of moving to Australia and creating a capitalist utopia. So he hired boats, took some money and about 300 workers with him.
What happened is, that once there, the workers wandered off, claimed land for themselves and set up business for themselves.
If you give workers an alternative, they will choose something else.
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zephro
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Post by zephro on Mar 15, 2023 19:41:24 GMT
Robert Peel? He never went to Australia. Or I'm fairly sure he didn't.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Mar 15, 2023 19:46:59 GMT
Died after being thrown off a horse in London, if I remember my GCSE history.
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zephro
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Post by zephro on Mar 15, 2023 19:53:59 GMT
Huh I always figured that happened at Drayton Manor Theme Park.
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Post by The12thMonkey on Mar 15, 2023 19:55:14 GMT
Huh I always figured that happened at Drayton Manor Theme Park. Used to be some good rollercoasters there.
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dogbot
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Post by dogbot on Mar 15, 2023 19:59:43 GMT
Huh I always figured that happened at Drayton Manor Theme Park. Passed into history and invented the Bucking Bronco ride at the same time.
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Whizzo
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Post by Whizzo on Mar 17, 2023 15:47:18 GMT
It's not like he's ever likely to face trial but at least any travel plans are going to be a bit more awkward.
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Vandelay
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Post by Vandelay on Mar 17, 2023 18:12:15 GMT
Likely meaningless, but it really is about time. Not sure why an arrest warrant couldn't have been issued for him basically right from the very beginning of the invasion, although this particular issue is certainly one of the more heinous actions.
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