xzar_monty

While it's not big, I think it's good that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia have refused to participate in joint military excercises with Russia planned in mid-October.

For reasons of temperament, I think you're very unlikely to get non-conservative police forces anywhere, at least in places where people can choose their occupation. For the same reasons of temperament, you're very unlikely to get a conservative theather troupe, for instance. People just don't want to do stuff that goes against their temperamental makeup. But I agree there are degrees. Of depth, too, when it comes to conservatism. Anyway, good to hear about that, even if it happened too late. I would assume that absolutely none of these cases anywhere in the world were true, but I suppose one or two might have been, just. An awful lot of damage was done to an awful lot of people, though. I suppose it's an indelible stain on the psychiatric community.

We may get a clarification for this, but I was thinking: language problem. The person you responded to is obviously not a native speaker, and you clearly speak English at a native level. You two may well have different definitions of "infrastructure" in mind, yours being much more encompassing. English is sometimes a language of sweeping generalizations. The thing you have between the room you're in and the next one is a wall. That great thing in China is also a wall. But some languages have two different concepts for these two things that are obviously quite different. Or: a couple and their children constitute a family. Include their grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces and so on, and they're all still family. But again, some languages have two different concepts for these two things that are obviously quite different.

From a Nordic perspective, it has been sobering to recognize that the Baltic countries, apparently, had it right early on. Of course, they had a very recent experience of having escaped the Soviet / Russian world, and they knew what it was/is like. (Also: one evil deed in the Hell Trials in BG2 makes you evil. This is entirely correct, and in line with what you say about reputation. Traditionally, the path of virtue is not called "narrow" for nothing. )

I agree it wasn't a very smart comment, and shouldn't have been made, but there you go.

The missiles are almost certainly aimed at infrastructure, but because the aim is poor, they end up being more terror strikes than anything else. Terror strike in the literal sense, i.e. causing terror in Ukrainians. With a smallish number of casualties, too. EDIT: Kasparov on Putin. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/garry-kasparov-on-the-war-in-ukraine-everyone-who-is-still-in-russia-is-part-of-this-war-machine-a-ce9b5c68-7ba4-4b97-8bb2-6f71525486ea

Well the ship doesn't exist anymore. I think there's a world of difference between anything nuclear and anything non-, so say it's not far off is far off. Anyway, this was partly in reaction to what @kanisatha said about how "deterrence theory may be getting a serious workout soon". We're in the realm of speculation, of course, but apparently NATO's response to a nuclear strike would be non-nuclear. Why do you automatically assume that Russia's response to a non-nuclear strike would be nuclear?

Russia has already said that it is at war against the West. It is important to remember that is impossible not to provoke Russia. There is ample proof for this in history. Whenever a provocation is needed, it is found. It is the same logic that applies to purges, for instance: whenever a guilty person is needed, he will be found.

At this point, I would no longer be surprised if NATO did a pre-emptive non-nuclear strike that sunk the entire Black Sea fleet and demolished a significant proportion of the Russian military in and near Ukraine.

This was to be expected, yes. I remember watching a discussion between two Nordic politicians in early March. One of them pointed out that if the war doesn't go according to Russia's plans, Russia will resort to what it always resorts to: wholesale shelling of civilian targets with absolutely no regard for anything. I must admit Russia is good at this. I am currently reading Ian Kershaw's To Hell and Back, which deals with Europe during 1914-1949. His verdict on Russia at the start of this period is sobering: "Violence, brutality and scant regard for human life had been deeply embedded in this society." It has not changed much -- and although human life got scant regard in most places before 1900, things have changed an awful lot in many places.

Staggering numbers: over 1300 Russian tanks now documented captured or destroyed in Ukraine. Since these are only the documented numbers, with proper evidence, the real number essentially must be greater, but by how much I don't want to speculate. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

Oh, of course. But has anyone suggested anything else? EDIT: Apparently, yes, right at the top of this page. I suppose this is what you were referring to.

But whatever happens in the war (or in any other thing, for that matter), you're going to find someone who thinks it's legitimate. So I'm not sure if that's much of an argument.

I love the lyrics of this song. This is also great fun to play. The atmospheric intro (in five) is superb. Also, this is the only instance where I have seen anyone combine the metaphors of the "short straw" and "clutching at straws". I love it, I think it's very clever.

Patriarch Kirill appears to have been a KGB agent. I'm not sure if this has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, but it seems very likely. Corrections welcome, as always.

Elsewhere: the Russian Orthodox church and its holy mission. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/10/orthodox-church-severomorsk-wanted-collaborate-drinking-wanter-kirkenes

It does, yes. In a sense, it may even be a requirement, because the guilt of having killed a large number of your peers is unlikely to be pleasant. Which is not to say that there isn't severe guilt no matter what, at least in a large proportion of soldiers. (I can easily remember a local veteran of WW2 who was painstakingly obvious in his inability to regard the people he had almost certainly killed as humans; they were only "the enemy". I thought that was a particularly obvious example of a psychological defense mechanism at work -- and given that he was essentially a kid when he went to war, it's no wonder.) The communist states, by the way, were particularly brutal and effective in their dehumanization efforts even outside war. For instance, when the communist party set its quotas of people guilty of treason in Ukraine in the late 1930s, it was often the peers, neighbours and even family members whose duty it was to carry out the orders, up to signing the execution warrants. And the process did indeed work like this: the quotas of guilty people were set first (in Poltava, for instance, it was initially set at 5 000, but as the local KGB branch wanted to please the party, it asked for permission to increase the quota, and the permission was granted), and only then was the process started to actually find these guilty ones. The people responsible for finding them were best advised to come up with the requisite number of offenders, or else. This process of dehumanization and destruction of people by their near and dear was extremely effective and traumatizing, as I suppose anyone can understand. If you want to demobilize your citizens and ensure that they don't rise against you, this is likely to be almost the perfect way. Russia is still carrying on this tradition, although in somewhat different form. Speaking of traumatizing, btw, I was recently reading a study where it was rather forcefully asserted that being under artillery fire is among the most traumatizing things in war. The logic is as follows: everything that removes your agency and simply makes you a target is traumatizing, and thus -- for example -- mano-a-mano is always less traumatizing than simply being fired at (I suppose anyone can easily figure out why). You can be just a target when you're under artillery fire and when you're being bombed, for example, but there's an important variable here, too: when you're being bombed, you can hear and see the planes in advance and you know that it's coming, so there's less of a surprise factor involved: you can prepare, at least in some way. When you become under artillery fire, you cannot prepare, you cannot see it coming and you have no idea where the next hit is going to strike. This is one of the most traumatizing things in war, and its horror is compounded by the noise: modern warfare has become much more traumatizing than earlier warfare because the human nervous system doesn't really cope all that well with the sheer noise, for example. After WW2, the most traumatized and difficult-to-even-help-much-less-cure patients in psychiatric wards tended to be those who had repeatedly been under artillery fire. Russia prefers artillery fire, particularly against civilians.

If it was a suicide mission, the timing was set so that it would cause the least possible collateral damage (which has also been noted in the speculation). For Russia, the death of every Ukrainian and every ethnically non-Russian living inside Russia is acceptable, possibly even preferable. So the standards depend on who you ask.

As a general statement, I agree with this. However, there are circmustances. In 1993-1994, I worked at an orthopaedic hospital with a separate ward reserved for people coming in from the former Yugoslavia with 0-3 limbs or so, many of them children, some of whom had just learned to walk but then were no longer able to. Let us just say that even for someone personally untouched by the conflict itself, working there was eye-opening on several levels. I don't know if you have family, but given what we've read of the atrocities committed by the Russians, I can imagine several fathers being prepared for anything after being forced to witness all sorts of things done to their wives and children. It's not an excuse, and it doesn't make it all right, but I can see how it might go. Now, we don't know if it was a suicide attack (although that would seem most likely, in my understanding), and we don't know whether there was anything like this behind it. But I just wanted to point out that there might be circumstances where even that may become a course of action less outrageous than it looks like, simply as an act.

I have read reports of both Shoigu and Gerasimov being "purged", but certainly not from any sources that I'd trust, so I'd just wait a bit longer on this. Sounds plausible, sure, but so did the multiple heart attacks.

Not that I know of, sorry. I can't see him being any more "democratic" than Putin.

Interesting that you say this. I have a seen former(*) Nordic intelligence leader point out that Prigozhin has done a number of things apparently aimed at improving his stature and thus demonstrating that he can be the future leader. (*) Current ones aren't as free to comment.

The biggest contributor to Ukrainian weaponry is.... <drum roll>.... Russia! Somewhat amusing, this, in the middle of all the dire news. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-new-offensive-is-fueled-by-captured-russian-weapons-11664965264?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Right. Thanks. This kind of demonstrates why I don't feel like the Unfair difficulty is a great idea (for me!). You really do need to make a fairly specific set of choices to be able to compete (perhaps there are several possible sets, but not that many). It makes me feel like the Unfair difficulty is a battle against the game mechanics (essentially, math), not against what happens to be put against you in the game, if you get my drift. But thank you both, you and @Gromnir, your answers were good. I continue to play on Core because it requires some planning and guile, which I enjoy, while freeing me from the necessity of planning everything Just Right.

I suggest you delve into the workings of the Russian military at least a little bit. Look at how brutal it is, look at how much hazing and abuse is reported and then extrapolate how much of it may be going on beneath the surface. Look at how many conscripts are either killed or commit suicide while in service. Then think what happens when an army as brutalized as that gets its hands on helpless civilians who are deemed to be their enemy. Please don't be so naive.