xzar_monty

We can't say for sure, as we just don't know enough about this, but I wonder about the climate as well... There's the old joke: if Dostoevsky had been born in Hawaii, would the world have Crime and Punishment? I'd say pretty much everyone agrees that the answer is almost certainly: No.

This is true. There are all sorts of reasons for why nations are the way they are, as you well know. This is one of them. Another example: Switzerland. Why has it remained successfully neutral for such a long time? Well, look at geography. Does anyone even think the Swiss neutrality would have been possible if the country was as flat as, say, the Netherlands? Switzerland is a mini-Afghanistan right in the middle of Europe, in terms of geography. That helps! Likewise, Russian paranoia is definitely fuelled by the fact once you start marching east from Poland, it's essentially all flat land. Hence the historical need for a buffer zone. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any attempt to update this idea even if Russia is under no threat at all from the west.

German intelligence would seem to confirm that atrocities, such as those in Bucha, are part of a deliberate Russian strategy. There was never much doubt, I would say, but of course it needs to be confirmed. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/butscha-soldaten-besprachen-graeueltaten-gegen-zivilisten-ueber-funk-a-9e01662c-aa7e-4828-bf6f-f662d9b6164e?d=1649315458&sara_ecid=app_upd_903PVrz5TZlGJuLWLqJDVijRko558t&sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph It's curious that we still have people on this forum who post "badass" photos of war criminals, regard alternate narratives as "truth bombs" and seriously talk about "psychotic Russophobia" in the West.

I am not Swedish, but the question is very hard to answer. You'd have to conduct a huge poll to find out. Obviously, you can find some kind of an answer by looking at elections and their results. I would argue that all of Scandinavia is more inclined to the former idea, but even if those supporting the latter idea are not significantly growing in numbers, they are making a lot more noise. Scandinavia is almost certainly right up there when considering the best places to live in this world. Of course, Russia has very recently changed this idea rather a lot for the worse, but Scandinavia is still right up there. There's this famous "blindness test": you're going to be born into this world. You don't know if you're rich or poor. You don't know if you're a man or a woman. You don't know if you're healthy or if you have some genetic problems. Where would you want to be born? Scandinavia is a good place, as good as any place can be.

Ok, you and @Gorthboth do make a valid point. So, granted: it IS possible to be unaware of this stuff. It's still mind-boggling. An army should know where it's going and what it's doing. After all, it's one of the most famous locations in the world, calamity-wise.

It's not really possible to be unaware of that, if you know anything about anything. But perhaps they really were unaware. Russia is taking stuff to a whole new level.

On CNN: "Video shows Russian forces dug trenches in highly radioactive off-limits area near Chernobyl." If this turns out to be true, which it likely will, we will have to invent completely new ways of measuring and indicating how stupid an army can be. Clearly words fail. Early on in this conflict, someone in St. Petersburg chiseled "NO WAR" in the ice in the river. Obviously this was a provocation. People were promptly ordered to get rid of the text. So, two people went and PAINTED over the text, which was IN THE ICE, and then, halfway through their project, they RAN OUT OF PAINT. But that was nothing compared to this headline.

Ok. Hey, since you are in/from Germany, can you perhaps offer some kind of idea about the internal feelings/tensions in the country now? I mean, Germany is the country with the Russian noose most tightly around its neck with the energy thing. How is Merkel viewed now? What's going on? All info and commentary would be appreciated. I am curious, not out to blame.

This is an extraordinarily interesting page from Price Wars by Rupert Russell. Cannot comment on its trustworthiness.

This, in turn, apparently provided the Finns with an awful lot of grim determination in the war and an even fiercer determination to keep the country's defences up after the war. Help was supposed to come from all quarters when the USSR attacked in 1939. No help came.

Finland is very aware and well-prepared given its size and, therefore, limited means. Norway and Denmark are NATO countries. The odd one out is Sweden which used to be, shall we say, naive or at least complacent. Probably because it was able to bypass fighting in WWII and instead make huge amounts of money selling iron to the nazis, so it has to real recent history unlike Finland (Winter War, Continuation War), Denmark (Germans) or Norway (Germans, Quisling). As for the "experienced" part you mention, I can't comment, I don't know enough about this.

According to local military specialists, of whom I am not one, the attempted attack on Kyiv was so hopelessly poor in both its planning and execution that it would have got a resounding F in any proper military academy, had someone suggested that in a strategy test. Not quite idiocy but close to it, anyway.

Fair point as such, but as far as the "another" word is concerned, what are you referring to? I mean, as far as successors to BG are concerned, I'm not sure there have been that many attempts. But enlighten me. PoE was one, but it was a success.

Terrible reportage coming out of Borodianka, a smallish settlement not that far from Kyiv. One cannot help but admire the courage of the mighty Russian army: it takes heroic bravery and guts to mercilessly attack civilians and deliberately destroy their homes.

As terrible as the whole topic is, one cannot help but be fascinated by the fact how the destruction of other peoples tends to be expressed in language related to cleansing, making places better and cleaner. There's probably a psychology thesis or two waiting to be written about this. I'm sure some have already been written. It's not killing, much less murdering. It's cleansing. Of course, Russia has always said the opposite of what it does. During the Cold War, if the Soviet Union came to help you, you were likely to die. (The most obvious parallel of course being Hitler and his use of language. Apparently, btw, Hitler was particularly prone to the emotion of disgust, specifically, and particularly eager to eradicate everything that triggered it. I am not an expert on this, however, having only read one of the many huge biographies.)

@Malcador: Yes, fair enough!

Trade with China is currently important to Russia. Trade with Russia means little to China, because the important markets are elsewhere. Potentially, Russia has a very interesting future to look forward to, as a vassal state to China.

Please keep in mind the awful possibilities that this allows. In other words: Russia is currently invading Ukraine with the intention of "educating" them. It doesn't matter what you or I think about Russia's justification. What matters is what the Russians think, and they clearly think they're right enough to have started an invasion. To move this problem into a slightly less dangerous environment: one thing that really staggers me about the division in the United States is that the vitriol directed by some of the Democrats at the Republicans is in no way different from the vitriol directed by many of the Republicans at the Democrats. Once the "discussion" reaches these heights, i.e. depths, it doesn't really matter which side you're on, because simply entering the arena already signifies you're in trouble. Both sides remain absolutely convinced that they are in the right. This is a genuinely difficult problem.

But a more serious problem remains: when someone (or a nation) is in denial, what to do about it?

It does change, but the parallels are spooky. A German named Herbert Backe divided much of Russia into "surplus" and "deficit" zones in his planning. The idea was to take the surplus zone (much of which was in Ukraine, btw, because of its extremely rich soil) and disregard the deficit zone. As the Germans themselves wrote in the minutes of the big meeting concerning this, "as a result, x million people will doubtlessly starve, if that which is necessary for us is extracted from the land" (translated from the German, obviously, for everone's convenience). In may 1941, they also had an official document called Guidelines for the Behaviour of Troops in Russia, which stated, for example, that everyone suspected of working against German interests were to be tried on the spot and shot if found guilty, regardless of whether they were soldiers or civilians. All of this happened such a short while ago that there are still people alive from that time. The remarkable thing is that at least two countries that have committed terrible atrocities have taken a serious look at themselves and made profound changes: Germany and Japan. While there is almost certainly at least some somescreening involved in this, I have no doubt that genuine progress has also been made. The depressing thing is that nothing like this has even been attempted in Russia. Consider how Hitler is viewed in Germany, and then consider how Stalin is viewed in Russia. There is a world of difference right there. It is true that Russia is full of cenotaphs and other memorials with a plaque saying something along the lines of "No one has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten" (a translation from a fairly poor memory, please don't put me down if this is somewhat incorrect, but I'm certain it is not totally incorrect). But this is not true at all: Russia's memory has been selective in the extreme. Everything inconvenient has been forgotten and deliberately suppressed, and right now we are in a situation where if you bring any of it up, you're facing up to 15 years in jail. Historians had a terrible time in Russia even before this most recent period of atrocities. Along with so much else, Russia is also suffering from a terrible curse of resources: it doesn't need societal change. It doesn't need development. It doesn't need better universal education(*). It doesn't need the kind of society where ideas are thrown around and discussed and criticized and occasionally implemented, too. It has resources. It sells them. That's enough, financially speaking. This is extremely bad for Russia. (*) In the US, much of education can be dreadfully poor. But some of it is also almost certainly the best in the world -- as a late friend of mine, a professor from Iowa, said to me, "All the stereotypes about the US are true, but their opposites are also true". Russia has good education in some areas, especially some natural sciences. But not the kind of culture that leads to a flowering of ideas.

No. I started learning English at school when I was ten. I have visited the UK several times, but I have never lived there and certainly wasn't born there.

Link not working. The whole site taken down? Anynomous at work? Dunno. But link not working.

We can't know if this is true, but it is very plausible. Fighting back on all fronts.

In my country, we start studying a second language on third grade and a third language on seventh, at the latest (often fifth). Many if not most study three foreign languages by the time they're on 8th grade. So, people tend to speak multiple languages. I speak five, to varying degrees of fluency, and on top of that I know something about four other languages but could not read a New York Times type quality newspaper in any of them, so there's no real fluency there. English is not my first language. We're up here in the North of Europe.

After Groznyi and Aleppo, this is hardly a surprise. However, it is heartbreaking. As the saying goes, barbarism begins at home. Child abuse in Russia is routine -- the numbers, if you consult the studies on this topic, are chilling. Given the nature of Russia, its institutions are also exceptionally cruel and conducive towards abuse. An awful lot of "hazing" and extremely serious physical abuse in the armed forces; the 200th Brigade is especially notorious for being internally violent and low on morale. (My understanding is that the brigade has now been largely obliterated in Ukraine, but not sure about this.) All of this takes a very real human toll on the whole society: health and happiness levels plus trust in others plus life expectancy are all remarkably low. Russia is not a happy place. So, not surprising that there is an awful lot of excessive cruelty and, shall we say, lack of what would be regarded as "proper" behiaviour, to the extent that such exists during wartime.