Ukrainian War

I am worried about the word "soon"

These are the images the russian people are not allowed to see on their TVs.

This war is not about fighting Nazis, this war is about bring pure terror on the entire population of a country.

A sheer disrespect to the lives of the people... even to the lives of their own soldiers.

Even worse than that are the lies from the Putin regime.

They claim that the Ukraine has executed collaborators. Really?

Amongst the dead, Children collaborators?

How sick does your mind have to be to come up with such a stupid story?

The surviving population in that region all speak of Russian massacres on their neighbors and I am convinced that the more villages are re-captured the more dead civilians will be found. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

What the Russian liars forget is that it is without any doubt possible to figure out when a person was killed based on the state of the body and then figure out which troops were active in that region. Russia can not hide the truth.

Quote

Russia Accuses Germany of Developing Biomilitary Labs

Really?

...

...

...

Beer breweries are no biolabs ffs!

Headaches will go away after some time.

I perfectly agree to that. The Veto right is the UNs biggest course.

It needs to change but is the hardest thing to do because the all the countries need to agree to it and most important once even one country Veto such a change it will fail.

Only Alternative would be to disassemble the UN and create a new one based on better rules and hope that the countries join the new organisation.

Tricky. Especially due to all linked organisations that essentially are part of the UN.

Yeah, I don't think we are heading back to multiple blocks. At least not anytime soon.

There is strong rhetoric about this but economic numbers do not support such claims. Russia right now is burning between 10 and 25 billion $ of its financial reserves per month (the large discrepancy between the numbers is because of a significant increase in the past months). More than half of the assets are frozen, therefore Russia is heading towards bankruptcy within the next year.

Not the greatest conditions for forming a block.

Politically Putin also can not score. When 143 countries of 193 countries vote against you and only 5 really support your efforts, you are on lost territory.

Then again we have the financial power. 8 of the 10 biggest economies are allied. Only counting those (and ignoring the ones outside the top 10) they combine a GDP of ~44 trillion $ vs. Russia with only 1,7 trillion. Well, I don't think that this looks like a fair competition between the potential blocks.

You could now mention China but I think China has its own ambitions and its own problems (property crisis, debt situation, 0-covid, weakening economy, etc).

Coming back to Russia I see many more issues.

~60% of the revenue is based on natural resources but more and more countries refuse to buy. Price caps will make these revenues collapse by a huge margin. Potential secondary sanctions against China and India will make this even worse (those are expected to be introduced in Q1 2023). Both countries would benefit from supporting the price caps but also risk there trade relations if they side with Russia. If Russia cuts oil and gas exports as result the bankruptcy is just going to happen sooner.

Then we also have the technology situation. Russia is not known for producing high-tech products. They have to be imported... but there are the sanctions. A block that can not produce its own technology is doomed to fail. Tech products are required for own economy. Without that the block always will have an economic disadvantage. Same can be said about military where high-tech these days make a huge difference as we meanwhile very well know.

The assumed 2nd strongest army in the world has turned out to be the 2nd strongest army in Ukraine. Sheer force vs. technological advantages. The miracle hypersonic weapons have been used how many times by Russia? It were not many. That speaks volumes when it comes to the availability of high-tech.

Next topic to factor in here is demographics. Russia already prior the war had terrible demographics. A death rate (prior war) twice as high as the birth rate. A very disproportional life expectancy for males/females (I wonder why *cough*). A not so great age distribution and... some events in 2022 which made everything even worse.

A few hundred thousands mostly young left the country in the early months... another ~700.000 after the mobilization announcement. Unemployment rate due to age distribution prior the war was already extremely low. Now ~1 Mio workers are missing in the economy + an unknown number of killed and wounded soldiers that also need to be subtracted from the workforce.

A wannabe block needs workers and a working economy. Russia lost decades of progress in this area.

Furthermore do blocks if they want to have a future need to have an education system that motivates people to free thinking. Many intellectual people have left Russia meanwhile and teaching propaganda does not lead to fresh new ideas.

In my eyes way too many indicators show that Russia is done. The talks about blocks and new world orders and such a crap is just stupid nonsense.

China is a different more complicated topic in this regard.

Just ran into an article from 2003 that was naming the 14 characteristics of fascism. Looks like a perfect match for Russia.

1. "Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism" -> Russian flags, Z symbols etc. - check
2. "Disdain for the importance of human rights" -> what human rights? - check
3. "Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause" -> the evil West - check
4. "The supremacy of the military/avid militarism" -> military all the way - check
5. "Rampant sexism" -> to a degree for sure, combined with homophobism - check
6. "A controlled mass media" -> there is nothing but state TV - check
7. "Obsession with national security" -> one of the many declared reasons for the war - check
8. "Religion and ruling elite tied together" -> KGB agent as head of the Russian orthodox church - check
9. "Power of corporations protected" -> energy companies are untouchable unless you want to die one of many deaths - check
10. "Power of labor suppressed or eliminated" -> ask the minorities which were mobilized against their will - check
11. "Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts" -> many intellectuals had to flee the country or lost their jobs - check
12. "Obsession with crime and punishment" -> up to 15 years of prison if you have a different opinion than the Kremlin - check
13. "Rampant cronyism and corruption" -> what else... of course its Russia - check
14. "Fraudulent elections" -> putting the opposition into jail or counting empty voting ballots as "yes" during the referendums - check check check

A perfect match.

Believe it or not but even Gamers are allowed to have an opinion, especially if it is strongly backed up by facts. For everything I wrote above I can show definite proof.

As gaming community it would even be fair not to forget the gamers which suffer from these events. Players which most notably suffer from daily power outages and potentially are at risk to freeze to death during this winter because one faction in this conflict decided to commit war crimes by bombing power stations, heating facilities and gas production on a daily basis meanwhile.

If you see hate in anything of that, you probably should take a second, closer look at all of it. Criticism against a regime is not hate against the people and for sure not directed against players and members of this community (no matter on which side they stand).

This community has Russian players and also Ukrainians. Nothing has changed how these people are being treated on this site and I have no intention to change my personal relations with these people just because of their country of origin.

IF hate was an intention here then the quality and quantity of posts were very different.

Didn't Sasha Grey die already in 2015 as nurse in Russian propaganda?

What's the message? War is sexy?

I am getting Starship Trooper fibes atm. "Do you want to know more?"