Understanding Russia & Putin

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Gennadiy1981 said:

Let’s be honest, Russia is the second powerful nation in the world and I am sure it could have captured entire small Ukraine in a day or two

1) Ukraine is not so small.

2) Capturing it in a day or two? What are you smoking? The US could not properly hold Afghanistan with 20 years and $2 trillion dollars.

I think Russia can certainly dominate Ukraine militarily, but it will take a few months. This is still relatively fast.

[Preety_India]

9 hours ago, BlueOak said:

Russia thinks its fighting a wider war, because their country is individualist, they look at the world as individual countries standing strong alone. Their population is collectivist however.

NATO thinks its helping another country but not in a war, because their countries are collectivist, dependent on each other with intricate alliances and treaties. Their population is individualist however.

For example, Russians prefer state TV to give them a message because their populations are collectivist as a society.
NATO prefers many channels of information as their populations are individualist as a society.

This is where the misunderstanding comes from. NATO believes that further cooperation and treaties with everyone is beneficial. Russia believes it should stand alone apart from this cooperative influence. Both approaches to life causes distrust in each other throughout their societies.

The only way(s) to solve this puzzle is to look again at what Ukraine wants and needs. Alternatively a way to encourage peace, is to condense what I just said into a message that we can give to others in the form of a solution. Please yellow thinkers have a shot, give me a message I can drop in the right places that is easily understood or do so yourself when it comes to you.

Thanks

@Leo Gura Tagging you for a big brain answer.

What's your ethnicity if you don't mind? Just curious. 

 

[Lyubov]

8 minutes ago, Knowledge Hoarder said:

US>China>Russia in my opinion. With India being close fourth - almost on a level of Russia. For being such a huge country with that much resources, Russia's military is really not that impressive - could be a lot better.

It’s because lots of their military budget is taken through corruption starting from the top down. You can assume for every million allotted for the military there, some percentage is taken before the money is actually put to use how originally intended. It’s why there are reports of Russia’s land equipment being poorly maintained and serviced. Hard to keep maintenance up when that money gets eaten away at by corruption. It’s why they tout their nukes so much and make so much propaganda about their army. They know it’s actually not as good as it really is so they have to compensate. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Lyubov

[voxun]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

1) Ukraine is not so small.

2) Capturing it in a day or two? What are you smoking? The US could not properly hold Afghanistan with 20 years and $2 trillion dollars.

I think Russia can certainly dominate Ukraine militarily, but it will take a few months. This is still relatively fast.

Yes its about the size of France. Driving from one end to the other at normal car speed can take 12+ hours using Frances long freeways. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by voxun

[Lyubov]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin
 

A great article by a respected scholar on the war. 
 

He believes Russia is favored to win this war. A good balance to all the Twitter stuff saying how well Ukraine is doing. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Lyubov

[Hello from Russia]

Lol. Obviously why this is slow is because Putin wants to preserve as much civili population as possible and make as little damage as possible to it. For many good reasons (I'm not just whitewashing him)

If he wanted, for sure he could take Ukraine by 2-3 days, our army is quite capable of that. The problem is that it would create a shit ton of collateral damage and would create 10x public outrage than what we have now

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, voxun said:

Yes its about the size of France. Driving from one end to the other at normal car speed can take 12+ hours using Frances long freeways. 

They aren't driving cars down French freeways.

[voxun]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

They aren't driving cars down French freeways.

No they are driving thousands of large military fuel monsters down Ukrainian roads while being ambushed on a regular bases.

Seems like a logistical nightmare.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

[_Archangel_]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Russia losing Ukraine to the West is like having your balls dangling and exposed in a street fight.

This goes straight into the book of Leo's awkward but fiitting analogies Lol

[BlueOak]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't think Russia's or Putin's attitude is to be individualist. Quite the opposite, they want more allies, but of course they want allies that are favorable to their agenda. Allies like China.

Individualists do work together, but they don't rely on each other as a rule. They don't interconnect in the same way as a collectivist would.

[BlueOak]

12 hours ago, Preety_India said:

What's your ethnicity if you don't mind? Just curious. 

 

Celtic is closest, because I enjoy that culture the most. I never had a strong identity of country. My racial identity is almost non existent. I have a lesser European identity based on proximity, common values, and safety, which was slow to come about. My father is Scottish, Mother English and we have Italian blood apparently in the family, a refugee from war.

Something you said once, might make this useful to look at, especially given this war is fueled by nationalist sentiment.

On race or bloodlines, at one point I did inner or spiritual work wanting to work with my ancestors. Which is a huge resource if you ever head in that direction, lot of strength in your DNA, your heritage, your bloodline and race. The land around you is some of the most rich connection to life and you there is. Lot of certainty there when you begin to remove identity completely from yourself. Easily dismissed these days in the 'temporary' world of passing technology and individualist logic, which closes people off to how interconnected they are within their society, family, their land and the DNA in their body. If you are happy or at least content with who you are, and what you focus on, then family lines explored spiritually are beautiful.

If not, then wait to do that, as it can lead to some pain. It did for me in a direct spiritual way. It can certainly lead to identities that exploit others for harmful gain, as everyone has seen, so these topics take a lot of care, as there are many terrible things clouding it like a shadow. (This war for example). Like most inner or spiritual work based on reality it turns everything up to 10 and if I had to put another stage to Leo's spiral dynamics it'd be total integration of the body/mind and everything we are, which ultimately at its most beautiful is love.

A lot of spiritual work lacks roots in the real world because its all based on concepts that don't exist, or we are trying to perceive something we can never see, but family lines, DNA, what made you who you are, that's very potent and where the magic happens.

*I mention all this because people's lack of connection to the land, their history, race, culture etc, is what nationalist sentiment based on a constructed identity replaces to fill that void. Which leads to war over constructed identities that don't even exist.

Edited March 13, 2022 by BlueOak

[Preety_India]

7 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

Celtic is closest, because I enjoy that culture the most. I never had a strong identity of country. My racial identity is almost non existent. I have a lesser European identity based on proximity, common values, and safety, which was slow to come about. My father is Scottish, Mother English and we have Italian blood apparently in the family, a refugee from war.

Something you said once, might make this useful to look at, especially given this war is fueled by nationalist sentiment.

On race or bloodlines, at one point I did inner or spiritual work wanting to work with my ancestors. Which is a huge resource if you ever head in that direction, lot of strength in your DNA, your heritage, your bloodline and race. The land around you is some of the most rich connection to life and you there is. Lot of certainty there when you begin to remove identity completely from yourself. Easily dismissed these days in the 'temporary' world of passing technology and individualist logic, which closes people off to how interconnected they are within their society, family, their land and the DNA in their body. If you are happy or at least content with who you are, and what you focus on, then family lines explored spiritually are beautiful.

If not, then wait to do that, as it can lead to some pain. It did for me in a direct spiritual way. It can certainly lead to identities that exploit others for harmful gain, as everyone has seen, so these topics take a lot of care, as there are many terrible things clouding it like a shadow. (This war for example). Like most inner or spiritual work based on reality it turns everything up to 10 and if I had to put another stage to Leo's spiral dynamics it'd be total integration of the body/mind and everything we are, which ultimately at its most beautiful is love.

A lot of spiritual work lacks roots in the real world because its all based on concepts that don't exist, or we are trying to perceive something we can never see, but family lines, DNA, what made you who you are, that's very potent and where the magic happens.

*I mention all this because people's lack of connection to the land, their history, race, culture etc, is what nationalist sentiment based on a constructed identity replaces to fill that void.

Well said. 

 

[Loba]

Touching.  <3

[Preety_India]

1 minute ago, Loba said:

Touching.  <3

So beautiful. 

 

[Leo Gura]

How Chinese propaganda supports Russia invasion:

Pretty clear where China's loyalties lie.

[charlie cho]

I talked to a college girl in Ukraine. She seemed really stressed out. But she wasn't in Kyev. She was on the borders on the country. But still, in the night, 2am, 5am, she had to go to bunkers because of air emergencies. I felt sorry for her. I told her, "Young boys and girls suffer because of older idiotic politicians from both Ukraine and Russia." 

[vizual]

1 hour ago, Knowledge Hoarder said:

So, the western sanctions probably won't ammount to shit at the end of the day.

They will think twice before planning to invade Taiwan. If NATO countries start sanctioning China it will be a big blow for their economy. NA, EU and Japan are their biggest export markets, Russia imports relatively little from China.

[Lyubov]

1 hour ago, Knowledge Hoarder said:

So, the western sanctions probably won't ammount to shit at the end of the day.

It’s just really uncertain at the moment how this will play out. We do know they have done some damage and will have affected the life of millions of normal Russians, even the rich and ruling class will have felt it. Has this swayed public opinion of Putin? It’s too early to tell. Some think it hasn’t and has only made the more conservative wing (Russians not from Moscow, people over 40, etc) double down. Younger generation is greatly affected by it and is in the process of brain draining the country by fleeing abroad. I think when some of the dust settles they absolutely will have stunted the development of Russia some and curbed some influence. Also I think it will have kept this conflict from spreading past Ukraine. We will have to just wait and see. 

[PurpleTree]

Russia: We is very important peoples. We has histories. We has artists. We has security interests (we has not much of feelings) If west don't take Russia serious we will attack Ukraine and make blood bath.