TwinkleToes

Yes, that's exactly it. Their most advanced weaponry is being made and used instantly, as opposed to being drawn down from older stockpiles. This is suggestive that those initial stockplies are gone, and that they're having to use things as fast as they can make them.

It paints a picture that they are struggling to keep up, that they're not capable of further quick escalation, and that they'd be very sensitive to a disruption in the delivery of components required to make these things when they're using them as fast as they can build them.

Yep. no doubt. Imposssible to quantify, but reports at the time were at least a million men fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.

I make no claim that the 575k number is dead. Even UA says that's their estimate of dead and wounded. And to be extremely generous, let's say 30-40% of those wounded are probably so disabled, amputees or worse, that not only can they not fight anymore, but they can't work jobs at their full pre-invasion potential. That would still be hundreds of thousands of lost labor force participants in a country who relies massively on heavy industry and resource extraction manned by able bodied, if often drunk, raw manpower. They won't be shifting war amputees to service sectors desk jobs and call centers.

These newly disabled veterans will become burdens on a state that probably won't honor the support agreements to their full extent, making them worse than simply unproductive - it will make them bitter living testaments to the stupidity of this war and it's broken promises. In the cold caclulus of Russian brutality - these people are better off dead telling no tales and drawing no pension than they would be alive. Russia's interal ethnic cleansing and useless mouth disposal of their own people sometimes gets lost in the ocean of wickedness that this entire war has been.

Definitely off topic, and suggestive of decades old axe-grinding whataboutism. But - since it's a topic of apparent interest to you, let me counter in good faith with another OpEd angle for "why was iraq invaded", beyond the simple motive of vanity revenge. Pure speculation, no claim this is fact.

In the initial months and years Post 9-11, there were dozens of AQ cell attacks across the globe, including inside the US and Europe. Gunman squads, workplace murders, bombings across the globe, Spain, Belgium, France, etc. Stopping them all is essentially impossible. The US is also in a position of having to "respond" to deal with the american electorate's bloodlust. You can't just do nothing and bleat on superlatives about moral superioirty. Someone has to die. They are unable to find and stop AQ cells from carrying out attacks on soft targets against civilians, in areas only protected by local law enforcement. So - what do you do? Deploy your army everywhere in your own country to try and interdict attacks after they're already happening? Well, that's not a great plan.

Maybe the conscious decision was to create a global flashpoint in someone else's backyard, which would draw in the irrational hatred of global jihadism, where they could fight directly against the US military, instead of against civilians, and where collateral damage would be the lucky host country's problem. Put simply - invite the jihad inclined global population to come to Iraq and die fighting the US Army instead of having them come to you and kill people in malls, airports and gas stations. Of course the idea is morally reprehensible - criminal even. But it's also logical. That is not the same as saying it was a good idea, before you go down the ad hominem route. Offered only as a possible line of thought of "why was Iraq invaded at all". But - brought up only because of an incongruity with your assertion that Iraq was a vanity revenue project and therefore(?) at least somehow comparable to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine because of it's ongoing insistence on being an independent country.

Now, perhaps you're doing what you seem to be - trying to equate the US actions in Iraq as a moral equivalent to what Russia has done to Ukraine. If that's your angle, well - you be you, i wouldn't try to change your mind. I would only, in that case, say that Russia invaded Ukraine, first in 2014 and again in 2022, without any pretext 9/11 style attack. Russia's simple, naked imperial genocide was not provoked by any Ukrainian-spawned outrage, but if you'd care to make the case that even that is not true, but all means, let's hear it.

Nation of cynical thieves who don’t even have a word for empathy eating themselves at the first hint of trouble? I’m shocked. SHOCKED.

Well - not that shocked.

I worked for one of the major dating sites about a decade ago. Let me assure you, that people act like debased hyperhormonal chimps in heat when they think nobody is watching. Oh, and by the way - someone is ALWAYS watching.

If you're a male who has some combination of a steady job, are remotely reliable, not drug or booze addled, have most of your teeth and hair and can tell a joke and hold a conversation - you're golden. It is UTTERLY unfair to ladies, but just being able to hold that low bar will get you much farther than you might think.

It's a strange dilemma - for a dating site to suceed, you have to protect the women. From the guys' perspective, it's shouting into the void, on the off chance you might EVER stand out enough to get a reply a week. From a woman's perspective, it's like the ozone layer protecting a constant bombardment of radiation and lethal rocks from space. A cornucopia of typically BAD CHOICES that manage to slip through the various cracks that the sites/apps put up to protect them.

But - the women ARE the site. If you have the WOMEN, then the men would follow you buck naked through the flaming tar pits of hell to get to them. But - the average male is a monosyllabic goblin with skeletons in his closet and bad intentions much more often than you'd think. It's why Bumble tried female-only communication initiation. The women on dating sites have an invisible shield tbey don't even realize exists around them to prevent bots, unsolicited dick pics, one word messages, repeat-offense harassers, and wide-net-casting quagmires who have more deeply held mysoginstic beliefs than they do good pick up lines.

".... and THAT'S why it's totally justified for me to have murdered thousands of my own citizens, rather than behave like a democratically elected leader".

Trump has become an unfunny version of Eric Cartman come to life. A petulant, shameless, poopy pantsed little boy who could never fill the inky black waste void in where was supposed to have a heart, brain and soul with enough of anything.

This was a branding exercise that truly got out of hand, and he was a simple fluke. But of course, that’s impossible for him to accept.

It gets really, really interesting now that he can’t be of any use to anyone and all the stupid plans and bad loans come due at the end. Jail would be the best outcome.

So - systems check time.

Made yourself a global pariah

Destroyed your primary export market.

Pissed away your Soviet stockpile inheritance

Blew your 30 year war chest of blood oil/gas, leaving your future extraction reserves of only the harder, more expensive to get variety.

Made yourself the permanent junior vassal to China, to whom you can now never refuse any demand for resources or concessions.

Destroyed any wisp of diplomatic credibility you’d had since even Stalinist times. Your remaining crop of fourth rate allies run only on bribes, and are comically useless compared even to the rogues gallery of corrupt tinpot dictators and thin skinned, low functioning mob bosses you propped up in Soviet times.

Pissed away your irreplaceable war stockpiles of missiles, attack helicopters, advanced fighter bombers and AWACS planes. Oh, and - the entire Black Sea Fleet. And the use of the Sevastopol Harbor that hosted it.

And - 575,000 working and breeding age males. So far. For a country with brutal demographics way below replacement rates. They would have been very useful to rebuild your society, rather than being slaughtered trying to establish a land bridge to a region that can no longer safely support military facilities

And for what? To be within visual range of territory you already controlled for a decade. Put this in perspective - so far through 2/3rds of 2024 alone, Russia have lost 180,000 casualties and masses of antiquated equipment, and taken the net sum of territory equivalent to the size of New York City. And your losses are RAPIDLY accelerating to higher than at ANY point in the war. You're driving soldiers into the front lines with scooters, ladas and golf carts.

Oh, and the small neighbor of 'racical inferiors' you set out to commit national genocide against have claimed more of YOUR territory in 72 hours with 3 brigades than you have with 300 in 2.5 years.

And that’s to say NOTHING about what it would take to actually hold that ground long term with occupation forces and settlers despite a permanent insurrection of drones, snipers, IEDs, sabotage, assassinations, car bombs and other goodies that would keep your army bleeding indefinitely and make the American experience in Iraq seem like child’s play.

Also to say nothing of making an eternal enemy of your most powerful former abused client state. There is Absolutely. No. Cooperation between the malignant petromafia kleptocracy you've built and a sovreign Ukraine going forward. Your 1,000 year project of abusive cruelty against Ukraine is drawing to a close - that divorce is final, we're just settling up the final bill, and neutering your sadistic tendencies as the same time

This has all been a GREAT idea. History is not going to be kind to the black hearted gangster ghouls who make it happen.

Of the many ridiculous things Russia has done to humiliate and debase itself in this stupid vanity revenge project, making no provision at all for serious border defense may not be most manically immoral, but it may be the most militarily stupid.

For all their bluster about nukes - how are you going to use them exactly? On the Ukrainian territory you claim is yours, or on the Russian territory that is currently occupied by Ukraine.

They’re just so fucking stupid.

Capital punishment, by other means

Incompetence of their side is definitely a perpetual factor - but the excellent intelligence and satellite surveillance intel of the Ukrainians is the real cause here.

Read between the lines - this means the US is providing satellite intel inside Russia, of a moving target, in addition potentially to authorized use of HIMARS inside Russia along with that SitRep

Welp. Russia historically only responds to strength and their overall strategy has always been “keep dying in massive numbers until something big happens”. Usually that something is a crushing defeat that leads to revolution, but - they like to count their hits and ignore their misses. So - carry on.