Was the 8 years of sanction proofing their economy worth the 8 years of allowing the west and UA to prepare for the invasion?

Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014? If they could surely hard hitting sanctions but a pacified Ukraine would be a lesser headache than what they have now no?

>Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?

probably. they were poorly trained and armed.

>>63838928 (OP)
they really struggled against georgia in 2008. they werent even close to being ready for a full scale invasion in 2014.

>>63838981
just focus on the capital. the 2022 invasion failed because they were too spread out.

>>63838992
This, if you make the columns even more concentrated, congested and depleted of supplies that would he sure to fix the problem

>>63838992
This was before the situation at Belarus. Russia didn’t make Belarus into their military vector point after the protest against luka.

>>63838928 (OP)
Obviously the current situation is a fucking disaster so you can pretty much say anything else would've been better, either going for it in 2014 or just settling for what they already grabbed back then.

On the other hand, it's not just sanction-proofing they're economy that they've been doing in the meantime. It also gave Putin the opportunity to shore up his own position. Where the last 8 years that significant compared the preceding 14? I'm not sure but I imagine it might've been.

>>63838998
they have an endless war now because they didn't take the capital.

>>63839016
That doesn't mean changing for another bad idea is gonna fix the problem they're in
Rather than doing either of these they should have done a proper SEAD/DEAD campaign, actually supplied their motorpool with quality, not embezzled all their fuel and equipment and just been a completely different country than the failed shithole they are and have always been

>>63839032
the capital was poorly defended. sending 90% of the forces there would have worked. the other 10% is for feints across ukraine.

>>63839032
Had Russia been a country filled with non-retards, ruled by non-retards, international politics would've been so different as to be unrecognizable.

>>63839006
Wasn't he already fully in control by 2014? I thought that is what he was doing when he allowed Dimon Medvedev to be President

>>63838928 (OP)
>muh sanctiooooooooooooooooooooons
arent a problem, and never will be
they only effect the every day Russian consumer, who was supposed to get soooooooooo heckin mad they got their nintendo and mcdonalds yanked that they all
>"rose up and couped Putin!!!"

lmao pathetically, israel thinks they will somehow get Iranians to do this to their own government because iraeli propaganda says
>"Iranians hate their government more than israel! yep, and they are about 2 seconds away from rising up and killing the regime off for good!! haha times up supreme reader!"

>>63839055
>arent a problem, and never will be

it's the reason why they can't build anything advance or in large numbers.

>>63839055
>sanctions don't matter btw pls take them off

>>63839043
The slow moving column would have literally been crawling forwards from inside russia, and would have 0 supply depots to use because of the insane amount of material stuck in a giant traffic jam
It would have been even more of a shambles, I'm sorry anon russia is a failed retarded shithole but your idea is retarded too, that wouldn't solve jack shit

>>63839045
Yeah if the entire face of the earth from the 1800s was radically different then russia might have stood more a chance, all they had to do was win the great game and not devolve even further into a failed dystopia
Simple really, not sure why they didn't think of it

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Putin is an impatient retard that cannot into Psy Ops and assymetric warfare.
>Annex Crimea with pro Russian population
>Flood it with resources and improve quality of life
>Spend a shit ton of money on media and pro Russian advocacy subverting Ukrainian government through propaganda, dropping dirt on and compromising Ukrainian politicians, propping up the most corrupt Ukrainian politicians they can find, and rubbing the success of the new Russian territories in their faces at every opportunity
>Sabotage Ukrainian infrastructure to further make Ukrainian government look incompetent
>Fuck with them economically buying and selling their bonds and money market instruments and buying out major Ukrainian companies through proxies
>Demand referendums in provinces leaning pro Russian forcing the Ukrainians to either “deny democracy,” roll in military forces leading to civilian backlash, or just give their own country up piece by piece
Instead the tard went full monke and invaded because he didn’t want to wait 20 years.

>>63839045
when retardation surpasses a certain level it's not retardation anymore, it's treason

>>63838928 (OP)
>Was the 8 years of sanction proofing their economy worth the 8 years of allowing the west and UA to prepare for the invasion?
Yes because it means the country didn't immediately collapse.
Russia would've just vanished without Nebulina's nonstop work on disentangling them from the rest of the world.
Running into a wall is bad but there'd be no country to wage war otherwise.

>>63839134
Isnt that basically how China is handling Taiwan? Leaders want to see the change they envision happen in their lifetime which is why so many go full retard instead of accepting that geopolitics is a game with rounds that last multiple generations.

>>63839055
Sanctions killed the T-14 through its dependence on euro electronics, and are currently crippling Russian rail networks as we speak due to an ongoing shortage of critical parts like casette bearings.
It's not just about inconveniencing the populace by depriving them of consoomer goods: it's about hindering the government's ability to produce and maintain infrastructure and military hardware, by making relevant tools and materials more expensive/difficult to acquire.

>>63839266
Now we get to find out if chairman Pooh is smart enough to not fuck it up. I wouldn't bet on it.

>>63839279
plane parts too. they can use cheap chinese shit, but it breaks down faster and are less efficient.

>>63838928 (OP)
Why was it so easy to annex Crimea and so hard to annex the Donbas?

>>63838928 (OP)
They failed because the CIA warned Ukraine about the Hostomel Airport invasion a day prior and Ukrainians had time to fill the airport with MANPADS and have heavy reinforcements posted relatively nearby.
If the VDV helos didn't face heavy resistance during the airfield seizure and they captured the air field and had an early air bridge like they had planned, things might have looked very different. Keep in mind the VDV wasn't supposed to have to fight to take the airport, they were supposed to capture it relatively unopposed and then just hold it while Russia landed all the heavy troops and equipment.
Everyone laughs at the Russians but their plan made a lot of sense, it was just thwarted by western intelligence agencies.

>>63839574
I dont understand. How is one airport that vital to capitulating Ukraine or taking Kiev? Was the entire air force there or does the countries entire logistics get flown in? Can the Russians really not just fly from Belarus to provide air support?

>>63838928 (OP)
>Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
Most probabbly yes. There might've been strong insurgency in the following years but Russians would be able to beat Ukrainian military in 2014.

>>63838928 (OP)
Are they truly sanctioned?

Also they're bypassing it through third countries in India, Middle East and Central Asia so whatever sanctions leveled to them is only half working

>>63839134
He doesn't have that much time left.

>>63839932
It's not about air support, it was about rapidly landing a bunch of tanks and armor in Kiev within a matter of hours, giving the element of surprise.
Instead it turned into Russia version of Market Garden, paratroopers went in and weren't able to receive support. Just like Market Garden an armoured column was sent to support the paratroopers but got bogged down with fierce resistance so wasn't able to make it to the paratroopers in time. By the time the armoured column and troops were able to reach Kiev the Ukrainians already had time to prepare and move an ass load of troops and equipment in for defense.

>>63839932
Because they could've had forces with heavy equipment in the kyiv metro faster than they did, denying Ukraine time to defend

>>63839932
what is there not to understand? capturing the major enemy airfield next to their capitol. then you're quite actually landing all your dudes in their base.

>>63839574
>Ukrainians had time to fill the airport with MANPADS and have heavy reinforcements posted relatively nearby.
Nah. Not at all. VDV died to jist a bunch of fresh conscripts and rear echelon troops.
Yes they fucked up this much.
>We believe the Russian military expected minimal resistance at Hostomel, since only a small number of Ukrainian forces were left to defend the capital. The 72nd mechanized brigade, which was charged with Kyiv’s defense, was still on the move from its garrison south of the city. While many Ukrainian units began moving the day prior, they had not yet reached their planned defensive positions when the airmobile strike force arrived at Hostomel.

Thus, on the morning of the attack, approximately 200 soldiers from the Ukrainian National Guard’s 4th Rapid Reaction Brigade were left to defend the airport. The rapid reaction brigade was a new unit, organized according to NATO standards, combining light infantry, tanks, artillery, and surveillance drones. Ukraine expected Russia’s main effort to be in the Donbas region, so most of the brigade had been moved southeast. The 200 personnel left to guard the airfield were largely new conscripts and rear-echelon troops as opposed to combat soldiers.

>>63839134
>Flood it with resources and improve quality of life
Literally impossible for Russia.

>>63838928 (OP)
They could’ve probably taken Ukraine in 2022 if they invaded with far more than 200k men and actually gave the army time to prepare instead of keeping the whole thing a secret.

>>63840012
t. Retard

Most of the VDV casualties in the initial airfield seizure was from Mi-8s getting shot down before unloading their troops. Once the VDV were on the ground them killed the majority of the 200 national guard and took the airport relatively easy.
The problem was that the VDV didn't receive any support at this point and the Ukrainians launched a heavy counter attack from Ukraine special forces, civilians, and 72nd mechanized brigade, and artillery, which slowly whittled down the lightly armed paratroopers.

Actually do some research instead of just parroting shit you read on 4chan

>>63840012
A helicopter getting shot with a manpad is "heavy resistance," conscripts or not.

>>63839016
They would have had an endless guerilla war if they took the capital retard-kun. Fact of the matter is you can't get a people who wants to resist to stop unless you are able to eradicate every last one willing to resist.

>>63840113
no they wouldn't. ukraine only fights because their leadership stayed intact.

>>63840123
So you don't think Azov or the civvies making molotov coctails in the first week would be willing to fight back if Zelensky got killed?

>>63840143
Maybe for a little bit, but endless gorilla warfare is a fantasy by Ameritards who grew up watching Red Dawn. Majority of Ukraine was pro-russian prior to the CIA backed Maidan revolution in 2014

>>63840123
After 3 years of seeing the horrors implicit in russian occupation? L M A O this war will last untio the last russian leaves ukraine or dies

>>63839988
>>63840000
>>63839994
But why have all that when the element of surprise was already there? Instead of having troops march into deep territory with nothing and then fly in the heavy support equipment, you just have them side by side with fast armored support vehicles and put the petal to the metal with all gas no brakes and B line straight to the airport as soon as the invasion starts and have air support cover them.

Basically what happened at Ouadi Doum Air Base in the Toyota War except with air support.

>>63840143
if ukraine leadership didn't exist, azov would not receive arms to fight. and i don't care about a few people larping with molotovs.

>>63840165
not an occupation yet. the two sides are still fighting.

>>63839055
We never needed those decadent wectern optics anyway!

>>63840168
You have to secure an airfield before you can land cargo planes there, retard. It takes time to land and unload planes, do you really think it's a smart idea to do this undefended? One single destroyed plane on the air strip makes it impossible to land any other planes there.

The plan was for VDV to secure the airport and form a perimeter to keep the enemy far enough back for planes to land and unload armor. This didn't happen due to the reasons previously mentioned.

>>63840197
They would secure it? Who said they wouldn't? If the airfield is the key objective the armies march would stop and defend it until it was secured. Again the whole point is to completely overwhelm their forces at the airport with a large and fast amount of ground forces and armor then guard while support sets up shop. Yeah they'd have more time to prepare defenses in the capital but with the airport secure you have a free life line to drop as much as you need for the battle ahead.

You're talking like im saying to just take it and then drive on past it when that's not what im saying. And the much larger air force can patrol the skies around the airbase from Belarus until its secure enough to house. Its own fighters

Anything that would have saved her would have been an improvement

>>63840070
This. The Ukes had to scramble a QRF to take back Hostomel, and from the WSJ article I read on it at the time, it sounds like it was a hell of a fight. No joke, without advanced warning I think the war would have looked very different. Would it be decisive Monke victory? I dunno about that. But it would have been a hard blow to the Ukes losing Kiev right at the start of the war.

>>63840178
>the russian occupation of territory russia is currently occupying is not actually an occupation
Do you have a brain parasite? I refuse to believe anyone this fucking stupid can be literate without some mitigating circumstance.

>>63839134
the problem is he likely doesn't have 20 years, or at least not in good condition to enjoy his victory

>>63839043
You're retarded. They didn't fail to take the capital because they didn't commit enough stuff, they failed to take the capital because they were confined to a couple shitty roads, ran out of gas, and got stuck in the worst traffic jam in history.
Part of the reason they did better in Kherson and Zaporizha was that they could actually move overland and didn't get stuck.

>>63840891
it's not an occupation if it's contested

>>63840934
you'd have enough gas if your forces weren't split

>>63840934
>and got stuck in the worst traffic jam in history.
Second worst. A certain highway still takes first place.
Napoleon's retreat from Moscow would be a candidate too.

>>63840959
No, because they didn't run out of gas because they didn't have gas on hand, they ran out of gas because they siphoned the tanks to sell it to Belarusian peasants, then had no way of distributing the gas they had back in Belarus to the vehicles in Ukraine. A lot of the trucks that were caught in the traffic jam were gas tankers that had no way of actually driving to the head of the column to refill the trucks that were out of gas.
The northern advance was literally 10m feet wide and 60km long, and there was nothing they could do to make it 15m wide.
It sounds stupid because it *is* stupid.

>>63839266
Chinks are one of the most reactive and impatient retards on the planet. You thinking china has some 5d chess grand strategy just shows you have no clue what is going on behind the language, cultural and censorship wall. Just parroting something you heard that has it origins as a CCP slopagnda

CHYNA is the land of zero coof lunacy, the SARS and wuhan flu, violent takeover of hong kong completely castrating any trust or goodwill, and finally, the land of turd warrior diplomacy.

Taiwan will never willingly submit and is always an independent state no matter what Maos failed empire claims

>>63838928 (OP)
>Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
Possibly, but the resulting occupation would've been a fucking nightmare.

>>63841262
>Taiwan will never willingly submit and is always an independent state no matter what Maos failed empire claims
The Taiwan is not an independent state, it claims the whole China

>>63839574
>Keep in mind the VDV wasn't supposed to have to fight
Their entire invasion plan hinged on them not having to fight. In my mind that makes it a fucking god awful dogshit invasion plan.

>>63841277
Good intelligence and prior warning will ruin any "perfect" plan, anon, no matter how good or how awful you think it is. Maybe the Russian general should have come to you for strategic advice, though

What killed the plan was obsession with 2. The decision was made on 22.02.2002, shown on TV the same day, and actual invasion 2 days later. The ground was too wet for tanks to move offroad. It would've succeed in the summer.

>>63841291
I'm saying their plan was far from "perfect" because so much of it relied on the Ukrainians just not putting up a fight.
Not letting their troops know what was happing was an interesting choice as well.

>>63841338
>not letting their troops know what was happening
This is a 4chan meme mate

>>63841346
We have direct testimony from POWs that claim they were told they were there for a training mission in Belarus.

>>63838928 (OP)
The rule of thumb is that you don't attack until you're not sure of the victory. The capture of Crimea and Donbabwe was the best Putin could do at the moment.

>>63839988
This sounds like a plan designed by someone who's understanding of how transports work is derived entirely from RTS'es and not actual reality fucking kek if this was the actual plan Russians are absolutely retard.

Can someone explain why is nothing going on in this area, apart from current and limited offensive in Sumy? Ukrainian capital is right there, less than 200 km from the Belarussian border and 230 km from the Russian border. Why not just launch an offensive from that direction to capture the capital?

>>63841338
In their defense, it worked perfectly well in Crimea.
>But it'd been 8 years, anon! So much had changed, they should have known it wouldn't work twice!
Maybe. But keep in mind the guy who had tried to put up a fight after the seperatists tried breaking away was forced out of office because the people lost faith in him, and they elected a fucking TV star whose only qualification was successfully providing an escapist fantasy for Ukrainians where their government was functional and less corrupt. For all their fuck ups, I'm willing to cut the Russians a little slack for getting surprised by Zelensky actually having a spine.

It's also worth noting that the south remained a hotbed of Russian loyalism, with Melitopol surrendered with hardly a shot.

>>63841392
I am equally confused by this.

>>63841392
Because it is Belarus

>>63841398
>Zelensky actually having a spine.
In his 20ths Zelensky was a captain of a team in the "KVN" TV game, where he had to improvise a lot live on air. For him giving up would've been something like for an artist giving up on the playing the role of his whole life. So his persistence was not surprising at all.

>>63841403
And Russian border is right next to it.

>>63841431
Russian border is on teh other side of Dnepr

>>63841392
>Why not just launch an offensive from that direction to capture the capital?
They tried it with 100k-200k men and failed miserably. They don't have the means to try again. At this point it would take decades for them to build up the forces needed to make an honest attempt.

>>63841444
That isn't a big problem. Reaching Kiev (again) would already be a huge success.

>>63838928 (OP)
Yes.

>>63841475
now post dates of these articles

>>63841392
with what fucking troops? if they pull from other fronts they either get pushes into donbabwe or kursk 2.0, another mobilisation is out of the question since its the one thing that might rock putins powerbase

>>63841370
No we don't, /pol/ and /k/ told you we did

>>63841473
Now it's a war of attrition anyway its goal is to wear down the entire Ukrainian army and force it to surrender. It is not possible to conduct maneuver operations when armor is so vulnerable to drones.

>>63841518
re

tard

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/28/world/europe/russian-soldiers-phone-calls-ukraine.html#

inb4
>nyt

>>63841494
Mobilization would rock teh economy as there's near zero unemployment and each drafted person is one less worker in enterprises. Many of them just won't survive another loss of workers. The only way to do a large mobilization is to return to command economy, and Putin obviously doesn't want it. He even haven't declared martial law as it would've invalidated every contract with force majeure clause.

>>63841392
Probably a few reasons
>can’t spare the manpower
>draw attention away from the East
>ukraine built up defenses there just in case this happened again

>>63839279
The Su-57 also hasn't gone anywhere because of sanctions.

>>63841559
that too

>>63841262
Bro they even got the KMT to be pro CCP. The populace doesnt give a shit about the grudge of the old. The average Taiwanese is more favorable to China than they were 20 years ago. They dont have to do anything but slowly influence them into being pro Beijing.

>>63839279
If only companies like Siemens would get sanctioned until they stop providing ongoing software support for Russian CNC manufacturing, which their military is almost completely reliant upon.

>>63839279
>>63839447
>plane parts too. they can use cheap chinese shit, but it breaks down faster and are less efficient.
Their whole civilian aviation is absolutely fucked, the all-russian versions of mc-21, SJ-100 or the Baikal are getting pushed back year after year and no wonder when you suddenly try to replace 60% of the plane with less efficient parts that you somehow scrounged together

>>63841392
They've fortified defenses. It'd be too hard to attack it now. That's why surprise attacks are so important.

>>63842121
Maybe it's for the better long term? That's a good way to push your national industries and force them to improve, even if it's painful at first. At least they can source their own titanium locally.

>>63838928 (OP)
> Was the 8 years of sanction proofing their economy
Its not some sophisticated "sanction proofing", its the fact that the world loves them some cheap oil and gas and china is supplying 95% of consumer goods - the budget dont go empty, and average person dont really have to adjust their consumer behaviour. Long term sanctions might have killed some fancy stuff like domestic passenger jets and armatas and the like, or cut off long-term growth of prosperity, but short-term - they didnt do much to putin's beloved "stability".
> Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
Absolutely. Ukrainian army has been in steady decline all those years after fall of ussr up to 2014 because "who are we even gonna fight, nato? first - why, second - they'll stomp us. russia? again - why, and its not gonna end well too".
Someone mentioned georgia - georgia prepared for a fight of some kind, ukraine did the opposite, steadily decomissioning and neglecting stuff and happily letting ammo stockpiles burn every summer - treating it like a seasonal natural phenomenon.
> If they could surely hard hitting sanctions but a pacified Ukraine would be a lesser headache than what they have now no?
If executed immediately after/during crimea, it probably would not even look like a war, something more akin to "csto" operation in kazakhstan in january of 2022 - roll in amid confusion, kick in the face few who resist, declare martial law, install yanukovich-mkII, make sure he has sufficiently supplied and loyal law enforcement(imported if needed), leave in a month or two.
Sanctions for that wouldnt even be that hard.

>>63838928 (OP)
> Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
Maybe, but you have to realize that the 2014 Russia (starting with Putin and down to the more triggerhappy mil characters) was not nearly as daring. I'm sure there are people in Kremlin now really pulling their hair out for not being more active back then, but they needed to convince themselves they could do it.

On the other hand, "worth" is subjective, and if you want to predict Russian moves you have to be able to understand what is worth what to Putin. I expected the invasion to be a nothingburger, so at this point I know I don't understand Putin, and I distrust anyone who says they can.

>>63842188
>Its not some sophisticated "sanction proofing", its the fact that the world loves them some cheap oil and gas
The other thing is that there was difficulty tracking the real state of Russian economy even when there was open data on it. The most notable thing is unemployment: Russia has always had generally low figures. Part of it is deliberate semi-formal and informal gov intervention targeted at keeping this measure low to keep investors from panicking - state owned enterprises like Gazprom are encouraged to furlough or part-time their workers as opposed to laying them off. The other part of that is the extremely low unemployment payouts - an average Russian knows that if he gets fired the unemployment will not be enough to buy food let alone make rent, so they will get a shittier job ASAP.

>>63842186
>Maybe it's for the better long term? That's a good way to push your national industries and force them to improve, even if it's painful at first
That's debatable because the planes will be objectively worse, the first decade at least (if i remember it right the MC21 will be 6 tonnes heavier and get less efficient engines on top), so the only outside customers you will get will be those that don't have any other choice
Now, you could go full autarky and still build a competitive aviation industry but that would require sums that would make even the saudis wince
Kinda similar to car manufacturing, only with an even bigger barrier of entry, every shithole this side of Belarus could produce shitboxes for internal demand but to be successful outside you'd need to challenge the big companies that already source parts from all over the world

>>63841533
>inb4 you point out I am not using a credible source
Jew York Times was also reporting on the 6 million babies Hamas beheaded on October 7

1. They didn't spend 8 years "sanction proofing their economy" (outside just accumulating more money in reserves), they've spend that on military preparations. New army detachments were created and fielded, rearming was done, new logistic bases created, new roads and rail lines built to support the invasion and so on and so forth.
2. In 2014 they were an order of magnitude weaker than in 2022. Less missiles, less drones, less trained soldiers (they've used the campaign in Syria to buff up everything), less options for recon and communication. Hence why their "proxy" forces (not really proxy, just glowies and retards operating without insignia) got BTFO'd by a makeshift civilian militia composes of football hooligans with civilian weapons and they had do throw in a full blown tank army to save them from collapse, encountering a ton of losses in the process.
3. It was their fuck ups in 2014 that forced them to stand down and double down on preparations.

>>63842561
re planes, I will translate a copypasta from 2ch.hk for anons' interest. This is from something around 2018 or 17.
Based on that, I think it might take a lot more than a decade.

> I'll try to explain to you briefly why Russia cannot into aviation.
>
> In 2009, a person appeared on an aviation forum with a question about whether an American turboprop engine could work mounted upside down. People were surprised, but gave him some advice. When people started asking the author why the fuck he needed this, they were shocked that the person works at SibNIIA, wants to build airplanes, but asks for advice on a random forum. So, with a used American engine 10 years ago, the story of the AN2-MS and TVS2-DTS began. In a couple of years, the institute was able to put an American engine into an AN-2, but with such hacks that programmers could not even dream of. Since with the removal of the piston engine there was no compressor, the plane was left without brakes. It flew like that for the first few flights, then they bolted on an electric fucking compressor! They still fly and even sell airplanes like that. An entire fucking factory and institute could not make regular hydraulic brakes on the wheels.

1/3(?)

>>63842632
2/3

> Let's move on. The product somehow flew and the institute wanted money. No testing, no certification, NOTHING, but they need money. Bring us the remains of your AN-2, 300K, or better yet 500K dollars and pick up the AN-2MS in a month. Now the appetites have grown up to 60 million rubles. Everyone is whining and complaining about the American sanctions. Although they want 40,000 euros for the engine mount frame (two rings and 4 rods from 30KhGSA) of their own production. 40k euros for 10 meters of 1-inch round stock. Even for this money, customers were found. What the hell can they do? They need to fly, but there is nothing to fly on. They successfully showed the project to Putin with all this crap, and he approved it. Only because of this, Rosaviatsiya sort of issued a permit for passenger transportation on this product. Although I can't stand these fucks from Leningradka, but here they were right, apparently they resisted until the last, and a full certificate was sort of never issued. The result of all this action were two disasters: in Mongolia, after which we were kicked the fuck out of there, and in Naryan-Mar. Since Vova himself approved the project, no one was imprisoned, it was all hushed up. But the institute didn't give a shit anymore.

>>63842638
3/4, sorry
> They were in full swing putting to use the 4 billion that Vova allocated for the development of a new prop aircraft and in 2017 they presented to the world a "fully composite biplane that has no analogues in the world." A biplane, fucking composite, with a takeoff weight of 7 tons, which is complete bullshit for a single-engine aircraft, with a range of 3000 km, to which it can only carry pilots and their slippers, with a price tag of over 5 million dollars. The funniest thing is that there was nothing Russian in this plane. The plastic is Italian, the engine and electronics are from the States. But they had to somehow account for 4 billion. They decided to launch production with Kazan carbon fiber and with an Omsk engine. Omsk was shocked. They abandoned the TVD-20 back in the 90s, as soon as it became clear that neither the An-3 nor the An-28 would be produced. They blew the dust off the blueprints and said that they were ready to make an engine, but for 60-65 million apiece. For comparison, the American one with the propeller costs 450k in Russia, including customs and delivery. The Kazan carbon fiber turned out to be different from the Italian one, and to use it, the entire plane would have to be redesigned. Meanwhile, the government remembered the 4 billion and asked about the plane. After six months of searching for a scapegoat and all sorts of meetings, a Solomonic decision was made. Give another billion and a half, but not to the Siberians, but to the Muscovites so that they can design a normal aluminum airplane in the shortest possible time, since no plant in the world builds fully composite airplanes. The Siberians, in turn, did not want to lose their piece of the pie, and through the head of Buryatia, they lobbied for the production of their plastic wonder of technology. At a plywood factory. An abandoned plywood factory. For all this, they are asking for 10 billion in funding for the construction of the factory itself.

>>63839134
>Flood it with resources and improve quality of life
They did pump out a ton of resources, but that didn't help much. Because quality of life is impossible when it's outside mosqueov and partially pidorsburg. Because that's the nature of centralized empires. So all the resources were acquired by cronies on overblown PR projects. While a regular local got fucked because they started to get their stuff "redistributed" from them kek.

>>63842649
4/4
> That's the kind of fucked up situation with the little prop cropduster. It's even worse with superjets and MS-21s.

>>63839134
>improve quality of life
i stopped reading right there.

>>63839279
It wasn't sanctions that killed the T-14 project, but lack of money. All of the interesting wunderwaffe projects were planned and put in motion before 2014 when the regime in russia used retarded assumptions for their long-term economic planing, which included oil going over $250 per barrel, which it did not. And even with $100 per barrel their economic growth model basically stopped working by 2012-2014. Hence since then the focus of the regime was to view people as "the new oil" and extract wealth from them, creating new systems of taxes, tariffs and other paid systems which were mandatory for use.

>>63840414
kek ukr lads have shown me videos of freaking dudes with bomber jackets that were handed a damn ak and some mags dumping magazines on chechen niggers. VDV and their chechen pets got madly MOGGED by disorganised defence that simply rushed to stop the charge. When the defence got oriented the attackers were flushed.

>>63842666
Well that and the conversion of all the funding to yachts, luxury housing, and hookers.

>>63841392
related to potatoman unwillingness to join the war

>>63839134
Had Hitler continued his trick to boost the economy and pressured Poland and the West for the return of Danzig et al, or offered to buy it from Poland, while championing helping Finland against the Soviet hordes, Hitler could have gotten everything he wanted. He could have gotten France and UK involved with fighting USSR (France and UK were preparing to send troops to Finland to help them), could have told Japan they could go into Russia and take their oil instead of involving the empires. Tell USA that the eastern part of Russia is open for them and tell Turkey they could take the Caucasus. Hitler then gets everything he promised as well as a a world that is happy for them to exist. As long as he didn't go full retard and do the genocide thing (which was diametrically opposed to the West's beliefs) he could have died a STD infected drug addict in peace and somebody reasonable could have come in and Hitler would be famous as a great German leader rather than the moron he was. But Hitler was autistic and impatient and he thought neither UK nor France would honour their agreements with Poland. So he rushed it.

Now do you see why your idea of 'just wait 20 years bro' is retarded. FSB stated that Ukraine needed an additional year to eighteen months to be suitably infiltrated and subverted but Putin rushed in because he didn't want more aid to get to Ukraine or some shit, magic meme numbers. He had already waited 8 years. COVID had spooked him. He knew how easy it was for him to just die without seeing his glory achieved. So he thought Ukraine would be over in a few days. Then he could get Georgia. Possibly diplomatically 'solve' the issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan as 'peace keepers' (aka annex them - can't argue over territory if it is all Russian now lol). Things seem logical in hindsight but dictators don't work on that logic.

>>63838928 (OP)

How about an alternative of no thrust to kiev, just that horseshit about liberating donbebwe and I can't africanize Luhaz I just keep thinking Lufthansa.

But right, could Russia have just gone up to the river, went "We're protecting these Russian speakers", and won in 2022?

>>63842950
> donbebwe and I can't africanize Luhaz
The canonical version is "Donbabwe and Luganda".

And yes they potentially could, but (a) that would have required them to not treat this as Crimea-2, which they obviously did and (b) that would have required them to have a completely different understanding of what "winning" means. And both of these would have required Putin not to be a deluded retard, at which point there would probably have been no war whatsoever.

>>63842934
That's a mandatory constant factor for the regime and many other post-soviet systems.

>>63839266
China is missing a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to tiawan, thier last chance for peaceful integration ended when the island became democratic
It is now impossible for mainland China to offer a higher quality of life than Taiwan because joining China means losing that democracy

>>63839134
>step one of the plan
>be benevolent
ain't happening chief
>>63839266
no? especially after russia invasion

>>63839951
Anon they tried to invade in 2014, the whole "it was just donbass militias" thing was a cope to cover up for the fact that they couldn't
They waited 8 years for the follow-up attempt because that's how long it took them to recover from attempt #1

>>63840161
Don't be stupid anon, there are living Ukrainians who were alive the last time Ukraine was under russian control
THAT is why they fight so hard, they know what's coming if they lose

>>63841276
Only because mainland China has promised to invade them if they stop

>>63840161
>Majority of Ukraine was pro-russian prior to the CIA backed Maidan revolution in 2014
I don't think "pro-russian" is the right way to put it, but "not anti-russian", yes. Maidan was about Yanukovych refusing to turn the country towards the EU, because Ukrainians expected being EU-affiliated to be much more profitable for them individually (read: more and better gibs) than Russia-affiliated. But outright hate for Russians was something normal only among marginal nationalist movements.
Hell, it even stayed not extremely widespread (or limited to lip service) until 2022. Post-soviet people, generally, are not as politically active as Americans, and want to just be left alone to better their lives (although Ukrainians are more politically engaged than e.g. Belarusians or Kazakhs, because the country uniquely has more than one center of political power and somewhat independent regions).
But by now, of course, that ship has sailed (although I expect the fatigue to become higher as the draft goes on).

>>63843102
>because Ukrainians expected being EU-affiliated to be much more profitable for them individually (read: more and better gibs) than Russia-affiliated
Naive, it was never about gibs (hence why nobody cared about potential financial aid from russia), It was about basic bitch things of being a normal country. The gibs part was actually a donbas thing, where a chunk of the population was more soviet and paternalistic in nature and thus expected "investments from russia", despite any investments from russia always following a shitfest, such as buying a controlling stake in the factory and dismantling it to be shipped off back into russia kek.

>>63842632
>>63842638
>>63842649
>>63842655
Fucking great stuff
What a shitshiw

>>63843122
To be clear I don't just mean investment or grants when I say gibs (although the amount of money EU poured into e.g. Lithuania or Latvia is incomparable with anything Russia would or could have done). Labour market access was another thing too because a lot of Ukrainians sent remittances home. That's why visa-free access to the EU for seasonal work was such a big deal, and that's why Poroshenko still has a lot of popular support despite the corruption and/or being an oligarch.

Does "sanction proofing" in Russia's case just mean "making the best of having no access to precison manufacturing"?

>>63843165
>that's why Poroshenko still has a lot of popular support despite the corruption and/or being an oligarch
Poroshenko was done dirty by both local media and russia propaganda. The amount of reforms during his presidency was insane.

>>63838928 (OP)
>sanction proofing
Anyone remember the stolen Swedish speeding cameras?

>>63842607
>They didn't spend 8 years "sanction proofing their economy"
They did something though.
introduced a national payment system (so that visa/mc exiting was not much of an issue).
Developed a domestic SWIFT replacement (for some reason blocking SWIFT was actively discussed in 2014 but not implemented until 2022 - so Russia had time to prepare).
Somewhat migrated critical systems to domestic software (it is still Linux indeed but at least they control the build process).

>>63843200
> Somewhat migrated critical systems to domestic software (it is still Linux indeed but at least they control the build process).
Related to that was encouraging the local SWE industry. This not so critical and matters more for optics and individual Russians not feeling the impact on their consumption habits, but it mattered that AWS, GCP and Azure pulling out was not a big deal and did not suddenly bring down the entire Russian internet, because everyone was on Yandex, Selectel and Alibaba clouds anyway.

>>63838928 (OP)
>Now here's how Muscovy could have won!
Hahahahaha, fuck you to death, Russian faggot.

>>63840070
They didn't exactly wipe out the garrison. They regrouped and with reinforcements and support, basically annihilated the VDV's best units. https://youtu.be/r0Ji7KqqEqg

>>63841370
"...this has training mission written all over it, why else would they keep our orders from us for so long?"

>>63841966
He's wrong about the Taiwanese having no fondness for the mainland, but you're wrong that the KMT are pro-Communist Party. What the KMT is, is pro-unification. If you knew their history, this would not surprise you. They do not see themselves as Taiwanese, but as Chinese, and with the decades they have felt less like Chinese in exile. But make no mistake that they think they'd be the ones running the show, a thought that is about as wishful as Chaing's dream of going home after fleeing there some seventy years ago.

Other parties in Taiwan think of themselves more as Taiwanese, and not Chinese, and so are more leery about what reunification would mean for them.

>>63842944
To be fair, the risks are always calculated. France and Britain had been emphatic that Czechoslovakia was a red line, and then when he swallowed the thing whole there was nothing worse than meek protests that it wasn't what they'd agreed to in Munich.

Additionally, thinking the Japs would go in on Russia is misguided, desu. They'd gotten their noses bloodied in the border skirmishes in the '30s, and actually honored their neutrality pact with the Soviets when Barbarossa got launched. The story goes that they got so used to it that the invasion of Manchuria in '45 caught them by surprise, something you'd expect a people as perfidious as the slants to have seen coming. Point is, I doubt that Hitler being on the same page as the Allies would have been enough to prevent a Japanese collision with them, or us, in the Pacific.

I would also point out that the genocide was non-negotiable. The whole crux of Nazism was that the Jews must be purged lest they corrupt what Hitler & Co. were building, and the Slavs must be subjugated as an inferior people, to be treated much like the Indians and Africans had been by the British and French. There are ways one could conceive of the war ending better for the Nazis, but I don't think it could have been avoided, as much as Hitler may have wished it to be so.

>>63843476
Bot post

>>63843666
The wiped out or routed the entire garrison, reinforcement came in the form of 3rd Special Purpose battalion and 72nd mechanized and civilian fighters. The video you posted is from a heavily biased pro-ukraine about, btw. Check out his Mauripol video and you'll see he doesnt give an unbiased account at all

>>63843780
Right you are but the KMT itself has acknowledged it can not go back to that position from where they came. Instead it wants to evoke the time when the KMT was unified with the communist under Yat Sen. I beleive their argument is that they won't oppose unification under the PRC but demand that the KMT party be a peer either as a second party or faction inside the CPC.

I think Chinas strategy is to infiltrate and warm people up to this idea and then through bribery, subversion or intimidation control KMT leadership so if peaceful unification does happen and the KMT gets their wish they'll be controlled opposition that is filled with CPC plants and effectively influence nothing and be just another group of CPC cadremen by any other name.

But that's probably why they lost their elections and finally no longer became the ruling party as Taiwanese saw what was happening and would much rather just be peaceful with China but stress independence, and have no problem being seen as Chinese Taipei and maintaining status quo

The Greens hate both parties equally from what I hear but theyre an outlier and probably won't ever gain enough of a following to take the majority.

Slowly influencing the KMT is pretty much their only strategy outside of war and that seems to be what theyre trying to do atm

>>63843960
I'll give you that. Like I said, it seemed to me that the KMT had some fantasy that they'd actually be relevant in a reunified China, and your suggested explanation of Communist subversion doesn't strike me as fanciful.

>>63843915
glavset hooker

>>63843949
Check incel slava Z for more info on this that western media trying to berry.

>>63844177
I don't speak vodkabot

>>63838992
>just focus on the capital.
They had a 40km long convoy that got bogged down due to logistical constraints. You can't throw more men and materiel at the capital than they already did, at least not without taking that airport. Attacking other areas was a good way to at least draw out Ukraine's resources and force them to concentrate on other operations as well.
The real issue is that they didn't mobilise initially. All their best units were undermanned and got mauled before they started mobilising. Once they finally got the appropriate mass of bodies, they lacked the trained and well equipped units to act as the force multiplier.

>>63844238
You should, considering you are one.

>>63844250
Someone tell monke putler that his bots are glitching out again.

>>63844265
Is feigning schizophrenia supposed to work on people? How's that going for you?

>>63844270
Idk youre the vatnik bot confusing posts as your comrades. So why dont you tell me.

Was worth it in the long term. Back in 2014 Russia didn't have its own financial system, didn't have large industrial base, had much smaller and weaker economy, didn't even have basic food security. The kind of sanctions introduced against Russia today would have actually devastated it ten years ago, not spurred it into becoming largest economy in Europe and a military industrial giant outproducing the entirety of NATO. The world was a much different place too ten years ago. China-US war still seemed avoidable, if not impossible. G7 still had larger share of global economy than BRICS. Multipolarity was just crazy talk, not a matter of fact.

Although you could make an argument that Russia would have achieved quick and decisive military victory over Ukraine in 2014. But what after it? Get crushed by sanctions and still have hostile military alliance on your doorstep? Being less technically prepared for it too as stand-off systems like Kalibr and Iskander were still in their infancy. The overall military, industrial, economic and political balance would have been just tilted further in NATO's favor as a result. Achieving victory now would place Russia in a far better strategic position for the next war than a quick victory achieved ten years ago.

>>63844327
All of the discussion about "victory in 2014" or "victory now" really misses the fact that nobody understands what the hell "victory" looks like for Russians.
Total subjugation of Ukraine w/ puppet regime is obviously out of reach now, and most likely would have failed to stick in 2014. And if not that... what? Denial of NATO membership? Even if you theoretically impose that, I have no idea how it could be durably achieved. E.g. Japan is only notionally demilitarized by now. Full Donetsk+Lugansk oblasts? That's not a victory, that's saving face. Land corridor to Crimea? What else?

>>63844383
The joke is NATO membership is probably the only thing that can stop Ukraine from acting like Israel and taking back a slice of its former territories every decade or two. Regardless of Ukraine's former status, the AFU will continue morphing into a capable NATO-pattern military funded by Europe. Because it's cheaper to fight the russians via a proxy. Meanwhile, the best case scenario for russia is a long-term economic crisis.

>>63844413
That seems to depend on what NATO looks like. If it stays as it is now, still mostly centered on the US - I agree with you, Ukrainians would love NATO membership but it's not in anyone else's interest, they're more valuable as a non-article-5 thorn in Russia's side.
If the US informally disengages from NATO or even leaves properly - things could look differently. I think if NATO devolves to being just EU, it would be more valuable to cut the losses by ceasefire uti possidentis, then fast-tracking the still independent Ukraine to membership, because it really doesn't change much for a "EU-NATO", they already have members bordering Russia and being terribly scared about it.

>>63842655
>>63842649
>>63842638
>>63842632
>In 2009, a person appeared on an aviation forum with a question about whether an American turboprop engine could work mounted upside down. People were surprised, but gave him some advice. When people started asking the author why the fuck he needed this, they were shocked that the person works at SibNIIA, wants to build airplanes,
My sides, this is even worse than i expected kek
This shit reads straight like a "swap a $500 ls1 into your shitbox in an afternoon" pasta, only not $500 but 4 billions, not an ls1 but a discontinued Lada engine and not an afternoon but fucking decades

>Based on that, I think it might take a lot more than a decade.
Yeah, the decade was the low estimate,without even taking the "corrupt shithole" problems into account
The fun shit is that the Baikal project is still ongoing and it recently turned out that they fucked up some calculations and the plane will need a twice as long runway as planned, making it not viable for most landing strips it was supposed to operate from, so they want another 10 billion rubles and 5 years to fix it
The situation is so bad that Solovyev sperged out about it in his shop calling the designers to be shot kek

>>63844413
i think a collapse of ukraine and transformation into belarus 2.0 is not off the table. help from europe is miniscule and sluggish, american help is on the way out. eventually ukraine will have to compromise and then russia will be the one taking ukraine piece by piece and with glowie election manipulations.

>>63840000
What game is that from?

>>63839134
If Russia could do that, they wouldn't invade Crimea as developing Russia would be easier and a greater reward.

>>63844327
>would have actually devastated it ten years ago
Russian economy was and is devastated now retard.

>spurred it into becoming largest economy in Europe
In what retarded la-la-land is russian economy the largest?

>military industrial giant outproducing the entirety of NATO
Is this trolling?

>>63844850
Jagged Alliance 2

>>63843949
>>63844182
>Send detachment of your finest soldiers
>Send them all to capture a contested airport deep inside enemy territory
>Surprised when they shoot down your helicopters
>Surprised when they don't just let you take the airport
>Surprised when they actually launch a counter-attack
>Surprised when the reinforcements STILL IN RUSSIA AND BELARUS don't make it in time to save their asses
>It's the fault of the perfidious Anglos and le heckin' western intelligence!!!!!
>Meanwhile the entire world knew 3 days in advance Russia was massing on the border

Is this the power of the 2nd largest army in the world?

>>63845415
Thanks. I suspected that, but I have played JA2 for a whopping half an hour or so and most of it was trying to deal with the interface and getting rekt by some dudes in shitty huts. Is it worth powering through?

>>63840326
>>63840197
Quick question; what about the blunder at Hostomel could not have been accomplished if it weren't done on day 1 of the invasion?
Ideally, you get everything done ASAP, but what REALLY would have changed if they did it after already establishing land routes to Hostomel?

A propaganda victory. That is why those men were sent on a one way trip to Hostomel. No grand strategic plan, no cunning ruse or masterful feint; a fucking political stunt for updoots.

>>63845469
>>63845518
Damn, armchair generals on /k/ really have all the answers, Russian high command should have come on /k/ for strategic advice. Clearly you know more than them

>>63845469
It really is strange for a 4channer to sit there and glaze western deep state intelligence and globohomo. Makes me wonder if you're a real genuine poster

>>63838981
>they really struggled against georgia
???
they achieved their objective in like 3 weeks, overall they did fine despite some tactical blunders
>they werent even close to being ready for a full scale invasion in 2014.
they werent ready in 2022 either, however in 2014 ukraine was fragmented and there was no cohesion in their military command, if they went in with 200k men like they did in 2022 i think ukraine would've folded.
they captured the entirety of crimea without firing a shot pretty much.

>>63845541
The results speak for themselves.

>>63838928 (OP)
>Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
No. Russian logistics was tapped out just supporting the seperatists.

>>63845542
>they achieved their objective
Cool it with revisionism. They've planned full occupation and regime change with a trial (and potential execution) for Saakashvili.

>>63845541
>Russian high command should have come on /k/ for strategic advice
Unironically should have in 22, they couldve just done nothing and been better for it

>>63838928 (OP)
>Would they have taken kyiv/kiev if they had gone in at 2014?
yeah easily, but Russia isn't warmongers so they gave ukraine a chance to prove it's not just a shit proxy, ukrainians failed and are now paying the price

>>63840161
>the CIA shot 40 million Ukrainians with their dislike Russia gun

>>63841392
It didn't work the first time and that was when Russia still had the 1st Guards Tank Army. 50-year-old mobiks in Ladas aren't going to capture Kyiv.

>>63838928 (OP)
they fucking tried.

i'm tired of people pretending they didn't. everyone in the world just watched it happen and pretended they didn't, because to admit that the west still thought it was more comfortable to offer a soft exit from a war of conquest than to admit what was happening. the free democracies of the world watched a war of conquest and decided to just act like it didn't happen. it was easier that way, easier to pretend that russia's narrative had some amount of truth to it, after all, ukraine had just had a change of government and was unstable, any support would just mean they collapse a handful of weeks later.

when the attacks stalled, when they found people who didn't just roll over and submit to them, things got brutal. for a while i remember occasionally some of the videos the chechens were making would get put up here too. raping and executing children to try and coerce the ukes into giving up easy. meanwhile putin just pretended that he dindunuffin and that the west was being so mean asking him what was happening there and telling him he should just stop and we can all pretend like it didn't happen. somehow russia couldn't win against a bunch of local retards who picked up whatever they could from deserters and shot back, because they were cowards who couldn't commit enough to see the job done in the first place. the ukes military was completely fucking shattered, nobody was in charge, and they still couldn't fucking do it.

>>63846076
They'd get trolled and said to forgo all other fronts and go all in with the Dollar Store D-Day

>>63839466
They already had their troops in Sevastopol since they leased the base from Ukraine. Plus look at a map, there's two roads into Crimea and the actual land connection to Ukraine is barely 40 miles across.

>>63838928 (OP)
"Sanction proofing" was a cope for having to adjust to even the mildlsanctions they got hit with after 2014.

>>63839016
Okay, and? "Just focus on the capital" wouldn't have changed that, only made the doomed push for the capital cost them even more.

>>63839043
THe cpaital was extremely well defended. Sending 90% of the forces there wouldn't have achieved anything more than what they did, given they were unable to put togehter the logistics even for that. More troops without any ammo, fuel or ability to get there would have been worse than useless.

>>63838928 (OP)
I don't think Ukraine could've won against them with just the 2014 preparation, no. Those 8 years did wonders for letting Ukraine arm itself quickly.

>>63845505
It's one of the most /k/ games of all time. JA3 is pretty nice, too, and a bit more newcomer-friendly. Far less modding content, tho.

>>63844327
LOL. LMAO, even. Russia is right now in worse shape than it has been at any point since the late 90's.

>the largest economy in Europe
LMAO. That why it's smaller than Italy and in active collapse?

>military industrial giant
That why it has to use meatwaves and beg North Korea for something as basic as artillery shells? Russia can't even outproduce singular NATO members.

>The world was a much different place too ten years ago.
Yes. Russia was a lot better off comapratively back then, in virtually any way notable. Then monke went full retard and got himself sanctioned over Crimea, and it's been downhill ever since.

>muh BRICS
ROFL.

>Achieving victory now would place Russia in a far better strategic position for the next war
ITT, utterly delusional and clueless vatniks actually believe this.

>>63845541
>muh deep state
>muh globohomo
Fuck off back to /pol/, tourist.

>>63846649
You're right on most points, but describing russian economy as "in active collapse" broadens the definition of "collapse" so much it stops being useful. Sanctions have hurt it, absolutely, it's in the worst position ever since 90s, yes, but "collapse" is corralito-era Argentine or 2009 Greece and we're not seeing that yet. The average Russian still isn't picking nettle from the sidewalks to make soup.

>>63844327
>not spurred it into becoming largest economy in Europe and a military industrial giant outproducing the entirety of NATO
lol.

>>63846950
>in active collapse
Because Putin introduced draconian economic policies to keep it going. Which cannot last long term. What he did was FORCE banks to give loans to 'war critical companies' on favourable terms even if the companies were literally incompetent and in massive debt and could never pay the loan back. But they were forced to do this. So loads of companies lied and pretended they were vital for said war to get the good loans. All the way these banks are now on the hook for loads of financially risky loans... And what happens when the banks are fucked by this? It means they have to be bailed out by the state, which means more taxes and other things.

Could the West put on actual proper hardcore sanctions and fuck Russia properly? Sure. Will they? Nope. They don't even care enough to close loop-holes. Sanctions were never meant to destroy Russia, it was just 'W-w-we're doing something!' response.

>>63847009
State bailing out a bank in Russia is not the same thing than it is in the US or EU. For one, income taxes never meant much for the Russian budget, bailing out a significant player or their creditor is a lot likelier to involve drawing on the sovereign wealth fund than it is to hike taxes. And generally, even before 2022, anyone who knew anything about the Russian economy knew that MIC, O&G and a few other industries did not play by the same rules as anyone else.

Yes, they are currently expending a lot of money to keep the system going. Yes, it can eventually give, and yes, once it gives it can look a lot more like the definition of "collapse" we're used to, but the situation is not at that point right now.

>>63839266
>Isnt that basically how China is handling Taiwan?

PRC destroyed any fringe credibility they had with Chinese Unionists in their handling of Hong Kong and the violation of every guarantee they made. Which was Xi going full Monke because he couldn't handle the idea of free speech in one single city.

>>63846950
>The average Russian still isn't picking nettle from the sidewalks to make soup.
Things like that literally are impossible to happen in a non-closed economy. For all the bullshit czar monke has done, he is at least somewhat mindful of how USSR fucked itself by being rigid in economy issues.

>we're not seeing that yet
The civilian economy is collapsing literally before our eyes. The state higher ups literally publicly saying that by 2027 no new housing might be built for example.

>>63840161
>Ukrainians have no political agency! A country not sucking Russia's dick is muh CIA!

>>63847817
It's not a conspiracy theory or my opinion, it's a verifiable fact and the people involved openly talk about it that US intelligence agencies were behind the Maidan coup

>>63848156
May I see it?

>>63840161
>>63848156

>>63839134
If putin was competent enough for russia to not be a shithole conflict would never happen in first place since ukrainians wouldnt be willing to fight against gov for not signing treaties with eu

>>63838928 (OP)
>8 years of sanction proofing their economy
it was mostly having India ordering sanctioned electronics that were then shipped to Russia. more sanction evasion than proofing.

>>63845505
>but I have played JA2 for a whopping half an hour or so
What a mess. Where's the dignity?

Seriously though. I've been playing it since the demo. That I got from a PCGamer Magazine demo cd. Remember those days?

https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=msg&th=24648&goto=361643&#msg_361643

>>63841392
>attack on dogshit roads that have been mined and fortified amidst swamps and forests

>>63839466
Crimea - effectively no ukrainian government or chain of command during it happening; crimea itself being an "autonomous republic" simplifying things for a takeover; advantegeous geographic position and russian troops being stationed in sevastopol; lightning-fast execution. One day there's seemingly nothing happening except for unassuming mild protests/counterprotests seen across the country; the next the "green men" flood the streets, lock down every ukrainian military base and government building with a threat of "sit tight on your asses, dont try anything funny or else" while everybody understands everything about who they really are and who is behind them and unwilling to "provoke le mighty russia into actual war", then the government of crimea declares independence and soon after - a "referendum" and annexation. Less than a month since putin saying "go" till russia proclaiming crimea its region - a surgical strike against opponent confused and frozen with fear.
Also of course important to note that crimea isnt just another chunk of land for russian, eh, "imperial thought" - besides practical reasons of being a base for black sea fleet, its a powerful symbol of past military glories, a monument to accomplishments of empire at its peak, etc. From this point of view, it simply doesnt feel right to not have a crimea as a part of russia. Putin most likely shares this view, and, that might be a controversial thing to say, but not insignificant part of crimean population also did and does.
(also have some original content - a tank destroyed in summer 2014 at one of two, no longer remember which one, interchanges south of luhansk. photos taken 31 of january, 2015)

>>63848467
Donbass is a different thing. On top of obvious differences from crimea, its "just a piece of land", those talks about "protecting muh russian speakers" is bs. I believe that incorporating it into russia wasnt a plan from the start. That is why instead of carefully planned and quickly executed operation it got girkin and co who proceeded to larp as an epic insurgency leader at the head of mostly local rabble armed initially with looted aksus and grandpas break-action shotguns, which gave ukrainian forces opportunity to organise and respond. As the conflict escalated, russian involvement grew, culminating with significant forces rolling in when ukraine was about to crush the "rebels" in summer. A tried playbook - keep a region separate, but not completely out of reach, greatly inconveniencing and forcing target country to divert a huge chunk of resources to keep it in check; while maintaining (flimsy, but still)deniability and ability to strike again from prepared position. And in 2022 it seems it outlived its usefulness in this role, might as well grab it, while making it impossible for russia itself to go back to pre-2022 positions.
(and another angle)

>>63848180
Yeah, use Google and look into it. Oh wait, you want me to spoon feed you? You can easily look into it yourself if you actually cared, but I'm not gonna waste my time on someone who has a 50% chance of having below 100

>>63848184
What are you getting at here? No one denies Russian has been involved in Ukraine since 2014?

>>63848551
Not anymore, but they certainly used to.

>>63848545
>I can prove it easily
>But I won't)))))

>>63848573
>not anymore
So what are you arguing then?

>>63848636
NTA, but probably that russians are untrustworthy liars, and that the idea that Euromaidan was a CIA coup is retarded.

>>63848661
Again, have you actually looked into it, or your entire argument is that you immediately dismiss it because you think Russians are "liars?"

>>63848636
>>63848661 is right. Euromaidan was organic. The russian side of the fence only promises poverty and misery, I don't blame anyone for wanting to escape it.

>>63848680
I have looked into it, and you're free to post even a single shred of evidence of the CIA being behind it.
And I don't "think" russians are liars, it's a pretty well proven thing.

>>63848551
Presumably the idea of the maidan being a CIA coup, as if the glowies just flicked a switch and mind-controlled the Ukrainian population into opposing their government.

>>63848545
>>63848680

>>63848815
>>>63848815
>glowies just flicked a switch and mind-controlled the Ukrainian population into opposing their government.
Is this not the classic CIA playbook and has been used countless times since the CIAs inception?

>>63848930
See >>63848843

>>63844383
>Land corridor to Crimea?
Not worth all the blood and treasure they've spent at this point, but not to be undervalued. That warm-water port is a big deal in prestige, if nothing else, to the Russians, and it was always tenuous so long as the only connection it had to the mainland was the Kerch bridge.

>>63848467
>>63848477
I like your breakdown, anon. I might add that by the time of the move on Donbas, the element of surprise is gone. The thing about subversive deniable attacks like the one they pulled in Crimea is that the trick only works once a generation.

>>63848930
The idea that you can just pay a bunch of no job losers on the street with the only instructions being "topple the gobernment" and expect that a significant part of tge population will just roll with it and even help is stupid, it's even more stupid because Putin himself put it to the test in the Donbas, just to fail. I'm not your teacher, but even you can see past examples and notice that every single time a popular rebellion/revolution happended there's a whole of alot more at play than just glowies controlling the masses and the people just rolling with it a mob. Use your head nigger, read about the arab spring or better yet the "colour revolution" to get why Russian propaganda paints these as CIA spyops

>>63838928 (OP)
URGENT TIME SENSITIVE QUESTION
Does anyone have the screencap of the Russian Twitter bot analysis that showed how one troll farm network had thousands upon thousands of shill bots, and they all liked each and other promoted each other... and only posted from 9 to 5 Moscow time.
does anyone have that pic?

>>63848815
They better be involved. Conspiracy or not if a country next to your rival is undergoing extreme unrest to the point that its future is uncertain, you better get in there and make sure it has a favorable outcome. Especially since euros tried doing that with Mexico during its turbulence. So why the fuck can't the CIA and why is that some bad thing? Theyre just playing the game that everyone else has been playing for millenia.

Otherwise id be pissed my tax dollars are paying their asses to do nothing.

>>63849607
>anon is happy his tax dollars are going towards lining the military industrial complex pockets and creating forever wars instead of "doing nothing"
The American™ mind, everyone

>>63848930
the CIA would certainly like you think they have that power so that you don't align yourself against american interests, but the coke money's pretty well dried up by now, and the 9/11 stock slushies getting dry too

>>63849151
>https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/
plenty of articles out there, but i dont have that one. if you wanna fuck with some of the bots though i'm pretty sure 'reset conversation' hasn't been patched though if you want to fuck with them

>>63849675
If they have a purpose, good or bad, id rather they be doing it to the best of their capabilities rather than doing nothing and sucking up money and oxygen.

>>63849686
What about the human trafficking and fent money?

>>63848467
what people don't discuss is that ukies were basically told by US and EU to not respond to crimea shitfest, as in "hurr-durr this is bait"

>>63848930
This is not how coups generally work. "Le popular mob storming a government building" is how they end but to let things get to this point a lot of backroom elite fuckery and wheeling and dealing needs to happen.
I'm not an expert in Ukraine but I'm pretty sure there was a coalition of Ukrainian oligarchs and local politicians that realized going with Russia will be less profitable for them, and they made sure the police in Kiev, outside of Berkut, were generally chill and didn't try too hard to disperse the protesters.
A foreign intelligence agency can grease the wheels of this process (and maybe they did, but I don't think we'll ever know), but it can't create one wholesale.
Even in Moldova, where Russians are trying this exact playbook (and mostly fucking it up as they do), they needed an already existing local oligarch with political ambitions - Sor - to coopt.

>>63849801
This. It was the painfully obvious lack of any conceivable endgame that made the Arab Spring such a mess, the Obama Administration apparently never bothered to consider think much further than "dictator bad." That's a nice sentiment, but if that's all you've got you get the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (followed by coup and military rule, lol), the absolute state of Libya, and ten years of war in Syria for an ultimate victory we had nothing to do with, putting a guy we may rightly have serious qualms about in the unenviable position of somehow rallying the rest of the country around himself after ruling a single city for several years.

>>63850246
Frankly, looking back on it even Berkut seem pretty chill to me. They were definitely thugs, what with the bludgeoning and the ramming BTRs into barricades, and the occasional sniper picking off some unlucky bastard. But the usual playbook for dropping the hammer on protests you want stopped is akin to link related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LaoamJ3vbs

>>63850259
>Berkut seem pretty chill to me
Boot lickers like you belong on a cross.

>>63848477
Yeah I buy that. I think (hard to know really) Crimea and Donbass both came out of different russian players going to Monke and getting approval to try and seize different parts of Ukraine.
Crimea was interesting to russian MOD (because port) and they had assets in place, so they could execute it more or less cleanly amid the disarray. But Donbass was the pet project of Malofeev whose ability to start shit was limited to getting Girkin and some random fucks armed and funded. They managed to hold on to enough to make sustaining them viable and to rope MOD into supplying them and sending "volunteers" their way, but they didn't have the skill, nor the numbers, nor the first mover advantage to do it as fast and clean as "little green men" in Crimea.

>>63848930
>Is this not the classic CIA playbook and has been used countless times since the CIAs inception?
No, it's the classic KGB talking point used countless times since the KGBs inception.

>>63850272
>Crimea was interesting to russian MOD (because port)
The whole port thing is just cope and propaganda. Not only does russia have other ports in the region (e.g. Novorossiysk, where they're hiding the rest of their fleet now btw), but nobody threatened their port until they've sperged out. I won't even mention that fast that the value of the port is overstates, as proven by ukies since 2022.

>>63850261
NTA but it's not bootlicking, it's knowing how it can get globally. RUAF do commit war crimes and do shell civilian buildings, but general Soviet and Post-Soviet military (and internal affairs) playbook does not allow mowing down crowds of protesters (and that's the school Berkut commanders and personnel came out of like many similar units throughout CIS). Even in Belarus, as brutal as suppression got in 2020, this was not done.

>>63850283
I don't mean that losing Sevastopol would have been decimation for the Black Sea Fleet or something like that. I mean that if anyone in the Russian power structure would have been tasked with destabilizing/annexing Crimea (or came forward with this idea and got the green light) it would have been MOD because they (a) have a port there however little its actual value so they know the region and (b) have the assets in place ready to go.

>>63850283
>value of the port is overstates,
Russians value defense in depth as if they're about to be invaded by the Nato reich army and have kursk tank battles. As if the minute an existential invasion happens that's not what nukes are for. Russians very much overvalue things in an anachronistic lens

>>63850293
>it's knowing how it can get globally
That's a propaganda whitewashing talking point. Similarly how RU regime often tells its proles "you actually have it good, billions in africa would kill for your quality of life" and shit.

>but general Soviet and Post-Soviet military (and internal affairs) playbook does not allow mowing down crowds of protesters
Who are you trying to jew here, faggot? Both USSR an post-soviet states routinely did things which weren't in a "typical playbook", because in the USSR mindset the rules and laws are just pieces of paper, not actionable things. Here's the most common example where people just went protesting about prices and shit in USSR and got shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre Similarly, pigs in blue would kidnap and torture people, killing them and so on.

>Even in Belarus, as brutal as suppression got in 2020, this was not done.
Tens of thousands of tortured people, people literally killed on the street is okay? Followed then by NKVD-tier night raids on normies at their homes. Please kill yourself

>>63850308
Some of that is (IMO) also intra-elite dynamics. Maybe RU MOD would not have lost too much capability if they had lost Sevastopol, but if (for example) they come before Tzar Monke and SVR can boast about "le epic disinfo campaign" they ran (edited Wikipedia to say Ukraine is rightful Russian clay) and FSB can boast about "we have extremely valuable intelligence from a credible source" (googled it) and MOD had their shit took, it makes them look bad and fall out of favor.

>>63850315
Yes, I know about Novocherkassk. Novocherkassk was bad enough that Khrushchev was forced out in 2 years after that. Brezhnev tried this shit once in Chimkent in 1967 too. But it didn't happen after that - not in Ordzhonikidze in 1981, not in Novy Uzen in 1989, not in Russia or Belarus after USSR. Yes, people were beaten, and yes, they were tortured after (I'm not saying it's "okay", the reason I'm sitting my ass in one of the EU countries right now is that I didn't want it to happen to me), but doing that is different from mowing down a crowd of protesters on the street.

>>63850420
>Khrushchev was forced out in 2 years after that
That wasn't the reason why he was forced out. He was forced out because he was too troubling for the system, disturbed the internal status quo too much.

>Yes, people were beaten, and yes, they were tortured after
Bruh, the amount of stuff that happened in USSR and then just got swept under the rug is insane. Just because some event wasn't highly publicized doesn't mean that it didn't happen or that people weren't killed. In many of those protests people were literally killed and maimed by repeatedly striking them with military entrenching shovels.
There's a reason why after 1991 so many unmarked KGB burial sites were found and are still being found.

>>63850315
Easy there, anon. Neither me nor the other guy are suggesting that these things are acceptable policing tactics, we're simply comparing them with how much worse they could have been. The British are a good example of what even erstwhile civilized powers can do to crush dissent, and the Chinks are still a household name for Tiananmen. All I had attempted to do, and all the anon who jumped in here tried to do, was point out that, had the Yanukovych administration really been overrun with Russophiles intent on subjugating their nation to Putin, they could have been far more aggressive against the protestors.

Over two months during Maidan, they actually killed 108 people, out of hundreds of thousands who showed up. That works to about .027% of the protestors, if you take the low end for how many turned up. Compare that with your link, which produced 24 dead on a single day, out of a crowd numbering only in the thousands or tens of thousands. Again taking the low end, you're looking at .48% killed. As for Tiananmen, the numbers there are hard to come by thanks to continuing Chicom obfuscation, but if we just take the official government tally, they killed 218 people in about two days of violence, out of several thousand. So that, compared to the several periods of pronounced violence during Maidan, you see how much worse it could have been. To me, that's indication of restraint.

>>63839045
If Russia was retards they wouldn’t still occupy their historical empire and be expanding. If they were retards, they would be left with some little island with a fake king and beg the US to fight wars for them or something like this.

>>63850485
>had the Yanukovych administration really been overrun with Russophiles intent on subjugating their nation to Putin, they could have been far more aggressive against the protestors.
More whitewashing. Cool it with revisionism. People were literally kidnapped from the street and their homes, taken to black sites and tortured, often killed.

The reason why more of this bullshit wasn't done is not because they didn't try, but because cops en mass, as well as most of the "internal troops", overall didn't want to get fucked over later for this. They were verbally given orders, but they decided that it's not forth it to a potential patsy later, when no written orders were given, so a ton of the law enforcement made excuses and ignore those verbal orders. "Hurr-durr we can't move out to crush the protests because our base is blockaded from outside" (it wasn't kek).

You can only have so much fucked up retards from Berkut for the whole country. Hence the regime had to hire and bring gopnik enforcers and some cops from other regions, including russian ones in local ukie uniforms, as proven later by doing face search via footage.

>they actually killed 108 people
They've killed more. The 108 number is just from the main public clash. How many were killed outside of the main protest only god knows. Many just disappeared and never were found.

>To me, that's indication of restraint.
To me, that's disingenuous whitewashing and boot licking

>>63848205
Living somewhere in the rust belt and saying that Russia is a shithole is some kind of retarded projection.

>>63850902
Remind me what shithole collapsed TWICE in the 29th century?

>>63850906
20*
fix

>>63850902
the rust belt is like Monaco compared to rural russia

>>63850906
Germany.

>>63840070
>Actually do some research instead of just parroting shit you read on 4chan
Read nigga, read!
https://warontherocks.com/2023/08/the-battle-of-hostomel-airport-a-key-moment-in-russias-defeat-in-kyiv/

>>63850927
>still has better economy and living conditions compared to pidorstan
grim

>>63850962
>>63850922
It is curious to consider how the preachers of God's Word felt when they encountered the local inhabitants in the lands of the unclean pagans and juden ghettos.

>>63850987
>the lands of the unclean pagans and juden ghettos
But enough about Russia

>>63850987
>"go touch grass"
>sosnowsky's hogweed in the background
kek

>>63850987
God isn't real, but pidorstan, unfortunately, is.

>>63838928 (OP)
I see the tankie revisionist campaign has started
>we w-would h-have won if...
No, no wouldn't.

>>63850485
>>63850516
nta, but even commie states didn't mow down protests en masse with machine guns (at least in the later stages), not out of a bleeding heart or anything similar but cynical pragmatism
If there's enough unrest to spark a protest despite your full control of the state and the media then indiscriminately mowing down protesters will only make the situation worse, it's always better to just disperse the riots, quietly disappear the leaders and imprison the more active participants instead of adding more fuel to the fire
Later you can claim they fled to Greenland, Liechtenstein or whatever country you want to frame them as an foreign agent from in an attempt to discredit the protest despite the only thing they were fleeing from being the helicopter 2km above the ground
There's a reason only people who have an iron grip on their country order them against their own citizens (or at least people who think they have an iron grip vide Ceaușescu) and Yanukovych's rule was nowhere near strong enough to get away with this, hell i think that when he was ousted even some deputies of his own party voted against him

>>63851113
>and Yanukovych's rule was nowhere near strong enough to get away with this
That happened only after a long series of bad decisions done by him one after another. Basically the FSB curators, or whoever was pulling the strings, pushed to quash protests, which every time just resulted in more and more passive normies joining in as a reaction. Outside of that the regime was strong enough to jail political opponents, repress randoms, steal the property and so on.

>>63851153
>Basically the FSB curators, or whoever was pulling the strings, pushed to quash protests
To be fair to his FSB curators, using brute force worked well during russian protests

>>63838992
Dont siege Kyiv, just take it

>>63851054
>Ask a question asking what would be different if it happened in 2014 for better or for worse
>this must mean they are pro Russian and bragging

>>>>no, no wouldn't
I fucking hate these pos esl bots that are ruining this board with schizo spam.

>>63845505
i started playing the freshly commercially released ja2 wildfire modification back in the mid 2000s at age 12.
and while being fascinated by the artstyle, the presentation and depth, i got dunked on insanely hard, considering the mod was a cranked-up version of the base game, not really unexpected.
but still it hooked me like rarely something else, whenever i got frustrated after being put in the dirt in the very first level, i let it sit for a few days and inevitably came back to try again and again, until eventually i got the basics and managed to survive a few enemy encounters.
ever since then i really got into it, playing modded runs every other year, experimenting with stuff all the time and shit.
for a beginner i'd recommend you to pirate the gold verion or get it off of gog, the base game is somewhat beginner friendly.
if you manage one or two runs you might get into ja3 or try the ja2 1.13 mod, which basically transforms the game into a ten times more tactically complex and rewarding experience

>>63851153
>That happened only after a long series of bad decisions done by him one after another. Outside of that the regime was strong enough to jail political opponents, repress randoms, steal the property and so on.
Even before his dumb decisions he wasn't nowhere near entrenched enough to pull this off, because there's a massive difference between quietly jailing/killing off some political opponents and shooting scores of people in broad daylight, and that's true even for post-commie states where no one would even be remotely surprised by politicians stealing property or general corrupt shenanigans
Look at other dictatorships for example, Pinochet's highest death toll during national protest days wasn't even 30 people for one protest, usually around 10 or so, and even he saw that it's counterproductive and had to make concessions in the end. And he was a dictator for a decade at this point, not some first term president.
Yanukovych didn't show restraint, he whipped out everything he thought he could he could get away with and still ended shooting himself in the leg with it

>>63851153
>>63851163
>To be fair to his FSB curators, using brute force worked well during russian protests
Makes sense since Putin was in control in Russia for 15 years, never mind other differences between the countries, no wonder that shit that works there didn't fly in the Ukraine
There's also the angle that they added fuel to the fire on purpose to warrant a russian intervention

>>63841392
ever since the war the forest service stopped routinely removing beaver dams in that area and thus huge swathes of ukie/belarus border got swamped to shit and beyond.
add countless tons of defensive installations and you have virtually impassable terrain for russian troops.

>>63848184
to be fair, I can totally see an old soviet Pantsir being found in a random shed in Donetsk.

>>63848235
>PCGamer Magazine
for me it was wildfire, read up on its imminent release in a gaming magazine, a few months later the same magazine offered the full version for a few bucks lol.
only afterwards did i play the base game, a cakewalk in comparison

>>63847399
>Xi going full Monke because he couldn't handle the idea of free speech in one single city
Why didn't he just like, you know, not do it?
There was no downside whatsoever to not doing it and only downsides to doing it.

>>63840113
>unless you are able to eradicate every last one willing to resist.
like what they did in chechnya?

>>63841392
Luka said "no" and we all know who really is in charge of this war.

>>63851384
Truly, bribes are an impressive weapon. Shame Russia is broke, huh.

>>63839574
>our war plan was almost flawless, the only way it could possibly fail is if we face even the slightest resistance
If your entire invasion plan hinges on your troops not having to actually fight anyone, its a fucking dogshit plan

>>63851385
>pic related
still can't believe this was real, were they this sure to win that they didn't even care about opsec at all?

>>63851406
Luka leaked it on pupose, anon.

>>63851374
Point is Pantsu is not a soviet vehicle it's from early 2000s

>>63851416
Wait, they're this new?

>>63851353
>There's also the angle that they added fuel to the fire on purpose to warrant a russian intervention
Stop thinking that russians are smarter than they are. They wanted to quash the protests and get more influence in the country, basicaally to puppet it. Same as they've done with Belarus in 2020.

>>63851366
based beavers

>>63851406
>>63851408
Nah, they were so sure about being done in 1-3 days that hubris overcame them.

>>63851426
Yes? It was the newest undefeatable wunderwaffe stealth killer until it got used in Syria

>>63851366
based bobr bros

>>63851455
Luka is only allied with Russia, because Europe won't accept a dictator. Putin and Luka very much are rivals. Luka's efforts in establishing the union state were part of his bid for control of Russia.

>>63851378
This is the same guy that declared Winnie the Pooh was no longer kosher in China. The dude has a thin skin in things that he perceive as insulting him and a city that's not fully under his idea of one China and can just speak about things freely must surely be a big thorn in his mind. That's also why he's been so gung-ho about "China Numba Wan" and pissing off the neighbors and practically any country he sets his eyes on that aren't thirdies and why he wants Taiwan under China in his lifetime.

>>63851585
But why not just not do it? Why not just go "ha ha, yes I sure do like honey, you guys". Why not just say "we don't like what you are saying, but we are committed to the one country two systems policy"?
There is nothing to lose.

>>63851404
>Surprise attack isn't as effective when you lose the element of surprise
Wow, truly ground breaking stuff here

>>63839574
A plan where you just take key terrain unopposed is stupid from the get go. VDV got blown out cause they had no plan for enemy MDCOA

>>63851455
Putin swiftly taking Ukraine would leave russia in too powerful a position for Luka's safety.
Russia struggling as it has while Belarus got to sit on the sidelines was unironically one of the best outcomes he could hope for, and he knows it.

>>63851591
They could do that, but in their view, why bother? Just like their "Wolf Warrior" diplomatic policy nowadays, they see anyone that's not them as lesser beings and should bow down to them and serve their betters in their entirety. I mean, they could have left Hong Kong as their shining beacon to lure in Taiwan without having to invade them or to still keep the West blind to their nature. They'd rather break it and just ignore it afterwards while saying to everyone that they can't do shit.

>>63851795
Putin is already too powerful for Luka's safety. Luka sealed his fate in 2020 after chimping out too much on the protests, having to rely on foreign riot police and replacement regime workers. Before that he kinda tried playing both sides, slowly chipping away things to russia, but since then it's full steam ahead on Belarus annexation.