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submitted 1 year ago by Gork@lemm.ee to c/world@lemmy.world

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In a recent appearance on Russia's state-run television, Russian political scientist Sergey Mikheyev suggested that the country's "empire" should grow to encompass three American states.

"I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland," he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. "Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I'm not sure, to be honest. We'll clean them."

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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 100 points 1 year ago

"I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland," he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. "Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I'm not sure, to be honest. We'll clean them."

This guy sounds exactly like Donald Trump.

[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

The orange menace would be only too happy to oblige Putin's every whim, after all, he is one of Trump's main dictator heroes.

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[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago

Lets say Russia magically is able to land on US soil completely intact after passing through the US Navy infested waters of the Atlantic or the Pacific. Lets just assume they can so we can continue this crazy thought experiment.

To take territory you need boots on the ground, troops, tanks, APCs, etc. These are transported by troop transport aircraft and large ships that are naval landing craft. For Russia that would be the Ropucha-class. Each of these ships can carry about 10 tanks and about 310 troops (per ship).

So how many of these ship does Russia have? Hundreds, right? Nope: 11. Thats it. So assuming a full load of every ship thats about 110 tanks and about 3500ish troops. And all of that assumes all 11 ships will make it alive to US soil.

This is just how crazy this Russian claim of taking US States is.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's not supposed to make sense, it's supposed to make actual Kremlin policy seem sane and moderate to the domestic audience.

[-] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 8 points 1 year ago

You forget that Alaska is like 2 miles from Russia

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 10 points 1 year ago

Bruh there's so many gun nuts in Alaska that jerk off to Red Dawn it'll be Winter War 2: Now With Air Support

[-] not_that_guy05@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

He's talking about California. He understands taking Alaska and Hawaii, but cali?

[-] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Hmm, Pearl Harbor and the place where the 10th mountain train to fight in snow.

Ok Ivan, good luck. You’re gonna need it.

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I think you forget that we have 24 hour satellite surveillance all over the globe.

If you think Russia could send a large fraction of its blue water navy to one single point on the globe while also mustering all those troops and equipment on the ground in Russia beforehand without the US knowing about it weeks before hand, you don't have a good grasp on the level of technology employed in today's military.

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Also its alaska. Russia would be operating out of what, vladivastok maybe to take similarly shitty US ports in alaska.

If russia wants shitty coastal wilderness at uninhabitable climates they already have them.

[-] Professorozone@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but we have Sarah Palin there to take care of it for us.

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[-] Squiddly@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Not to mention every other citizen is armed

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[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Well…once they consolidate their claim of Canada it will be easier

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[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago
[-] edwardthefma99@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

And they thought Ukraine was hard to conquer it will be like 1776 every body and her brother killing the invaders

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 28 points 1 year ago

There is a 50/50 chance the MAGA crazies will side with Russia.

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My first thought was Putin's well on the way with Texas and Florida, but California might be a challenge.

[-] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I thought those were two of the states before clicking, maybe Idaho as the 3rd.

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[-] edwardthefma99@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Why dose every one think trump and Russia are friends the steel document was proven to be fake trump hates Russia he probably would decimate there military if given the chance

[-] Professorozone@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Maybe because he has expressed his admiration for Putin on more than one occasion, has sworn to pull all support for NATO, which was founded to defend against a Russian threat, around the time of the election the Russians hacked email accounts of prominent Democrats thus helping Trump's campaign efforts, or because Trump chose to believe Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agency in the matter of Russian influence in the 2016 election, Trump's national security advisor was forced to resign after he had inappropriate contact with Russia to discuss sanctions then lied about it, and because there is a boatload of circumstantial evidence, like relations his family has had with people close to Russia. Maybe for those reasons or it could be people are just really unfair to poor Mr. Trump.

[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

One third of the American colonists helped the Revolutionaries, one third did nothing, and one third helped the British. The conservatives (Monarchists, Loyalists) wanted to stay part of the British Empire. The Revolutionaries were liberal democrats, literally.

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[-] BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All of these locations (Alaska, California, Hawaii, much of eastern Europe) are ones that Russia has at one point in its imperial or soviet history had either outposts or territorial claim to. Of course, much of Eastern Europe was as recently as the 1980s under the Kremlin's direct control, either as puppet states or as territory Russia or the USSR directly claimed. Finland and Poland in particular have both been completely invaded by Russian forces multiple times, but at the moment they are built up defensively in ways that Russia quite honestly has zero chances of winning against.

Alaska was territory that imperial Russia claimed before any European country did. It was sold to the US during the Crimean war (1853) because Russia needed the money and in all likelihood it was going to lose it to Britain. Russia established early trading outposts in Alaska and California but sold or abandoned them after wiping out the fur animals they'd come to harvest and trade.

This talk for the benefit of Russian audiences is about reminding Russians of former imperial or soviet glory, but the problem with that historically is that it wasn't actually glorious.

The current propaganda push to get Russians thinking they really have a shot at rolling back the map changes since Imperial times is just an effort to sustain Russia's modern project: dismantling the post-WWII order in which the West (the US, in particular, but NATO and much of the UN) upholds alliances that Putin sees as against Russia's interests.

[-] gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago

All of these locations (Alaska, California, Hawaii, much of eastern Europe) are ones that Russia has at one point in its imperial or soviet history had either outposts or territorial claim to.

Come on dawg, you can't just drop Hawaii in there and not tell us what the fuck the Russians were doing over there!

[-] BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Sorry- I didn't know that part off the top of my head But since you asked, Russia's presence in Hawaii was sort of like its presence in Alaska and California: early 1800s outposts established by agents acting on behalf of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-American_Company, which the Russian Crown had granted a monopoly on operations in North America and the Pacific but was unable to back or support such claims.

[-] fidodo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

You mean something like a third Reich?

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[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

Okay, so Alaska I get. Hawaii, well okay middle of nowhere, strategic location.

But California? The fuck? Good luck with that.

[-] RedIce25@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago
[-] ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I’d love to see Putin spend a week in the wrong part of Los Angeles and have his a__ handed to him by some Mexican American gang, or black gang. You want California, dude? As a white (non-Russian) living here, I have had gangs threatened to shoot me about five times now, because I accepted a job assignment in an area they considered to be their turf.

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[-] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Near the end of the clip, the host of the program was quick to deflate Mikheyev's comment as "wishful thinking" divorced from actual politics.

"Yes, but again, wishful thinking is one thing and actual politics is another," the host said.

Gerashchenko, meanwhile, was less keen to write off the political scientist's comments as fantasy.

I mean, glad to see that even some Russian propagandists expect some of their viewers to have functional brain cells.

[-] hungryphrog 9 points 1 year ago

Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I’m not sure, to be honest. We’ll clean them.

wtf is that supposed to mean

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Projection.

In WWII, a lot of Russians got damage from easily preventable things that the Finns didn't, as we had saunas and better equipment. Something as simple as getting dry, clean socks and getting to wash your feet can be incredibly important. Just hygiene in general. Not to mention how a good sauna can improve moral.

If anyone was stinky in Winter War, it was definitely the Russians. Not the Finns. (weather at -30 in this photo)

Photo from this article with lots of other photos: https://www.life.com/history/the-coldest-front-lifes-coverage-of-the-winter-war/

[-] hungryphrog 5 points 1 year ago

Oh, so it wasn't about my armpits. Good to know.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Ah, so your armpits are named Poland and Finland. Are you perhaps the Baltic Sea?

[-] mechoman444@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That naked guy holding the bucket is probably the most Russian thing I've ever seen and I'm Ukrainian.

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[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Genocide I imagine.

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[-] andrewta@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

They should start with Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana. The red necks would grab every gun they have , be the shit show of the century.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

No they wouldn’t. Because the Orange Turd would tell them that it’s okay and to just go with it.

[-] andrewta@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

i fully disagree. they would for 2 reasons:

the rednecks wouldn't put up with some foreign nation showing up in the south

and

Trump would just turn around and claim that he didn't want this and ask the rednecks to get involved.

or another way to put this

https://youtu.be/ycffZkWEVno?si=tZRLyWE3Zvy6js2a

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[-] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Except for Atlanta, those states are currently welcoming Russian control with open arms

[-] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago
[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Protecting the Russian speakers right?

[-] rimu@piefed.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Some random guest on Russian state TV wants that, according to a translation done by a Ukrainian. Newsweek then goes with "Russian State TV wants", implying endorsement of the idea by the Russian government.

Can you imagine if random Fox News guests were quoted as if they spoke for us? Obviously bullshit, right. That's what this is. Nothing on Russian TV can be taken at face value.

And it wasn't the host of the program that called it wishful thinking, it was the random guest himself only seconds later. Watch the video clip in the tweet embedded in the article to see it.

Trash journalism, Newsweek. But they knew it'd get clicks because apparently I'm the only person here who spent 25 seconds to watch the video and another 25 seconds to think. We need do better than this, people.

The real interesting bit is the "We'll clean them", salivating about ethnic cleansing of all non-Russians. It was a different voice than the guest - I think THAT might have been the host but I can't tell as I don't recognize the people involved.

[-] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 1 year ago

To sum up:

  1. Russian TV airs some bullshit.
  2. Ukrainian propagandist carefully selects a tiny segment, puts it into whatever context suits him. Provides translation which no one checks.
  3. US rag misquotes segment and misattributes statements.
  4. We sound off on social media.

Bullshit from start to finish.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In a recent appearance on Russia's state-run television, Russian political scientist Sergey Mikheyev suggested that the country's "empire" should grow to encompass three American states.

The clip of the remarks began to circulate on social media on Friday when it was shared by Anton Gerashchenko, an outspoken critic of Russia and a former adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, to X, formerly Twitter.

In it, Mikheyev mentioned the territory he would like to see taken over by Russia, including three of the westernmost American states and two North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member nations in Europe.

Near the end of the clip, the host of the program was quick to deflate Mikheyev's comment as "wishful thinking" divorced from actual politics.

In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and its heightened rhetoric about attempting to annex other countries and territories, suggestions about retaking Alaska from the U.S. have become prevalent.

In a December post to social media, also translated by Gerashchenko, Russian lawmaker Sergei Mironov suggested that U.S. oversight was weakening, and alluded to Alaska while discussing land that could be taken from it.


The original article contains 503 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] lukeblackwell86@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

hey they can just have new jersey if they want it

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this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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