The people are victims too. Even if they’re mislead and sent into the meat grinder, they’re not the ones who benefit from the hate and anger.

it’s already an impossibility for russia to wage war with the US or European NATO countries alone

Some (!!!) EU NATO members have underinvested in defence for decades and now severely depleted their stocks to help Ukraine.

If Russia wins in Ukraine and if Trump withdraws from NATO or implies he won't intervene in Europe again, then Russia is not unlikely to invade one of the Baltics. Putin's allies say as much on a regular basis. The Suwalki Gap is basically indefensible by NATO allies anyway.

Even if Putin doesn't actually invade, he'll do constant military provocations, troop buildups, military exercises near the border, just to fuck with Europe and the US. A constant stream of shit, basically. That increases the likelihood of mistakes, and without the US nuclear umbrella, and even without Russia deliberately invading a (former) NATO country, that actually increases the chance of an all out war in Europe. The reason to have a strong conventional military, is so that you're less likely to be existentially threatened and need to use unconventional(nuclear) weapons. The best case scenario is that Europe will be perpetually distracted. We'll have to triple or even quadruple defense spending.

Of course, as a European, I can confidently predict what will actually happen in that case: with Russian support right wing populists will gain even more ground. "Our people first! Why are we spending so much on defense?" The EU project will die, a divided Europe will end up kowtowing to Beijing (even more), the US will lose market share in one of the world's most important markets, and the likelihood of de-dollarisation will increase significantly. Beijing will also be far likelier to invade Taiwan. And no that wouldn't be a cakewalk for the US.

Obviously, this is just me regurgitating stuff, but I don't think anyone can argue that the stakes aren't infinitely higher than Afghanistan or Iraq. If the US was able to spend thousands of billions fighting and dying in those wars, it's a no brainer to spend tens of billions so that Ukrainians can have the 'privilege' of dying in a war against Russia and fighting to further European and US interests.

It's not just the moral thing to do. You don't need to care about war crimes. You don't need to care about democracy or whatever. It's in the west's interests.

Don't forget the brain drain once they officially declared war (special military operation) against Ukraine. There was a mass exodus of scholars and intellectuals not wanting to be trapped in russia.

And it's not only the population, but its GDP is tiny. Back when Russia first invaded Ukraine, I wondered how big Russia would be if it were a US state. I compared the GDP per Capita of all US states to Russia's.

Mississippi's GDP per Capita was almost 4 times larger than Russia's. Mississippi! I finally went into the US territories to find one that Russia could top (American Samoa).

And, in case you're thinking "well, that's GDP per Capita, they'd dwarf all US states in GDP," they'd be the third largest state behind California and Texas and just ahead of New York. The US as a whole has a GDP over 10 times larger than Russia.

peria

"Pariah" might be the word you're looking for.

yeah its strange they kidnap the kids when its like. dudes you do not have to go to war. just do foreign adoptions!

Russia lost the ability to do soft power. All it can do is bluster and threaten and attack (with variable likelihood of success). It has no economic opportunities that would attract venturesome migrants, as everything of value happening in Russia belongs to oligarchs who understand that they owe their lives to the Czar, and anybody who gets any ideas about disrupting the incumbents and getting rich is unlikely to live very long. Other than from the poorer ex-SSRs (colloquially known as “the ‘Stans”), very few people were inclined to immigrate to Russia even before the war, and now with foreigners being press-ganged into the frontlines, that isn’t improving.

This is what happens when you're an incompetent dictator/military whose only strategies are war crimes/genocide and throwing numbers into the meat grinder.

They try to take entrenched Ukrainain positions by throwing 100s at them to be slaughtered, hoping they will overrun them. If that fails, they try again! They literally have been sending their prison population to the front line to be meat shields for their infantry.

The fact that they have to supplement their infantry with prisoners tells you all you need to know about their incompetency and how dire their situation is.

that's not a high value at all, just divide the total casualties by the duration of the war and you get to a higher number than that for the average monthly losses. "Since October" is > 1.5 months by now

What usually happens to these bodies? I would assume a lot of them just rot somewhere. It seems insane to me that you find decomposed bodies and guns and shit in the forrest somewhere in 10 years.