cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1253052
Archived version: https://archive.ph/HGfpH
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230809191901/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-build-up-forces-west-counter-nato-threat-shoigu-2023-08-09/
“We’ve scraped together 40 drunks, a ninety year old tank, and a potato gun. Which the 40 drunks immediately dismantled to get the potatoes to make vodka, and set fire to the tank.”
sad blyat noises
Surely the Ghost of Kyiv can wipe out those 40 drunks in less than a year, yes? No need to throw $40 billion every month
Oh, bless your heart, child. Do you think we are sending them money all willie-nillie?
What we are sending them are mothballed weapons that were just sitting in wearhouses collecting dust.
Now those weapons are fulfilling their purpose and what they were designed to do: kill Russians and their equipment, and there is a massive bonus with the loan. We are destroying Russia without a single American soldier having to be on the ground. Their economy is in shambles, their young bright minds have long since fled the stupidity of the Russian military and leaders, and all that is left are drunks and idiots to blind to see or to ignorant to care what’s happening to the country.
It’s a master class in overseas diplomatic maneuvers, and Diamond Joe is the one who did it. What a stud.
Least bloodthirsty lib
"The enemy is both strong and weak. By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Shoigu’s cat.
A normal day in the Russian army.
If that’s the state of the Russian military it says a lot that even with billions being thrown at Ukraine they’re still fighting a year and half later
You can do quite a bit of fuckery when you keep a population ignorant and misinformed.
US Republicans furiously taking notes
What I mean is that Ukraine still fighting Russia with so much money being thrown at their defense doesn’t seem to jive with a narrative of a foundering Russian military
What russia lacks in gear it makes up with cannon fodder and blood. This is how you last a year and a half.
Like every article and interview with Ukranians about the conditions on the battlefield make mention of the RF consistently having an exponential (sometimes 10 to 1) artillery advantage, which also doesn’t gel with the narrative of an unsupplied army on the brink of collapse
It’s not the Russians sending waves of recruits into minefields but ok
Because you think they didn’t do it when they attacked a few month ago ?
And what he’s saying is that you can do a lot of fuckery when you keep people misinformed.
They may not have many effective pieces of equipment or soldiers, but they sure as hell have a lot of ineffective ones
They’ve already been moving troops and equipment away from the Finnish borded demonstrating that despite their narrative they’re not actually worried about NATO invasion. If the Wagner mutiny revealed anything it’s that if Finland ever wanted to take back Karelia now would be the time and to be honest we could snatch St. Petersburg while we’re at it and basically receive zero resistance. We wont though and they know it.
I would wager they’d resort to nuclear response if that happened. The last thing putin could ever accept is losing existing russian land.
Dictators like Putin dare not let their military become powerful. There is too much risk that the military will rise up and depose the dictator. In most NATO countries the military and people believe in the country and rule of law and so they won’t do that. However a dictator doesn’t have that option.
Russia will make a show of building up, but they will be careful about it. Weapons systems that look good in the demo will be ordered in small numbers, but not enough to make a difference in any war as they would be used against them. Even when they do have good systems, leaders are promoted based on loyalty to the dictator, not how good they are.
It’s also not just about intention, but about possibility. Russia lacks well-trained soldiers and modern equipment as demonstrated in the war. They can’t magically solve either of those problems.
No magic needed. Russia has some modern gear that they make themselves. They have some well trained soldiers. They know how to design modern gear. They know how to build more gear. They know how to train good soldiers.
What they can’t do is fix their problems overnight. In just ten years they could fix the problems. Putin is old and statistically unlikely to live ten more years. Their system of government is vulnerable to the military running a coup and taking over so it is unlikely they will fix their problems, but they could.
Build up forces from what? Babies? 90 year old elders?
Cause eveybody else is getting killed in Ukraine
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I kinda feel like if the whole rest of the world other than some shitty dictators is against you, maybe you’re in the wrong?
No worry, the vocal Russia/China sympathizers out here will try to convince you that the whole world not aligning with them is a CIA job, neocolonialism and western media brainwash… :)
Ha! What drivel.
That’s great, every soldier there isn’t killing Ukrainians.
Conscripts to the western front. The one with the rifle shoots.
Westerners will say they aren’t propagandized, while thinking Enemy at the Gates is a documentary.
c/Whoosh.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Aug 9 (Reuters) - Russia will build up forces at its western borders following Finland’s accession to the U.S.-led NATO alliance, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told the governing board of the ministry on Wednesday.
“The collective West is waging a proxy war against Russia,” he said, according to his ministry, pointing to its “unprecedented support” for Ukraine in supplying tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to help Kyiv repel Russian forces.
The two Nordic states abandoned generations of neutrality that had held throughout the Cold War to seek NATO membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.
“On Finnish territory, it is likely that additional military contingents and strike weapons of NATO will be deployed, capable of hitting critical targets in the northwest of Russia at a considerable depth,” Shoigu said.
“Today, at the meeting of the Board, we will consider issues related to the creation of the Leningrad and Moscow military districts with the simultaneous strengthening of groupings of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on our western borders.”
Shoigu said the number of NATO military units from outside the region stationed in eastern Europe had increased by two-and- a-half times since February last year and that they were now 30,000-strong in total.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Over the last year, they pretty much cleared the border of troops to support the Ukraine war. A lot of them now stay in Ukraine permanently. Hence Finland could walk into (though obviously not actually hold) St. Petersburg right now.
I think this shows better than anything how much they really are worried about NATO.
So in order to even restore the troop levels prior to Finland’s joining NATO they indeed have to bolster their “defences” quite a lot.
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pfft sure they will… they are barely holding onto power… they don’t even know if the Rosgvarda will protect them at this point…
Scarecrows equipped with more Mosins?
Welp. Everybody strap in. This could get bumpy.
It won’t, it’s just bluster. With 90% probability they won’t do jack shit to a NATO country because they know that’d be the end of us all. That 10% is the Russian sociopath factor; I could absolutely believe they’d prefer killing a huge chunk of humanity and themselves rather than look weak
It really won’t. They need to bluster but all they can do is station un/poorly trained conscripts and talk big about it.
They couldn’t even handle Ukraine. How is this going to get bumpy? What troops do they even have to build up in the west.
Remember a few years ago when Russian mercs decided to attack an American special forces team in Syria and they not only failed to kill a single American they got bombed into oblivion?
Same thing will happen if these troops so much as step into NATO territory
From what I heard it was a bit more nuanced than that. The russian government deliberately ordered the army’s air defences disabled which allowed American air power to have free reign in that battlefield. I’ve no doubt the americans would have beaten them back regardless but with casualties.
