Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/nepali-gurkhas-joining-russia-s-wagner-group-amid-lack-of-recruitment-opportunities-in-indian-army-report/amp-11687830362756.html

"Nepali Gurkhas joining Russia’s Wagner Group amid lack of recruitment opportunities in Indian Army: Report"

India recently changed rules on army recruitment which de facto cut down dramatically the number of Nepali Gurkhas it takes in.  It seems they are going to join Wagner instead

Not a bad move for a PMC that captured Rostov and threatened Moscow.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

This entire Ukraine joining NATO is a classic deadlock

a) Ukraine cannot join NATO until the war with Russia ends
b) Russia will not end the war with Ukraine unless Ukraine promises not to join NATO
c) The deadlock of a) and b) could be broken by the collapse of Ukraine which would remove the political basis of Ukraine joining NATO
d) The deadlock of a) and b) could also be broken by regime change in Russia in which case there is not more need for Ukraine to join NATO

I've highlighted in bold a giant error in your calculations. It's not a condition, but blackmail of a street bully:
"Drop the pepper spray or I'll hit you with a bat!"
The interlocutor is using the pepper spray, bully is throwing a bat and running away.

In fact, the Kremlin carried out a full-scale attack on Ukraine precisely because Ukraine is NOT a member of NATO.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

You know how in a Crusader Kings game you could have a load of really awesome knights with high prowess but then you launch an ill-planned out war and lose some battles and a lot of those really awesome knights get killed and you have to replace them with not so great knights and then those knights also get killed in a higher rate due to that in future battles?

I think the equivalent of that is happening to Russian commanders.

The Marxist and post-Marxist system brings to the top not tough knights, but those who are good at stealing and cheating, even when it's suicidal for their line of work, or at least they do not prevent others from doing it. A competent specialist is a person with nous, and nous is the main enemy of post-Marxists (Marxists at least came up with ways to attract reasonable people and then fool them, post-Marxists just destroy any people's thinking promptly).

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

I think it's a catch 22 situation that prevents a political solution.

Russia can never end the war, because the moment it ends America gets Ukraine officially and forever.

America can never invite Ukraine as long as the war goes on, because the moment it's in they make the unofficial war with Russia into an official one.

So I guess that the undeclared war lasts forever, just like the war between Israel and the Palestinians.

Yes, Putin expected that this war would be endless, like any war that Putin started. But Ukrainians have a good chance to kick Russian troops out of Ukraine.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Marxism, Crusader Kings ?

I'm sorry people this is a Wendy's (or at least a thread about a real War).

Everything is simple here: the modern Russian government consists of post-Marxists. Not at all in the sense of that toothless term that simply refers to the branch of the Social Democrats after the World Revolution of 1968, but in the sense of the mutation of the Marxists, which happened already in the twenties and thirties and is accurately illustrated in Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. After Stalin in the USSR, they tried to return to orthodox Marxism, but nationalism, conservatism, reactionism and, oddly enough, anti-communism still sprouted on it from the sixties.

And Virgin Einzige vs. Chad bronz mentioned a Crusader Kings game just to illustrate the idea that the most competent personnel of the Russian army died at the beginning of a full-scale war.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

They're both mourning the murders of Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalists/Nazi collaborators during WWII:

https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/1678044002136858625?s=20

But Ukraine still have streets named after Bandera when it was Bandera's OUN that was behind these massacres.   I guess for unity sake Duda is not making a big deal of this.

Bandera is far from the most murderous person to be honored in Ukraine's national mythology. Russian media loves to make it a big deal out of it though to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine to no avail.

Yes. Bandera is just a way for ruscists to switch arrows from their beloved Stalin. Another projection.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Marxism, Crusader Kings ?

I'm sorry people this is a Wendy's (or at least a thread about a real War).

Everything is simple here: the modern Russian government consists of post-Marxists. Not at all in the sense of that toothless term that simply refers to the branch of the Social Democrats after the World Revolution of 1968, but in the sense of the mutation of the Marxists, which happened already in the twenties and thirties and is accurately illustrated in Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. After Stalin in the USSR, they tried to return to orthodox Marxism, but nationalism, conservatism, reactionism and, oddly enough, anti-communism still sprouted on it from the sixties.

And Virgin Einzige vs. Chad bronz mentioned a Crusader Kings game just to illustrate the idea that the most competent personnel of the Russian army died at the beginning of a full-scale war.

Post-Marxists ?

World Revolution ?

Virgin Einzige vs. Chad bronz ?

Crusader Kings ?

I think we should all get out more.

As to my personal opinion, I think the best trained russian soldiers died early in the war, but their generals also sucked the most early in the war.

I can still imagine that some funny dude decides to declare me crazy for talking about Russian philosophy, but declare me crazy just for the nickname of another poster? Seriously?

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-show-gratitude-west-support-ben-wallace-nato/

"Ukraine must show ‘gratitude’ to the West to keep support, UK defense minister warns"



More making friends and influencing people in action, only this time from the UK.

Headline manipulation. The article itself evokes the opposite impression. If you really want to know about "making friends and influencing people", you could read the channel of the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. Here are the last three posts, for example (machine translation):

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/351

Sleepy senile Biden said that two years ago in Geneva he denied the President of Russia guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO.  Like "I’m done, I didn’t cave in to the Russians!"

Then, however, he shamefully fled from Afghanistan.  Then, to hide the shame, he ruined the economy of Europe.  Subsequently, having delivered hundreds of tons of weapons to Ukraine, he unleashed an extremely dangerous protracted conflict with Russia, as a result of which the Kiev regime is destroying the remnants of its country.  Now, having exhausted all resources, he promises cluster charges and again beckons neo-Nazis in Kyiv with the NATO perspective, the realization of which means a third world war.

Why is he doing this?
The easiest way is to think that this is the course of any American leader and US deep government: to dominate and limit other countries.  Especially obstinate ones like ours.

You can also say that he is a sick old man who is in severe dementia.  Like he doesn't know what he's doing.  Trump and a large part of Americans are screaming about this.

Or maybe everything is different?  Maybe the dying old man, obsessed with unhealthy fantasies, simply decided to leave gracefully, provoking nuclear Armageddon and taking half of humanity with him to the next world ...

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/352

If an attempt to attack the Smolensk (Desnogorsk) NPP with NATO missiles is confirmed, it is necessary to consider the scenario of a simultaneous Russian strike on the South Ukrainian NPP, Rovno NPP and Khmelnitsky NPP, as well as on nuclear facilities in Eastern Europe.  There is nothing to be ashamed of here.

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/353

Preliminary results of the NATO summit.
 Just like we thought:

1. Action Plan for Ukraine's membership in the Alliance (MAP) - cancel.  Kind of take it faster.

 2. To call the "404 country" to NATO.  But they will accept - it is not known when and under what conditions.

 Quite possibly never.  And that's what realists in the Alliance are afraid to say out loud.

3. To increase military assistance to the Kyiv regime.  Everything that is possible: rockets, cluster charges, airplanes.
 The completely crazy West could not come up with anything else.  Predictability of the highest level, to the point of idiocy.  In fact, it's a dead end.  World War III is getting closer.

 What does all this mean for us?  Everything is obvious.

The special military operation will continue with the same goals.

 One of them is the refusal of the Kyiv Nazi group from membership in NATO, which we insisted on from the very beginning (which is impossible).

This means that this group will have to be eliminated (which is possible and necessary).

P.S. It was reported that Tokmak was shelled with cluster munitions.  So, it's time to uncover our arsenals of this inhumane weapon.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Headline manipulation. The article itself evokes the opposite impression. If you really want to know about "making friends and influencing people", you could read the channel of the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. Here are the last three posts, for example (machine translation):

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/351

Sleepy senile Biden said that two years ago in Geneva he denied the President of Russia guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO.  Like "I’m done, I didn’t cave in to the Russians!"

Then, however, he shamefully fled from Afghanistan.  Then, to hide the shame, he ruined the economy of Europe.  Subsequently, having delivered hundreds of tons of weapons to Ukraine, he unleashed an extremely dangerous protracted conflict with Russia, as a result of which the Kiev regime is destroying the remnants of its country.  Now, having exhausted all resources, he promises cluster charges and again beckons neo-Nazis in Kyiv with the NATO perspective, the realization of which means a third world war.

Why is he doing this?
The easiest way is to think that this is the course of any American leader and US deep government: to dominate and limit other countries.  Especially obstinate ones like ours.

You can also say that he is a sick old man who is in severe dementia.  Like he doesn't know what he's doing.  Trump and a large part of Americans are screaming about this.

Or maybe everything is different?  Maybe the dying old man, obsessed with unhealthy fantasies, simply decided to leave gracefully, provoking nuclear Armageddon and taking half of humanity with him to the next world ...

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/352

If an attempt to attack the Smolensk (Desnogorsk) NPP with NATO missiles is confirmed, it is necessary to consider the scenario of a simultaneous Russian strike on the South Ukrainian NPP, Rovno NPP and Khmelnitsky NPP, as well as on nuclear facilities in Eastern Europe.  There is nothing to be ashamed of here.

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/353

Preliminary results of the NATO summit.
 Just like we thought:

1. Action Plan for Ukraine's membership in the Alliance (MAP) - cancel.  Kind of take it faster.

 2. To call the "404 country" to NATO.  But they will accept - it is not known when and under what conditions.

 Quite possibly never.  And that's what realists in the Alliance are afraid to say out loud.

3. To increase military assistance to the Kyiv regime.  Everything that is possible: rockets, cluster charges, airplanes.
 The completely crazy West could not come up with anything else.  Predictability of the highest level, to the point of idiocy.  In fact, it's a dead end.  World War III is getting closer.

 What does all this mean for us?  Everything is obvious.

The special military operation will continue with the same goals.

 One of them is the refusal of the Kyiv Nazi group from membership in NATO, which we insisted on from the very beginning (which is impossible).

This means that this group will have to be eliminated (which is possible and necessary).

P.S. It was reported that Tokmak was shelled with cluster munitions.  So, it's time to uncover our arsenals of this inhumane weapon.

What is the point of having a headline and an article in conflict like that? Perhaps that's the real question.

The usual shocking to attract attention to the publication, no? Zelensky always thanks the allies, for example, in January and April of this year. But for a person who is protected by another person from the attack of a rabid bear, it is not so important how many times it was said "thank you" with a bloodied mouth, as for a third person who, with the help of cunning manipulations, set this bear on both of them and is trying to manipulate also these people in order to quarrel between them.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

In dreamland, Ukraine gets everything on its wish list and solves all its issues successfully.
In the real world compromise and realpolitik reign more often than not and what you want and what you get are two distinct things.
Ukraine's leadership is right to be pushy, but some kind of post-war relationship with Russia is inevitable, the question is what tenor it has and what it focuses on. This war will partially decide that, and post-war needs will also partially decide that.  If we treat Ukraine poorly enough, it might find itself having to get closer to Russia (relatively), and it might be mutually beneficial too (for both UA and RU).

After the war, Ukraine can easily enter the sphere of the PRC: in spite of everything, the Ukrainian government sees no obstacles to this. As for relations with Russia, until February 24, 2023, Ukrainians and Russians cooperated very well at the international level (for example, I participated in the Ukrainian Uzhgorod club of tabletop role-playing games, which had members throughout the CIS, but was closed on February 24 due to the fact that its founders became military volunteers), but it is unlikely that in the next fifty years it will be possible to restore what was destroyed just on February 24.

Even after 2014 it was impossible to imagine a full-scale war between Ukrainians and Russians, these two peoples ruled together in the Soviet Union and did not distinguish each other by nationality. Especially when you consider that a large number of Russians have Ukrainian surnames and a large number of Ukrainians have Russian. February 24 erased the history of their relationship, now we are in a new reality.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Meanwhile a group of far-right Republicans in the US House are threatening to hold Ukraine funding hostage during the upcoming annual Defense spending bill.

American public support for continued funding for Ukraine has increased significantly over the past couple months, after taking a bit of a dip in the lull between the successful UKR offensive of last Summer and fall, and the Russian conquest of Bakhmut which is now basically just a pile of rubble.

A group of far-right-wing House Republicans pushing to load up the annual defense bill with socially conservative policies on abortion, race and gender have another demand: severe restrictions on U.S. military support for Ukraine.

The group’s proposals on military aid stand no chance of passing the House, where there continues to be strong bipartisan support for backing Ukraine’s war effort, or going anywhere in the Senate.

The House on Wednesday began debating the $886 billion measure, sidestepping the rifts as Republican leaders toiled behind the scenes to placate ultraconservative lawmakers who are demanding votes to scale back Ukraine aid and add social policy dictates. But those disputes will eventually have to be resolved to pass the bill, which had been expected to receive approval on Friday — a timetable that is now in doubt as the hard right threatens to hold up the process.

They are seeking votes on a series of proposals that would hamstring U.S. support for Ukraine, including one to curtail all funding for Kyiv until there is a diplomatic solution to the conflict and another that would end a $300 million program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers that has been in place for nearly a decade.

“Congress should not authorize another penny for Ukraine and push the Biden administration to pursue peace,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, argued to lawmakers on the House Rules Committee this week, appealing to them to allow votes on several proposals she has written on the topic. “Ukraine is not the 51st state of the United States of America.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/us/politics/defense-bill-republicans-ukraine-war.html

I'm not surprised that the Maoists find it easiest to get along with the far right, for example with the ruscists.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So it would possible, if UA feels deserted/underserved by the US, then it would turn to China? That certainly could throw a wrench into some calculations by the Russians and others...
Chinese advances into Eastern Europe are both perhaps under-reported on, and probably more influential in long-term impact than most realize.

Indeed. From the point of view of the PRC's geopolitics, there is almost no difference between the CIS and Africa.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Graverobbers... the more things change perhaps more they stay the same in Russia, where once again purging is back in fashion, not to mention the whitewashing of history.

(No paywall--- but might want to check it out for the photos)

The corresponding photos, showing graves marked with pyramids instead of the customary crosses or monuments, were published by Kremlin propaganda outlets.

According to reports, the images were captured at one of the most well-known cemeteries for Wagner mercenaries in Stanitsa Bakinskaya, Krasnodar Krai, Russia.

Meanwhile, wreaths adorned with the symbols of the Wagner PMC, led by Wagner mercenary company owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has apparently fallen out of favor with Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin following a failed military coup, were removed from the mercenaries’ graves and gathered in a large heap.

Simultaneously, in other burial sites of the deceased Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, unidentified individuals have started removing the flags that were previously erected there.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/surovikin-s-pyramids-installed-on-wagnerites-graves-photo/ar-AA1dLFl0?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=e425b79ff3e94f3aaea95d2d79d62ee0&ei=12

The photo itself says nothing. Instead of a typical Russian gravestone, there is a pyramid made of the same black granite, plus there are decent crosses. It's quite an expensive grave decoration by Russian standards. Only the design is unusual, and the reason for choosing that design is most likely not Wagner's fake disgrace, but the need to unify funerals that have become a routine.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

In dreamland, Ukraine gets everything on its wish list and solves all its issues successfully.
In the real world compromise and realpolitik reign more often than not and what you want and what you get are two distinct things.
Ukraine's leadership is right to be pushy, but some kind of post-war relationship with Russia is inevitable, the question is what tenor it has and what it focuses on. This war will partially decide that, and post-war needs will also partially decide that.  If we treat Ukraine poorly enough, it might find itself having to get closer to Russia (relatively), and it might be mutually beneficial too (for both UA and RU).

After the war, Ukraine can easily enter the sphere of the PRC: in spite of everything, the Ukrainian government sees no obstacles to this. As for relations with Russia, until February 24, 2023, Ukrainians and Russians cooperated very well at the international level (for example, I participated in the Ukrainian Uzhgorod club of tabletop role-playing games, which had members throughout the CIS, but was closed on February 24 due to the fact that its founders became military volunteers), but it is unlikely that in the next fifty years it will be possible to restore what was destroyed just on February 24.

Even after 2014 it was impossible to imagine a full-scale war between Ukrainians and Russians, these two peoples ruled together in the Soviet Union and did not distinguish each other by nationality. Especially when you consider that a large number of Russians have Ukrainian surnames and a large number of Ukrainians have Russian. February 24 erased the history of their relationship, now we are in a new reality.

China is by tradition isolationist, even when a color revolution happened in Kazakhstan they didn't even make a tweet, they don't lift a finger for anyone even if they come begging. That's why they have no allies or even spheres.

As for the rest it's also false, war between Russia and Ukraine was inevitable since the summer of 1991, it was largerly feared over the 1990's that it would be over Crimea, and it got close in 1992-93, the 1994 Budapest Treaty temporarily defused things until Poland became too strong.

A general state of war in the former USSR was always considered inevitable as typical post-colonial conflicts, same reasons (badly drawn borders) it's just the size that's different.

How do you live there in a parallel universe?

1. What the ***king color revolution in Kazakhstan?
2. The war of nationalist groups was inevitable only if the USSR continued to exist. There is not a single reason for Russia to shake its imperialist dick, trying to grab back the republics to which it itself granted independence, there is not and never was. The very desire to capture them back is madness and crime.
3. Poorly drawn borders could only lead to minor skirmishes between the Central Asian republics, but this was prevented by their common economic, political and military connection with Russia, which could look like a connection of small European countries with Germany, and not like puppets of the Warsaw Pact.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

This entire Ukraine joining NATO is a classic deadlock

a) Ukraine cannot join NATO until the war with Russia ends
b) Russia will not end the war with Ukraine unless Ukraine promises not to join NATO
c) The deadlock of a) and b) could be broken by the collapse of Ukraine which would remove the political basis of Ukraine joining NATO
d) The deadlock of a) and b) could also be broken by regime change in Russia in which case there is not more need for Ukraine to join NATO

I've highlighted in bold a giant error in your calculations. It's not a condition, but blackmail of a street bully:
"Drop the pepper spray or I'll hit you with a bat!"
The interlocutor is using the pepper spray, bully is throwing a bat and running away.

In fact, the Kremlin carried out a full-scale attack on Ukraine precisely because Ukraine is NOT a member of NATO.

I will argue that if Ukraine and NATO had stated ahead of time that Ukraine will never enter NATO the chances of a Russian invasion would have gone down significantly. 

State-to-state negotiations on foreign policy alignment are not blackmail.  I see nothing wrong with Russia asking Ukraine to play a role similar to what Finland did vis-a-vis USSR during the Cold War.   Namely, Ukraine does not take an anti-Russian position and does not join in any alliance directed at Russia, and in return, Russia will not force a pro-Russian orientation on Ukraine nor interfere in Ukraine's domestic issues.  I am not saying that Ukraine must accept since that is a matter of relative balance of power between Russia and Ukraine as well as other key stakeholders but making such a request is standard SOP in international power politics.

Your speech is directed at people who only know about Russia that it is called Russia and that it is cold there.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

2-3 years?! 😂
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-pilots-mastered-f-16s-in-just-4-months-report-2023-5?amp

It is one thing to be able to fly the F-16 but another to use it effectively in combat.  Throwing F-16s into battle with Ukrainian pilots that got 4 or 6 or 8 months of training is a very bad idea and will lead to the losses of very expensive F-16s when a much better training pilot can make a much greater military impact.

This issue has already been discussed. It takes years to train a pilot from scratch. But Ukrainian pilots already have sufficient experience. Figuratively speaking, it takes several months to retrain a person from a Soviet manual transmission to an automatic NATO one.

But the tactics of the wumaos were perfected back in the late sixties: if they endlessly repeat the same phrase, regardless of any refutation, in time they will be able to convince people of any nonsense.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

After this war, assuming that Ukraine remains a sovereign nation, there's zero chance that it would somehow end up in a PRC sphere of influence. The mere fact that a Western-backed Ukraine defeated Russia's war of conquest would be seen in Beijing (at least in parts thereof) as proof that the West successfully used a proxy to destroy Russia's sphere of influence. Worse, if (in my opinion, most likely) the reason for the Ukrainian victory is due to a collapse within the Russian elite, it would be spun (unconvincingly to even the dumbest of xiaofenhong) as a western-backed colour revolution.

For those CCP apparatchiks who are in their 50s or older, they would be reliving the shock they experienced during 1989-91. Ukraine would be an embarrassment they would much rather look ignore, and maaaybe you will see some Chinese state-owned construction companies getting some reconstruction contracts, but nothing more.

After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the nationalism of the peoples of the Russian Empire, including the Russian people, became a spring in a tin can, nourished by the extremism of the Marxists. The can is open. This means that all over the former Soviet Union is full of ultra-right, and as you know, there is no more fertile ground for Maoist agents than the ultra-right. Any state of the former USSR, except perhaps the Baltic states, which was Soviet only on the map, is extremely malleable for the PRC.

Of course, the degree of influence of the ultra-right in the former Soviet republics is a regulated thing. The question is how much it can be suppressed.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So my Friend, please explain the distinction, for those of us not familiar with Russian burial rites and images for those considered to be "War Heroes" within the current Russian paradigm?

The heroism of the grave is determined only by the personal means of the family of the deceased. Obviously, these graves were made not by families, but by Wagner's management, so they are modest, but surprisingly worthy by Russian standards. Especially when you consider that the Russian military leadership often abandons its soldiers to be gnawed by stray dogs, or cremated them in mobile incinerators, which usually dispose of medical waste. To be in a huge mass grave dug in the forest, even some luck is required.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Hahahahahaha

The Telegraph is a tankie now. This is all a strategy to legitimize Putin and his invasion by DARING to criticize Godgend’s Zelenskyy, the greatest world leader who can never do any wrong.

Unlike your favorite dictators, Zelensky could leave the presidency as early as next year.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://news.yahoo.com/law-moves-ukrainian-christmas-jan-114800447.html

"New law moves Ukrainian Christmas from Jan 7 to Dec 25, other holidays changed too"

I think this is not a smart move.  It hands Putin more ammo in his narrative: "This is a war for Russian civilization.  If Russia loses it is the end of Russian civilization"

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople celebrates Christmas on December 25th. If the Russian Orthodox Church considers itself superior to the Church of Constantinople, then active support of the perfidious criminal war is not its only sin.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the nationalism of the peoples of the Russian Empire, including the Russian people, became a spring in a tin can, nourished by the extremism of the Marxists. The can is open. This means that all over the former Soviet Union is full of ultra-right, and as you know, there is no more fertile ground for Maoist agents than the ultra-right. Any state of the former USSR, except perhaps the Baltic states, which was Soviet only on the map, is extremely malleable for the PRC.

Of course, the degree of influence of the ultra-right in the former Soviet republics is a regulated thing. The question is how much it can be suppressed.

But, the reality is, the PRC's main tool to gain influence abroad has been elite capture, not supporting revolutions. The old adage that revolutionaries become counter-revolutionaries after they gain power rings true. That's why the PRC supports the far-right military junta of Myanmar while also supporting various ethnic rebel groups, why it supports various Islamic theocrats while suppressing Islam at home, and even why it supported the Nepali government when it was suppressing Maoist rebels.

The overwhelming main concern for the CCP leadership right now isn't about how to export the revolution, but how to keep themselves in power in the context of China's own sputtering economy and increased tensions with the western powers. Maaaaybe this will lead to some Central Asian dictators or some Siberian warlord becoming richer. But, the overwhelming sentiment among the CCP elite is "if Russia loses, the west will have a free hand to besiege us", not "let's export the Revolution! Long live Xi Jinping Thought!"

The tactics of cultivating agents among the elite is as effective as possible, revolutions are an archaic thing compared to this. I don’t know if the Russian Party in the CPSU and the KGB was raised by the Chinese, or if it was a purely historical inevitability of the development of Russian philosophy, but it was the nationalists of the Soviet elite who turned the USSR, which proudly opposed the PRC in their own Cold War after de-Stalinization, into the CIS, where countries are rushing to become colonies of the PRC. I don’t know why a revolution is needed when the PRC can just help some far right party to become the ruling party in the state and make it its puppet.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

If the PRC's method for spreading influence is elite capture rather than exporting revolution, then it's no longer Maoist in practice.

Maoists are Chinese Stalinists. Stalinism itself was already post-Marxism, Maoism is also post-Marxism. As you remember, Stalin preferred direct military invasion to revolutions, changed the course of the World Revolution to the course of building socialism in a single country, catastrophically quarreled with the International, flirted with Russian nationalists, made friends with the capitalists, concluded agreements with the most ardent anti-communists in the world — the Nazis, he trained their pilots and shared Poland with them, and at the end of his life he decided to arrange his own little Holocaust against the "cosmopolitans". All this, you know, is not very Marxist. Thanks to the genius of Mao, his version of Stalinism mutated even further. Maoism is Marxism in name only. And do you remember Pol Pot, that curious Chinese project in Cambodia? He shocked orthodox Marxists.

Second, the CCP itself was a creation of Comintern, and its elite up until the 2000s spoke Russian because many of them studied in the USSR in the 50s.

It's widely rumoured that Jiang Zemin, when he was studying in Moscow in the 50s, had a girlfriend who turned out to be a KGB spy. There's even gossip on how that explains why he simply agreed to the Sino-Russian border as-is.

Anyway, the idea that the CCP engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union is just so ridiculous that it's not worth addressing.

It is strange that in the West there is an opinion that the USSR and the PRC were two testicles in one red scrotum, when the US actively helped the PRC in confronting the USSR, starting with the Chinese war against Vietnam and ending with the Afghan war, where the Americans and the Chinese helped the Afghans together. It was also the US that helped the PRC to get out of the failed state into which it was driven by Mao. It is also worth recalling the war for territories between the PRC and the USSR, which was completed very quickly, largely thanks to the "heavenly fire" of secret Grads, with which Soviet troops annihilated the Chinese invaders on Damansky Island. You will also be interested to know that along with the word "revisionist", which in the PRC as a whole was called Soviet Marxists and those Chinese Marxists who fell out of favor with someone, the Chinese used the word "Khrushchov". "Let's crush the Chinese Khrushchovs!", etc. In the PRC and the de-Stalinized USSR, propaganda was actively carried out against each other. Soviet propagandists delicately but unambiguously compared the Maoists to the German Nazis. I cannot convey even one percent of the hatred that was between the USSR and the PRC. Looking at Putin licking Xi's shoes is hard to believe it now, I get it.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So my Friend, please explain the distinction, for those of us not familiar with Russian burial rites and images for those considered to be "War Heroes" within the current Russian paradigm?

The heroism of the grave is determined only by the personal means of the family of the deceased. Obviously, these graves were made not by families, but by Wagner's management, so they are modest, but surprisingly worthy by Russian standards. Especially when you consider that the Russian military leadership often abandons its soldiers to be gnawed by stray dogs, or cremated them in mobile incinerators, which usually dispose of medical waste. To be in a huge mass grave dug in the forest, even some luck is required.

By the way, a fresh illustration to my words. And this is not even a battlefield, this is an ordinary civilian funeral agency in oil prosperous Samara city:

"Chilled meat": in Samara, ritualists store corpses in household refrigerators
Volga News
July 13, 2023 20:35
Machine translation:

On Thursday, July 13, the bodies of the deceased were found in Samara, which were stored in a household refrigerator with the inscription "chilled meat". The refrigerator was in an ordinary garage box on the Upper Career street.
...
Apparently, the garage is somehow related to a private funeral agency or mortuary.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://news.yahoo.com/law-moves-ukrainian-christmas-jan-114800447.html

"New law moves Ukrainian Christmas from Jan 7 to Dec 25, other holidays changed too"

I think this is not a smart move.  It hands Putin more ammo in his narrative: "This is a war for Russian civilization.  If Russia loses it is the end of Russian civilization"

Imagine believing that the survival of "Russian civilization" hinges on Ukrainians not celebrating Christmas in December. Gives the term "War on Christmas" a whole new meaning too.

There was a reason why Stalin choose to make the movie "Alexander Nevsky" in 1938 and its depiction of Battle on the Ice in 1242 as a way to appropriate Russian nationalism in the service of his regime.  1242 was not just a German invasion but it was a Catholic invasion.  Ukraine going to the other side of the 1054 Schim will also bring up memories of the Polish-Catholic invasion of the early 1600s as well as the Teutonic Order invasion of 1242.

ya maybe among the vast population of 1000 year olds i guess

Do not underestimate the power of the memory of Alexander Nevsky.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/29/stalin-name-of-russia

"Medieval warrior overcomes Stalin in poll to name greatest Russian"

In 2008  Alexander Nevsky beat Stalin in a Russian poll of over 5 million respondents as the Greatest Russian.  Stalin is there because of the Great Patriotic War.  For  Alexander Nevsky to beat Stalin over the Battle of the Ice a full 800 year earlier than the Great Patriotic War show the power of the memory of that conflict.

This "historical memory" is based only on the 1938 movie comics and anti-historical modern books by Fomenko and Nosovsky.

By the way, a funny thing with "the Greatest Russian" Stalin, he was not Russian, his real name was Dzhugashvili. He was a Georgian Ossetian.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-demography-second-year-full-fledged-war

As of Jan. 2023: Approx. 31.1 million Ukrainians left in territories controlled by the the Ukrainian government.

When you include land currently occupied by Russia (1991 borders) 37.6 million - Which means six 6.5 million inhabitants live under Russian rule of law. Not counting the Ukrainians who fled or were deported to the Russian mainland.

In comparison, at it's peak right before the end of the USSR, Ukraine had a population of 51-52 million. Ukraine has lost over a quarter of it's population since then and it's most likely going to continue that path as the war continues..

Only a real cannibal can gloat that Ukrainians are being subjected to genocide.