Russia is basically nazi germany with nukes. It's fucking frustrating.
"Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs":
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3734-neutrino-beam-co...
EDIT: removed uncited rumor
See "MAD -Criticism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...
I would argue for the top secret program.
I do not however believe that Russian politicians and military recognize this concept beyond its application to NATO meaning that they would hope we believe in it. There isn't one document I can point to but rather all of their political and war history suggests they would believe a nuclear war can be won and they don't really care if half their population were wiped out. The political elites can hide in bunkers deep under ground for a very long time. They have been preparing for this since at least WWII. Add to this the evolution of smaller, faster more efficient tactical nuclear weapons and HANES EMP weapons would bolster their confidence in winning. I don't really know what winning means given they would be economically destroyed and the surviving civilian population would be starving and sick. I am just looking at this through Russian history tinted glasses.
But UK got better medical care and education.
Nevertheless.
Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries. And they’ve also shown that they probably couldn’t manage it even without NATO or the nuclear deterrent.
Russia wants NATO to be back into 1997 borders. Exactly because it wants to get EE countries back into its sphere of influence. If NATO allows this to happen (and there were people arguing for it) - Russia would blackmail these countries to become Russian vassals. And if they don't want to - it would invade them.
Russia already invaded Baltic states in 1991. Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Georgia in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 and now.
It's not exactly a secret. Putin and his ideologues (Dugin for example) wrote about the need to "recreate Russian empire". The only reason they don't is because USA remains active in Europe and NATO remains a credible defensive alliance. But it's not guaranteed forever. There are political forces in US and the rest of NATO that consider it too costly.
It's about the gas that was found there.
Their current actions seems to have made NATO stronger ( eg. Finland and Sweden possibly joining). Don't believe Russian rethoric too much.
They don't only want Crimea. They already had Crimea before this invasion. They are occupying large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk provinces and some other parts of Ukraine and they tried to siege the capital city and nearby provinces.
It's also not just about when they talked about NATO. There were already constructing ( shell of memory serves me right) gas extraction around Crimea. It was crippled during the invasion in 2014.
It could have probably replaced ALL Russian gas imports.
This was supposed to be just the beginning.
What will be hysterical is in fifty years when it all becomes unclassified after the new weapon has to be used outing its existence and we all learn that there was a deep state after all and they hid the existence of the weapon from Trump. I'll be long dead, but I would have enjoyed it immensely.
What would be even better is an announcement like, "The US has voluntarily destroyed all of its nuclear weapons and generators and welcomes the world to verify there is no longer any massively fisionable matter anywhere in the country. Also, along with this announcement we have constructed a 600 mile long accelerator which can instantly detect and detonate any such material found anywhere in the world, instantly. Everyone's nuclear weapons are now their own worst nightmare and we encourage all countries to rid themselves of such weapons as quickly as possible. Starting with you, Russia."
Can you imagine?
- Neutrino accelerators.
- EMP weapons.
- Human Engineering.
- Espionage.
- Real time tracking 24/7 of the location of government officials that could give such order.
- A type of SEAL Team 6 team ready to go anywhere and disable them.
- Most important you need an EMP solution to disable Nuclear submarines.
That could be the beginning of the novel/Netflix series/pre-announcement mystery as all the scientists in the world notice something just happened, but aren't sure what for a while...
I also love the idea of doing it all as a hoax. Like a bluff. We mock up fake demos and then convince the entire world we have this power to detonate any nuke anywhere as if we owned it... And say, "We really don't want to have to demonstrate it for real, but if we have to." And the world voluntarily disarms...
"How to dismantle a nuclear bomb" (2019)
"MIT team successfully tests a new method for verification of weapons reduction."
https://news.mit.edu/2019/verify-dismantle-nuclear-bombs-092...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(World_War_II) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Balti...
I don't know about you, but this gives me massive "We've always been at war with Eastasia" vibes. We really shouldn't be normalizing "reviews" of our attitude towards other countries in the context of history, based on whatever is politically expedient today.
I think you are misled about the degree to which much of our "history" is based on what _was_ politically expedient at the time. Nothing the parent poster has said is false, it is precisely addressing convenient myths that have been left to stand.
To provide some examples:
The Wehrmacht was not innocent when it comes to the holocaust, but it was politically expedient to pin the blame on the SS and promote the idea that the Wehrmacht was largely "clean". So until the past couple of decades, that's what the histories said.
Hitler wasn't single-handledly responsible for most of the decisions that were pinned on him by the German military high command after the war. But the German high command were tasks with writing the histories, and it was certainly in their best interests to do so.
A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
As to how this applies to the Russian myths of WWII, here is a thread from a historian: https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/14973067463306...
What changed between now and the cold war? You'd think that it'd be very expedient to do some revisionist history when they had nukes pointed at us, or were engaging in proxy wars all over the globe.
>A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
Of course, the revisionism isn't going to be as blatant as "We've always been allied with Eastasia" today and "We've always been at war with Eastasia" tomorrow. This time it's going to be "removing the convenient lies of the past", and the next time (when we want to be allied with russia) it's going to be "judging them by the standards of the time" or whatever.
Don't worry, this has been already happening for years. Nazis are being normalized constantly.
btw you'll be surprised but England made a deal with Nazis a few years prior to Soviets. Another thing that may surprise you is that Poland occupied small part of Czechoslovakia when Germans conquer it (after they made deal with England).
Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
No need to twist my words here. You know very well what I meant with it.
> Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
I’ve lived in different political and economical systems and on both sides of the iron curtain which makes me think I have developed good immunity against all kinds of propaganda.
Also the Russians made a peace treaty with Germany after the UK and France had. Neither the UK or France would agree with a mitual self-defense treaty with Russia prior to the Ribbentrop peace treaty.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1939pact.asp
"In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party. Article II. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement. Article III. With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinteredness in these areas. Article IV. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret." Moscow, August 23, 1939.
That is not really an argument. I can select an arbitrary time period (other than 20 years) and show that none of these were part of Russian empire at that time.
I mean, so what? Modern Russia is not the Russian Empire; it is a successor state of the Soviet Union. It formally seceded the same day as Ukraine (and Belarus). If it wasn't happy with this situation, then it shouldn't have done so.
Even if modern Russia _was_ a rump state of the Soviet Union (which, again, it isn't) it would have no more right than anyone else to former dependencies.
Similar hyperbole is trotted out in every conflict. The Saudis are Nazis to the Yemeni people, the Israelis are Nazis to the Palestinian people, so we should have a mass boycott and divestment not just from Russia, but from Saudi Arabia and Israel as well. Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression doesn't actually exist for the United States (see Iraq as well).
As far as nukes, we'd be back in the large-scale tank battles of WWII without nukes. They generally have a stabilizing influence as the architects of wars are notably reluctant to place themselves on the firing line; sending kids off to die somewhere else is not a problem for them, but facing the nuclear annihilation of their own home is another matter.
There's reports of Russia extracting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to camps within Russian borders. We don't know the exact scale or nature of these camps yet.
> Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression
Ah, whataboutism. We're not doing shit about one terrible situation, so we shouldn't do shit about any terrible situation.
This article has 3 entries from 3 teenagers, the last one is from a teenager of a Pro-Russian family who have been relocated to Russia. He's writing they've been rescued from the "tyranny": https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/01/w...
So just about any country... given that nations themselves are mostly-immoral geopolitical entities.
> trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
Perhaps. But massive outrage at atrocities can't be blunted with "eh, your country didn't care about it elsewhere."
Your first comment is very strange. Russia seems to be following the expansionist genocide playbook. But they can't be compared to Nazi Germany because, uh, they've not managed to secure too much of the Ukrainian population yet, and there's not ironclad evidence of mass incarceration of Ukrainians yet?
Every country has skeletons in its closet. Should we then just ignore crimes against humanity?
> Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
Nope, hypocrisy by itself isn't a problem. To understand why consider a criminal that once thought stealing is ok, then got caught, was in prison for his sentence, repented, and now thinks that stealing isn't ok. Can he complain to authorities that his neighbor was robbed?
You are saying he shouldn't. It's not only absurd - it's also morally repulsive. The only reason you could think avoiding hypocrisy justifies ignoring crimes against humanity is if you're trying to defend the murderers.
Dude. Just don’t.
I recommend cracking a history book. That's literally every country.
> A uniform standard of justice is a key requirement of any legal system of accountability, in my opinion. Pointing out hypocrisy could be called 'whataboutism' I suppose, but what about hypocrisy? Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
I couldn't care less about your hypocrisy charges. If something is bad it should be stopped. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter by who. You can get your high-minded moralizations on once the dust settles. Moralizations are for the living - a champagne problem if you will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
This system of forced labor concentration camps was active in USSR till 1987.
> The tentative consensus in contemporary Soviet historiography is that roughly 1,600,000[b] died due to detention in the camps
That's on top of outright mass killings and ethnic (yes - ethnic) cleansings done by USSR. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
You can argue nazis killed more people, but it's the same order of magnitude (millions).
Nobody was held responsible for these crimes against humanity. There was no Nuremberg trials for soviet mass murderers and torturers. These people often worked for NKVD/KGB and remained in power after it turned into FSB (which Putin was a member of).
These people (or their subordinates) are still ruling Russia. So there's no wonder they are still doing ethnic cleansings, mass murders and terror.
I stand by my opinion - Russia is a nazi germany with nukes.
For example there were many pogroms, some inspired by Russia some by Germany, many were "grassroots".
Soviet brutality is a fact, but suddenly bringing this up in 2022 when everybody’s obviously not bothered by it that much any more and drawing a parallel with Nazi Germany is bizarre to say the least. I think you must have realized yourself that the comparison was far fetched and you’re fishing for anything which would make it seem at least halfway logical.
Russia literally invaded Ukraine and mass murdered civilians in occupied cities.
Putin made a speech in which he said Ukraine is a "fake nation" and that "Ukrainian question must be solved".
There were lists of people to be eliminated prepared before the invasion.
Thousands of Ukrainians from occupied cities were moved to Russia against their will. It's not clear what happened to them.
Russians have pseudomilitary training for kids and population is wearing stylized Z symbols to show their support for the "operation".
Calling the "operation" a war is an offence for which people go to jail. So is criticizing the Russian army.
And you're saying it's "bizzare" to compare this to nazi Germany?
What do you want - a signed letter from Putin admitting it?
If Russia wasn't behaving like USSR in its totalitarian period I wouldn't be reminding people of these examples. But it is.