Army is a reflection of the society. For the army to improve radically, the society itself has to learn and improve. If it didn't happen for the last 200 years, why would it happen now?
Also, do you have an argument as to that “it didn't happen for the last 200 years” claim?
https://hromadske.ua/en/posts/russia-is-struggling-with-a-sh...
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-st...
#1 is not an option if you leave far away from a town.
#2 is not an option unless you can pay for it and its maintance.
I understand that this sound like a problem or some savagery but in reality this is not much different from the fact that most countries do not have centralized hot water or heating.
My summer house also does not have a flush toilet despite the fact that I can easily afford one. What's the problem?
From the first link in my previous comment.
Just bringing data to whether or not Russia is well equipped with flush toilets (or really more the point public sanitation).
From a public health standpoint, human waste reaching rivers tend not to be good.
"Untreated human sewage teems with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and many other infectious diseases."
https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/clean-water...
https://www.growingblue.com/septic-or-sewer/#:~:text=Septics....
They're generally sanitary (when maintained) and are a whole septic system. And are attached to flush toilets.
That's massively different than raw sewage making it to streams and rivers.
However none of this really matters because the point is that many rural Russians lack access to water and proper sewage (apparently as laid out in the above previous links). So politely you're wrong. Have a good day.
I really doubt about 1/5 but yes, sure, some parts of Tula look like this: https://st05.realtymag.ru/1911/2023-03-31/0/2101217236877371... basically a village with no connection to Tula's centralized sewage system.
>From a public health standpoint, human waste reaching rivers tend not to be good.
It doesn't in most cases. It goes into a hole. By the time it reaches river via ground waters there is literally no problem.
I've had the same shitty (pun intended) toilet argument on HN with other Russophobs and there's just no reaching these people seething with racial hate.
And poke around Youtube sometime. Plenty of people in Russia loading up videos (including westerners) of what life is actually like there.
I was there for the world cup, and after my country was out of the competition I traveled outside the cities hosting games including some very distant places. Agriculture in Russia is mostly an industrial affair just as in the West, with the usual John Deere dealerships dotting the margin of the roads along with some Chinese and Russian brands I've never heard of before, but that seems to be big there.
Of course, I stayed in the western portion of Russia, not even crossing the Urals. It is a gigantic country, and probably as you go east, probably things are more backward.
In general, the Russian experience, at least at the time of the world cup was basically the standard European experience for a traveler, things mostly work, the trains are absurdly better than American ones, on the same level as European trains, and at least in the big cities, you can get around speaking English. If you stay in an Airbnb and cook your meals, supermarkets had incredible variety at good prices.
Probably some things are worse or a lot worse now with the War Economy and sanctions, but on the other side, it is clear that Putin has been preparing for this for a long time, and export substitution has been going on for a long time.
The bottom line is that Russia is not like Elbonia from racist Scott Adams cartoons like so many people think.
You’d have to argue that wasn’t better than it was around 1820.
Hardly seems like being outclassed when Russia has spent the last year redeveloping it's logistics.
Additionally this is Russia's best vs the Wests hand-me-downs.
Yes. With old Soviet equipment (largely S-300s and BUKs). Which further proves my point. But those are running low and Ukraine has already lost a Patriot system just a few weeks after going into service.
Ukraine might have some better ranged munitions than they did previously like British Storm Shadows. They have even less range than the the US ATACMS and both are getting intercepted on the regular. And vs. the Russian Kalibrs, neither are all that special.
But the biggest problem is Ukraine doesn't have sufficient launch platforms for them (they are air launched and have to be retrofitted to Soviet era aircraft).
Now Russian logistics is a different story...
And in addition to the soviet equipment they have IRIS-T SLM, Patriot and some other western systems.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/19/ukraine-air-...
Patriot system has been reportedly consistently shooting down Kinzhal.
Not questioning whether or not Russia posses(ed) some great engineers (this would have to include Ukrainians then since this stuff was designed in the USSR) that certainly can do it's job when deployed correctly. Rather that Russia has somehow outclassed the "West" seems rather farfetched here.
And did you see the full video of the Patriot blowing two full loads before getting taken out in Kiev by Kinzhals (2:14 hit)?:
Yes, its simple hypersonic ballistic missiles are nowhere near new, whats new is hypersonic glide vehicle of which Kinzhal is not. You simply aim for where the missile is going to be in the future and hit to kill it.
Also, the Kinzhal is close to 30+ years old as well as it's just a Iskander thats air launched.
> And did you see the full video of the Patriot blowing two full loads before getting taken out in Kiev by Kinzhals (2:14 hit)?:
You have the video, can you show me a single image of an exploded patriot, you cant because it missed the only damage was from shrapnel from nearby buildings and that was quickly repaired.
Would love to see evidence that the system was destroyed (as in couldn't be repaired; couldn't still do it's mission) and that Kinzhals have not been shot down.
The US got out of WW2 with minimal casualties and a ton of riches, compared to a beaten down Europe/USSR. It’s not a fair comparison. For what it’s worth, the USSR indeed had very great education and have some excellent textbooks/papers as legacy.
Or chose a number different from 200.
My point is that the Crimean War resulted in reforms later on.
This time Russia has nukes and the means to deliver them to any address on this planet.
Zhukov: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
School might also have noted the complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis; things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Not really. They mostly started coming after the USSR stopped the Nazis in 1942.
"complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis"
Too bad your school forgets to mention the Munich agreement between the Nazis and the West, and all the efforts of the USSR to forge an anti-Nazi pact with the Great Britain and France. All of which happenned before the M-R pact.
But its not like after Munich, Britain and France invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia while Hitler took the Sudetenland, so bad as it is, it doesn’t compare to the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact.
The USSR took back what your lovely European hyena bit off from the corpse of the Russian Empire 20 years before that [0][1].
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzon_Line
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Bounda...
That's exactly the problem with cherry-picking Molotov-Rippentrop pact.
And btw no one of significance has ever called Russian Empire a hyena. Unlike Poland.
But Poland and Hungary did [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Czechoslovakia_(...
The USSR crushed over 600 thousand strong Quanqtung army in less than a month in Machurian strategic offensive operation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
They waited until Japan was beaten, then grabbed some land.
And let me quote the wiki article I linked to: "The Soviet entry into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionall".
As were the rest of the Allies. Soviet help with Japan probably would've been welcome much earlier.
> And let me quote the wiki article I linked to: "The Soviet entry into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionall".
The Japanese home islands were blockaded, constantly bombed, and hit with nuclear weapons after a grinding campaign across the Pacific. They'd lost by the time the Soviets jumped in; they were solidly on that path since 1942.
Soviet entry may've reinforced the hopelessness of continuing, but the Pacific part of WWII was largely fought by the US and UK alone. Contesting "the US won over the Japanese in the Pacific" is a tough path.
So, you know, not exactly the same as now.
No, I’m not; Stalin is recorded to have made the comment at the 1943 Tehran Conference with Churchill and Roosevelt.
Zhukov’s statement was 20 years later, addressing Cold War revisionism which minimized that contribution.