gandhium

Maybe they will or maybe not.

I can remember similar predictions about Japan and... let's say they didn't make it.

> The evidence is shaky at best

I think nothing will please the 'believers' except the personal Putin's apology. And of course they might say that was just his double speaking.

> it's debatable on whether or not those bombings did indeed cause the surrender of Japan

They were specifically mentioned in emperor's address. Yes, they caused the surrender.

> Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not military targets

They were military targets. There was army HQ, troops stationed there, factories which were producing military goods.

> We were not producing commodities for the sake of profit.

Definitely. Apple for sure is a non-profitable charity.

It's not interceptor, it's a multi-role stealth fighter.

And still I'd say - yes, it's better.

No, they weren't accounted since US Army found them in all the strange places.

> The similarity between these and NASA's shuttle is stronger than I remember.

Because USSR decided to copy Space Shuttle (instead of another competing Soviet-produced approach).

No, China putting their taikonauts to space using chinese rockets.

F-35 don't have any Russian and Chinese counterparts. They're all in design stage.

China may get to the mass-produced stage, but that's stil debatable, since they have issues with their engines.

So, about 5 thousand chemical ammunition that were found there are not WMD?

It wasn't ahead, but on the contrary it was behind.

They didn't managed to add engines to their copy and US launcher had reusable parts, but "Energiya" was strictly for single-time use.

> with mortality rates under 10%

More than 10%, and much more in some places or during some periods.

Yes, USSR invented stealth, internet, iphone, google and whatnot.

Ok, on the serious side - US obtained that design in joint agreement with a huge financial boon for YAK bureau to develop another plane for Russia.

Guess what - nothing from Yak design went into F-35 and nothing was produced in Russia by Yak.

Coincidence? I think not(c).

So, in which conflict it was proved to be better?

"From 1969 the SEAM was incorporated in the F-4J and enabled the missile to be locked on a target off boresight slaving the missile's seeker head to the aircraft radar. "

1969 was way before MiG-29 first flight.

> Flying and improving Soyuz (especially through the tough times of 199x and beginning of 200x) is definitely a success

Let's not forget that they survived those 'tough times' with generous US financing.

> My first thought on the title of the article was "if it ain't broken, don't fix it"

Problem is - it's broke already. In all means - sloppy quality, price hikes, political bullshit with 'russkiy mir'...

> IR-missile targeting on the MIG-29 (it took a while for the US AIM-9 to catch up)

AIM-9L (first type with IR/Laser) started producing in 1977. First MiG-29 flight was in 1977 (and I highly doubt that they had IR-missile targeting at that time).

Where's 'took a while' actually?

One of the Buran designers openly admitted that they were forced to copy Shuttle since it was 'already working'.

You can call them anti-Trump as well. And they have to serve jail time in Russia, btw.

That filmmaker was anti-Putin and he still lives in Russia? Totally believable.

> The Soviets were on the brink of invading Japan and one of the "reasons" for the use of the atomic weapons was as a show of force / deterrent against the Soviets

Soviet invasion of Japan was discussed in detail on Yalta conference. Don't you think it was a little too late to deter Soviets by bombing Japan?

> The book mentioned that many historians think the Japanese were motivated to surrender more by the Soviet threat of invasion than by the atomic bombings.

Japanese emperor mentioned both of them when he addressed the nation. I wonder why those historians wasn't aware of that.

> Browder's Yeltsin-era investments and subsequent financial arrangements in Russia were not entirely virtuous

Even if they're completely non-virtuous, how that can justify stealing from him and attempts to jail him?

Yes, most likely you're kremlinbot, spreading FUD around.

Movie by the 'top anti-Putin Russian director' is called "The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes", not "The Magnitsky Files".

The support for claims "effort to bury that film" or "top anti-Putin director" is on you though.

And movie “The Magnitsky Files: Organized Crime Inside the Russian Government.” is a different movie and was presented by Browder itself: [0] (looks like it's a story from WaPo but I cannot open WaPo link, so here's the copy) [0} http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/2012/06/magnitsky-docume...

> you couldn't own a good car, no matter who you were.

Well, theoretically you can. But you have to be a really high on the ladder.

Brezhnev had several good _imported_ cars. Gagarin had a sport car (gift from French, I believe). Vysotskiy (think of a Soviet Elvis Presley) had a good car.

But other 99.99%... no chance.

Of course, I'm not taking into accounts hundreds of "expropriated" German cars which appeared in USSR after 1945.

Most of them doing just that. Flooding a lot of areas because hydroelectric dam was built on the river is a valid scenario.

See: https://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renew...

> In the three decades Stalin was general secretary, the Soviet Union had enormous economic growth. China also had enormous economic development under the communist party from 1949 to 1978

Suprisingly (or rather unsurprisingly) they've also managed to starve tens of millions along with their 'growth'.

> what would have happened if Gorbachev had simply accepted Reagan's apparently sincere offer to share SDI technology rather than dismissing this as ridiculous when the U.S. would not even share "milking machines."

This... this is interesting. What technology Reagan was talking about?

Well, khruschyovkas and neobrutalist apartment blocks were started some 40 years _after_ Soviet rule was established.

So their primary target before that was not to take millions out of mediocre living conditions, but world revolutions and such.

Well, meduza.io is not strictly Russian. That's why they can raise a lot of hot topics without fear to be silenced by Kremlin.