Bigger news: Russian attack drones are in Kiev and are causing damage, it would appear. Have they gained ground and are they moving forward towards the city?
No. They’re not gaining ground. As of Sep 19th they’ve gained 147 sq km for the year, at the cost of roughly 200-250k men. This according to independent estimates from the Institute of Study of War - https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
Russia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.
It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit-for-tat. Presumably Z has a list of important targets and is working his way down. Maybe data centers rank, maybe they don't.
During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.
I would imagine data centers would have more military value for Ruzzia than Wildberry, but also a significant escalation (which Ruzzia has now seemingly done)
Data centers are now dual use infrastructure and valid war targets
I'd say the real issue is that datacenters are super flammable (unlike refineries and evidently wildberries warehouses). Russia can use ballistic missiles on Ukraine's DCs but Ukraine has relatively small drones and few flamingo missiles
> I would imagine data centers would have more military value for Ruzzia than Wildberry
You and I are not informed enough to speculate like this. Presumably the military planners in Ukraine are competent. If they haven't been striking data centers, it's almost certainly because they prioritize other targets. It won't be because they haven't thought of it or are afraid to do so.
Sounds like Russia should make the first move to de-escalate given their role in starting this invasion and spending so much time striking civilian Ukrainian targets.
Russians terrorists are already primarily targeting schools, shelters, residential buildings, energy infrastructure, etc.
One of the first acts of was a destruction of the dam.
"It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit for tat" - what are they going to do, bomb some datacentres or power plants (again)?
I hope Ukraine is going to bring a major inconvenience to Russia before this winter. Otherwise kacaps are going to continue supporting this outrageous aggression.
Attacking Russian supply lines and logistics capability seems to be far more effective in stopping the Russian ability to wage war. Attacking data centres is likely only going to marginally hurt their economy.
Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory. Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground. Macron famously said that he would "have to send guys to Odesa" and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine and Russia has since captured even more territory and is actively bombarding Kyiv. Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.
Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.
Europe doesn’t decide when to end the war, or if it does, Europe has decide the war does not end. There is only one party that decides when the war ends. That would be Russia.
It's hard to see Putin ever choosing (under pressure) to end the war unless he can at least claim some sort of victory, such as territory gained, although never say never. The Soviet Union eventually just accepted their loss in Afghanistan and withdrew, although it took new leadership to do that. For that to be politically possible probably requires the war to become felt even more at home in Russia, and become more unpopular, which seems to be slowly happening already, even before more advanced missile systems become available to Ukraine.
Right, so the hope is that eventually Putin will either die of natural causes or be deposed in an internal coup / revolution. And then maybe his successor will be more reasonable. Until then there's no way to end the war.
You don't decide an outcome, you decide what you will do. Assuming Russia doesn't suddenly change goals, there is very little France can decide to do which could plausibly lead to the outcome "peace in a united Ukraine".
> Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground.
This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.
A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.
In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.
The britain coming out of world war 2 was very different from the britain entering WW1, in a way the late-comer nations refusing to be starved by the empires by going hyper-imperialist destroyed the age of empires.
?? The chinese are openly calling what they do inspired by the british empire. The turks want to restore their empire. The iranians are in it for the very same reason. This seems very wishful thinking. Not that empires are not zero sum and perfectly dreadfull, but i would call believers in the western alternative limited to europe, japan, sk and canada right now.
Humans have always been up for seizing neighbouring humans stuff and trying to rule over them and human nature hasn't really changed but the economics have. In the days of the British Empire it was far ahead industrially so could go stick railways in Africa and India and trade and it was kind of win win, sorta. Now everyone is more similarly developed and if you try it on in places like Ukraine they fight back at a similar tech level to Russia which ends up with ownership of some bombed out rubble in Ukraine and their own stuff burning.
For clarity I'm talking proper empire where you send in troops and install a viceroy, not just trading with places which is mostly what China does. The Taiwan thing is a special case of the communist party trying to take the remaining bit of China which has held out for a century.
Maybe. But another possibility is a repeat of what happened in 1918 with the Russian central government falling to a violent revolution followed what was essentially a surrender in WWI. That's not necessarily the most likely outcome — but one can hope.
Getting Ukraine to cede territory is going to be an uphill battle because the last time they did it, our security guarantees meant jack squat. Also Russia is never going to let them join NATO because they fully intend on taking the rest of Ukraine. The only way to keep them out of NATO is to continue the war with them.
So, if Ukraine cedes the territory, they have just legitimized the Russian claim to that territory while getting nothing in return. This is why talks have always fallen through up to this point. Russia wants Ukraine, Ukraine does not want to be Russian. There is no middle ground.
There is a middle ground which is kind of happening. Ukraine doesn't get all its territory back as it would be too costly in lives. It doesn't join NATO as that was never that practical.
However it builds up its military with the aid of partner countries sufficiently to stop Russia.
That's my bet - it gets frozen with some territory lost but with Ukraine able to defend itself a bit like USSR v Finland. I daresay it could still go like USSR v Afganistan too.
Why would Ukraine need to cede territory to get military aid they are already getting and _not_ be able join NATO? That would be like trading your back yard to your neighbor in exchange for your front porch not being burned down while the neighbor warms up the flame thrower they used to burn down your shed after you gave them your car to not burn down your shed. You are just giving Russia the time to build up infrastructure and equipment to go at you again.
Nobody is hoping for a peace deal. The goals of Russia and Ukraine are too incompatible for any peace deal European leaders could support. Everyone has resigned to the fact that the war will go on, until the internal politics in either country make it impossible to continue. Or until something completely unexpected happens.
And the $100 billion/year military aid can go on indefinitely, because it's only a fraction of the increased military spending due to the war. If the war ends too soon with the terms favoring Russia, Europe would have to spend even more to increase the pace of its remilitarization.
There's been a recent influx of pro-Russian astroturfers here and elsewhere. I have a feeling something seriously bad is about to happen.
Alternatively, people could be reading hollerith's post as "I want Ukraine to do whatever's necessary to make peace with Russia," which is obviously downvote-worthy.
I personally chose to read it as "I want a peace deal that involves Russia G'ing TFO and paying reparations," but he did leave room for other interpretations.
I'm hoping too. Basically everyone has been up for a peace deal apart from Putin. It will likely be harder for him to keep the agression up now Russia burns and runs low on money.
This is factually incorrect. The west torpedoed a peace agreement in early 2022, I think it was Johnson, though probably it was really the Pentagon and your "secret services". And you cannot expect Russia to accept a peace agreement which is just a pretext to gather forces to attack Russia in the future.
The 2022 "peace agreement" was something like give up your territory and weapons so we can take the rest when we feel like it. That it was more is mostly Russia propaganda based on the details not being published so they can make up stuff.
"pretext to gather forces to attack Russia in the future"
For goodness sake Russia is 100% the aggressor in this. If they hadn't started killing the neighbours no one would be hitting them.
>Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.
The total NATO military budgets are $1.8 tn per year. They could easily chip in $100bn a year indefinitely to defeat their no 1 adversary. There won't always be a Putin fanboy in the White House cutting all funds.
While I support aiding Ukraine, your comment doesn't make much sense. There has been only a small amount of bilateral weapons trade between Russia and Iran. The drones and missiles that Iran is using lately are mostly domestically manufactured with some key components imported from China.
Who's "we"? Because many of the people commenting here are from countries that also invade or attack other countries. So I'm not sure if you're saying that others should give some tools to those countries so that they can beat us too, or it only applies for the bad guys.
I said from the beginning that the west backing Ukraine wasnt so much about having ukraine win, it was more about letting Russia break its teeth on ukraine.
its fucked up and while i cheer on The US/Germany/France/Poland etc backing Ukraine, they're all guilty of paricipating in the drawn out decimating of Ukraine.
With this and the data center destruction in the Gulf, maybe in future countries will need to move to constructing datacenters deep underground to protect them. Probably more expensive, but I imagine still cheaper than building data centers in space.
Same solar panel wattage yields something like 10-15x more power in space. Given biggest shortage for building on earth has been power - I don’t see it being actually cheaper.
Sure there are other issues with getting there, cooling, radiation. But for cost of power prices - space has huge advantage.
Also seems a lot of people on far left seem agree we shouldn’t be building them which yields extra support for SpaceX.
At this point in time I think a few key observations should be clear:
- Putin wages an invasion, with the primary goal to occupy territory. This is what they officially say too, bla bla bla Ukraine should give up Donbass etc... bla bla bla.
- At the same time, Putin also wages a genocide. This is in many ways similar to other wars, e. g. Israel expanding and occupying Palestine, just on a large scale Putin commits to his genocidal war ambition here (see the rumours of another wave of upcoming mass mobilization in Russia).
- Unfortunately, and this is an even bigger problem for more people in the future: Putin has no interest and desire, but also no longer any real possibility to end his war. He married the thought of the war to not only his own personal survival but that of imperialistic Russia. I don't really see how negotiations could work now (Trump acting as agent Krasnov won't do anything useful anyway, other than be a spokesperson for Putin - note that Yuri predicted this in the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0) and this means Putin can only escalate further. While many think Putin is insane, I think the path of escalation "makes sense" IF you are willing to use nukes. While the USA meta-jabait trolls ("he won't use nukes"), I am pretty certain that he would. Which then brings us to the biggest question here:
- Why is the EU not already mass-producing nukes for all member states?
It can not continue that terrorists such as Putin continue to threaten europeans with total annihilation. Relying on the USA is a losing strategy; a replacement for NATO is necessary, one that can also include more actors, including Canadians. Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense. We all know Russia under Putin will continue to escalate daily. At some point these EU politicians then have to answer why they did not build up nukes. Agent Krasnov will never harm his business partner - he maximizes on his own personal wealth. Worst US president ever but best russian asset.
> Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense
I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!
In the book 1984, the country was at war with another country. Then they changed which country they were at war with overnight, modifying history books to pretend they had always been at war with that country. The public just went along with it.
If Putin wants an exit strategy (I’m not sure he does), he can simply declare that all terrorists were defeated and the “special operation” achieved its goal. Then hold a victory parade and have state media say that Russia won. The Russian public would be so glad the war was over that they wouldn’t care.
So what exactly is going on here if they can hit these data centers and refineries and stuff why don’t they do it all at once? I’m talking about both sides. Wouldn’t it make sense to hit every target at the same time and cause as much non-collateral damage as possible at once. Why is it spaced out? Like if Kiev can hit targets in Moscow why not hit every single target in Moscow at once.
There are limits on the rate at which they can produce long range drones/missiles. Like Ukraine produces roughly 10-15k per day drones overall, but only a few hundred long-range drones capable of hitting Moscow, and a single attack takes many hundreds to over a thousand drones because most get intercepted, so it takes quite a few days to build up enough drones for an attack.
Russia lost most of its drone capacity when USA destroyed the Shahed factories and stockpiles in Iran and it has taken awhile for them to ramp-up their own domestic production. Both Russia and Ukraine are limited in the volume of drones operational at the same time so they deploy them as they become ready. There really isn't enough at any one time to do large coordinated swarm attacks like you're describing.
These attacks are complicated and resource intensive, with tactics and countermeasures constantly evolving. Attacks need to happen in large coordinated swarms in order to get past defenses, and arranging dozens or hundreds of different drones to all attack deep into enemy territory at the same time without being detected beforehand is challenging. The successful strikes make the news, but there are many failed attacks that get less coverage.
Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.
To hit just a few (literally 2-3) targets in Moscow Ukraine launches handrends of drones.
Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.
If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.
Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.
Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.
It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.
Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.
We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.
News like this getting posted and then echoes in meaningless reactionary commentary of clueless or otherwise motivated usernames is not gonna fly on my watch.
“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” - Henry Kissinger
“Were there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region“ – Joe Biden, 1986
“The Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.“ – senator of USA
“The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war“ – Julian Assange
“Soon after 9/11, former General Wesley Clark visited the Pentagon and saw plans for regime change in seven countries in five years: "Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & finishing it off with Iran.“
I will not comment on the comparisons on this thread with nazi Germany, though as a person who lives abroad and is a native Russian speaker, and who understans a bit more about the causes of this war than the average american joe, then at least from the point of view of rabid nationalism and hatred of people based on their nationality, the Germany here is you and your friends in Kiev, and not Russia.
Sorry, but nothing will change this basic truth: just as an example: remember permitting hate speech on your social networks against Russians, then "retracted" with no visible effect? I do.
Effectively suppressing on your web forums discussions of ukranian "nationalism" (a very soft word to describe it) is another example, but there is much more.
79 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] threadRussia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.
During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.
Data centers are now dual use infrastructure and valid war targets
You and I are not informed enough to speculate like this. Presumably the military planners in Ukraine are competent. If they haven't been striking data centers, it's almost certainly because they prioritize other targets. It won't be because they haven't thought of it or are afraid to do so.
One of the first acts of was a destruction of the dam.
"It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit for tat" - what are they going to do, bomb some datacentres or power plants (again)?
I hope Ukraine is going to bring a major inconvenience to Russia before this winter. Otherwise kacaps are going to continue supporting this outrageous aggression.
Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.
Why would Europe decide anything? Ukraine is a sovereign country, nobody should be making decisions on its behalf!
Especially not about war and its teritory!
And nothing Ukraine can decide to do on its own.
This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.
A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.
In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.
For clarity I'm talking proper empire where you send in troops and install a viceroy, not just trading with places which is mostly what China does. The Taiwan thing is a special case of the communist party trying to take the remaining bit of China which has held out for a century.
So, if Ukraine cedes the territory, they have just legitimized the Russian claim to that territory while getting nothing in return. This is why talks have always fallen through up to this point. Russia wants Ukraine, Ukraine does not want to be Russian. There is no middle ground.
However it builds up its military with the aid of partner countries sufficiently to stop Russia.
That's my bet - it gets frozen with some territory lost but with Ukraine able to defend itself a bit like USSR v Finland. I daresay it could still go like USSR v Afganistan too.
And the $100 billion/year military aid can go on indefinitely, because it's only a fraction of the increased military spending due to the war. If the war ends too soon with the terms favoring Russia, Europe would have to spend even more to increase the pace of its remilitarization.
I'm hoping for a peace deal.
Alternatively, people could be reading hollerith's post as "I want Ukraine to do whatever's necessary to make peace with Russia," which is obviously downvote-worthy.
I personally chose to read it as "I want a peace deal that involves Russia G'ing TFO and paying reparations," but he did leave room for other interpretations.
"pretext to gather forces to attack Russia in the future"
For goodness sake Russia is 100% the aggressor in this. If they hadn't started killing the neighbours no one would be hitting them.
The total NATO military budgets are $1.8 tn per year. They could easily chip in $100bn a year indefinitely to defeat their no 1 adversary. There won't always be a Putin fanboy in the White House cutting all funds.
As a taxpayer I'd consider it one of the world's great bargains, shutting down Russian imperialism before they cause even more grief.
its fucked up and while i cheer on The US/Germany/France/Poland etc backing Ukraine, they're all guilty of paricipating in the drawn out decimating of Ukraine.
Sure there are other issues with getting there, cooling, radiation. But for cost of power prices - space has huge advantage.
Also seems a lot of people on far left seem agree we shouldn’t be building them which yields extra support for SpaceX.
- Putin wages an invasion, with the primary goal to occupy territory. This is what they officially say too, bla bla bla Ukraine should give up Donbass etc... bla bla bla.
- At the same time, Putin also wages a genocide. This is in many ways similar to other wars, e. g. Israel expanding and occupying Palestine, just on a large scale Putin commits to his genocidal war ambition here (see the rumours of another wave of upcoming mass mobilization in Russia).
- Unfortunately, and this is an even bigger problem for more people in the future: Putin has no interest and desire, but also no longer any real possibility to end his war. He married the thought of the war to not only his own personal survival but that of imperialistic Russia. I don't really see how negotiations could work now (Trump acting as agent Krasnov won't do anything useful anyway, other than be a spokesperson for Putin - note that Yuri predicted this in the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0) and this means Putin can only escalate further. While many think Putin is insane, I think the path of escalation "makes sense" IF you are willing to use nukes. While the USA meta-jabait trolls ("he won't use nukes"), I am pretty certain that he would. Which then brings us to the biggest question here:
- Why is the EU not already mass-producing nukes for all member states?
It can not continue that terrorists such as Putin continue to threaten europeans with total annihilation. Relying on the USA is a losing strategy; a replacement for NATO is necessary, one that can also include more actors, including Canadians. Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense. We all know Russia under Putin will continue to escalate daily. At some point these EU politicians then have to answer why they did not build up nukes. Agent Krasnov will never harm his business partner - he maximizes on his own personal wealth. Worst US president ever but best russian asset.
I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!
Recent German, French and Italian elections are a cause for concern too.
If Putin wants an exit strategy (I’m not sure he does), he can simply declare that all terrorists were defeated and the “special operation” achieved its goal. Then hold a victory parade and have state media say that Russia won. The Russian public would be so glad the war was over that they wouldn’t care.
Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.
Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.
If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.
Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
They sell "we're only targeting military infra" and "we only escalate after unwarranted escalation by Ukraine".
They hit Ukraine's energy grid during literally the coldest days in winter. The audience's reaction? "YES LET THEM FREEZE".
Russia couldn't care less about what they need to sell. They've been hitting civilian infra right and left.
Russia hit these targets from day one, as a priority.
They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.
Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.
It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.
Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.
We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.
“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” - Henry Kissinger
“Were there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region“ – Joe Biden, 1986
“The Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.“ – senator of USA
“The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war“ – Julian Assange
“Soon after 9/11, former General Wesley Clark visited the Pentagon and saw plans for regime change in seven countries in five years: "Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & finishing it off with Iran.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westsplaining
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Principles_of_State_Lan...
Sorry, but nothing will change this basic truth: just as an example: remember permitting hate speech on your social networks against Russians, then "retracted" with no visible effect? I do.
Effectively suppressing on your web forums discussions of ukranian "nationalism" (a very soft word to describe it) is another example, but there is much more.