The Russian invasion of Ukraine (4 Viewers)

[ann post]

do as much damage as possible to the Russians for them.

By blowing the eastern side of their own country to bits?

I definitely think damaging/blocking the infrastructure around grain production has emerged as a strategy/tactic. I'm not so sure it was plan a. They took serious losses in the initial assault on kiev, in the past month they've failed (for now) in the stated attempt to take the whole of the eastern regions - again with significant loses.

I'm just kinda channelling UTM here as he's really really well read on history, but he tends to say that russian just has never had any issue with putting endless troops into a meat grinder to win a war. Putin has spent his life installing himself somewhere in the power structure of all the major russian resources. Would he then see ukraine as a pride victory or as a massive coalfield and steel resource?

 

[pete]

By blowing the eastern side of their own country to bits?

I think the russians have that angle mostly covered for them, but yeah.

I think that as long as the americans see value in the russian army being ground down for them by someone else (or more accurately, the increasing economic cost to the russian economy of that happening) the big guns will keep on coming. Should be interesting to see how that angle escalates over the next while.

 

[flashback]

@ann post who's UTM?

As I understand things, the Russians have ~limitless old tanks and weapons, and ~limitless men to throw into the grinder.
By brute force they've more or less ironed out a lot of the broken logistics that were messing things up at the start, and there's kind of a rhythm going on now.

And that's how it's going to go, lobbing shells, grinding day after day, reducing the place to rubble and ethnic cleanse / rape anyone left over. The longer game plan is simply: we can do this all day, eventually the rest of the world will get bored, then you'll give up.

But if western weapons manufacturers have any sway anywhere, and they do, they'll ensure that lots of product keeps flowing in. This has to be too perfect of a scenario for US to screw up. A proxy war, with no downside, gradually ruining Russia's ability to fight wars. They can pour anything they like in there, within reason. Plus they can keep streaming in Russian troop movements and intel, generally exercising that entire wing of the military.

It's almost in everyone's interests, other than Ukraine's, to keep the thing going.

 

[ann post]

@ann post who's UTM?

I live with an uncle who has literally travelled the globe and reads history almost all the time, i believe @pete made the reference ages ago and i've stuck with it..

Uncle Traveling Matt

Uncle Traveling Matt is a brave Fraggle explorer and Gobo's uncle on Fraggle Rock. In "Beginnings," he ventured out of the Rock to explore the human world of Outer Space. To document his exploits, Matt sends Gobo a series of postcards recounting his experiences with the Silly Creatures and their...

muppet.fandom.com

 

[flashback]

I live with an uncle who has literally travelled the globe and reads history almost all the time, i believe @pete made the reference ages ago and i've stuck with it..

Uncle Traveling Matt

Uncle Traveling Matt is a brave Fraggle explorer and Gobo's uncle on Fraggle Rock. In "Beginnings," he ventured out of the Rock to explore the human world of Outer Space. To document his exploits, Matt sends Gobo a series of postcards recounting his experiences with the Silly Creatures and their...

muppet.fandom.com

ah, nice one.

I just learned that the lighthouse in Fraggle Rock depended on if you watched the English version or the American version. They left the entire thing more or less the same, apart from the lighthouses.

I saw the American one over in America and got a mild anxiety attack because it was the wrong lighthouse in the intro, but I didn't know the lighthouse was the issue. I just knew something was badly wrong and suspected someone was trying to rewrite history. Again.

 

[pete]

ah, nice one.

I just learned that the lighthouse in Fraggle Rock depended on if you watched the English version or the American version. They left the entire thing more or less the same, apart from the lighthouses.

I saw the American one over in America and got a mild anxiety attack because it was the wrong lighthouse in the intro, but I didn't know the lighthouse was the issue. I just knew something was badly wrong and suspected someone was trying to rewrite history. Again.

it was syndicated into loads of TV markets with the lighthouse/lighthouse keeper & sprocket localised as necessary & the fraggles etc. dubbed

 

[ann post]

The middle class in fraggle rock really ran on thier privelidges in my memory. Did they eat the houses of the little fellas with the building stuff or something?

 

[pete]

The middle class in fraggle rock really ran on thier privelidges in my memory. Did they eat the houses of the little fellas with the building stuff or something?

the doozers? can't remember.

 

[flashback]

The middle class in fraggle rock really ran on thier privelidges in my memory. Did they eat the houses of the little fellas with the building stuff or something?

there was always this sort of philosophical angsty undercurrent going on.

The Doozers were considered to have little to no rights, and the Fraggles did enjoy eating their buildings. But some social justice woke type Fraggles, possibly that young one Red, got it into her head that maybe the Doozers didn't appreciate the Fraggles coming in and wreaking havoc upon Doozer society for the sake of treats.

HOWEVER, it then transpired that if the Fraggles didn't remorselessly terrorize and destroy Doozer's buildings, Doozer buildings got out of control and it had impacts on other aspects of their society.

Ultimately the whole question wasn't resolved to my knowledge.

 

[magicbastarder]

the doozers couldn't be trusted to run their own society and needed the parasitic fraggles to keep them on the straight and narrow? this gets worse.

 

[pete]

I think the russians have that angle mostly covered for them, but yeah.

I think that as long as the americans see value in the russian army being ground down for them by someone else (or more accurately, the increasing economic cost to the russian economy of that happening) the big guns will keep on coming. Should be interesting to see how that angle escalates over the next while.

Ukraine may soon get US long-range MLRS rocket system

The US looks set to send the weaponry, but Russia warns it would be a provocative escalation.

www.bbc.com

 

[flashback]

the doozers couldn't be trusted to run their own society and needed the parasitic fraggles to keep them on the straight and narrow? this gets worse.

Yes, you could argue that the Fraggles may have overstepped certain boundaries here and there while invading and rampaging through elaborate Doozer buildings, bridges, towers, roads etc, smashing and eating everything in sight, typically gleefully enjoying the sight of distraught, fleeing Doozer children caught up in the crossfire.

But, on the other hand it was clear that Doozers were intrinsically incompetent, inferior beings, who basically had it coming.

 

[seanc]

I don't remember anything about this in Fraggle Rock. I'm scared to look it up.

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

Did any of that carry over into the reboot?

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[ann post]

No because they took an oath in season six

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[flashback]

Did any of that carry over into the reboot?

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The Woke PC brigade probably got to them and they left out all the stuff about Doozers being notoriously sexually promiscuous, and as a result absolutely riddled with venereal diseases.

Or that genetically speaking Doozers would be closer to insects than us/Fraggles.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

By blowing the eastern side of their own country to bits?



I'm just kinda channelling UTM here as he's really really well read on history, but he tends to say that russian just has never had any issue with putting endless troops into a meat grinder to win a war. Putin has spent his life installing himself somewhere in the power structure of all the major russian resources. Would he then see ukraine as a pride victory or as a massive coalfield and steel resource?

True - the powers that be will continue to feed manpower into this. But based their initial war aims of regime change what they are pushing to achieve now is a lot less.

If some sources are to be believed the Russians have casualties in 3 months equivalent to the whole of the Afghanistan war. This is without achieving what they initially set out to do.

As for economic vs pride motives - the two aren’t mutually exclusive - if coal and steel were the sole motives here they would have just formally annexed the regions they had puppet administrations in.

I don’t doubt putin would have issues about digging in and grinding on - but this has not gone to plan

 

[Unicron]

I don’t doubt putin would have issues about digging in and grinding on - but this has not gone to plan

Even accounting for Russia's historic tendency to pour young men into the meat grinder of war, which is obviously what every other country has also done, but much of Russia's storytelling to itself accounts for the suffering it went through during WW2, oh that's starting to sound like the Brits now, will there be a point where the public start to question if it's worth continuing to send their young people in there?

The yanks obviously don't have the appetite for another full scale operation after only getting out of Afghanistan after a couple of decades, plus if they did the theatre of operations would probably spread globally, but a perpetual proxy war suits them just fine, all that's being lost on their side as far as they're concerned are Ukrainians and any head the ball who decided to volunteer for a foreign batallion.

 

[rettucs]

Ukraine may soon get US long-range MLRS rocket system

The US looks set to send the weaponry, but Russia warns it would be a provocative escalation.

www.bbc.com

think this has been ruled out. NATO didn't trust Ukraine not to start lashing these into Russia (which I would have thought would be fair game, but there you go)

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Even accounting for Russia's historic tendency to pour young men into the meat grinder of war, which is obviously what every other country has also done, but much of Russia's storytelling to itself accounts for the suffering it went through during WW2, oh that's starting to sound like the Brits now, will there be a point where the public start to question if it's worth continuing to send their young people in there?

The yanks obviously don't have the appetite for another full scale operation after only getting out of Afghanistan after a couple of decades, plus if they did the theatre of operations would probably spread globally, but a perpetual proxy war suits them just fine, all that's being lost on their side as far as they're concerned are Ukrainians and any head the ball who decided to volunteer for a foreign batallion.

yeah - the failure in Afghanistan (and in particular public opposition to increasing losses) was one of the many things the weakened the USSR.

WWII was an existential struggle against an enemy which considered the majority of the population of the USSR at best second class humans. Heroic losses are more justifiable in that context, particularly as they won in the end. A faltering war of choice - even if it plays into nationalistic ideas of historic russian territories, Kievian rus origin myths surely wouldn't fall into the same category.

The US has said they want to weaken Russian here - so I think your second paragraph is bang on.