re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Russia has attacked the Baltic States and Finland over the last decade or so, cyber attacks to shutdown banking, communications, GPS, etc...

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GPS, etc...... ????

Goodness Gracious dude !
REALLY??

Russia! ........ has attacked!????

OH MY!
The US would _ n e v e r _ do such a Russian thing !

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Understanding the Russian people? This could turn into a rather lengthy conversation steeped in literature... Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn...

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The Russian people could be the finest people on the planet, but they have very little say so about anything so who cares?

They are use to be bossed, they are use to the state controlling their lives and they really know no other way.

Kraut made a video on it

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I'm sure we give military aid to Egypt... and will give them a lot more in the future, along with Jordan and Saudi Arabia... they'll all basically be security partners with Israel, united against Iran.

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Are they going to buy weapons from.us with that aid money?

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Are they going to buy weapons from.us with that aid money?

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Not all of it, as the total aid is split between Foreign Military Financing and Economic Support Funds. The ESF funds go mostly toward education and government funding while the FMF, from what I can tell, goes to anti-terrorism measures, law enforcement and narcotics control, officer training in the US as well as toward arms deals. The Egyptians are among the top five importers of weapons in the world, and while a significant percentage of their arms sales post-Morsi came from the US (nearly half till 2016), the French and Russians were more proactive in that market up until 2022. There was a deal that the Trump Admin proposed about refurbishing and selling older Apaches to the Egyptians, but I don’t know if that deal actually went through. The latest 2022 arms deal was mostly about radars I think.

Much of the purchases with respect to the French weaponry were funded by French banks, but the Gulf Arab states also have funded weapons purchases on behalf of the Egyptians, as post-2013 they’ve given 17 billion (as of 2020) in low-interest loans to the Egyptians in order to stabilize their economy, while also cumulatively investing directly in the Egyptian economy, outpacing the US in 2018 if you combine the investment totals from Kuwait, the UAE and the KSA. There is a lot of effort regionally to ensure a stable Egypt, as the country needs a lot of jobs to meet its growing population, as the number of expatriated Egyptians in the Gulf remains high.

great vid... that's the equivalent of 6 semester hours of college credit!

Battle Damage Assessment of the Toropets ammo warehouse: LINK

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Sentinel-2 satellite imagery confirms the destruction of the majority of ECMs from the 107th Arsenal of the GRAU in Toropets. This has enabled a more comprehensive BDA to be possible.

With a high level of certainty, 46 earth-covered magazines (ECMs) are visually confirmed to have been completely destroyed, 74.19% from the original total of 62 ECMs.

Significant damage resulting from openly-stored ammunition is also evident, with the north-eastern areas of the facility shown following.
This confirms the hazardous consequences of Russia’s ammunition storage practices, as referenced in yesterday’s thread.

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You can see the infrared images in the thread.

Since the facility held an estimated 30,000 tons of explosives, that would mean that over 22,000 tons of shells and rockets likely blew up.

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Having read Russian history, it's easy to see this. They are not close to European

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Jesus you are an idiot!

And by "idiot" let's be clear as to the meaning ...

... you are a bigot.

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Russian .... They are not close to European

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their thinking is more like mongols. Workers are lazy and incompetent, bosses corrupt and the higher you get in pecking order, the more corrupt. Chinese traders buy Russian commodities at big discounts or not at all. Russians deliver substandard always.

Russian workers never know if they are getting paid at the end of the month or several months later, so cannot blame them for DGAF attitude which is endemic.

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Having read Russian history, it's easy to see this. They are not close to European
Jesus you are an idiot!

And by "idiot" let's be clear as to the meaning ...

... you are a bigot.

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If you watched the vid he's referencing, or studied Russian History, you'd take away something the vid makes a point to highlight:

"Russia remains a country in which state power puts the Ruling Man above the law and removes them from any accountability to the law or the wider citizenry.

A mistake commonly made, though, is to assume that these developments were unavoidable and part of some inner logic of Russian culture itself."

What that says is that the system, not the "people," is the problem, and the system replicates itself in any new type of government, starting with Mongol subjugation ruled by Princes, moving on to Tsarism, Communism, and now Autocratic Capitalism.

His comment references that the Russian system is rooted in those Centuries of being subjugated by The Mongols, not in European influences, The structure of Russia's society has always remained the same as when an Aristocratic Russian class ruthlessly ruled over the peasants on behalf of the Mongols.

The vid does a good job of quickly telling that long tale.