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John Duckitt's avatar

thanks for a careful and sober analysis of what's going on in this war. It's bizarre that after so many years of those like the Duran spouting complete nonsense (Putin is a master strategist; Russia is winning/advancing/ and Ukraine will collapse any day, week, month now) there are completely uncritical, possibly seriously stupid people swallowing this month after month, year after year. If Putin really wanted to win this war he would start bombarding the Dnieper Bridges (and that would probably do it without even having to mobilize fully). The problem is that Putin is a creature of the enormously rich billionaire oligarchs that stole the entire Soviet economy in the nineties, and they not only don't really want to win the war they are determined to keep their costs to an absolute minimum - sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands means nothing to them - they just want more and more luxury villas in the west, huge yachts, private jets and anything that might threaten their profits is unacceptable. Putin was appointed by Yeltsin as a front man for these oligarchs and he remains their creature.

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Wandrer's avatar

The more I read about the war the less I understand what Putin is doing. Why do you think he's just building this meatgrinder instead of fighting an actual war? Rurik, who you've probably also read, thinks it's a large Semitic conspiracy, but I don't really buy that as most elites would gladly sell out their own people, so ethnicity doesn't matter that much. But then what does it leave us with? Is Putin just doing this to help the US destabilize Europe? Is he just an idiot? Is he making money through this meatgrinder as a forever war always makes great money for the weapons manufacturers? Do you have any hypotheses for the bigger picture?

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