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- cross-posted to:
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Russians are simultaneously more and less stupid than they seem to be at the same time. They are really run by the intelligence services, and they often “test narratives” to see how messaging goes over with the populations. They use deliberate ‘repeaters’, messengers and role players within their sociey to gague themes to try and advance their goals. You see public figures following their scripts consistently, from froth-mouthed apocalyptic lunatics like Solovyev and Medvedev threatening to end the world, down to malcontent grunt Z-Bloggers like Girkin muttering tactical level failures, acting as a release valve for the failings of the state ‘not going far enough’. The ones who are allowed to speak on an ongoing basis are sanctioned to do so, for reasons that make sense to the FSB.
Until recently, any public talk of even ACKNOWLEDGING, much less ending the SMO/ aka “War” would get you locked up for discrediting the army. Now, they are starting to seep out war-ending off-ramp strategies. This is the first time I’ve seen one around the idea that the war should be stopped “for the good of the economy”. That sounds more high minded than verboten military or moral alternatives like “we’re losing” or “it’s the humane thing to do”. At any rate, it’s at least tolerated public dialogue that explicitly talks of ending the war. None of these narrative tests are accidental - some are outbursts, where the messager is locked up or killed - but this is different in that it’s from a named public figure.
Having them say “it’s for the good of the economy” allows them to at least try to avoid the humiliation of a completely stalled front that they have been unable to move substantially for nearly two years. It ignores their invasion’s absolute failure, doesn’t acknowledge that maybe little brother ukraine isn’t an inherently inferior race, or that the entire country ackshually belongs to Rusia, because - reasons - and doesn’t have a right to exist. It doesn’t even mention NATO as the REAL reason why they aren’t vacationing in Kyiv today.
It’s all a colossal tragedy, of course. But putting that aside - it’s both funny and somewhat pathetic that this is where they’re at more than four years in having squandered their entire soviet inhertiance on a petty 20th century revenge project led by an overpromoted gangster ghoul. But - it’s also a good thing that they’re openly talking about how to exit an aggressive war of invasion while being WELL short of their goals of conquest.
Will be interesting to see if this “for the economy” theme persists as a face-saving tactic. What do you think?
Ukraine: Ok. Give us back Crimea, and all land formally recognized as Ukrainian before 2014.
And all the stolen children + POW
And reparations for all the damage caused to infrastructure and the environment.
Yes, this. Actually I should have lead with this.
Chuck in a few trillion in reparations.
Also what’s his names. Slowpunch McFacefart the
martial artssitting fatly champion of the world has been credibly accused of walking guns. At least war crime trial him.Well - sure. All reasonable people with a remote appetite for justice would like that.
It’s kind of fascinating that this is where russia has ended up, given all their theoretical advantages before the full scale invasion. Russia is squealing for some kind of favorable settlement it doesn’t deserve. The central “Problem” seems to be that they can’t advance anymore. They can’t stop Ukrainian drone production, they can’t stop effective drone deployment. The Russian theory of victory has two parts to achieve one outcome:
#1 is a REAL problem for Russia, as it’s labour and logistically intensive. But also because the only way it’s successful is if Ukraine agrees to stop killing Russian soldiers at the front. Pushing low-functioning grunts into blasted puddles of toxic rainwater until they are eventually killed isn’t a great occupation strategy. The point of a war of conquest is that you get to reap the benefits of economic activity in the land you conquer. But workers and occupation forces can’t generate wealth while under fire. They can’t live in charred craters - they live in soft housing and barracks and rely on there being peace in order to control the territory. But if Ukraine refuses to stop killing them - then the exploitation of the conquered territory can never begin. This is a BASIC and seemingly unsolvable problem for Russia at present.
#2 is also HUGELY resource intensive, uses platforms with EXPENSIVE inputs and things they don’t manufacture domestically, and machines you can’t replace at scale in the near term. It also has never, ever worked as a strategy for conquest in history against an industrial society. Even WW2 levels of YEARS of strategic bombing against Germany and Japan STILL requried ground forces for the former, and atomic weapons for the latter to force captiulation.
So - neither #1 or #2 can, by themselves, achieve Russia’s strategic goals. Ukraine doesn’t seem to be in such desperate conditions that they need to consider #3 anytime soon. It’s russia, the aggressor, who is asking for peace terms. Ukraine can probably continue to trade tiny slices of land while bleeding out the russian war machine longer than Russia can continue to support their invasion. Hence Russians talking about peace at all, and on basis of economic terms so they don’t have to confront the enormity of their military failure.
Nobody who is serious minded expects the Russian Federation’s current form to honor a long term peace agreeement. From Ukraine’s perspective, the ONLY way to permanently guarantee their own security might be to keep fighting. Keep destroying everything you can, until there is significant change to the composition of the political system in Russia.
Great and accurate insights, thank you
did japan “require” two atomic bombs? or did the usa demonstrate their power on defenseless civilians? afaik the japanese wanted to surrender before, with the condition that the emperor is not harmed. after the atomic bombings vaporizing tens of thousands of civilians, they surrendered without conditions. and then the usa spared the emperor
Well, we’re crossing discussion streams significantly as this point, but I’ll have a go.
Depends what you mean by “afaik the japanese wanted to surrender…”. The fanatical military leadership certainly didn’t, and wasn’t going to. After Okinawa, it seemed pretty clear what an invasion of any of the home islands would look like. And the allies were VERY concerned about countering the USSR’s advance in Europe, hence didn’t want to get bogged down in a years long bloody ground campaign in Japan. It was a higher priority to stop the russians than to do things ‘the old fashioned way’ in Japan. It’s more complex than that, of course, there wasn’t just one single reason why the U.S. used the atomic bomb.
If you want to have a moral argument about ‘demonstrating their power on defenseless civilians’, well, I’m sorry I’m not likely to move you on that.
using the a-bomb is one thing, blowing up two random cities, mostly civilians is another
okay, demonstrating the power of the bomb is necessary: why not bomb a military base? why not bomb an un- or at least less inhabited area? if they did it near a city, over the ocean, it would have made a similar impression
i’m just frustrated that this idea is widely accepted and repeated
also kinda reminds me of israelis saying “well it’s sad but we have to kill them all”
I don’t think any answer I could drum up would satisfy. It’s a very different decision making process sitting at a keyboard in 2026 and shaking your fist at Harry Truman than it would be to be in the Oval Office in 1945 after several bloody years of war and a world eager for it all to end.
But - let’s try, because this is the internet, so why not. Let’s have a conversation, though I doubt you’ll be swayed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are large urban centers in southern Japan. Which presumably would have been the invasion route that the Allies would take as they’d march up from Okinawa. And they of course had critical logistic and transportation network value to the Japanese. Most serious historians estimate that Allied casulaties for a ground campaign would be a least a million, and that Japanese casualties might be 20x that. To the level of absolute disintegration of the entire society. In short - they were legitimate military and economic targets, in the path that the Allies were moving anyways.
Attacking the cultural, economic and political centers like Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo would signal an intent to totally exterminate the nation. And it would probably not help negotiations by vaporizing the leadership you’re wanting to engage with. So - perhaps Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected to be demonstrations of power of the totality of destruction against key defensive targets in the south, while leaving a political system in place to actually negotiate a surrender with.
The U.S. only had a small handful of bombs at that point. Using any of them on a military outpost outside a city would have been easier for the fanatical military leadership to shrug off. Respectfully CANNOT agree with your assertion “why not bomb an un- or at least less inhabited area? if they did it near a city, over the ocean, it would have made a similar impression”. That’s completely not assured. In literally EVERY prior defensive battle, from Alaska to Okinawa, the Japanese leadership had been clear - no surrender, no retreat, fight to the last, and if you have nothing else you can do, kill yourself, and take some americans with you if you can. Saying that the Japanese military leadership would have been rational with a over-the-sea demonstration badly ignores literally everything that Japan had done up to that point.
And as stated earlier - the Allies deseperately wanted to end the war as fast as possible, and turn their attention to saving Europe from the Soviets - who VERY much wanted to keep rolling West. And the russians absolutely did try to keep moving forward - this is not abstract. They launched the Greek civil war in 1946. Blockaded Berlin in 1948. When they couldn’t move any further in Europe, then they prompted North Korea to invade the South in 1950 and were the primary benefactor for the Viet Minh starting in 1955. Then they invaded Hungary (56), Czechoslovakia directly (48 & 68), helped sustain the Vietnam war when it pivoted from the French to the Americans . The point being - if you’re prioritizing threats, assessing that Russia was the single biggest threat was absolutely correct, and therefore ending the Japanese portion of WW2 was an approach that cost less lives compared to the alternatives. Ending the war in Japan was horrific, but also urgent. And strategically defensible. Moral? What does morality have to do with a war at the scale of WW2?
Of course war is a vulgar and disgusting thing. But it DID end the war. Period. The allies DID stop after Nagasaki, when the military fanatics could no longer keep demanding total national sacrifice in the face of such unprecedented destruction.
They didn’t surrender after the first one, so
idiots assumed usa would be satisfied after evaporating one city
Pretty stupid of them tbh, considering America had already firebombed every other city into ashes.
Tbf America would have had to wait for a little bit after vaporizing a third so they weren’t completely wrong that the bombs were limited.
Japan was indeed willing to surrender, but on the conditions that Hirohito would stay emperor, Japan wouldn’t be demilitarized or occupied.
After the US dropped the bombs they allowed Hirohito to stay emperor.
And demilitarized and occupied them. Crazy, like those were the most important goals or something.
The atomic bombs were arguably not even the worst thing the US did. The firebombing of Tokyo killed around 100,000 people in one night and burned the mostly wooden city of millions to the ground. It is one of the worst war crimes in history and was followed by the additional two atomic tests on civilian populations.
“One of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all of history” - General McArthur in regards to the Tokyo bombing.
No they did not, it was a horrible war crime.
Zelensky has also been floating the idea of talks lately.
true. but - he has said so for years. And his negotiating position is FAR stronger than it was in 2023/2024. And he doesn’t seem to be particularly starved for them. Trump tried to stiff-arm him into a bad peace, but as usual, he tries to negotiate with leverage he doesn’t actually have. He pulled direct U.S. support, and removed Russian oil sanctions, but the mainly-Euro supported version of the Ukranian army in 2026 can probably resist the current version of the Russian army for a long time yet.
Of course any reasonable leader would say they want the war to end - but Zelensky can be a LOT more assertive about how this goes going forwards than the russians can.
Russia is S-C-R-E-W-E-D, and they know it. Destroyed their army. Spent their 30-year war chest. Destroyed their diplomatic and political capital. Destroyed their entire soviet hardware inheritance. Destroyed their primary energy export markets. Became vassals to China. Lost Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Armenia. Is losing Africa. Lost power projection generally. Lost the Black Sea Fleet. Lost dozens of their strategic nuclear deterrent aircraft. Lost their AWACS. Destroyed/lost 1 million+ laborers for their economy. Have already extracted the easiest-to-get-to oil and gas and everything is harder from here on out. Their demographics were already terminal, and they supercharged the loss of human capital by failing to re-acquire a new colony to offset the losses of their slave army.
Hell - their entire way of war has been destroyed. Their myth of national inevitability. Their philosophy was Horde War - that it didn’t matter if your stuff was worse than NATO’s, as long as you had enough of it. They presumed they could march from Poland to Paris to Portugal before the feckless pussies in NATO could even start to respond. Well - it turns out they can’t even get to the Dneiper river right next door. They are a 20th century army fighting a 21st century war with 7th century brutality, and rebuilding a modern army will take longer than Putin has left to live. The entire concept of just marching a man forward and hoping the land turns from blue to red like you’re in a video game is itself obsolete in a world where cheap drones at scale have made invading and holding territory essentially a dead concept. They’ve not only lost this war - they’ve lost the 21st century.
You’d like a real satisfying ending where the black tower of mordor crumbles and the orcs scurry back eastwards to feud amongst each other rather than invading the neighbours - but that’s movie stuff. The core principle that russia has already lost the war is true, if way more boring IRL.