Polish government tells citizens to gather sticks for heating, stick it to putin.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #19:
> I am saying that people are not willing to die for the values of the american government, like feminism and democracy. the afghan army collapsed in front of the advancing taliban, none willing to sacrifice their lives for abstractions. if you think it is going to be any different in ukraine you are in for a rude awakening.

If you think they're fighting for American ideals or abstractions, that's completely delusional - as so much as any country which defends itself against foreign aggression is 'fighting for american ideals' or abstractions.

The situations have already proven themselves to be vastly different, the Ukranian army has already proved itself a competent fighting force with high morale - and the government has the backing of the population, the Afgan national army/govt had none of that.

The 18 year olds in the Russian military are nothing like the extremely battle hardened Taliban to boot, in this case it is -THEY- who are low in morale.

I’m not about to argue economics credentials with a guy who just claimed the Central Bank of Russia’s reports on the Russian economy were “a stretch”.

clousems said in #22:
> I’m not about to argue economics credentials with a guy who just claimed the Central Bank of Russia’s reports on the Russian economy were “a stretch”.

look. of course i am going to trust a random person on the internet named after a nursery rhyme over the central bank of russia, when it comes to assessing the russian economy. so the way i see it you are losing this argument. do you really want that, huh? lose an argument on the internet in the all-important eye of an obviously unbiased observer?

@obladie said in #20:
> A statistician would have done that.
> The russian ruble was worth shit 10 years ago..it is now worth a tiny bit of extra shit.

this is just cope. the ruble is already the strongest currency of the year.
www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ruble-currency-2022/

@twighead said in #21:
> If you think they're fighting for American ideals or abstractions, that's completely delusional - as so much as any country which defends itself against foreign aggression is 'fighting for american ideals' or abstractions.

ok so when you said "freedom" you meant that they would not accept to be annexed by russia. and that is most likely true, but that is not one of russia's goals, i think even the russians know that an occupation of the ukraine is far too costly to be worth it.

> The situations have already proven themselves to be vastly different, the Ukranian army has already proved itself a competent fighting force with high morale

the ukrainian army is destroyed, by the ukraine's own admission they have lost 50% of their soldiers. their moral has plummeted ever since the Azov surrendered in Mariupol.

> and the government has the backing of the population, the Afgan national army/govt had none of that.
maybe the government is popular, but how can you really measure that? all opposition media in ukraine is banned, and if you post on social media anything against the war or against the government, you just get imprisoned for being a russian collaborator, we will know though once russia wins and the dust is settled, i would be surprised if zelensky isn't hanged by the ukrainians.

> The 18 year olds in the Russian military are nothing like the extremely battle hardened Taliban to boot, in this case it is -THEY- who are low in morale.

the russian army is far better trained than the ukrainian army, and they have better equipment, air superiority, and are the ones on the advance.

i don't know about you but when the ukrainian army is retreating, losing towns, has lost half of its fighting force if not more, has no air superiority, has their elite units surrender en masse, and are poorly trained. and the russian army is advancing, taking towns, has only committed 10% of its military, has air superiority, had a great victory at mariupol, and are well trained.
i tend to think that the russians are the ones with better moral.

@clousems said in #22:
> I’m not about to argue economics credentials with a guy who just claimed the Central Bank of Russia’s reports on the Russian economy were “a stretch”.

lmfao, what a pathetic response.

this is what i was calling a stretch:

> that is what we economists call "pretty freakin' bad")

> I’m not about to argue economics credentials

i didn't ask you to argue credentials, if it isn't clear already i don't care about credentials. i do want you to argue against the points i made earlier though.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #26:
> i didn't ask you to argue credentials, if it isn't clear already i don't care about credentials. i do want you to argue against the points i made earlier though.

Gladly.

"inflation is stable in russia, which is why they increased pensions to match it, meanwhile inflation is skyrocketing in the west..."

US and EU monthly inflation is stabilizing around 8 percent. I'll grant you, that's high. Russia's stabilizing at around 17 percent.
tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
tradingeconomics.com/russia/inflation-cpi
tradingeconomics.com/european-union/inflation-rate

Imagine getting schooled by an ignorant economist.

@clousems said in #27:

> US and EU monthly inflation is stabilizing around 8 percent. I'll grant you, that's high.

for america at least, that is the highest inflation rate ever recorded. and neither of them have the actual rate for may.

> Russia's stabilizing at around 17 percent.

read it again, russia's inflation has been DECREASING ever since april. and your own source is projecting that it decreases to 16.5% this month.

> Imagine getting schooled by an ignorant economist.

i guess by "schooled" you mean proving my point for me.

remember this is my prediction : "...but comparing the russian and western economies since the war started, and comparing where they are headed, it is obvious that russia is going to stay ahead."

the factors that caused an increase in inflation for russia was the shock and uncertainty from the war. which is waning by the day. the factors that caused an increase in inflation in the US is the overprinting of the dollar, increasing the money supply by 100% in two years. and for the EU it is the sanctions on russian energy and food products and fertilizer. and neither of those factors are going to subside anytime soon. any reasonable person can extrapolate from these facts that my prediction of russia staying ahead is obviously true.

@TheMuffinMan2000 said in #15:

> russia would achieve the goals it outlined for the special military operation. it is pretty straightforward.
>
>
>
> the same way the afghan people would fight against the taliban for feminism and democracy and bakabazi? the fundamental issue is that this world view is incorrect. nobody, except people in the west (even then it's arguable) actually want freedom (whatever that means), people do not die for abstractions like "freedom" or "democracy", people don't even want to be inconvenienced for abstractions, the idea that anyone in ukraine is thinking about sacrificing their lives for freedom is so far removed from reality that i don't even believe we are talking about the same thing.
>
> regardless you are wrong about the ukrainians fighting a vietkong style for against the russians, what will probably happen is that hostilities subside, and then ukrainians find out that the reason they suffered was to keep russian separatists in donbas a part of the country, and will either move on with their lives or overthrow the government.

I wonder what you think are the "goals" of Russia in this "military special operation", as you say. By the way, Are you russian? I know that only in Russia the war called a special operation.

As for your clumsy predictions that "Russia will win" - it is obvious that Russia fucked up with its "operation", if I was told before the war that in 100 days Russia will try to take Severodonetsk, and from the regional centers will take only Kherson, I would say that such impossible. Because it would have looked good to me if Ukraine had stood still for at least a week before the war, given the strength of the Russian army. But now the situation is different, fortunately.

Although, I must admit, it seems that their economy has performed a little better than the army. But there will be even more sanctions, and no one has said that sanctions will have an immediate effect. It takes time. In the long run, Russia kaput in any case))

Anyone interested can search for:
russian disinformation war

Duckduckgo seems to have some different links from google. Perhaps other search engine too. I haven't tried Yandex though it may result in funny links. I haven't tried Baidu either.

I find it interesting that Russian propagandist are here as the war won't be decided on this forum. Perhaps they believe that repeated lies are more trustworthy.