England’s long history of having blood on it’s hands, money in it’s pockets.
Whatever it is that is tying NATO’s hands, needs to be untied.
Russia having nuclear weapons is whats “tying NATO’s hands” also because any direct military intervention spills out to a war between all treaty signatories and Russia.
I wonder how much or how far the difference in regional culture allows for certain actions to occur and be tolerated or even encouraged in different countries. Yet as an outsider I know that it is easy to see countries as stereotypes, and in the modern era there is also the issue of mis- and disinformation that permeates things. But I also try to apply this question to the country I know the best, The United States, as well.
Relevant to the issue at hand, there has been lots of discussion about how in Russia it is common (accepted or expected?) to grift and to take whatever you can benefit from (selling spare parts, tell your supervisors you are doing the work but in reality not at all or with substandard materials, etc…). I’m not saying this does not happen in the USA, but the cultural acceptance is different.
The other thing that I believe is the popular perception about Russia is that it is an oppressive society that has dealt with political opposition harshly and that the punishment for “failure” in bureaucratic duty is “being sent to the gulags” and/or to Siberia. Not saying that if you could know the true feelings of the average Russian that they would be ok with this practice, but that they accept it is a reality and there isn’t much to be done about it.
Maybe it is like a weather vs climate thing?
“The fundamental problem is that when you want to tackle the propaganda, you cannot just say what you are getting on TV is not true; it doesn’t work like that,” said Sophia Hnizdovska, an executive at the council. “We are trying to slowly, through our narratives, make people question the official sources.”
World poised to scan Putin’s military showcase for clues to Kremlin
This could be an inaccurate tweet. There is speculation that more Russian men will be drafted.
How bad is Russia actually losing?
It’s probably too early to measure the result definitively, but as this war drags on and Russia continues to suffer non-trivial losses I keep thinking about a chart I saw some years ago where you can see and trace the echoing effect on the Russian population age & gender of the losses suffered in WW2. I also recall that in the past decade or so the Russian government has been very explicit with their encouragement of young people to have babies.
Anyway, as of May 6, 2022 it appears that Russian soldiers killed is somewhere in the neighborhood of ~22,000-25,000. And they already have quite an undersized cohort of <30 year old population.
Source: https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2022/