But as it is March now, the conditions could be a lot worse at this time of year. Winter has advantages for the hard ground, but troops would be exposed to harsh cold.
I don’t think it was plan A, but was certainly always likely the plan B.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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That is actually not true at all. I was also surprised by the U-turn, but they had to react quickly as we will have an election in 2 weeks. I also do not expect that it will change after the election as Orban is pragmatic and there is hardly any reason to side with Putin. I am actually proud of our efforts in these times, because we took care of about 500 000 refugees so far and sending further support to Zakarpattia Oblast. The second biggest city in Hungary is Debrecen with 200 000 citizens, just for comparison.
But have we not been seeing and reading about Russian armoured vehicles being stuck in the mud?
We have. But it could have been much worse, especially in the South. All those stuck in the mud appeared to be on the Northern front.
They could take on any army in Europe, never forget
They quoted Atlatszo. And when I looked I found this which corroborate the claims, at least for the first week of the war.
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Then again I totally agree with your analysis. Orban is not stupid. He will side with the West and respect EU’s decisions. He will have to do it wholeheartedly, at least out of pragmatism.
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I'd imagine Orban and Fidesz have to walk a tightrope between being being somewhat friendly with Putin and NATO membership obligations. If it looks like Putin is losing, Orban will be incentivized to be more vocal against the invasion imo.
One of the tasty subplots in all of this is how the Klingons of the Russian Federation (Kadyrov and Co) have been farcically ineffective in living up to the tough guy image they've promoted over the years.
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That's a good source. It couldn't be easy to make such a U-turn and in the first few days there were some other voices, but they quickly decided which is the right way to communicate before the election. I quicky checked the article and I can imagine that the "experts" who were making comments are truly siding with Russia, but they haven't got any airtime since then (if I'm not mistaken).
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Legend.
We have an election in two weeks, so Orban and Fidesz had to quickly distance themselves from Putin, but the people are not completely stupid which made it a bit difficult. I don't think that there is any way back to Putin, so Orban and co must restore the relationship with the European Union.
The tricky situation is that we are completely reliant on the Russian gas - among other things -, and I don't know how much reserve we have, but our industry would basically stop once it runs out. As a consequence, our currency plummeted really quickly in the first few days and there was already high inflation in the country.
I always felt they look like Remans inside the Romulan Empire though. Remans are a race of slaves of the Romulan Empire from the neighboring planet Remus, used as miners and cannon fodder.
Feels like Kherson are just waiting to pounce once the tide changes.
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Yeah could be. I always thought of the Klingons as the most neaderthalish of all Trek characters, which is why Kadyrov reminded me of them.
Changing street names? What?
Maybe we should ask them if Russians want to name a street in Moscow after Lavrentyi Beria when one knows the kind of monster he was.
Russian "negotiators" still not taking things seriously, "mediators" trying to show they are actually doing something.
Presumably to aid in Russia's excuse for being there.
This is likely part of the "denazification" Russia demands. Rename streets named after people who are considered Nazis makes absolutely sense. This is a bit aftermath of WW2 when the German Wehrmacht liberated Ukraine from the Soviet Union (not everyone saw it that way, but there was a huge amount of Ukrainians siding with the Nazis).
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Netflix just started carrying Zelinskyy's TV show from just before his political career a few days ago. Watched the first episode where he improbably wins the Presidency. Just surreal to think its the same guy we're seeing here throughout all of this.
"Truth is stranger than fiction". I think this quote applies here. We're witnessing surreal events.
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It turns out that Russia is only opening its stock market tomorrow in relation to federal loan bonds, and not anything else such as company shares, because they fear what will otherwise happen and have no other means of of stopping it.
I do wonder if the Polish/Czech/Slovenia leadership visit was discussing something along these lines.
I was listening to a lecture from 2015, that says that could only ever be the plan because of the Western Ukraine's European focus. That it was common knowledge that invasion and occupation was beyond Russia, and any invasion would just be about wrecking the place and causing a refugee problem and then just retreating, with a, 'you can have it then'. At which point the west would say, no thanks.
The lecturer said that Ukraine was strategically crucial for Russia but a free hit for the west. So stir it up but never commit to it. Had it been from last week and not 2015 I would have been more skeptical.
Edit - link added
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I don't think the "no thanks" part is correct, though. This has created such an amount of sympathy that I'm sure Ukraine will get into the EU if they want to. I wouldn't be surprised to see them in Nato soon either, no matter what any agreement with Russia says. Russia has repeatedly proven that they don't honour agreements, so no one should feel obliged to honour them either.
Yeah, you are 100% reliant on Russia for gas I read. What's the long term guesses on that in your press?
Ah yeah, I don't think anyone foresaw the unity that has been seen around Ukraine. That has to have an effect you'd think.
Edit - I was lazily paraphrasing, added the link to YouTube version above. I'm not linking to the lefty podcast I heard it on.
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Hopefully
That's a pretty optimistic tweet. Here's hoping it's indicative.
I think they are just going to get rid of it slowly like the other EU countries. The plan of EU right is to reduce that percentage quickly and end it by 2027.
There is not enough on the market to do it sooner.
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They could offer to change the names of public toilets to those of various current Russian politicians.
Gonna be a lot of streets in Ukraine named after the sea of Azov at this rate.
Let's get real, Russia is a country with a smaller economy than New York state, in a total demographic death spiral, that doesn't make/produce anything worthwhile and that wouldn't really matter if it weren't for nat gas and all the deals our German friends have been making with them..., yet we have been treating them as an existential threat since WWII... Hope they can feck off back to obscurity once again.