Ukraine

Saintman2884 said
So, if another 150-200,000 thousand Ru soldiers, pilots, special forces members get killed or wounded, or permanently maimed over the next year or so, it'll still barely make anything more then a ripple or a mild disruption among most Russians living in major population areas, cities like Sochi, St. Petersburg, or Moscow?

I don't know how Putin or any of the other Russian oligarchs trying to defend or argue this invasion was successful or morally/ethically justified. This isn't like other past disastrous wars like Napoleon's 1812 Grande Armee invasion or Hitler's bloody, violent, apocalyptic racial/ethnic genocidal war like Operation Barbarossa and the Great Patriotic War. Russia wasnt invaded or personally attacked by a foreign power. If anything, this is more akin to near-decade long Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and thats where the Red Army was bled, slowly to death.

Because they (supporters of the war) don’t think in terms of moral outrage but in terms of geopolitics. They see it as pushing back against primarily the US and to a lesser extent the UK. In a sense they feel they were “forced“ to invade. I’m not talking about your average Russian but more like the upper caste, although the view Is probably not that uncommon with the average man on the street who pays attention. As KiwiSaint attested with the taxi driver. And it’s more common in the older generation.

And yes, if 250k Russians have to die to accomplish the vague goals set out by Putin, it’s a cost they’re willing to pay. From their perspective, mostly people who dont contribute much to the Russian economy anywaym which is mostly petroleum and raw materials export and some agriculture. You don’t need a lot of people for that, and the subset you need can be protected.

It is a very old school mentality. Not necessarily Nazism, but more like 19th-early 20th century nationalism and balance of power politics. Not all that different than how many European and even Americans thought during that time.