Yes, it seems like that’s the propaganda. The free speech democratic West, instead of reporting about the objective truth, tells us half truths for their own benefit.
Western news resources aren’t controlled by government, unlike Russia. So they have incentive to post what generates clicks, not necessarily what reflects reality.
if they published anything for clicks they would have immediately published the Hunter Biden laptop story. The most salacious click-baity story in 20+ years and it was shelved. There's more to influence than "money"
90% of the media in the US is owned by 6 companies [1]. We, the people of the western civilization, are not those 6 companies. Most of us don't trust the media [2]. With that freedom of speech, these "news" agencies can be as biased as they want, lie in all sorts of ways (omission, etc), they mostly just can't slander/defame. Almost all are strongly aligned to the republican party or democratic, and all of them are aligned to common goals like oil and Israel. It's best to watch the news knowing that there's an attempt at manipulation. Luckily, with the anti-alignment of the news agencies, the "other side" will often loudly point out flaws.
The only hope for reasonable context/nuance over here is through independent journalists.
Don't just the world through the lens of a few billionaires.
Every day that passes, Ukraine gets stronger: more domestic defense production of what's currently the cutting edge of warfare; deeper financial integration and relationships with Europe; more aid lined up; European powers taking more responsibility for supporting Ukraine and seeing it win, not just survive. They have the largest and most competent army in Europe that's fought Russia to a standstill.
Every day that passes, Russia gets weaker: more oil sold in crude form only, since they don't have refining capacity to export gasoline; foreign currency reserves shrinking, since China is their main customer; another 35k casualties every month, with mounting costs for enlistment bonuses and death benefits; outer provinces stripped of men of fighting age, North Korea unwilling to send more soldiers, African recruits drying up; inflation raging, industries shutting down, and all economic indicators heading south.
It's terrible that Ukraine is trapped in this slugfest, but at this point, time favours Ukraine.
Ukraine domestic defense production has the slight problem of being continuously bombed, lacking manpower, reliable (or any!) electricity. Are you sure it is growing? Perhaps explosively...
Their largest and most competent army is mostly dead and maimed, they rely on catching unwilling men on the streets and herding them to the front. You believe 35k Russian casualties each month, and at the same time you believe Ukrainian official figures of 55k casualties overall, right?
European powers taking responsibility for supporting Ukraine by continuously arguing where/how should they get emergency funds to 'lend' to Ukraine, so its finances do not collapse within the next 2 month.
Man, how can you believe this nonsense?
Time does not favour Ukraine. It does not favour Russia (or Europe) either, it favours mostly China.
It produces its own Neptune cruise missiles (100+), and developed the Flamingo cruise missile. It has its own self-propelled howitzer, and has built more than 200 to date. It rebuilt its bullet manufacturing, replacing the loss of its luhansk facility. They've massively expanded domestic production of 155mm shells.
Whether or not it's under constant bombardment, Ukraine is now supplying 50% of its consumable supplies; in 2022, it was under 5%. Ukraine actually exports some weapons and drone tech to finance other purchases.
Its manpower crisis has been continually overstated by Russian propaganda. At the moment, they have 800k+ in their army. They rejected a bill recently to lower the conscription age to 25 from 27. They have an untapped pool of manpower aged 18-27 that they're avoiding if possible (as has been possible so far).
Whether or not Europeans are arguing a lot, they're still providing massive material and financial aid to Ukraine, which still has a functioning economy and social welfare system. Their gov't pensions go out on time and in full. They're not experiencing hyperinflation. There's a reason that Ukrainians as a population aren't willing to accept the kind of crap settlements Trump is pushing.
> Man, how can you believe this nonsense?
You're the one spouting Russian disinformation, especially after looking at your other comments. If you're not getting paid for this, you should be.
I agree with your point overall but realistically speaking, its not like the death of Ukraine will fix Russias economy, even if it did: not in a single day.
You can exhaust yourself completely and be dead on your feet.
There is a strain of thought in Russian political circles that they'll be doomed anyway due to lack of defensible borders if they fail to capture Ukraine. This could explain some of their actions that otherwise seem irrational and counterproductive.
It doesn't seem to make any sense: nobody was invading Russia until Russia decided part of Ukraine was Russia (and then Ukraine invaded it), and why would Ukraine be a more defensible border than the actual border? Ukraine borders NATO, after all.
From the Russian perspective it actually does make a bit of sense, in a twisted sort of way. They were invaded from the west before, most recently by Hitler and before that by Napoleon. There are no good natural defenses to protect Moscow and so they seek to establish defense in depth with additional buffer territory. (I write this not to justify recent Russian acts of aggression but to explain some of their internal strategic thinking.)
Ukraine is also very hard to completely destroy, either militarily or economically. And Ukraine is in an existential struggle, I don’t see the Ukrainians caving.
But then what, become a part of China?
I don't think Russia could defend themselves from an attack of a lesser nation right now, and I truly wish one of them would take opportunity
They need Russia to guard their back, the last thing they need is a USA-friendly regime in Russia.
You are all talking about 'just a bit longer and Russia will implode'.
Look at the state of Ukraine, who is going to implode sooner, Russia or Ukraine?
Heck, look at the state of Europe and USA! USA is a political nutcase, and Europe has deep divisions and is overflowing with incompetence and impotence. Plus enormous debts, both in USA and in Europe.
China doesn't want Russia to implode. That would only create problems for no real gain. But they'll take advantage of Russia's weakness to get cheap raw materials and perhaps some territorial concessions.
Why do you imagine Ukraine's desire for sovereignty would be exhausted before Russia's stomach for economic hardship? Do you really think the Russia public has the stamina even for the 4 more years it will take them to capture the rest of Donbas?
Right, it must be biggest country in the world with the economy size of Italy, ostracized by everyone except other outcasts, fully dependent on selling cheap carbon fuel under market rates, and that struggles to occupy Donbass for 12 years.
There’s a decent article in the Economist right now warning of Brazilification in the west. A particular kind of debt fuelled economic death spiral on which Brazil is unfortunately a pioneer.
That is the very basis of our currency, and the basic idea is a good one in an idea-heavy economy more reliant on innovation than natural resource constraints. Also, if truly becomes too much we will just have one of the many many currency changes. My grandparents lived with about five (could be as many as seven) currencies throughout their (German) lives, for example.
As long as the real values remain, the factories, the people, the roads, the buildings, that is not a problem overall. It's not like people can emigrate to alien worlds, and on earth the places with the best real economy will be where they will go - have to go.
Money is the carrot dangled in front of us to keep us moving and to create real value things. The carrot can be updated and changed if the current one starts to lose its appeal, it is not what ultimately matters. The point of view of an individual and the big picture are very different things.
And I'll just use this opportunity to recommend David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" - a wonderful book about the history of economy, demonstrating how it always boils down to effective use of debt.
There are tons of great parts in it, but one that really stuck with me is his analysis of the social dynamics whereby when someone brings you a gift or otherwise does something expensive for you, you are temporarily in debt to them, and the polite expectation is that you always pay it back in a way whereby you give more than you owe, such that they will then be in debt to you (generally for approximately the same amount), and the relationship can continue oscillating, with each of you being in debt about half the time. Paying back exactly what you were given and not a penny more is thus considered to be an indication that you want to discontinue the relationship.
I'm not sure why you ask me what I say. I left it as a written comment for you to peruse at any time and as many times as you want to see what I'm saying.
The opposite is not true though: successful products might have messy codebases, but that doesn’t mean, that messy codebases lead to successful products, or that quality doesn’t matter.
There's a balance to strike, and it's hard to get right. You have to give up quality enough that you actually deliver things to users rather than working on 'the perfect code', but you also have to keep quality high enough that you're not slowed down by spaghetti code and tech debt so much that you can't deliver quickly as well.
This is made more complicated by the fact that where the balance lies depends on the people working on the code - some developers can cope with working in a much more of a mess than others. There is no objective 'right way' when you're starting out.
If you have weeks of runway left spending it refactoring code or writing tests is definitely a waste of time, but if you raise your next round or land some new paying customers you'll immediately feel that you made the wrong choices and sacrificed quality where you shouldn't have. This is just a fact of life that everyone has to live with.
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