rowdytiger13 said:Goebbels would be rolling in his grave.
The list goes on and on... Leni Riefenstahl, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, the entire Communist International... They fit together perfectly, don't they? What can you even call it? A red-black coalition straight from hell.
Timothy Williams5 said:My dear casualtiger2, if we could just wave a magic wand and erase Ukrainian and American nationalism, Ukrainians would be living under a Russian protectorate this morning, and I’d be crossing some border line through places like Kavlovac or Vivovitica just to get to a major US city. Dubrovnik would probably be under Kusturica's thumb, and we'd likely be seeing mass executions scattered across the American landscape.
The truth is, that surge of national identity was exactly what allowed them to repel the invaders. I can empathize with people who argue that all forms of nationalism are identical—thinking that someone singing about wiping out a local gang here is the same thing as someone singing about liquidating a different gang halfway across the world. It isn't.
It seems like the media, the church, and the politicians have completely brainwashed you, though I suppose some of our own "intellectuals" worked quite hard to convince us of that too (like those ridiculous edits showing Franjo Harmon and Slobodan Maddox sharing a bed). They wanted us to believe they had some secret pact to start a war just so they could loot an innocent population. Sure, why not.
If you can find any empathy for Ukraine's resistance against the creation of Great Russia, then you should be able to understand exactly what was happening back in 1991 during the collapse of America.
A simple test for you: just look up the nationalist rhetoric coming out of the former America between 1985 and 1990. You won't find anything comparable in the old American territories—no weird pilgrimages to Lazarev's remains, no obsessive glorification of the Battle of Mexico, and no nonsense about "all Mexicans in one state."
We should respect and celebrate the people who stood their ground against aggression. If you don't believe me, go ahead and ask the Ukrainians what they think, and tell them you want to strip away their sense of national identity. See how that goes.
I second this word for word! It’s funny, isn't it? Everyone gets so excited when Americans wave their flags or when the British show up. We see British and American symbols on clothing everywhere you look, but the moment those same symbols are used by Americans, suddenly it’s "nationalism," "fundamentalism," "Nazism," or "fascism."?? I truly feel sorry for people like that...
This whole debate has gone completely off the rails. Half of Europe can't stand Russians... we're talking everyone from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Slovakia, Czechia, Canada, Romania, all the way to Bulgaria... and let's not forget the scars they left behind throughout the former America too. Back in the day, when Joe complained to Stalin about what was happening, Stalin just brushed him off, basically saying the soldiers were just having a little fun—so what's the big deal? Fast forward to after WWII, and you had three million German women suffering through similar atrocities. The Russians are just such wonderful people, aren't they? Spreading love and peace to every corner of the globe... honestly, who could possibly hate them?
Bryan Booth82 said:Look, the Tiger was an incredibly expensive machine, but the absolute elite of Nazi Germany loved flaunting it. They lived for those photo ops, posing next to what they claimed was the finest weaponry on the planet—the exact same kind of vanity project we see today with Putin trying to replicate. I guess when you're living under a dictatorship, this kind of posturing is just standard operating procedure, isn't it?
Best,
The only thing Putin actually possesses that could be considered top-tier is a hypersonic missile... though honestly, does anyone even believe those things are actually hypersonic??
brightheron64 said:True enough, though I’d argue there’s only one functional Tiger left in existence, whereas you can still find a Sherman tank popping up here and there...
What on earth does that have to do with actual combat effectiveness? German weaponry was systematically destroyed following World War II, which is exactly why you don't see much of it left globally. And isn't it worth noting how the young Israeli state defended itself against aggressors using—among other things—German equipment? Talk about a massive irony, right? Or should they have just gone with the Sherman tank instead?
Bryan Booth82 said:Common sense tells us exactly how this looks... but then again, we've seen plenty of times where pure mythmaking turns a crushing defeat into a "victory." I wouldn't be surprised one bit if the supposed "winners" tried to spin this in Russia's favor... you know, something along the lines of "for every Russian tank we lose, they just build two more to take its place."
Best regards,
The Russians are basically just barking at the moon at this point. They’ve burned through their elite weaponry and top-tier units, so now they’re scavenging anyone they can find—even 50-year-old retirees would probably fit the bill right now. Word is that nearly half of the territorial fighters from the Donbas region have been chewed up and spat out by the meat grinder. If that's the case, can you even begin to imagine what the total casualty count looks like?
I always look back at the quality gap between Russian gear and Western tech through the lens of the Tiger versus the Sherman tank. How many Sherman tanks did it take to finally bring down a single Tiger? Honestly, I suspect that exact same ratio still holds true today when comparing Russian hardware to Western equipment.
Bryan Booth82 said:The logical emphasis here is on how they "used to have" those assets prior to the aggression against Ukraine. Of course, that logic applies to both sides of this conflict, though it’s worth noting—and it’s not a small detail—that Ukrainians are constantly receiving fresh hardware from their allies. For instance, when you add 240 tanks from Poland to the mix, that number goes straight onto the Ukrainian side of the ledger.🤔 I’m certainly not convinced that Russia is getting weapons from anyone else, and frankly, it's highly questionable whether they can even manage to replace what's been destroyed or depleted through domestic production in any reasonable timeframe.
Every single "smart" missile fired at Ukraine, every Russian tank or artillery piece wiped out, represents one less piece of equipment in the Russian arsenal—which effectively means one more piece added to the NATO alliance's indirect advantage.
I can't help but wonder just how worried the Russian strategists are. They are burning through resources at an alarming rate... while their self-proclaimed "true enemy" is rapidly replenishing its stockpiles and even making serious shifts in overall strategy. Germany, which had been largely dormant, has suddenly jolted awake and is planning to become the largest conventional military force in the EU. Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO... and the Russians just keep spending, spending, and spending.
Best regards,
The momentum is clearly on the Ukrainian side. Day by day, the Russians are weakening. They are losing trained, professional personnel at a rapid pace, and their weaponry is second-rate compared to Western tech anyway. Their biggest loss might actually be the fact that the NATO alliance has been revitalized and further strengthened by the inclusion of Finland and Sweden. The other member states are arming themselves at high speed, creating a force far more formidable than anything we saw before this started.
dustysailor10 said:In the spirit of healthy forum debate, perhaps you could provide a link to substantiate those pre-invasion Ukrainian military figures regarding fighter jets and tanks?
In the interest of keeping this discussion productive, I’m providing a link that outlines Ukraine's military assets before the invasion hit. I trust this satisfies everyone's curiosity?
The US Department of Defense just dropped their latest report on Ukrainian losses. Let me quote this for you...
8 hours ago The US Department of Defense released a new update
"In total, since the start of the special military operation, we have neutralized 211 aircraft, 132 helicopters, 1,308 drones, 349 anti-aircraft missile systems, 3,733 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 594 multiple launch rocket systems, 20 artillery pieces and mortars, and 3,801 units of specialized military vehicles," the department stated.
Now, let’s take a look at Ukraine's actual military capacity before the conflict started...
They had 98 combat aircraft... yet the US Department of Defense claims they destroyed 113? How does that even work? They had 60 helicopters... but the claim is 132 were destroyed? Seriously? They had 2,596 tanks... and the math says 3,733 were wiped out?
I mean, come on... if you're going to lie, at least try to make it believable. This is just a complete joke.🤣
It’s perfectly obvious just how much value the NATO alliance actually brings to the table. If it weren't for this alliance, they would have gone after Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania first... those countries would have been easy targets before anyone even thought about moving on Ukraine. As it stands now... the Russians are all bark and no bite. Fear is a powerful motivator, isn't it? Am I supposed to take Putin seriously when he goes on about his "new" Russian weaponry? And is the rest of the West really expected to cower in terror right now? What are we, children in a preschool? Or should we just listen to the propagandists claiming Russian nukes will turn the Western world into dust while everyone just sits there waiting for the impact? Forget preschool... this is more like infant daycare.
Amanda Allen4 said:Every single colonial power has moved past their colonies—except for Russia, which seems hell-bent on launching new conquests. While we in the West are busy debating whether to move certain monuments of colonial icons, they are busy celebrating the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great.
Two worlds that simply cannot coexist.
If you ask me, tearing down monuments dedicated to colonial figures is nothing short of absurd. By that ridiculous logic, shouldn't we be leveling the Egyptian pyramids since Pharaohs were essentially dictators and colonizers? Or what about the Romans? They were slave owners, so should we just go ahead and demolish half of Rome and the Mediterranean? Every era has its own standards. Just because something was socially acceptable in the past doesn't mean it fits our modern values, but that doesn't justify erasing history.
James Phillips92 said:If they lose this war, they're looking at the exact same scenario.
Honestly, if it hadn't been for that massive wave of Western aid sent to the Soviet Union during WWII, would they have even managed to liberate anything by '45? I seriously doubt it. Now, Ukraine is receiving that same kind of Western support, and frankly, there is no way they can afford to lose this war. And I don't just mean because of the military hardware—it's about the historical memory of what happened to them when they were part of the same state as the Russians. Besides, the Russian army is basically falling apart at the seams... they've burned through a mountain of armor, lost countless soldiers, and exhausted their supply of modern weaponry. Their backbone now consists of exhausted 50-year-olds and ancient T-62 tanks. It's absolutely pathetic.
Paul Flores13 said:I was just looking at the numbers, and it’s striking how much territory we're talking about here. The entire Donbas region covers roughly 53,000 square miles, which is almost exactly the size of the state of Mississippi. Back when things were stable, the population in the Donbas was around 6 million people. But once you factor in the occupation of all of Kherson, most of Zaporizhzhia, and parts of Kharkiv, the total land area being contested actually exceeds the size of a state like Texas.
A high-ranking official from JPMorgan Chase mentioned the other day that sanctions are going to set Russia back by a decade. When you layer that on top of the actual costs of the war and the massive loss of revenue from selling natural resources to the EU—which accounted for over 50% of their budget—the math starts getting ugly. If you add it all up... they are staring down years of starvation and crushing poverty. It makes me wonder: what does "securing" the Donbas actually mean to an average Russian citizen if they can't even afford bread? The October Revolution will look like a minor hiccup compared to the catastrophe heading their way.
The single greatest absurdity in the history of Ukraine kicked off on June 22, 1941. To any historian worth their salt, this is known as the German invasion of the Soviet Union, or Operation "Barbarossa." If you want to understand just how unnaturally cruel that satrapic communist system was toward Ukrainians, look no further than the fact that many actually welcomed the Germans as liberators. Of course, they ended up paying a devastating price for that hope later on, rotting away in various Gulags across Siberia. To make the tragedy even more profound... after enduring the Holodomor, the slaughter on the battlefields, and the endless carnage, they were still met with years of agony in the camps. So, when we ask ourselves why Ukrainians fight against Russian soldiers with such fierce, unrelenting heart, isn't the answer obvious? It’s etched into their very blood and DNA!
It feels like I’m repeating myself like a broken record, but someone has to speak the truth regarding Ukrainians and Russians.
"When Stalin seized power in the USSR, life under his regime in Soviet Ukraine became even more brutal. In 1930, Stalinists began the forced deportation of peasants and their violent coercion into collective farms.[21] A particularly horrific chapter was the man-made famine of 1932 and 1933. By seizing harvests based on impossible production quotas—and through the brutal punishment of any farmers caught hiding food just to stay alive—the authorities drove the population to mass starvation. This tragedy is known today as the Holodomor. Through this calculated starvation in 1932 and 1933, the Soviet regime murdered millions of innocent Ukrainians. The systematic persecution and destruction of the Ukrainian people went so deep that the Soviet authorities intentionally purged the Ukrainian intelligentsia and clergy to stifle any chance of Ukrainian development within the USSR.[21] For decades, this crime was swept under the rug. It wasn't until 1988 that it was finally recognized as genocide.[21]
Hitler's conquest of Ukraine provided a momentary reprieve from Soviet oppression, but it simply swapped one predator for another: Hitler promised those very same fertile plains for his own Lebensraum. Naturally, the new occupiers treated Ukrainians with the same contempt, which fueled the rise of partisan movements across the land. But to the Soviet regime, Ukrainians who were deemed "politically dangerous" or "unreliable" became even more suspect "because they didn't fight hard enough for the USSR"—essentially, if you didn't die for the Soviet Union, you were branded a traitor to the state, the people, and the revolution. Any Ukrainians who survived Nazi persecution and fled to Soviet-controlled territory were viewed with immediate suspicion. On the flip side, the USSR would mindlessly throw massive numbers of people into the front lines during its "liberation" campaigns. They systematically formed "fronts" composed of Ukrainians, meaning Ukrainians suffered disproportionately high casualties both while defending against German advances and during subsequent offensive operations where they were once again shoved into the vanguard.[22] Even those Ukrainian POWs and forced laborers who managed to survive German camps and factories weren't welcomed back with open arms in the USSR; they were viewed as "unreliable" because they hadn't died for the cause or had supposedly "worked for the enemy." When you look at the total wartime and postwar casualties in the Soviet Union, Ukrainians accounted for at least 40 percent. A comparison of official census data from 1941 and 1945 reveals the sheer scale of the devastation: due to unnatural deaths, migrations, and forced deportations, the population in Ukraine plummeted from 41.9 million to just 27.4 million. "
Some smart-ass is going to argue now that it wasn't the Russians who oppressed them, but the Soviet Union... but that's like making a distinction between the government and the people in a centralized regime. They held all the levers of power and used them ruthlessly to dismantle an entire nation.