They are being downvoted because Nuland is an utterly insignificant diplomat, but serves well as a dog whistle for people who subscribe to the belief that the Maidan revolution in Ukraine was really some Obama organized coup. This is a story peddled by the Russian government, which of course is where Yanukovych promptly fled after having protestors shot. At the same time Russia was busy staging troops and material for the actual coup they were planning.
Yes, insignificant enough to remark "Yats is our guy" (during an intercepted but confirmed-authentic conversation with another US diplomat that Russia subsequently leaked), only for "Yats" (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) to subsequently become the Ukrainian PM. Coincidence, I'm sure...
You're comparing apples, bananas, and pineapples while pretending they're all one thing. Switchblades are extremely effective (albeit expensive) anti-personnel (300 model) and anti-armor (600 model) drones. Shaheds are much larger, cheap, low on capabilities, but attritable used to attack fixed positions (e.g., buildings). These are all very different.
I don't understand your point. Switchblades are (roughly) more akin to FPV (300 model) and Vampire drones (600 model) with reapect to size and payloads. Shahed style drones are roughly like like low end cruise missles. Different form factors and different capabilities. All of them are needed, but they're all very different.
A cruise missile is 3,000,000$ and a shahed drone is 50,000$ so if it’s even remotely the same capability it is an immense technological improvement over an expensive and slow to manufacture cruise missile.
You need a high/low capability that mixes all levels. For example, the Ukrainians and the Russians are both manufacturing very expensove cruise missles (Neptune/Iskander) and long range attack drones (shahed/fp-2/lute/etc). At any rate the original post I was responding to was comparing Switchblades to Shaheds, which is non-sensical.
I didn’t see any more brutality than I saw from US regime and especially ICE.
I never saw a person shot in the face in Iran but I saw in the US. Should we bomb US?
Also, 30k dead means there would be at least some proof. Once Iran reinstated internet after protests NO VIDEOS of killings showed up. Protesters decided not to record any of the killings?!
I'm not gonna debate the obvious with an account with 53 karma who denies the existence of basic stuff or not aware of the obvious who wants to lash out against the west. No videos my ass. I'm not gonna be your Google, so I am out.
Trump announced yesterday they will murder anyone who takes leadership. They don’t want it opened, they want China and India to suffer while establishing themselves as alternative energy supplier.
US itself has huge reserves, and recent move with Venecuela further expands it.
Middle East countries are too blind to see it, they’re being thrown under the bus to hurt Iran.
Yes, a decade or two down the lane, all of middle-east will regret that they didn't do anything to check the US backed Israeli aggression in their region. The lack of political foresight and political will is really astounding (and surprising). And this is after the US Ambassador to Israel openly said that Israel has the "Biblical right" to all of middle-east, and the US is fine with that!
Russian unemployment of 2.2% is a bad sign, not a good sign.
For practical purposes, unemployment around 4% means full employment, because there's always a portion of the population not working for some reason: taking time off, too dumb, don't want to work, unable to for reasons of temperment or psychological health, etc. At 4% (as the US has often been in the last few decades) it's really difficult to fill menial roles or unskilled factory jobs with people who know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Russia at 2.2% means many needed positions are going unfulfilled, crippling productivity and planning. It's a sign that the manpower needs of the war are draining productive workers, slowing their own economy at a time when they need more productivity to overcome sanctions and other economic effects.
This number doesn’t take into account immigration. Russian economy is supported by several millions of immigrants from Central Asia (the number much bigger than number of mobilized people). There was low unemployment before the war.
correct. they've mostly shifted to a militarized economy and all available labor is now gobbled up.
salaries are pretty good, relatively speaking, if you're in engineering or other STEM fields.
excess labor is being drained off to die horribly to drones in eastern Ukraine.
it's kind of like a fat guy starving to death -- for a minute all that weight loss will bring improvements to blood pressure, insulin, etc., but in a couple weeks he's not gonna feel so great
It’s as if he’s just options trading.
I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if he attacked those power plants this evening.
reply