Tuukka R

“When they came for me, there was nobody left to help.”

I don’t consider the concept of national stereotypes offensive per se. What I see as offensive is assuming that a random individual is akin to the national stereotype of their culture. Absolutely nobody is.

If someone considers the whole concept offensive, then that’s their problem and won’t affect my writing.

Oh, and I did consider it offensive that you assumed I think about stereotypes the way you said. It looks like you based that on a stereotype – assuming that I am alike the stereotypical whatever-you-were-thinking-of.

No national stereotypes apply to every single individual from that nation. They are rather about statistical likelihoods. In the Russia people are much more likely to be lazy and socially reckless and say “I am not political” as if it was something to be proud of. And also, it shows a lot that they even feel safe to say so. In Finland people typically have mindset, where saying “I stay away from political conversations” would be very shameful. People would not feel socially safe saying that here. In the Russia it is not shameful. And that feature is one of the things that make “a Russian mindset” a useful concept for use in conversations. There are other features typical to people living in the Russia and atypical for others, not only this one thing.

Ukraine’s losses as dead are lower in proportion to population than those of the Russia. As dead+wounded they are higher, but that’s relevant for the army, not so much for the nation. The severely wounded typically need a prosthesis, but will stay in the lives of their children.

Add to this that Ukraine is the defending party in the war, so they would be able to incur even higher losses without breaking than the aggressor has to bear with.

If you mean civilian casualties… Most of those are in the occupied territories. The terror attacks do kill people, but that is statistically insignificant. The Russia has been able to kill only a fraction of a percent of Ukraine’s civilian population. That is not something that has any effect on the war’s outcome. The terror attacks against civilians might have some strategic function in Putin’s head, and it does have an effect by reducing western countries’ willingness to support Ukraine, but in Ukraine itself it has no real effect and seems to be happening “just for fun” (as macabre as that sounds).

The Russia’s army is in much deeper trouble with manpower than that of Ukraine, and civilian population is statistically not in any immediate danger in either country.

(And I do believe I understand quite okay how the Russian mind works because when I lived in Ukraine, I learned both Russian and Ukrainian languages reasonably well, and can therefore follow their sources in original language)

Last year the Russia was advancing faster than expected. During the whole year they managed to conquer 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total area. Less than one percent. And that’s their “fast”.

Their recruitment capacity is 25 000 to 35 000 soldiers per montg, which tranalates to roughly 1000 per day. And losses (dead+wounded) have been mostly around 1800 per day.

Recent video footage shows almost no Russian tanks but only light DIY vehicles.

Even if Ukraine was to lose all western military support, the Russia would not be able to advance faster than 10 times the speed of last year. And that would be 7% of Ukraine’s total territory. Not enough for victory.

The Ukrainian economy is so small that EU countries would have no problem covering 100% of its budget. Ukraine’s economy will therefore survive indefinitely. The Russia’s won’t.

Time is strongly on Ukraine’s side. They can lose only if the west withdraws all support. We’re not stupid enough to do that.

So, as you said: Since the Russia’s loss is inevitable, why continue wasting their lives?

Well, he also went from lawyer to comedian. Kind of makes the jump seem much lower.

True, but there is the army that handed all the logistical trucks to the Red Army. The backbone of the Red Army was US material support. They provided the manpower, USA provided the tools. Plus, USA and UK provided a notable amount of manpower from another direction. And the tools for that manpower as well.

It is true that the Soviet army did a lot there. But still, the Russian claim that they did basically all of the job, especially when a huge chunk of “their” soldiers were actually from Ukraine and not from the Russia, is a lie.

It was a coöperational effort of several countries. USA could not have freed us of Nazis without UK and USSR. And USSR could not have freed us of nazis without USA and UK.

Also, in this case we are discussing here it is crystal clear that this was an actual intended nazi salute. Those other ones in the photos probably were not – at least each picture has visual cues that point towards the hand gesture having had a different meaning than on this one now.

On first one the fingers are much more open than now. On the second one the arm is quite low and the facial expression looks mostly worried. Probably he’s just waving his hand there. And the same goes for the rest of the pictures. Especially the facial expressions are very different from the video shown now, where there is nothing ambiguous.

Of course, if the context is shown, some of those photos could prove to really have been hitler salutes, but I highly doubt they were.