Or just want to have a mole to help suppress such stories and their consequences.
He almost certainly is approaching his whole job differently. Have you been paying attention to him at all these past months? Hell, even in that article, they say this:
But his attempt to pull Ukraine’s President into a PR-friendly embrace at a joint press conference following the tour was not warmly received.
Zelensky looked as though he’d rather be fighting in the trenches of Severodonetsk when the smarmy French leader, dressed impeccably in his trademark navy blue suit, wrapped a crisply-laundered sleeve around his torso.
“Zelensky looked as though he’d rather be fighting in the trenches” has been his image since the first day of the war, and he hasn’t changed that. His whole demeanor sends the message, “This is all just bullshit, what we need to be doing is winning the war.” It’s a message the Ukrainians need to hear, as well as everyone else in the world.
Zelensky comes across as uniquely real, for a politician, and astonishingly brave. He also is an actor, and knows exactly what he is doing in front of cameras.
Apparently the meeting in Ukraine went well. Getting a face to face commitment is an important step. It means more than vague public comments from spokespersons.
ISW June 16
It must really eat at Putin that a younger, stronger, braver man is his adversary.
Russia has a damaged Tug.
myukraineis has two videos. I checked several sources that said the damaged Tug didn’t sink.
This is Boris’ 3rd trip to Ukraine.
A well-reasoned explanation of why the Russian army is so critically short of troops on the ground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKewF8_SiIs.
Great link. Thanks
That’s crazy, I used to watch this guy for videogame videos.
Fascinating. Thanks for posting it.
Heheh, yes thanks. I watched this before I went on a business trip, wanted to post it, but was using a work computer that didn’t have my SDMB login cached.
And an article on the related issue of Russian demographics:
I can’t read the article and I’m not sure why: it doesn’t complain about my adblocker (I disabled it), it doesn’t ask me to subscribe or complain at me in any way… but the article just fades out in paragraph 3.
The end of the article seems a tad worrying,
like a star, when it runs out of fuel and flares up, Russia may become more aggressive as their situation worsens.
Maybe that’s why they kidnapped relocated all those Ukrainian children.
I recall seeing one explanation for WWII, once, that was like “Yeah, racism, German superiority, blah blah. Really, the issue was that Germany was going to run out of food because they had more people than farmland and the Green Revolution hadn’t happened yet. If they didn’t conquer some land, they were headed for an internal crisis.”
No idea if that’s accurate but, certainly, it wouldn’t surprise me if - for Russia, today - there were some fairly practical realities that lead to the choice for conquest.
Of course it was planned. That is how fear and intimidation works. Might makes right in that world view.
Higher than I would like, but not inevitable.
Or maybe Zelenskyy was entirely in control? No… more likely he’s human. I expect he’s not getting nearly enough rest and sleep, he’s under enormous stress, and probably frustrated with politics and posturing.
Yes, well Zelenskyy is not by profession a politician. That has, at times, caused problems for his political career. I suspect that a lot of people have always underestimated him - supposedly he is a very, very smart guy and very astute.
… and possibly healthier man. Who is “just” a comedian and actor. And a short little guy - Zelenskyy always seems to be the shortest person in the room. Which latter two traits are the sort that might make a bully underestimate him.
There’s no amount of land acquisition that will compensate them for the global ass-fucking they going to get. And land is all they’ll get. They bombed any useful assets back to the stone age. They’ll have to rebuild what they destroyed.
At 5’ 7", Zelenskyy and Putin are the officially same height. Unofficially, I’ve read speculation that Putin is actually 5’ 3" or 5’ 5".
From the 6th reply in this Quora discussion [emphasis mine; edited to add links to photos, since Discourse won’t allow the embedded pictures]:
PM [Narendra ] Modi is roughly 5′5″(165–167cm) for sure as I have met him personally.
Now look at pictures of Putin with Modi ji
[Photo of Modi and Putin walking together]
if you look closely, Putin is wearing shoe inserts(you can clearly see his abnormally bent legs)
Putin is clearly shorter than Modi Ji and considering he has at least 5 cms of inserts. He Must be not more than 160cm
You can see both pictures at the same time by going to the Quora thread and scrolling down, or individually by clicking on the links to them in this post.