How odd. I thought their population was much, much bigger than that.
It peaked in 1992 at around 148m. Keep in mind the while Russia was by far the largest component of the Soviet Union by population, it was only about half; plenty of people lived in the other SSRs. The USSR had more people than the US, but Russia did not.
Russia’s population has been more or less static since 2000 or so and is still down from a peak around 1995. And their growth rate is declining and may be effectively 0% or even negative at this point.
Russia is HUGE in size, but in population density, it’s just slightly more crowded than Idaho.
Overall, yes, but something like two-thirds of Russia proper is trackless taiga. I suspect that may have a thing to do with the Soviet practice of part of the test to get your driver’s license was showing that you could fix the car. (Or so I heard, back in the day.)
Hell that’s a practice we should have here! I made my daughter show me she could change a tire before she was allowed to drive on her own - even though we have AAA.
Ukraine alone is 44 million former (well, the over 30 set anyway) Soviet citizens.
I think this analysis sounds more likely:
“Saudi Arabia sees a recession coming next year and they don’t want to be stuck with millions of barrels of cheap oil. They see now as the time to get the best price,” a former senior US official told Middle East Eye, on condition of anonymity.
Given that Russia was on the podium to announce it, I’d assume that they were the ones to point out the math. But I still think that it’s the math that won the day.
When that fool actually pops a nuke we cannot say we were not warned.
where they are wrong is … the ukr has plenty of HIMARs rockets to take out (and keep taken out) those bridges day and night … so that should not be an issue in this fight … IOW: for strategic “planning”, those bridges do no longer exist. As a matter of fact the Antonov bridge is no longer a bridge, there are now segments completely missing (not just holes in the structure, like some weeks ago)
what worries me more is that the russian share the city with civilians (donno how many) - so you cant starve them to death, b/c they will take whatever they want from the civilians, and thus - are a rung above those …
There is nothing short of ongoing, perpetual capitulation that will materially reduce the risk of Putin’s use of a nuclear strike, and the consequences of such capitulation would be horrific for millions of people as well. He may be just saber-rattling - indeed, I deeply hope that he is - but even if he’s serious, the worst thing we could do would be to demonstrate that nuclear threats are effective. All we can do is to make it clear that the consequences to him and to Russia would be dire.
Plus, if the “fool actually pops a nuke”, the fact that he can say “Told you so!” after the fact isn’t really the thing that we’ll be concerned about.
very interesting thread on Ru defense positions @ the dam en Nova Khakova and nearby
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click tweet for more pics
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it surely makes you wonder if all that positions are known, the HIMARS with the 180.000 tungsten balls will convert all those “soft targets” into ground meat …
and those are the sat-pics regular folks have access to, I assume the assorted militairs get 1-2 zoom levels better information …
not a good time to be a russian solder in Ukr.
I am interested in military history, especially the Pacific War in WWII and the Japanese strategic decisions. They should have never challenged the US, but it’s interesting to see what kind of decisions were being made and how they got there.
Anyway, back to this war, it does look like more information is coming out about the insanity of the Russian system. A lot of information isn’t verified really well, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt, but it does make some sense.
One YouTuber was saying that in Russia, although stealing from other people is seen as morally wrong, there isn’t the same about stealing from the state. If true, I wonder if that is one reason people look the other way.
Another claim is that authorities allow things to be stolen to have leverage against those people.
In WWII, everyone knew that aviators reports were too generous, but while the US tended to factor that in, the Japanese did not so much.
In the Russian military, perhaps things are just too far gone. Maybe they can’t put in place the necessary processes to obtain realistic information, without which they are doomed.
It really looks like the Russian situation is not sustainable.
I wonder where they got the number for mobilizing 300,000 troops. If the leadership isn’t getting accurate information, do they believe they can resume the offensive or just to hold the lines?
I would assume they intend to use those forces to defend what territory they’ve managed to take and keep so far. Russians are in a tough spot because they desperately need more forces NOW, so they have two bad choices: 1) wait a couple months until most of the mobilized troops have been adequately trained to provide some realistic chance of performing adequately in combat, and in the mean time continue to trade space for time all the while risking possible collapse of lines, or 2) throw untrained and inadequately trained troops into the fray immediately and likely sustain significantly higher casualties as a result (and wind up in short order having to do yet another mobilization in a few months).
This is how Russian tourists in Ukraine should behave:
Do the Russians have the capability to blow up the dam? Is that possible/advantageous for them to do it?
It would probably be a war crime, but there are two reasons why the Russians would probably not do it at the current time: they control both sides of the river downstream, so they would be the ones negatively affected by its destruction; and, secondly, there’s a road on top of the dam which they need to cross the river.
Ukrainian missile strikes have targeted the bridge over the narrow channel, which I presume is for ship transit. I’ve read that the Russians have filled this channel with rubble.
A new Ukrainian counteroffensive brewing?
After their earlier successes, I’m sure the Russians are paranoid that every attack is a feint.
Coming back to this, Retired Major General James “Spider” Marks explains why this is called a feint.
He was specifically asked by the host the point you made, because the counter-offense towards Kherson is a real offence, is it fair to call it a feint? Gen Marks said it is.
The point is that Ukraine could not commit to both offences simultaneously, so they made all these noises that they were going to be conducting a full scale attack there, they did it with fire and movements, and convinced the Russians that the primary attack would be there.
After they were successful in the east, then they could go after the next target and the main offence is now in the Kherson area.
Militarily, this does count as a feint.
All true and, even worse for them, there was a large birth dearth in the decade following 1992. Those few born during that time period make up a substantial portion of the current prime pool of fighting men.
Russian demographic problems are a fascinating issue in their own right.