I'm old enough to remember the Halfrican, the Euroweenies and the neocons mocking Russia because of the small size of its economy.
But now Russia is going to dominate the world?
I'm beginning to wonder what proof that the neokoolaid is.
Heck, it's only been a month since The JoeRon declared that "the ruble is rubble", nyuk-nyuk-nyukking before he had a diaper accident to finish the speech.
A lot of people have things out of context.
First, Russia’s chief aim from day one is that the clock is ticking on manpower, with it being ‘now or never’ to attempt something like this. In 20 years, they simply won’t have the birthrate going and providing conscripts at this size.
The chief aim? Merely to recover the border countries (Ukraine, Romania, the Baltic states, Bulgaria) to protect against the ‘evil’ NATO.
A lot of this....is simply Putin and the inner circle believing their propaganda over the past two decades and that NATO is some aggressive thug organization that will threaten Russia.
Then you come to the old Soviet Union ‘drama’...that things were better when Moscow ran things. Thanks to TV propaganda over the years...probably one-third of Russians do believe in that attitude. The rest of the country just laughs, and notes that culture moved on.
I would end this and just note...Russia on GDP, is ranked number eleven in the world (between Canada and South Korea), and here in 2022....they will likely fall to number five to eight steps by the end of year (ranking somewhere near Turkey).
They don’t have the economy to carry out a six-month long war, take huge losses on military hardware, or be able to lose 40,000 men by the end of hostilities. There’s enough evidence now that over 100,000 IT/science background folks have exited the country (not intending to come back), and that number will only increase as the months go by.
It’s not a pleasant future...no matter how Putin arranges a ending.