Enrico_sw

This one was great too.

I'm getting reminded of this game everyday....

Firing at a nuclear power plant was really sick. Who's going to trust someone that f** fires at a nuclear power plant?! Tension is rising and I hope it doesn't use tactical nuclear weapons (as many people say he will), because shit might escalate rapidly from there.

Inevitable? I hope not. A coupe of weeks ago, nobody believed that an invasion of Ukraine was possible. So, the Worst is unpredictable. But I'm sure the Best is, as well. Either Putin is playing the Madman theory and he only has a strategic plan that can bring him so far. Or he's mad, in which case things can worsen rapidly... If there's a WW3, it's probable that someone is gonna go fucking nuclear. In which case, WW4 might be fought with sticks and stones

Meanwhile, this is what's happening in the USA... Woke students calling people who don't think like them "nazis" and "fascists". The whole world can watch this. Do they take the USA seriously after watching this? BTW, General Milley of the US military pander to these people. https://theparadise.ng/i-was-forced-to-hide-conservative-event-at-texas-college-attacked-by-antifa/

I'm not sure I hope they'll do it fast. It seems that they're mostly dealing with optimisation/visual bugs. This is due to multi-platform coding; I guess it's hard to optimize for several consoles / console gens and PC at the same time. People are less angry on Steam (notes are "very positive" now), but bugs are still being reported.

Yeah, Russian soldiers are seen as expandable by the military staff... I'm wondering how acceptable civilian losses will be for the Russian's public opinion. Though there's lots of misinformation/propaganda, there's still social media and I can't see a deadly fratricidal war being acceptable for them (if it was a war against Chechens or Afghans, the story would be different). I don't think that the "nazi" argument will be easy to swallow either, especially if many civilians are killed.

I haven't bought it yet... I want to play on PC and given how many bugs need to be fixed, I'll wait. I don't want the game to be ruined by bugs. After Cyberpunk, I've learned my lesson: I don't buy early purchases and I wait for the gamer's reviews.

What seems to have been underestimated by Putin is how democratic ideals are cherished by people who have lived under authoritarian regimes. He may think it's weak, but democracy is still seen as a jewel by many. But what seems extremely strange to me is how people in democratic countries seem to admire authoritarian regimes (I'm still so surprised by how many people still admire Xi for example).

^ But then again, I might be very wrong, given how people talked about nukes only a couple of days ago...

Maybe I'm wrong or too optimistic, but I can't see Russian soldiers blindly massacring too many civilians. The death toll is already high (I hear 2,000 civilians), but I can't see big scale massacres happening. Not in a brother Nation. If Wagner legions or Chechens are given carte blanche, then the story might be different... because these guys could go extremely bloody. Russian soldiers don't show their usual ruthlessness here:

Do you have quotes? Examples? I'm very cautious with these things. Americans politics are extremely tense, I'm very cautious with how this conflict may be used for domestic politics.

Yep, they're great folks. I've met many of them in Paris. They are really nice people. Like the Swedes.

Who is defending this invasion in the West? On a political level, the operation is not good for Putin so far. The whole world is against him and he can't hold a cold war type propaganda for long. People have phones, internet, social media. You can censor mainstream media (that fewer people trust anyway), but not the internet. And it may just be a small leak at first, but soon the leakage would grow larger. I hope this de-escalates quickly and he retreats. It's pretty sure he'll want to at least claim some sort of victory or compromise (though we don't know what it'll be)

From a strategic point of view, the death of civilians in a brother nation can be very detrimental to Putin's propaganda. Even if it's only a week and the forces may advance and besiege Kyiv, I don't think they'll get a lot of support if many "Brother civilians" are killed. Also, Putin can't hit Kyiv like he did with Grozny (because few people cared about Chechens in Russia, but it's not the same story with Ukraine). Kyiv is the cradle of the Slavic civilization. Ukrainian's "war on images" has been very efficient so far (and I pass no value judgement either).

BTW, I hope everybody stops calling everybody Nazis. That includes: - People on twitter calling Russians Nazis (and the viewpoint of the famous "intellectual" Madonna on the subject doesn't matter ) - Trudeau and his goons calling the truckers Nazis. - The famous "intellectual" Whoopi Goldberg belittling Nazism because of her CRT beliefs. - In North America, the Left and Right calling each other Nazis (thankfully, we don't have that in Europe, but there's still a Godwin's point tendency....)

This was a very stupid tactic to call this operation "denazification". I don't think it even works on the Russian population. Now, the soldiers see with their own eyes that they aren't fighting Nazis.

The whole operation is a mess. It seems Putin misjudged the Ukrainians. The country is not what is was 20 years ago, or even 8 years ago. Though we're not in his head, it seems that he thought that there would be more neutrality in the civilian. Maybe he thought that the soldiers would be seen as liberators (maybe he fooled himself). In any case, this operation might be Putin's Afghanistan. I hope there's a de-escalation soon.

You mean Putin, not the Russian... It's not the same. Though it's hard to sense the reality of Russian's opinion, Putin's disinformation isn't as efficient as he thinks. There's social media (even if they can be blocked) and the whole world is against Putin (which is a first). It seems that Russian forces have lots of restraint compared to what they are used to doing. In Chechnya (and the battle of Grozny in 99-00 particularly), it was a fucking eradication. They killed ruthlessly. I've seen many documentaries when I was younger and it's very crude (not just the use of freaking thermobaric bombs, but also Russian soldiers collecting people's ears). And that's not even close to what the USSR used to do. Their method was to send soldiers who didn't speak the local language and tell them they had to kill fascists (old habit...). BTW, all communist regimes were ruthless (it's easier to massacre people when you do it in the name of "ideals"). It seems that, in the today's case, Russians were told to be "less brutal" than usual, because it's still a "brother nation". Even if it's ultraviolent and there are tons of deaths (it's war...), it's still in the lower range of Russian standard. They speak a language that's close to Ukrainian (not the same, but close) and Russian soldiers will realize that the populations are not nazis. Now, with Wagner legions and Chechens, the story might be very different.

Femme Actuelle, 28 February 2022

Putin has the nuclear triad, which means he can hit anyone. Of course, NATO can second strike him, but all of this would be a fucking massacre. How the f*** did all of this escalated so quickly?