news
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Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
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American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
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Ukraine would've lost a lot of fighting spirit of Russia had managed to take him out. Especially if they managed to capture him.
Wars aren't won on 'fighting spirit'.
Sure does help if the other sides morale crumbles.
There is an overwhelmingly strong argument to be made that Zelensky is merely a useful figurehead that the Ukrainian Nazi-led military is willing to tolerate so long as he's useful. There are even videos of one of the commanders talking about how uncomfortable he was that a Jew was being put into the head of state role, but relaxed once he saw how successfully it whitewashed them in the eyes of the world. Zelensky is there to serve a purpose, neither the military command structure nor the poor grunts who are forced to fight in the trenches have any love for the former comedian doing vanity photo shoots and kowtowing to Trump's mockery on live TV.
And speaking of the low level soldiers and their low morale? On top of ordinary forced conscription (which is always popular /s) Ukraine has been pressganging innocent people off the street who are shoved into white vans and sent to the front lines to fight and die as cannon fodder. Do you think those soldier's morale is going to drop that much more because the leader presiding over the country when that happened to them also got kidnapped? Most of them would probably chuckle and correctly say he got a taste of his own medicine.
But we're talking about early in the war. Then people definitely rallied around Zelensky and avoided a collapse that so many people were expecting at the start of the war. For that taking about the most visible person of the resistance would have helped. Idk why they didn't try it at least, could've made the war shorter. Missed opportunity.
You're just reaching for anything to salvage your bad take, which has been explained to you by multiple people why it's a bad take. It wouldn't have shortened the war, not by any plausible mechanism. The point is that there are many people that could have filled Zelensky's embarrassing shoes, which was true then just as much (if not more) as now. The only thing it would have accomplished was massive escalation and proving all the "Putler is an unhinged lunatic Bond villain trying to start WWIII" propaganda true, and justifying direct NATO military action against Russia.
But sure, let's go with it, personally I wish Putin had kidnapped Biden! Talk about a missed opportunity. Guess he still could kidnap Trump. Just think of what that would do to US morale!
Don't bother with this person. They are completely detached from reality and have refused to engage with multiple people like yourself trying to explain this to them.
I mean the reality is that Russia tried because it is the obvious move to make. I've just had fun seeing what sort of stuff people come up to explain why they didn't manage to actually do it, unlike the US with Maduro.
The whole thing is silly, if they could've ended the war with taking out Zelensky and other top leaders and taken over Kyiv of course they would have. Didn't manage to though.