Rules:
No sympathy with the enemy or its collaborators. Russian and North Korean soldiers are fascists committing a genocide. Remember that.
Objective and factual reporting from the battlefield, parliaments, etc. is encouraged, even if it's about bad news for Ukraine.
Insulting Putin and his cronies (Orban, Trump, Musk,...) is absolutely fine but don't use homophobic or similar language against them. Members of the queer community don't deserve to be compared to that scum. Also: Putin disciminates against gay people. If you do as well, you're part of the problem.
Don't insult or use overly harsh language against other commentators.
Don't submit direct links to Twitter/X and Truth Social posts. You may: Post a screenshot + quote, do a full quote and name the author, direct link to a proxy service like ThreadReaderApp.com or Nitter, deep link an image embedded in a tweet because Lemmy will cache a copy.
Don't just complain about paywalls. If you encounter one, be a sport and link to an archived version instead. Use Firefox + Cookie AutoDelete + uBlock Origin with the annoyances filters enabled and https://filterlists.com/lists/bypass-paywalls-clean-filter to avoid encountering many in the first place.
Not paying your troops has never been a future-proof idea, all over history. Like the sacking of Rome in 1527, and many similar occasions.
Ohh that's why the bots have gotten so lazy and listless here
The Yandex data center strikes have probably had more effect on bot traffic than the russians would dare admit. This U.S. midterm cycle had a more muted and boring experience. Find it highly unlikley this is a coincidence.
Further - out of all the strategic weaknesses russia has proven unable to defend - I find the data centers one to be the most interesting. Why?
Becuase there's so few of them in russia for starters - only 6 i think. Big, indefensible, stationary server farms. The bot farms are also an essential part of Russia's strategy to fart out corrosive bullshit onto the world. They're very good at it - it's one of the few things they do REALLY well, and the tech oligarchs have shown themselves to be NO ally of the west in terms of stopping it, as long as it drives engagement on their platforms.
Further - you hear a lot of "it won't matter, because Russia will just move the data elsewhere". Think about that for a second. Their bot farms are a critical, effective strategic tool. Moving one of your best capabilities out of your data centers to, say, China's, is like moving your nuclear weapon infrastrcture from your control to someone else's. China has copied and stolen everything it can get it's hands on for over a century. They will surely be stealing everything that Russia shares with them. These are not simple commercial agreements that have enforceable contract law - these are critical national defense assets with a proven capability to influence the population of your enemy. They got Donald Fucking Trump elected - twice - by serving social media bullshit to racist uncles and groyper troll fascist millenials. Powerful stuff.
It is strategically a MASSIVE vulnerability to have to move your server farms to another country that isn't REALLY an ally. China is China's friend, full stop. Nobody else's. It serves them to have a weak, junior vassal colony in Russia that they can treat like a resource yard.
That’s…a strategy I guess
Not a winning one. Seems like a trivial, maybe even bureaucratic thing. But the basic social contract in a dictatorhsip is that the police crack the skulls of their fellow citizens, as long as the government keeps them supplied and fed. If they're having to make these types of choices, then they are really playing with fire.
Just something to watch. Especially for a war that is being fought by volunteers and mercenaries. They at least seemed to understand that not paying their grunts in Ukraine is a non-starter. For now.
If they’re having to make these types of choices, then they are really playing with fire.
Historically speaking, "not paying the army" tends to result in the ruling class having a bad time.
Heads in baskets, even.
You know, of all the terrible things Russia's had, a military dictatorship isn't one. Not sure how much worse it could be though.
You think the military will take over? I guess that is a possibility, and I don't think it would make much difference to having Putin as a dictator.
If you don't pay the military, according to all written history, the military packs their things, turns around from wherever they are, disposes of the leader, and takes control.
Yes it's absolutely plausible the military will try to take control, but the military was prevented by the people when they kidnapped Gorbatjov and tried to take power, and Yeltsin took over instead. We will see what happens.
However we get there, if it makes Russia weaker and therefore unable to menace it's neighbours, that's fine by me.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
The Russian Ministry of Defense plans to shift the payment of December salaries for military personnel to January for the first time due to a sharp increase in the budget deficit
The Russian economy is collapsing. 🤡 🤣
It also suggests that there is a maximum size to how big an army Moscow can support, and that they’re likely at that limit.
I've been saying they are above for 2 years now, with higher military spending than they can afford. The Russian economy hasn't been sustainable for a couple of years already. The evidence is coming out for real this year. The collapse has been slow, but it is happening, and it is accelerating.
A lot of winning going on in Fascist circles today lol
Oh no how unfortunate.
Then it's a good thing that Trump lifted sanctions on them, huh? /s
When they are floundering this badly, the proper strategy is too increase pressure, not remove it.
The people running the strategy aren’t proper people.
Putin makes a Putin face.
Ha ha
Whoops! I bet he has no regrets.
Regrets? I think you misspelled "better options".
I guess he lost those better options February 24 2022, but before that he had lots of better options.