r/worldnews • u/UNITED24Media United24 Media • 11h ago

Russia/Ukraine CIA Chief Told Moscow Russia Is Getting Weaker—Putin Reportedly Canceled Their Meeting

https://united24media.com/world/cia-chief-told-moscow-russia-is-getting-weaker-putin-reportedly-canceled-their-meeting-22121
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u/RelegatedRick 11h ago

I feel like thats just undeniable fact at this point, people were afraid of Russia 15 years ago.

Now we know they can’t even handle a non-nuclear much smaller neighbour literally next door, regardless of if they win or not, they look like a paper tiger incapable of large scale warfare and their economy is on the brink of utter collapse to top it all off.

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u/Tiddlewinkly 10h ago

People should still be afraid of Russia, but not for their combat ability.

It's the information warfare they've been aggressively encouraging since the cold war to this day. It's no secret that their mass disinformation campaigns have been significantly influencing western nations in their attempt to destabilize them. One can say they've been largely successful at it.

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u/gambiting 8h ago

As someone from Poland, it's terrifying. People don't realize we're already at war with Russia - that war is just waged every day on our democracy by thousands of online trolls that attack and spread misinformation online, but which also fund groups inside Poland to incite hatred in real life(mostly against Ukrainians, but it's not limited to them - the more discord the better). This isn't just "oh they write some angry comments on Facebook" - it's a concentrated campaign hitting from thousand angles and while no missiles might be flying above Polish soil it absolutely is an attack on our country.

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u/fugaziozbourne 5h ago

Kremlin literally says that the information front is more important to their plans than air, sea, or land. They're not hiding this.

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u/tang-tw 5h ago

Taiwan has long been accustomed to this kind of online propaganda offensive. They collect local vocabulary and terms to create databases, impersonate locals to spread rumors and interfere in elections, and launch large-scale cyberattacks. This year, AI proxy attacks have also emerged. Taiwan has also become accustomed to their indirect infiltration and bribery of military personnel and corporate employees to steal secrets. China and Russia are both exchanging and learning from each other's achievements.

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u/draftedvet 8m ago

Bravo!

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u/Chance-the-Gardener 9h ago

The world at large is like that now. The age of information has become a world of deceit.

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u/cattaclysmic 8h ago

Russias neighbors will always be afraid og Russia. Untrained gopniks with a gun will still kill you even if they aren’t efficient about it. And Russia will just throw bodies at you and has a nuclear deterrent.

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u/paulywauly99 10h ago

We just need our hackers to hack their hackers and out hack them I guess?

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u/genital_lesions 10h ago

It's not even traditional cyber hacking so much as it is just Russia's ability to influence Western public opinion with disinformation and misinformation.

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u/Printer-Pam 9h ago

it's just that narcissists, sociopaths and so on admire other narcissists, sociopaths and so on, so the far right from the West admire Russia

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u/makingnoise 9h ago

If you think Russian propaganda is only targeted at narcissists and sociopaths, instead of literally the entire US political spectrum, you might be interested in buying a bridge I own in Brooklyn.

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u/fake_user_34 9h ago

Mate, it's the children they are targeting and it works. majority of Gen Z men voted for Trump.

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u/jackyomum 8h ago

You are missing the point. They are fanning the flames on both sides trying to get them to hate each other. It is not just propaganda to make people right wing.

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u/broguequery 8h ago

No it's notjust right wing propaganda... But the right propaganda is outrageously effective.

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u/fake_user_34 6h ago

The issue with this though is that majority of the time, it really is just alt right messages that they spread and it is the american youth that combat more left wing people, which leads to the online discourse.

There are hardly any truly left wing conspiracy shit that they peddle.

So really, they aren't fanning the flames on both sides. They are fanning the flames on one side and that one side attacks the other for just living.

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u/jackyomum 5h ago

They certainly target left wing people as well:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/01/facebook-russia-internet-research-agency-fake-news

specifically, trying to get left-wing people to sour on Biden so they wouldn't vote for him. Your overarching premise of Russia wanting Trump to win is true (bomb threats on left-leaning area election offices etc), but my main point is that we are all susceptible to propaganda and they want us divided.

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u/NancyDiver 7h ago

a country divided is a country not united.

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u/MalleDigga 9h ago

the never ending circle.. gott ich bin müde chef

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u/asspounder-4000 10h ago

Bring in hacker man, won't even need to hack time, all he needs is a floppy disk, a zip drive and a payphone. The kremlin will fall in a day

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u/FlukemanFrancis 10h ago

Impossible, Russians can’t be affected by disinformation for the same reason fish can’t drown

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u/jtr99 10h ago

Where is Johnny Lee Miller when we really need him?

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u/SlowlyDrown 5h ago

It doesn’t work on them because they don’t have real elections.

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u/Expensive-Raisin4088 8h ago

Got donnie elected twice. Which severely destabilized NATO and weakened the US

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u/cheddarben 8h ago

probably nukes, too.

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u/Angus-muffin 8h ago

Big I studied the blade energy though

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u/espy3277768 6h ago

Bullshit is the Russian Forte

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u/iloovehugecock 6h ago

I find it crazy how nobody seems to care all the right wing political parties around the world basically share the exact same policies and views these days, and pretty much all have suspicious connections to Russia.

I seriously wonder what the hell our intelligence agencies are even doing at this point.

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u/dragon-fence 6h ago

Yup. They got the UK to leave the EU and have thoroughly destabilized the US. Those are substantial achievements that show Russia is dangerous.

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u/EmptyIII 6h ago

I really, really, really wish this capability would falter and collapse when Russis does so too

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u/Grand_Pop_7221 5h ago

Don't forget, though, that a good part of this Alt-Right global movement that they push benefits certain people in the host countries as well. Trump, Elon, La-Penn, Farage, Lowe, Orban, and the rest all get to reap the fruits of some of this. It would be wrong, I think, to attribute this solely to Russian information warfare. Especially when the networks that disseminate most of this tripe aren't even owned or operated by Russia.

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u/Latensi 3h ago

I just assume every social media drama these days is boosted by bots from various national intelligence agencies. Just sewing discord.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 10h ago

this is easy to overstate. conspiracy theories are popular because nothing is certain. russia is not that great on that front either, but it is so easy to ascribe every failure of domestic politics to russian influence

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u/WeedstocksAlt 11h ago

And they effectively already lost, there’s no coming back with an actual win from it.

It’s legit like … one of the biggest military failure in history lol.

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u/dat_oracle 10h ago

the only win they still can get is the end of putins dictatorship

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u/Superb-Draft 10h ago

America spent 20 years in Afghanistan just to hand it back to the Taliban. There’s plenty of shame to go around. 

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u/TrainingAmphibian354 10h ago edited 10h ago

Afghanistan didn't make life genuinely hard for US citizens, and 500k+ Americans didn't get turned into fucking tomato paste even after 20 years straight of fighting.

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u/Arcayon 10h ago

Yea and how many Americans died over that 20 year period compared to Ukraine. They are not even comparable military blunders lol.

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u/TTrampz 10h ago

Afghanistan was not a military blunder or defeat, it was a political one.

Ukraine looks like it’s both , military and political
Defeat

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u/Arcayon 10h ago

100% with you friend.

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u/kinkakujen 10h ago

America dominated afghanistan and beat it and occupied it within weeks. WEEKS. That's the part Russia is failing at in Ukraine.

The political nation building disaster after beating them militarily is a whole different topic, but certainly not a military defeat. 

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u/vincentkun 10h ago

I don't think it quite tracks. Afghanistan was conventionally defeated and its very, very far from the USA. What we were doing there was trying to nation build and extract more out of them. Russia has been unable to defrat Ukraine conventionally, an enemy that is just next door.

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u/Straight-Ad-7387 10h ago

Except %gdp wise and troop deaths over that entire 20 years don't compare to russias losses.

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u/soldiernerd 10h ago edited 10h ago

US met their military goals in Afghanistan, they just couldn’t get people to buy into the dream of a pro western democracy.

Also Russia has, since Feb 2022, experienced about 50% of the KIAs the US has had in its entire 250 year existence.

I’ll also remind everyone that Ukraine is Russia’s neighbor with a largely shared culture and language, not a radically different country halfway around the globe.

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u/SketchTeno 10h ago

Remember how many russians died in ww2 compared to the rest of the western world? Excluding china, more russians died than just about the entire rest of the world combined in the war.

And they STILL had the ussr for decades afterwards.

...there is a very different perspective on life there.

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u/Ossa1 9h ago

You have to add that around a third of the russian soldiers died by starvation in german POW camps.

Russia lost around 7 million in combat, around 3 were starved/killed in german Camps.

Around 16 million soviet civilians were killed by hunger, forced laber or outright shot.

These numbers dwarf quite a lot of conflicts.

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u/SketchTeno 9h ago

Yeah, when you have 16 million non-combat civilians die in a conflict, and still come out as a world power for decades afterwards... you're just doing something very different than what the western world is used to at that point.

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u/xakeri 9h ago

A big part of it is just having that many people.

Most western countries simply don't have a population that could handle that. In 1939, the US had 130 million people. The Soviet Union had 170 million. France had 42 million and the UK had 47.8 million.

A comparable amount there would have been 4-5 million, which would still have been insane, but is way smaller in raw numbers.

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u/SurprisedJerboa 4h ago

Meeting military goals with a blossoming strategic failure is terrible War planning.

Ukraine is Russia’s neighbor with a largely shared culture and language, not a radically different country halfway around the globe.

Historic genocide and current threats of genocide are certainly more dangerous for the Ukraine people compared to those US Wars,

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u/soldiernerd 1h ago edited 1h ago

Honestly I wouldn't even argue it was a strategic failure; the things which made Afghanistan a problem for the US in 2001 are gone. The failure is in the lives lost and the money wasted for 1.5 decades of pointless effort.

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u/SurprisedJerboa 55m ago

The military wanted to withdraw with a functional Government. (that's the 'later strategy ' that was decided)

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u/Justame13 10h ago

There was a wide stretch of that time that it was more dangerous for troops to go to the National Training Center in CA than Afghanistan

There is not a comparable case in Europe

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u/BurntWaffle303 10h ago

Yall remember Vietnam right?

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u/mlhender 10h ago

For Russia, Ukraine is arguably already considerably worse in raw military losses. CSIS estimated in July 2026 that Russia had suffered roughly 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 450,000 deaths, since February 2022. CSIS describes those fatalities as more than four times U.S. fatalities in all American wars combined since WWII.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russian-blood-and-treasure-ballooning-costs-putins-war

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u/deja-roo 1h ago

Russia lost more men in Ukraine this summer than the US lost in Vietnam over like 12 years.

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u/BurntWaffle303 1h ago

Not about men. The original poster said it was one of the most shameful military losses. I’m stating that Vietnam was objectively worse in the sense of a failed objective. That’s only going back to the 60 as well. Plenty of butal military losses in history.

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u/morningreis 9h ago

Russia is losing personnel in Ukraine every 2-3 days equivalent to what the US lost in the entire 20 years.

The scale is completely different.

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u/WeedstocksAlt 10h ago

And knowing that, it’s not even a bit close lol

Russia’s casualties are above 1,4 million ……. 10s of thousand of armour, tanks, artillery system lost.

The are buying from North Korea….

And all that to invade their direct neighbour, not projecting forces across the globe.

It’s not even close to being comparable

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u/Jared_Kincaid_001 10h ago

Sure but this equivalent is if the US lost to Manitoba (with the entire population of Canada in it). Just a tiny country with no real nuclear capability.

Granted the Canadian military has been known to put belt to ass, but they're also known mostly as peace keepers/pacifists.

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u/Daniel_The_Thinker 7h ago

20 years patrolling it, not fighting over it.

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u/PrimeIntellect 4h ago

that wasn't really a war though - occupation is something else. if we were actually at war with afghanistan it would have been over in a week.

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u/deja-roo 1h ago

That's not even remotely comparable.

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u/Skill_Issuer 10h ago

Yes that was a failure but Russia’s failure is several times worse

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u/123_alex 10h ago

an actual win

What would a win look like?

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u/OhDaFeesh 9h ago

My guess is a capitulation by leadership and a signed agreement.

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u/WeedstocksAlt 8h ago

There’s no win possible.
The best option is "what’s the less worst loss".

Probably and internal revolution that ends with a democratic government. But that’s not happening.

At "best" the oligarchs make a coup to take control, leave Ukraine, blame it all on Putin and save what they have left.

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u/123_alex 7h ago

Let me rephrase it. What would a win have looked before '22?

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u/WeedstocksAlt 7h ago

Actually taking Kyiv in 3 days.

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u/123_alex 6h ago

Reasonable. Thanks for the answer.

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u/sirboddingtons 10h ago

We're trying hard in Iran. 

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u/MazzleMaze 7h ago

My guy, Ukraine has the 6th largest active military in the world. They have around 700,000 - 900,000 soldiers. Russia has about 1.2 - 1.3 million.

Much smaller is definitely an overstatement.

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u/user_account_deleted 2h ago

Except Ukraine has a quarter the population and a tenth the GDP. Ukraine is a demonstrably MUCH smaller neighbor. They cannot sustain their level of military enrollment for nearly as long as Russia can sustain theirs, and they're fighting with a fraction of the military budget should aid slow or stop.

One number does not a correct comparison make.

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u/MazzleMaze 2h ago

Ukraine is backed by NATO. They have a GDP 15-20x larger than Russia. The US alone has a GDP 10x bigger than Russia.

Its just an improper statement. Ukraine is the 6th largest army in the world. Backed up by the largest economies in the world. They have been able to hold off Russia for a reason...

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u/user_account_deleted 2h ago

Being backed by larger countries isn't the same as having the economic power or available manpower as all of those countries. In not sure what you're on about.

And the backing provided by those countries thus far is half what Russia has spent in the same timeframe.

AND Ukraine started with significantly fewer resources compared to Russia.

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u/MazzleMaze 2h ago edited 1h ago

They dont need manpower they are the 6th largest army backed by the largest GDP 25x over.

Combined Western aid rivals or exceeds total direct outlays when factoring in broader economic support and total national costs.

No matter how much you try to cut this. They are backed by a much larger GDP and have an army of comparable size. Especially when you account for the border Russia has to protect compared to Ukraine.

Russia has about +50% of its forces committed. Ukraine has 90-100% Ukraine actually has a LARGER combat force committed compared to Russia.

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u/user_account_deleted 2h ago

And the reason they've held off Russia is it turns out the Russian military was kinda shit when this conflict started

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u/Illustrious_Shame918 5h ago

my guy , if you had several hundred thousand less things than your opponent, they have much more than you. i don't think it was an understatement.

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u/Sedative_Sediment 2h ago

less things

Fewer.

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u/MazzleMaze 4h ago

My guy, Ukraine can commit near 100% of their forces to the front. Russia has a much larger border with a lot more enemies.

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u/Farticus69420 5h ago

When you looked at equipment at the start numbers dont mean too much.

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u/Debatebly 5h ago

A huge part of the developed world supports and supported Ukraine. I'm all in to hate on Russia, but we can't get delusional that Ukraine is David vs. Goliath.

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u/user_account_deleted 2h ago

The total disbursed aid to Ukraine is equivalent to about two years military spending in Russia. It's still David vs Goliath.

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u/SuperSquirrel13 11h ago

What happened after the fall of the soviet union - lots of arms sold. 

When this collapse happens, I fear the same, but with nukes. Imagine the terror events and warlords in africa that can be done using sold russian nukes. 

Im sure there will be "control", but still. The concern is what keeps me nervous. 

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u/doc5avag3 11h ago edited 10h ago

There was a reason that both the US and China worked together very quickly and civilly when the Soviet Union collapsed. Nobody wants to see what happens if you don't monitor and maybe even step in when a Nuclear Power faces the possibility of balkanization.

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u/hyldemarv 10h ago

Nope. It would be fun watching Mad Max tribes roam around the steppes brandishing nuclear warheads but the maintenance needs will make them become duds rather quickly.

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u/iNetRunner 3h ago

Sure, if you don’t maintain the tritium in a thermonuclear bomb, the secondary (fusion) stage might fail. But even if only the first stage (i.e. fission) of a thermonuclear / H bomb “works” the results would still be equal or greater than the fission devices dropped on Hiroshima (16 kt of TNT) and Nagasaki (21 kt). Though, if the secondary stage is made from deuterium of lithium deuteride, then it would probably still be stable and function.

(Tritium has a half-life of “just” 12.32 years. Whereas deuterium and lithium deuteride are stable. Though, deuterium must be kept in liquid form at cryogenic temperatures — so, that would probably greatly limit the lifetime of poorly maintained devices. Lithium deuteride is a solid at normal room temperature and pressure.)

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u/40StoryMech 11h ago

The US needs to get ahead of this and flood the market with nukes. Imagine the money Tru ... I mean, WE could make.

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u/Abslalom 11h ago

Right, because of the trickle down economics

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u/hume_reddit 11h ago

Gold plated Trump nukes! (Which are actually Russian nukes in a new shell...)

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u/620five 10h ago

My god. This is as actually possible.

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u/123_alex 10h ago

warlords in africa that can be done using sold russian nukes

I'll give you a nuke for free. Can you maintain it and use it?

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u/jl2352 10h ago

They won’t sell nukes because the controls and infrastructure needed is too great. It’s physically too impractical to sell.

Then there is the attention. The US military doesn’t care if a shipping container of small arms is sold to a warlord. That’s a problem for Interpol, the FBI, or whoever. Whereas the US military would carry out a small invasion if it thought there were nukes being sold.

What did happen after the Soviet Union is lots of Soviet nuclear scientists and other specialists went to work for other regimes. That helped the proliferation of missile and nuclear technology. That is the main fear.

The US did some work to help fund Russian fields in this area. It’s one reason (of many) on why the US would support the Russian space program. It keeps the Russian expertise in Russia.

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u/SamsonFox2 3h ago

There is no evidence that Soviet nuclear scientists helped anyone achieve anything on the nuclear front. There was nothing close to "nuclear horror stories" during USSR dissolution (mind it - it was neve a breakdown).

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

Russia are having a bad time in conventional warfare vs Ukraine, that much is true, but it's unwise to under-estimate Russia, even now they have an unknown amount of nuclear weapons capable of being fired through various means, and the largest ICBM stockpiles in the world stored all around the country. They have adjusted to a wartime economy reasonably well (considering all the sanctions) and their production power is second only to China. That's not even taking into account their ability to meddle in foreign affairs and their cyber-warfare capabilities.

All that being said, that they are still a very dangerous country, and what makes it worse is that they are unpredictable. The closer Russia gets to essentially being made to surrender, the more desperate they become, and the more dangerous they become.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 11h ago edited 11h ago

Russia has a GDP slightly larger than Spain.

Edit

Nothing wrong with Spain, it's a fine proud country but it's not considered a military and econonic super power.

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u/KatsumotoKurier 6h ago edited 2h ago

Russia has a GDP slightly larger than Spain.

With an economy roughly the size of Canada's yet with over 100 million more people, with an overall life expectation that's like 12 years less, a much lower overall quality of life, horrible corruption issues, and what some experts are calling an HIV epidemic.

Meanwhile it is enormously resource rich yet still insists on invading its neighbours for needless expansion wars. Like really - imagine being 150x the size of Norway and with a population 70x the size, and with all the same resources in enormous plentitudes, yet... not being a better country? Russia seems like a land of massively wasted opportunities and potential. It could genuinely be a serious and respectable world leader in so many admirable regards.

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u/Count_de_Ville 11h ago

Oof

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 11h ago

It's true, the military industrial complex needs an enemy, China is relatively benign unless you are a small neighbour in it's sphere of influence, it's happy making money, so there's not much threat, well yet. Who's the enemy? Russia apparently, and that's a paper tiger. Who else North Korea, Iran? They are scraping the barrel to justify outrageous military spending.

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u/LothorBrune 10h ago

I mean, under Trump, Russia is obviously not going to be the enemy, and corruption can justify itself.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

You bring up GDP thinking it somehow matters but it definitly does not. I wonder what Iran's GDP is and how that correlates with their military capability?

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 10h ago

Ah right right you want it both ways? Russia is powerful with lots of kit, Russia has no kit but is powerful in other ways. Look, countries with no GDP cannot invade others, they can mount a defence I suppose. But they become much less of a threat.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

The thing about GDP is that it does not actually measure military capabilities. For a prolonged conflict it might be better to count how many raw materials they have, how dependant they are on other countries to supply them and how many recruits they can bring in long term. I'd say Russia likely beats Spain on all of those. Recent studies also show a very low readiness to defend their country in case od conflict among young men.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 10h ago

Yeah, talk it up all you want. But the facts remain. Every month Ukraine holds out Russia gets weaker. It can't refine its own petrol now. This doesn't have much to do with Spain to be fair I could have easy said another country with a ball park GDP, but it is a measure of industrial output and wealth.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

I do not dispute that. Ukraine has been doing great, which only strengthenss my argument regarding GDP. If you study historical conflicts( some before global trade ) it was more important for a country to have strong ideology and raw material/resource independence. My point is GDP is not a predictor for militaristic success be it Spain or any other country. We also measure GDP in dollars and with Russia almost fully isolated from world trade, switching to a war time economy and printing money to sustain it, even our GDP estimates are not comparable with other countries anymore.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 9h ago

It's a measurement of economic output, there are other factors but if you have a very low GDP your ability to produce cutting edge technology is usually very low.

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u/TD_Lemon_1901 11h ago

The amount of nukes doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if you can blow the whole world only 1 time or 20.

Their conventional forces suck balls and they've lost 2/3 or their tanks and IFV they had beenn stockpiling for over 50 years.

Regardless of the outcome, they will never recover from this, they're done.

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u/Jacc3 5h ago

Regardless of the outcome, they will never recover from this, they're done.

Long term, sure. But short term Russia is still very scary. They may have used up most of their armour but their drones forces are arguably quite competent and have lots of real battle experience.

Sure, Russia wouldn't stand a chance against NATO, not even without the help of USA. But that is no guarantee that Russia wouldn't try attacking the Baltics for example. Putin may bet on the larger militaries of NATO either not wanting to risk a larger war, or being too slow to react.

Russia is a threat to be taken seriously, they shouldn't be underestimated

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u/BritishAnimator 11h ago

I disagree, unless every country stops buying oil, Russia will of course recover, nobody currently wants to invade their pre Crimea borders and claim new soil, so it's logical. Also, no point replacing outdated tanks, jets, AA launchers, and a navy when drone warfare has reshaped the entire battlefield. It's a lot cheaper, faster and safer to rebuild as a drone based millitary for both offence and defence. With Nuclear and ICBM's already part of their defence, they have time to rebuild and reshape, don't make the mistake thinking they are done when billions of dollars sits under their turf.

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u/mtutty 10h ago

Russia isn't capable of replacing the things you're talking about - from TU-95 bombers to oil refining equipment to BUK and S400 mobile defense systems to just troops and infantry equipment.

It's all either impossible to make at all, or it's 20 times more costly and time- consuming to produce than it is for Ukraine to destroy.

Europe isn't coming back for Russian oil/gas, ever. We (US) don't need it. That leaves India and China, with ever- decreasing Russian production capability. That's not a path to recovery.

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u/IZ3820 10h ago

What's the consumer population of India and China compared to Europe and North America? You're off your rocker if you think the math won't add up.

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u/BritishAnimator 10h ago

I said the exact opposite. They won't be rebuilding with that stuff. And you just dismissed China and India buying Russian Oil as not a path to recovery when it is exactly that.

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u/mtutty 5h ago

Russia is making drones, fair enough. But they are also the aggressor in this war, and drones cannot help Russia nearly as much as they're helping Ukraine.

China and India (and maybe Brazil) might continue to buy Russian oil, but it will always be at a steep discount from market, and they will stop as soon as the economic and geopolitical tides change. Like everything else Russia does, this is held together with string and duct tape.

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u/BritishAnimator 4h ago

I don't disagree with that. Putin keeps doubling down, taking no off ramps. But their drone's are equally as nasty as Ukraine's and if China supports Russian Drone manufacturing then things could shift dramatically. However, China supports China so they risk losing more EU\USA trade by supporting Russia. It's an interesting board, I just hope somebody forces Russia to back off. Then I also hope they can't recover enough to start again before Ukraine gets NATO membership of some sorts.

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u/mtutty 15m ago

What I'm trying to say is that drones can't hold territory. Russia can make as many drones as they want to, but they can't use them to actually conquer Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine can keep hitting oil, defense, and commercial targets 1500km away, with $2500 equipment.

It's not a symmetrical asset, not a symmetrical conflict. And Russia's problems go way deeper than taking territory or flying more drones - they've *lost* troop net strength for the last several months running, they're out of so many other irreplaceable or extremely expensive assets, and some huge portion of their e-commerce infrastructure has now also been destroyed. Ordinary Russians are openly turning against this guy.

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u/micropterus_dolomieu 11h ago

MAD obviates the ability of one state to blackmail other nuclear states though. Putin isn’t some Bond villain in a hidden underground lair. We know how to destroy Russia with conventional or nuclear weapons.

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u/Shamino79 11h ago

Oligarchs like staying alive. What fool is gonna start a nuclear war.

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

Don't worry about the Oligarchs, they will flee before shit hits the fan

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u/Cosack 6h ago

You can't really outrun it. No one wants to live out the rest of their days in a bunker, even a nice one.

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u/scienceguy54 10h ago

The fool that believes that a first strike will be successful. There are lots of those fools in Russia and the West right now.

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u/m0j0m0j 11h ago

The Soviet thing collapsed despite having even more nukes

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u/JakeTheAndroid 11h ago

Their manufacturing isn't as advanced nor as effective as China. Their wartime economy is still producing plenty of supply failures. And their actual equipment isn't that great. Outside of deciding to destroy the world with nukes, they're not nearly as scary as people assumed 10+ years ago.

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u/qwogadiletweeth 11h ago edited 11h ago

Nukes mean nothing. It’s potentially the end of the world if they use them. They have the choice of continuing to try to win the war, loose the war, or end the world at worst. If Putin wins then he is safe, if they lose then Putin will be toppled internally. China has warned them not to use Nukes. They need China on their side.

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u/RezzleG 11h ago edited 10h ago

That's just simply not true. If Russia decide to use a tactical nuke against Ukraine, who is going to respond in-kind? Sure, France or the UK could send over a wave of nuclear weapons, but in turn they will guarantee mutual destruction, so that's not going to happen, and it's the same in with the Americans. There is no way to guarantee that Russia cannot just activate the dead hand and take everyone down, so the risk of reactionary tactical strikes on Russia makes it not a feasible option.

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u/TTrampz 10h ago

But a single tactical nuke does nothing to help Russia, they may kill a few more civilians but that’s it. They ve been killing civilians since the start.

If anything it ll likely make all of Ukraine take up arms, not to mention the political fall out.

Mass nukes on Ukraine and everyone going to bundle in on Russia.

Nukes just aren’t the super weapon Russia think they are va Ukraine, what they do is stop others getting involved.

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u/RezzleG 10h ago

That's my point though. They could drop 1, or 2, or 3, or however many, it doesn't matter, because of their nuclear arsenal and means of striking, no other nuclear armed country is going to risk a retaliatory strike.

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u/Hail-Hydrate 10h ago

Use of nuclear arms, tactical or strategic, will trigger a response from NATO due to the risk of fallout affecting a NATO member state. The organisation has been very clear on this to the russian government since the outset of the war.

You're correct, russia using one or a handful of tactical nukes won't see another country nuke them in exchange, because that's a completely nonsensical response. If russia were to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine the entire remaining black sea fleet would be sunk conventionally by NATO forces and potential staging areas in occupied Ukraine would be bombed out of existence, followed by ceasefire negotiations between NATO and russia. There are plenty of ways you can conventionally respond to nuclear escalation, which is why russia hasn't tried playing that card yet.

That and nobody (sensible) wants to be the one to open the nuclear Pandora's box. Once use of nuclear weapons of any kind is "normalised", we will see proliferation on an absurd scale. It just makes it more and more likely their usage escalates until a full global nuclear exchange occurs.

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u/TTrampz 10h ago

The retaliatory strike doesn’t have to be nuclear or hot.

Pressure on China to prevent them supporting them at all?

How about nations giving Ukraine nukes?

There’s loads of things that could go wrong for Russia by doing that, not to mention it doesn’t achieve anything for them, instead just means they now have millions more people form Ukraine wanting to utterly destroy them

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u/RezzleG 10h ago

You are right, but that is a different discussion - my point was that Russia have pretty much free reign to deploy and use nuclear weapons without fear of tit-for-tat from other nuclear armed countries, hence you can never disregard them as a serious threat.

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u/CustomerBusiness3919 10h ago

Ukraine have the capability to dirty bomb Moskow and St Petersburg leaving them uninhabitable. Putin won't use nukes.

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u/CorrectOrder 11h ago

I doubt they have maintained the nuclear arsenal any better than the rest of the country. Even the dead hand is probably just chatter as a deterrent.

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

You can't assume that they aren't maintained though. Nobody knows for sure.

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u/jimmythegeek1 3h ago

It takes serious resources to maintain them. The US devotes more to nuke maintenance (with a smaller stockpile) than Russia does to its entire military while in the middle of the biggest conventional war since WWII.

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u/RezzleG 2h ago

That is pure speculation. No one other than the Kremlin knows exactly how many active nuclear weapons they have that are maintained and suitable for use.

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u/jimmythegeek1 2h ago

Is there something magical about Russian missiles and warheads that they don't require maintenance? Why does the West soend so much maintaining theirs? Are they stupid?

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u/RezzleG 1h ago

Of course. But nobody knows how much of their arsenal is maintained, unless you have some insider at the Kremlin who can confirm it (you don't) anything any media reports is just speculation. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.

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u/deja-roo 1h ago

Because westerners are paid way more than Russians are.

We have had bilateral unclear inspections for decades. The Russians have functional nukes. We know this.

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u/scienceguy54 10h ago

I would agree, but for different reasons. I think the older ICBM systems are gradually being replaced with much more modern and much more accurate ones. That relieves Russia of a lot of the maintenance issues. Their current build rate suggests they are potentially adding 30 Mirv system per month. That's even greater than China's buildup.

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u/orion-7 10h ago

That's a dangerous assumption. America's bridges are notoriously close to collapse through lack of maintenance, and yet it would be a terrible mistake to assume that they treat their nukes the same way they treat their infrastructure

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u/charpman 11h ago

Maybe. But consider, the generals were willing to siphon off billions into their own pockets rather than build out the modern military they were supposed to. This was for weapons it was entirely conceivable they would need to use at some point. You think they didn’t siphon off money earmarked for upkeep of nukes? Something nobody other than Trump wants to ever use?? Look into how much the US spends on nuke upkeep vs Russia and based on that alone, assuming all the money went where it was supposed to and tell me their arsenal is functional. I’d be surprised if they had any functional nukes anymore.

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u/obeytheturtles 10h ago

their production power is second only to China

This is nonsense - Russia's manufacturing base is roughly the size of Ohio's

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u/RezzleG 10h ago

The US' own media disagrees with you

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u/After_Network_6401 9h ago

That article simply states that Russia is manufacturing high levels of artillery shells, compared to what Western allies are manufacturing for Ukraine.

Nothing in that article suggests “their production power is second only to China”. The rapid depletion of Soviet era weapons stockpiles indicates that they can’t produce enough to cover their losses.

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u/RezzleG 9h ago

It's not just what they are providing to Ukraine, it is overall production of munitions, and other equipment

You can look for yourself where the US, EU and other countries fare against Russian production of munitions and other equipment. I'm not just making stuff up.

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u/Slow-Hawk4652 11h ago

i am smelling a fn commie here. ей блядь...

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u/toetenveger 9h ago

what in the absolute fuck is communist about Putin's Russia?

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

Not at all. I do not have any love for Russia, I am just not ignorant of the facts.

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u/Asleep_Context_399 11h ago

This is a dishonest take.

Ukraine had intelligence help from before invasion and mostly has full on help minus NATO troops on the ground.

Were it just Ukraine, it probably would have fallen already even with the botched Kyiv infiltration.

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u/jureeriggd 10h ago

If you believe Russia wasn't aware of the intelligence sharing before the second invasion, or that Russia wasn't aware of how likely it was for NATO to get involved, I've got a bridge to sell you in Crimea.

It's an honest take to say that Russia underestimated Ukraine's abilities, not because they were ignorant to them, but because they were arrogant.

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u/123_alex 10h ago

I've got a bridge to sell you in Crimea

I'm interested in that bridge. What's the state of it? How may years? Was it well maintained? Any rocket damage?

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u/Exact_Band_5259 9h ago

Russia gets help from China,  north Korea and iran

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u/CustomerBusiness3919 10h ago

Were it just Russia, without North Korea's help, Russia would have fallen.

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u/WeedstocksAlt 10h ago edited 10h ago

Full help? You obviously didn’t follow one bit of the war to say that lol.
If Ukraine had full help of NATO minus troops, this war would have been over years ago.

Ukraine has been fighting at best with the equivalent of NATO leftover closet.

NATO’s whole doctrine is based on complete air superiority and Ukraine was pretty much completely shot out from support on that. A couple of F16 isn’t "Full help"

NATO’s full help would have ment unrestricted strike in Russia, F35s over Ukraine, thousands of Abrams tanks, continuous production and supply of patriots interceptors.

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u/Androne 10h ago

In what reality does a nation at war not rely on allies for help? Having allies is part of the package. You don't get to demand a 1-on-1 in something like this. .

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u/slugmorgue 10h ago

yeh but how often are there any wars with no outside involvement, this is just to be expected. Every country has allies

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u/Melodic_monke 10h ago

Yes, now try the same against Europe except with even more support, lesser manpower advantage and longer front. Russia clearly has a very hard time currently.

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u/lexuspartsman 6h ago

Yeah right dude, they had their "highly trained" VDV paratroop into an airport and get mopped up. They got stuck in a traffic jam trying to brute force their way into Kyiv and those idiots even packed parade uniforms like they would be welcomed. They are morons, weak morons.

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u/rbobby 9h ago

they can’t even handle a non-nuclear much smaller neighbour literally next door

And America is also looking very weak. Lost to the Taliban. Losing to Iran.

And the US economy is headed to the dumpster. The national debt is through the roof for tax cuts and military spending. Congress even gave the DOD 40% MORE than they asked for in the budget request. Think on that... the military asked for a trillion dollars and congress said have $1.4t. Criminal.

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u/123_alex 10h ago

incapable of large scale warfare

Their hybrid warfare soldiers are on point. Messed up a lot of elections in a lot of countries. Still a very dangerous country.

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u/CheeseMongerMelvin 9h ago

I mean, I think it's wise to have at least some fear of a nuclear power. Who knows just how few people need to be in their right mind before nukes start flying.

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u/yanginatep 9h ago

Russia already had a huge demographic crisis with birth rates before the war.

Now, over 240 000 dead male Russians later, there's basically no way they can recover. But it'll take decades to play out.

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u/eyepoker4ever 9h ago

You can argue that they're incapable of handling "smaller neighbor", but they still have enormous ability to cause death and destruction.

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u/michary 8h ago

Russia can attack out of strength or weakness.

A wounded animal that has nothing left to loose is still dangerous.

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u/tankeras 8h ago

idk, can you argue the US military is not a threat, because of its failure in Iran?

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u/gentian_red 7h ago

we also found out their military is a paper tiger with all of its equipment rotted and sucked dry by greedy oligarchs

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u/Daniel_The_Thinker 7h ago

Russia is still scary.

They are obsolete, not irrelevant.

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u/User69ab 5h ago

The view on Russia has gone from second-strongest military in the world to “I don’t think about you at all” territory in 5 years. Not to sound nonchalant about the war crimes in Ukraine, but this is one of the biggest own goals in human history. 

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u/No-Newt-961 5h ago

Same could be said about the US rn. Look how they struggling against Iran. China is the smartest one. Hasn't attacked Taiwan (yet). Us china Russia biggest armies, can't take one country.

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u/soggit 5h ago

Now we know they can’t even handle a non-nuclear much smaller neighbour literally next door, regardless of if they win or not, they look like a paper tiger incapable of large scale warfare and their economy is on the brink of utter collapse to top it all off.

This doesnt seem like it only applies to Russia. The USA cannot bring Iran to heel and China is (rightfully) afraid to invade Taiwan even with the USA at its weakest in a half century.

Warfare has just become asymmetrical. Unless we're talking full population mobilization, all out world wars, the big countries and their big militaries are finding out they arent very useful in the 21st century. When the goals of conflict are more nuanced, the broadsword of a fully equipped military isnt appropriate. You need a scalpel. Or probably more effective - a pen. Ukraine, Iran, and Taiwan can all "win" an asymmetrical battle because all they need to do is make the juice not worth the squeeze and not lose. Drones have changed the game. It's a lot easier to waste your opponents money while holding them to a stalemate is a lot easier than steamrolling across europe and taking the reichstag. Even if you Russia/USA/China were to achieve total victory in one of these conflicts with boots on the ground and a regime change, now you just have to deal with an insurgency anyway because, again, we aren't dealing with a pre-internet world where everyone just lays down their arms. Who wants that? Nobody.

Perhaps we have evolved past war as being a useful tool as a species and just havent realized it yet.

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u/40mgmelatonindeep 4h ago

Sounds like another country I know of..

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u/DonEffe69 4h ago

They cant handle the second biggest and strongest conventional Military force on the european continent....

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u/America_Is_Fucked_ 11h ago

I agree. But swap Iran for Ukraine and the US for Russia and you have an equally truthful statement (other than the admittedly fairly important "next door" bit).

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u/kerkyjerky 11h ago

Eh, not really. The US hasn’t put any boots on the ground, and have committed only a fraction of the resources used in any US conflict in recent memory.

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u/Legitimate-Cress-575 10h ago

They used almost all of their ATACMS reserves stockpiled for like how many, 30 years, for a conflict with Iran that lasted for less than a year? And their production is still at an extremely low level, not enough to maintain the pressure. If Russia is considered a piper tiger, then so is US

The problem is that European countries don't even bother to strengthen their military to the point that 2% of their GDP being used for upgrading their military capabilities (which is arguably still much lower than a preffered level of military spending) in case of escalation with Russia (or at this point the US, considering that orange clown is out of control).

Also, somehow people don't consider the fact that Russia is succesfully uses meat waves tacticts even in the current drone combat landscape - they simply don't care, because they have the numbers. And the number of reserves that are not located in Ukraine is still more than 500,000 troops - whats the average number of soldiers available in countries like Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia? Please google the answer. Ukraine is big and have the numbers to oppose Russia (with NATO support of course), but Baltic countries just don't. Right now is the crucial moment, where we don't know whether Russia will escalate and invade Baltic countries or not. Right now they're testing the ground with their hybrid attacks on NATO members, and looking at the reaction, I would guess that they're feeling pretty emboldened

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u/obliviious 8h ago

The last time waves and waves of Russians were marched into another country on an endless meat grinder people got a tad upset with the Tsar.

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u/Juris_footslave 11h ago

Apples to oranges. Next door makes a massive difference, and the US is not trying to annex Iran.

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u/Icutthemetal 11h ago

Not even remotely the same thing.

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u/Far_Point3621 11h ago

I agree but if the US would be willing to sacrifice so many lives to defeat Iran I’m sure the situation would have turned out differently

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u/fromkatain 11h ago

Us would have karg island at least then

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u/QiTriX 11h ago

US can never hold karg island. Iran will just keep peppering their troops for decades.

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u/fromkatain 11h ago

True, it was iran's atollah/irgc's choice to extend war with iraq to let anyone rember starting against iran will have its enduring consequences.

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u/Syentist 11h ago

Lmao if the US sacrificed 200,000+ American lives on some fool's errand in the Middle East, there would am uprising that puts the Bolshevik revolution to shame.

The country might even fragment into two or 3 regional confederacies.

Russia is much more social cohesive than America, and so can push much further than america.

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u/like_a_brot 10h ago

America isn't weak. Yes the Iran bullshit is dumb and they shoot lots of their rockets reducing their arsenal but they still have lots of fighting power. If Trump were as ruthless as Putin they would have bombed Iran to shit and secured the strait of hormuz and maybe even get a ground invasion into Iran going. Just compare how many americans died since the start of the Iran war vs how many russians died since the invasion into Ukraine. Not to mention that Russia right now is economically fucked compared to the US.

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u/America_Is_Fucked_ 10h ago

America is economically fucked. It's only the dollar being the world's reserve currency preventing the Ponzi scheme of its colossal debt from destroying the economy. And Trump is massively eroding that reserve currency status with his belligerent trade idiocy. And massively increasing the debt. When the world stops lending and starts calling in the debt America is going to be utterly, utterly fucked.

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u/auto-spin-casino 9h ago

Both your takes are way off base.

​Old mate here treats a ground invasion of Iran like a video game. Iran is three times the size of Iraq with brutally mountainous terrain. Invading it would be an absolute multi-trillion-dollar quagmire, no matter how much firepower the US has. Hence why every administration before the circus moved in always left it at the discussion stage.

​Calling the economy a "Ponzi scheme" just tells us all that you don't understand sovereign debt. Foreign countries can't just "call in" US Treasuries like a loan shark, they hold bonds with fixed maturity dates. If they want out early, they have to sell them on the open market and despite trade stupidity, there’s still no actual alternative to the US dollar. The Euro has structural fragmentation issues and China strictly limits capital flow on the Yuan.

​The US isn't about to collapse, but burning through global goodwill while ballooning national debt obviously isn't a great long-term strategy either.

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u/Sure-Wish3240 11h ago

Iran is a regional Power, by Far the strongest islamic nation. In money, manpower and firepower is an order of magnitude stronger than ukraine.

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u/z3phs 11h ago

Problem is always one. Call them whatever you want. They have nukes… and that makes it a problem

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u/Experithought 10h ago

There is no way people are so ignorant and oppressed as to believe this bot. Besides earning 600 upvotes a day since the bot account was created a few months ago, the USA was toppled and pilfered by Russian bots and agents. Not figuratively. 40tn in debt. White Americans are gunned down by police on camera and the perpetrators are reassigned to different streets. Israeli pedophiles are caught red handed and returned to their native country while their coconspirators await trial. Right now.

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