Sorry, I’ve lost my capacity to discuss this further, for today. I’d try, but that’s the best I can do.

I gave your point a better thought, and I mostly agree. I should have formulated my reply better, perhaps, but I didn’t have much capacity for that either. I live in Ukraine, and I’ve spend the childhood mostly in Russia with relatives, so I know it first hand. You won’t persuade me they are strong. They are not. They are a paper tiger. I don’t believe they even have nukes (that work reliably).

The problem is, they are stronger than Ukraine. That’s why we need help with them, we won’t win alone. Russia’s allies aren’t pussies, while we have no allies, only partners. US switched from being a ‘won’t give more than the minimum’ partner to ‘capitulate, lol’ unreliable partner. They are closer to enemy now, and they’re owned by fucking russia. Russia is good at generating fiction, and I afraid people believe that fiction.

Have you even been to Russia? I didn’t understand, honestly, as I have an impression you say that Russia is strong and powerful. I don’t believe so. But that does not mean they are nothing to worry about.

Look, they send some soldiers to attack some positions on the front, they would more likely die, these poor souls. Yet, they can bring harm. They can kill someone’s on our side. They can ruin something. En masse, they achieve something, with a great price of about 1,000 personnel a day. They send missiles and drones, which are intercepted en masse. You cannot imagine how much better the air defence became over these years. I bet that’s one of the best air defences in the world right now. Yet, it’s impossible (or super difficult, at least) to intercept all the missiles. They still do harm. And what? Would you say something like ‘they target civilians with deadly drones daily, but hey! Ukraine is good at shooting them down, so I’m okay with Russia doing that!’ Those are two separate issues. We’re being good at protecting ourselves does not mean it’s okay to casually target civilians daily.

Right now, we have no electricity, heat, and some cities like Kyiv, there’s a catastrophe. That’s a combination of factors, including political, corruption, and of course Russians. They terrorise civilians all the fucking time, all the time, starting in 2014, not even 2022. Nobody gives a flying fuck about that. Imagine Ukraine targets Moscow and casually murdered some tens of people in some high storey building. The world would yell ‘how dare you’s. All that, it’s allowed for Russia, but others, they must play by the rules. It’s not even expected of Russia. The number of war crimes they commit daily is unimaginable. Nobody gives a fuck. It’s some kind of a show for an average westerner. I’m sure there are huge masses of people who’d sincerely ask whether we still have that war. Yeah, we do. Because they don’t help us as much as they could. The EU gives Russia more money than they give Ukraine.

We fight alone. Remember, a couple of years back, they were threatening everyone with everything, including nukes, if the EU or the US would dare to give us this, give us that. These partners of ours, they gave us some technologies, they gave us F16s, patriots. The Russians? Did nothing.

They are very good at lying, they create fiction and many buy that fiction. They are weak. They’d collapse within a year or two, if that’s not for China. They are anything, but strong. They are not even winning this war. The issue is, we fight alone, and we fight what others believed in being the second military in the world. Turned out, they are second army in not only Ukraine, but in Russia too. (Kursk offensive.)

They are weak, but it doesn’t mean we would automatically win without help and doing anything. We would not. But we fight alone. Nobody sent their troops to fight for Ukraine. China, North Korea, they did. The world? Does nothing. Business as usual, isn’t it?

Russia is showing the NATO is a hoax, and the EU and the US are not different to Russia, they are paper tigers too. And unfortunately they are successful at it, because the USians are dumb enough to elect someone who’s an enemy’s agent. The EU, I don’t know, it looks like they don’t quite understand they are next if were to lose. And the worst thing is, if Ukraine would lose, they’d fight for Russia against Europe, or just die, so … I don’t know what the EU thinks, they appear to not understand the situation, and are too afraid to actually act.

So my point is, fuck the US, I don’t believe they’d return to normality any time soon. Even if they would, they’re unreliable partner and you cannot trust them. They are falling into irrelevance, by their own stupidity. The EU though, they should find some nerve to actually do something and stop being terrified.

It’s not as simple as ‘Russia is strong, so let’s not provoke them’ or ‘Russia is weak, so let’s do nothing, Ukraine would deal with them without any help at all.’

Their might is rather irrelevant, I’d dare to say. It does not matter. You must answer yourself whether you’re okay to live in the world where Russia is a winner and is given everything they want. Or you want to live in the world where the aggression is persecuted and there’s rule of law.

If there’s rule of force, and you can do everything you want if you’re strong … well, I might die by that point, but it still be quite funny to see the US thinking they’re the strong ones, too big to fail and all that … it would be quite entertaining to observe their fall off their illusionary pedestal and thrown into irrelevance by some brute force autocracies that are actually stick to each other. Unfortunately, that’s a very depressing scenario for many of us who’d been relying on that unreliable partner.