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Edited for correctness, clarity, and tone...
With apologies to the motte for the tardiness on this, I've been recovering from an injury.
A reply to https://www.themotte.org/post/3359/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/381026?context=8#context
Russia.
"We will eat grass rather than become a Russian colony again" — Polish FM Sikorski (and every other sane person in Eastern Europe)
Not to worry, the Russophiles may have a counterproposal, "Your country and women will be raped anyways, wouldn't you rather spend your few remaining years in a nice camp in Siberia rather than the frontlines?" — @No_one, probablyBy now, wise people, who read the newspapers (Russian newspapers generally never lie), have noticed that the news out of Russia is bad. After years of relentless and very stupid propaganda, even 'Izvestia' is running articles such as "Nearly 7000 transport companies in Russia on verge of bankruptcy" and "The share of companies with overdue loans reached a record one in four." A bit of lying around the end, "there is no recession, but of course there are negative trends." (https://youtube.com/watch?v=xbTDbAosRVM)
'Nezavisimaya Gazeta' ditto "the total volume of mutual trade [with China] continues to decline. […] imports of Russian oil decreased by 21%." (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2xNro016M)
That means something. Not at all clear what. Obsessive observers of the war believe Russia is likely to hold out until end of '26, early '27. However:
1- There's a financing issue.
Sure, the Chinese may be willing to keep buying Russian crude at obscene discounts of nearly $20 dollars per barrel (https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Sanctions-Widen-Russias-Crude-Discount-to-20-a-Barrel.html) but will that be enough to keep financing the war?
Russia, as everyone knows, is mostly broke, with the exception of oil and gas revenue, which is only because Europe propped them up. Paying through the nose for overpriced recruits like e.g. convicted criminals and 50 year old grandpas (2 million rubles sign-on bonus, 5 million first year salary) which are going to be used as meat assaults for a gain of 2 meters of frontline doesn't seem like a winning strategy, especially when $500 fpv drones being able to destroy them.
Unlike Ukraine, which will be getting direct Russian cash (which will be replaced by zero-coupon AAA bonds for Russia to pay reparations out of after the war lol) https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/eu-finance-ministers-agree-using-frozen-russian-assets-most-effective-way-to-fund-ukraine, Russia will be resorting to raising money from its Chinese handlers (except because of the sanctions, China can't participate) in Yuan-denominated domestic bonds. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/11/12/russia-to-issue-first-yuan-denominated-domestic-bonds-on-december-8/ Russia-Ukraine watchers will be paying close attention to the interest rates on these.
2- Materially, it's bad.
We know the gist of the situation, Russia has too few IFVs, AFVs, tanks. After losing upwards of 60% of their gigantic pre-war stockpile (the remaining ones being rusted out hulls with their insides scrapped or sold by corrupt base managers), Russian forces are resorting to using donkeys and camels to resupply their frontlines. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-depletes-tank-reserves-due-to-wear-and-tear-in-ukraine/ar-AA1JRlKJ https://www.newsweek.com/russia-deploys-donkeys-camels-ukraine-amid-resupply-struggles-2037097
There is a shortage of everything in Russia, petrol (https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSK7hPhwQl0), bread, potatoes, milk, even vodka (https://youtube.com/watch?v=HncXBqcedCg), but also cars too (https://youtube.com/watch?v=xt6_axtjJMs). Why there is a shortage of cars seems… mysterious. China surely should be able to keep Russians knee deep in cheap trucks. What gives?
There is even a shortage of artillery shells, Russia famously resorting to using North Korean bottom shelf products with 50% failure rates. Not to worry, I'm sure their drones will be way better. https://www.newsweek.com/half-russia-north-korea-made-artillery-shells-do-not-work-vadym-skibitsky-1873612 https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/north-korea-runs-out-of-shells-for-putin-1763159907.html
Russia drops bombs using their many planes daily, but Ukrainians sometimes deliver up to 300 drones and
ballisticcruise missile strikes a day. Any refinery, power plant, supply dump even far away from the front can be hit. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/14/ukraine-war-kyiv-hit-russian-attack/ https://i.redd.it/zxpc8b6p9b1g1.jpeg3- The front.
In 2025, Russian forces have made significant territorial gains in Ukraine, capturing approximately 165 square miles in the four weeks leading up to November 11, 2025. At these rates, Russia should be able to take all of Ukraine in a few decades. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-11-2025
Overall, as you probably know, the situation on the front is bad. Russia is trading immense amounts of blood and treasure for small territorial gains, and patting themselves on the back for it.
Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you,' it looks like the Russian press is preparing the public for 2-3 more years of depression (https://youtube.com/watch?v=z3BVZ66KcrE), a closing act of its imperial ambitions that started with the little green men invasion of the Donbas. Russians may or may not be eager for peace, "61%, up from 54% in 2024 believe it is time to start peace negotiations rather than continue military operations in Ukraine," (https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/three-four-russians-expect-military-victory-over-ukraine) but unfortunately they have chosen a strong man as a leader (https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXwuLlZeIN0) that has tied his political fortunes to the result of this war, claiming such things as "Russia's border doesn't end anywhere" (https://youtube.com/watch?v=fWaXH7N__LU).
I think the weakness with this analysis is that it focuses mainly on Russia for the first two points and misses the context for Ukraine. Point number two is even more dire for Ukraine than Russia, especially manpower-wise. There's really no solution for it other than getting Western countries to send troops, and I don't see that happening.
My read is that Ukraine in 2025 is similar to Germany in 1943 -- everyone who knows anything about the war knows that the loss inevitable given the strategic picture. But still, they have to play pretend to keep the public morale high and go through the motions just in case Ukraine rolls a series of nat-20s, or to maximize its negotiating position, or to squirrel away more personal wealth. But just because the war is inevitably lost doesn't mean Russian propagandists are right and Ukraine is just two weeks away from collapse. It can still drag the war out for two more years and inflict hundreds of thousands more Russian casualties.
If it worked like this WW1 would have ended in the 1960s or something. Just stop with this, it's stupid and makes me assume I'm reading assbrained worthless propaganda. The only worse thing you could do is start blurfing about the Budapest Memorandum.
Edit: Whoops I meant to reply to @theSinisterMushroom with this.
Can you give me a brief case against the Budapest Memorandum's relevance to this issue?
So the Budapest Memorandum said, in brief, that Ukraine would give up the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed within its borders, and in return the other signatories would agree not to attack them. Also, they would agree to go before the UN and raise a formal stink on Ukraine's behalf in the event that someone else attacked them. It wasn't an especially great deal, but Ukraine didn't have the ability to launch the weapons so their leverage was not that of a proper nuclear power.
However, Ukraine-aligned propagandists shitting up places like /r/worldnews love to refer to it as a "security guarantee" and behave as if it's outrageous that everyone hasn't declared war on Russia already. That and the aforementioned linear model of war where Ukraine loses its last mile of territory in 2060 are the two big tells that you're looking at pro-Ukraine, well, drivel.
Oh, come on. It was Ukrainians soldiers and scientists that maintained these weapons. Yeah, they didn't have the launch codes, but it would have taken them less than a
yearmonth to hack a solution to make them operational.Edit: just to reiterate, since I drastically adjusted my estimate, the Ukrainian nuclear forces had full physical control over the ICBMs, had detailed plans for these weapons, had been maintaining them for years. The only thing they did not have were the launch codes
Not launch codes; PAL codes.
Permissive Action Links (and their Russian equivalents) are designed for paranoia against literally this scenario - someone with physical control of the weapon activating it. The weapon is designed in such a way that it is impossible to remove or bypass the PAL without rendering the weapon useless (basically, other stuff breaks first).
To turn a PAL-protected nuke into a working nuke (without the code), you have to disassemble it and remanufacture the physics package. This is easier than somebody acquiring nukes ex nihilo, because you can at least recover the weapons-grade plutonium* and as such you can skip the actinide acquisition, nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant. But it's not trivial; you still need the actual bomb-manufacturing plant.
*This is somewhat more complicated if the PAL fired one of the lenses, because then the core will have been pulverised by the (conventional) explosion. My limited understanding, though, is that they aren't generally rigged to do that on tamper; it's more a deliberately-triggered self-destruct.
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