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You can always use further motivation to continue the war. They're relying on volunteers, not conscripts, and this will surely spark a wave of new volunteers. They'll probably play up the "IRL action movie hero" part even more in Russian media, too.
Oh, and this general was apparently from Western Ukraine, so he's practically the perfect model for their "Ukraine is Little Rus" propaganda. He can be a useful spokesman after the fighting ends.
At this point, what I expect to spark new waves of volunteers more than anything is rising compensation along with rising big expenses such as mortgages and cars, not some stale propaganda. It's been five years, infamously longer than The Most Holiest of Patriotic Wars 1941-1945.
At the very least, who's gonna be fool enough to volunteer during winter? If you're going to go to war and can pick when you go, you wait until the season of snow and mud is over.
The best time to join the war is on the end. If one was to join WWII as a Russian the best time would have been to arrive at the front when it was in Berlin and after a tiny bit of action take a selfie at the reichstag.
Russia clearly has the momentum in this war. Ukraine is losing ground faster and faster, Ukraine has rising desertion rates and the highly motivated fanatical elements of the Ukrainian military are largely spent. People want to join the winning team and Russia is clearly the team to bet on at this point.
The front line has hardly shifted for years. If a literal snail had started where the Russians did it would be halfway across Ukraine by now, and the Russians are nowhere near that. Lately the Russians have started lying about taking objectives at a greater rate because no man’s land is getting wider and wider so they can kinda get away with it. The fact that they are not attacking for the most part does not mean that Ukraine is spent. It’s a deliberate choice to remain on the defensive and win the attritional exchange. If the Russians want to send guys to die on assault, Ukraine is smart to sit in dugouts and pick them off with drones. The win condition for Ukraine is not that they reconquer their territory, it is that Russia gives up. One way to accomplish that is retaking territory to weaken Russian morale, but it probably isn’t the best one. It’s going to take time for the Russian people to sour on the war.
If you were actually paying attention, or reading sources that cover the conflict in any amount of detail, you would be concerned.
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Ukraine has been losing ground faster and faster for 5 years now, at the risk of repeating myself. I do not recall hearing about the front being in Kiev yet.
What is different about the "momentum" today that wasn't true a year ago, or two years ago, or at any other point where Ukraine was about to collapse any day now?
Ukraine essentially has no real initiative or ability to do anything larger scale. In 2022 they had two big and succesfull counter offensives. In 2023 they had a large summer counter offensive. In 2024 they did Kursk. In 2025 and into 2026 they have been losing ground at a noticeably higher rate while not being able to launch any real counter offensives.
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Aren't you engaging in Atlanticist retconning here?
I'm engaging in describing my experience with reports on Ukraine as I remember it.
Another point: the recruiters ought to have more information on how the war's going than the average potential volunteer does. If they're still offering wads of cash, then it's probably not going to be a 2 weeks walk in the park.
I reckon the last time multiple talking heads were making predictions of a swift and imminent Ukrainian collapse was in the first few days of the war. To the extent that such were still being made, they were marginal and incidental until nowadays. It also wasn't until recently that the Russians were able to capture towns and not just on a one-off basis but in a sequential manner.
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At least as of right now, the official-line-adjacent Telegram channels I know about (anna_news, sashakots, rybar) are not really giving this any priority over their daily war reporting noise, and I'm not seeing any traces of an "IRL action movie hero" framing. They are just talking about how those perpetrators that were caught admitted to being paid money by the Ukrainian secret services and the like.
Even if you think a false flag is conceivable, why would it be more likely than that the Ukrainians indeed did it? This wouldn't be the first time, unless you claim that all the assassinations of prominent Russian figures until now, including the ones that they openly took credit for, were actually false flags, and the benefits for their side are obvious without mental gymnastics (eliminating useful individuals, encumbering Russian processes with friction and fear, signalling Russian weakness to internal doubters and external supporters). It seems like you want this to be a false flag, contra LW principles.
I just thought it's odd that the man was shot 3 times at point blank range at survived, and i'm trying to think of an explanation. But I admitted that I'm biased because I've been reading spy thrillers recently. I'm really not making a strong claim here about anything, I just thought it was an odd story. Whats the point of Ukrainian secret services shooting some random general in Moscow?
If the person who shot him had no experience with firearms, it's entirely plausible. Hit a non-lethal spot the first time because you are nervous, and two more times because you underestimated recoil and now your hands are hurt and shaking.
What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.
But maybe it was actually done by a Japanese high schooler with a magic notebook - I've been reading a lot of manga lately...
Well, the true answer is I don't know. I don't speak Russian, and I'm not very well-informed about that case or the results of it.
But it seems to me that the reporting focuses on that general's role in charge of chemical weapons. Those are a huge trigger-word for western civilians. By killing him, the Ukrainians are making a big public statement that "the Russians are using chemical weapons on us." If that's true, it would significantly increase Western public support for Ukraine. Of course, I have no idea if that's true or not (I hadn't heard of chemical weapons being used anywhere else), and frankly I don't care, I think a few thousand dead from chemical weapons is much less important than hundreds of thousands of dead from artillery. But politically, they are a big deal.
Also, you know, they killed the guy. They didn't just lightly injure him by sending an assassin who had no prior experience with firearms. That seems like an important step in carrying out an assassination.
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