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Notes -
Never heard of that podcast either.
I try to make an effort to understand Russia's point of view enough to get an idea of why they think it's necessary to fight this war, and why they have shown such dogged persistence in it despite disappointing results of their opening moves and staggering casualty counts. I still can't see how they would think it's a good idea to start throwing nukes around now, especially at the other European powers. It seems to me like it would read to a lot of people as an admission that they are unable to achieve a result they consider favorable on the battlefield with conventional weapons, which isn't going to be much of a plus for their standing in the region. I also find it unlikely that there are any good targets in Europe for "tactical" nuclear weapons right now. It seems highly likely to me that any use of nuclear weapons against formally uninvolved NATO nations at this point would escalate to strategic use exactly as fast as pretty much everyone has always expected. I suppose there's no way to know what might change in the next year, but it's hard to imagine what could happen that would change that.
So yeah, I think it's just Russia supporters being all butthurt that they haven't been doing all that hot.
At this point I think it's probably closest to:
The only ones interested in nuclear escalation in this picture are the armchair warriors (mostly ignorant/uncaring about consequences and just wanting to feel good about the Russian bear going apeshit, not unlike some who think USA should just glass Middle East until goals are achieved) and the rank and file soldiers (who'd rather Ukraine get nuked than have to lay down their lives for it any further). Consequentially they are getting very angry at Putin who pursues the image of "denazificator" (as opposed to "stone them into the bomb age") and the other power centers who pursue money handouts for building nationalized social media apps and the like.
I agree about the armchair warriors bit. I do think their motivation for the war is much deeper and more fundamental and not really like Putin thought he could grab Ukraine all quick and easy and is now in over his head. Instead, I think the entire Russian power structure is existentially petrified of invasion from the West. It's all long memories about how horrifying Operation Barbarossa was to be on the receiving end of - this also fits in with how they talk about "denazifying" Ukraine. This is why they're willing to make incredible sacrifices to ensure that Ukraine remains in their sphere of influence. That also explains how there doesn't seem to be all that much discontent in Russia about how this war is going. I'm not super confident in my ability to determine exactly how much unrest there really is in Russia, but I would have expected to see more signs of it with how much of a grind this war seems to be for them.
On the IT side, I also discovered the Ukrainian scam call center thing - big article about it in Russian, Google Translate works pretty well. Apparently there's a ton of these call centers actively working to scam random Russians out of money and blackmail them into committing various petty, and maybe sometimes not so petty, crimes. Thinking from the Ukrainian side, it's understandable that they'd lean into that sort of thing and attempt to integrate it with their formal intelligence agencies to gain an asymmetric advantage when so many things are stacked against them. But then from the Russian side, that is a much more reasonable explanation for why they're cracking down so hard on the communication and messaging systems.
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