So it’s been a calendar year since February 24 started along with year 1939 (the dates since February 2020 got really messed up). Let’s see how it went.
russia decided to mimic Nazi Germany and started the war “against NATO threat” by using its own Gleiwitz incident (which they first executed a couple days before the full-scale invasion and then back-pedalling—they can’t do anything right). They committed every possible war crime, if they have missed some that’s only because they either overlooked it or didn’t know how to do it. The occupied territories suffered from the genocide (direct and cultural), not occupied territories suffer from their terrorist strikes (mostly on civilian infrastructure). And all of this happens because of some deranged führer in the bunker with a resentment about russia losing the Cold War. And while many world leaders try their hardest to not see the parallels, Hungary was eager to become its ally (it’s the only Axis country country where a 1944 coup changed pro-Nazi government with even more pro-Nazi government after all).
In either case, in the first days of February many believed russian propaganda about its power yet it turned out to be not a colossus with feet of clay but rather a colossus made from shit and sticks on brick legs. Their plan was to bribe various officials, make some precise strikes and during the confusion seize the control of various crucial positions and use them for fast occupation of Ukraine. The first step had some limited success since while certain people are willing take bribes, not all of them are eager to work for it or use those received money for further bribes (it is said that medvedchuk received a billion dollars for that purpose and he used them for his own benefit). The second step also had issues since russian weaponry was not that precise as they hoped. The third step largely failed since Ukrainian authorities were prepared so people acted on their own even without the communications to the centre so e.g. in my home city the head of local state security division acted by russian orders and yet he failed to cause enough confusion and seize control, so the city did not fall to russia forces. Sadly there were enough traitors in Kherson and some parts of Kharkiv region to surrender local towns to russian forces.
Yet the main thing that allowed russians to occupy large portions of Ukraine were their reserves of Soviet weapons and munition plus modernisations of them. Neither of their newer wunderwaffen have proved to be any good (does anybody remember how their deployed some laser weapons for shooting down drones in May? has anybody seen seen their new Armata tanks in action? what about independently verified proofs of their Su-57 usage?). Initially they could use the usual World War II military tactics but then Ukrainian air defence (which they claimed to have fully obliterated in the first days) brought down enough of their planes and Ukrainian soldiers with Javelins and NLAWs destroyed enough of their tanks so they had to resort to the World War I tactics (shelling by artillery and then sending their hordes in) but nowadays with HIMARS “cottoning” their front line munition depots and the overall depleting of the reserves (they can’t produce enough and have to hope that DPRK and China will send more) nowadays it’s mostly sending their poorly-equipped hordes plus terrorist attacks on the civilian infrastructure by various missiles they have (who cares that a good deal of them malfunctions or explodes near the launch site?) and Iranian drones.
And there’s one thing they’ve threatened the world with—nuclear weapons. From what I heard, their de-escalation strategy includes escalation by exploding a small nuke somewhere to demonstrate that they have them and they won’t hesitate to use them. So far nothing like that has happened, I heard several reasons why: USA threatening to obliterate russian forces on Ukrainian territory by conventional means, russian allies (China and India) not willing to accept that either (because everybody will lose then), or even that they tried it but either it was sabotaged on some lower level or their devices simply failed to work. In either case, in the first days of the 24th of February it was easy to believe in their nuclear threats, nowadays nobody takes them seriously. And even them taking nuclear power plants as hostages is now seen mostly just as another war crime they’ll have to pay for later (and somewhat tricky place to liberate).
War is a very horrible thing but it also shows true colours of the people and tests your claims against reality. russia has boasted its army as the second most powerful in the world and its weapons as unparalleled. When they’ve finally decided to continue the 2014 war it turned out that their tanks lose to Ukrainian tractors, none of their advertised weapons are that good (and can’t work without Western chips) and “we’ll take Kyiv in three days and whole Ukraine in a week” turned into “we need to fight for preserving the integrity of russia”. It also turned out that making Hungary a member of anything was a big mistake and that the most of European politicians lack spine. Ukrainians turned out to be the nation that unites against the common threat and demonstrates unexpected strength while russians turned out to be non-thinking thieves and liars deeply infected by imperialistic chauvinism (it’s hard to hide behind the great artists of the past, most of whom are not of russian origin anyway, when all your soldiers do is loot, rape and shitting and their relatives are mostly fighting over compensations for their relatives killed in action).
Meanwhile though they’re seemingly trying to turn it into a religion like building communism before (and with the same rhetoric)—it will be all good sometime in the future when we achieve the goal (but we’re not going to disclose it), so you should stand up to the difficulties created by our self-imposed isolation (the country is doing great by the way and anybody claiming otherwise will be prosecuted as a heretic) and be ready to lay down your life for the country in Afghani… err Syr… err Ukraine.
I hope this day will end soon, and russia will follow the suit. Hopefully then the enslaved minor nations of russia will have a chance to build their own states (now they’re mostly sent to die in Ukraine which russians approve with the notion “why should we go to die when those exist”) and the carbuncle of this world won’t be able to threaten other countries ever again (also maybe China will get a lesson from this but I shan’t bet on it).