Rolf Gjerdsjø

DUMB THINGS RUSSIA DID IN THE UKRAINE WAR Sometimes we do not fully realize how stupid, absurd, delusional, and surreal the Russian war in Ukraine is. We got so used to all those idiotic Kremlin statements, to Putin regressing into childhood and being not even able to explain what this war is even about (at a current moment), to mercenary armies of suicidal convicts and Russian neo-Nazis claiming to be "liberating" Ukraine from "Nazim" and at the same time denying Ukraine's very right to exist, that we often miss it out how many insanely mind-blowing things that history textbooks will be telling about this war in the future. Here's my impromptu list of stupid things that happened to Russia or that have been done by Russia in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022. It's far from complete, of course, given the fact that the Kremlin never ceases to amaze at hitting rock bottom. So, over the last 19 months of this war, Russia: - Managed to lose a submarine to a cruise missile, for the first time in human history. - Lost its fleet flagship (for the first time since 1905), the biggest warship sunk since 1945, to a nation that has no navy. - Lost at least 2,300 tanks by now (including some 1,000 during the February-March 2022 blitzkrieg), which is more than all tank forces of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy combined, and is comparable to the entire U.S. Army operational tank fleet. - Exhausted its capabilities to the point of having to de-mothball T-62 and T-54/55 tanks that were of relevance around the Cuban Missile Crisis era. - Managed to basically exhaust the gargantuan Soviet stockpile of artillery munitions (which was considered endless) due to insane over-expenditure that reached 60,000 rounds a day in Donbas in mid-2022. - Was seriously expecting to conquer and occupy an unfriendly 40-million nation with a 150,000-strong invasion force. - Plunged into full-swing fascism, a mass cult of territorial grabs, and militaristic hysteria under the Z-swastika while claiming to be ancestors of WWII victors. - Had its troops digging dugouts in the highly contaminated soil of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. - Was so successful that, 6 months after the invasion day, it had to declare mobilization for the first time since 1941 and 1914. - Failed to score air supremacy despite obvious advantage over Ukraine's air force in quality and numbers - Simply declared a 40-million European nation "Nazi" and thus entitled itself to eradicate and occupy it in a war of aggression. - Had a daring landing operation at a strategic airfield that was supposed to be a crushing blow upon the Ukrainian capital but nonetheless failed on day 1. - Lost up to two battalion tactical groups (!) to Ukrainian artillery while trying to cross a river in Donbas in May 2022 - Spent a month trying to break into Kyiv and then simply left, having failed the entire war's key axis, with its most elite forces severely degraded. - As the world's second strongest military, it became dependent on Iranian supplies of kamikaze drones (and likely ballistic missiles) and begged North Korea to provide it with artillery munitions. - Seriously believed Putin's kin Viktor Medvedchuk, who had spent years plundering the Kremlin money and telling cool stories on how Ukrainians were just dreaming of being part of Russia again. - Had its regular military so insanely successful that it had to hastily pump up a "private military company" led by a catering tycoon (a former street criminal) and a neo-Nazi, which recruited masses of suicidal convicts and practiced ISIS-style executions on camera. - As the world's second strongest military power, it re-introduced the phenomenon of "meat grinder assaults" in Europe in the year 2022. - Spent hundreds of missiles to strip a 40-million European nation of electricity and heating in the dead of winter -- and failed. - Occupied nuclear power plants and deployed military forces at their facilities -- for the first time in human history. - Spent a year and lost tens of thousands of men fighting for the ruins of a mid-sized provincial town of Bakhmut (which it declared the new Stalingrad), the eventual capture of which resulted in no further progress at all and was quickly forgotten. - Had its daily acts of nuclear blackmailing so overused that everyone eventually stopped paying attention. - Had Putin ribbon-cutting a wonder wheel in Moscow during the disastrous defeat in Kharkiv Oblast and visiting a turkey farm in Tiumen following the withdrawal from Kherson. - Unleashed the biggest European war since WWII and, after things went south, began whining about Ukraine not willing to have a "ceasefire" and a "deal in negotiations." - Made the West wake up and provide Ukraine with weapons ranging from artillery to tanks, air defense, missiles, and now also jet fighters. - Faced an armed rebellion by the "private military company" which easily captured a key Russian city, a key military HQ, and then moved towards Moscow, making Putin flee and ask for a deal. - Despite all the bravado and megalomanic plans, after 19 months of a full-scale war, Russia occupies 18% of Ukraine's territory (including Donbas and Crimea seized in 2014), and it has lost some 50% of the Ukrainian territory seized after February 24, 2022. - Unleashed the biggest European war since WWII due to "the NATO threat" in Ukraine but couldn't care less about Finland and Sweden joining the alliance - it's all just fine. - Saw Ukrainian drone strikes on the Kremlin and Moscow becoming a new normal. - Had Ukrainian-backed Russian armed nationalist groups crossing the border, capturing Russian towns, killing Russian troops, and leaving unpunished. - Annexed entire Ukrainian regions it did not even fully control by simply formally declaring them Russian regions and having a gala concert at the Red Square. And left Kherson a month later. - After a year of the war, lost at least as many troops as the U.S. had lost within a decade in Vietnam, making this the deadliest Russian war since WWII. - Saw Putin break his word and assassinate the "private military company's" chiefs after they had stupidly believed they could have a deal with Putin. - Committed atrocities in Bucha, Izium, and Mariupol, with mass graves, acts of torture, and executions seen in those lands for the first time since the Nazi occupation and called this "liberation". - Saw The Hague court issue an arrest warrant for Putin on charges of war crimes. - Had to leave Snake Island and then relocate its Black Sea fleet from Crimea to mainland Russia due to devastating Ukrainian attacks, effectively giving up on its control over the northwest Black Sea -- to a nation that has no navy. - Easily exchanged the Mariupol garrison leaders, including insanely demonized Azov Regiment commanders, for no one but Viktor Medvedchuk -- and continued listening to his cool stories about Ukraine. - Triggered the worst man-made disaster since the Chornobyl blast, the Kakhovka dam destruction, leaving swathes of Ukrainian land flooded, including Russia's own military facilities on the Dnipro River banks. - Had its strategic bombers and transport aircraft destroyed on the ground by Ukraine at airfields hundreds of kilometers deep inside Russian territory. - Prior to the 2022 invasion, Russia got Ukraine semi-surrounded with the largest military force seen in the region since the peak of the Cold War -- and then declared that Ukraine SUDDENLY decided to attack Russia and "the Russian people in Donbas." What a coincidence! - Saw its much-advertised winter 2023 offensive (for the sake of which it had launched a large-scale mobilization) fail without any substantial progress. - Made its online bootlickers act as if it's actually Ukraine that has failed with its 20-month blitzkrieg into Russia -- not kinda the other way around. - Had this insanely hyped-up General Armageddon, the hammer of the Ukrainian doomsday who ended up only ceding Kherson, being discharged two months after and exiled following the Wagner coup. - Still struggles to choose a certain end goal for its "special military operation" -- be it "de-militarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine," or "the fight against Satanism and the collective West," or "the protection of the people of Donbas," or "saving Russia and its civilization from losing its sovereignty and collapsing." - During the disastrous withdrawal from Kharkiv, abandoned for Ukraine an amount of munitions and military hardware comparable to the entire Western supply by that moment. - Rendered Donbas largely uninhabitable. - Ruined the region's once-gigantic industrial base. - Made millions flee in terror. - Slaughtered tens of thousands of able-bodied Donbas males forcibly mobilized and then used as cannon fodder in meat grinder assaults. - Leveled entire cities to ashes, with those cities very unlikely to be ever revived due to astronomical amounts of resources required and due to almost complete depopulation. - And then proudly installed its flag over the lifeless ruins and called this "de-Nazification." P.S. Those who knowingly endorse all those things that Russia did to Ukraine should quit calling themselves sane human beings. Support my work here: buymeacoffee.com/saintanger