Україна Ukraine

Don't forget the brainwashing - all it takes is one fuckwit to give away the whole plan, so even if YOU are not, so long as THEY are you're screwed. And also the very real terror of what they will do to your family - even by dying you protect them, but by living via mutiny (probably followed by defection) it puts them at grave (if not certain?) risk.

Plus do not underestimate the power of going along with the crowd, even if you know it is wrong - that pressure to conform is HUGE. Studies do things like ask people what 4+3 is, with the answer delivered as a raising of hands and a whole classroom of plants (people being in on the study, knowing they are intentionally giving the wrong answer) and people will give an answer like "6" (rather than the true of one 7), presuming that they somehow missed something somewhere (rather than assume that EVERYONE who gave the incorrect answer is an absolute idiot), and just not wanting to stand out. In fact, this effect is apparently so powerful that I cannot be certain that even you or I, having been forewarned by knowing about these studies, still would not fall prey to it in some form or another where we may not as immediately recognize it in some new context.

Russia has ~~centuries~~ millennia of practice at what it is doing now.

Yeah I'm constantly confused by the idea that they could conscript 500k people who don't wanna be there, give them training and weapons, and they DON'T just take their officers out on day 1.

But I don't pretend to know any of the gritty facts of the situation either.