"We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine. And with it, they've destroyed 50% of Putin's army." - Ad targeted to Republicans to support Ukraine
When it comes down to it, this is a hell of a deal for the US. We spend a tiny fraction of our military budget to de-fang Putin and don't have to fire a single shot ourselves.
I'm not sure just how much the US spends on weapon testing, but I imagine it's a bonkers number. And now they get an opportunity to test in a real environment, with some other country's army to do much of the heavy lifting?
I do software dev and testing stuff is expensive. Real world testing is a particularly difficult and pricey thing to do. It's not easy to simulate realistic usage and it's super common to discover all sorts of issues only when something is used outside of controlled conditions. That's why so many web products get the hug of death. It's why Lemmy has had so many problems not just with scaling, but things like UX. It's so easy to not realize even "obvious" problems when you don't have a large number of real users.
Maybe you are being genuine so I'll try to be too, you're wrong to fear what comes next. Historically new leaders don't in totalitarian states don't want an external war, they want to secure their lot, make sure they are protected, shore up support.
Children are being kidnapped, prisoners of war ar being tortured, civilians raped, towns and cities cut off from water or flooded, left to freeze over winter. What exactly do you think is coming next? Someone with more efficiency? Less morals? Thanos?
Let's see... From top of my head: Boris Nemtsov, Alexey Navalny, Ekaterina Shulman, entire Anti-Corruption Foundation and more than half of alive Russian soldiers(counting dead soldiers more than 2/3).
"This is not war of Russia and Ukraine. I an against such definition. This is Putin's war."
- Boris Nemtsov, before he was shot on bridge near Kremlin wall
P.s. funny story about soldiers. Some idiots(thank you, idiots!) from Omsk decided to open voting station near front line for governor and regional parlament. Since soldiers officially don't have internet, there was no Remote Electronic Voting(ДЭГ) and 100% voted with paper. And since paint protocols and stuff boxes is scary in front of armed men, it wasn't done at usual scale. In result hard-core pro-war United Russia governor candidate got less than 50% and I think even lost on those stations.
Nah, it's easier for them to sit on their fatasses and do the bare minimum of movement while they tout their shitty flags and shirts about in their traitorous stances. They're the same people that wouldn't even sign up to be in the US Army, but will swear up and down about "IF I WAS THERE..." stories of power fantasies.
The target audience are independents and the few sane (but denialist) Republicans left. I think the ad's goal is to drive them away from the republican party.
The current leader of the Republican party called the invasion "genius" and "savvy". But there's always such a divide between a party and its constituents, don't you find?
@Wilshire I cannot think of a time in recent history when we have gotten more bang for our military buck than supporting #Ukraine against #Russia .
Not only are we doing the right thing by helping a democratic nation fight an invasion by an expansionist regime, but this aid has helped weaken one of our two main adversaries, and serves as a warning to China.
This is truly one of those win/win situations where the only debate should be the degree of military aid, not whether we support Ukraine.
We didn't promise to protect them. But Russia and the US both promised not to invade.
Of course, we should still help them because it's the right thing to do AND is harmful to our average.
But I do think the worst thing about this war from a geopolitics standpoint is Russia going back on its word. They've essentially proven that no nation should ever give up their nukes.
I am emphatically in favor of supporting Ukraine but you should be aware that Zelensky has suspended elections. I wouldn't call Ukraine totalitarian but a true democracy never suspends elections, even when they're inconvenient. The United States has never done it despite always being at war and I don't think we should give a pass to other nations just because they're at war.
Zelensky didn't suspend elections. The Ukrainian constitution suspended elections--the country is under martial law due to invasion, and their constitution disallows elections under martial law. In order to hold elections, Zelensky would have to disregard the constitution.
Assuming every nation's constitution is the same as the United States and then judging actions based on that error is some high-level cultural arrogance.
'At war' is not the same as defending yourself from an invasion, which the US has not had to do since it has existed in it's current form. Also, governments have suspended elections in the past when necessary. For instance, the UK suspended elections during WW2 via the 'Prolongation of parliament' bill, while they were defending themselves from a German invasion.
America has never been invaded to the level that its existence as an independent country has been threatened, at least not since the war of independence.
During WWII the UK postponed elections. We even have explicit rules for how this can be done, when required. Wartime is one of the situations where it can be required. The complexity of holding an election under wartime conditions is huge. It is also a serious distraction from actually winning the war, and so costs lives. Finally, changing leadership, mid war is risky at best. The time for a new leader to settle in is paid for in lives lost.
US has never been at war in the homeland. That would make a huge difference. Plus it would probably be much easier during the chaos for Russia to subvert the Ukrainian elections. But that's just me talking out my ass. Definitely good to be aware though. If the US did it, it would at least be through congressional action.
Yeah fuck off with that. We'll supply with Ukraine with so many weapons it'll destroy putlers hateful regime. The idiot fascist only understands violence. So violence is what he will get.
Actually I think this is one of the keys to freeing the minority of the country that insists on being stupid as shit. They love trump but loyalty to the military runs far deeper. Find me a right leaning fuck who doesn't at least pay lip service to the military. Of course they don't actually support them, but it's a potent motivator that they at least feel like they're doing so.
So not unlike when you have to work certain angles to get a toddler to take a bath or go to bed, so must steps be taken to try and pry these people out of their death cult spiral. The alternative is to likely be dragged down with them.
Does this include giving them old equipment which they'd have to dispose of anyway? Because that's not exactly "spending". Some even say that it saves money because they have no disposal cost.
Thats assuming the republicans and tankies WANT Putin's army destroyed. To them, this sounds like what a normal person would hear if we said: "We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm the IRA and 50% of Britain's army has been destroyed."
Plenty of leftist-Tankies here on Lemmy's federation where I've had to explain that yes, Russia is a problem and what they're doing to Ukraine should be stopped.
The left is doing a good job preventing the Tankies from taking over their party however. Republicans are letting the far-right dictate politics and are likely going to (try to) cut Ukraine out of the budget this week. So the far-right is a bigger problem, if only because Republicans are failing to rise up and counter the threat from their own party.
Thinking out loud, I wonder if it's better to aim computer generated voices to be understandable and pronounce words correctly, but place them firmly on the lower side of the Uncanny Valley. In other words, let them be noticeably different, but otherwise comprehensible.
For ads and movies and such, obviously those companies want the most realistic voices they can. But for voice assistants, maybe it's better if we don't.
Since i work in media i can tell you with 99.9% certainty that's not an AI-generated voice. It's just cut a bit too tightly and the super low quality of the audio track doesn't help either.
If you could reason with them they wouldn’t be republicans.
We should stop trying to convince them with logic, and start paying off the far right talking heads to change their talking points. If fox and newsmax pundits, and the shitty far right members of congress (like bimbobert and MTG and minor-lover matt gaetz) did an about face overnight, so would the entire republican base.
This is mostly true but in politics you constantly deal in partial success . If 5 percent of the audience are swayed to not vote over voting GOP even that is worth it.
They’re conservative about planes and attack helis but have enough.
Money is good,
oil good,
cash reserves ok
debt to GDP more than good.
Workforce very big but affected
But still...
They’re low on tanks,
artillery shells,
Combat experience,
Air defence systems,
Russia as a whole is doing fine attrition wise but they’re equipment is being blown back 40 years. On top of that Ukrainians are doing very well and are cost effective. Russia spends multiple $ for every $ sent to Ukraine.
The Russians are liquidating the Soviet stockpile that was built while they were a global military superpower. They don't have the capacity to rebuild that arsenal. Russia is being taken off the world stage as a military power for at least three decades.
It's worded in such a way as to be meaningless - half of what? The original number of Russian soldiers, the original number plus Wagner and other extra troops, the current number deployed with/without mercenaries? Plus Russia's numbers don't look like US numbers, don't quite look like Ukraines numbers.
That said heres the first source I found:
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
...
Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.
Those numbers refer to the current number of deployed and undeployed Russian soldiers plus mercenaries, which is clearly not the numbers the ad is using.
To be clear, I fully support Ukraine and fully support the US guaranteeing missile manufacturers that we will buy new missiles even if the war ends tomorrow to incentivise greater production. I just think the ad played with the numbers until they said what we want them to say.
Perun did an analysis a couple of weeks ago. In short, Russia is building new stuff, but the mix of losses show a fair bit of stockpile has been used. https://youtu.be/ctrtAwT2sgs
They also edited out any breath pauses from the narrator. I've heard that voice over many years of political ads. They may have modled a cg voice from a real person, or they edited the hell out of a genuine voice over.