With top notch analysis like this, you should consider claiming a salary from the fifth directorate of the Federal Security Service. This is just the kind of stuff that'll allow them to continue building on their stellar track record of 2022!
I am sure they are also willing to pay big rubles for people sabotaging the ability of western countries to have meaningful debates and discussions. Messing with the reality finding mechanism of your opponent is as good as it gets during wartime. And that is most effective if you overdrive the narratives people already believe.
edit: Case and point, OP is flagged and no longer visible. This is how successful Russian information operations look like. There is nothing the Kremlin can publish that is going to convince any meaningful section of western society, but getting them to put on blinders is incredibly easy. And once they are on, we are screwed. When stuff becomes unthinkable it becomes incredibly easy to exploit. Not to mention that believing your own propaganda targeted at the morale of English speaking Russian soldiers is already really dangerous.
I'm not sure of your motivation either, but we all have our biases; those are powerful predictions, and it's a shame you've been hit with such a downvote attack.
I would not be surprised if people downvote this sort of comment since—no matter the predictions—it seems like an attempt to piggyback off the parent post to make more people see your own post when just posting a top-level comment would have been more appropriate. Not trying to imply intent, though.
I intentionally made predictions that could be verified after a year but would also be minority views on this site, since repeating where I agree with the majority does not add to the debate. Sure, they won't all happen, but say, a 50% chance of happening or better, and made a sufficient number of them that I expect a lot of interesting predictions will take place. With the Turkey/Syria meeting, Erdogan has already been asking for it, and at some point Assad will give in. US troops there are surrounded and having trouble resupplying. For the mutual aid treaty, this is based on some under the radar meetings already taking place. That Ukraine lost 100K was inadvertently leaked by Ursula but really everyone paying attention knew -- for example they announced they needed to do a new mobilization of 100K to replace lost men. 100K is most likely a sever under-estimate. Presence of Polish, Georgian, and other troops in Ukraine is already well known, but they haven't been focused on in the West yet. The arrivals of 1000 dead bodies to Poland is forcing the issue into public debate. Other documents have also been leaked.
But this just goes to show how strong Narrative enforcement is in the west. Downvoting is nothing, you have people denied banking services, getting fired, put on no-fly lists, fined, and in Europe even imprisoned for speech -- for questioning NATO narratives. So HN downvotes is not important, it just reveals the various narrative enforcement mechanisms at work even here, but with a lot less at stake.
If this was a Chinese message board or Russian message board, I could make opposite predictions and be met with much more interesting debate and intellectual curiosity, as their information control mechanisms aren't nearly as sophisticated, and as a society they tend to be much more pragmatic and intellectually curious. The West is unique in being so ideological in the present moment - basically it is going through something similar to the cultural revolution period in China, and of course that was not a time to go against official narratives.
But in any case -- just wait a year. I'll be happy to compare my predictions in Dec 2023 against others'. It would be funny -- and quite appropriate -- if the some of the most interesting and accurate predictions of the last year were flagged on this site. But that's up to HN management, and they most likely have limited capacity to stand up to information warfare policies in the west and the hordes of professionals with hurt feelings flagging everything they disagree with. I don't take it personally at all, it's just a sign of the times.
> If this was a Chinese message board or Russian message board, I could make opposite predictions and be met with much more interesting debate and intellectual curiosity, as their information control mechanisms aren't nearly as sophisticated, and as a society they tend to be much more pragmatic and intellectually curious.
How do you mesh this with the fact that you can and will be arrested in Russia for calling the war in Ukraine a war, or for even protesting with a blank sign?.
As a simple example, there was an employee of a TV news station in Moscow that started screaming pro-Ukraine things on the air, on live TV. She was given a 100 ruble fine (for causing a disturbance) and released.
Meanwhile, people in the EU are actually imprisoned for supporting Russia. And of course Ukraine has death squads, and merely being accused of supporting Russia or being accused of speaking Russian is enough to end up in one of the filtration camps.
I’d suggest you find better new sources because I have seen the videos of the people being hauled off by the Russian police for holding a blank sign where as your example does not even exist.
> Around the same time, it's clear that there are more than 200K Ukrainian dead and all Narratives of them winning the war or even maintaining a stalemate are gone, even from western media.
I am curious as to what leads you to make this prediction?
Not him, but from current predictions to 200k isnt that big of a jump. If i recall we are likely at over 100k dead servicemen (matching Russian losses) and something around 40k dead civilians.
Not so sure about such a drastic shift myself, but its a possibility if you think of it in terms of having overdone the whole propaganda aspect and inadvertently triggering a reaction. Especially as having observed it for the better part of the last year, i suspect Russia has been goating western media/commentators/politicians into especially brazen stuff. To give an example for especially brazen instances, there is the propaganda channel "Perun" on youtube who does a great job framing itself as open source intelligence. When it came to the Ukrainian Kherson offensive he however dropped the ball and transparently crossed the line from miss- to dissinformation when he
1) Congratulated the Ukrainian government on "preserving manpower" by banning military age males from leaving the country
2) Stating that the Ukrainian military was made up solely from "volunteers", thus the great fighting spirit
3) Congratulating the Ukrainian government on its willingness to take losses in Kherson with the strategic aim of worsening the Russian supply situation
Add to stuff like this the reports that got brazenly silenced like the Amnesty International report about Ukraine having soldiers positioned in schools and hospitals. The rational being that Russia knew about all prewar military positions in case you wondered.
Its the old problem of exploiting a bogey man too brazenly and overdoing propaganda. Once you overdo it, you might be in for a rude awakening about the extend of stuff that stops working.
edit: Minute 26:06 in the Video from 17th of September (Seven months from Kyiv to Kharkiv), Minute 27:30 and 41:40 of the Kherson video from 20th November. Binge watched them so not sure where he mentioned the volunteer part, but the preserving manpower with ban to leave the country should be mentioned in the Ukrainian mobilization video. But also referenced at around min 13 in the Kyiv to Kharkiv video.
Russia will not have a sudden reversal in capabilities. China is not going to abandon its strategy of hedging its bets to tie itself to a sinking ship all of a sudden. Iran and Saudi Arabia will not have a sudden change of heart to adopt a completely opposite position. Zelensky is already to US liking and Ukraine has shown itself to be capable rather than on the verge of falling apart.
Basically OP was positing a complete reversal of existing realities that all just happen to align with enemies of the US all of a sudden becoming more capable and deciding to band together. In reality political alliances, as well as military and economic capabilities, don't do screaming 180 degree turnarounds.
But Russia is accomplishing their objectives, so there would be no reversal. Ukraine is holding on by pouring tens of billions of dollars worth of Western armaments into the conflict (which are coming slower and slower), not to mention the lives of servicemen.
It's not a very optimistic picture is it? Definitely feels like we're heading in to one of those "things are going to get worse before they get better" periods
As some other has pointed out this sounds way too disruptive to be true (how exactly would 200k deaths change the entire prospect of the war?).
Why would the US need to replace zelensky with a "puppet"? Ukraine wants US boots in Ukraine.
China recovery of their GDP is going to happen how? They got multiple issues systemically destroying their GDP growth (pollution, corruption, housing market collapse, over fishing, bad policies being enforced with no room for negotiation, etc. ).
To be fair, when your survival depends on the military spending of someone else, the lines between "alliance" and "vasalism" starts to blur. It will (understandably) take some balls for Zelensky to ever refuse anything from Biden in the short term ; and in the long term, US will likely not refrain from using the "remember when we saved you from Putin" card (we've heard this in France for, what 50 years ?)
I'm pretty sure Churchill and De Gaulle were called "pupets of the USA" at some point, and they seem to have gone on _fine_.
That being said, it would be foolish from the US to not "destroy the Russian army for less than 5% of its defense budget, without loosing any soldier".
I agree, and of course I expect the US to use their "hey remember that time" card a few times, and I'm sure Ukraine itself (not just Zelenskyy) expects the same.
And for context, the US helping Ukraine to this extent pretty immediately means the US is loved in Ukraine, and the country will be pretty happy to follow the US in whatever for quite a while.
"Puppet" has other implications, though. A puppet, in its most literal form, is an empty face and body where you put your hand; it does your every move, everything you exactly want it to.
The implications of calling Zelenskyy the US's puppet are appalling. It implies Ukraine didn't choose him, rather that the US placed him. It implies Ukraine has no agency, but is just the "United State Border Office for Russia". It implies that Ukraine's biggest problems are whatever the US is concerned about; rather than what currently threatens its existence.
I'm tired tired tired of americans thinking they're so god-damn important in the world, that every other nation is a "puppet state". And they always say it with disdain at their own administration, as if that makes it okay. Not to say the US hasn't had puppet regimes installed, but fuck, it's seriously egocentric.
