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Eric Arnow's avatar

One of my Russian friends tells me that building a movement is difficult now among Russia's working class, because people are doing reasonably well. If they don't like their job and want better pay or whatever, they can just switch employers. After the 1990's Russians want stability, and a movement would create instability. However, Shea's points are well taken. Long term, the working class has to get control or in the long run be ground down, if I understand him correctly.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

I appreciate where Pateli’s analysis is pointed, but I am convinced his take on the state of the operation arises from obsolete expectations, especially in regard to the nature of combat operations in this conflict.

Pateli is still assessing the progress of the conflict by square kilometers gained. This is a war between mechanical bee swarms, in which the “Line of Contact” is notional. The outcome will have been decided well before it is safe to amass an armored column and drive to Kyiv.

In recruitment and training, in strategy and tactics, and especially in logistics and war materiel production, the RF is out-massing and outclassing the armed might of NATO, and that handily. The west is not ready to admit it is defied and defeated quite so spectacularly, therefore it continues to supply Zelensky and crew with sufficient cocaine to keep their delusions alive.

As for the end state of the Ukraine, Pateli is spot on. Putin and his gang of autocrats would rather wear a hornet nest for a hat than to be obliged to rule western Ukraine, but the neofascists will disdain capitulation when they are holding cabinet in sewers, I expect.

Which brings to mind a painful comparison of the relative energy and motivation between these neofascists and the worker’s movements I keep hearing about.

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