Moldova has had a Russian backed separatist region called Transnistria since 1990. Moldova has had a hard time, they do not have huge resources they can use, and their military is not well- equipped or funded.

During the Soviet era the country was producing huge amounts of agricultural products. After dissolution, Moldova still relied heavily on export to Russia. It was mostly in their best interest to keep their heads down and carry on, as they do not have the means to fight a serious conflict.

They’ve also had massive brain drain. Large volumes of young people have been leaving the country for decades. Many young people with Romanian heritage applied to become Romanian-EU citizens when Romania joined the EU.

They have slowly been pivoting towards a pro-EU policy. Whenever they make an obvious plan to head more towards becoming European, Russia will often apply some kind of sanctions. It’s been a common tactic over the last few decades for shipments of wine, cognac or other Moldovan products to be seized and ‘destroyed’ by Russian customs officials in retaliation for Pro-EU policy shifts by Moldova.

When the Preisdent of Belarus, Lukashenko, leaked Russia’s Ukrainian invasion plans, Moldova was shown as being a point of troop movement. So Russias invasion plan definitely originally included Moldovan territory as well.

When I wrote the above I thought, hah someone’s going to be like ‘bUt HoW WilL tHe vAnS gEt tHeRe jEeNiuS?’. But then I thought, nah noones that iamverysmart. Yet, here we are.

Ban cars in the main street. I’m sure you can learn to walk one block. You might even find you enjoy it when you are not having constant near death experiences with cars.

All those parking spaces are now spaces for pop-up businesses. Food vans, shipping containers that are now selling vegetables, outdoor dining, art fairs, etc.

You can now legally live in those apartments that people used to live in built above the existing shops, before that was made illegal for reasons unknown.

Don’t worry, they have options. They can also take out shitty loans laden with fine print from China

It’s always a baguette and some celery

I agree. Ukraine did a great job in preparing for an inevitable invasion. Zelensky is the reason the preparations succeeded.

There has been some good answers, but I’m not entirely satisfied with the details, so I will add my own response.

Culturally Russia sees itself as outside the rest of the world. At the very minimum, an equal to historical empires of Europe or Asia, but part of neither. It sees the USA as an ethnic mongrel with no culture or history, and hates the US power it projects globally.

Russia sees the former Soviet Union countries as property of the Rus people, and NATO involvement as outsider influence in affairs that do not concern them.

Globally, the world values stability more than they value justice or peace. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it came after several other invasions of other former Soviet countries. There was little global response on any occasion.

Putin did expect the invasion to be fast and achieve their goals quickly. It was a mistake on his behalf.

This invasion was taken differently than any previous invasion because it upset global stability. Gas, oil and grain were traded openly with Russia and Ukraine and a war upset the market right when the world was trying to stabilise markets rocked by inflation, pandemic recovery and suppy chain problems.

The result was many countries around the world pledging military support. This was always older generation materiel which essentially costs those countries to maintain. It was the global equivalent of giving a homeless man the doggy bag you didn’t want anyway.

Why did they do this? They wanted Russia to pull back, return to its 2014 lines and go back to stability so that global markets could resume. So they gave Ukraine just enough to defend itself, but not enough to win.

Why did they do this? Because the world wants stability more than peace. Of the pledges of materiel, almost none has actually come to fruition. About 1/4 of the armor promised has arrived that was promised. Ukraine continues to beg for alms (or in this case arms), and they do amazing things with the little they are given.

Western powers could arm Ukraine and it would win. They have had no problem spending trillions of dollars over decades to protect their influence. It does not in this case as the World is only just coming to terms that Russia will not stop just for stability.

Putin will cease to be leader if he pulls back. The Russian leader would be seen as weak, and the Russian culture loves a Tsar. Putin believes in luck and will continue the sunk cost in the hope that some outside factor or random event will go in his favor.

The West is already getting bored and tired of a war they aren’t even fighting. There is a possibility that pro-Russian Republicans could regain office or power in the US. All Putin has to do is hold and eventually the West will even start telling Ukraine to capitulate to them.

Putin does not care how many troops he loses. Russia doesn’t really care how many people it loses unless those people are from the cities. Russian culture dehumanises the poor and mixed ethnicities.

This current grinding stalemate is a direct result of world policy. The world supplies Ukraine with just enough so they don’t lose, but not enough that they can win. In the meantime, the arms dealers are circling like sharks. India and China are cashing in on filling global supply gaps and taking advantage of Russias need for materiel frozen by sanctions. The hope would be that world leaders realise before it’s too late that the only way Ukraine can win, is that if Russia loses.

You have to know how to operate the oven to reheat store bought pie. Generative LLMs are machines like ovens, and turning the knobs is not creativity. Not operating the oven correctly gets you Sharon Weiss results.

Tearing out extra lanes that do nothing but encourage more traffic, adding protected cycling lanes or reducing road speed are seen as extreme by those that made the decisions that have created the infrastructure we have. In reality these are compromises.

‘Share the road’ is not a compromise. Sharrows are not a compromise. Jaywalking laws are not a compromise. Victim blaming is not a compromise. Media dehumanising pedestrians is not a compromise.Nobody ever fucking considered anything else but cars, drivers and the car lobby when installing these things.

Now tearing it out city centers to focus on humans and humanity is extreme?

Country defense is oriented around the most likely attack in the near future. Once Russia is defeated and this war is over, the most likely invader is still Russia. So they are planning on what will defend against what Russia has now.

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That’s exactly the point of this. To hold the position Russia has to have safe logistics and fortified positions. Ukraine only needs to increase the grey zone to disrupt Russia’s logistics into Tokmak to collapse the front on the South.

I did spend some of my childhood stealing traffic lights and street signs. It wasn’t Satan that made me do it, it was the boy scouts.

The Russian mobilised from prisons are trucked to special units made up of criminals who are sent straight to the front line to die in human wave attacks.

These are small unarmored units with light weapons only. They are sent in waves consisting of many small groups of around six across a long area of frontline. They die in huge numbers and if they turn around and retreat they are killed by other Russians themselves, in what is known as ‘blocking units’.

The entire point of their deaths is to spread Ukrainian soldiers and widely as possible and to constantly test the Ukrianian fortification for weakness.

If they find any, bigger infantry units are sent with support from a light armored vehicle with heavier weapons.

This tactic also applies to other people Russia considers disposable. Ethnic minorities such as Buryats, or poor people from rural villages.

Russia and Iran stirred some shit up in Israel knowing how predictable the global response would be. Suddenly out of ‘nowhere’ Hamas has North Korean weapons and state level intelligence information.

Elon Musk is a pro-Russian muppet.

100% Everything going on right now is to diminish focus and support for Ukraine.

I grew up in a family who were professional criminals. Nearly all of the first and second generation eventually got into real estate development and the several of the second generation went into tax law. A bunch of other families I knew of got into local politics.

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Certain weapons have stopped being produced. As you can see from the missile types that are fired by Russia now compared to early in the invasion, the varieties have gone down to only a few types.

This is because stored supplies are being depleted, components are hard to come by, and Russia is focusing on only producing missile types with the greatest success rate of reaching their targets.

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