A short sampling of Western media delusions:
- Royal United Services Institute. April 1, 2022. “…we might consider an alternative explanation: that Russia’s failures reflect a series of long-standing erroneous assumptions about modern warfare that are held by wide segments of the military.”
- GIS Reports. May 2, 2022
- NPR. May 3, 2022
- Journal of Democracy. May 10, 2022
- The Hill. May 13, 2022
- Daily Express. May 16, 2022
- The Spectator. May 21, 2022
- Modern War Institute at West Point. May 23, 2022
- War on the Rocks. June 2, 2022
- TIME. June 6, 2022
- Daily Beast. July 6, 2022
- European Union External Action (“”). September 14, 2022
- Atlantic Council. September 17, 2022
- Deutsch Welle. September 21, 2022
- CNN September 22, 2022.
- Reuters. September 30, 2022
- Washington Examiner. October 3, 2022.
- Salon. October 11, 2022.
- Daily Mail. November 6, 2022
- Center for European Policy Analysis. November 20, 2022.
- Yahoo UK. November 25, 2022.
- The deck: ‘A Times investigation based on interviews, intercepts, documents and secret battle plans shows how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.’ New York Times. December 16, 2022. “Russian soldiers go into battle with little food, few bullets and instructions grabbed from Wikipedia for weapons they barely know how to use. They plod through Ukraine with old maps like this one from the 1960s, recovered from the battlefield, or no maps at all. They speak on open cellphone lines, revealing their positions and exposing the incompetence and disarray in their ranks. This is the inside story of historic Russian failures.”
- Business Insider. January 9, 2023
- Washington Post. February 23, 2023. “I think that the terrifically horrible Russian military planning and the hubris that underlay it–you know, you remember in those first weeks, 20-, 30-kilometer convoys of Russian trucks just sitting in Ukraine, you know, with–in the open air, sitting ducks for Ukrainian attack, but also the fact that Putin has been willing to sacrifice so much of his country’s future for this imperial ambition, for this dream of conquest. You know, in some categories, he’s lost almost half of his military arsenal, ground forces in particular, but also aviation, that, you know, he’s–a million people, mostly men, have fled Russia rather than fight for him, that 200,000 Russians are killed or wounded. So, you know, that is an enormous commitment for a country that already had not lived up to its European potential.”
- RAND Corporation. February 28, 2023.
- Newsweek. March 17, 2023.
- Daily Mail. April 4, 2023.
- Daily Mail May 12, 2023.
- June 2, 2023.
- David Ignatius, Washington Post. June 24, 2023. “The speed with which Putin backed down suggests that his sense of vulnerability might be higher even than analysts believed. Putin might have saved his regime Saturday, but this day will be remembered as part of the unraveling of Russia as a great power — which will be Putin’s true legacy.”
Karl 12: “Russia is a dwarf. I will bring her to her knees.” 1707
After the battle of Poltava, Sweden lost the status of a great power.
Friedrich 2: “I will conquer backward Russia.” Mid 18th century.
In 1759 the Russians entered Berlin.
Napoleon: “Russia is a colossus with feet of clay. I will destroy it.” 1812
In 1814 the Russians took Paris.
Hitler: “I will conquer the USSR by the end of the summer of 41.” 1941
In 1945, Hitler committed suicide when the Red Army entered Berlin.
Some of the things Hitler said can be applied to modern China as well, just change Russians to Chinese :
“The Russians never invent anything. All they have, they’ve got from others. Everything comes to them from abroad—the engineers, the machine-tools. Give them the most highly perfected bombing-sights. They’re capable of copying them, but not of inventing them. With them, working-technique is simplified to the uttermost. Their rudimentary labour-force compels them to split up the work into a series of gestures that are easy to perform and, of course, require no effort of thought.”
“One must give the Russians their due and admit that, in this respect, they have succeeded in limiting the power of monopolies and eliminating private interests.”
