Army is a reflection of the society. For the army to improve radically, the society itself has to learn and improve. If it didn't happen for the last 200 years, why would it happen now?
Outside of datcha villages (summer/weekend garden houses where people generally don't live full time), this is just total BS. Have you ever visited Russia?
Flush toilet requires your private house to be connected to a centralized communications OR to your personal water pumps.
#1 is not an option if you leave far away from a town.
#2 is not an option unless you can pay for it and its maintance.
I understand that this sound like a problem or some savagery but in reality this is not much different from the fact that most countries do not have centralized hot water or heating.
My summer house also does not have a flush toilet despite the fact that I can easily afford one. What's the problem?
Check this persons posts, they're 90% anti-Russian. No amount of factual or anecdotal information is going to change their attitude.
I've had the same shitty (pun intended) toilet argument on HN with other Russophobs and there's just no reaching these people seething with racial hate.
"Located less than 200 kilometers south of Moscow, the industrial city of Tula is home to around 549,992 people. And about a fifth of them have no access to centralized sewage systems."
From the first link in my previous comment.
Just bringing data to whether or not Russia is well equipped with flush toilets (or really more the point public sanitation).
From a public health standpoint, human waste reaching rivers tend not to be good.
"Untreated human sewage teems with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and many other infectious diseases."
They're generally sanitary (when maintained) and are a whole septic system. And are attached to flush toilets.
That's massively different than raw sewage making it to streams and rivers.
However none of this really matters because the point is that many rural Russians lack access to water and proper sewage (apparently as laid out in the above previous links). So politely you're wrong. Have a good day.
>Located less than 200 kilometers south of Moscow, the industrial city of Tula is home to around 549,992 people. And about a fifth of them have no access to centralized sewage systems.
I am from South America, so my experience in Russia was a tourist. But really, This is basically bullshit. Soviet architectural heritage may be depressing sometimes, but one thing they took seriously is infrastructure.
I was there for the world cup, and after my country was out of the competition I traveled outside the cities hosting games including some very distant places. Agriculture in Russia is mostly an industrial affair just as in the West, with the usual John Deere dealerships dotting the margin of the roads along with some Chinese and Russian brands I've never heard of before, but that seems to be big there.
Of course, I stayed in the western portion of Russia, not even crossing the Urals. It is a gigantic country, and probably as you go east, probably things are more backward.
In general, the Russian experience, at least at the time of the world cup was basically the standard European experience for a traveler, things mostly work, the trains are absurdly better than American ones, on the same level as European trains, and at least in the big cities, you can get around speaking English. If you stay in an Airbnb and cook your meals, supermarkets had incredible variety at good prices.
Probably some things are worse or a lot worse now with the War Economy and sanctions, but on the other side, it is clear that Putin has been preparing for this for a long time, and export substitution has been going on for a long time.
The bottom line is that Russia is not like Elbonia from racist Scott Adams cartoons like so many people think.
Yuri Gagarin and Russia's 99.6% literacy rate disagree. Like it or not, Russians (and Ukrainians for that matter) consistently read and math gooder than Americans.
USSR did run to the finish losing medals to put the first human to space. USA did the same to put humans on the Moon. You can safely ignore these data points as anomalies. Can Russia consistently innovate in any technological field?
Did you read the article? Russia has objectively (for now, that gap will close) outclassed the west at EW, missile defense & offense. They are also a leader in nuclear technology. Are those not high tech industries?
Doesn't really sound all that outclassed. Ukraine has been shooting down a fair bit of Russian attacks and if I'm not mistaken Ukraine has some better ranged munitions now.
Hardly seems like being outclassed when Russia has spent the last year redeveloping it's logistics.
Additionally this is Russia's best vs the Wests hand-me-downs.
> Ukraine has been shooting down a fair bit of Russian attacks
Yes. With old Soviet equipment (largely S-300s and BUKs). Which further proves my point. But those are running low and Ukraine has already lost a Patriot system just a few weeks after going into service.
Ukraine might have some better ranged munitions than they did previously like British Storm Shadows. They have even less range than the the US ATACMS and both are getting intercepted on the regular. And vs. the Russian Kalibrs, neither are all that special.
But the biggest problem is Ukraine doesn't have sufficient launch platforms for them (they are air launched and have to be retrofitted to Soviet era aircraft).
Patriot system has been reportedly consistently shooting down Kinzhal.
Not questioning whether or not Russia posses(ed) some great engineers (this would have to include Ukrainians then since this stuff was designed in the USSR) that certainly can do it's job when deployed correctly. Rather that Russia has somehow outclassed the "West" seems rather farfetched here.
Do you really believe the Patriot is shooting down Kinzhals? Consider the source. And the physics of it all (the math don't work). And the history of the Patriot system (inability to shoot down 1960s scuds, several friendly fire aircraft incidents). It's a 30+ year old system, after all.
And did you see the full video of the Patriot blowing two full loads before getting taken out in Kiev by Kinzhals (2:14 hit)?:
> Do you really believe the Patriot is shooting down Kinzhals? Consider the source. And the physics of it all. And the history of the Patriot system (inability to shoot down 1960s scuds, several friendly fire aircraft incidents). It's a 30+ year old system, after all.
Yes, its simple hypersonic ballistic missiles are nowhere near new, whats new is hypersonic glide vehicle of which Kinzhal is not. You simply aim for where the missile is going to be in the future and hit to kill it.
Also, the Kinzhal is close to 30+ years old as well as it's just a Iskander thats air launched.
> And did you see the full video of the Patriot blowing two full loads before getting taken out in Kiev by Kinzhals (2:14 hit)?:
You have the video, can you show me a single image of an exploded patriot, you cant because it missed the only damage was from shrapnel from nearby buildings and that was quickly repaired.
Do you have evidence or facts to show that the news reports on the Patriot system are wrong?
Would love to see evidence that the system was destroyed (as in couldn't be repaired; couldn't still do it's mission) and that Kinzhals have not been shot down.
You imply in a capitalistic system that innovation stems from its own citizen? Especially in the melting pot of the world? Like, you would be hard-pressed to find a single innovation that doesn’t have emigrant names attached to it - the goddamn Manhattan project is jokingly called a Hungarian high school science fair project.
The US got out of WW2 with minimal casualties and a ton of riches, compared to a beaten down Europe/USSR. It’s not a fair comparison. For what it’s worth, the USSR indeed had very great education and have some excellent textbooks/papers as legacy.
The question "can" is not about the intellectual capability of Russian people but about whether they will be allowed to by their leaders. Innovation is disruptive, after all.
Crimean War was lost. Russian-Japanese War was lost the same way. WWI way lost by Germany, but Russians lost even to Germans. WWII was won as part of the Allies by sacrificing Ukraine and using the extensive support from the US. Looks like a pattern to me.
Unfortunately, the independent Ukraine has been busy destroying monuments to the Ukrainians that fought againsts Nazis and naming dozens of streets after Nazi collaborants.
School would probably also have noted that 80% of the USSR's copper, 1/3 of its explosives, fuel, trucks, etc. came from the US and UK via Lend-Lease. At a fairly critical time in the war.
Zhukov: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
School might also have noted the complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis; things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Not really. They mostly started coming after the USSR stopped the Nazis in 1942.
"complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis"
Too bad your school forgets to mention the Munich agreement between the Nazis and the West, and all the efforts of the USSR to forge an anti-Nazi pact with the Great Britain and France. All of which happenned before the M-R pact.
Munich was bad and is to this day a touchstone of failure of character in the West (indeed, one of the ways those proposing capitulation to Russian purported annexation of parts of Ukraine as the cost of peace are mocked is comparing their stand to Munich).
But its not like after Munich, Britain and France invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia while Hitler took the Sudetenland, so bad as it is, it doesn’t compare to the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact.
The European hyena bit off what the Russian Empire hyena bit off 30 years earlier. Which the European hyena bit off 15 years earlier. Which the Russian Empire hyena bit off 20 years earlier. Which the... isn't it convenient to cherry pick one point in history and base all your truth on it?
By "waited" you surely meant "were busy fighting Nazis".
And let me quote the wiki article I linked to: "The Soviet entry into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionall".
> By "waited" you surely meant "were busy fighting Nazis".
As were the rest of the Allies. Soviet help with Japan probably would've been welcome much earlier.
> And let me quote the wiki article I linked to: "The Soviet entry into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionall".
The Japanese home islands were blockaded, constantly bombed, and hit with nuclear weapons after a grinding campaign across the Pacific. They'd lost by the time the Soviets jumped in; they were solidly on that path since 1942.
Soviet entry may've reinforced the hopelessness of continuing, but the Pacific part of WWII was largely fought by the US and UK alone. Contesting "the US won over the Japanese in the Pacific" is a tough path.
