At what point should you just move on?

[The Comrade]

[eynon81]

[The Comrade]

Well that's exactly what would happen.

What you're looking for is either a nuclear war or one where america loses very badly

[eynon81]

[Kane]

[Saz]

[Giant_Enemy_Crab]

If Russia doesn't keep a significant force near the caucuses people will probably get ideas and the increasingly ineffective (not unbrutal though) Russian puppet state in Chencyna, things might start to slip. Region is kept under the heel with brutal suppression mixed with overwhelming force not because everyone's learned to get along.

Kazahstan and Belarus are starting to question 'wtf' is the pros of being in the Eurasian co-prosperity sphere.

So yeah, they are doing a lot of damage in Ukraines Rust belt, but we are talking about a petrostate that is 5 months into what the Saudi's seem keen on making a 5~ year of destruction on the N.A tar sands oil industry.

What gradded Russia out of Yeltzins wild shock liberalisation ride, was petrodollars. That's it. Petrodollars just about keeps the serious problems picking away at the fabric of russian society like a crashing birth rate, lowering life expectency (lol krokodile) and so on in check.

They are not 1950'ies USSR. Not quite a paper tiger, but they know they'd fare barely in a proper gunfight.

The only real ace in Putins hand is that, so far he has popular support and the opposition can't openly do much to oppose him.

Tsardom of Russia 2: Eletric boogaloo has plenty of serious issues.

Let's also not forget the man is getting on in age, don't want to do a Chavez and leave an f**k retard in charge of your highly tuned populist state.

[The Comrade]

does he have popular support? someone did a poll of a bunch of pollsters and found that a lot of people say they're pro-putin because they're afraid of being disappeared in the night.

fear of the KGB runs deep in russian society.

[Giant_Enemy_Crab]

[The Comrade]

1. wargaming master race filthy gaijin go home

2. lots of russia is past the "decaying" part and are straight up living in places that look worse than pripyat. just go on r/wtf and you'll find various pictures of packs of russian children shooting up heroin in tenement houses that look like they were old when stalin was in power.

if that kind of shit hasn't changed anyones mind, i don't think anything short of mass-starvation will. and even then, the average russian gets their news from pravda and RT. it'll just be spun as the fault of the west.