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.

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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.

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.

I was buying from ebay because I didn’t want to support Amazon. Now what?

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.

I think Aardman is still a small independent studio, but they could pivot to CGI and keep the clay style. Blue-Zoo animation has done this on several of their works. ‘The Adventure of Paddington’ is a good example.

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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Many Russian conscript POWs have said they never handled a weapon. They were told they were going to be drivers, then trucked somewhere to then be given a shovel and told to dug trenches. Then a few weeks later trucked to the front-line and told to sit in a hole and observe.

Rage comics were better and were actually a modern form of Commedia dell’arte or Masked Theatre, in such that it used stock characters and so plot could be both meaningful but simple. Wojacks lack implied character and context, so story or character depth requires explanation which doesn’t usually work as well with that form