Ukraine-Russia War Take 2

it's collapsing.

This was pre-war, no european countries had this in the 90s

This is what i mean with collapse

Now they have a smaller problem with pensioners, mostly because russian men specifically have one of the worst life expectancies worldwide outside subsaharian africa (and again, that was true even before the war, now it's just worse + hundreds of thousands will survive, but disabled).

But they have a hollowed-out working age population, that is aging *fast*, and the population is decreasing faster than in Japan, which is the "oldest" (highest median age) country around.

And this is with sanctions and the EU having basically blocked russian immigration.

Imagine post-war, at some point relationships re-normalize, the brain drain of capable russians will be massive.

Ofc all the above applies even more strongly to ukraine, which is completly gone and cannot be re-formed demographically no matter what.

Sorry, you just showed two pictures with no comparison of any single metric to some other European countries.
My point was to define "collapsing" against Europe. But if you agree that most of Europe is also "collapsing" - then there is no dispute from me.

Russian borders are open since 1990, which current brain drain you imply? Everyone wanted to leave already left. What stopped someone to leave in 2022 so he should wait post-war? The real brain drain happened in 90s when USSR collapsed - but even that magnitude didn't destroy Russia

QFT :p

Flying a Stealth Bomber/Fighter formation overhead as Trump/Putin walk into the summit was 100% badass! I know this is a lefty echo chamber but c'mon as an American you just gotta love that flex 😀

Looks we might be close to a deal if Trump didn't want to take questions as that would have been agreed with Putin before the conference as Trump always takes questions whenever he can.

Yeah Putin surely got very impress and scared from taco flex lol ?

I’ll bet you Putin knows more what USA got in its military arsenal then trump .

Ps: I remember how the doge was so important from saving wasted money ….
Let’s spend couple thousand just to make a « show parade » like here .
Trump love those .

Pas: not being a fascist board doesn’t mean it’s a lefty board .
Center is usually a pretty big part .

Define "fascist". Please! 99.9% of people who routinely use that word have no idea what the definition is!

Far far right views .
But with the gestapo putting in place slowly by trump , will see it soon enough 😀 .

FWIW if your an American you probably have no idea what actually left looks like .
I mean just the thought democrats in the U.S. been called for decades lefty or communist is quite hilarious from a europeen or Canadian view point .
You know the entire western world ex USA .

I disagree that this forum is a "lefty echo chamber." That would be Unstuck Politics.

So you can't define it 😀 I didn't think so.

99,9% of people who (willingly?) ignore the fact that fascism already has a definition and ask someone to "dEfInE it" are worthless fascists themselves.

So go look it up, lazy brownshirt loser.

most of europe isn't collapsing like russia

These are the 2 most popolous european country, Germany:

France:

As for the brain drain, you fail to realize what an upper middle class russian realized. Up until 2022, upper middle class russians were protected from problems. They lived mostly in moscow or st peterburg and neighoring areas, had a good high quality "european style" life, and could plan for their future and their children future in the same way a german or a british person can.

Their salaries might have been a tad lower nominal, but extremely low taxation helped make take at home pay for , say, someone who works in finance , not too dissimilar to what they could get in amsterdan or paris.

With the war effort and the redirection of state revenue for that they do realize at some point taxes have to grow up, and meanwhile they know they or they children can be drafted to go to die in a moronic war effort.

Thtat changes the picture dramatically for them. Expect a mass exodus of quality professionals as soon as they physically can and are accepted in first world countries.

Shocker that an idiot who did none of the required, tedious and unglamorous behind the scenes work got nothing from meeting Putin.

To be fair he got to flex a stealth bomber overhead

Alpha

Man, that bomber could have got rid of two of the biggest threat to humanity there is.

Correct me if this is wrong, but it seems the biggest problem with population collapse is if you have a social welfare state and the small number of young people have to pay for the large number of old ones. If you dont bother with this part, and just let old people die it seems your population just goes down and it isn't a big deal. You are just a smaller country with less people.

Now this isn't necessarily good if you have ambitions to be a imperial power. But if you are ok being a country of 75 million people instead of 115 million, what is the big deal?

The brain drain issue seems like a bigger deal for Russia specifically, because of their political dysfunction.

But for a country like China, it seems they can just let their old people die (or get robots to take care of them) and they can just have a declining population, without having to go the European/US route of massive 3rd world immigration to support their older population, risking fundamentally changing who they are as a nation (and probably not for the better).

To be fair, this probably was the best result possible for Trump meeting with Putin, which was nothing changed. Basically the same as the Two Fat Guys One Summit with Trump and Kim Jong Un. If you're the US you have the power to get concessions because meeting with POTUS is a prize for people like Putin/Kim but Trump doesn't really care about US interests. But at least the US only lost credibility rather than something like Trump's middle east policy of letting his idiot son in law sign treaties meant to normalize Israeli/Arab relations and minimize the influence of Iran and Hamas which lead to major wars.

LOL. When Obama tried to hand the keys of the ME to Iran, all they did was create dysfunction and major wars in places like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. That got American soldiers (mostly in Iraq) maimed and killed using Iranian provided weapons. Much bigger wars with much more human suffering than the wars that have happened in Trump's term.

There was just no Jews to blame, so no one cared.

Realizing the US made a bad deal with Iran and its proxies that was just making everything worse, cutting ties, and shifting support to Israel and the Sunni Axis was definitely the correct move. Not perfect, but definitely the lesser evil option.

Obama gave Israel the biggest weapons deal in history at the time. and its pretty obv that the bullshit nuclear deal signed with Iran was just a front for spying.

Nah, history will remember this as the best possible outcome for putin who got his beta bitch to literally roll out the red carpet for him and try to do performative gestures to impress him while conceding literally nothing and getting to leave early

Meanwhile Trump looks like a clown who will likely parrot talking talking points of how this is all zelensky’s fault. As with literally every ****ing thing Donald Trump, america has the pleasure of coming out looking worse

liberals once again proving that substance doesnt matter and they only care about how things "look". but I guess this is all a show, or kabuki theater like luckbox always says so maybe they are more grounded than me after all.

I doubt history remembers this at all. Trump is weak and got nothing while Putin got a propaganda victory in the midst of all his problems. Sure this would have been a major unforced disaster for pretty much any other US president ever. But when you elect Trump you've already conceded defeats like this so he can role play and watch coverage of himself engaging in fake big boy diplomacy.

was having US soldiers literally roll out a red carpet for your bosses boss badass too?

lol you stupid ****ing MAGATs