9 more years and he will be a Sleepy Vlad

That's the point: we don't know if he really has cancer, it's all conjecture at this point. The way he looked today supports these rumors imho, which would be significant.

Yes they are *currently* experts at playing the long game.



this makes no sense to me. Western China is empty. they have all that space to build build build. i dont believe from a historical standpoint, cultural standpoint or interests standpoint that doing anything to russia, i.e. troops on the ground ever, is in their playbook. while western narrative is that china is overpopulated and yes they have alot of chinese ok! the technology of today and the space in china is such that even if the land is not great for building, its simply so vast that they can do w/e they want if they have the money (note: they have the money). They have more lebensraum as you might put it, as compared to other countries.





there is alot in here. i agree with most of it. but well taiwan is china's ukraine, or america's cuba or australia's solomon islands (vary degrees of weakness when comparing ok, give me a rope to hang myself).

This post was edited by ferdia on May 9 2022 03:17am

Creating Artificial island is actually in China's playbook to choke Taiwan, South Korea and Japan if one day USA intend to trigger sanctions or any sort of aggression on China, while we are talking right here there is already some updates on US strategy on China.
Quad was created as some sort of a Mini Nato against China in the East, mainly Japan , Australia, US and India.
Due to India's position with Russia and her unwillingness to follow US lead , America have decided to pull in a new member which is South Korea.
On the other hand we have AUKUS that is already establish to handle the Chinese "Expansion" in the pacific.

I would say China rise in using soft power only started about 10 to 15 years back at best. They were still eating tree bark 30 to 40 years back except for those major major cities.
China is taking a page out of the US playbook when in comes to economically conquering the world, but they are studying the US very carefully and the mistakes that they make especially when it comes to interfering other country's political situation.
The wars that the US did in

Vietnam
Afghanistan
Iraq
Yugoslavia
Libya
Syria etc

and Her invasion of
Panama
Grenada
etc

Have taught the Chinese very invaluable lessons on what to do and not what to do.

I don't think China can turn Russia into her bitch per say, China depends a lot on Russia's energy. She has no reason invade Russia's territories as it will be unwise to mess with someone like Russia or US who has 6000 or more Nukes each.
They will just play around with what they can with economy and while doing that , they are improving their defense as quickly as possible.

Even that being said , it is pretty much known that China's military capabilities cannot surpass the US or even Russia as she is at least 30 years behind.

He don't look too good, and if something happens to him , we better pray we don't get a second one who is 10 times more hardcore than he is, there is a chance though.

I think that concerns over China's potential annexation of more land are really stretching far into an uncertain future. Climate change will make large chunks of Russia (and Canada) into prime real estate. But even if territorial gambits about artificial islands and projecting force in the south pacific are on the table, China aiming at Russia really truly is not. Maybe 50-100 years from now we'll be wondering about that, but I can't imagine a scenario where China angles for northward expansion in our lifetime. It wouldn't even be hospitable land yet under the most doomsday scenarios of climate change.

they definitely play the long game while the west self destructs

western china is pretty desolate, that green area is mostly wasteland, desert and very high altitude

you dont really want to have big settlements there

its like greenland. sub optimal but with technology who knows what will happen.

there is a lot of untapped resources there....

I'm starting to believe that outside the Donbas, Russian expansion may be over, they're really not pushing in the south and are just happy having taken Kherson as west most territory. At this point there's enough evidence to suggest that both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be broken off from Ukraine. In the north around Kharkiv the Russians are slowly giving up towns, IMO to me this front was always just a distraction so as to spread Ukrainian forces having to defend multiple fronts.

Pretty much the bulk of the war is raging in the Donbas region. The west for weeks has been broadcasting another mass Russia offensive which hasn't come yet. I think the reason it's not coming is it'll be extremely costly lives and equipment wise so Russia is content with smaller scale offensive operations while having their artillery grind Ukrainian defensive positions slowly. That was the mistake of their 1st phase, underestimating Ukrainian will and preparedness to fight, this time they are not making that mistake, so they turned from a blitzkrieg to a siege type war. People also have to understand that the Donbas region has been heavily fortified and prepared for war for like 5 years, so there's no easy and fast way to dislodge the Ukrainian army here.

If you look at the current map they are slowly poking holes from various directions in Ukrainian lines. By doing that it creates potential flanks for Ukrainian defenses, so then the Ukrainians have to be very careful as they can get encircled and cut off. I've heard of tactical retreats from the Sievierodonestk and Lysychansk to prevent this encirclement but so far that's just unconfirmed rumors on twitter.
Ultimately I think the goal for Russia is to basically seize everything from Yzium down, basically the rest of Donestk oblast. Once that happens forward territorial operations will probably stop.

https://liveuamap.com/

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 9 2022 07:09am