Stark Admissions, some History, and a Callup for 200,000 More

Margarita Simonyan, a popular Russian propagandist for Putin, had some telling revelations that hint at a level of realization that Russians haven’t yet come to terms with — that Russia loses wars that it fights alone. She called the war in Ukraine the most difficult war in Russia's history because they have no allies at all. She then adds that the last time in her memory that this happened was the Crimean War of 1850s when Russia lost to an alliance of the UK, France, and Ottoman Empire. She speaks of WWI and WWII and how the allies made insignificant contributions compared to the Russian sacrifices, saying that “those countries fought on our side,” not “we fought together,” a small but notable insight into Russian thinking. Note that Russia was on the side of the Allies in WWI but still lost the war and was not included in the Allied victory. “And now they are all against us.” She says, “It’s hard to call Belarus an ally, as they are us. All these others, countries of BRICS, all the rest just look on. They don’t condemn us, but they just watch. They don’t send troops, they don’t send weapons.” During the last war when the US and USSR fought on the same side, WWII, the US supplied, in 2020 dollars, $608 billion in aid to the Soviet war machine. This included one-third of all the explosives used by the Red Army during the war. <a href="https://medium.com/@dylan_combellick/stark-admissions-some-history-and-a-callup-for-200-000-more-4427a84622c5">Learn More</a>