Ulara

Pentagon has indeed made such a deal with Starlink: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/pentagon-buying-starlink-dishes-for-ukraine-after-funding-dispute-with-spacex/

Machos feel truly alive when they are at war. They show friendliness only out of necessity, when they are weak. Accordingly, they perceive friendliness as a weakness, as an opportunity to press forward. So macho's dog has to be big and aggressive.

They have increased arms spending several times, as soon as they understood what the 2014 annexation of Crimea portends to them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-19/baltics-states-have-doubled-arms-spending-since-putin-s-advance Now they prudently give a lot of arms to Ukraine, to prevent any possibility of Ruscist success.

And he won't retire, so he dons tires.

The top tire must signify a numerical probability of his success in Ukraine.

Video of this interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=21SVQY0ymZ8

The main concern of a Russian officer is to keep his position. And the way to do this is to produce optimistic reports to the faraway high command, or be fired. He can't procure any valuable resources due to sanctions, so he uses anything he has just to show he does something. He cares about his position above everything else, so this decision is quite rational for him.

I think they don't have at their disposal a proper aerodynamic tube. Perhaps you would kindly recommend some software to model the aerodynamic properties?

Well, all the large empires were corrupt at the end of their life, and all have successfully transformed.

There is no gene of corruption - it's rather a matter of prevalent culture, informed by socioeconomic factors. As these factors change, the culture has to change as well, even if this is painstakingly hard for local culture carriers.

By the way, it's remarkable that some of best levels of wellbeing and democracy are achieved by small Nordic countries. So the small size isn't a guarantee of happiness, but smaller countries are easier to govern in right direction.

There's only one really active community at Kbin.social, namely Ukraine_UA . And one at Lemmy instance, at sopuli.xyz. So the discussion is already consolidated.

In the huge and aged empire, corruption can't be eliminated due to sheer size and structure of the empire. Corrupt people can always evade real responsibility by moving to another region, and the reputation institute doesn't quite work. Lateral anti-corruption checks are eliminated, while the corrupt officials fool the faraway central power. Colonial policy necessarily leads to oppression throughout the country, due to the Foucault's boomerang.

However, when colonized people break free - like the Baltics states broke free from the USSR - politics get local, good reputation becomes essential, and there are powerful lateral anti-corruption checks. Central power can't be fooled much in a country of normal size. Moreover, there's necessarily more international cooperation, with international anti-corruption measures.

So the healthy nations of the empire are going to be on the right track fairly soon: https://freenationsleague.org/en/home.html Less healthy ones will also eventually transform for the better, simply because the countries will become smaller. Late Roman empire was also deeply corrupt, but the nations of it have eventually found their way.

I believe that in the long run the breakdown of the Russian empire will be beneficial, leading to freedom, well-being and prosperity of people who live there. Any empire becomes suffocating at the end of its lifetime, and needs to be dismantled for new countries to develop.

Actually used, and well-known (with a bit of humour) equivalent would be "пиздець російській федерації" (pyzdets' rosijskij federaciji). It was made famous by the speech: https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=503739114801103 and you can hear these words at the very end of the speech.