Oddbean

Even if it may be less efficient (which is still to be proven) than investing in weapons, at least it is non violent. Your cold, purely financial reasoning is definitely the type of reasoning of an autistic sociopath.

It's a war. You need clear headed men to look at the situation objectively and win it. The more efficiently you kill off Russians, the fewer Ukrainians will die. Between the two, one group is objectively evil and the other is not. The objectively evil group is the one trying to massacre Ukrainian civilians with drones. https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953

Objectively seen, at any front of war, it is some brotherhood against an other brotherhood. Every soldier is there first and foremost to make sure his close friends are fine. They fight for their brothers in war. There is no basic differentiation, when you would sit in a Russian front or the ukrainian front. So to have very effective ways for them to resign without losses is maby a very strong weapon. And then document those surrender to and push it through as many media services as possible to make sure this footage reaches russian soldiers.

The supermajority of Russians who are dying volunteered in exchange for (by Russian standards) large amounts of money; Russia has not resorted to large scale mobilization yet and it's illegal in Russia to send conscripts to Ukraine. The Russians fighting are psychopaths who thought it would be fun, and profitable, to kill off Ukrainians. That's probably a big part of why they fight in such wasteful ways: their commanders don't give a shit whether the men fighting live or die. They're just meat to them. And the Russians fighting don't give a shit about the people around them: they just want to avoid dying long enough to collect their financial reward. Not all cultures or people are equal. That's leftist "defund the police" type nonsense.

Exactly. You don't win a war by 'killing the other camp more efficiently'. Sending more weapons will just keep the war going on longer and kill more people (but I agree we also must do it anyway). This war I guess will end only thanks to some internal change in Russia.. So maybe this kind of action may be actually more efficient to that purpose. I've met a few Russians and Ukrenians in my life, I don't want any to be killed just because Russians are driven by a crazy fascist.

I also know both Russians and Ukrainians. The sane Russians with at least some wealth have mostly left Russia, for good. The ones I know who have stayed (or returned!) are nutjobs; I'm not concerned about the wealthier Russians who haven't left. And as for the poor ones, if they want to live the onus is on them to do something useful like sabotage to make their country lose faster. It's not that hard. We should not sacrifice the lives of Ukrainians – and quite possibly ourselves in the future – for the sake of Russians. The fact is, you do in fact win wars by killing the other side more efficiently. WW2 was won because far more Germans and Japanese died than westerners. We were damn good at killing them, to the point where they simply surrendered essentially unconditionally.

ChatGPT does not agree: During World War II, the Allies suffered significantly more casualties than the Axis powers. The Axis (Germany, Japan, Italy, and others) lost about 8 to 10 million people, including both military and civilian deaths. Germany alone accounted for roughly 5 to 6 million of these. On the other hand, the Allies (including the Soviet Union, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and others) saw around 50 to 55 million deaths. The Soviet Union had the highest number of casualties, with 24 to 27 million, mostly civilians. China also suffered heavily, with 15 to 20 million deaths. The higher Allied losses were largely due to massive civilian casualties and widespread destruction in the Soviet Union and China.

I specifically said "westerners" for a reason. We killed Germans efficiently. The Soviets were brutal and inefficient, including to their own people, and would have been utterly crushed without massive amounts of Western military aid. Allying with the Soviets was an example of joining forces with evil to fight evil. Also mentioning China here is ridiculous. The massacre of Chinese civilians by the Japanese is one reason why we went to war with Japan in the first place. It's like arguing that the 6 million Jews that were murdered show that we couldn't kill Germans efficiently and the war wasn't lopsided.

I see a number of misconceptions in you writings about the wars… or better say conceptions that take only similar points of view as true - well there are many others supported by numbers, logic and common sense. Please, study at least WWII and other military conflicts statistics and of course other people’s argumentations… it surely will make you more mentally and psychologically complete and stable (to my opinion any person talking about killing one people to save the others is ‘unstable’ and reminds me of many dictators from the past) and you will not think that killing more Russians or Ukrainians effectively is the only key to peace in todays Russia-Ukraine war)))) Peace.

"Clear headed men" disqualifies you. You don't even know the history of this war starting circa 1990. This was a 30 year NATO buildup, a 2008 us army first strike nuclear doctrine, a 2014 coup, 2 minsk treaties promises broken and a missile provocation. You must have got a woke education.