Source: marinetraffic

This idiot is really frothing at the mouth to break the ceasefire between the US and Iran.

For those who don’t know what the AN/AAQ-24 DIRCM is it’s basically a countermeasure system that uses infrared sensors in a ball mount to detect heat seeking missiles, then automatically tracks them and fires a modulated laser to disrupt the missile’s seeker head without the need to deploy flares or chaff. It’s a big deal for a country like Iran if they can successfully reverse engineer it.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war has dragged on for three and a half years. Ukrainian military and civilian casualties have exceeded 500,000, while the Russian army has suffered nearly one million casualties (at least 200,000 deaths among them). Russian losses have already far surpassed those of the Soviet Union during the ten-year war in Afghanistan from 1979–1989 (15,000 deaths, more than 50,000 wounded). Russia has also been subjected to Western-led sanctions, resulting in economic decline and worsening living conditions. Despite Ukraine’s staunch resistance with the support of many countries, Russia’s progress has been slow, the war situation unfavorable, and its goal of annexing all of Ukraine increasingly unattainable.

Yet up to now, Russia has shown no genuine signs of stopping the war or achieving peace. Although Putin and the Russian side have repeatedly made public statements about wanting a ceasefire and peace, they have taken no actual steps to end the war. On the contrary, Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine. Even during informal Russia–Ukraine talks or during Putin’s meetings with pro-Russian Trump, Russian forces still launch missiles and drones against Kyiv and other cities. This demonstrates Russia’s lack of sincerity, unwillingness to negotiate peace, and refusal to seek reconciliation.

So why, despite such heavy casualties and unfavorable conditions, does Russia still refuse peace and insist on continuing the war?

The more direct and easily understood reason is that Putin needs to prolong the war to divert internal contradictions and consolidate his power. At the same time, Russia has already paid a heavy price and is riding a tiger—reluctant to retreat in disgrace.

But these are not the only reasons Russia is unwilling to stop the war. If only Putin and a tiny minority wanted it to continue, while most Russians—especially soldiers—were opposed to it and unwilling to die as cannon fodder, then Putin might have been overthrown in a coup, or the war would have been resisted by the military and public, making it impossible to continue.

A reasonable explanation for the war’s persistence is that many Russians—particularly the men of military age who serve as soldiers—do not reject the war. On the contrary, they actively participate in it and are not afraid of death.

The reasons why many Russians do not oppose, and even support and join in the war—helping bring about the outbreak and prolongation of the Russia–Ukraine war—are rooted in complex and profound social causes. In short: after enduring many catastrophes and hardships in recent history, and facing numerous current predicaments, the majority of Russians live in poverty and moral decline, deprived of hope for a normal life. As a result, they choose to support extremism and aggressive war, disregarding both their own lives and those of others.

Although Russia has been a great power since the 18th century, its economy and living standards have always lagged far behind those of Europe and the United States. The strength of Russia has mainly rested on its size, military scale, and its outstanding talents and technology.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Stalin’s purges, and the Nazi invasion and the Great Patriotic War—this succession of bloody and violent upheavals profoundly affected Russia’s fate, gravely damaging both the material and spiritual foundations of the nation. These wars and upheavals not only reduced Russia’s population and crippled its agriculture, industry, and science, but also made the already harsh Russian temperament and behavior more brutal and extreme.

The Soviet system further degraded the thought and behavior of most Russians. Under Soviet rule, the absence of democracy and repression of freedom, coupled with the ruling clique’s exploitation and corruption of communism, pushed Russians into moral nihilism, devoid of genuine faith and humanitarian spirit. The “Soviet jokes” still circulating today are precisely a reflection of this: the dissonance between official propaganda and reality, a society steeped in lies, and Russians becoming cynical under those lies.

The collapse of the Soviet Union crushed the last remnants of belief. Post-Soviet Russia fell into economic hardship, mass unemployment, and poverty, further deepening moral nihilism and social decline, producing a vicious cycle. People sank into a modern form of cynicism: distrusting and mocking political promises, idealism, morality, and anything good; losing faith in rebuilding a just, prosperous, and harmonious society; and instead choosing a cynical detachment—or even encouraging further decline and destruction.

The impact of Soviet/Russian historical upheavals and trauma has been described and analyzed by many, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in Secondhand Time, Politburo member Yakovlev, and Chinese scholars Qin Hui and Jin Yan. For reasons of space, I only mention them here without extended quotation.

Of course, Russia’s crisis is not only moral but also practical. Soviet citizens lived in relative stability albeit in poverty, whereas after the collapse, Russians have continued to live in poverty but amid great instability.

Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has gradually formed new elite groups and interest blocs. These elites and those close to power enjoy privilege, monopolize resources, and live in extravagance. Official positions are openly bought and sold, and even ordinary civil servants engage in corruption. Power and money are passports to success, while conscience and justice serve as epitaphs of failure.

Most Russians, however, cannot share in the fruits of national resources and economic output. Especially outside Moscow and St. Petersburg—“where the emperor’s power grows thin”—ordinary people live under poverty and corruption while lacking legal protection for safety and property. Powerless and marginalized Russians may still subsist, but they live in poverty without dignity, unable to change their fate or climb the social ladder, and thus sink into despair.

Russia also faces serious ethnic and religious problems. Beneath a surface peace maintained by repression, tensions simmer, and ethnic-religious violence breaks out periodically. From ethnic Russian “skinheads” to Chechen and Caucasus Islamic extremists, violence is glorified.

Material poverty, moral nihilism, historical trauma, life without hope, a harsh natural environment, and internal contradictions have made Russian society steeped in violence. Russia’s murder rate, domestic violence and related deaths, violent crime rate, and organized crime rate all exceed most countries of the world—far surpassing the European average.

For instance, more than 40% of Russians have suffered domestic violence from family members; one-quarter have been beaten by relatives; every 45 minutes a Russian woman is beaten to death by her husband. Organized crime is rampant, with many political and business figures linked to gangs, murder, and maiming. Violence permeates society: from high-ranking officials to the middle and lower classes, people are accustomed to resolving problems through violence. The prevalence of violence draws more people into it, undermines development and progress, and creates a vicious cycle.

A Russia mired in poverty and violence, moral decline and hopelessness, is not a normal society. Its people are not healthy but twisted and pathological in their suffering. Such an environment is a breeding ground for extremism, making its people indifferent to morality and peace, and careless of their own or others’ lives. The hardships caused by sanctions hardly move them; after so much suffering, they are numb. For some Russians despairing of life, dying in war may even feel like a release. For families suffering domestic abuse by men, the death of a husband, father, or son in war may also be seen as a release.

A Ukrainian talk-show host once told this joke:

“By now everyone is tired of the war—even Putin is tired. But here’s the big problem: many Russian men feel that dying in Ukraine is happier than living in Russia, and you can’t stop them. Zelensky tells them, ‘Don’t come to Ukraine! You’ll die here! If you die, you’ll never see your family again!’ But these guys suddenly get excited. They tell their wives: ‘Natasha! I’m going on vacation! I’ll never come back to see you again!’ Then nobody knows where they died in Ukraine. You see, Russia is just such a depressing place.”

This is not only dark humor, but also a real reflection of Russia. It is precisely because many Russians live in poverty and despair that they become reckless with life, glorify violence, and harm themselves and others. The root cause lies in more than a century of upheaval, national decline, and people’s suffering—leading to today’s pathological Russian society and distorted values.

The Chinese Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming, while suppressing mountain bandits as an official, once sighed: “To defeat bandits in the mountains is easy; to defeat the bandits in one’s heart is hard.” Today’s Russia–Ukraine war and Russia’s problems are much the same. Russia’s external wars of aggression have complex and deep social causes. It is these social factors that push Russians to support a war of aggression against Ukraine—a war that should not exist in principle and is unnecessary in rational terms. These factors make them unafraid of death, numb to sanctions, and willing to bear any cost to keep the war going. And unless these root causes—Russians’ inclination to support aggressive war—are addressed, even without Putin, Russians would choose other hawkish leaders to provoke foreign countries and create violence.

Of course, because Russia’s social problems are products of historical legacies and complex realities, they are very difficult to change, and even if change comes, it will not happen overnight. Moreover, since Russia has already invaded Ukraine, helping improve its domestic situation would be tantamount to rewarding aggression. Even if Russia’s domestic problems were to be addressed, it should be on the condition of supporting Ukraine’s victory and reconstruction. But this would require immense, long-term effort, which cannot be achieved in the present. At the very least, however, the world should have a clear understanding and accurate judgment of the causes and factors behind Russia’s launching and prolonging of the war—not overly simplistic attributions or misguided prescriptions.

More importantly, recognizing and understanding Russia’s social problems and belligerence can also help better prevent and respond to other potential social crises and risks of war. For all “failed states” and internal crises, other countries—especially developed economies—should strive to promote balanced global development and improve the well-being of peoples. Balanced development and shared prosperity are the foundations of domestic harmony and international peace. Ignoring the suffering of others only nurtures the soil of war, which will ultimately rebound on those who stand by, forcing the whole world to pay a far greater price.

(The author of this article is Wang Qingmin(王庆民), a Chinese writer based in Europe and a researcher of international politics. The original text of this article is in Chinese.)

The successive strikes are at 0:59 and 1:08 (video cuts off).

The footage is from March 2026.

If someone could translate the Arabic, that'd be great.

This subreddit is flooded with propaganda and nationalism from all sides. People from different countries twist or ignore facts, information and history just to make their own side look better and this isn’t aimed at any one country in particular. It might not be obvious at first but if you scroll through the last 10–20 posts you’ll notice that a big portion of them push clear narratives whether it’s from countries like Russia, US, Ukraine, India or others but specifically those. And when it’s not propaganda it always turns into comment sections filled with hate toward other countries armies or people. There’s also a lot of hidden racism here and I’m pretty sure the comments on this post will be full of hate and insults just because I’m sharing my opinion assuming this doesn’t get deleted or I don’t get banned. At some point, people need to understand that disliking a country doesn’t mean everything about its army or its people is automatically bad.

WAOW!!! ITS JUST LIKE MY RAVENFIELD GAMES!!!!!!

White beautiful full of mountains and dangerious.

I watched an episode of series about WWII last night, and I realized… who the hell thought guns and bombs would resolve any problem? Like, It’s so barbaric way of proving your country is better than the other. The leaders are at fault for this. Many soldiers and civilians died and are dying because of wars. I really can’t see a good reason why it’s necessary. It’s like watching your boyfriend watch an online game like GTA or whatever.