Plus c'est la Même Chose
Russia’s Peter the Great, 1672 - 1725, had a great idea: don’t build one really good naval warship, like the stupid English and French do; build a lot of shitty ships and overwhelm the enemy. “After all, we got millions of lazy peasants lounging around whose lives don’t matter, so it’s a win-win, right?” Russia used the same thinking during the Napoleonic Wars and, in WW II, the USSR lost more soldiers than any other nation - some 6.7 million men by most estimates. Incredibly, in the late 20th Century, Soviet tank warfare still followed Peter’s lead building shitty tanks to overwhelm the enemy. By contrast, the Americans had rangefinders, computers, night vision devices, tank reclamation vehicles, the works. When Shakespeare mentions men being food for battle in Henry IV, he must have had the Kremlin in mind. Well, it’s 2023 and you’re not going to believe what Mother Russia’s doing in Eastern Ukraine. Here it is.