Atatator

standing at the doorstep of their ancient capital

Moscow was neither "ancient capital" nor current capital of Russia in 1812.

usually, capturing the enemies capital equals victory and Napoleon did capture Moscow.

Too bad the capital was Saint Petersburg at that time.

As my scientific advisor used to say: "Markov has nothing to lose but his chains!"

"The cake is a lie"

Exactly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy

Мехмат отзывает 500 000 своих выпускников. Причина отзыва: во втором томе Фихтенгольца на странице 187 в формуле XVIII.56 отсутствует нормирующий оператор.

I wonder - when was the last time you were in Russia to speak so decisively about the country and Russians?

Hmm Military Watch Magazine places China into "TIER ONE MILITARY POWERS" list https://militarywatchmagazine.com/forceapp/countries/

Do you have any source saying that China's military is not as strong as it appears to be?

Where do people from NY go to?

Where this myth about "shipping gas across Siberia is impossible" comes from? Projects like Yamal LNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamal_LNG are already operational. On top of that Chinese gas consumers are not dramatically further away than consumers in western Europe - it's only matter of 2-3 years to build a pipeline to connect them.

Can you please elaborate more about "in terms of civil liberties and all that stuff Russia is far behind"? Have you ever been to Russia?

I wonder, why e.g. S-400 then is so popular. Even Turkey, a NATO member purchases them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system#Turkey

Why India has signed an agreement to produce over half a million AK-203 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-a... ?

Even if we take nominal GDP, Russian GDP is roughly 17% higher than Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

If we take GDP by PPP, then it's more than twice that of Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Just a couple more comments/questions:

"US is a lot closer to Germany than Russia" - do you think that's natural, or more due to US lobby organisations such as Atlantik-Brücke ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantik-Br%C3%BCcke ) and other agents of influence?

"NATO that dabbled" - it feels like it would be more appropriate to say "US that dabbed". It was Victoria Nuland who was handing out cookies to "protesters" (and a lot of other shenanigans involving Hunter Biden, Westinghouse, selling junk vessels which point to that).

Can you please elaborate more regarding "I would prefer the US as a partner compared to Russia"? Shipping liquified gas with tankers from a place several thousand kilometers away seems like less eco-friendly alternative, to say at least.

Quite right!

Koo!