To my Western mind, it seems similarly crazy. One thing I took away from a recent Econtalk episode[0] was that the minds of the Russians are not our minds. I d

To my Western mind, it seems similarly crazy. One thing I took away from a recent Econtalk episode[0] was that the minds of the Russians are not our minds. I didn't grow up in a post/soviet state. I didn't have to deal with that kleptocracy. I am not the commander of thousands of nuclear warheads. My mind is not their mind. One good and easy vector that I have is the twitter account of the 'Tires Guy' that was popular briefly in the early part of the war [1]. Trent's continuing insights to the conflict, mostly from a logistics perspective, have been good for me to understand the war and the motivations behind the decisions. He brings in a lot of conflicting voices, history, and other media too. He is open about the fact that he can only see white propaganda and tries to balance that out when the data comes in. Trent's insights on the Syrian conflict, unfortunately, seem to indicate that the Russians are likely to 'lose' the war, but just go on fighting it anyway (again, their mind is not my mind). I'd give the guy a follow if you'd like to stay up to date on the conflict. It may take a week or more to grok though, so be prepared to be patient. [0] https://www.econtalk.org/chris-blattman-on-why-we-fight/ https://www.econtalk.org/chris-blattman-on-why-we-fight/ [1] https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko