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> You'd be surprised to see how much old industrial machinery is still being used around the world, even in other developed countries. Machines like these are a

• hkpack 3y ago
  Although contrary to the popular believe, a lot of equipment in Ukraine is of the latest generation. For example, a lot of farmers use the latest John Deere tractors. The same is for metallurgy - it was consistently upgraded through the years and not outdated in any way.
• elzbardico 3y ago
  Ukraine is piss poor compared to Russia. For years Russia provided Ukraine with underpriced gas while Ukraine’s export prices increased rapidly, but due to the dysfunctional governments they had, they never were able to take advantage of that. Ukraine historically was an agrarian economy that was industrialized with the usual Soviet brutality, accompanied by agriculture collectivization and the usual mass repression. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it inherited a relatively good infrastructure and capital stocks, especially in energy, but it mostly failed to maintain that. Add to that the fact that since 1992, there was only one year when Ukraine had a balanced budget. There was a lot of growth in the aughts due to the high price of metallurgical during this decade, but Ukraine was mostly taking advantage of their existing industrial infrastructure inherited from the Soviets and failed to diversify and sophisticate their economy. Besides, if the idea is to invade the country to incorporate some separatist regions, it doesn't make sense to destroy its economic basis and end up with a huge refugee problem and a completely deserted land you just conquered. This is basically propaganda for gullible Americans that never traveled to Eastern Europe.
  • rewmie 3y ago
    > Ukraine is piss poor compared to Russia. I fail to see the relevance of that. Sounds like cheap propaganda. My point was clear: when Russia started it's invasion of Ukraine, one of the first things they did was to pillage the industrial areas of the regions they controlled to take away industrial equipment, including farm vehicles. HN had a discussion on how John Deere kill switches were rendering Russia's pillaging useless as the stolen tractors were being remotely disabled once they were moved into Russia. Industrial equipment, even old one, is often used extensively in spite of existing latest and greatest offers.
  • _kbh_ 3y ago
    > Ukraine is piss poor compared to Russia. If this is true for all of Russia why do they keep stealing toilets?.
    • type0 3y ago
      Siberian forest dwellers that get drafted are extremely poor, everything from civilization is a luxury to them
  • type0 3y ago
    > Ukraine is piss poor compared to Russia. Yes comrade, Russia is bigger and has a lot of oligarchs so off course there's much more money there, but average citizens are piss poor. Russian elites has been robbing Ukraine for three decades with their Kremlin buddy oligarchs like Medvedchuk, and not just Ukrainian oligarchs a lot of Russian ones were quite cozy there even after 2014. They robbed eastern part of Ukraine after ceasing control over the territory. It proved to be difficult to rob whole of Ukraine with just the dirty oligarchs, so they proceeded with full scale invasion in 2022.
  • worklaptopacct 3y ago
    It amazes me how people are incapable of multi-dimensional thinking: you can pick a side without claiming that one of them is pure good and the other is pure evil. But we are also probably talking about the kind of people whose only cultural references are superhero movies and Harry Potter.