- cross-posted to:
- spaceflight@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- spaceflight@sh.itjust.works
The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
Russia has been racing to the Moon's south pole against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on there next week.
No country has ever landed on the south pole before, although both the US and China have landed softly on the Moon's surface.
No report on whether or not Russia was attempting to use repurposed anti-ship missiles like the ones they use to attack schools and hospitals here on Earth.
Ok, thanks for the clarification! Glad everyone is on the same page that this whole subthread is just slinging insults at each other. Sometimes that's what happens on the internet.
Could I suggest though, when you have time, that you try to learn more about the dissolution of the Soviet Union? Specifically check out stats like life expectancy, maternal mortality, average calories per day, stuff like that. You might find some interesting changes in about 1993. Learning more about the world is always good, you know?
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm from an Eastern Bloc country and have witnessed the changes first-hand.
Ok, but as we say in the sciences "anecdotes are not data"! What could it hurt to look at a couple of graphs? Also, are you old enough to have been at least a teenager in 1993? Real boomer hours over here, my god! (I'm totally joking, it's cool that there are sometimes people in their 40s and up on the internet)
You know what else isn't data? Insults. Which is the only thing anyone has posted in support of their opposition to what I said. Oh, and "spend your time looking up evidence for my point of view"? Also not data. So given that my much-ridiculed Guardian article is more than you lot have managed to come up with combined, I'd say it's more than good enough for this little corner of the internet.
Alrighty! If you'd rather, you could look for evidence that your point of view is correct. You could try and find evidence that current-day Russia and the Soviet Union are basically the same. It would be interesting to see what you find in trying to back up that view. But I don't know your life, you probably have important day-to-day things to deal with that don't give you much extra time to scour the internet for historical documents.
I don't need to scour the internet for historical documents, I just have to watch the news. Have you been keeping up with the news? Did you know that Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent it from switching allegiance to the West? Which is exactly what the USSR did to Czechoslovakia in 1968. Russia has fake elections and a de-facto dictator holding power for decades, just like the USSR did back in the good old days. It has strict censorship and state-controlled media brainwashing its population with bullshit. And its soldiers are still totally clueless and unprepared. I'm sure you noticed what a shambles the beginning of the invasion into Ukraine was, with some fresh recruits not even being told they were being marched straight to the front lines. We had a contingent of Russian troops in this country during the Cold War too. They got trucked here in the middle of the night and spent their time holed up in their Russian base in the middle of the woods with Russian signposts and a Russian commanding officer and didn't even know they weren't in Russia anymore. Gotta keep the cannon fodder in the dark about where they are and what they're doing, otherwise they might start asking questions, you know? I hate to break it to you, but Russia is still the same shithole and still acts in the same shitty way toward both its neighbors and its own citizens and troops. I'm sure you can comb the statistics and find some numbers that are different, but in the ways that actually matter, Russia hasn't changed one bit in a century.
I live in america, so keeping up with the news here (at least about the war in Ukraine) means reading an article about how Russia is hopelessly inept one day, and then two weeks later reading an article about how Russia is too prepared. The news, at least here in america, is not a great source of information, is what I'm saying.
I gotta say, some of the rest of your comment sounds fake as fuck too. Russian officers put up fake Russian signposts to trick recruits into thinking they're still in Russia? That's a wild claim, and one I'm going to spend some time looking into today. Who knows, maybe it's really true? If so, watch your inbox, you'll get a nice comment from me to which you may reply with the meanest, nastiest "I told you so" you can muster.
Those articles aren't contradictory. One is about static defenses, such as minefields, trenches, barricades, and anti-tank obstacles, which the Russians have had a long time to build, while the other is about a lack of manpower reserves to reinforce the front if/when needed.
No, not fake Russian signposts. Just signposts in Russian. For the Russian troops that didn't speak any other language than Russian. Signposts in the base pointing to different parts of the base and such. Every bit of text in that base was in Russian because it was staffed entirely by Russians.
Oh. Well that's a very different claim. I would expect a base full of Russian soldiers to have signage in Russian, just like I would expect a base full of american soldiers to have signage in english. That doesn't sound like the USSR tricking its soldiers, that sounds like the USSR trying to make it so soldiers aren't asking "where do I go" seventeen million times a day.
The point is the soldiers weren't told they were going to a different country and they were kept in a base built to look exactly like bases in Russia in the middle of the woods so that they didn't find out. That's been the Russian military doctrine for ever. The less the cannon fodder knows, the better.
Hell, when the last of the occupation forces left the country in 1991, they were very surprised there weren't throngs of people in the streets throwing flowers at them as thanks for their valuable service. Like... they didn't even realize they were reviled occupiers, they were completely clueless about what their military was doing and their role in it. It was a genuine "are we the baddies" moment.
It still doesn't sound specifically "Russian" to me that the low-level troops don't have a ton of information. I think that's just how militaries work? I do find it hard to believe that it's possible to trick soldiers into thinking they're in a different country than they actually are, at least for any amount of time. I've been googling various things for like half an hour now and I'm just literally not finding anything that suggests Soviets ever tricked their soldiers into believing they were somewhere they weren't. Can you give me something, anything to go on here?
By the way, I did find this article by googling "occupation forces 1991" and ignoring all the stuff about the us occupying Iraq. I had no idea that the USSR had so many troops all over Europe! Very interesting. For what it's worth, that article says that when the Soviets pulled out of Czechoslovakia, instead of rotten fruit and curses as they expected, they instead got flowers and warm words of farewell. There's a picture that seems to back this up, and a link to an article in Russian that I very much cannot read because I'm an idiot american.
But anyway, I have to get off the internet and actually live my life. If you give me some sources to look at about Soviets tricking their soldiers, I'll gladly take a look. Otherwise, I think I've learned about as much Soviet history as I'm going to today. Have a good day!
I'm given to understand that Western militaries actually explain to their soldiers where they're going and why. It helps things run smoothly for obvious reasons. The Russians do the opposite because to them, independent and informed thinking is a threat. As for sources, I have none. You're getting a second-hand account of the recollections of eyewitnesses. I don't even remember where I originally read them.
You do realize Russia Beyond is a propaganda mouthpiece like basically every other state-run media outlet in Russia, right? Of course they'll say we were sorry to see their soldiers go and we miss them very much to this day.
This part is definitely not true.
Damn. Ah well, nevertheless.
No, I didn't know that. I've never heard of them before today. I will point out that on their website they say "Russia Beyond falls under the umbrella of ANO TV-Novosti, an autonomous nonprofit organization." Of course, seeing how "autonomous nonprofit organizations" report on the news here in america, I know better to just blindly trust that they're autonomous. I'll put Russia Beyond into the same mental category as Radio Free Asia and the like, at least provisionally, until I learn more one way or the other.