Yeah for real it’s really hard to wrap my mind around what Russians, especially those in Moscow, must be thinking. Blackrock was just the closest thing to an American version of Wagner I could think of, but it actuly fits kind of well. It’s 2014, the US is using Blackrock in Iraq, the leader is posting on social media about how the Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sucks, he then eventually posts that there are no WMDs and Bush got tricked into thinking that by the military. So our Blackrock guy puts all his troops on a boat, lands in Jacksonville or something, takes the city over, then marches to DC with little to no resistance, but kills US military personnel along the way. Bush does a scared prime time address then hops on airforce one and fucks off from DC. The Canadian prime minister brokers some agreement with the Blackrock guy, and the battle for DC is averted. Bush says nothing. It feels like some wild alternative fiction novel when I write it out, but Russians fucking lived it.

And your point on how regular people are likely to respond is really good. People freak out about thunderstorms where I am. We didn’t have toilet paper during the early weeks of the pandemic. What does a 25k strong army marching to your basically defenseless city look like? Especially with basically no warning, shit started popping off on a Friday night, by Saturday morning the seige is coming.

One thing that is different, and that makes it even harder to put myself in their shoes, is Russians understand and have tolerated a good level of corruption most of their lives. Their cynical to a depressing degree. So maybe all of this wouldn’t be as shocking to them as it would be to us. But that doesn’t mean they were ready for tank battles in their neighborhood. From what I understand Moscow is basically a modern city, full of educated knowledge workers, bureaucrats, and the like, a lot like DC. It’s really hard to think about how they are processing all of this.