NATO can’t field an actual war against Russia, NATO countries don’t have the industrial capacity to do so. NATO has big scary tools, but not many of them, and in a protracted war where the industrial power wins Russia would win out. It would be very bloody, long, and NATO would lose, so it’s unlikely that there will be all-out war.

The war has gone on for 3+ years, and it still has two participant nations, with “Ukraine’s allies and friends standing with it” nowhere in sight. No western soldiers dying, but Ukrainian soldiers dying, - it’s a demonstration of values too.

Other than that any real war treats fit men as a resource. Such a flight will happen in any country at war with conscription, when its population knows what war is.

A functional military doesn’t do superman shit, it doesn’t have irreplaceable heroes and it doesn’t use smarts. It’s a pipeline. Nobody wants to be fed to it if they can avoid that.

Most of all - those Europeans cheering how they “stand with Ukraine”. But they haven’t been taught to keep their fucking mouth shut about standing with anyone if they are writing comments and that someone is under bombs.

So I thought before 2020 that western values are “if we have the same idea of good, we die for you, you die for us”, even if I wasn’t sure if anyone really shares that, I thought the western public kinda remembers something of that.

Then war in Artsakh happened, and I understood all about western values, western ability to keep their word they chose to give, western honor and what will happen with all that. Just all thieves and cowards, who seem civilized by inertia from robbing half the world. The economic and demographic dynamics show that this won’t happen again.

Well, not only western, but in general, it turned out that for most Russians alliances matter nothing if the other side is some people who “disrespect them” - how nice, yes, so if I don’t like how a Russian talks, I have the right to not pay them for work or deny them, say, a floating jacket when they are drowning … ah, oops, it’s different, “too much honor for some kebab makers” - that was said by a person for all supposedly good in Russia, against Putin and such, about alliance obligations. These people don’t even understand that fulfilling obligations and being decent people is all about their own honor, and if something is “too much honor” for someone, you shouldn’t give your word.

So - for Ukrainians it was naturally easier to believe in some “western values” because the west was seemingly helping them, and saying many nice things.

But I think now they are done with that.

We’ll have a world where all the politics will function after Conrad von Wallenstein’s army, because to restore understanding of honor you should first impress with all the weight upon humanity, in practice and thoroughly, what role honor fulfills.

No model is absolutely precise, and no pyramid of modelling to avoid full cost will rid you of need for real feedback. That works for everything in history.

Why die for western values when you can just cross the border and have them? Why they didn’t cross the border to Belarus?

Turns out they never wanted to. They were just conscripted under threat of execution.