| > You don't have a realistic understanding of the situation. Rail links are limited, I do have a realistic understanding of the situation, see for example this article from back in 1973, Le Transsibérien [1], published in the French Revue Défense Nationale. It's basically a French lieutenant-colonel who took the Trans-Siberian Railway and who came back with some lived experience and with some statistics. Back then the Trans-Siberian alone was responsible for 9% of the internal rail traffic from the entire world, I'm pretty sure that 50 years later and with a doubling of the rail connection between European Russian and the Far-East Russia the stats are pretty much the same, if not better. Like I said, I know that rail is a little more expensive compared to sea transport, but nothing that can't be dealt with given the context of a world war. > why not point upwards and get back Siberia Not every big country on this planet has the same natural resources-focused imperialist views like the Western countries have. Forgot to mention about the Trans-Siberian, supposedly the Soviets built the 2-lane railway bridges at some distance one from the other, meaning one lane from the other lane, so that an aerial bomb attack taking out one of those railway bridges wouldn't have taken out both lanes at the same time. It's small things like that demonstrate the strategic long-term thinking of some societies. [1] https://www.defnat.com/e-RDN/vue-article.php?carticle=1454&c... Later edit: Sorry, meant as a reply for the above poster, HN should implement a "Delete" option sooner rather than later... |