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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

> Anyway -- you can help!

The best way to help them now is to send arms, but that if of course if you can get them through the border.

Belarus knows that they can't trust army drafted from regular men, and that's why the army was sent off to seal the borders, while the special police monsters are let to keep doing their atrocities inside cities.

The West is also unwittingly facilitates this by keeping shutting down attempts to get arms to Belarus from Balkans.

It's now in the news, but Poland, a NATO member, has already shut a third attempt to get arms to the country, despite Warsaw itself being the one initiating this with Belarus opposition.

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you really think having a civil war right around the corner, practically on the other side of the fence, is something any country wants to have? not to mention having an armed rebellion means putin's intervention is guaranteed and then belarus just becomes another federal district.

that's a bad-faith argument, it should instead be:

Do you really want to allow systematic killing of the opposition by current un-elected criminals holding on to power. Putin's intervention is not some kind of "hypothetical future danger or milestone in theoretic escalation" but has been fact since 1998.

Europe isn't going to do anything except sending their thoughts and prayers and direct intervention by the US is unthinkable (for now). Sending support (which includes arms, and mercenaries) is the only way that can protect the civilian population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus%E2%80%93Russia_relatio...

No, starting a civil war is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to protect the civilian population.

that's pretty hyperbolic. it's not "starting a civil war" it's leveling the playing field against those who are already brutalizing the population.

So you give arms to a bunch of people, they kill a bunch of people, and then you hope that the leader that arises from all this blooshed is better than Lukashenko?

Good luck.

All this while still not making it easy for people that don't want to live in that country from actually emigrating to somewhere safe and with a government of their liking. Yeah, the old "Hunger Games" approach for freedom spreading.

context matters a lot.

the Belarusian security forces are not as loyal to the Lukashenko regime as you think. They are all part of the same social fabric, they have mothers, brothers sisters who are among the population. The oppositions successful unmasking of them has been a massive spanner in the strategy of Lukashenko oppression.

What they are missing is being able to defend themselves from Wagner group mercenaries who have absolutely no such ties and couldn't care about who they kill. Sending mercenaries and arms with a mission to take out the Lukashenko regime while fighting the Russians who are infiltrating the security forces would be the only strategy.

Helping in other ways (from the comfort of an arm chair) is possible but it means cracking down on off-shore banking and money laundering (much of it takes place in Europe & the US. Good luck.

That's pretty much how this has been working throughout the history of the human race.

First of all can you provide any credible sources that will back your claims regarding Poland and its attempts to smuggle weapons? This sound like pure lie to me. Second thing: "The best way to help them now is to send arms" - this sounds like Russian provocation. Sending weapon to Belarus will only justify Russian miliary opperations in this country. So either you don't know what are you saying or you are instigator.

I'm talking about an action that an individual can take. Is it enough in the grand scale of things? No. Does it make a positive difference in a day-to-day life for people in Belarus? Yes it does (e.g. knowing where the local meeting is happening, where the thugs are etc.). Can you do more? Always.

Roughly speaking, $1m is enough to feed, and arm a force of a 1000 with small arms only for 1 to 2 months, with men under arms being responsible for their own livelihood beyond basics.

That's a very small amount of time. And without a training, and heavy arms, none will be a good match even against Belarusian standing army.

The challenge is to use up money in the shortest, and most impactful way possible. The longer men stay in the field doing nothing, the more money is burned on canned food, and toilet paper rather than diminishing enemy fighting power.

Yes, individuals can arm a significant amount of volunteers, and even keep inflicting the damage for a few weeks. A battalion of complete war rookies can do things if it strikes first, attacks softer targets other than standing military, and focus on high cost/opportunity operations like enemy's command chain, and political leadership.

But in the larger scheme of things, even $1m is a pocket change on the scale of nation states, and completely pales to what a military of even smallest European states can do both force, and material wise.

Yes, get your politicians involved, get your state involved. Even a third grade caucus can easily dish out 8 digit sums in US without even blinking.

Two can play this game. Look at Podnistria or Donbas.

Belarus split between a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 2.0 and a Totally-Not-Russian-Puppet-State, with several thousand young men's graves in between, isn't any better than Belarus today.

One side will have the definite firepower advantage, enough to deal with other be it puppet, not puppet or whatever.

You choose what this side will be.

Russians have nothing in their coffers they can spare for a puppet project when there will be a battle hardened army a day away from Moscow.

It's the best way for NATO to put Russia on defensive. A solid wall of steel from Baltic to Azov to seal it shut from Europe.

"It's the best way for NATO to put Russia on defensive. A solid wall of steel from Baltic to Azov to seal it shut from Europe."

Can you see the problem with NATO?

European countries are unlikely to finance the effort, our armies are for the most part underinvested and their deployment capacity very limited.

France has some capabilities, but it is also bogged down elsewhere (Sahara), because the Islamist threat is more acute for Paris than whatever Russia does.

USA and UK have two decades of nation building behind them and whatever fighting spirit is left, is reserved for a possible confrontation with China. Also, both of them are naval powers, while Belarus is a landlocked country. Not to say that they are unable to fight on land, but it is a disadvantage for them.

If you like The Lord of the Rings, we are sort-of similar to Gondor just prior to the war. Not enough power and will to hold Mordor in a siege.

The good news is that Russia is fairly strained and it is not a full Mordor either. More like a group of orc chieftains from the Misty Mountains.

I very much see this very problem with NATO.

It's exactly because of this NATO's best move is to commit to one defence line.

Even if depleted, and under invested. The power of EU NATO members combined will be more than enough in this scenario to hold a line with a few choke points in between plains, and impassable forests.

IDK. "Holding the line" scenarios in last 100 years generally ended up badly for the defenders: expensive and ineffective. Modern wars are all about movement, maneuver and sudden concentration of power in a spot chosen by the attacker.

If the recent Nagorno Karabakh war is of any use as an example, Russians and Russian-trained officers were unable to hold their positions against killer drones. Drones are cheap and their destruction in combat does not fuel anti-war sentiments at home, unlike a stream of coffins draped in flags.

But given that Russians are not stupid, they are probably working on some anti-drone strategy as well.

Saying this, it's not a literal line of course, but a meaningful strategic objective, and rough position for offensive staging.

Yes, yes, yes. Long lines on warfare are an invitation for a breakthrough by a more concentrated force, which is what every Russian military textbook tells.

The Anti-Drone strategy in Nagorno Karabakh would have been airstrikes. But the rules of engagement were such that this was not doable.

Beyond that, actual Russia support was very limited as punishment for Armenia's reorientation. If this was a full-scale war then the skies would have been full of Su-35s swatting out the TB2s and killing drone operators.

The key to small drone efficiency is that they don't need big airfields which can be bombed.

Instead the attacking force will be hard pressed finding hundred separate drone teams hiding in bushes, and forests on the frontline, while flying over enemy AA themselves.

There will be no enemy AA. There will be no enemy air force. You do not understand the dynamics of this conflict. Ukrainian AA is entirely inadequate and it's airforce is a joke to Russia.

Beyond that, these drones are satellite-guided. You can't control them from bushes and forests. The Bayraktar TB2 that did the vast majority of the damage in Azerbaijan needs to take-off from an actual airfield, too.

What you might be referring to are loitering munitions. Their issue is that they have pretty dumb guidance, so all they are good at is going to predetermined GPS coordinate or homing on radar. The solution is to overrun their positions and use your airforce to shoot them down if they do take-off. They are very slow. It can be expensive to shoot them down but you only have to do so until you overrun their 60km or so range, and for the things in the danger zone you only have to use mobile assets that cannot be targeted via GPS.

In small numbers and without actual drones to help with jamming these loitering munitions are also quite vulnerable to AAA.

There are some long-range loitering munitions, like the IAI Harop. However they can only do radar-seeking missions without a base station and actually do need a base. Additionally munitions like the Harop have a very large radar cross section from anything but the frontal aspect and are thus very vulnerable to detection by modern aircraft radar.

TB2 on sale has no satellite link.

TB2 Video is line of sight gigahertz link. Control, and telemetry UHF which can get to 100km.

TB2 can launch from improvised strips with substantial payloads.

A mobile catapult launch adapter was once advertised

Some TB2 in Azerbaijan were operated by Turkey essentially, but I take your point.

TB2 may be able to launch from improvised positions. But it cannot land and resupply there. The weak point still exists.

The elephant in the room is also that the TB2s will get shot down by the Russian airforce. In Azerbaijan this did not happen because Turkey was willing to protect Azerbaijani airspace and the Armenian airforce is weak. In Ukraine the roles are reversed.

Turning Belarus into Yugoslavia is not going to improve the situation.

> Warsaw being the one initiating this with Belarus opposition.

> Turning Belarus into Yugoslavia is not going to improve the situation.

It will.

It's only because of massive amount of guns pointed at Belgrade, and the previous civil war, you don't have Slobodan Milosevic still smiling on you from TV now.

Arming Bosnians did more to crack the genocidal regime than any NATO bombing. This is the fact.

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