Explosions in Kiev and Kharkiv now [CNN] | Hacker News Reader

Explosions in Kiev and Kharkiv now [CNN]

cnn.com

133 pointsAlexeyBrin67 comments

Crossposting from other active thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449831): This is an unmitigated tragedy. There are reports of explosions even in the capital, Kyiv. I used to work in the region and Ukrainians are some of the brightest, hardest working, and passionate people (at least when it comes to advocating for democracy from the people I met in Kyiv) I've gotten to know. A freelance correspondent on twitter I follow posted a thread on charities to donate to for those so inclined (disclosure, I haven't done due diligence on them): https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1496486993848643584

I should make it clear, that these are not just any random nazi idiots which we could find existing in any country, but that this logo and the military division are official and endorsed part of the forces there.

It does appear that they recently removed the sunwheel part from the logo, but the wolfsangel is still there. How much of it is just image management vs actually booting the nazis is better answered by someone else.

This is such a tragedy. Two close countries with shared histories are being put to war and many innocents will die because of a crazed maniac who has been sitting on his chair for 20 years and who has delusions of grandeur.

This war is about more than just Putin.

Research: George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, John Mearsheimer, Peter Hitchens, Noam Chomsky (more of an ideologue), etc. on this issue. You can start on YouTube OR read their books, I guess.

Youtube is great for fixing a chair or a wheel but it is a blazing trash fire for anything involving politics.

Chomsky is the very last person I'd go to for any "research", YouTube or not. His relationship with facts is practically non-existent. "USA Bad" and whatever facts need to be cherry-picked, massaged, or ignored, whatever history needs to be rewritten, whatever motives need to be speculated about to support that position is fair game as far as he is concerned. He regularly cites sources while stating something completely different than what they say and his tone frequently suggests this is not even a consideration of fact, but merely an exercise in interpretation as one might treat a work of fiction or artistic work.

Fun exercise for your research, do a search on "Chomsky genocide denial"

OK. Then, try listening to some of the other guys?

Yes, Chomsky is an ideologue. I disagree with him on many issues.

More importantly, it is surprising that you're just attacking him in general rather than specifically on what he said with regards to Russia/Ukraine. His thoughts on the matter seem perfectly reasonable to me.

And, can you please point me to where he denied genocides? I'd love to know. Like I said though, I don't worship him. He's wrong on many issues, IMO.

Chomsky literally said that the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was US/NATO's fault. He's not an ideologue, he's just an old asshat way too many naive leftists put on a pedestal. Nothing positive about the west can get into his head.

Chomsky was wrong on aspects of the Khmer Rouge in the 70s due to lack of information, but he absolutely does not deny it as genocide.

I know there were issues about the genocides in the Balkans in the 1990s. But, in that case, he wasn't saying that there weren't massacres taking place -- he was saying that the US was selectively engaging for geopolitical reasons, not humanitarian ones.

He did say that, ignoring the fact that the real reason for this change was the election of Bill Clinton, and he also repeatedly, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, denied that Omarska was a concentration camp, he uses mocking language suggesting things like "because there's barbed wire and some people were thin people call it Auschwitz" (as it, in fact, was). He's been called on repeatedly to correct his previous statements and only doubles down.

I listened to all of these and didn't hear anything concerning: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chomsky+yugosla...

Do you have a source for this?

Exactly, I keep trying to make people watch a talk from John Mearsheimer [1] from 2015 right after Crimea was invaded and I've been only met with aggressive retorts for a week, like I'm some kind of Russian government shill...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

It's about controlling the supply of oil and gas to Europe. Putin didn't get his pipeline. This is the unfortunate alternative.

No. He was about to get Nord Stream 2 through, which doens't run through Ukraine, and now he got it shut down.

Temporary pause in licensing from Germany not 'shut down'. Germany has no choice but to buy Russian gas where else are they going to get energy from to run their huge GDP country

Gas makes up 10 percent of energy usage. More of a concern for heating and industries requiring it. But they can start investing in retrofitting and other sources now.

Too bad Germany decided to shut down its nuclear plants.

See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-25/what-t...

This needs to be repeated at every opportunity. I believe history will ultimately judge this as Merkel's greatest failure, and I say that as a fan of her's.

Ironically, Russia was pretty comfortably selling oil and gas until Putin decided he wanted to destroy his country's industry. I don't think anyone hates the Russian people as much as he does.

This is going to be the strongest push to get Europe of Russia's gas ever seen.

Winter is 2/3rds over.

If it's only about oil - this is incredibly short sighted.

As others have mentioned - Nord Stream 2 circumvented Ukraine. All was well for oil. This blows that up in his face.

The ruble is down ~14% since this started. MOEX is down ~20% on top of that. Corporate debt yields are up from ~1% to ~8%.

This has erased almost 40% of Russia's private wealth in the span of a month.

For anyone thinking - BUT THE PRICE OF OIL IS GOING UP!!1!

Not Russian Oil - it's going down: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/2/22/russian-oil-sell...

> This has erased almost 40% of Russia's private wealth in the span of a month.

Just wait until Putin announces the pívot to the metaverse.

This is why Russia has been quietly funding all the anti-nuclear movements in the west. ...to keep the west addicted to his oil and gas.

Here's a wide view livestream over Kharkiv, retweeted by Jeffrey Lewis (for your "is this credible?" filter),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ZbVufqW3s

https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/14966928962164572...

edit: Also verified by the NYT -- their screenshot looks identical to the video source above:

>"The Times’s Visual Investigations team verified the location of the explosions, which were captured on a webcam just outside Kharkhiv."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/23/world/russia-ukraine

Bots are spamming the live steam chat with slurs in an attempt to get it taken down.

The Metaculus betting market for "Russian Troops in Kyiv in 2022" has spiked to 85% within the past hour: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9459/russian-troops-in-k...

Shows how useless the prediction markets are if they’re integrating information this late.

Well, there was a question mark as to whether the invasion will just be limited to Donbas.

Agreed but the Russians have known for a long time what they’re planning. The betting market is now looking backwards.

I agree, but the real plans are probably kept to a very small inner circle who are expected not to go around betting with that knowledge. It's why the stock market has been slow to react, too.

I haven't really cared about them since they predicted a huge win for Hillary, right up on the night of the election.

One of the very first questions the site ran. It's a totally different platform and community in 2022.

The platform indicated an invasion before other prediction markets and before the vast majority of commentators. It's not just now coming around.

As a customer of thingsboard.io I am worried for the people we've worked with there. They are good people and don't deserve this in any way.

For weeks now we've been hearing from Moscow that Russian troops massing around Ukraine were just conducting a military exercise, that there were no plans to invade, and that any reports to the contrary were mere propaganda and hysteria.

What a coincidence that Russia's biggest deployment of troops since the Cold War just happened to come immediately before an actual invasion of Ukraine.

Now where are all those who kept claiming this was just an exercise and not a preparation for an invasion?

You missed a step. What a coincidence that Russia's biggest deployment of troops since the Cold War just happened to come immediately before the Russia-controlled-but-not-admitted occupied sections of Ukraine asked for military help.

And what a coincidence that all those troops just happened to be perfectly situated to jump into action in response to the request.

One Russian independent new group is claiming that the metadata for Putin's latest justification speech shows that it was recorded 2 days ago.

https://twitter.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1496705752114900993

It's similar to all news media where alternative news stories are prepared beforehand and are kept hidden until one of them gets published as soon as possible when events unravel.

Hm, where did that other thread go?

Became too partisan/political People forget this is not twitter

Anyway Ukraine will be broke for a long time after this, there's no jobs during a war except fighting we can help there is tons of developers there who will be jobless probably tomorrow

+1 Ukraine was already hemorrhaging money because of decreased flights, decreased FDI, investments being pulled out, higher borrowing costs and now the economy is going to be crushed. Finding ways to hire Ukrainians or otherwise invest in the country is probably a pretty meaningful thing to do in the near term

Russia and America turned Ukraine into a "if we can't have, burn it to the ground" situation.

I am for keeping Ukraine as a neutral buffer separating Russia and the US.

NATO proposed Ukrainian and Georgian membership of NATO in 2005-2008, in the clear knowledge that this would destabilize the situation.

France, Germany, and others were against this. The proposal began the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs

We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.

> I am for keeping Ukraine as a neutral buffer separating Russia and the US.

What does Ukraine want?

Contrary to popular belief, that is only a small consideration in geostrategic security politics.

You may think that this is a 'smart' or 'moral' question. But, it really isn't.

What did Austria want?

To be left alone so that it doesn't suffer casualties.

That's what Ukraine wanted, but we pushed them into non-neutrality and anti-Russia.

Biden said that US is not going to war, but in fact there are many ways to slow down the Russians. You could have a voluntary army from western countries geared with weapons and supplies, like during the Spanish civil war in 1936 or eastern Ukraine since 2014. This will probably not save eastern Ukraine, but better than doing nothing.

Or, this could turn Ukraine into another Syria.

News like these are huge enough to feature on HN, but at the same time I understand why PG always tried to mitigate this. Here you have a lot of people who are most likely technically smart in their fields, but a substantial fraction of the comments seem completely detached.

> atlgator says this is b/c Putin didn't get his gas pipeline, completely reversing the causality of why the pipeline was put on hold yesterday.

> warner_of_doom suggesting us to go read why this is more than Putin and to go into the Chomsky et al hole of crazyness.

> ComradePhil making this about why CNN is a propaganda war machine so we should watch Chomsky again

Etc.

As I have said, Chomsky is an ideologue. But, I listen to his views nonetheless.

If you prefer, you can read some of the more anti-Russia scholars I cited, like Peter Zeihand: https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/1495884492480913409/p...

Let's be honest about Ukraine.

Nobody cared when Russia put military there last year. Then after Afghanistan disaster in the summer he doubled the amount of military, and still nothing happened in response. It's a highly corrupt country where opposition is in prison, and various foreign leaders launder money there. There is no appetite for investing in Ukraine, meaning multi-billions into real air defences and training military to use it instead we gave some pocket change and wished them the best while using their banks and oil companies as personal ATM.

Meanwhile, once again, soon after the Iraq debacle: here we are getting dragged into another "war for democracy".

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