How Russia Took over the Internet in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

How Russia Took over the Internet in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine

datacenterdynamics.com

220 pointsrntn131 comments

Is anyone else completely shocked that our Ukrainian friends seem to have stable high speed internet?

I have two friends there, and I've been talking to about a dozen others. Not one of them have disappeared, or said "My internet might be spotty; there's a war here after all."

I don't know how long it can last, but this feels like a modern miracle. Who are the unsung heroes keeping the internet up? There must be some sysadmins somewhere that are really taking care of business, even though tanks are almost literally rolling down their street.

My Ukrainian colleagues were actually back to work yesterday. It's surreal how things can be so normal and yet so different.

I noticed that too! In livestreams on tiktok, air raid sirens are going off 24/7, explosions aren't unheard of, and yet the cities seem... normal? The streets are full of cars, and if not for the sirens, it would seem to be just another day at the office.

WW2, Vietnam, and Iraq apparently biased our understanding of what a war is like.

I told my Ukrainian buddy that as long as he doesn't get drafted, he'll be okay, and to stay put. I thought that every combatant was going to become either unalive or a prisoner.

Their leader is a badass. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/t1pr8... I told my friend, "If I were him, I'd be scared shitless." His response appears to be showing me that I'm empirically a lot more cowardly than I care to admit.

They're managing to hold. Against Russia! Ukraine has internet, water, food, and their air force is intact. It's just incredible.

Hats off to everyone in (or near) Ukraine who are resisting.

It was the same during those other conflicts

People aren’t just huddled in a subway station for 5 years

Everyone has stuff to do, and react when necessary

The streets of Iraq were full of cars during the invasion and subsequent occupation, which caused a lot of incidents when skittish coalition forces shot at them for driving suspiciously, especially near checkpoints. https://www.channel4.com/news/iraq-war-files-death-at-checkp...

WW2 and Vietnam featured absolutely huge levels of mass area bombing that cannot be achieved now. The entire Russian air force is only about 1,000 aircraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_Air_For... ; difficult to get figures for the buildup, but this https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-air-force-is-joining... suggests that a few hundred are within range of Ukraine (makes sense, they're not going to leave the rest of the country undefended)

By comparison in WW2:

> On the morning of March 18, 1,329 bombers and 733 fighters of the US Eighth Air Force formed up over England and set a course for northern Germany. The target for 1,221 of the bombers was Berlin

> More than half of the bombers, 714 planes, sustained damage from German anti-aircraft fire. 16 suffered hits so severe that they had to crash land behind Soviet lines. In total, 24 bombers and six fighters were lost on the mission. 178 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured in the raid. The German Luftwaffe lost just three pilots.

Also, it's like day 3 of the war, there simply hasn't been time for attrition against civilian vehicles and fuel supplies to empty the streets.

That and possibly the Western intelligence/military has been training and providing hardware to the Ukrainians to set up redundancy in their network. The threat of invasion has been there since 2014.

Which made me wonder whether an open-source kit to create an inexpensive 4G connection tower with an ethernet plug at the other end exists? Such a project would be _invaluable_ in areas hit by war or other disasters in the modern age of information. I'm thinking something as cheap as possible with an open-source firmware that can be flashed onto cheap hardware such as a Raspberry Pi: build it, flash it, plug it in. Is anybody working on this already?

https://bellard.org/lte/

That's not open source, and probably not inexpensive either.

Most probably considerably less expensive than any other commercial option, though. And, as opposed to other commercial solutions - it runs on a PC with a SDR, and nothing else is needed.

There's OpenBTS, but it is GSM only afaik.

I heard a rumor that Russia cannot disconnect Ukraine's internet infrastructure, because it is somehow interconnected with Poland, which is a NATO member. Disrupting Poland's internet could be seen as an act of agression against a NATO ally and would require NATO to respond. Again, this is only a rumor that I have heard, don't have any sources to back it up. Maybe someone here knows more?

Oh, yeah thats is quite something important I would like to have disproved or verified.

Targeted attacks on water- , civilian energy-supply or civilian communications infrastructure is a war crime.

One of my 2 routers in Kyiv is on AS16007 'UKRAINIAN-AMERICAN-SWISS LIMITED LIABILITY PARTNERSHIP "KANCOM"'

Tracerouting to it from London shows traffic going from London onto AS8359 MTS (Russian ISP), seemingly to Frankfurt then Moscow, then to AS21497 PrJSC VF UKRAINE

The other router is on AS1820 WNET. Traceroute dies at London going to Ukraine, coming back the other way the ISP uses 100.64 ranges, so no idea where it routes. RTT via Russia is 70ms and via unknown is 40ms so I suspect it's direct.

Clearly Moscow could stop advertising Ukraine traffic out to the west, but then I guess traffic would be harder to intercept.

I do remember yesterday or the day before, NATO confirmed that cyberattacks fall into the category of attacks that require an Article 5 response. That is, Russia taking out Poland's internet would be considered an attack on NATO.

If Poland and Ukraine have intertwined backbones, that may have been the reason NATO felt compelled to make the announcement.

On the other hand, there were reports that the Russian navy has damaged parts of the internet cable between Norway and the Arctic. Norway is a NATO member, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903777

> Is anyone else completely shocked that our Ukrainian friends seem to have stable high speed internet?

Not really.

I mean, its clear they have good reason for a deep-seated mistrust of their Russian neighbours. So clearly when establishing international IP transit links they have opted time and time again to connect in a Western direction, and evidently this has paid off.

Achieving in-country resilience is then not particularly difficult as long as you have geographically dispersed datacentres and nobody starts cutting fibres or toppling 4G masts.

I think it speaks more of what the Russian goal here is. Its clear the Russians planned this as a "shock & awe" blitzkrieg, basically hoping for a rapid "victory". So their priority has evidently been to capture as many high-value targets as possible in the shortest period of time. Let's face it, the Russians are not stupid, if they wanted to make the Ukranians suffer they would have targeted all their resources at Odessa (70% of Ukraine's imports and exports) and they would have disrupted communications.

Indeed, the Russians could have disrupted communications early on if they wanted to. No bombs required, just a few special forces types.

Edit to add: To support the above, take a look at the Arelion (a.k.a Telia Carrier) network map[1]. Shows two international connections to Kyiv from Hamburg and Vienna (and nothing in an Eastern direction). No doubt the map story would be similar with other Tier 1 carriers.

[1] https://www.arelion.com/our-network.html

Just wanted to note it’s “Ukraine”, not “the Ukraine”.

Thanks. Noted and corrected.

Don't beat yourself up over it, though.

'The Ukraine' used to be perfectly acceptable English.

It's a bit like Burma vs Myanmar.

IMHO it’s still 'the Ukraine,' 'Burma' &c. There's no need to change. We say Paris, with an 's,' not 'paree'; the French say 'Londres,' not London, and that's okay too. Languages use their own words for common place names, and that is fine. There's nothing wrong with using a language's words, and no real need to change them.

There is something wrong when it's a clear political statement to use the wrong term

> Thanks. Noted and corrected.

Looks like it wasn't a clear political statement, and was instead an honest mistake. Let's not get too carried away with this, there's a very real conflict going on and I don't imagine the people being shelled and shot at are particularly concerned about the word "the" right now.

If you read the chain, the clear political statement was by eadmund. But sticking to old terms or naming conventions (or switching to new ones) is often a political statement. It's a powerful way to do it. I mean, look at the people calling COVID-19 "the China virus". Or the people with strong opinions on "blacklist" vs "denylist"

> If you read the chain, the clear political statement was by eadmund.

Ummm, I made no clear political statement, just a linguistic one. I am instinctively conservative, and deeply suspicious of folks who promote change for change's sake. Our language is a lovely, beautiful one and we have spent the last several decades abusing it.

Eh, we've spent the last few hundreds years abusing our lovely language.

And the only reason it ain't longer, is because if you go far enough back, it's different enough that we can't call it our language anymore.

Language evolves and political correctness is just one force amongst many, and not even a new one:

> "Rooster" was originally shorthand for "roosting bird," preferred by the Puritans to the double entendre of the more typical "cock."

From https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/...

These days saying rooster doesn't typical indicate any prude leanings by the speaker, even though that's how this change started.

'The Ukraine' was acceptable when it was a region of other countries (like "the Midlands" or "the American Southwest"). It's unacceptable to refer to a country. I'm sure trying to (subtly) demote Ukraine from a country to a region is a goal of Russian propagandists.

> It's unacceptable to refer to a country.

The United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Bahamas, the Gambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (and probably others) would like a word. :)

Unites States of the America

Full names don't get that treatment for some reason, but even that fully applies. It's the United States of America or America. It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or Great Britain. It's the People's Republic of China or China.

I will admit commonwealth countries are often "The Republic of The X". But that naming seems left over from when they were territories of the British Empire, where "the X" is referring to a subdivision of the empire.

You better fix Wikipedia then:

> The Netherlands (Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdərlɑnt] (audio speaker)), informally Holland,[15][16] is a country located in Western Europe with overseas territories in the Caribbean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands

they did achieve something!

they took out 200 men with /200 helicopters/ to take over an airstrip

and 17 blokes on an island in a shed with a /warship/

I was wondering about this.

My conclusion was that “the Ukraine” refers to the geography and territory (it would read as The Borderland in East Slavic, between the steppe and the Carpathians) whereas Ukraine is the republic and nation that resides in the territory.

Since this war directly involves the population and the government, it is Ukraine the nation, not ‘the Ukraine’ the land.

Ukraine means «Fortified area» in Ukrainian or Polish. It's «укріплення» (fortifications) + «край»(area)/«країна»(country) = «україна». A modern Ukrainian word with the same meaning is «укріпрайон» (fortified area). It's started by Poland as a set of fortifications to protect eastern Poland against nomads from the East. Multiple ukrains were built. Ukrainian Cossacks were used for defense. When lines of defense covered large territory, the whole protected area received the name «fortified area» (Ukraine).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Vasseur_de_Beaupl... for details.

Russians are trying to downplay this and replace Oo at the beginning with Oh, to create Russian word Outskirt instead.

> My conclusion

As you can guess, there is no definitive article "the" in Ukrainian language:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171014083357/http://www.ukrwee...

> Let's face it, the Russians are not stupid.

I thought so too. But one surprising thing about military conflict is that it's easy to be stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lICRQPIduFc&ab_channel=Monte...

Even with overwhelming superiority during WW2, the US damn near lost their first attempt to invade Japan.

Ditto for Japan attacking Midway, and every other decisive battle.

It's unclear what Russia is even trying to achieve at this point. Supposedly they've only committed 1/3rd of their forces, which means they have about 100k troops in reserve. But the 50k they did commit seem to have achieved nothing. I was expecting a blackout (thanks to air bombardment), followed by a destruction of Ukraine's air force, then the fall of Kiev. Not one of those things happened.

It really makes you question whether Russia's reputation is well-earned.

The next few days will be crucial. Russia has only a few more chances to plan their next moves. If they continue failing, they'll be forced to withdraw when they run out of supplies. Which is to say, a Ukrainian victory doesn't seem to be impossible, and it doesn't seem to be the result of Russia not wanting to punch too hard.

> But the 50k they did commit seem to have achieved nothing.

A bit far-fetched I admit, but thinking outside the box, perhaps those on the Russian side of the front line don't really fancy being involved in this ? In other words, "we need to make some noise because the boss is watching" but really the commitment isn't there.

Reason I say that is perhaps its an extension of what we saw on that infamous broadcast where Putin was seeking approval from his cabinet but some of them were struggling to find a way to disagree without actually saying it.

> It really makes you question whether Russia's reputation is well-earned.

But this is also a possibility of course.

Who knows. Its impossible to second-guess Putin.

> perhaps those on the Russian side of the front line don't really fancy being involved in this ?

I think that's definitely the case, Russians are very close to Ukrainians culturally and ethnically. They were on the same side on several wars.

I think this may explain why things are not going full on bloodthirsty kill-everything-that-moves yet... but just wait until coffins start piling up on the hangar. Seeing your mates being killed has a way to make you de-humanize and hate the other side, no matter who they are. That's how you end up with entire cities bombed to the ground in later stages of a war... I don't think any war starts that way, that's how it usually ends though.

Let's hope they'll find a way to stop this in time.

In another thread, commenters were remarking about how ineffectual protests by the Russian people would be on account of Putin not caring about their opinions. Whether or not that’s true, I wonder if the Russian people could shame their soldiers into a degree of ineffectiveness (“throwing the game”).

No, but upper echelon is well-versed in money and power. If it seems like Putin is losing the game, their opinion could change the power structure. That is not automatically a good thing by the way. There is a reason 'devil known' is a phrase.

Robert Axelrod's "evolution of co-operation" book on Game Theory discusses instances of German and Allied trench forces in WWI firing their artillery at the same time and place each day so it looks and sounds like a war is happening but the poor schmucks on the front line aren't needlessly murdering each other. It supposses they can organize this without any explicit communication as it's fairly obvious when someone is trying to kill you.

There's also a long history of people in wars not even firing their weapons covered in the book "On Killing". People generally don't want to needlessly kill other human beings and a big part of army training and tactics is to work around this basic human instinct e.g. making you fight to keep your small group of friends alive, rather than for the financial benefit of some oligarch hundreds of miles away in safety.

> People generally don't want to needlessly kill other human beings and a big part of army training and tactics is to work around this basic human instinct e

I wonder if that's the actual source of the purported necessary 3:1 attacker to defender ratio in an insurgency. You have three times as many people willing to kill to defend their home as to invade, so you need more people to get the same number of shooters.

It has only been 3 days. I would give it 30 days for them to destroy (or more likely take control) of critical Ukrainian infrastructure.

Make no mistake. This is a seizure of Ukrainian land, sovereignty, resources and infrastructure.

Isn't 30 days essentially a military and political failure though? I can see in Putin's thinking that a 3-5 day long decapitation strike would be feasible, and then they occupy Kiev and it's fait accompli.

But 30 days, with almost all of the world against it? It's way too long and someone else may get involved.

Desert Storm took that long when you consider the initial air campaign, and even then the ground invasion still took 4 days in a theater with complete air superiority, decent terrain for a mechanical warfare rush, and local support from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

But was the rest of the world almost unanimously against Desert Storm?

I simply cannot see a scenario where a 30+ day slog in Ukraine, with attrition and mounting casualties, has any positive outcome for Putin.

(I struggle to see any positive outcome for Putin anyway and cannot understand what his endgame is, to be honest. Even success at toppling Ukraine's government, if achieved at all, may prove to be short-lived)

If Putin doesn't care about the opinion of his own voters, the whining of the Western world wont matter (China, Iran, Venzuela and others are not against Russia).

But don't you think in a protracted conflict some power is bound to get involved, triggering an escalation? With each day, week and month the chances of this increase.

It's one thing for Putin to get it done in a week or so. Even then, how does he plan to hold his puppet government in Kiev?

I wish I could be as optimistic as you are about that but looking at Georgia, Belarus, and other recent historical examples makes that hard. China, Russia, and Iran (with hangers-on like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, et al) have been working hard at building an alternate global trade and financial system for more than a decade now, precisely to remove what little socio-economic leverage the west had. And, it's stil winter in Europe. The Germans and French need to heat their homes, which currently depends on Russian gas.

Also keep in mind that China is working towards this same "resolution" with Taiwan. It's in their interest for Russia to succeed here.

> decent terrain for a mechanical warfare rush, and local support from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

This applies to Russia in Ukraine as well. It's mostly flat plains, Russia has support from Belarus and is a direct neighbour itself.

Russia supposedly stopped the offensive yesterday for negotiations and it's now back on. Makes sense considering how calm the front was yesterday and how we are seeing tons of movement today. But of course that could be pure BS, it's hard to even get verification that things were actually calm yesterday since both sides have a pretty solid opsec... at least compared to what I got used to with the syrian civil war!

That is most certainly BS. There is no doubt, no question.

For the past several months Russia’s stated efforts at diplomacy have been an utter farce, the saying “pissing on you and saying it’s rain” does not go far enough.

Now all of a sudden Russia says they paused for negotiations… “fool me once shame on you; fool me 100 times with the same ruse, I should stop taking drugs”

> Russia supposedly stopped the offensive yesterday for negotiations and it's now back on.

An important caveat is that this is according to Russia.

Ukraine's version is quite different (it was Russia's attempt to lure Ukraine's top officials to Minsk, which is the only place where Russia is prepared to conduct the talks).

In any event, it seems pretty clear that there was no actual ceasefire yesterday or today.

Agreed 100% that this is absolutely just from russian and like very pro russian sources. The only reason why I give it any credit is that it fits with the reality on the ground. If russia was pushing and got actually stalled, I'd have expected to see a lot more air raids and shelling. Yesterday was weirdly calm, even when it comes to airstrikes, bombings etc. Not exactly the signs of a desperate push

My interpretation is they're pushing and (sadly) making progress, though much slower than they'd like.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-ukraine...

Judging by the many videos of interrogations of Russian POWs, many of them are just kids who barely know where they are, are unmotivated and poorly equipped. Hardly a professional and well-equipped army. There are also indications of logistical challenges (videos of Russian military vehicles running out of fuel, that sort of thing).

Running out of fuel is pretty common in military vehicles as the fuel gauges are at best reliable to half a tank.

Drivers are supposed to track how far they have driven, but if its driven by multiple people and someone forgets to log distance or the vehicle is forced to idle for a long time the distance can be off.

Also a broken fuel gauge will not mark the vehicle as a casualty. Its not critical equipment as your supposed to be tracking fuel usage as a driver.

The main problem (?) here is why Russian forces totally forgot how to move in a convoy.

They constantly lose their mates, move in a line like they are on a parade, move without deployed AA.

This is beyond "unmotivated and poorly equipped", this is Africa/Middle East levels of incompetency.

There is something very, very fishy going there.

is the adviser to the President of Ukraine seems to be very pro russian to you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30478794

Again, the source that your other comment cites is a Kremlin propaganda outlet. There's little reason to trust it to accurately represent Ukraine government's position on anything related to this war.

https://www.stopfake.org/en/strana-ua-or-strana-ru-how-a-san...

Search your «facts» in this little collection of Russian fakes with 13000+ items: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/

Sorry, I'm a noob in HN interface and didn't find how to answer your original comments -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30478874

> This "evidently Ukrainian site" is a Kremlin propaganda outlet

I'm not going reasoning here about how propagandistic is stopfake itself, because, as I already said, if you only wanted, you could easily find some information about this s*ithole for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t05R_cPVjtU

but I ask you:

did you find any confirmation or refutation of my words?

is the current advisor of the president of Ukraine any pro russian?

I am not an expert but this is my rough take.

It seems that the Russians are having logistical issues. They are running out of gas. Not sure how but it seems like it.

We are hearing today about them sending in more armored divisions. These will re enforce the supply lines. But this is a really risky play. It is a double edge sword. Now that they send more in they need even more gas. And if they run out they suffer a larger loss. What good are 4,000 tanks without fuel? Suddenly your armored division are infantry divisions who are outgunned on foreign soil.

The less risky play would be to withdraw there armor pretty far back. But this means an extend war. Which they should lose do to basically endless international support to the Ukraine and their willingness to fight.

So the play would be to pull back and stick to claiming the small section of the separateness region they have capture so far. This is will happened when the last of the armored units cross the line to cover the retreat. Given Ukraine can last four more days and keep the supply lines broken.

Ukraine is open to a negotiation with Putin at Hague. Putin refuses, but Ukraine will convince him.

>It's unclear what Russia is even trying to achieve at this point.

That's really the crux of the matter here. What is Russia's goal here? If you're operating on the assumption that they indeed want to capture the entire Ukraine, it then indeed looks like they aren't doing as well as a lot of people seem to have expected, thus far.

However, it's possible that Putin is using the Russo-Georgian-War (2008) playbook again which didn't aim to capture the entire country, with the goals of ultimately capturing only some of East Ukraine (Dombass in particular, and keeping Crimea) and forcing the remaining Ukraine in negotiations to become a "neutral" state located between Russia and NATO/EU. While again embarrassing the West and their military and diplomatic resolve as a cherry-on-top. That Russia has been hitting targets in the west of Ukraine might have been to destroy Ukrainian military's capabilities and capacities, in this scenario.

Even if it's the Georgian playbook again, I still think Putin might have grossly overplayed his hand there. The NATO and EU will likely not let go as easily this time, especially not because in particular Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states as NATO and EU members feel very threatened and expressed themselves as such.

It's 50 more years of standoff if a Russian doesn't give Putin the coup de grace, because of the geographic location. But that is what Putin wanted - to consolidate fiefdoms and polarize the divisions.

> forcing the remaining Ukraine in negotiations to become a "neutral" state located between Russia and NATO/EU

This keeps coming up as if Ukraine's acceptance into NATO was imminent any day now. Realistically NATO membership Ukraine was decades away, if ever.

It's a convenient pretext pitched mainly by Russian media, which needed to frame the sense of urgency, but the real reason must be elsewhere.

Hypothetically if you were Putin and that was the actual reason, wouldn't you want to deal with it asap when it's still years or decades away, rather than wait until it's close enough that your invasion might lead to them quickly signing it and then sending in Nato forces? Not to mention the fact that he might not trust reports of how far away it is and think it's happening sneakily behind his back soon?

I've no idea what Putin's motives are, but I don't think the fact that Ukraine joining Nato wasn't weeks away from happening prevents it from being as likely a reason as if it was that imminent.

Russia's demography is declining, and global warming will thaw the permafrost and annihilate a ton of infrastructure in the East. Oil prices are high right now, but European reliance on Russian oil is probably at the highest it will ever be. Putin is not getting younger, and he probably wants to finish the long work of integrating Ukraine into his governance system before he dies. The Russian army, as the last three days have shown, is strong, but not getting stronger with every passing day. It's probably way past its prime.

Even though what Putin hated was not the risk of Ukraine joining NATO, but merely Ukraine saying it wanted to join NATO, on the Russian side, it might have been now or never for Putin.

Russians fear that NATO will join Ukraine.

It’s only day 3 and Ukraine is big. I imagine Plan A was to expect the Ukrainian military to surrender rapidly, and they are now gathering and mobilising for Plan B.

"Hope the enemy immediately surrenders" should never be plan A.

Why not? It's usually the lowest cost (in money, materiel and bloodshed) option for both sides, so it doesn't seem a bad first option. Of course it's unlikely to happen, so you should be ready to execute a plan B.

~It can definitely work, see for instance Nazi Germany -> Poland.~

Edit: Nevermind. I am very wrong on this. What I understood to be a "quick" victory from my vague memory of history lessons was a month. I also never considered that Poland never surrendered but _lost_ the invasion. There was no surrender.

If Putin believes he had the means to capture Kyiv within a really short time AND he believes his own propaganda that Ukrainians are idiots and cowards and drug addicts and whatever then yeah. I do see how you could logically conclude that they would surrender quickly.

But Ukraine turned out to have an extremely strong leader, raising morale to levels far beyond Russia's. Turns out the folk is nationalistic, proud and doesn't want to take shit from Russia.

So many civilians in Kyiv are joining the fight because they want to and they have to.

Is that what Putin was expecting? I don't know.

Do want to note that on Dutch television a historian stated that he believes Russia believes they will have Kyiv captured before early March, since airports near the Ukrainian border have been closed until then. So while 3 days is long for Kyiv to hold out, the reality might be they'll have to hold out for at least 2 weeks before it starts really mattering in the eyes of Putin.

> It can definitely work, see for instance Nazi Germany -> Poland.

What are you talking about? The invasion lasted several weeks and had the support of the USSR. They quite literally destroyed the Polish army. In fact, Poland never officially surrendered.

> see for instance Nazi Germany -> Poland

I don't know what your understanding is of the invasion of Poland, but you should probably read up on it if you think it ended in an almost immediate surrender.

>>Is that what Putin was expecting? I don't know.

This is the weird point to me. I had zero problem understanding why Afghanistan fell as quickly as did it. And that is with seeming IC warnings that Taliban had enough clout and American's sufficiently disliked.

It is hard for me to believe Russia did not have appropriate intelligence on nation's mood as a whole. And it seems like they either did or disregarded it.

Maybe there are other considerations at play that weigh harder than the risk. Then again, if Chechnya showed anything, it is that Russia can play long occupation and 'win'.

> Then again, if Chechnya showed anything, it is that Russia can play long occupation and 'win'.

You can't compare Ukraine with Chechnya. Also Russian soldiers are much more hesitant to attack Ukrainians, the plan as I see it was to scare them to surrender, but Ukrainians weren't scared so what could follow might be a horror for humanity to behold if it continues for a long time because resentment builds up we might see some terrible atrocities of war.

As of now the estimate is they have committed 50% to Ukraine, that is pushing hard at the upper limit of how many can actually be committed before there is no logistical support at all. They could go to 2/3 for a short time, but even more of them would be wandering about begging for food than are now.

They appear to have made the same mistake as Rumsfeld when invading Iraq, a similar sized country with a similar sized invading force - he tried to go light and immediate reinforcements were required. The difference is the country of Ukraine is better prepared, they have better resolve, and some better weapons, while the Russians have far lower equipment quality, morale, and training.

Nonetheless, there is an enormous logistical advantage of attacking a neighbor from three sides and not a country halfway around the world. Ukraine also has much more forgiving terrain for an attacker than Iraq.

Everything is up in the air, but I share your optimism that Ukraine could come out on top.

Why would Russia run out of supplies? They have an unlimited and uninterrupted supply line back to Belarus and Russia in multiple directions. I find it more likely the folks in Kiev run out of food in a few days.I support the Ukrainians but the writing is clearly on the wall and it makes more sense the Russians would wait them out and use their air superiority to keep supplies out of Kiev, for example.

Russia doesn't even have air superiority yet. Ukrainian air force is blowing up elite paratroopers before they even have a chance to reach the front lines.

This entire invasion is already a disaster. Russia still has an advantage but they're taking unnecessary losses already.

-------

No Ukrainian city is encircled yet either. Kyiv can't run out of food when it's still safe for supplies to come into the city.

Russia needs to establish the basics, and haven't even done that yet.

EDIT: it's been like 3 days. It's too soon to expect Russia's military to have a big success yet. Russia's superior weaponry should have a relatively easy time but... Russia is basically trying to perform 4 or 5 simultaneous 'Battle of Fallujah's here simultaneously.

Just going all in on major cities around the country simultaneously, where most people in those cities really hate Russians right now.

It appears to be an accurate assessment. I was expecting to see blitzkrieg based on initial reports, but it seems less likely now. In a very real sense, I hope that is the case.

If anything, the Russians are moving in too fast. I think the Russians really were going for the 'decapitation', trying to quickly kill or capture the politicians in Kyiv, leaving the Ukrainians leaderless.

All signs point to this IMO. Russians have failed in that attempt this far, but it's only day 3.

Ukraine has been routing or killing a lot of airborne / paratroopers in and around Kyiv (Russian VDV units). Russia really is going for a quick victory, committing so many airborne units there.

But in all likelihood Russia still wins easily from Ukraine. Even if at a slightly higher cost than hoped

The initial war? Quite possibly.

The ensuing Western-supported insurgency, under the name of either Zelenskyy the hero or Zelenskyy the martyr? Quite a bit more doubtful.

Russia has already lost more airplanes than the US did in the entirety of the Iraq war. (USA lost 24 fixed-wing aircraft in all of Iraq 2003 to 2009).

I do realize that this is a Ukrainian propaganda, but their claims are incredible: https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1497643063...

7 aircraft shot down in a singular night, including 2x IL-76 MD just last night alone. Big, slow, 4-wing transport airplanes (carrying either 100+ paratroopers or heavy equipment to the front lines). These aren't drones they're shooting down, Ukrainians continue to threaten the logistical support Russia needs to feed the front lines.

We're no longer in "slightly higher cost" territory. We're in "Russians failed to disable Ukrainian's airforce and air-defenses... advanced _ANYWAY_ and are taking heavy losses" territory.

Yeah, Russia may win after this. But what's incredible... something completely unthinkable just a few days ago... is that the Ukrainians might actually win conventionally. Russia's failure to disable Ukrainian's air force is already a costly mistake, especially because Russia continues to advance despite being in a state of air-parity with the Ukrainians.

--------

I think the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv is in trouble however. But there's video proof of entire convoys being blown up (https://mobile.twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/149757339550817...) on their way to Kharkiv, definitely proving that the Ukrainian Air Force continues to fly.

> Why would Russia run out of supplies? They have an unlimited and uninterrupted supply line back to Belarus and Russia in multiple directions.

I'm not an experienced armchair logisticians, but it seems like at this moment: Russia can't bring in supplies to the airfields; Ukraine has anti-tank weapons that I'd expect to work well against supply convoys; Ukraine has a motivated population resistant to the Russians.

Maybe the route from Belarus, through the Chernobyl exclusion zone is short enough to avoid interruptions. And if Russia can establish operations at an airstrip, that changes a lot. The route from the south seems disruptable because there's a single bridge chokepoint. (But maybe temporary bridges are viable, again, no logistics experience).

They have an unlimited and uninterrupted supply line back to Belarus and Russia in multiple directions.

It does seem unlikely and I can't confirm specifics but someone posted on another thread that the Ukranians or their allies have apparently disabled all the train lines from Russia to the border to frustrate Russian logistics.

> Even with overwhelming superiority during WW2, the US damn near lost their first attempt to invade Japan. > Ditto for Japan attacking Midway, and every other decisive battle.

What you're missing here is the fog of war. When decisions are viewed through what information was available to the decision-makers, it paints a far more relatable picture. No one was stupid at Midway. Have a look at this long video going through the battle from the Japanese perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo

> Its clear the Russians planned this as a "shock & awe" blitzkrieg

> the Russians are not stupid

these 2 points have been on my mind unrelated to your argument. I do not think they're stupid which is why I can't help to figure out why they botched this up. The whole thing looks like an unhinged ego trip of a single ruler that has grown increasingly isolated (maybe because of the pandemic), like Stalins final days. But Putin isn't Stalin.

So either they failed on strategy, nobody was brave enough to question Gerasimov, or the bigger plan is yet to reveal itself. For now it's Occams razor I think.

> these 2 points have been on my mind unrelated to your argument.

Same here. Could the issue be morale? I heard isolated reports that the lower-rung soldiers appeared to have very low fighting morale, and apparently many had not believed that the invasion would actually go ahead. Allegedly, some hadn't been told they were actually doing an invasion.

What if this problem exists from the top down? It only takes a few disillusioned generals so they fail to deploy 70% of their forces, and the troops that do make it to the battlegrounds are not being properly coordinated. The only other reason I can think of besides internal sabotage is that they're worried about the optics of a too brutal assault, but then again they have not really worried about optics in the past.

It seems to be morale. Here [1] is a click of Ukrainian asking Russian soldiers if they need tow back to Russia.

My point is that Russians and Ukrainians people like each other: the problem is that Ukrainie does not have puppet like Lukashenko as a leader.

[1] https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1497485623225200640?s=2...

Am I the only one who thinks that while what’s going on is reprehensible and terrible, it does actually make a lot of strategic sense from Putin’s POV and he is not, in fact, an idiot?

Ukraine is a pretty soft target and has great strategic value. After taking Crimea and installing favorable leaders in Belarus Russia was prepared to invade from all sides with no resistance (Which was probably planned years in advance). Europe is helplessly dependent on Russian gas, and won’t risk intervening. China is collaborating with them behind the scenes mitigating the West’s threats of sanctions.

From my perspective I see a highly intelligent, strategic set of decisions made over a long period of time. Unfortunately it seems most people seem to be ignorant to the facts and analyzing the situation emotionally.

It’s a stalled offensive front, it’s not strategic to waste time and resources. Russia is only exposing themselves more the longer this draws out.

> it does actually make a lot of strategic sense from Putin’s POV and he is not, in fact, an idiot?

I don't believe he's an idiot and I'm sure he knew that he could take the Ukraine without much resistance from the West. It comes with significant drawbacks, however - the EU might not cease trading completely, but the sanctions still hit the economy hard and their own stock market tanked. The war is also really expensive and quite unpopular, both inside Russia and on the global stage. Finland and Sweden will also most likely join the NATO now, which, while geographically not that important, still makes him a tad more surrounded. Lastly, a destroyed Ukraine full of people hating him is really not that useful.

It's a bit unexpected, but we also know now that the Ukraine is putting up quite fierce resistance and is not really a soft target. I was wrong about him invading at all, so my predictions about Russia might be wrong again, but I think invading was strategically a really bad move.

Minor correction: Putin did not install any leaders in Belarus. Lukashenko became a president years before anyone heard of Putin (1994). Lukashenko has always maintained close relationship with Putin's Russia and would have supported such invasion in 2014. The price for such support for Russia would be much higher back then though.

> the Russians are not stupid

Arrogance is one hell of a drug. It's entirely possible that Russia believed its own propaganda and thought they would be welcomed as liberators by the Ukrainian people. The US literally did the same thing in the war in Iraq.

With the number of lies the Russian state throws out on a daily basis I'm sure it's hard to keep things straight.

>There must be some sysadmins somewhere that are really taking care of business, even though tanks are almost literally rolling down their street.

https://xkcd.com/705/

Is there a course to go from SRE to SERE?

Russia is focusing exclusively on military infrastructure. They are actively avoiding civilian damage. So it is not a surprise that internet is up.

> Is anyone else completely shocked that our Ukrainian friends seem to have stable high speed internet?

The only reason Ukraine continues to have Internet access is because the Russian Army hasn't chosen to cut it. That's literally it. Internet infrastructure is incredibly fragile. A couple of well-placed missiles is all it would take.

There's no excuse for Putin's invasion. None. There are underlying reasons but they are in absolutely no way a justification. We can and should ask how we could've avoided this. It may well inform how we end it.

That being said, Russia is clearly pursuing a strategy of minimizing civilian casualties (for now at least). Targets have been military installations, key geographic points, bridges, airports and command-and-control infrastructure. I suspect that if Russian casulaties continue (and it seems like they've been reasonably high) then images and video of downed Russian aircraft and helicopters and the remains of Russian convoys may well cause Russia to cut off that Internet. It could get much, much worse.

And apartment building, hospitals and ambulances... I originally would have agreed with you, mind, but it would seem our shared optimism for minimized civilian targets was mistaken.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/26/kyiv-residential-to...

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/25/ukraine-russian-cluster-...

All of those things have happened. Straight up. And again there's no excuse for it. But it could also be much, much worse, particularly if the Russians decided to actually bomb civilians and target things like water treatment plants, utilities and so forth.

I concur, and to be clear I'm only noting that to counter disinformation that only military targets were hit, not as a criticism of your post.

It seems reasonable Russia wants to keep infrastructure intact, not just for minimizing outrage, but also a county reduced to rubble isn't very useful. Not to mention I doubt the average Russian soldier is terribly keen on doing more than necessary damage as well.

> optimism for minimized civilian targets was mistaken

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/26/kyiv-residential-to...

This is clearly not a target. And if you ever had seen the damage from the cruise missile (hint - look at two previous days with tons of footage of Kalibr hitting intended targets) you would clearly see what this is definitely not the amount of damage a proper missile would deliver. More so, given the position and direction there is a pretty high chance what it was an AA missile from the Ukrainian side.

Anyway, it is amusing how when anything happens which involves Russia it is killing intent and war crimes immediately, without even an attempt to reason it with a common sense.

Can't say anything on the second link, though it is very little damage for a cluster munition.

When I saw the apartment building on the news and I saw the fire fighters I immediately asked myself "wait, why are there fire fighters in the middle of a war?"

I started thinking that maybe these buildings were not targeted by the missile, but the missile landed there because it was deflected?

I don't have an idea on how weapons work, but I don't really think that these buildings were the actual targets.

The Internet is designed to withstand a nuclear war. RF is not a threat for Internet.

I pondered the exact same question. My thought process settled on…

keeping the data network alive makes it easier for the Russian military to communicate and maybe infiltrate. Shutting everything down removes attack vectors.

Hello from central Kyiv, Ukraine. I have had zero internet disruptions.

The Ukrainian government has specifically announced today (in response to Russian propaganda)they will not disconnect any internet or communications - if there is an outage, don't be concerned - it will be repaired asap.

Because, Russia is indeed losing what they have started, and Ukraine is winning.

Slava Ukrajine from Czechia! We are doing what we can to help here, please don’t stop fighting.

Yeah there was this post on here yesterday "Here comes the tiktok war" presuming there was going to be all this media spraying out on socials but then there was just nothing. All the gawkers are asking "huh? Is this war even real?" then I see apparently Russia blocked twitter (and presumably other sites) on all the ISPs around there -

https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1497523148362862593

Somehow I have the impression that Russia has dropped the mask and doesn't feel it's necessary to pretend anymore.

Ukraine (and everyone else on this planet) needs to counter Putin’s constant barrage of misinformation. There are lessons here for all of us.

‘I need ammunition, not a ride’: Zelensky declines US evacuation offer, while Russian media announces he left the country: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1497257833095733252?s=20...

And tell the story of how the war is actually being conducted: https://twitter.com/aletweetsnews/status/1497008826201124870...

I believe a lot of the media is getting taken down - the bot/partisan armies are reporting it as offensive, and a large enough volume of reports inevitably gets things removed. There was an article on here yesterday about "banned from youtube for watching a livestream of the conflict".

That's an efficient short term solution to their war on information control, but it's really just a delay. The problem for them is the sheer ubiquity of devices which can still record without access to the internet, and then be taken to regions where they can reconnect to the world and spill their secrets. People have come to expect the basic ability to communicate on a level that our forbears scarcely dreamed of.

"A well connected Community, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Phones, shall not be infringed."

I would hope that if any constitution of any country gets a right to bear phones baked into it, they won't take the incredibly confusing wording of the second amendment of the US constitution as their role model.

Good point!

A well regulated social network being necessary for a free state, the right to keep and bear phones shall not be infringed.

What isn't clear about that :)

Agreed, or else you'll get people clamoring for the government to control the phone industry because they misinterpreted the period meaning of "regulated" (that is, definition 2 here[1] not definition 1)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regulate

No, twitter is working fine right now

There is a ton of media/livestreams/etc if you're in the right places. r/combatfootage, twitter, various livestreams on youtube/twitch/etc, telegram, etc.

This is why we need Starlink. An internet that is cheap, free, open, independent of govt control is a geopolitical game changer.

> An internet that is cheap, free, open, independent of govt control…

Absolutely! We're far better off with a global satellite network controlled by a U.S.-based private company.

> cheap, free, open, independent of govt control

Literally neither of those is true about Starlink.

Makes me wonder whether the original comment was satirical but I doubt it

Starlink combined with decentralized finance is how we put authoritarian governments into the rear view of history.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317

Putin wanted so much to be Stalin that has ignored the first rule of successful bullying. Hit your targets one by one. Never, ever, threaten the entire class at the same time. The usual outcome is everybody teaming against the bully until removing him/her.

So the longer this situation lasts, the worse for Putin also. Higher probability that the Russians will eventually say enough is enough, and throw him under the bus to get rid of him. Maybe this is one of the reasons to give the army something to do. He is entering the same age when Stalin started his decadence until being poisoned by their own people at 73 Yo, and is not earning a lot of friends lately. He's looking more and more desperate for a fast victory.

Threatening with giving Sweden and Finland the same treatment as Ukraine is also interesting. Will not grant him a lot of sympathy among the Linux crew and open source world for sure. If you rely a lot on cyber-war, disinformation and cryptocurrencies, going after the quiet wallflowers in the class that hold many keys in this field can backfire easily.

GNU changing overnight all the support for Russian language to Finnish just to send a message, would not be an unexpected outcome for example.

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