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Comment by blip54321 | Hacker News Reader

The population of Ukraine is 40 million.

The Russian invasion force is 200,000.

If every Ukrainian had a gun and instructions for a Molotov Cocktail, Ukraine would be unconquerable without general genocide.

I'm not sure how close they'll get, but that's what the Ukrainian leadership is aiming for.

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I am developer from Lviv, Ukraine. I already prepared molotov cocktails. Ukraine is united as never before. Lot of people donate big amounts of money, buy necessary goods for army, everyone is very supportive, everyone knows what to do. There is no single pro-russian people there. Every citizen will fight for our land, because truth is on our side, and it become obvious to the whole world.

We stand with you.

Do you know a paypal compatible donation link I could use ? (the few I tried had technical difficulties)

You can do Swift transfer to the official national bank of Ukraine account to support army

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...

Thanks, that's very useful. I will disseminate that link wherever I can.

My minor googling suggest molotov cocktails won't do much against modern tanks except worry the crew. Probably best to leave the real tanks alone and focus on smaller vehicles.

Edit: unless the hatch of the tank is open!

In particular: trucks carrying fuel, spare parts, and ammunition. Tanks can't run on patriotic spirit.

We stand with you.

It’s worth bringing up the case of the Chechen war, where Russia eventually prevailed, but at enormous human cost of to all sides and, as usual, civilians.

“prevailed”

Please enlighten us on your opinion on what otherwise happened..

A pyrrhic victory if any, even today Kremlin hardly controls Chechnya.

Of course a country without infrastructure or cities is pretty much as valuable as not having conquered it at all.

Though literally nothing about this war makes a lick of strategic sense for Russia.

> Though literally nothing about this war makes a lick of strategic sense for Russia.

see "Natural gas transmission system of Ukraine" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_transmission_syste...

the discussion about Norstream2 and to a lesser extent NATO membership: Since Russia is an oligarchy its "sense" is defined by Putin's ego such as "reuniting Russia" again as it was and ruling it as its Tsar.

I was somewhat surprised that the State Dept. claimed that Russia was willing to inflict mass casualties on the Ukrainian population.

I assume they've discovered through espionage that Russia intends to unleash nuclear, chemical or biological warfare on the Ukrainians.

That’s an improper assumption. You can do a lot of harm with regular explosives

Given enough time, yes. But I'm pretty sure Putin doesn't have the luxury of this war lasting too long.

He'll want to force his adversaries on their knees within a week and considering the snail's pace at which the Russian military are gaining ground that doesn't seem likely.

You can inflict mass casualities with convential means, case in point, the Dresden bombing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...), in the second world war.

Or starvation. Again. Russia killed 3.5 million Ukrainians that way, likely within the lifetime of your grandparents.

I think that their leaders should sit down and negotiate, rather than stick weapons in the hands of ordinary people and deter Russia with the threat of causing genocide. Nobody wins in that scenario, unless Russia backs down which seems unlikely at this point in time. Dialogue is the way forward, not improvised video game weapons.

Negotiate what exactly? It's a war of aggression.

Putin articulated his ultimatums for Kyiv: Recognize Crimea as Russian - Rejection of NATO accession - No weapons supplies from the West - LNR and DNR gain territory that the regions had pre 2014

Or, and this might be a wild idea, Russia could mind it's own god damn business in it's own god damn territory seeing as how 50% of that list is "respect our previous wars of aggression against your territory" and "don't join alliances which would've prevented our wars of aggression against your territory".

But the internet is rife with Russian shills at every turn right now.

I'm sure the internet is rife with Russian shills, but there are also a number of non-interventionists who don't want to get whipped up into a war frenzy and get involved another foreign war.

I wish Russia and NATO/US could agree to a basic Neutrality and non-intervention treaty for Georgia and Ukraine.

Well golly gee, I guess the last 20 years of Ukraine not being in NATO was just too much of a risk. Nothing says "don't try and join NATO" like ongoingly and continually trying to invade and conquer a country because they're not a member of NATO.

Hey, I wish we lived in a perfect world too. I really do, but countries have conflicting interests, and always put their security first. The first step in navigating the real world is understanding that things are not perfect, and trying to understand the motivations of others. Russia has an agenda, NATO has an agenda, and Ukraine has an agenda. The more people are in denial about this fact, the more suffering there will be.

The nefarious Ukrainian agenda of checks notes "continuing to exist as a sovereign democratic entity by the self-determination of its people".

Dialogue & militarization isn't a mutually exclusive choice as in some video game either

Ukraine needs to be able to threaten a costly conquest for Russia, as other countries are showing they won't intervene with their own military. Only when they can demonstrate that cost will there be incentive for dialogue from an attacking force

The Ukrainian president was open to discussing a ceasefire and dialog, sounds like Russia isn’t interested at this time.

Everyone only wants to discuss a ceasefire on their terms. Not very useful.

Let's just settle this through a fair fight.

Russia just said Ukraine said no to a ceasefire and dialog.

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1497553764517036035?t=5WjH...

It's almost a parody, but with real innocent deaths.

If anything has been proven in the last one month, it's that Putin says one thing and does another.

I bet the exact opposite happened. Ukraine must have offered ceasefire and Russia said no.

I can confirm that. BBC says this was offered by the Ukrainians but Russia chose not to engage.

Thank you for your expert confirmation and no less from such a reliable source as BBC.

I don’t believe that for a second

Negotiate on whether to invade Ukraine or not?

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