Hacker News Reader

Comment by kilroy123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm highly skeptical about these numbers. I think it will be some time before we get a realistic picture of what is happening.

View on HN

Indeed. This is war and at war nobody is interested in telling truth - that would only help the enemy. So far Ukrainians have been really good at propaganda, churning out high-quality memes at a good cadence and achieving almost total "social media superiority". Later their reports turn out to be exaggerated or outright false (it is crazy, but they posted a dogfight clip from a video game like it was a real thing), but people just want to like and retweet what they want to believe, so they accept it uncritically. By contrast, Russian trolls have been relatively quiet.

I suspect that some people are knowingly playing along with the Ukrainian social media strategy. Perhaps that is even the right thing to do.

> Perhaps that is even the right thing to do.

Interesting discussion, I personally don't think so. Truth is important. If one claims some kind of moral high ground, it is important to base one's actions on accurate information whenever possible and encourage others to do the same, otherwise it will only lead to some kind of "are we the baddies" moment down the line.

It has been very disheartening to see some of vocal propaganda critics on my twitter timeline turn into unabashed propaganda machines for the content that they like.

I don’t think enough Russians have enough self reflection to ask themselves the question.

Well that's just chauvinism.

>Truth is important

I love truth with all my heart. Though I'm not flawless, I'm sometimes honest to a fault.

But the question, I think, is whether you save any lives by gathering popular support and foreign political will, if that translates to an extra influx of money and equipment.

Would you lie to save a life? A hundred? Zero?

Consequentialism upsets me very much, because I really wish 'doing the ethical thing' actually meant doing the right thing, every time.

All philosophy has given me is more questions. I would like to be told this is all wrong and propaganda is bad, if you please.

Look to the history of the world. Nearly every single awful tragedy in our world has been motivated by (from the perspective of the person doing such actions) good intentions. The grand utopia said villains had in mind when carrying out their misdeeds never came to pass, but the horrible actions done in the name of it most certainly did.

You cannot predict the future; your actions will often have consequences far outside that which you intend. And there's an extremely good chance that what you intend to happen will never happen anyhow! This ultimately makes Machiavellianism somewhat of a non-starter. The ends cannot logically justify the means when you cannot even truly know what the ends ever will be. All you can be certain of is that we will experience the "means."

Make the world as you would have others make it for you.

I've been following the development of this war closely on Reddit and Twitter, and even if it's clear there's a ton of Western and Ukrainian propaganda, I wholeheartedly welcome it. The more it seems Ukraine is doing well, the more it'll help the Ukrainian morale and it's going to spread in Russia and possibly lead to the toppling of Putin and his sycophants. Maybe even leading to a democratic Russia.

Because the only chance for Ukraine and possibly NATO is for the Russian regime to crash and destroy itself. Putin won't become any saner than this, and the worse case is a war with NATO, which is unthinkable.

So I welcome the Ghost of Kyiv, the Snake Island 13, the Sunflower Babka and the Zelensky gigachad memes. The videos of Russian kids surrendering, normal people making molotovs and fighting for their liberty. May these memes spare us any more bloodshed. There's not much more us Western civilians can do.

Agreed. People are quick to call out Russian propaganda when it obviously exists on both sides (it's a war after all).

According Alexey Arestovich (a military advisor to the office of the Ukrainian president), the 3500 figure includes killed AND wounded.

This was clarified in a comment thread on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/alexey.arestovich

edit: https://imgur.com/a/jnu3yUn

If that's correct, it's quite a big deal. Both the BBC and Wikipedia have very clearly "3500 killed". See here under the section 'Casualties and losses': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...

I obviously don't have any data of my own, but Arestovich is one of the people who deliver military briefings to the nation on behalf of the Ukrainian President's office[1]. I have the greatest respect for both Wikipedia and the BBC, but it's almost certain that their reporting is downstream of his and therefore more likely to be inaccurate.

(But yes, that's a huge discrepancy.)

[1] https://www.facebook.com/president.gov.ua/videos/37266901135...

Wikipedia isn't a credible source though.

The takeaway from the last 2 years is that you can't trust the media. It's all propaganda and lies. Unbiased, objective news died a long time ago if it ever existed.

I got more "info" and "context" from Putin's speech than I did in the first 5 news articles I read about this "incident".

All the "news" articles were full with unprofessional and for lack of a better word, angry or childish comments on the part of the journalists. It's as if the collective effort of the news media was to do their best to "stop" this thing, rather than report it, and to do so by generating negative sentiment.

I honestly have a hard time believing that right now, but I'm open to the possibility. Maybe wars are different than protests, but when there was protesting in the states, there was multiple 24/7 livestreams of people on the ground.

So far, all I've really seen are recycled videos that seem to get reposted everywhere and used in the media, but very little engagement. I have a feeling that either:

- The resistance in Ukraine is actually very little, so the goal is to try to get people from other countries contacting their politicians to provide assistance. I've seen some news about certain groups being banned from leaving and being encouraged to join the army and about how they are providing information on state media about making molotovs.

- Try to make it seem like they are somehow winning by providing high estimates to try to hurt the morale of Russian soldiers.

It does seem like thus far Russia has mostly been focused on strategic targets, with some isolated civilian incidents. This makes the most sense right now considering that multiple superpowers are monitoring the situation and if Russia makes a wrong move by decimating civilians, then this could quickly turn into a world war.

Both sides are appealing their population, troops not to film or post anything so that they won't give out vital information. Still plenty floating around telegram accounts, but wars sure are different than protests.

> Maybe wars are different than protests

You think?

Are you able to find the comment, screengrab, and put it on imgur? I had a quick scan but couldn't spot it. You're absolutely right that it makes a massive difference.

https://imgur.com/a/jnu3yUn

Casualties in warfare is typically used to measure the lose of the fighting force. Not only does it include killed and wounded, it typically also includes troops lost to disease and starvation.

It is pretty common for people to misinterpret casualties as deaths. Especially when people who are not familiar with the terms try to repeat the information to others.

20 hours later.. FWIW you were absolutely right. Wikipedia has changed its page to "3,500 casualties", and its source to Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/western-allies-expel-ke...

I haven't seen instances of Wikipedia being that wrong before, but in their defence they did state their source, which was Ukrainian military facebook page via BBC, and that fb page did say that (even if it was later clarified that that wasn't what was meant in a comment).

Well spotted!

Skepticism is fine, but the undisputed fact is that Kyiv is still in the hands of the Ukranians, the first all out assault has failed and barring a strategy change (for instance: paratroopers) you have to wonder how they plan to go about this.

Probably by sheer force of numbers and firepower. I think it’s very likely Russia will win in the end, they’re just going about it in the most half assed way possible that drags this out and increases their own casualties.

> they’re just going about it in the most half assed way possible that drags this out and increases their own casualties

You're saying that they purposefully as dragging this out and purposefully want as many casualties on their own side? What purpose could that serve?

Putin wants Ukraine to be a part of Russia again, I'm sure he'd want it to be as little damaged as possible and aims to replace the government first and foremost. Anything else is collateral damage.

> What purpose could that serve?

Absorb impact of high tech armaments until Ukraine runs out of those after which they could send in more valuable troops. Armies are like pyramids, tons of 'cannon fodder' on the lower branches, what photos I've seen of the actual Russian troops in Ukraine are mostly scared kids aged 18 to 20 or so, hardly any seasoned troops.

Do you have sources that this is an actual (modern army) doctrine anywhere?

Russia has a demographic crisis. Their population of young men (20-34) will go from 14M to 11M in 5 years. Around a 20% reduction. They won’t have enough men to man their massive borders or maintain their massive infrastructure. Every soldier lost in this war cannot be replaced. Throwing men into the meat-grinder would be the most retarded strategy ever.

No, that's just one way that it made at least a little bit of sense.

> Throwing men into the meat-grinder would be the most retarded strategy ever.

Yes. But that has been the Russian way for the longest time.

That would explain a lot of things, but what the Russians are doing is even more inexplicable, with a mix of good and bad tactics and cheap assets and valuable assets. It’s amateur night in some places, but at least one reporter accidentally discovered that the airport they were reporting from had been taken by Russian paratroopers. (“How far are the Russians?” “We’re the Russians!”)

There’s more nonsensical stuff, but I have the feeling some - but not all - important people on the Russian side really, seriously believed the crazy idea that Ukrainians would all immediately surrender, and acted accordingly.

> That would explain a lot of things, but what the Russians are doing is even more inexplicable, with a mix of good and bad tactics and cheap assets and valuable assets.

Another explanation is that it could be simply a probe to see what the readiness of the Ukrainian forces is. They should know that by now, so you can expect an imminent change in tactics.

> It’s amateur night in some places, but at least one reporter accidentally discovered that the airport they were reporting on had been taken by Russian paratroopers. (“How far are the Russians?” “We’re the Russians!”)

Yes, lots of confusion, but that is to be expected, similar stuff happened during the (former) Yugoslavian war.

> There’s more nonsensical stuff, but I have the feeling some - but not all - important people on the Russian side really, seriously believed the crazy idea that Ukrainians would all immediately surrender, and acted accordingly.

This is a distinct but remote possibility. For sure they underestimated the resistance.

There are a few things that can only be explained by total incompetence on the part of a Russian planner or a belief there’d be no resistance (which I suppose amounts to the same thing).

I don’t have a huge frame of reference since war is not something I normally read about, but it’s striking even to me that the humble Ukrainian Air Force was (still is, one hopes) able to offer the resistance they did. On paper the Russian military is capable of destroying all their airfields and SAM sites the night prior to the invasion, and knowing where those Ukrainian jets were was someone’s job. It seems crazy to say “those fighter pilots will switch sides when they see us coming and there’s no way they would engage our fighters, bombers, or troop transports. Why would we even want to destroy that perfectly good airfield where they are located?” I wonder what the actual conversation was like.

> For sure they underestimated the resistance.

They sure did.

If it’s part of some master plan it’s not exactly brilliant. We are talking about primitive WW2 style doctrine here, which is completely unsuitable for this type of aggressive war and current Russian demographics. The simplest explanation (occam’s razor) is that the Russian army is not as good as many thought.

Analysts expect occupation to be the hardest part for Russia. Ukrainian resolve is at legendary high levels at this moment.

Those numbers are very close to reality. Source - my family and friends in Kyiv saw it with their own eyes.

Your family and friends have personally witnessed 3500 killings themselves? In that case, the total number over Ukraine has to be a lot larger. Or, you misunderstand how much information your family and friends can confirm.

I hope everything will end up OK with your friends and relatives, may they experience peace as soon as possible.

If the witnessed info matches the news in different parts of the city and country - the reported numbers are obviously close. Sure there is some exaggeration but in this situation it must be supported as it helps reduce aggression and lowers invader's morale. We will of course find the true numbers later, but now is not the time for that.

At the very least, Russia lost two gigantic IL-76 last night (confirmed by US). We don’t know how many people were aboard, but each one could easily have 200-400. A figure of 3500 casualties (KIA + wounded) does not seem unreasonable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com