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Comment by blunte | Hacker News Reader

On paper, Russia has significant military advantage. But if you look at the humans doing the fighting, I think you might see some very different levels of commitment and motivation.

The Ukrainian troops are defending their homes. They are up against a wall, so this is a matter of survival. The Russian troops are fighting for something that likely many of them care nothing about. They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak). Not only may they have issues with fighting other similar folks, but they certainly don't _need_ to be risking their lives.

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Russia can’t do combined arms warfare they don’t have good communication lines even on a platoon level and pretty much no cross branch communications.

They also seem to completely lack modern blue force tracking which is why they still have to rely on recognition stripes it wouldn’t surprise me if the Russians destroyed as much of their own armor as they did Ukrainian.

And most importantly they seem to be completely inept at performing SAED something that the US and some of its allies especially Israel seem to have nearly perfected at least when it comes to Russian/Soviet AA.

But you are also very much right about the morale problem.

This is a surreal exchange between a Ukrainian and Russian soldiers it feels like a scene from a Cohen Brothers movie

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank...

That's one weird exchange. It seems that the Russian soldiers weren't expecting the car to be armed. There are also videos where cars are moving past Russian tanks without any confrontation.

It’s probably about the same experience as US troops would have if they were ordered to invade Canada.

Also they were probably told not to treat the local population as hostile and even if they weren’t it’s usually not the default disposition of people soldiers or not.

These guys have no fucking idea where they are or where they are headed or what their mission actually is and they probably can’t even call anyone up the chain of command to get new orders and they don’t seem to even want to do that.

There are videos on Twitter of Russian forces seemingly ambushing unarmed civilians who are just driving from point A to B and then using their vehicles as road blocks.

Seems like it really depends on what men are behind the guns. Such is war I guess.

Many of the videos that you see such as the infamous one where you see a group of armed men pull out the occupants from a car are from 2014 and it isn’t soldiers but militia and it’s unclear which side it even was.

It also is very much dependent on the situation these soldiers are stranded and under no threat.

If they were mounting a checkpoint which was coming under attack they probably would treat incoming vehicles very differently.

No I'm talking about very graphic ones involving dead bodies that clearly tried to crawl away and vehicles riddled with bullets.

You're correct though, the fog of war is thick, and it's hard to tell for certain.

I hate to use reddit as a source, but here is a group of civilians encountering a roadblock, being shot at, and then managing to escape. This video is not as graphic as the others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_gett...

Although I can't say for certain if this recent, but it seems to fit. If someone could for certain debunk this, I'm all ears, but this same location (red truck and cars blocking road) shows up later in other twitter videos with a destroyed Ukrainian convoy and dead civilians.

Why would Russians be setting up roadblocks?

To hinder the movement of Ukrainian forces, I would assume.

Ukrainian forces are taking up defensive positions. It’s the Russians that need to stay on the move. Ukrainian forces are currently blocking roads and blowing up bridges. Russians need to establish supply lines.

Being defensive and needing to move are not mutually exclusive.

I can’t put my finger on it but it seems to me that this is not your domain of expertise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR8BVr_B338

Does this abandoned convoy blocked by jack-knived trucks not have Ukrainian "golden block"[0] camo on some vehicles? Could be stolen I guess? None of the typical glyphs of Russian forces though, unless I missed them while scanning the video.

Mind you the passengers speculate some of it is Russian gear. I'm just saying it's possible they were attempting some sort of retreat. This is the same road where civilians were being fired upon. I don't think Ukrainian forces would be shooting at civilians on blocked roads if they had blocked them in this instance.

0. https://img.112.international/original/2019/02/27/280961.jpg

I believe the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland provides a better comparison than the US and Canada. While we share strong cultural ties and a border, Canada is not a former subject of the US (despite our best attempts in 1812). These days the UK and Ireland mostly peacefully co-exist, and you can imagine how outrageous it would seem if UK soldiers started marching south from Northern Ireland because the Republic of Ireland refused to align geopolitically or promoted the Irish language.

If the troops are being kept in the dark about their location and missing, that would go a long way to explaining the abyssmal performance of the military so far. How are you meant to plan logistics in this situation?

Everyone I know in russia declares virtually 0% support for this invasion. You can only hope that this is begining of the end for Putin.

However one should be carefull drawing conclusions about total ineptitude of the Russian military - in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea, these issues might not apply.

>the troops are being kept in the dark about their location

considering that that excuse has been practiced at least since 2014, and that the soldiers have smartphones to post selfies, and after watching several of those POW videos with their canned responses, i'm convinced that it is just a trained excuse to get better treatment from Ukrainians when caught.

Even any technical aspects aside. I grew up on a USSR Navy base, and we always knew who goes to fight where. And the military convoys always naturally interact with locals on their route, soldiers talk to the locals, exchange fuel for vodka/cigarettes, children come to get onto/into tanks in exchange for some small favors/goodies/etc.

And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine :)

Btw, on Ukrainian TV - they are in much better mood today giving their military successes and corresponding Russian failures, i mean they weren't panicked or anything like that yesterday, just seriously somber, it is just today they are really having the blast - they today addressed that overall Russian people habit of playing a powerless victim of circumstances : "Next time you'd think twice about whom to choose President."

(Other quotes from Ukrainian TV today - "We Christened Russia, and we're going to give it the last rites.", "To see Kiev and die. Looks like you're insisting on doing it in that your own peculiar way - well, be my guest.")

And to another commenter below:

>conscripts calling families telling that they are forced to sign contracts (in military operation can participate only contractors)

so, they forced you to signed contract because that is the only way you can participate in military operation and are sending you on "exercises" with full battle ready hardware somewhere close to Ukraine when there is escalation in the air/news. Days later you're driving through Ukrainian villages with clear orders to shoot on Ukrainian tanks and soldiers first and like have no idea where you are and why you're there :)

The Ukrainians have been dismantling roadsigns.

Most cellphone footage seems to be from the rear lines it wouldn’t surprise me if front line troops don’t have cellphones due to opsec or can’t keep them charged or afford roaming and it seems that Russian soldiers don’t supplement their kit with offline civilian GPS units.

There were also posts of the target marking kits that Russians use and they all seem to be commercial off the shelf laser beacons and reflectors.

The Russian army looks more and more like it’s being supplied through Aliexpress.

smartphones were taken from troops before they were sent to ukraine (there is a bunch of stories of conscripts calling families telling that they are forced to sign contracts (in military operation can participate only contractors) and phones are taken from them. otherwise internet would have been full of russian tiktok videos .

>And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine

Yeah, sure. It's like when you need to get to bakersfiled but the last road sign its arrow pointing to general direction of california in utah.

"the soldiers have smartphones"

Surely militaties don't allow their frontline troops to have phones? That would enable Ukranian side to track and count troops and use that information for artillery strikes?

> Everyone I know in russia declares virtually 0% support for this invasion.

I mean, you don't have a balanced or unbiased sample. You sound like the people who are like "No person I know supported Trump."

> in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea

I'm pretty sure you meant "continuing to occupy Crimea"

> mean, you don't have a balanced or unbiased sample

Well we can't exactly conduct a democratic referendum to find out, can we?

There a lot of datapoint that indicate this is the case, the russian commanders being in shock when they learnt abotu the task and their concern for desertions, etc. Ofcourse I could be totally wrong, we are all couch generals here

https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-60528746

That's true. There are polling agencies who purport ti be able to handle the logistics of polling Russians. They showed Putin's approval (pre invasion) at just over 50%, which sounds plausible. The fact that it's not Crazy high made me think maybe they are getting real feedback.

Russia can’t defend Crimea conventionally either at least not against NATO but that would be a nuclear trigger for them almost certainly.

Seeing how the Russian army is performing so far, it's starting to make more sense why Putin constantly, oddly whips out the nuclear threat (giving off hints of serious insecurity). Turns out it's very revealing as to the state of their military, it can't properly defend itself against NATO and is badly outmatched today.

China has to be seeing this and eyeing some of that sweet Russian border territory for the future.

Extrapolating from bits I've read online (which means, this is probably completely wrong... but possibly not!)...

Most of Russia's income is from oil and gas. And the profits from oil and gas are received by a very small few people. Those people probably do not pay a lot of taxes.

Therefore, it can be assumed that the Russian military and related systems are not well funded. Russia has for decades had a brute-force approach to military - simpler, less efficient systems which are more robust and which can be field serviced.

If numbers found on the internet can be believed chuckle, in 2017 Russia spent 66 billion USD-equivalent on its military. The US spent $646 billion. Now maybe the US is much less efficient, with grifter middlemen contractors, but still... 10x the expenditures.

As for China, they want the energy and mineral resources from Russia. They are treading carefully to appear supportive of Russia while not alienating the rest of the world (their major trading partners).

I've got a suspicion that Russian military procurement has its own share of grifters. Maybe even as high as the US does. Maybe even higher.

Russia has about 145 million people. The US has about 340 million.

The Russian economy is about $1.7tn and the US one is about $29tn. Yup, you read those figures right.

For comparison, the USSR had 286 million people in 1989 to the US 248 million.

And their GDPs were $1.7tn for Soviets (yep, same amount after 30 years of inflation, plus the Soviet one was most likely inflated...) and US about $6tn.

Russia is the world's biggest banana republic. More like oil sheikdom, actually.

These are depressing numbers for Russia.

I think within 5 (maybe 10) years we will see a regime change in Russia and a big shift in policy.

They didn't stay the course during the 90s.

They fell, like the rest of us, but they, Ukraine and Belarus did... nothing. Or installed dictators.

Meanwhile 90% of the former Warsaw Pact recovered by 2005 or so and now is at historical economic peaks, see places like Poland.

He has said as much. Here he says there is "no comparison" between Russian forces and NATO forces, implying the latter dwarf the former:

https://twitter.com/CorpsmanUP1898/status/149687929406015078...

It seems to be Putin is terrified that just dust kicked up at Chernobyl will contaminate Russia. There was a battle to secure the facility. Ironically all the military vehicles involved stirred up dust causing a 20 fold spike in radiation compared to the typical level. I can't accept that Putin would nuke any European country. If he were to nuke anywhere I think it would be the US far away from Russia.

Russia wasn’t scared about Chernobyl they captured it because it was on the way to Kyiv and it was before they started bypassing towns and infrastructure due to their poor combat performance.

Putin took Chernobyl because A) it's pretty much on the way from the Belarus border and B) it's a convenient staging area for forces where they're mostly immune to attack from heavy artillery or drones, precisely because of the risk of breaching the containment.

I think I saw comments that's a fake with an overlaid audio. In the end he starts driving while continuing talking so dunno about that. If it's real, it really can fuck up your mind that your enemy that you are supposed to fight are so similar to you. One thing is to patrol a street full of "Muslim terrorists" thousand miles away from home and another is having a casual chat with a dude you could have been drinking vodka last weekend.

There are plenty of videos that show similar interactions. The cultural or indoctrination elements don’t exist here like they might do in the Middle East, there is no hate heck there probably is no real animosity either unless they are forced to engage in combat they have no reason to be hostile.

Hostility due to hate has to pre-exist or has to be built over time.

Nationalism aside they are as close to being one people at this point as you can get, you’ll find it very hard to find a Ukrainian family without Russian relatives and vise versa due to the legacy of the USSR.

Basically if a bunch of marines would be deployed and told to take Toronto would get stuck on the way they’ll probably opt to head to the nearest tim hortons too.

And unless they come in guns blazing I don’t think the local population would try to feed them through a wood chipper…

That psychological aversion to genocidal murder cerainly doesn't spread to Russian general staff.

They are continuing bombing the Kiyv dam.

> They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak).

From the interviews of people on the street in Russia before the invasion I think it's quite literally fighting actual cousins and aunt,uncles, grandparents. Russian people interviewed remarked that they many Russians have close relatives in Ukraine.

Exactly. There is just no good motivation for fighting neighbors or family.

I have heard that a fair percentage of Russians have some level of Ukrainian family ethnicity roots too. I can’t imagine that all of the Russian troops are only of Russian ethnicity. Couple that shared background with command and supply issues, it’s a recipe for morale issues.

A billion dollar in weapons also helps.

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