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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

Normally I would agree with this take. I'm also in Europe and feel similar to the OP though. I recognise that I'm doomscrolling but this feels different to other "bad things in the world that have happened in my lifetime" (I'm in my 40's). I live 12h drive from the border of Ukraine. In addition my outrage at the Russian invasion and what's happening to the Ukrainians, it also feels uncomfortably close.

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It is close. Less than a good days driving. But don't let that proximity get to you too much, the dangers are just the same if you live in Amsterdam, Berlin or New York, to believe otherwise is an illusion. If it remains a conventional war then there is no way that the Russians will manage to do much without being beaten savagely, but at the same time that is exactly why if they decide to press on things could well get out of hand.

I live near the centre of a large city in the UK. I suspect that we here are more likely to be a target if there is a nuclear exchange than people close to Ukraine or Russia.

However, I also think that a nuclear exchange is still very unlikely. Putin is also suggesting talks on the Belarus/Ukraine border.

I'm hoping for/dreading one of those cold war fudges we had back in the bad old days. Some horse trading, perhaps a partition of the Ukraine with attendant population sorting and so on. Negotiations about force reductions and all of that.

It took the US/Alliance army of 180 000 plus air cover a month to render the conscript Iraq army non-operational and to gain some tenuous control of Iraq (or at least the major cities) in 2003. Putin must have had a time-scale of weeks in mind for this operation.

I shall be disconnecting from wall to wall news coverage next week as I do have anxiety issues sometimes. At the end of the day none of us here can do much.

> Putin is also suggesting talks on the Belarus/Ukraine border.

The word is that the Russians will suggest that they unconditionally surrender or Kyiv will get the 'Grozny' treatment. I'm pretty sure of the outcome there, but of course anything could happen.

They already suggested the unconditional surrender but I doubt that the threat of Grozny treatment will be enough for Ukraine to fold. They need something else. Something more convincing and I can't think of anything. Even if they only have the Grozny threat on the table and they go and act on it, in practice it will make the russian position much worse because Ukraine is not Chechnya, it's in a much better position (I could enumerate the differences but I think they are obvious).

Have you forgotten the global pandemic and impending climate disaster?

> I live 12h drive from the border of Ukraine.

The closer you live to Russia the more this conflict matters. The more your country relies on the globalized economy the more this matters. This war is a big wake-up call to Europe, and many developing nations are in big trouble that Russian oil and Russian and Ukrainian wheat might not make it to market. The United States will have to put up with higher commodity prices and we should step up measures to support the poor and deal with less until the market can adjust.

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