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Comment by monkeybutton | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is that the sanctions of Russia and support of Ukraine is accelerating faster and faster every day. Had the initial plan of decapitating the government and installing a puppet who signs a peace agreement with Russia worked, I doubt we'd be seeing the same level of support as now. Apparently the EU is now giving them jets in addition to all the small arms, fuel and anti-tank weapons. With all the economic sanctions it seems like they want to collapse the Russian economy and instigate regime change from the inside. Putin made a risky bet by attacking Ukraine, but the EU collapsing Russia with all their nukes still hanging around and hoping the next government in charge is more stable is a way more risky bet.

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> With all the economic sanctions it seems like they want to collapse the Russian economy and instigate regime change from the inside

Pretty ridiculous to think this when their isn't much of an opposition to regime change to. And when oligarchs and other interests are massively benefiting from the corruption.

It's purely to impose a serious cost on Russia so that they consider withdrawing from Ukraine and think twice about doing it again e.g. against Eastern European countries.

Do you think Putin will still be in office two/three years from now?

After all this, I really hope not. I really hope that this is enough to push over a large enough majority of Russians to force him out.

I would put even money on him being alive 30 days from now.

Some would consider that a win/win bet.

And Zelenskyy being alive in 30 days?

I think losing both would be a net positive.

Zelensky would probably press it for you.

There's a tradition going back at least to ww2 of waiting to see if the attacked country stands up and fights. If they demonstrate that, then we go all in.

And lose >4000 soldiers in the process?

What's the alternative? I think the USAs operations in the Afghanistan showed that you simply cannot just come in, fight a countries battles for them and leave. Ukraine has proven to want to stand up to Russia and now the West is putting it's full weight behind them.

What I don't quite get is why even still pretend to not engage? Surely arming Ukraine with fighter jets is basically the same as flying missions yourself as far as Russia is concerned. If I where Putin at this point I would consider NATO to have started actively participating in the war.

It’s not the same though. Foreign legions have a long history, and foreign armaments do too.

> Surely arming Ukraine with fighter jets is basically the same as flying missions yourself as far as Russia is concerned.

Except Putin may nuke you. He's basically threatened that.

That's because of Zelenskyy and what he represents.

Usually, you'd expect a state like Ukraine (ex Sowjet) to be corrupt and run by oligarchs with no support by the populace. In that situation, Russia would waltz in, the old depot would flee the country, Russia would isntall a puppet and the populace would be indefferent to it, since it's just more of the same shit.

But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.

This was Putin's big mistake. He believed he could scare away a greedy despot to replace him with another one. Instead, the Ukraine has a true leader and developed a real national identity.

For Putin, this is a nightmare. For the west, we finally have someone worth supporting (often we have the issue that we don't know how is the bad and the good guy, see Syria, Mali).

I have nothing to prove it, this is just speculation, taken from some tweets I saw. It makes sense to me, but I have no social insights.

This whole thing could have looked very different under any of the former leaders of the Ukraine.

He had an approval rate of 28% and a disapproval rate of 57% in October.

The west is singing his praises right now, but this isnt necessarily reflective of what Ukrainians think.

For now he's walking around in a flak jacket with an AK and I suspect that if they did a poll today the numbers would come out a bit different.

He certainly managed to gather quite a lot of support outside Ukraine, quite quickly. I guess that's no easy feat either.

Polling numbers indicate 96% support.

Not surprised. Wonder what the real figures on Putin are.

They did. 90%.

>But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.

So much BS... He literally done 180 on his election promises, done a lot of unconstitutional moves, and his public support was continuously dropping to the point of losing to Poroshenko on hypothetical elections.

Ukraine was (and still is) quite corrupt. They ran their president out of town on a rail in 2014 because he was massively corrupt. To the point of using government funds to build a private zoo at his house. Zelensky made his name by portraying an everyman who lucks his way into the presidency by vowing to fight corruption and somehow life imitated art. He was clearly inexperience and in over his head, but his character and showmanship are paying huge dividends right now.

And to just because we have to make everything about US politics, the corrupt leader who was run out of town was elected with the assistance of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates who both ended up working on the Trump campaign less than two years after their cash cow was exiled to Russia.

> But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.

He's not that clean himself, given that he was mentioned as holding offshore finances in the Pandora Papers leak.

Also he invested in the production company (Kvartal 95) that then created the show 'Servant of the People' where he was shot to stardom playing the role of a teacher elected president. The company then also paid to create a real party named 'Servant of the People' and managed to get him elected as president for real!!

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-r...

Where he got all that offshore money from is a question we can ponder. But it seems to me that he was primed for the position he is in.

You certainly can't believe everything you read on the internet, but apparently Zelenskyy met with Erik Prince who was up to his war profiteering self-serving crap. Zelenskyy subsequently aggressively moved forward with a plan to produce Turkish government manufactured drones (the ones you now see advertised in the war-media) and associated munitions within Ukraine, starting off with the purchase of a dozen for USD$70M (~USD$6M each).

https://www.voltairenet.org/article215489.html https://time.com/6144109/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-vikto... https://time.com/6076035/erik-prince-ukraine-private-army/ https://www.businessinsider.com/erik-prince-had-pitched-10-b...

Even though I am inclined to believe he is the lesser of two evils, it would seem that this war is in part being used as an advert for those munitions (see multiple videos released in the last 2 days from the drones). The Turkish OEM https://baykartech.com/en/uav/bayraktar-tb2/ was founded by Selçuk Bayraktar, an MIT graduate returnee who married Turkish president Erdogan's youngest daughter in 2016. Its apparent exclusive armament is the Turkish government's own Roketsan brand munition https://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/products/mam-c-smart-micro-mu... A UK entity accused Bayraktar of cloning their munitions rack design (the company denied the claim), and an Austrian motor manufacturer accused the company of redirecting their 100HP recreational aviation motors to military use.

I'd be interested to read more from a local about any public statements and private funding and control around those deals. While he's certainly the lesser of two evils in this conflict, history shows us the politicians are often not as clean as they like to make out, it's not out of the question that Zelenskyy or his cronies could have an undeclared private stake in the business and thus be personally profiting from the war and its aftermath.

> it's not out of the question that Zelenskyy or his cronies could have an undeclared private stake in the business and thus be personally profiting from the war and its aftermath.

No doubt that's possible. But if profiting off the war were his primary objective, then why would he stay in harm's way by remaining in Kyiv? Pretty risky bet, I'd say.

He's an inbound politician approaching the apex of his career at the intersection of two superpowers. Of course he's got more than one iron in the fire.

Don't think Turkish drones are war profiteering considering how much utility they've had in the current war and in the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict. Maybe you're not aware, but Ukraine has been dealing with war since 2014. This is probably the worst example you could have used since TB-2s are both incredibly practical and extremely cost efficient compared to most Western military equipment Ukraine would have purchased instead.

> But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.

Totally ridiculous. Zelensky was selected as president for his acting skills, not management skills. He's as compromised as it gets.

No responsible leader of a civilized nation would goad/force his people into picking up AKs in the face of a vastly superior professional military force. He would accept the loss, surrender, and save as many lives as possible. But Zelensky is not a responsible leader, he is a mad sociopath trying to save his own skin, because he knows he has no place in the world should his regime fall.

Horse shit. It is not irresponsible for a leader to motivate a country's populous when that country is under attack. Are you saying that any population should just give up when someone else wants to occupy their home? No matter what might happen to them and their families anyway?

You missed the part where Ukraine has literally 0% chance of winning. Most Russian troop brigades haven't even reached their destination and Russia hasn't yet deployed its fixed-wing aircraft.

Zelensky is actively gambling his people's lives away. Because they aren't his constituents. His constituents are on another continent.

> Instead, the Ukraine has a true leader and developed a real national identity.

Honestly curious: What has Ukraine’s president done in the past to show that he’s a good leader?

The world barely even knew of him a few months ago, until every Western platform started deep-throating us to herald him as the second coming of Jesus in the last 2 weeks or so.

The propaganda is at a bizarre level.

I think the true leader stuff is mostly about how he's done since the invasion. And he seems to have done well there, no propaganda needed. (If you want bizarre propaganda try watching rt.com a bit - I did that last night - was quite bizarre).

>Had the initial plan of decapitating the government

Why people assume that the Russian plan was to occupy whole Ukraine (the largest European country after Russia) in just several days? Even in Georgia with its much smaller army and territory it took them 5 days to be close to capturing its capital. As another example: it took US several weeks to conquer Iraq, which again is smaller than Ukraine and has a much denser distribution of population centers. Also unlike certain countries Russia does not want to bomb Ukraine into the stone age before moving ground troops in and instead it tries to keep whatever loyal parts of the populace it has there.

>>Why people assume that Russian plan was to capture whole of Ukraine

I literally haven't seen anyone assuming that. All theories seem to be about Russian army going in, getting rid of the government and replacing it with whatever arrangement works for Russia, then going back home.

In my understanding, the GP states that "the initial plan" should've ended by now.

If you read the newspapers you'll see this assumption is universal. They are describing his campaign as having run aground, delayed, going badly etc because he didn't take the entire country in 24 hours. Feels like war propaganda.

>unlike certain countries Russia does not want to bomb Ukraine into the stone age before moving ground troops in

I read or heard (maybe on http://iswresearch.org/) that Russia has very few smart bombs. If they had plenty, they might've used them as liberally as the US did in Iraq in 2004.

I assume the plan was to go to Kiev, get rid of the government and install a Putin stooge. Had:

>Zelensky rejects US evacuation offer: I need ammunition, ‘not a ride’

gone the other way it probably would have worked.

You mean Putin threatening the west with his nukes a few times a day is not a risk?

It is a risky bet (and unlikely the next one after Putin would be any better). But it is also a deterrance. Anyone who would want to initiate a war in EU needs to think twice (if EU is successful this time) after this.

> Had the initial plan of decapitating the government and installing a puppet who signs a peace agreement with Russia worked, I doubt we'd be seeing the same level of support as now.

What rules out that Vladimir and Volodymyr aren’t in on this together to dupe other nations and later make up anyway?

It’s a classic con since time immemorial: 2 partners, one who pretends to be the baddie and another who pretends to be against him to gain the support of a dupe, and later split the profits.

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