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Comment by senectus1 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not certain that Ukraine is winning all that much. sure there are a lot of encouraging and heartwarming videos out there, but Ukraine keeps losing key locations and infrastructure.

I'm keen to see some more pointy support for Ukraine. this invasion was completely unprovoked and unwarranted.

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Conversely... Does it matter? The US couldn't hold Afghanistan or Iraq. The USSR couldn't hold Afghanistan.

What even is a "win" in Ukraine? It's inheriting 44 million armed insurgents and an unpopular occupation with your own people.

I think [0] Putin vastly miscalculated public sentiment in Ukraine. His attack was based on the premise that Ukraine's government is essentially a puppet state of the west with little popular support in the country. This is been how the Russain state has been telling the story since 2014. He probably expected this to go like the Taliban's expulsion of the US from Afghanistan in 2021. Most of the people would support, or at least not be too bothered by it, the government would flee, and the few government supporters would have no will to fight. Then he could install a sympathetic government as there is in Belarus. But obviously, popular support for the Ukrainian state turned out to be much, much higher than Putin thought.

As they say, don't get high on your own (propaganda) supply.

[0]: With the obvious caveat that I'm just a random person on the internet with no special information.

The Iraq war was way more costly in terms of lives lost. Despite killing so many people the US still couldn't hold it.

Iraq study estimates war-related deaths at 461,000

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24547256

Can you elaborate on "couldn't hold it" in the context of the Iraq war? It makes sense with Afghanistan due to the Taliban filling the void, but doesn't Iraq have roughly the same government and stability that it had when the US left / withdrew?

"In January 2020, during massive protests[3] and following an escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran, the Iraqi Council of Representatives passed a non-binding measure to "expel all foreign troops from their country," including American and Iranian troops. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_tr...

It's a bit crazy that to me that its only been a few days and everyone is judging russia in ukraine. How would they have judged the usa in afganistan after a couple days? Or iraq?

true. I guess the unbridled success of the Crimea still took a little over a month.

> not certain that Ukraine is winning all that much

Nobody says Ukraine is winning. Just that Russia is performing comically badly.

Major cities stand. Ukraine maintains an Air Force and SAMs, denying Russia air superiority. Putin attempted blitzkrieg and publicly failed. He’s also turbocharged NATO and possibly extended its northern borders, a monumental blunder given his original premise for the war.

Put simply, Russia’s military is worse than people assumed. Before, that was uncertain. Now, it is known. That isn’t great for a dictator ruling by military night.

In chess, what can look like a blunder in the short term can be a brilliant move longer term.

I want to believe you're right, but it's too easy to say they're performing comically badly. Putin and his cronies aren't idiots. I can't shake this feeling that there's a longer term play at hand and this is a part of it.

> Putin and his cronies aren't idiots.

Not idiots, but hubris has been the downfall of many powerful people.

I think he is an idiot / retard / criminal / whatever else goes here

It would be cool if we could refrain from comparing mentally handicapped people – using slurs, to top it all – to heinous war criminals like Putin. I mean, c'mon, that's super simple stuff.

You know very well what I meant. Do you you really think I am trying to equate him to that poor mentally handicapped soul wandering streets?

I don't know if Ukraine will win, but I can't see this as anything but a blunder. The only reason Ukraine is getting this much aid is because of these blunders. If everything went well, they would be receiving a fraction of the military aid.

Instead, you have the EU giving Ukraine fighter jets, among other things.

So, maybe this was their plan. But it's still a blunder since I doubt their plan was to coax the EU into giving multi-million dollar pieces of military equipment to the Ukraine. And if it was, I don't see the upside here.

Divert military resources away from nato countries so another invasion could begin with a split focus... china -> taiwan?

Lol. So Russia is a sacrificial offering so China can take Taiwan? Putin got the shit end of that deal.

Not at all. Where did I say that?

Edit: to give you more of an idea where I'm coming from. It doesn't exactly look like Putin sent in the A team does it.

> doesn't exactly look like Putin sent in the A team does it

He sent in his Siberia team. They suck. They appear to have been lied to about what they were doing. There is no military rationale for using them. It was poor planning and/or poor impulse control.

The troops invading from the south are more competent, but by the time they reach the action Kiev will have their new Javelins and Stingers. More of these seasoned troops will be lost as a result. Putin is sensibly holding back Russia's modern kit (fighters, advanced electronic warfare equipment) Doing so helps maintain the narrative of a limited incursion in the east. It also prevents NATO from getting great intelligence on them.

What is clear is he overrode his military advisors, or never had good contact with them in the first place. Best case scenario, he winds up with an insurgency to manage and a ruined economy increasingly taking instructions from Beijing.

Incompetence can look like malice, but this isn't malice masquerading as incompetence. Putin gave the West - and in fact the rest of the world - time enough to get their act together, big mistake.

Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe, did you expect a full occupation in 5 days?

> Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe, did you expect a full occupation in 5 days?

Putin clearly expected air superiority and the fall of Kiev by now. You can see that in their logistics chain fumbling after the first forty-eight hours.

> You can see that in their logistics chain fumbling after the first forty-eight hours.

Do you have more on the specifics of what happened here? I don't recall reading much about their supply line issues, but granted I haven't looked specifically for it yet.

There are only a few photos here and there over social media. I hope that Ukraine is able to resist the Russian military but I would wait to see whether these Unweighted Claims of logistical incompetence actually deliver on effect size. I do fear that Kiev will be lost in a matter of days.

Putin did. He had a plan for a 2-days war.

That’s different: most people were expecting Russia to have air superiority quickly and control of major roads, airfields, etc., even if that’s not most of the country. From the initial rush, I think the assumption was that they could blitz Kyiv and capture the fraction of politicians who didn’t flee, on the assumption that a lot of people would stop fighting by then. Air superiority would make everything else they do easier and they appear to have thrown away a lot of their more heavily trained troops on those air drops, none of which can be helping morale.

A blitz for Kyev and surrounding and killing the government didn't seem so unlikely given how close it is to russian territory and given how small the Ukrainian army is.

There is no winners here but it's a huge improvement that Russia has to at least pay the price.

They're not. Propaganda machines are in overdrive.

For context, Germany with the help of the USSR took Poland in about 31 days, which was considered fast.

It's day 3, Russia is knocking on the capital and Ukraine is on its own. This is pretty one sided.

Kiev is located less than 100km from belarus, where russia is staging and sending troops from. You could literally drive from kiev to belarus in an hour and not break the speed limit, if there wasn't a war on. Maybe your analysis is too simple for the comparison you're making?

Also, over 80 years of technological advances complicates the comparison quite a bit.

Russia is already showing that they're not doing great. The actions are not very targeted (missiles sent into residential areas), there's no viable air defence, (transports getting hit by drones), estimated 1/3 of forces already sent in and the capital still not taken over, airports were changing hands a number of times... Ukraine may not be winning, but Russia definitely isn't.

>Ukraine may not be winning, but Russia definitely isn't.

good summary I suspect.

Ukraine won the war of perceptions.

Putin is absolutely come out as weak and pathetic from this step. Sure, he may get some with negotiations and the nukes threat, but everyone now knows that if he has to cry about my nukes in a strategic land war, orchestrated with months of planning, then he has already lost the war.

I would not be surprised if he will be deposed in less than a decade from now on.

The main way I see Ukraine winning is it continues like you said - Ukraine will lose infrastructure and key locations. But then it becomes guerilla warefare. At that point Ukraine has to outlast Putin or Putin's will to stay in Ukraine while he sees his military's morale and economy go down the drain.

Unprovoked?

Ukraine has been shelling Russian military installations for months and current government is openly hostile towards Russia, wants to join Nato and Zelenskyy called for Nuclear armament of his country.

Think if this was a situation in Canada. How long would the US tolerate Canadian government being openly hostile to the US. Employing the kids of Russian officials. Asking Russia for Nuclear arms and military aid. And openly shelling Alaska.

The Donetsk region of Ukraine doesn't want to be part of it Large parts of Ukraine are ethnically Russian and voted in past for the pro Russian candidates.

This is a regional conflict with global implications. But the more the world gets sucked into it. The longer the suffering for everyone.

Your comments on this subject are strange.

Not strange. I'm just telling you what the chessboard looks like from the other players perspective.

This isn't a game. There are no respawns.

This is not the right place for Russian propaganda

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