Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status | Hacker News Reader

Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

reuters.com

126 pointsmaury91159 comments

Belarus regime being what it is, I'd not think that the referendum actually reflects people's opinion, and the result was not predetermined.

OTOH I suspect that after the events of 2014 and 2022, Ukraine will remain the last country in history to willingly give up nuclear weapons. Many more countries will think about developing an deploying their own nukes, or at least staying one step away from actually producing them.

It's good to remember Ukraine never possessed operational control of them [0], so I'm not sure how much is "willingly giving up own's nuclear weapons" since they never had concrete nuclear deterrence capability, and circumstances (treaties and support from both Russia and NATO) required them to do so. Their decision has been impacting their condition ever since. But this may be the good outcome for all we may ever know, for they may have been alone otherwise.

0. https://www.nti.org/countries/ukraine/

While it is correct that Ukraine did not have operational control over the nuclear weapons, anybody who have nuclear weapons in their possession, and who have the engineering resources of an entire state, would be easily able to disassemble the weapons, reverse engineer the connections to the devices that initiate the detonation and substitute the control units in order to gain operational control.

Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most.

Therefore Ukraine, and any country which would have been in the same situation and would have chosen to give up their own nuclear weapons, really made willingly a choice to act in this way, because they also had the alternative choice of gaining control over the weapons and the Russians would not have been able to stop them.

>would be easily able to disassemble the weapons, reverse engineer the connections to the devices that initiate the detonation and substitute the control units in order to gain operational control. Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most.

I think you're massively underestimating the effort needed to have operational nuclear weapons. Nuclear missiles aren't like a car that you can just hotwire and jump start and something you can store and forget in their silos for years and then dust them off when you need them, but require constant and ludicrously expensive maintenance to stay operational.

First you need to have the rockets well maintained and tested to make sure then can have successful lift-off, then make sure the guidance systems are accurate enough to deliver your payload to the target.

Secondly and probably the most difficult, you need the detonation mechanism well maintained and tested, as the nuclear reaction needs super precise timing of the fissile material inside the chamber. Otherwise, even if you're lucky and hit your target, if the nuclear reaction is off, the explosion will be a dud and not cause much damage.

This is not something trivial that can be pulled off successfully in a few months notice, but you need a coordinated round the clock, and very costly, national program like the nuclear programs of France, UK, US, etc.

Ukraine had all the necessary resources, except funds maybe. Not that transforming your fancy missle warheads into free-falling bombs wouldn't work. Or artillery shells, a country running quite a few nuclear reactors should be able to do so if it really wants.

Russia actually had much harder time to maintain its arsenal than Ukraine because most of USSR's nuclear industry was in Ukraine.

> Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most.

But how much would it have cost to keep those warheads and their rocket engines and all the associated infrastructure in good working order, and secure from accidental launch or denotation, for decades up to the present day?

When the decision was made, I suspect it was not at all clear that having the ability to nuke Russia might be an option worth spending billions on, and at the end of the Cold War many Ukrainians might have thought that the real threat would be from the West (so they could rely on Russian nukes to protect them).

The point still stands, though, that nuclear weapons are a powerful (if expensive) insurance policy for a sovereign nation against unforeseeable future geopolitical risks.

Ukraine has a space industry. Just this week a rocket went up which was Russian engines, on a Ukranian second stage, with a US payload.

So while it would be expensive..history pretty much shows it would've been cheaper for Ukraine then what's currently happening, and they definitely have the knowledge and skills locally to do it.

> But how much would it have cost to keep those warheads and their rocket engines and all the associated infrastructure in good working order, and secure from accidental launch or denotation, for decades up to the present day?

If Russia can do it for a few thousand warheads, Ukraine can too. It’s not like their economies are that different.

I suspect that developing, maintaining, and securing a few thousand nuclear missiles is not 1000 times more expensive than doing so for just a few nuclear missiles.

To give some figures, the IMF estimates that the sizes of the economies in 2021 (in US$ million, PPP) were:

* Russia 4,328,122

* Ukraine 576,106

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...

> and who have the engineering resources of an entire state

It's not at all clear Ukraine had that kind of resources to invest in a nuclear weapons program, even if its government decided it would like to have one. Not to mention the fact that, were a decision like this taken, a Russian invasion would have been put into motion within the week.

> Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most.

I believe you are massively underestimating here.

Ukrainians are highly educated despite the poor situation of the economy. The main blockage for nuclear weapons is getting uranium enriched to weapons grade. If you have that, the next step to a bomb is much easier.

Japan does not have nukes although they possess a full enrichment cycle. But they are the only country that does to my knowledge and have their reasons for a moratorium.

> It's good to remember Ukraine never possessed operational control of them [0],

Ukraine had full control, and an operational arsenal for a few years. There was no such thing as a PAL on Soviet nuclear weapons.

Ukraine had a fully functioning nuclear force for these few years.

I will give no credibility to claims of Western think tanks who can't tell apart a tank from an apc.

This goes against my knowledge and documentation available on the matter. Any sources on these claims? Thank you.

>By early 1994 the only barrier to Ukraine's ability to exercise full operational control over the nuclear weapons on missiles and bombers deployed on its soil was its inability to circumvent Russian permissive action links (PALs). (from "Pulling Back from the Nuclear Brink" by Barry R. Schneider)

I find the whole corpus of Western military writing on USSR, and later as "generally unreliable."

Just too much of fiction writers working in these think tanks to pump grants, and research funding.

Even today, go and lookup a number of articles on something very trivial, say, "Russian general military doctrine," and your will get absolutely random, and bizarre assortment of opinions not agreeing on anything, despite that the official doctrine document in Russian is not secret at all, and is easily googleable on the internet.

A lot of them are just regurgitating each other's data without any original input, or validation. A broken telephone effect ensures.

But all sources I can see indicate Soviet weapons did indeed use PAL-equivalent security systems and there's no indication that Ukraine ever had a "fully functioning nuclear force". Some argue it would have taken a few years to acquire complete control of those within their borders had they not been handed over or destroyed. Excerpts from "The Soviet Nuclear Legacy", 1995:

>Fourth, nuclear warheads and or delivery vehicles are equipped with switches that permit arming and fusing only when a given code is entered-these devices are called permissive action links (PALs) in the USA. Launch crews do not have these enabling codes, which are provided by higher commanders prior to actual use. All categories of strategic weapons in the FSU are believed to be covered by PALs.

>To launch an ICBM, for example, now requires a '12-digit key' inserted via a complex and apparently highly secure system, and originating with the top political and military leadership. The ICBM crews do not normally have access to be able to launch missiles, but must receive a special 'preliminary' command from the top military leadership. Then they must receive additional codes that physically unblock the missiles for which they are responsible. Only when they have received these codes and commands do the crews have the physical ability to fire any of the 10 missiles in their group , . . The crews must correctly insert the codes in three tries, with an allowable time span of several seconds between each try, or else the crews are locked out and unable to perform the launch sequence. After a certain span of time has expired, the blocking system is automatically activated.

consultable at https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/files/RR/SIPRIRR10...

Prior to all of events in Ukraine, I actually been to the museum of strategic nuclear forces like 20 years ago. Guides there were actual ex-officers.

The launch sequence was very simple, but the procedure to "turning the missile on" was highly manual, despite some automation allegedly being there "but not usually working reliably."

Most of the gear in the silo was actually comms gear. There were no fancy computers in it, and missiles were programmed offline. The provision for "online" reprogramming was there, but the officer said "we never ever tried it, except on a simulator in the academy."

Officers were never told what targets were programmed into missiles, but he said that as targets were almost never updated in his near 14 years as a launch officer, he assumed these were cities, and not military targets.

His jobs as a launch officer was basically to do nothing, but sit and wait for a command using all comms gear in his disposal.

Once the missile is "switched on," and ready, the launch was done by 2 officers turning their keys without any extra ceremony.

The "codes" were employed, but only to check the authenticity of launch, or online targeting data.

That's one of the lessons, isn't it? First the West reneged on the Nuclear deal with Iran, now Russia invaded Ukraine. All the while North Korea is just simply left alone.

I think what he meant was that in 1994, in the Budapest Memorandum, it was decided that Ukraine would hand their nuclear weapons to Russia over and in return Russia promised never invade Ukraine. Interesting that the fact that it could be a mistake was raised back in the days already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine#De... I would be interesting to find out what the other "experts" said back in the day.

Yeah, turned out that was mistake (or was it really?) almost 30 years later. Back the day the world was different. The former USSR countries were dirt poor, military hardware was sold left and right wholesale. The USSR was utterly defeated. So for everyone, it was much saver to have only one, potentially failed, state having the USSR's nukes instead of multiple ones. And it worked for almost 30 years, so back then it made sense for everyone. That might change going forward. Or might not, way to early to tell.

Let us agree on that one: From the Geopolitical point of view was a mistake, from the practical point of view maybe not.

I'm not even sure geopolitical. Or do you think Ukraine would get all the NATO support if they had an arsenal of nukes outside of NATOs control? Culd easily be that NATO would tentatively ally with, un-officially of course, with Russia to get rid of a potentially rogue nuclear nation. Depending of the Ukrainian government of course. Or that Russia would have already annexed the whole lot during the Orange revolution. No way to tell.

Personally, as bad as war is for those in the region, every war in which belligerents don't have nukes is better. Because there is less risk of "accidently" causing a nuclear exchange.

> Personally, as bad as war is for those in the region, every war in which belligerents don't have nukes is better. Because there is less risk of "accidently" causing a nuclear exchange.

That's true, but having the Nukes, would may raise more responsibility around that topic too. Ukraine would be today a different country. The region dynamics would be different. Pakistan and North Korea demonstrated that. Said that, the only variable from the geopolitical point of view that for sure can be evaluated here is the possibility of "avoiding a Russia invasion in the Ukraine".

On that we can agree.

> The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the Principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Russia wasn’t the only signatory of the memorandum.

Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan, after the Belovezh Accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovezh_Accords) have already transferred all its nuclear weapons to Russia in 1992. So by the time Lisbon memorandum was signed in 1994 Ukraine did not have any nuclear weapons.

NK is not really left alone. They face very tough sanctions daily. But I agree, broadly I think there will be an arms race for nuclear weapons amongst the smaller asian countries.

Sanctions, sure. But no real military conflict, or attempted regime change by anyone, since the end of the Korean War. NK is at peace with its neighbors (meaning direct military conflict) almost as long as Europe is (ignoring the non-EU countries for now).

On top of that, the nuclear arsenal allowed NK to get away with a ton of human rights abuses and all the other shit, like shooting missiles over Japan, for decades.

I think it's simplistic to just put that on "NK have nukes". They also have support from China, who want them as a buffer and don't want to deal with the refugees from the state collapsing.

> But no real military conflict

NK and the US are still in a state of war, I believe. US vessels and other kinds of armaments are semi-surrounding it, and again IIRC there are occasional joint military exercises of the US and SK.

Could you explain what you mean when you mention that "First the West reneged on the Nuclear deal with Iran"?

I understand why the current situation would encourage Iran to pursue nuclear weaponry, but the agreement as far as I know did not include any defensive pact, so Iran didn't agree to forsake development of nuclear weaponry under the promise of protection from the west (which is now proving to be ineffective), it promised to forsake nuclear weaponry in order to be allowed to pursue peaceful nuclear technology. So what related lesson is to be learned from the West reneging on the deal?

Or are you saying that since the deal would have made Iran into a [nuclear threshold state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency), this is the West reneging on the deal to allow Iran the technology to defend itself, and the lesson is that they should never have relied on the West for that in the first place?

Well, the former US administration threw the deal between Iran and the "West" out. That's what I meant, Iran didn't do anything wrong there and still.

> it promised to forsake nuclear weaponry in order to be allowed to pursue peaceful nuclear technology.

Nope. The JCPOA agreement acknowledged (i.e. the US, the European signatories etc acknowledged) that Iran did _not_ have a nuclear weapons program. The JCPOA put in place stronger safeguards to ensure that remains the case.

Iirc NK also has the backing of China and has a ton of conventional arms aimed at Seoul which would cause mass casualties

North Korea has a big brother watching their backs. The country is used as a shield to ward of aggression.

Naive to assume they gave up all of them. If I was them I'd have a nice little dirty bomb stashed in some major Russian city right now.

Belarus is part of an official Union State with Russia, which is a framework designed to expand to eventually include other nations.

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

There's an explicit plan to reassemble "Greater Russia" around the historical borders of Kievan Rus. Which includes Belarus and Ukraine.

This organization was essentially dormant as Lukashenko tried to maintain some independence from Russia. But after he was almost toppled by a popular uprising two years ago he had to bend the knee to Putin to keep a hold on power. Belarus is now basically a puppet government with Russian troops permanently occupying.

Didn't know that! I'm learning a lot anout politics the region lately.

This is empty gesture, just a symbol of Belarus serfdom. Russian army was already free to enter Belarus using any convenient reason like military exercises so status quo hasn't really changed. Russia might keep nukes in Kaliningrad Oblast so from the security perspective nothing major had changed.

I would not be so quick to dismiss it. Belarus claims that it still is an independent country. If it uses a nuclear weapon then it cannot be treated as if Russians used it directly. At least in Russia it would be easier for propaganda to push the story that Lukashenko did it.

>If it uses a nuclear weapon then it cannot be treated as if Russians used it directly.

What!? Of course it can, and would be. This isn't a game. Nobody cares about tissue thin fig leaves when it comes to nukes. Belarus has zero ability to make its own. Any nukes it uses that came from Russia would be completely Russian responsibility. If it cooperated that might earn it a few nukes back amongst the thousands aimed at Russia but that's it.

.... Well, I didn't think about that side really. Goddamn. Are we really going there? Recon I should get in the car and head for the north already? ;)

For me is the opposite, time to head south and leave Vilnius, got Minsk at only 100mi from here

One positive side effect: this result, in the context of an ongoing land war in Europe will finally help to rattle us Europeans out of our traditional resistance to defense and military investment. (I'm both British and German.)

Stronger Europe -> stronger NATO -> more options for the Alliance, and for the US to prevent conflict in and out of Europe, since Europeans will shoulder more of the local deterrence burden.

Consider also the R&D spinoffs which typically result from military investment. These are dark times -- but longer term, imagine how much civilian technological advancement we can get out of this. This in turn can relieve so many other social and political problems in the West.

Technology that can get Europe off of natural gas would be tremendously helpful, and we already needed to be working on that yesterday because of climate change. Perhaps this war will provide a psychological incentive to do what needs to be done. This research could be carried out anywhere and there would be no need to classify it unlike military R&D so it can immediately be put into practice.

My hope in the US is that there will be motivation to direct some of our bloated military budget to renewables research. The long term impacts of dismantling Russia's leverage over europe through alternative energy sources will be larger than merely inventing a better gun.

Can be a net positive, if we also start to really stand by our principles of democracy and equality. The EU and NATO have a less then stelar track record on those for quite a while.

And the European disdain for military and defense spending only started after the end of the cold war when huge standing armies weren't needed anymore.

"Can be a net positive, if we also start to really stand by our principles of democracy and equality. The EU and NATO have a less then stelar track record on those for quite a while."

Absolutely. Our values are the engine of this entire thing. I'd say thanks to our insanely wired world, with the daily metric ton of stories coming out of Ukraine, people are realizing how precious Western values are, what they actually mean, and how necessary it is to defend them. We haven't thought in these terms for quite a while, in the context of superpower aggression.

"And the European disdain for military and defense spending only started after the end of the cold war when huge standing armies weren't needed anymore."

Yep -- we all hoped and worked towards a more advanced world. We didn't quite get it. But with the Kremlin intentions and ruthlessness made clear, for all to see, we now can make a wiser attempt. The aggregate political will that existed in Europe just 1 week ago, will now take a very different shape. That's despite Brexit, the pandemic, and the memory of our many past misdeeds. Great to see Western unity. That's what's holding the world together right now.

Resistance to defence and military investment should be intrinsic, it should always met with resistance. We don't need war for R&D.. We don't need war period.

Agreed -- some resistance, because military investment can easily break out of proportion. Right now though, I believe for the most part, European investment is not sufficient. Considering the NATO target for countries to spend 2% of GDP on defense.

> finally help to rattle us Europeans out of our traditional resistance to defense and military investment.

What a great development... Such ventures also invite competitors.

From what I've seen the British haven't hesitated to spend money on defense. The Germans were told not to buy the British to try and crush the Prussian military tradition and prevent future land wars, a powerful Russia being one of the consequences.

One negative (and intended) side-effect: USA as usual will reap all benefits from this war. Probably it is the reason why it pumped so much weapons into Ukraine and refused to discuss security questions with Russia prior to February 24.

Sanctions announced by EU will immensely weaken EU economy and enrich USA by forcing EU to buy more expensive US oil and gas. Also, US sanctions are laughable compared to EU. E.g. EU cannot sell Airbus produced in Europe to Russia. USA can sell their Boeings. US jets fly over Russia, EU - cannot. Etc, etc.

All in all, this looks like an attempt to plunder the biggest economy after they teared USSR apart.

Due to journo's lazyness headline became misleading: in Belarus votes are not really counted anymore. Like literally, numbers are taken out of thin air. So it's not like "referendum approves" anything - it's Lukashenka decides

Meanwhile in the EU, specifically in The Netherlands, we had a referendum about the Ukraine EU assoc treaty in 2016.

60% of the voters voted against.

Guess what happened?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93Eur...

So a single country out of 28 couldn‘t block it. Good.

And an addendum was added to address the concerns.

And the association treaty is merely a preparation, so that the country that wants to become a member can start to fulfill the requirements.

It basically spawned a civil war though.

You sound like our Prime Minister.

I am just pointing out wether your corrupt regime is associated with NATO or not, a referendum is not worth much if anything at all.

It was advisory and non-binding. I for one am happy that we get to express our opinions in this way, but the communication around it could've been better. At the time I recall also not knowing that it was non-binding. Calling it a referendum probably set incorrect expectations.

I am not Dutch (much like many people here), so your rhetoric question is difficult for me to understand. What happened? What did you expect to happen? What was the purpose of that referendum in the Netherlands in the first place? Was it a binding one? UPD. And, importantly, why is it all relevant to the topic?

I voted with a blank vote to make a point against "advisory" referendum. It in my eyes weakens the system where I vote on parties to make informed decisions on behalf of me.

What happened? Would Ukraine being a member of the EU prevented Russia from attacking, or would it have accelerated it?

The referendum was ignored, that is what happened.

It was an advisory referendum, according to the Wikipedia article you linked to.

Belarus is de-facto a part of Russia now.

I don't think that Alexander Lukashenko can make any independent decision anymore, except maybe the color of his underpants. He needs Putin for his survival. And he sacrificed his country's independence for it.

I like "Vlad the Underpants Poisoner" title given Putin by Navalny after he confirmed[1] responsibility for novichok nerve agent in his underpants. Lukashenko's underpants may interest Putin.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoni...

The linked article doesn't use that title, and I've heard that "Vlad" is not a culturally accurate shortening of "Vladimir" anyway:

> Vlad is short for Vladislav. The affectionate form of Vladimir would be Vova or Volodya.

https://twitter.com/alexey__kovalev/status/89032144807785676...

It seems that the only option left for Putin is the "nuclear" one (no pun intended) now that the whole world is seeing that the Russian army lost its morale, and its teeth. Old equipment, young soldiers that are harder to brainwash than in the old days. It is fascinating to see for the first time in the modern age what effect modern media consumption and the internet has on a local war.

While it is undeniably true that open communication and the internet has corrupted the value of information, it seems that for the first time in 20 years we're witnessing the flip side of this coin as well. It's harder to mobilise people behind a corrupt cause once blood starts flowing. Curious to see how this plays out!

And yes - there have been wars for the last 20 years, I know. But if we're honest, from a purely geographical perspective, this is the first war on the European continent in the 2000's.

> It's harder to mobilise people behind a corrupt cause once blood starts flowing.

I don't know how significant it is. Dictatorships have always been feared and despised. And armies lost motivation many times in history, before the internet.

From a military perspective what I think is different this time is how (probably) US intelligence is helping Ukrainians. It seems they know any Russian move in advance in real time and I doubt such a feat could be pulled in the past.

Same.

While it is still a bit unclear to me at least why Russia sent their seemingly old gear without proper support and young conscripts in first, the terrible parachute attempts still stand out.

When you want it to be over quickly, you have to send in the best soldiers with the best gear first to seal the deal?

In addition to live NATO intelligence, it is clear to most europeans that US intelligence tried to warn about this at the start of December, with photos showing large preparations for heavy army movement all around the Ukrainian border.

Seems like it is the same as the Soviet days: Russia is just an empty shell.

I recently learned their economy is as big as the Benelux. What a joke for a "world power".

Their elite spetsnaz got captured, the elite chechenians got annihilated before they could move a finger. No supplies, soldiers are uninformed, ... .

5 days of war, no major city captured, no air control, no cut in communications, electricity, ... .

They got nukes, yes, it seems that's basically all. If they are as good as the rest, they might even explode before they leave the surface ;).

Considering how fast things fell in place within the EU and NATO, those warnings (I doubt it was only the US) weren't in vain.

Why send not the best, brightest and most advanced? Because you only jump as high as you need. And using your most sophisticated gear in an area that is most likely covered NATO detection gear and consultants / advisors doesn't sound to smart neither.

Disagree. Shock and awe. Remember that this also should have served as showcase of their military tech for arms sales to the world. Only the fact that they used up all their guided missiles in the first two days without achieving anything (resorting to ballistic missiles by the third) shows how in fact it was always smoke and mirrors.

Tell me one war where shock and awe really worked. If used against a foe that wasn't totally outclassed in every imaginable way.

2014 Crimea annexation

And the war exactly ended since then? Because it seems Ukraine and Russia were in low scale war up to, ehat, two days ago?

> While it is still a bit unclear to me at least why Russia sent their seemingly old gear without proper support and young conscripts in first

To use them as cannon fodder to see what military capabilites Ukraine has been given by the West?

Yeah. Russians aren't stupid to send most of their punch in the beginning. Russian actions are perhaps of lower success than expected, but strategically they are correct. First there has to be the phase of measurement and taking out the most dangerous elements, preparing ground for the majority of troups. When roads are safe, the real invasion will come in.

> seemingly old gear

1.Russia doesn't have much new gear and 2. the old at least works reliably in the field. Russia for example backed down from gas turbines in tanks (like T-80) because of poor reliability and high maintenance (and maintenance is always a huge issue in Russia)

> without proper support

that is the best Russia can. Support and logistics has always been an issue.

> and young conscripts in first

the young people grew during Putin's Russia and they are much easy to make them kill Ukrainians.

> you have to send in the best soldiers with the best gear first to seal the deal

that were the ones who were dropped on the airfields near Kiev in order to capture them and thus facilitate coming of the next wave of the best - the Pskov's 76th paratroopers - who were to flew in. The capture of any of the airfields failed.

The ground attack, even by the best of the best, was too slow to make to Kiev for the "Czechoslovakia 68" plan to work.

> It is fascinating to see for the first time in the modern age what effect modern media consumption and the internet has on a local war.

The Russian propaganda effort seems to have involved the internet a lot, and you can see their talking points come out of the mouths of Western speakers in all the usual places on both the far-right and far-left.

Remains to be seen how well the domestic Russian propaganda effort will hold.

> It's harder to mobilise people behind a corrupt cause once blood starts flowing.

Only if that's your blood. If it's someone else's people are often fine with it. The returning dead Russians could make the country go either way - demands for revenge.

> from a purely geographical perspective, this is the first war on the European continent in the 2000's.

It's not even the first war _in Ukraine_ in the 2000s! Has everyone forgotten Crimea and the Donbass?

Other options for Russia are always negotiation and withdrawal. It's not like there would be an counter-attack.

For Russia? Yes. For Putin? No.

That depends entirely - what was the goal of this attack in the first place? Did he think he could quickly take Ukraine and the West wouldn't interfere? It's possible. His soldiers look unmotivated, even unprepared though.

Maybe it's part of a larger strategy. We might see more crisis popping up soon.

In soviet times (and possibly any other tyrant dictator era) the dictator was told what he wanted to hear or be (literally or figuratively) dead.

So perfectly valid assumption is that command chain inflated the capabilities and morale of the army wildly.

Also, I think it would be naive to think that the army is the one place were kleptocracy is not stealing from.

So who knows, maybe the tyrant is playing 5D chess and shit is going to go really bad or he could be playing 1D chess because ...

I can't help but think there's something else happening in the background, or that this is part of something larger.

It feels like a distraction because the "goal" seems ... both unclear and not worth the reputation damage.

An old colleague once told me, if it's either really stupid, or extremely genius, most of the time it's the former.

In all those years after hearing this, it has always been the former :D.

A small elite of oligarchs can now completely buy the whole country cheaply using up the dollars they stacked under their mattresses, having all been forewarned of what was to happen.

How much more cheaply, and will they be saving more than the sanctions cost them?

I would have thought that if they could buy it now / soon, then they could probably have bought it at not much a percentage premium prior.

I'm not across the realpolitik of this kind of thing though, but interested to learn.

> Did he think he could quickly take Ukraine and the West wouldn't interfere?

No and yes. He's taking it slowly because he knows the West won't interfere.

It's not a blitz, it's a siege.

The initial paratroopers at the airports plus fast armor columns all indicated a blitz approach. Those have already been destroyed. It's no longer on the original plan, and the West is interfering. The longer it takes the more weapons we can ship them, and everyone's running around looking for new types of economic sanctions which can be applied against Russia.

Russia is no stranger to sanctions, it doesn't mean much. Ukraine can barely get people out much less weapons in. The main point was he knew there would be no military response from the West so surrounding, cutting off the capitol, and slowly taking it through attrition is possible.

Paratroopers/fast armor columns and sieges aren't mutually exclusive, they can be used to probe weaknesses in a siege.

> Ukraine can barely get people out much less weapons in

There's a traffic jam of refugees at the border, but the roads, railways and airports are still there and in Ukranian control? I don't see what obstacle there is.

It was always blitz.

They expected capitulation by Sunday, with some ongoing attrition medium term. This is both from US Intel and now confirmation via a deleted, but luckily web archived, article/commentary on one of their major state-media sites, praising the (now impossible) “success” and their resurgence, while also flaunting the west.

I disagree with the premise the article verifies that, that could have been planned for release at any time.

I don't know what US intel you're referring to, so no comment.

In the end, we shall see, but from their positioning imo it looks like a siege.

Could you please post a link to the pulled article?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30492493

A siege of what? Land? Because the Ukrainians seem to prefer to die over living under Russian suppression.

Liberate the country (well half the country up til Dniepr river).

Liberate from who? We have a russian-speaking president of Jewish origin who is voted by 73% of the population, most of them from the russian-speaking South East. All of the ultra right wing nationalist parties could not even get into the Parliament. Putin calls nazis everyone who is against his plans to fulfill his dreams about rebuilding the empire. Today (Feb 28) he was bombing the russian-speaking cities, the population he said he wants to free from some imaginary "nazis".

While I'm all in awe for Ukraine resistance, I wouldn't dismiss so quickly the Russian army. The loss of morale and teeth, is mostly social media stuff. I do hope it's true, but I wouldn't bet on it.

They did encounter much stiffer resistance than they expected, but there are still hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of troops around Kyiv. Now that the West is sending arms to Ukraine, there is an increasing probability that they will manage to defend themselves. But unfortunately it's far from certain, or even probable at this point.

While I am mildly skeptical as well... There sure are a lot of videos of tanks blown up and of wreckages and of immobile vehicles. And recently Putin removed the head of the armed forces. I doubt things are going as planned for the Russians.

You cannot base opinion on online media, it's heavily biased! Even though I agree with the sentiment that Ukraine is doing better then I expected. I would not say things are going well.

The bombings and shelling looks really, really bad.. Kharkov will be nothing but rubble.

I honestly take most of my info from Reddit. There are a couple of subs where the discussion is quite nice. Twitter has a steady stream of data coming in and OSINT channels seem to make a honest effort to present genuine data (even if one-sided).

There is also the confirmation from the British Ministry of Defence: https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcam...

They are Ukraine aligned but are IMO more trustwordy.

Overall, I admit the fog of war is thick. But even maintaining my skepticism, the info seems coherent enough to convince me.

Just saying "You cannot base opinion on online media" is useless because what are YOU basing your opinion on? Online media, written media, whatever.. it's all information, one way or another we're all basing our view on external sources. The trick is filtering it and I think it's possible to at least glimpse reflections of the actual status. If you don't take into account any information you know nothing and just go off on projections in your head. Much worse state of afairs.

Can you distinguish burned or blown up Ukrainian tank from Russian tank?

Not to mention that Spanish media even used footage from video game to "illustrate" the fake news about the war.

I can't but a lot of other people can. There was exactly this going on in some subreddits where some APC's were presented as russian but it turned out to be Ukrainean. Camo is also different between the countries and they have the russian speciffic markings on their armor. Not to mention the kind of funny videos of abandoned Russian vehicles. That exposes deep problems in the way Russia is conducting the invasion.

Most shocking for me was the videos of the TB2's incinerating some BUK systems I think. I was... astonished, it means Ukraine can still operate in the airspace and that does not bode well for the Russians.

Pollonium and thermobaric bombs easily come to my mind. Funding terrorism on steroid making Iranian look like absolute kindergartener are something I immediately think of after the previous 2 options. I can probably write a master thesis in an afternoon for possible options Putin can take. Imagine people doing this kind of think tank on daily basis for Putin. Remember when Soviet were dirt poor then they can match USA militarily, Russia now is sig ificantly richer with more sophisticated weapons. Look up who ferry American to space for the past 2 decades. Hint...not Elon.

> Remember when Soviet were dirt poor then they can match USA militarily, Russia now is sig ificantly richer with more sophisticated weapons

They were poor, it's true. Tragically, because they were a centrally planned economy, the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine.

Russia is richer (about as rich as the state of Florida) but less centrally controlled, so it will find it harder to concentrate wealth into state initiatives at the expense of the lives of its citizens.

> the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine.

That would a stronger point, if one could not also unfavourably compare the size of the USA's military and social welfare budgets. And also the ease of expanding the former, vs. the difficultly in expanding the latter.

You aren't talking about the same types of thing:

1. The US also has loads of value which is not mediated by the state. A shop can decide what to sell, and you can decide to buy it, without any central planning or money spent by the state. All of this value could be (and was) decided by the state in the USSR.

2. "social welfare budgets" are not in the same league as what happened with central planning. From Wikipedia:

> In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the "lead by example" policy advocated by Lenin,[31] forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country.

> Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor.

We know that it rarely makes sense for other people to even plan software timelines for teams of 4 developers, and the team members are the best people to estimate timelines, pick tools, and solve problems. How much more does that scale up for a whole country's economy? How much more damage can someone do if they are choosing centrally to deprioritise wealth creation over the latest thing the state wishes to accomplish?

Historically, all terrorism was created and funded by USA. USA subsists on chaos in other countries. There's no benefit for Russia in this fictional terrorism, also we don't have it in our cultural code.

For the US and UK it was always a preferred modus operandi: to make other people and nations fight for them. Like before WW II they explicitly stated that they would be happy to see both USSR and Germany mutually annihilate themselves, so that US can come to what is left and occupy the remnants.

Islamic terrorism is also a child of USA.

Your take is very surface level, its like you are looking for faults.

Assaults on massive countries are not won overnight. USA had a quick win of a month in Iraq by using shock and awe. Blowing everything up and killing any civilian who got in the way.

This created a massive insurgency, which was fine because they didn't plan on occupying only destabilising.

Russia plans on occupying, to reduce NATOs ability to out flank them over the European plane.

So it takes longer.

Secondly, the young soldiers. Its called training, they are battle hardening the next generation in a 'easy' war, for if they ever need to use them in the future.

Russia is clearly taking the slow and careful approach, he wants these people to be part of the union eventually.

For a country not planning to occupy, the US lead coalition sure stayed for quite some time.

I think maybe parent is maybe combining info from the first and second invasion into one.

The 2003 war lasted 1 month, 1 week and 4 days (Wikipedia)

The invasion tactic was shock and awe.

They didn't plan to occupy, they thought it would be easier to setup a puppet government than it was. They couldn't leave until Iraq was in a state to balance Iran's regional influence.

USA wanted to use Iraq for a oil/gas pipeline to Europe from Saudi/Qatar. They realised that was not possible due to the USA lack of state building abilities. So they turned their attention on Syria for the pipeline.

Jordan agreed but Syria was a under the Russian sphere of influence, so they needed to topple this government for the pipeline.

The pipeline would have challenged Russian oil/gas monopoly in Europe.

Could be yes, didn't think about it. But didn't they create a Shiit uprising in the south during the first one? An uprising they allowed Sadam to shoot down with whatever limited forces he was left with?

That would have been outside the boundaries of the UN mandate and Bush Sr. wouldn't violate it.

Ah, yes. The good old days when UN mandates still mattered.

How does one outflank a country with thousands of nuclear weapons?

Many countries have nuclear weapons, doesn't you stop wanting to have basic strategic advantages on your side.

Why have a navy if you have nukes, why build tanks when you already have nukes, why not let your adversary encircle you if you have nukes.

Nukes are typically tactical weapons, you will still have a deal with a ground force once all the nukes have been used.

https://archive.fo/hfI7b

theres no doubt this was referendum where the votes were not counted. in the prev online-elections the newly elected president got like 3% approval rating.

3% comes from internet poll done by one of the newspapers, after the elections, during first weeks of the protests, while somewhat independent newspapers were still publishing.

The independent papers were closed few months later, those that weren't turned off their comment sections and started filtering what they publish.

https://www.nhc.no/en/five-facts-about-the-referendum-in-bel... :

"The amendments to this article will make it sound as follows: The Republic of Belarus excludes military aggression from its territory against other states."

Either Lukashenko will tell Putin to remove Russian troops from Belarus, or Lukashenko is breaking the new constitution of his own country.

Ironically, one of Putin's stated reasons for invading Ukraine was that Ukraine might get nuclear weapons.

Source?

Vladimir Putin: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine...

> Mr. Putin’s arguments occupied a third of his speech to the Russian people on Monday, when he made a series of bizarre charges that “Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.”

And if you don't trust NYT, just listen to his speech...

I just asked because I didn't read this news, you don't need to be so salty

But in case I'd ask you since seems like you speak Russian and you can understand his speech

Anything Putin says is worthless

True, but that's why I said "stated reason". Here's the full speech: https://theprint.in/world/modern-ukraine-entirely-created-by...

Duh, really… The person asked for a source…

In slavic countries there is a saying, how do you know if Putin is lying? If he opens his mouth he is lying.

By “referendum” do they mean he called his aunts and cousins?

I honestly don't know what Putin hopes to achieve here. Day one, every other country in europe joins NATO and wants nukes too to point at Russia. How does that help him? He's gained the Ukraine and lost the whole rest of the continent...

it's getting really serious right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM3SOQQ-7ng

Time to move to Africa

More than half of Africa is in some sort of active war, according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...

You probably wouldn't get downvoted if you added some context, but the description of the video is apt. NATO doesn't want to go into Ukraine because NATO directly getting involved could cause escalation to WWIII. Putin seems crazy enough to want to use the nuclear option.

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