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Comment by dstick | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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 ;).

> 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 ...

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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