Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

Now, need to fix the shit and Z stands for Nazi, Zelensky is war hero, Chechens dont understand why they were erased even before killing one civilian and there s no way it ends with a win for Russia.

Love it cause even if completely fake, it's probably 100% true :D

When the prediction doesn't pan out, the usual response is "two more weeks." Qanon is the most notorious and successful example of this phenomenon. You don't normally see these on HN, but they are common on anonymous message boards. Perhaps this is a "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" mainstream conspiracy theory being propagated as an official narrative for war propaganda purposes?

In the first days of the Snowden leaks, I was very skeptical (and got a lot of heat because of it), because, although intuitively it sounded true and fairly aligned with my world view, he seemingly didn't say anything that one couldn't just come up with and at the time only one news paper has seen the actual documents, vouching for it.

And this is purportedly intelligence information coming from the FSB! I mean, military intelligence, what could go wrong with trusting sensitive intelligence of an ongoing war that someone posted on Twitter or Facebook?

If it's true then that should give it more credibility, as most probably Bellingcat is a CIA-cover organisation itself, so I suppose they do know their direct field adversaries.

This comment is always near the top of any HN or Reddit post, and while it’s not wrong, it’s almost a cliche at this point.

There is clear misinformation being pumped out, but there is room to discuss should why it might be misinformation, and to understand why someone might have spent time carefully producing it.

Interestingly enough, HBO's Chernobyl was thrilling TV but not particularly good as a documentary of what actually happened, yet people are starting to believe what HBO (and the memories it's based on) tell us is "the truth".

I guess it's all based on lies indeed...

It also mentioned a false flag op to make Ukraine look like it's been developing nuclear weapons. News just broke of that today from Russian media, entirely in line with the letter. Huge coincidence if it's fake.

Same with how does Russia keep their Syria effort supplied when their logistics in Ukraine are already stretched.

So this is definitely written by some analyst, but who knows if from FSB.

Whistleblowing or not, "leaks" such as this, even if fake, can easily result in a death penalty in war time.

No way it's real.

Asking analyst to perform an analysis of highly unlikely scenario and punishing them for unflattering reports is a failure mode. All this story explains how this stupid war became possible: the decision was made by the very top officials, it was done in a total secret, it was based on flawed reports, which were flawed because for analysts they seemed as an unimportant nuisance.

I know that this is just a twitter-news, and I'm in doubt about it. But I struggle to find a good hypothesis explaining actions of Putin. I do not value much hypotheses like "Putin is a madman" or "Hanlon's razor": they may be valid explanations, but they do not allow us to predict future. A madman and a fool are unpredictable by their very nature, so these hypotheses sounds for me like "it is a random and unpredictable in advance process". Hypotheses like this seem to me to be a result of an intellectual laziness.

But this "whistleblower" gives some explanation. Pretty detailed explanation, allowing to predict, for example, a coming investigation for a failure of a plan. It is hard to predict where it will go then, but... It is a doubtful report, but if we assumed this text as truth, then we would get a more or less firm ground to speculate of what is going next. We can predict future. And then we can compare our predictions with our future observations. It will give us ability to assess likelihood of the hypothesis.

So the "whistleblower" had given us some secret facts. And therefore he is not a "whistleblower" but whistleblower. Though the possibility of him being an impostor was not ruled out.

- RF nuclear deterrence: this part is designed to allay fears of NATO citizens of getting directly involved in the fight. In what universe does a Russian spook undermine his nation's deterrence? So, garner public support for direct NATO involvement by claiming that military chain of command in RF strategic forces is non-functional, and (for bonus point) the weapons may not even work!

- Famine: this part is directed at the people of what is known as "global south". Under-reported in the West, the "global south" is either sitting this out or is voicing objections of Western hypocrisy and actually rooting for the Russians. Putting a little bit of fear of starvation in that demographics may provide political cover for their political classes.

- Chechnya: in the same alternate universe, a Russian FSB agent fans the flames of resentment of the locals in a separatist-ready corner of Russian Federation.

- Soleimani: this part is interesting. RF, of course, was not 'tricked' by Soleimani into getting involved in Syria. They got themselves a nice little piece of property (for ever, btw, for free!) on the Mediterranian. So little blackwashing of Iranians as well.

p.s. of course having this circulate in Russia will go a long way to demoralize the Russian public. It is transparent psyops.

Wheat prices are through the roof right now [1], it's only going to get worse.

So short-term impact pretty much guaranteed.

Longer term, much of the euro zone agriculture is very dependent on fertilizers that are either produced using Russian natural gas or directly bought from there.

Cost of growing food, if the situation doesn't improve, will increase dramatically.

So, in other words, major increase in food shortages is a likely scenario indeed.

[1] https://live.euronext.com/en/product/commodities-futures/EBM...

Stepping up production isn't easy, since most arable land is being used for food production already. You'd have to increase farming efficiency. (Which is possible, but not easy; nobody wants to do inefficient farming, so if, as a farmer, you haven't raised efficiency, it's likely that you don't know how, or simply cannot, due to other constraints, such as availability of machines and fertilizer).

Russia was getting much less efficient in Ukraine and the situation was pretty dire ( water was cut off)

However, one positive note to get out of this in any case is that with the current trajectory, even without any further outside intervention going beyond the current state of affairs will likely bring the Russian special operation to an end, be it that supplies are running out or people just start to lose overview or just that you cannot succeed if maybe 20-40% of your forces are gone even before you capture one bigger target. Russia supposedly already lost 10% of their attack army and they don't have a lot to show for it. It also explains their attack patterns getting more weird, uncivilized and cruel (e.g. "we have to do something", even if it is firing on nuclear power plants).

Next step likely will be Belarus troops and supplies entering the game, which makes it more obvious that Moscow was absolutely clueless. Belarus was on the brink of a regime change just last summer - the order to go to war with Russia against Ukraine will send Belarus over the edge, I am virtually certain about that.

[1] non Russian news outlets, if you google you'll get many hits

It seems far more like a slow surge offensive, siege technically. Look at US in Iraq, shock and awe was more akin to "blitzkrieg" and even that campaign took 3 weeks to secure Baghdad.

The first 3 days are critical. You need to smash a hole deep in the defence. Then gather logistics to carry on. however you are horrifically exposed until you shore up your flanks.

if you don't break the spirit of the defenders then you're in deep shit.

for what its worth, the german invasion of france almost failed, because the entire column got bunched up in the Ardennes. Had the french acted in time, the germans would have been destroyed.

Plus, because the french were so motorised it allowed the germans to piggyback on the infra.

HN was great in 2008 to remind us that developments in software development meant that starting a web app was now cheap enough to actually disrupt old businesses. but that was a long time ago.

This is political like the choice of technology is political. I.e. everything is political.

This is meat hook reality blasting apart comrades of ours on both sides.

This is not a debate about whether Putin should be impeached for hanging out with Aslan Usoyan.

Russia had already purged generals in 00s — there's been a LOT of weird "accidents" happening to experienced and charismatic generals after the second Chechen war.

That's one of the reasons behind what's happening now.

Its true that russia will find it _very_ difficult to sustain this level of effort for any level of time. Its logistic capacity has been pushed way beyond efficiency.

but with that in mind, whos going to push putin out of ukraine? yes the people can pick off soldiers for the next few years, but thats not peace.

It is currently within Putin's grasp to freeze the conflict as it is now, with eastern ukraine in his possession.

I suspect his options are:

1) stage a dirty bomb, blame it on ukraine, order a general mobilisation.

2) freeze the conflict now, hold on to the "gains"

3) Assainate Zelenskyy

4) Stage some other stupid humanitarian horror(bombing of russian hospital/orphanage/school) general mobilisation

5) carry on, regardless.

but Russia cant win either

> Вас просят (условно) рассчитать возможность правозащиты в разных условиях, включая атаку тюрем метеоритами. Вы уточняете про метеориты, Вам говорят - это так, перестраховка для расчетов, ничего такого не будет

They ask you (hypothetically) to work out the probability that human rights could be protected in various circumstances, including using meteorites to attack prisons. You try to clarify about the meteorites, they tell you it's just to be confident in the estimations, nothing like this would actually happen.

edit: here https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/64199473/translator-z-rosyjskiego-... and this was given as original source: https://t.me/Tsaplienko/1785 (last edited: Mar 4 at 18:29)

2009: https://www.rt.com/news/the-price-of-mass-destruction/

>Ukraine’s security service has arrested a group suspected of trying to sell a container of radioactive material. Officials say there was enough of the substance to create a dirty bomb, which could have posed a serious threat to the entire region.

2014: https://www.rt.com/news/ukraine-nuclear-arsenal-threat-314/

> While the uranium Ukraine gets from Russia for its reactors is low-enriched, reactor waste is quite enough to make a so-called dirty bomb. The country possesses manpower and know-how to do that as well as delivery vehicles for nuclear payload, which don’t have to be too sophisticated.

2015: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/311869-uranium-ukraine-nuclear-poro...

> According to Ukraine's security forces, they have seized nuclear material from a criminal gang that was trying to sell it. The substance is said to be Uranium-238, which can be used to create a so-called 'dirty bomb'

edit: Clarification for the many downvoting, this is in response to OP specifically saying "This makes the letter seem more plausible, if it really preceeds the news".

It's very hard to believe whatever either side is reporting. And before you say that's what Russian bots want you to believe, I'll add I lost my trust after Iraq war reporting (like who in their right mind confuses plot of The Rock (film) and WMD in real life), and then after Trump's victory in 2016 (media I was following at the time were making it out to be a sure fire thing for Hillary which is opposite of what happened).

I remain a skeptic and will wait for 5+ years to see what actually happened.

Say, what, now?

I don't think war threads are staying front page very long, but there is lots of discussion happening.

you will notice politics and actually real world concerns mostly by the absence, or the completely predictable what-about responses so the greedy people can try to get back to work.

I dont care about being banned my conscience is clear.

And regarding trolls in HN: this topic here is also full of comments "it's all fake", "where is the proof?" etc. It's the tactics troll factories used for years in every corner of the world. It's one of the main methods to erode the trust in societies. So, are these comments from trolls or from genuine smartasses? I don't really know.

Of course these perceptions are all relative, which is why "most discussed topic" can still feel "absent from HN".

Especially on a subject where every side has incentives to lie, distort or exaggerate the truth.

In practice, you just don't know and are speculating.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513...

Of course we still can’t know for sure.

Absolutely everything on this seems to be extremely biased, to the point, I simply assume it all to be entirely fake until proven otherwise.

2. They say that the latest Putin's video is green screened

No, not all information in this note is fake, that is complete nonsense, so now, if you don't mind, please point out exactly which bits you believe are fake and why?