Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%
metaculus.com
metaculus.com
I wouldn’t be surprise if many other communities in Europe are doing the same. The problem might be getting the aid to the right place.
Is the problem with food existence or food transport? My impression is the food problems are in besieged cities.
I saw a claim from a Canadian vet in Kyiv that 40,000 foreign fighters were already in Kyiv. The Canadian was part of a 500-man exclusively Canadian urban battalion. There was also a report on BBC that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia [1].
I've also been on Telegram channels helping American vets organize, fund their flights to Poland, equip, and then drive them to the Ukrainian border.
These are highly motivated well equipped men - many are veterans. Assuming these data points are accurate, then Russia's odds of victory are going down by the day as more western men and supplies enter Ukraine each day than Russian men and supplies.
[1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/west-sends-mercenaries-to-fi...
Kicking a poorly motivated invasion force out of the Ukraine is one thing.
Wreaking havoc in Russia? Quite another.
Now, Belarus, on the other hand, I could see toppling over in such a way (unless propped up by Russia)
UA forces are doing a good job holding out and fighting defensively, but a genuine attack will require serious concentrations of troops and equipment. Outside of local counterattacks, or maybe special forces raids (blow up rail lines, etc), large scale assaults probably aren't feasible.
You only need a few NLAWs and a yoga mat to sleep on if you're fighting in Kherzon, but you'll need a lot of fighting vehicles and gas if you want to launch an offensive. See also: Russian logistical problems.
It's like a mouse attacking a cat. The mouse might get lucky and survive an attack by a cat, but it has no chance of killing the cat.
Ukraine is also likely to lose all Western support if it attacked Russia.
If they survive at all (which is still very doubtful), they'll likely lick their wounds and try to rebuild their shattered country rather than go on the offensive in Russia proper.
Ukraine should even refrain from retaking Crimea militarily if things go well, unless it's virtually bloodless. This war has to end ASAP, and it won't end ASAP if Russians suddenly have a non-absurd reason to defend their land.
This is an important point. This is why we should keep reiterating to the Russian people that the sanctions are not to spite them and will be revoked immediately if Putin is gone.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Not sure what to make of it, but people are definitely thinking about this.
Could be all over the ideological spectrum. Surely quite a few Neo-Nazis, yes, but: If you're a fervent anti-Nazi who sees Putin as rather equivalent to a fascist (I pretty much do; a kind of Duginian pan-Slavo-fascism), you could AFAICS go fight against the Russians on those grounds too.
I am absolutely dying laughing at the absurdity of such a complaint (if true), lol.
Plus the experience of the Chechen volunteers -- who generally got hit hard from the looks of it -- is something the Kazakhs can look at and say "nah".
As a glaring example of how gullible are Russians to their propaganda - this official Russian TV story shows planes with unguided dumb bombs (FAB-250, 500lbs) with which Russia bombs Ukrainian cities, and they call it "high-precision missiles" and "point-precision weapons" with which Russia supposedly strikes only military targets (while any Russian can find, yet wouldn't, on YouTube the videos of Ukraine cities destruction by those bombs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrekdY2FgD0 , yet if you talk to a Russian in Russia they will be screaming that they only "precision-strike only military targets".
That is the same unit - the same planes and pilots - who did similar bombing of civilians in Syria cities back then. On February 5 Ukraine shot down one of those planes when it was bombing the city of Chernigov. The pilot was captured - happened to be the guy infamous for his Syrian cities bombings and who was celebrated by Putin for that. https://www.unian.net/war/bombil-mirnyy-gorod-letchika-so-sb...
A lot harder to uphold once a tactical nuke is used... My worry after the world is so blatently defying Putler with MiGs & other armarments...
I suppose it is the difference between officially being at war and not. If some country sends fighters to support your enemy, you may start asking if you are at war with that other country, after all?
So would you say it would be funny if Canada was officially at war with Russia now?
Unless Russia gives up, WWIII seems to already have started, as most countries have joined in one way or another. I guess the only hope is that Russia will decide that the cost is too high.
Canada itself is not sending them, that is the distinction here. The humor is in a country exercising hostility by invading another country then asking people to stop coming to that country's defense, simple as that.
Obviously the real world has more complexity than that. "Complain about it" could mean "We know about your tax incentives driving your citizens to fight us and we want you to end that program" but is more likely to mean "We want you to police your internal borders and prevent your citizens from traveling to Europe"
and a legal quagmire. I wonder if a canadian citizen who murders someone overseas can be tried for such in canada (when they return). Because if they can be, then going overseas to participate in a war can be legally problematic, esp. unauthorized by the canadian gov't.
But if this is seen as legal today, then it sets a bad precedence for private citizens going overseas to commit murder!
Is there a good reason why any country willing to claim you as a citizen should have a right to police you wherever you are in the world? In context, if Russia decided that all current Ukrainians were Russian citizens should they be allowed to continue the invasion (which at that point would just be ordinary police work quelling an internal rebellion)?
Russia cannot just declare that every person is a Russian citizen and therefor subject to Russian laws. (I mean... they can but it would obviously be in bad faith)
But it does make sense that people who themselves claim and hold Russian citizenship be subject to Russian laws and that if they do not wish to be so, they renounce their citizenship.
I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Do you mean that subjecting people to the laws of the jurisdiction in which they claim residence regardless of where their actions take place would be "bad precedence"?
In the case where an individual who claims residence in Jurisdiction A (where murder is illegal) travels to and commits murder in Jurisdiction B (where murder is illegal).
Clearly some form of "double jeopardy" would be bad and odd cases with conflicting laws can get complex.
But, overall, the notation that you abide by all laws of the land in which you claim citizenship as well as the land in which you currently physically occupy seems to be a "good precedence".
As for the "country" sending fighters, in this instance, it's miss-representative. These are legit volunteers acting on there own initiatives outside of any government's call to arm, a bit like the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil war.
Lastly, Putin is a gambler, but not an idiot nor a lunatic wanting to end the world nor a leader in a desperate situation. He made a gamble in Ukraine because he knew he could somewhat get away with it (even if things are not exactly going according to plan).
He will not start a global/nuclear conflict over a silly matter like few hundreds foreign combatants acting on their own initiative, which doesn't mean he will not posture against it.
If that were true, NATO would have at least have sent troops to defend Ukraine.
We know that if NATO uses nukes against Russia, Russia will nuke back.
Nuclear war will also almost certainly result from a direct non-nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Everything short of that is a murky, gray area. We are in uncharted waters, where one wrong move or miscalculation could mean the end of civilization as we know it, and possibly all of humanity.
I wouldn't be surprised if both Russia and the US have already started working through their WW3 contingency plans and watching each other very closely like two gunfighters looking to see who's going to draw first.
The slightest hint of starting to move towards a direct confrontation could quickly and easily result in a corresponding or even more provocative response, and then spiral out of control.
If you'd like to work together, I'd love to talk. Petrol has become pretty expensive, so pooling resources makes a lot of sense.
95% of everything is logistics. Fully agree with the quote.
We are mostly sourcing supplies from the US at this point. Tampa is our pack/repack and pallet departure point. We have pallet space aboard flights from Florida through Germany to Poland and Romania, available every other day or so. We have trucks in Cluj, Romania but not in Poland. Romanian and Polish Governments have waived customs and we have a direct line for whatever other needs arise - they've been incredibly supportive - perhaps worried about Putin's further ambitions. Someone we know flies with the pallets from US departure and stays with them until they're handed off to someone else we know inside Ukraine who distributes to support and defense units in country. There is a lot of fraud involved in mass mobilization and cross-border transport so this level of accountability is important to us.
Very few people in Ukraine thought Putin would invade, and even if he invaded, almost nobody thought he would cross the Dnieper river (in the south) and make a run for Kiev. The Ukrainians we know, very "ordinary" people, have dug in. There is no concept in their minds of a negotiated peace that leaves Russia in control of Ukraine. They would rather fight it out. As a result it feels like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We are focused on combat medical supplies at this point but as time drags on there will no doubt be a great need for food, clothing, and similar items you mentioned.
1. Offer immediate provisional citizenship/asylum to anyone who immigrated to fight.
2. Anyone in their prisons, offer them clemency if they agree to fight (bad idea I know but it works)
Ukraine is not a wealthy country. Who might consider citizenship so desirable to risk his life over it?
Sad to say it, as an EU citizen myself, but that's about it AFAICS.
For those volunteers who already decided to risk their life for Ukraine that is not an issue. What it does is give them, and the state of Ukraine, an out from accusations of "ruthless soldiers of fortune!" or Western nation-level meddling: "No no, these aren't foreign 'mercenaries', they're our citizens!"
2. Already done for people with military experience.
Except fighters and drones.
I think since after the 1st week of troop movements it's pretty clear:
- Russia aims at encircling cities, draining the resistance there, forcing them into negotiations and so that enemy combatants can evacuate into western Ukraine (like they did in Syria)
- Ukraine aims at short-term luring them into cities (e.g. preventing humanitarian corridors, creating negative pr) and long-term building up an insurgency (turning Ukraine into Russia's 2nd Afghanistan).
A recipe for humanitarian disaster.
The upside: Russia doesn't seem intent to even set foot in western Ukraine.
At lest in the west where our information is censored to provide a Pro-Ukrainian perspective.
I can only guess at how the social media ops-game is playing out in Russia and China within their own propaganda bubble.
A number of Wikipedia articles for historic events are also actively being revised
Looks like the rumors are true: you Russians are using Google to search for targets. It's hilarious that you're complaining that this is censorship when saying "war" gets you 15 years in gaol in Russia.
Just an example of information being delisted from search engines in the west. i.e. censorship.
I don't like my government participating in a war while being censored form learning about what is going in that war from public sources. These could include statements from my own government, past or present.
Starting Feb 24th, every Ukrainian knows to never photograph our troops, never post about location of our troops, and to photograph and post enemy troops as much as possible. That's why you can easily find photos of vehicles marked Z, but it's very hard to find photos of vehicles wearing pixel camo.
That doest explain why any loosely related information was scraped from the internet from the dawn of time
I said if I was Lithuanian I would probably apply. Sounds like they think the way I said they do.
The question of what is a strategic and moral mistake for this US is entirely separate from what makes Lithuania happy.
If someone asks me how I would feel if I were Russian, Lithuanian, or Chinese I provide an answer from that perspective. That doesn't mean I agree with it or it is moral.
To be absolutely clear, I can understand why Lithuania would want to be part of NATO, but I do not think it was wise or moral for the US to grant such a request.
This is not a radical position, and was held by many NATO members at the time. They required significant persuasion from the US to allow Lithuania entry to NATO.
Similarly, France, Germany, and many NATO countries did not want to open the door to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008. They felt that it would lead to war in Europe. Again they were overruled by the US and we got a war in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the largest war in Europe since WW2 today.
> This is not a radical position
Maybe not; only a stupid and morally abhorrent one.
> and was held by many NATO members at the time. They required significant persuasion from the US to allow Lithuania entry to NATO.
Yeah, NATO member states are also capable of holding stupid and morally abhorrent positions.
> Similarly, France, Germany, and many NATO countries did not want to open the door to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008. They felt that it would lead to war in Europe.
We'll never know, though, will we? Since Georgia and Ukraine weren't admitted into NATO in (or soon after) 2008, I mean.
> Again they were overruled by the US and we got a war in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the largest war in Europe since WW2 today.
Yup. Judging from the facts, all because Georgia and Ukraine weren't admitted into NATO in (or soon after) 2008. Well, because of that, and mainly because the Russian people keep clinging on to a fucking dictator who does shit like that, of course. Time for a fucking revolution, perhaps? I've heard you've tried one of those before. Pro tip: Try not to replace one fucking dictator with another this time.
I would say any price, as after WW3 civilization as we know it, if not all of humanity will perish.
It is WW3 that we are edging towards in this war over NATO membership.
It's not a "war over NATO membership"; that's just the Putler-propaganda framing of it.
That is the only reason NATO still exists.
We literally paid hundreds millions of dollars to prop up Russia and their nuke labs during Yeltsin.
Look what it got us. We should have snuffed them out like cockroaches. Instead we let them live. To our detriment.
We needed to keep the boogeyman alive.
The US takes the cake in all categories, but of course we aren't a bully, all the people we kill were the bullies. We are the strongest so we define who is a bully or not.
>We should have snuffed them out like cockroaches. Instead we let them live. To our detriment.
yeah, you really sound like the good guy here
The hypocrisy of people saying they "should have snuffed them out like cockroaches" after 50 years of US atrocities is just astounding.
Russia is a bully, but the US is 10x worse. Ukraine is the looser here.
The US intentionally played them like a pawn and use their lives to get more leverage against Russia.
What does that mean in concrete terms? An invasion and occupation of Russia after the fall of the USSR? An extermination of the Russian people?
What would a more complete defeat looks like?
> What does that mean in concrete terms?
A thorough de-Communistification and collective education into the principles of democratic government and statehood, like the de-Nazification of (West) Germany after WW2.
> An invasion and occupation of Russia after the fall of the USSR?
Would have been preferable, yes; mainly because it would have been required for the above. Which would have meant that under the watchful eyes of a (comparatively enlightened) occupying force, Communism would have been far less likely to be replaced by a kleptocracy -> oligarchy -> neo-Soviet pseudo-fascist rule, which is what we've seen play out in Russia over the last thirty years. (Hm, about one decade per stage of this evolution?)
> An extermination of the Russian people?
If you absolutely want to be ridiculous, go ahead and be ridiculous. Not that comments like that make anyone more negative to the idea, you know.
> What would a more complete defeat looks like?
Pretty much anything would have been preferable to what the Russian people have become: The same as they have always been, a willing herd for autocrats to rule and use.
Isn't it about time for the Russians, too, to try something other than authoritarian rule for once[1] in their thousand years of history? If they can't even catch up to the seventeenth century, what use does the world really have of a "Russian people"? The Golden Horde and the Aztecs are also gone, and nobody seems to be missing them much.
___
[1]: For a bit longer than the two single decades of dithering chaos under, uhm, Kerensky? and of kleptocratic free-for-all under Yeltsin.
I have a much more cynical view of US military interventions, in which they are largely self serving. The ideas of freedom, independence, and stability are platitudes to sell the war, are rarely align with the outcomes for the people in those countries.
The US did a good job of building liberal democracies after WWII, and perhaps up to the Vietnam war. If you look at countries in the last 50 years, the outcomes for the countries the US went into is quite poor.
In what way is Ukraine "preventing" humanitarian corridors? Ukraine is requesting them daily, but Russian troops keep bombing them and disrupting the evacuation of civilians, daily.
Please, don't come with conjectures about Ukrainians using civilians as a meat shield, this is either utterly bollocks or you need a pretty convincing source for that statement.
Not if you're Russian.
And if you look at how Russians have been behaving themselves ever since this war has started, then you will realize that Azov don't need civilians as a human shield since Russians are willingly shelling and bombing civilians, and have been doing it ever since this war started. Human shield won't stop Russians.
I'm very skeptical of any news coming from either side currently.
I think they officially said they were doing exercises and will not invade Ukraine. So no worries.
It's sort of like the Cambridge Analytica thing. We live in bubbles, and we're unaware that in some bubbles the Russians are completely winning the propaganda war.
The overzealous covid response further fragmented society and led to further distrust of the media. This created a huge opportunity for Russia.
For now, it's not significant enough to matter, but it might come to bite us in the ass.
I'm living relatively close to Ukrainian border, and helped moving Ukrainians further into the country. That's really weird not single one mentioned, that he has issues leaving due to other Ukrainians. Actually exact opposite.
Even weirder multiple people are parroting this today on HN.
HN is read by many influential Silicon Valley people. It's definitely the target of Russian psyops.
That seems to have changed since you wrote this five days ago.
Snake Island Soldiers Dying Heroically
Nuclear Reactor Shelled, Radiation Rising
Doubt it had anything to do with radiation though.
Regardless of that it is incredibly stupid to do any kind of fighting around a nuclear plant.
That goes both ways.
I saw the video from the start of the fighting and that was UA forces who started to fire upon oncoming forces from the building to the right on the video.
If you mount defenses for something vital for the civilians of your country you should always question how exactly to do that to minimize the damage from the fighting.
Given they took positions in the building, started the fight first, had a prerecorded video for Twitter of how they are under attack[0]...
Sure, I'm just an arm-chair general, but for me it looks what the Ukrainian force decided to fight on the NPP territory and buildings.
[0] go find it you if you didn't saw it. I doubt the first thing what would come to my mind as an operator of a NPP is to fire up a video for a social network.
In other words, never protect critical civilian infrastructure?
Is that the defense playbook you'd propose?
Like in your playbook there were absolutely no other options there.
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5026803,34.5967556,6233m/dat...
You did not “see the reactor get shelled live.”
Those gigantic streaks in the lower right are shells from tanks. They certainly aren’t tracers from rifles.
You’re right to press me for details on the “tank” part. I don’t know if the shots are from tanks. But they’re so large that it rules out foot soldiers, so it’s some kind of vehicle-mounted gun.
It’s definitely not the kind of thing you want hitting a nuclear reactor.
They're typically equipped with heavy weapons that are smaller or less powerful than tank main guns but larger than something that could readily be carried by a soldier or two.
Tank misidentification satirized here: https://twitter.com/pascalheyman/status/1088555831187128321
I only saw them on social media.
But I did see a source that radiation did rise around Chernobyl, probably due to dust getting kicked up by vehicles and foot traffic.
I saw some memes about the Snake Island Soldiers but never heard serious reporting on their deaths - I only ever heard the location had been compromised. Maybe the issue isn't so much a propaganda mill forcing false facts but the news sources you're choosing to consume. Unless you have family/loved ones in Ukraine there is no reason to try and follow up-to-the minute news - watch the daily shows, read a newspaper or just be a bit more skeptical about what you're ingesting.
Moreover, the radiation in Chernobil did rise (measurably, but trivially). That has nothing to do with the active nuclear plant where actual fights happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/ukraine-soldie...
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-snake-island-soldiers-russi...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-sold...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/24/russia-ukrai...
I could go on, but you get the point. These were definitely fake stories propagated by the western media as part of their propaganda campaign against Russia. Even if these outlets didn't know they were fake, they also didn't bother to check.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/ukraine-island...
Retractions always - ALWAYS - get less attention than the initial story.
They aren't in the business of spreading truth, they are a business with incentives to gain people's attention.
For all the mentioned stories it is clear that these weren't drafted up in a backoffice (such as Putin's propaganda about the genocide in eastern Ukraine).
Donbass is being shelled for 8 years. UN recognizes more than 10,000 deaths in the conflict there. The few journalists that interviewed people there got some interviews that really describes war crimes (watched recently an italian documentary that collected testimonialsthere). Which is not surprising, since neonazi groups were integrated to Ukranian army. You may dispute that this should be classified as genocide, but there are human rights violations happening there and this is not just Russia propaganda.
Nowhere in these stories do the news outlets claim that the Ukranian reports were independently verified.
So I'm not sure what you're complaining about. These news outlets are reporting what Ukranian sources say, just as they report what Russian sources say.
I read some Reddit and even there they mentioned eg. The ghost of Kiev is probably fake.
Your other points are also ridiculous. No radiation was rising and there was huge protest against Russians to take the facility. There were definitely fires nearby.
Reports of the nuclear facility ( video + sound) are pretty clear about what happened.
They did mention it is very dangerous to attack a nuclear facility.
I think that's pretty logical....
Chernobyl there were rumors about a nuclear waste depot being blown up and subsequent increase in radiation. However, it was always mentioned that this could be due to troop movement over contaminated soil and there were never worrying radiation numbers.
Edit: I previously said the control room was on fire but can’t find a source anymore.
I never heard that the control room was on fire, only that Chechens attached explosives to the reactors.
The shelling was at the training reactor building, and the administrative building was shot at and set on fire.
https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1499799810609668106
The focus of the fighting was elsewhere but some projectiles made it very close to the reactor buildings.
Based on comparing the shot out the window with a look on Google Maps this is between units 2 and 3 of the 6 at the plant
I'm not complaining - these things have a tangible effect on morale. But it is propaganda.
I wanted to understand the situation and searched "Ukrainian troop locations" in google, bing, DDG, and Yahoo.
One of the first times I have received no results in google. Absolutely blatant censorship.
Ostensibly, google doesn't want to provide intel to Russia, who has ample satellites and combat reports.
It seems a little too convenient that the major consequence is that Americans cant get any information that doesn't support the public narrative.
no "Ukrainian troop locations"... are well positioned, spread out, in the east, overwhelmed, shouldn't be disclosed, ect
0 hits containing the string.
Ukraine - being the underdog and the invaded country - has every incentive to publish every single tank they destroy. It isn't surprising, really.
There has been coverage on the South, where Russia has had more successes.
Who - UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace makes a claim
What - Russian forces have prepared a mobile crematorium for use in any future conflict with Ukraine
Where - Ukraine
Why - to avoid the problems with bringing bodies back
When - Now
There's no claim beyond that, however they do also highlight protests from Russia about missing and dead soldiers
I haven't seen anything debunking such a claim, although I haven't seen anything backing it up either. It's a fact that Wallace made that claim, and the company involved refused to respond.
The Snake Island incident is perhaps a better example.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60522454
Which reports that
Who - Ukraine officials say
What - Russia killed their soldiers
Where - Snake Island
Why - to occupy the island
When - Recently
And they also say
Who - Russian officials say
Why - Soldiers surrendered it to them voluntarily
Where - Snake Island
Why - to occupy the island
When - recently
The BBC says the reported audio is unverified
Later events showed that at least some of the soldiers were not killed.
The outrage was that it was close enough.
You can follow the bombings, for example: if Kyiv is being shelled (and reported in Russian media), it's not under Russian control. If the shelling last for days, the city is holding.
If some city was being shelled, but there are no more news about it, but the news are a nearby and further city is being shelled, the first city is probably under Russian control.
Following that kind of info, it seems the Russian invasion is crawling, and not running as intended. Russia is not doing much better (but not as bad as "reported" in Reddit, for instance).
During WW2, the siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. Ukraine has only been under attack for 13 days.
Instead you see things like the US does where you gain air superiority, take out all command and control via decapitation attacks, and then remove all the armor from the map with missiles and aircraft.
USSR in WWII was losing on average about 5000 (five thousand) soldiers per day. So no.
More seriously, think about it percentage wise. Russia is losing resources (tanks, missiles, etc) in a hurry. And the floor is not "zero XYZ remaining" otherwise they would have nothing left in the entire country to defend themselves with. They only have what they allocated for their idiotic invasion and no more. Russia may already be running low on cruise missiles based on the relatively peaceful night in Kyiv.
Ukraine shot down 4 Su-34. Russia has 134 of them. It takes years to build them.
In WW2, there were thousands of planes and tanks, but they were unsophisticated and quick to build.
The number of soldiers is also not comparable since modern armies aren't so large anymore.
I'm not in favor of Russia but it's clear they're running into much harder resistance than expected, and are really just warming up.
The Russians had to fight two brutal wars in Chechnya, lot of false starts and screw ups... but ~30 years later the Chechens sent 10000 men to fight in Ukraine for the Russians...
however, I don't think the western press is missing any deep details about russian fighting. The fight for Kyiv may end up looking like a reverse Stalingrad.
Not only is this true from a general sense of "fog of war" and misinformation, but even in a purely statistical sense, these numbers aren't compelling. As a stats person, both 0.9 and 0.26 are probabilities that basically reflect nothing more than a vague sense how the outcome will go.
In a classical NHST this degree of confidence would not pass even the most lose definitions of "statistical significance".
And in a more Bayesian setting, being 90% and 26% sure of rain both mean you'll bing an umbrella. Having a 90% chance of survival and a 26% chance of survival means are both too risky for almost all scenarios.
But for whatever reason, when predicting things like outcomes of an election or outcomes of a war, people start applying `round` to their probabilities.
At work if I see that I'm either 90% sure or 26%, I report that we still don't have enough information to say anything particularly interesting or to justify any major risks. So even if we had reliable information about the situation, these numbers aren't interesting. Since we don't, they're useless.
These are vastly different probabilities which mean that you might be wrong 9 out 10 days, or right 3 out of 4 times.
As another example: I bet most companies would die to turn up conversion rates up even 1 or 2 percent.
When dealing in risk management where probabilities should start in 1 in 10 or 1 in 100, then I could agree that 90% risk of failure isn't to different from 26%.
When it comes to certainty about an outcome (i.e. a hypothesis), they're not really that different. Probabilities are not linear, and start at 0.5. In log-odds terms were talking about 2.19 vs -1.04... not really a shocking amount of information. Sure in terms of gambling odds this might be useful but not for making any concrete statements about the world.
To your point:
> I bet most companies would die to turn up conversion rates up even 1 or 2 percent.
This is talking about two very different things. I would also be happy if I had a known 2 percent increasing in my stock performance. We're talking about quantifying uncertainty (though these criticism hold even in a frequentist frame work). I certainly wouldn't "die for" 2% absolute increase in my confidence about something (unless I'm 98% confident already!)
We're talking about our confidence in a hypothesis. At no company I've worked at would I be anywhere near comfortable stating that a 0.9 probability that A > B is enough to call an A/B test on. I'm going to be very skeptical of any analysis I'm doing if mode coefficients have anywhere near that probability of a sign error.
If you have no other information, then sure if I am 90% confident that one choice is stronger than other I'll go with the limited information that I have. However anyone with a statistics background would view either of these numbers as being very uncertain. That's arguably why these numbers are so good for betting, you want there to be a lot of uncertainty when gambling or it's no fun.
But as far as statistics is considered both 0.9 and 0.26 are essentially uninteresting numbers, that lead to very low confidence in the conclusion being drawn.
Huh? War is incredibly harmful to civilian infrastructure, and propaganda is similarly harmful to our ability to communicate.
Putin's propaganda loves this trope: "we can't know for sure, it's all propaganda, you have no choice but to pick a side. We're totally the good guys though, so be a good little soldier, spread our memes and ignore all other sources".
Contrary to what some people would like you to believe, you can know things without first-hand experience and you can be certain without having 100% proof.
Listening less to known liars also helps.
And I ran a simple experiment on Google News.
I simply removed a news source (using the three dots) when an article presented by it was:
1. Easily proven inaccurate (with a Google search) 2. Pure speculation (no actually reporting of change to “facts on the ground”)
I don’t have a single major news source left in my feed.
I highly recommend curating sources by their trustworthiness.
I'm not convinced assassination markets are practical. If you make a prediction that a person will be assassinated on a particular day, and put money on it, you'll make the odds for that day spike up, thus warning the target to take new and unpredictable precautions.
If you try to counter this effect with less specific predictions, then more people will take your side of the bet so you'll get worse odds.
https://www.metaculus.com/about/
It's well recognized, including my Metaculus users and admin, that money can provide a powerful incentive for accuracy which they do not use (presumably because this would be a very different, more legally encumbered platform). However, they attempt to make up for this by having many more predictions and, crucially, but weighting more heavily the predictions of people whose predictions have been more accurate in the past.
Russians also think that most Ukrainians support Russia, it doesn't mean it's true. Same with believes that most Iraqis supported US.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/da...
> Petraeus: Ukraine is not only bigger but some 50 percent more populous than Iraq, and the Iraqi population included many millions—Kurds, Christians, Yezidis, Shabak, and many of the Shia—who broadly supported the coalition forces throughout our time there. Only a minority of the Iraqi population comprised or supported the Sunni extremists and insurgents and Iranian-supported Shia militia. Though they did, to be sure, prove to be very formidable enemies.
I'm not just posting this to be pedantic - there are strong comparisons between the US attitude that we would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq and the Russian attitude about Ukraine.
But Saddam Hussein's popularity doesn't even compare to Zelensky's.
is not supported by
> the Iraqi population included many millions ... who broadly supported the coalition forces
"Many millions" !- "most"
He is thinking about the pre-Tsarist Russian Empire. Which included a few countries that were not in the USSR.
___
[1]: But, hey, don't despair: Belarus will join in any day now.
> This question will resolve positively if it is publicly reported by at least three reputable media sources or from direct statements from at least four Permanent UNSC members that the majority of Kyiv's raions are under Russian military control by April 1, 2022.
Just saying that the prediction market shall resolve because three reputable news agencies report something is completely devoid of any insight into the nature of issue. It's as logically absurd as claiming that you have cancer because a Doctor told you that you have cancer, or claiming that you killed Jack because a jury delivered a guilty verdict. No, you don't have cancer because a Doctor said so and no you didn't kill Jack because of a jury's verdict; you have cancer because of an actual condition involving the rapid and abnormal cell growth and you killed Jack because you took a knife and stabbed him.
You are certainly justified to believe you have cancer because a Doctor told you so, and I am justified to believe you killed Jack because a jury said so, but a justification is not the same thing as an actual cause.
So going back to the original question: what is the criteria that determines that Kyiv has actually fallen to Russian forces as opposed to what is the justification for believing that Kyiv has fallen.
Case in point: Vietnam. uSA and allies lost between 1/3 and 1/2 lifes than the North. And the USA loses were small (60.000 in a total of 1.5 million deaths). But it was a total defeat of the USA because none of the strategic objectives were achieved.
Ukraine: strategic objectives are being an independent country with a fairly working democracy. Russia: conquer and create a puppet state in Ukraine and keep pressing west againt NATO countries.
In the end we should measure against that, not by body count. I don't like it either.
Also, please try to Vietnam. The US is very favorably perceived, more than China or Russia, although probably below European countries.
In the sense, the US lost the war, but won in the end, at a very steep price, of course
US is perceived more favourably than China because their war with China was more recent and they have active disputes with PRC threatening island territories in South China sea.
Moreover, US has massive influence in terms of their media and their brands, something which China still doesn't match. Same reason even South Korea has massive appeal in Vietnam.
And USA defeated the whole communist block using the same weapons. Also, don't dismiss tourism as a _weapon_: it's would be more effective to send millions of frienly tourists to Cuba than to embargoe them for decades.
But that's disgressing. Vietnam was only used as a sample of strategic millitary defeat albeit losing less people. I don't think anyone in the Whitehouse has planned the vietnamese frienship ahead.
This has nothing to do with US intervention. China is also a market economy, the US never won a war there.
> Along with "cooling down" to the idea of joining NATO, Zelensky told ABC News that there's room for negotiating on the occupied territories and unrecognized republics.
Read between the lines.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/zelenskyy-interview-david-mu...
In otherwords he can still ramp up, then the west simply continues squeezing Putin and Russia for a year, or 3... then he can either go take back Crimea/Donbask regions, or perhaps wage a coup inside Russia -- get the oligarchs to agree to a Democratic Merging of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia with Zelenskyy as President for the first two terms, and with a path towards NATO and EU membership - which would be a HUGE finger to China and a big win for Democracy.
This essentially gives both sides a ceasefire but western pressure on Russia slowly strangles them to the point of collapse, and Zelenskyy can then basically take over, as he's basically a Hero for many in Ukraine and Russia and even Europe and USA. I mean a comedian turned President against Putin and he's holding his own pretty well - it's David vs Goliath.
IMHO that's the best option. As for this war, whether Zelenskyy does this or not. Putin has lost Russia. It's a matter of time before he's deposed after this blunder. Russia will never win in Ukraine.
Option B: Hold out a month, and basically Russia might be at the point they'd give him Crimea, Belarus, and Donbas if the west just eases up a tiny fraction on sanctions.
I'm not happy about it and can't sleep right for days anymore, because I fear a nuclear escalation. But I don't want to live in a world where such a situation could happen again and again. There are many slavic countries this fascist hungers for.
And what do you think would be the outcome?
The replacement could then spin it as being a good replacement and play by the rules of the west.
Kruschev --> Brezhnev
Brezhnev --> Andropov
Andropov --> Chernenko
Chernenko --> Gorbachev
Gorbachev --> Yeltsin
Yeltsin --> Putin
Putin --> Medvedev
Medvedev --> Putin
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_leaders_of_Russia
What's your point?
Also, if you haven't seen "Death of Stalin", it's an excellent dark comedy, if a bit historically inaccurate.
Lets say Putin nukes a carrier group at sea. This wont trigger an immediate counter attack like launching ICBMs would. Biden/whoever would have to order launching the nukes. Follow this for any usage of tactical nuclear weapons.
Will he decide to end life in America and most of the world over a carrier group? There's a non zero percent chance he would flinch at that.
Your argument is that nobody would have anything to do with Putin, but we already pretty close to that point. Backing Putin in a corner makes him MORE dangerous, not less.
Putin could do all kind of things to completely undermine as well. What happens if he decides that the world uniting against Russian means Russia no longer need to adhere to the Non Proliferation Treat and offers "free" nukes to whoever aligns with his new order? It's already understood geo politically that "no nukes" means the West and China get to bully you whenever they want. So why not take the offer? There's all kinds of ways this could get worse without all life ending.
I really doubt it. At the bare minimum a nuclear strike on military targets would provoke nuclear strikes on military targets in response. Excepting the middle of oceans, that's going to involve major civilian casualties. And then we're back to doomsday.
Not to get all Dr Strangelove on you, but once the nukes start flying there's really only one option - immediately take out as many of your enemy's weapons as possible. Sink all submarines, nuke all silos, hope for "no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks."
Especially if a purely military target was hit like a carrier group and it was all soldiers that died?
Its not so obvious to me that every leader could do that.
Now look at the opposite. You are a leader who is about to be killed/ousted/lose everything if current course continues. No matter what you are probably dead in 10 years anyways due to old age. Why not? Especially if you think Putin is how he is portrayed by Western media?
Not sure what culture you grew up in, but I grew up in the "progressive" side of the US and I'm quite certain that even the folks out here would demand immediate retaliation. The folks that grew up in red states are even more bloodthirsty. At minimum we'll be using nukes against Russian military targets, and I just don't see that de-escalating.
We don't know what he would do. A desperate dictator might just use nukes.
There's also the greatly increased risk of accidentally starting a nuclear war -- something we've come close to multiple times, even in peace time. In war time that's just short of WW3, the risk is increased exponentially.
No sane person wants to gamble with the literal fate of the world. Yet both sides are doing this by getting this close to WW3... that doesn't lend confidence to the possibility of staying out of a nuclear war if NATO "calls Putin's nuclear bluff".
I think if Russia backs them into fully rejecting all security agreements with the West as part of a settlement, they're just in for a takeover by other means, once Russia has its near-term concerns addressed by the peace settlement and can afford to sit back and wait. I think the most likely way out of that (assuming Ukraine achieves one) is a novel arrangement of some kind, more likely with with the EU than NATO, or (waaaay less likely) a new bloc & mutual defense agreement with Sweden and Finland.
Neither is possible. Ukraine does not control its borders so can't join NATO and is not economically viable enough to enter EU. And under that scenario trying to take Crimea starts a world war between Russia and NATO.
Ukraine joining NATO is just not ever going to be allowed to happen.
I believe a lot will depend on the outcome of this war as well as its ramifications for Putin's grip on power. Ukraine has so far defied all the odds and I wouldn't bet against them at this point. If given a bloody enough nose Russia may not be in a position to never allow NATO membership to happen.
As long as "full access" is defined as "except for any actual defense guarantees", that is. The EU one isn't actually that.
Which Russia cannot provide since they already promised not to invade.
I'm not sure how much that matters in practice, since nukes can be delivered by submarine or through ICBMs, but regardless, that's what Russia wants and a DMZ won't address that demand.
(Disarmament was one of the Russian asks during yesterday's negotiations. It was rejected ofc.)
The world is connected like never before and there are no unipolar winners or losers any more (if there ever were, considering the squandered individual, society-wide, and world-wide human potential when people die).
At the very least this is likely to lead to a global depression.
That's if we avoid WW3, which would devastate the entire world if it happened.
Such guarantees are worthless.
It's also clear that the rest of NATO is not willing to directly fight against Russia to save Ukraine, so NATO membership for Ukraine is just as worthless.
when will this be exactly?
Putin was living on borrowed time due to the move away from fossil fuels
and his main customers are now willing to pay more explictly not to use his exports
their military ambitions are now finished, permanently
China will buy Russia's fossil fuels.
I'd like to think that if Russia fails to subjugate and absorb Ukraine then it will put an end to Russian dreams of restoring empire, for at least one generation and perhaps for longer. Recalling Zbigniew Brzeziński "It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."
The EU and NATO are voluntarily breaking away from dependence on Russia on many fronts as we speak.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine galvanized this process.
Peace would have been far less devastating to all the countries involved.
Could you link to an article which shows a Russian official making such concessions or reducing their demands?
From my own reading, Russia has just been reiterating the same demands they had all along: for Ukraine to recognize the breakaway republics and for Ukraine to give up hopes of ever joining NATO.
Demilitarization of Ukraine, NATO membership and relations with the west in general are all going to be very contentious, and it's hard to see a solution here that both sides will accept.
That's what it means on paper. But we already see that in practice NATO is not willing to start WW3 to protect Ukraine.
How is that not clear?
If it comes to preventing the end of the world or protecting Ukraine, NATO has already shown it would rather prevent the end of the world.
That's because NATO hadn't committed to protecting Ukraine.
If it had, Putler wouldn't have dared attack.
Again: How is that not clear?
The motivation to save the world from utter destruction gives greater reason than ever before to not start WW3... at least not over Ukraine.. treaty or no.
Zelensky has said he is open to neutrality, but the problem is that he would need some sort of security guarantees moving forward. Demilitarization of the sort Russia originally envisioned is probably out of the question in any case, so that would solve part of it.
Maybe some solution involving international peacekeepers and demilitarized zones could work. Or escape clauses where Ukraine is permitted to annul their neutrality in the event of future aggression by Russia.
If what you say is true about Ukraine being willing to trade away Crimea and the eastern territories, then I don't think an agreement is necessarily that far away. Your initial demands in a negotiation are rarely your red lines.
The most contentious point (again, assuming you are correct that Ukraine is willing to cede the above-mentioned territories) will be bloc membership. Zelensky could possibly give some informal guarantee that he has no interest in NATO membership, but having your own foreign policy is a fundamental part of being a sovereign state, so being coerced into promising they will never join this or that bloc is kind of incompatible with Ukrainian statehood. And down the line they will definitely be eyeing EU membership.
Personally I would be sad to see territory ceded to Russia as it would reward their brutal and criminal tactics. I am also highly sceptical of Russia's willingness to abide by its obligations under any peace agreement. However, I appreciate that for Ukrainians especially, ending the bloodshed is the most important thing.
Particularly one next to Russia. (And Ukraine, in particular, after this?!?)
The Chutzpa negotiation approach would of course be, "OK, let's discuss demilitarisation. How and when do you propose to start yours?"
Before the recent escalation of the 8-year war it controlled Crimea and the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donbas and Luhansk each controlled a small fraction of the territory they claim; before the war Russia and their pawns controlled nothing in Ukraine's claimed and generally internationally recognized borders, that was the proximate problem Russia (which shortly before that time had controlled the Ukrainian government as a puppet) sought to rectify with the war.
Like he said to NATO in regards to the no-fly zone “How many civilians need to die? Give me a number, I’ll start counting.”
Similarly here; how many civilians are Crimea and the two eastern provinces worth? If you have a number we’ll start counting. We’ll get there before Putin falls.
"Better a scanty agreement than a robust battle"
If I was President of Ukraine, and wanted to convince the West of the urgency of a radical step escalation in military assistance, I might want them to perceive me as starting to waver in the face of the assault.
If I was President of Ukraine, and wanted to convince the Russians that good faith humanitarian corridors that weren't simply routes to captivity in Russia/Belarus and maybe even a general cease fire for negotiations while the Western sanctions continued to hollow out their war capacity were good ideas, I’d want to project the prospect of an acceptable resolution through negotiations.
It's very clear that the Russians badly screwed up their logistics chain - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wRdoWpw0w for a good obvious breakdown. But they also dramatically underestimated the morale of Ukrainians and also badly miscalculated NATO's response. NATO is flooding UKR now with drones, anti-tank misles and surface to air missles.
They also have failed to have clear armor and air supremacy. They have fed some of their most "elite" VDV units into a meat grinder by sending them directly into Kyiv without any support, under the thesis that the Ukrainians would leave them uncontested, or where not able to maintain a reasonable response.
Nevermind that Ukraine is mobilizing quickly (pre-war calculations where 30 days to build a effective force), while 75% of Russia's strike forces are in theater, and 95% are committed to battle.
Because of all this - Russia is in a no-win scenario. To hit their goals will result in sanctions staying in place - and eventually destroying the Russian economy or alternatively leaving them as a vassal state of China. If they retreat, they may save their army, avoid a vietnam scenario, but Putin will loose face, and Demcoratic forces will be revitalized inside of Russia.
Or they just stay where they are at. Inching ever close to Kyiv, but never winning any strategic victory.
Forces are pushing towards stasis right now.
I'd never bet on it - it's disrespectful to the dead and those fighting for their futures, and there are armies in the south that are a big problem - but I don't see a path for Russia to get what it wants. The question is how long will the sunk cost fallacy rule?
They aren't in a no-win scenario either. Kyiv cannot hold out forever. The Russians have an overwhelming numeric advantage and they can simply wait out the defenders, using that time to fix their supply lines.
It's tempting to exaggerate a Russian setback into a total collapse or a defeat. That's wishful thinking.
I agree with that, but if it takes going Full Grozny or Idlib on them, what's the point, other than saving face?
If the country wont agree to NATO neutrality, the next best outcome is destroying it so thoroughly that it will be a humanitarian disaster for decades to come.
The former is a much more attractive option to them because it would pose the lest threat. The second is still favorable to a prosperous NATO and EU member.
As to simply waiting out, a clock may be ticking for Russians as well as for the Ukrainians. Probably not the same clock but still...
They don't have to. They only have to hold out longer than the Russians.
In the north, the Russians are running out of supplies and their logistics is halted so they are not going to get more supplies any time soon.
In the south, Russia appears to have better logistics and they are still moving, but slower and slower. Their southern logistics is the railroad through Crimea - that is a major weak point. They have been trying with all their might to take Mariupol which would give them an alternative (albeit road-based) logistics path but have been fought to a standstill there too.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has an open logistics path through Poland all the way to the front lines (uncontested by Russia, unlike Russia's logistics paths which are long and vulnerable) and military supplies are pouring in.
Ukraine is getting stronger and the Russian troops are running out of men, diesel, food, and probably ammunition.
They don't, quite to the contrary. A tight siege of a city of three million would require some 500 000 troops, give or take. (Germans had 750 000 soldiers encircling Leningrad.) That would be three times as many as Russia committed to the entire theater of war.
Russian logistics are strained. They can't simply mobilize millions and somehow flood the Ukrainian territory with them.
Now there's a good prediction market - who will replace Putin if he's gone soon. My money will be on the kinds of people who will make Putin himself look like a liberal democrat.
This is basically a survey.
Survey with the predictors (humans) being ranked in their impact on the conclusion based on their historical prediction success.
Both Ukraine and Afghanistan have similar land in sqm and population sizes.
Why does anyone expect Ukraine to be taken over in a few weeks when there is bound to be more resistance? You would think atleast double or treble that time.
in Afghanistan the Taliban could hide out in network of caves and there is just no flatten mountains, the Vietcongs could utilize underground networks and dense forests to operate.
One hope for Ukraine is urban warfare, Putin launched two miserable wars against Chechnya and they were decimated from insurgents hiding out in various apartment buildings, it is likely what is stalling the advance in Kyiv.
Unfortunately, we live in a new age and China has perfected facial recognition software, which they will probably have no scruples about providing to Russia. I'm not sure a crowd provides the same kind of anonymity that it once did.
We are starting to see some of this right now (and I'm not 100% certain) but for instance the alleged Azov battalion operating near DNR/LNR area is said to be not allowing citizens to leave the city. There are footages going around them turning (you can tell from the patches they wear) citizens away from checkpoints as they try to leave.
Like Hamas in Palestine who regularly launch rockets at Israel from top of apartment buildings, it's only a matter of time before insurgency turns to this tactic as they are determined to keep fighting.
Another side of the story is that Ukrainians claim they couldn't reach agreement of ceasing fire and humanitarian corridors with Russians.
I believe people are leaving Kharkov and Kiev relatively freely.
Do you suppose that may have something to do with things like
https://www.newsweek.com/evacuation-route-offered-fleeing-uk...
and
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/06/europe/ukraine-russia-inv...
?
But you're right, the conflict may or may not actually reach the stage of clandestine insurgency.
Russia could only possibly even attack using airforce now, because anything on the ground is going to sink.
Ironically, Xi telling Putin to wait till the Olympics were over probably cost Putin the war, because of all the abandoned vehicles stuck in the mud.
There's a convoy with who knows how many vehicles but it stretches 40 miles and it's never digging out of the mud, most likely it'll be added to Ukraine's assets when things dry out.
Russia is leveling cities, but this is a WIN for urban warfar. In previous wars some people would level their own cities so they had better places to hide and setup snipers at.
Here's a good video outlying why Putin has already lost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ4hvLqNfqo
I could imagine Russian propaganda pulling up statistics saying Kyiv will fall soon
Also, too many people here do not understand geopolitics - the aim of invading Ukraine is to speed up the process of Russia's demands:
- Ukraine never joining NATO
- Donbas and Crimea ceding to Russia w/ Ukraine losing claim to them
It's not about fully invading Ukraine and ceding the whole state, because that would be a bigger problem for Russia if it does so
But in this case there's no actually money on the line, that's not how the linked website works. (PredictIt and others won't take bets on the issue, it appears.)
Remember that Trump was impeached for threatening to cut off military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a personal favor. The very same military aid that has likely prevented the outright capture Ukraine by Russia.
Russia will take control of all or most nuclear power plants and other infrastructure. At which point it's only a matter of time until the people of Ukraine will surrender with no water or electricity.
As it stands the West can do nothing.
In the case that NATO starts shooting, the sarcophagus over Chernobyl can be bombed (Putin can blame Ukrainians here).
It seems to be that there's no way out for the Ukrainians :(
Under the correct environment things can recover surprisingly fast.
I doubt Ukraine will surrender as long as it can supply its forces with food, drinking water, and ammo.
> As it stands the West can do nothing.
The West can do a lot of things that it chooses not to do out of fear. IMHO one of the biggest mistakes it has made has been to be very, very clear about what it won't do, while letting the Russians be very, very unclear about what it won't do. The result has been the Russian leadership is not afraid, and has taken advantage of the freedom that affords to bomb the shit out of Ukraine.
If NATO had massed soldiers in Poland in January and been deliberately ambiguous about its intentions, it's quite possible that Russia might not have invaded Ukraine at all (and then mocked the NATO by saying "LOL guys, we were really just doing exercises").
Countries have been very public about doing this.
> Supplying them early warnings about troop movements from satellite imagery and cracked Russian communications would be a second, and it would be very deniable to boot.
They're pretty obviously doing this, Ukranian forces seem to have a lot of knowledge about Russian movements.
> And finally there are of course all sorts of black ops you can do in an active warzone
Something like 20k "volunteers" have gone to Ukraine to fight. Many of these people are likely not random couch surfers that decided to sign up.
I think the west is already doing almost everything you've outlined here. We just aren't in a position to know.
There are direct reports of this. IIRC, they're taking raw intelligence, scrubbing it to hide sources and methods (they think the Ukrainian government is full of Russian spies), and refraining from recommending specific actions based on it (because they feel like that would cross some stupid line and irritate the Russians too much). My understanding is that they've been able to get timely updates the the Ukrainians pretty quickly.
No fly-zones. It's pretty clear that falls into the category of something the West can do, but chooses not to out of fear. Because the West is afraid, Putin isn't.
Stepping down from that: have Zelensky invite the west to bomb certain Ukrainian roads and bridges in Ukrainian territory that the Russians are using, then do it. Maybe even be funny about it and post a notice of emergency demolition due to unsafe conditions on some Ukrainian DOT-equivalent site. Or supply the Ukrainians with advanced weaponry like anti-ship and cruise missiles (perhaps in-fact secretly operated by Western advisors) to attack Russian landing ships and supply lines.
NATO shooting down Russian planes is war between nuclear powers. This isn't Libya. This isn't the West being afraid, it's the West acting like adults.
That is the West being afraid, specifically of Russian escalation. They're so afraid, they've pretty much explicitly told Russia it can do whatever it wants.
I don't really buy the Chernobyl argument either. If the NATO starts shooting the Russians already have nuclear weapons to act directly. No need to crack open an old nuclear plant and hope the wind doesn't change.
This would be a great tactic to reduce Ukraine to a pile of smoking rubble over a couple of decades of war. I'm not sure that's a great outcome for Ukrainians.
The will to commit Russia's military in Ukraine is pretty much Putin's alone. His narrative around the invasion was proven completely untrue within days. The sanctions are making life extremely difficult for both ordinary Russians, and for the wealthy oligarchs. Ordinary Russians are being asked to go die in a war against their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, who keep telling their Russian brothers and sisters to stop the madness and get the fuck out. And finally, Putin is 70, how much longer is he going to stay in control?
Bombing Chernobyl would make zero strategic sense.
OTOH, starting a nuclear WW3 would also make zero strategic sense, and still the West is worried about him doing that. So maybe worrying about this is also valid.
Yet what the fixation on Kyiv is doing is it's pulling resources away from the south and Donentsk/Lukansk area where the Ukraine army is in real danger of being completely surrounded.
There is heavy propaganda and disinformation from both Russia and Ukraine but what we've done in the West is effectively ban impartiality. Never before have we seen this level of zealous emotions since WW2.
@JominiW on twitter does a very good explanation of various political and military objectives and the strategic movement of the Russian forces and he's repeatedly called out the dangers of believing the enemy is a paper tiger.
We've seen all sorts of incompetence from the Russian side and Ukrainian forces have done a good job of defending Kyiv but we forget that Ukraine is not just Kyiv, it is slowly being swallowed up from all directions.
This is called target fixation and it's going to shock a lot of people who only follows one side. Best thing to do in an unpredictable and volatile situation is to not fixate on one view.
We will shortly know in the coming weeks what will happen, if Putin makes significant grounds, he has more chips to gamble/make demands. If Putin fails here, he has no choice to escalate in ways that was previously thought unimaginable.
It doesn't help that US/NATO alliance is adamant on not escalating to WW3 yet they sanction every Russian, despite their objections to war and Putin, in some extremely liberal naivete that the Russians will rise up against an authoritarian government who is ready to use small scale nukes if need be.
Except we haven’t forgotten, news orgs are reporting on things happening outside of Kyiv. Russia seems to have really overplayed their hand because they were barely able to take Kherson after like a week, and can’t even take bigger cities like Kharkiv, even with intense shelling.
Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.
How long did it take for the US to take Afghanistan?
It took 47 days to take Kabul, counting from the first day the CIA agents were sent to prepare the invasion. Furthermore, the objective was to find bin Laden, not to take cities.
The war in Ukraine isn't really comparable to Afghanistan. The US mostly "softened" strategic objectives with air strikes, whereas Russia can't/won't do that in Ukraine.
Also, the terrain is very favourable to create a quagmire in Afghanistan (resistance can retreat to the mointains) while Ukraine is mainly open terrain.
Neither could the US.
Another factor here is that Ukraine isn't Afghanistan or Vietnam where natural barriers offer chance for insurgency to hide out, regroup.
Russia here can absolutely level cities and buildings and it is impossible to construct underground tunnels in flat lands known for its ability to soak up water (the tunnels would not be structurally safe), and it is far too late now in this stage of the war.
An incompetent large army vs a competent large army makes little difference when the fighting environment is against the defenders (no mountains or jungles to hide out in).
The best chance at insurgency would be to start digging but again the soil in Ukraine makes this a challenge, my prediction is that we could see something similar to what Hamas is doing in Palestine in the form of human shields, swaying public media through casualties, urban warfare at best but unlike IDF which does to a certain degree exercise in minimization of collateral damage (ex. calling occupants in the apartment building to evacuate before bombing Hamas launching rockets) where as Putin/RF has zero qualms about collateral damage.
The Western sanctions have only esclated tensions, have emboldened Putin even more, as they've given him nothing to lose. When you corner a wild animal like Putin you will get bitten.
There's just no way out for him except to escalate from what I can see since Ukraine has rejected giving up DNR/LNR/Crimea. Neither side is willing to budge so this will simply continue to lead to human suffering on both sides.
In this analogy, doesn't the wild animal then typically get killed?
What ban was impartial?
He's already announced he is willing to use nukes if threatened and NATO will not respond unless multiple re-entry vehicles carrying nukes rain on their cities. He could do a lot here by using small scale nukes that don't create huge fallouts even.
If you were Putin, does it not make sense that his least trusted, potentially disloyal officers, generals would be on the frontlines and hope they don't come back?
Still, it doesn’t change their ability to flatten any city they want. And the lack of any good successor government in Russia to allow the current one to collapse, so they have nothing to lose.
In the end it’s all Larry Summers’ fault, like everything else in the world.
Only on Twitter and Reddit. Look at conventional media and they are mostly discussing Russian gains in the south, while occasionally mentioning that their advance has ground to a halt in the north.
WTF is there to be "impartial" about?