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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

My partners and I have a couple hundred employees in Dnipro, Ukraine. Most of the employees have relocated to Poland or western Ukraine, some are sheltering in place, some are fighting. We started to source supplies last week, especially for those who are sheltering in place or fighting. During discussions with various parties across the supply chain it became clear that an enormous effort was underway by hundreds/thousands of organizations (Governments, NGOs, companies, individuals) to flood Ukraine with every conceivable item they might need to support combat operations. Almost all of the commercially available weapons systems, ammunition, and body armor that we could find was already headed to Ukraine. We decided to focus on battlefield/first responder medical kits and supplies since those items were needed, but hadn't been mobilized as much. "Soldiers win battles, logistics wins wars." I heard that last week and it stuck with me.

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They are also getting fresh soldiers.

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...

Eventually the question becomes "if these guest fighters are successful, at what point do they consider going north through the contested border and attacking Russian (or, more likely, Belurussian) cities?"

Belarus may be at a higher risk here, the local army is weak and the political opposition was quite strong last election.

-At that point, of course, they'd meet resistance from Russian forces which suddenly _have_ a good reason to fight, likely also being supported by a population which will not be thrilled at a bunch of mercenaries having a go at their homeland.

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)

Probably not at all. I doubt there will be any will to invade Russia. Crimea and Donbas would be hard enough.

Aye. Attackers need 3-to-1 to overpower defenders, unless you've got some serious force-multipliers -- or so goes the thinking.

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.

Ukraine attacking Russia would be akin to Finland attacking the USSR during the Winter War.

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.

Except the cat is a paper tiger in this case. And my point was about mercenaries, not the Ukrainian military.

Finland did not "attack" Russia proper as such, but there were long-range ski patrols trying to cut the Murmansk railway. Also, Mannerheim kept Finnish troops out of the assault on Leningrad; the troops' remit was only to reclaim land taken in 1940. This was a wise move.

As a Ukrainian whose relatives are being bombed and whose friends are currently enlisted - I sure hope they won't consider that at all. The only actions performed outside the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine should be in aid of stopping the invasion of Ukraine. Bombing troops and launch sites - yes. Attacking Russian servicemen wherever they can be reached - yes. Occupying even an inch of Russia - hell no.

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.

> 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.

... and hostilities cease.

They can not and must not be revoked. This will allow Russia to build up its army again. Give them 5 maybe 10 years and they will start a new war. We must keep Russia isolated for as long as they are a fascist state. If Russia gives up Putin to be trailed in the international court for war crimes then we can lift the sanctions, not earlier.

They won't be revoked if the attitude doesn't change. If Putin is just replaced by another person like him (there are several) then that doesn't help things.

I suspect Russia is going to have big problems with revenge-seekers.

I really really hope not. As sad as this is, revenge will only escalate things. We want to be able to have our kids talk to their grandkids about the mistake that happened and that it ended as quickly as it started.

If the conflict in Ukraine ends quickly, do you expect that to be the last invasion Putin will arrange?

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Whether I think I think that is immaterial to deescalating this war. Pithy statements aside.

There's no point in attacking Russian cities or civillian targets. These are fighters specialized in sabotage behind enemy lines and highly mobile guerilla warfare. They make enemy military infrastructure go boom. Just what Ukraine needs right now: turning Russian combat vehicles into wrecks or stuck/abandoned vehicles, sabotaging supply lines.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard

I was actually reading some analysis from a military strategist who was quite critical of the foreign fighters. Essentially his arguments were that they are much more driven by idiology (and different ones) and thus less easy to follow orders and be controlled, which could lead to unwanted escalation.

Not sure what to make of it, but people are definitely thinking about this.

when you say driven by ideology, you mean they are neo-nazis ?

> when you say driven by ideology, you mean they are neo-nazis ?

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 propose Ukraine take up 5 Km over the border for a DMZ zone, like in Korea.

>There was also a report that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia.

I am absolutely dying laughing at the absurdity of such a complaint (if true), lol.

I hope every single ambassador said "they're on holiday".

I was thinking this every time I read the news back when Putin was saying this.

Meanwhile Russia is busy trying to recruit foreign soldiers themselves from Kazakhstan and Syria. Kazakhstan told them no, despite begging Russia to send their troops into their country when riots broke out a few months ago.

It's one thing to agree to remain in Russia's sphere and offer them some favorable deals -- quid pro quo for the riot thing -- but it's another thing to scrape up your own people to die in someone else's war.

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".

Chechen volunteers now seem to be leaning towards fighting against Russia https://www.newsflare.com/video/482085/chechen-volunteers-to...

Unfortunately, it is a big point of Russian internal propaganda which demonizes it into foreign "soldiers of fortune", "mercenaries" coming to fight Russia, basically they are making it into an additional point of how Russia in this war is basically defending itself from foreign invasion. "Ukraine is being pumped up with foreign weapons and mercenaries!". Unfortunately Russians are eating it.

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".

Russia claims their SVP-24 bomb sight with integrated computer enables high precision (3-4m accuracy) bombing with dumb bombs

That obvious lie just like that missile launch in the video by a plane loaded only with bombs. That is technically impossible, and if that were possible you wouldn't use 500lbs bombs as it makes the precision pointless.

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...

This is actually relatively comforting to me. Putler is at least trying to say they are using precision strikes.

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...

Nobody cares about Russian internal propaganda at this point.

What do you consider funny about it?

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.

>If some country sends fighters...

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.

There is a pretty big philosophical difference between a Canadian private citizen taking their own equipment to Ukraine and a Canadian soldier follows orders into Ukraine.

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"

> a pretty big philosophical difference between a Canadian private citizen taking their own equipment to Ukraine and a Canadian soldier follows orders into Ukraine.

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!

Most laws apply to people within the territory of a country, not to citizens of that country wherever they may be, and extradition typically is used when the law was broken in some country and the offender fled, not when the offense was committed elsewhere. For what it's worth, I think the counter-examples are a worrying trend.

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)?

I think the key factor here is individual consent.

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.

One might hope that consent would be the defining feature, but that's not how citizenship currently works. People become accidental citizens all the time, and the process for undoing the harm that causes is often lengthy and expensive.

> But if this is seen as legal today, then it sets a bad precedence for private citizens going overseas to commit murder!

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".

The irony simply comes from the "little green men" i.e. the Russian "volunteers" sent in Crimea/East Ukraine who were suspiciously well equipped and organized, almost like they were Russian Army military units in all but names.

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.

“This kind of French passport, Ukrainian soldier papers, you can buy in any hobby story”.

That's really dangerous. I'm not sure that Russia will care to distinguish between current and former military personnel when it considers whether NATO countries have intervened.

Whether Russia considers NATO to have intervened is less a function of whether the facts on the ground justify that assertion, and more a function of whether Russia wants a war with NATO. It will decide based on strategic considerations and manufacture or ignore the facts as necessary to justify its decision.

"Whether Russia considers NATO to have intervened is less a function of whether the facts on the ground justify that assertion, and more a function of whether Russia wants a war with NATO. It will decide based on strategic considerations and manufacture or ignore the facts as necessary to justify its decision."

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 Russia lobs a nuclear warning shot into the North Sea (say), what is the move by US+NATO that avoids escalation and avoids abandoning Ukraine ?

Lobbing one of their own into the Arctic Ocean?

"Works for me." Might work for further escalation too tho :-/

I'm part of a team that does (very small-scale compared to the big NGOs) logistics (food, clothing, baby stuff, hygiene, everything) and provides/mediates shelter in the North East of Germany and sending food, first aid kits and medical supplies to the borders/directly to Ukraine with the supplies and support of the people of the city I'm living in (I'm managing one of the provisional warehouses). We have bus companies driving people and other things.

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.

Yes, happy to talk with anybody involved in similar efforts so definitely reach out. My contact information is in my profile.

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.

Your operation is amazing, mobilizing air fright is massive. I'll definitely write you, we'll try what we can to support although we're much smaller.

All Ukraine has to do is:

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)

I'm not really sure about 1 (there are already many fighters from over the world), but they did 2. Unfortunately for this war, there aren't that many people in prisons there.

The Dirty дюжина

> Offer immediate provisional citizenship/asylum to anyone who immigrated to fight.

Ukraine is not a wealthy country. Who might consider citizenship so desirable to risk his life over it?

It would allow those who want to fight to not worry about the repercussions back home. Or at least to lessen them, as they have an escape hatch to at least live in Ukraine afterwards. I imagine a lot of those who volunteered to fight will come back bankrupt, with creditors at their heels and possibly to broken homes. Some of them who come from places like Belarus may even face criminal charges for fighting.

If Ukraine wins, that Ukraine citizenship is gonna be an EU citizenship in a couple of years.

Riiiight. Why couldn’t they join the EU before the war if that’s the only thing in their way?

Because the EU is -- or at the very least, until the 24th of February, was (but if so, I fear they'll revert to form quite soon) -- a bunch of namby-pamby ditherers and cowards.

Sad to say it, as an EU citizen myself, but that's about it AFAICS.

Very unlikely for Ukraine to be fast tracked before countries which are already on their way to become EU members (like North Macedonia and Albania) and those are 5 years away. A lot of reforms are needed and can't happen overnight especially due to its size and population. It is probably going to happen if Ukraine comes out a winner but we are realistically looking at a decade away.

> Who might consider citizenship so desirable to risk his life over it?

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!"

1. Already done, more than 10k foreign people arrived in Ukraine, some are already fighting https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russ...

2. Already done for people with military experience.

What about food?

An army marches on its stomach.

I think the question is - is food being mobilized to Ukraine?

anecdotally - yes. We bought and brought some stuff following that https://www.facebook.com/lnyuz/posts/5490539337642083 (drop-off in San Jose, some people order stuff from Amazon with delivery right to there), and while i don't see food among the list of requested item, boxes packed with donated food were pretty prominent there (and even though food wasn't mentioned we actually brought food too - long term packaged high calories low weight, we thought that probably that may be needed too and it happened so, seems like many people do that).

Anecdotally, I live in Ireland and a number of locals have mobilised to gather food and medicine to send it to Ukraine. Then I came across this article and now think this is happening across the country: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2022/0308/1285137-ireland-ai...

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.

> I think the question is - is food being mobilized to Ukraine?

Is the problem with food existence or food transport? My impression is the food problems are in besieged cities.

There is a great risk of massive starvation in besieged Ukranian cities, where it's too dangerous for sheltering civilians to venture out and procure or supply food.

> Almost all of the commercially available weapons systems, ammunition, and body armor that we could find was already headed to Ukraine.

Except fighters and drones.

This sounds like they want their capital destroyed like Grozny. Ukraine got played by the US, which misled it that they will fight together against the Russians.

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