Putin’s Game Ends | Hacker News Reader

Putin’s Game Ends

puck.news

There's no such thing as independent polling in Russia. If you don't want to be poisoned or disappeared you make the numbers look good.

According to 538, polling in Russia is surprisingly reliable. It's definitely imperfect, but it's better than you'd expect.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/is-putin-actually-popular...

They estimate the error at about -10%. An 83% approval rating is still pretty high even if you subtract 10%.

Navany team did regular polls for several years. Levada center as well. But they all ended by 2021.

In nearby Belarus independent polls are outright illegal.

the article doesn't contradict what you're saying:

> While Russia does not have a political system where Putin faces any accountability, the Kremlin does obsess over public opinion polls and keeps zealous control over the media to make sure the public’s opinions are not formed spontaneously.

...

> According to several Russian polls (which are inevitably hard to trust, as I’ve previously noted), Putin has become more popular since he started this war, not less.

...

Title issues aside - article is perfectly reasonable + shouldn't be flagged.

Agree - I don’t understand what the flag is for?

"Focused on the inside story at the nexus of Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington, and Silicon Valley."

Focused on the inside story at the nexus of people who can't have enough attention, money, power, and fps.

Can't say that it appeals.

Frames Per Second?

> The negotiations on Tuesday, in particular, seemed to produce something that many, especially in the West, were eager to cling to as a ray of hope

No the west isnt hoping for a swift end. What for? Russia and any occupied terrotiry will be sanctioned forever, there will be constant guerilla warfare and this thing will drag on via other means. Instead it is now amping up the arming of ukrainians (they must have started receiving US weapons this week)

> No the west isn't hoping for a swift end.

WaPo link in the sentence you're calling out: "Ukraine-Russia talks stir optimism, but West urges caution"

Quoting China, only our interests are forever, everything else, enemies and friends, is not. I don't like sanctions on Russia, if the war ends tomorrow, everyone back at where they were before and Russia pays damages, it's fine and we could remove sanctions. Of course this is pure fantasy, Putin will never stop by himself, he would lose face and even risk losing power. He is telling to russians that Ukraine is not a real state since 2008. This war will not end through diplomacy.

This war will not end through diplomacy.

So what outcome are you seeing, then? It doesn't like Putin has much of chance of attaining anything close to its initial goal set (or even a decent subset thereof) by conventional military means.

Archived: https://archive.ph/OwTzz

The HN title is incorrect, the linked article is "How Putin's Game Ends"

Removing "How" is one of those automatic edits to titles made by HN, and I think it's a bad idea, as it often changes the meaning. Fortunately, it's possible to for the submitter to click "edit" and change it back to the original.

unfortunately too late. I missed my time window for the edit.

It's pretty surprising to me that HN implements this. It seems like the exact kind of cute/clever automation that "good programmers" know to avoid - the kind that produces really bad results often enough to be nowhere near worth the benefit.

There is zero evidence that invasion is poorly planned.

Russian forces are around 250-270k (including Donjeck forces of around 70k), while Ukrainian forces are around 600k strong.

Russians are effectively in complete control of the battlefield, while outnumbered 2 to 1.

Here's a nice summary of what's going on in Ukraine.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realscottritter/status/1508813631...

If the planning was not poor, then the current situation underlines how poorly the Russian soldiers have been fighting for the last five weeks.

I admire the fortitude of the Ukrainians fighting back against this unprovoked invasion.

The decision to shell to the ground whole towns and cities where many civilians still live display to the world the cowardice of Russian soldiers, who are much better equipped than the Ukrainians.

Russia is a tiger of paper with nuclear claws.

Nobody knows where the front line will be when a treaty is signed - but Russia has lost for a century its rank among the leading nations in the world.

Just another despotic state with a second-class army and an economy surviving through the exportation of natural resources.

I hope that western countries will welcome all the Russian political refugees: they are the elite of this nation and having them working in our economies will be a big plus.

Already 70,000 IT workers have left Russia - and this is only the beginning of this escape from despotism and generalized corruption, a "kleptocracy".

Normally the invasion force should bring about 5 times the troops of the defence.

It's hard to prove it's poorly planned because it's quite a job figuring what on earth Putin wanted to achieve but if he wanted to decimate his own army and have the whole world hate Russia he's doing pretty well.

(Update - I was curious about the source of those tweets and it turns out "Scott Ritter currently writes op-eds for Russia-state-controlled media, Russia Today RT" so maybe not the most unbiased source.)

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