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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

There was war in Ukraine since 2014 - ever since they refused to become another Belarus. I agree that many people underestimated Russian threat, but them expanding is not really unprecedented.

I think that one reason why it flopped that quickly is that Russia was creating precedents of what it is going to do around for years. So it became impossible to ignore.

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And the ongoing precedent was that Russia could snip off chunks of any country they like and at worst they'd face very limited sanctions.

Taking a whole country at once in mainland Europe and having its economy completely isolated within a span of weeks was about as predictable as a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Nobody was prepared, and no preparation would've been sufficient no matter what.

> Nobody was prepared, and no preparation would've been sufficient no matter what.

This is just not true tho. Had Ukraine was not prepared, they would fold the way Russia expected them to. Instead, Ukraine did quite a lot of army reforms, lobbied to get guns long before war. They did not expected Russians to attack right now, because Russia seemed unprepared ... which they was. But they were not ruling out eventual attempt to takeover.

It is also not true that no-one anticipated. There were people both right before and longer before talking about eventuality - including Biden and American secret services. There were some people who did not cared about topic. There were many people who either knee jerkedly refused the eventuality, without looking at what is going on in Russia. Then there were people who rejected to possibility for political or financial reasons.

But, the notion that no-one was predicting it is simply untrue.

I agree with the OP that this situation is unprecedented. However, you're correct that this wasn't totally out of the blue. There were concerns about this that started emerging last summer, and then escalated again in the fall. This was related to the water crisis in Crimea as well as falling support for Putin in Russia.

https://www.ft.com/content/5eda71fc-d678-41cd-ac5a-d7f324e19...

I also think this has always really been about the eastern Ukrainian region. The stuff about taking western Ukraine has been a strategic ruse and/or secondary aim.

By unprecedented, in which time span it is unprecedented for Russia to become authoritarian or expansive? If anything, there seems to be continuity in Russian behavior.

> I also think this has always really been about the eastern Ukrainian region. The stuff about taking western Ukraine has been a strategic ruse and/or secondary aim.

I find this super unlikely. If the goal was eastern Ukrainian region, their initial attack makes zero sense. And also, their rhetoric's makes zero sense - they talked about Ukraine not being real country, Ukrainians not beaing real nation.

You don't need to attack Kyiv to get eastern region. There is nothing to suggest that this was ruse, but everything to suggest they failed and they are looking for second price.

No, after Crimea, there was widespread expectation Russia will try to take more. Not least in Ukraine itself, which led to the military preparations there that have made it so expensive for Russia.

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