Notes on Ukraine: I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

Notes on Ukraine: I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine

mattlakeman.org

108 pointsmonort13 comments

Quite amazing journalism. There is a lot of value in such a thoughtful and traveled on-the-ground report.

More than once I was reminded of a portion of Herman Wouk's novel The Winds of War that portrays a journey and escape from the Polish countryside to Warsaw ahead of the German invasion and siege in 1939.

Lol that green thing is definitely not an artillery shell, it's way too big. Must be a bomb

This guy has balls though visiting these places

It looks like part of the dropped rocket engine from an artillery rocket. Maybe something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-30_Smerch.

Good find! I thought it looked way too dented to be a bomb

> If another war breaks out in, for instance, Syria, a white American like me can’t waltz in and take pictures.

Really enjoyed the article but as someone who had and has friends who don't look local and travelled the Arab world and ended up stuck in bad shit, this perception always comes up and personal anecdotes prove otherwise.

If anything looking foreign and speaking passing Arabic, even if peaceful situations, makes you stand out and get unwanted attention. I have a lot of experience with this bit. Haha

That’s exactly what he is saying?

That is not how I read it.

He is saying being a white American person, commonly that would not speak Arabic, in Syria would make him a target as a spy.

What I am saying: no, it's not like that. Even the attention I describe (looking that way but speaking some Arabic) isn't that. I guess that wasn't clear.

Or a target for kidnapping. There was quite a few of them in Middle Eastern war zones.

Again, anecdotal. Not all the Middle East is the same. That is the point I was making. Is Iraq your example? Some other country? He moved in and out of combat zones, but most of the article he shows the good side of civilian Ukrainians not in active combat zones enjoying life and not threatening them. Do we think all of Syria, for example, during different parts of the conflict was a giant war zone?

This is HN. When people talk vaguely about technical problems like this without data or pose with anecdata, there is usually a higher bar of proof. Saying "Ukraine is full of white people who look like me, so less risky" and "Syria is dangerous" are not apples to apples comparisons in my book.

https://idlewords.com/2014/07/sana_a.htm

Incredible interesting insights about the situation, very great read.

I almost didn't click on this, expecting a lot of righteous ranting, but it turned out to be the best on-the-scene report from Ukraine that I've read so far. I don't completely agree with his analyses, but he makes an impressive effort to plainly report what he sees.

All I can say is this is an amazing read, so glad it's on HN.

> Fortunately, I had a friend in the city who has contacts in the police, so four police officers with assault rifles found me in the dark of the train station, marched me to a police car, and drove me through eerily empty streets for fifteen minutes to my friend’s apartment

> St. Michaels, one of Kyiv’s major churches, was closed, but I talked my way inside past a rather nice soldier.

Ah, "extremely nice" people, this is absolutely not a corruption.

> Most of these outlying towns were deserted, but some had a handful of people left who had lived without electricity, internet, or a reliable food supply for months.

Well, two months is not one month.

> Here’s one particular item I’m sure they will miss:

Shows a calendar with the month name spelled in Ukrainian

> We saw a destroyed school (seemed to be a lot of those)

https://youtu.be/ncV7yFIrZUA

> one major unexpected paradigm shift revealed in the Russian invasion which has benefited Ukraine

Being supplied by a constant flow of intelligence, including satellite and electronic surveillance.

> Ukraine’s military strength has also been augmented by public and not-so-public support. NATO and the US have been funneling money and equipment into Ukraine for years, most of which is superior to the old Soviet weapons of Russia. More controversially, the US has probably sent military personnel to train at least part of the Ukrainian military, particularly in how to use its fancy new weapons

Probably? 1 search away:

>> The big picture: Beginning in 2015, after Russia's annexation of Crimea, the U.S. invested about $126 million to train more than 23,000 Ukrainians troops at the Yavoriv military base in western Ukraine, Hilbert said.

Even more:

>> By January, the role of the Americans had evolved from "hands-on training" to advising on Ukrainian-led strategy and preparing for "large-scale combat operations."

>> https://www.axios.com/2022/05/05/pentagon-details-us-trainin...

> This turned out to be a huge miscalculation on Putin’s part.

Now this one is correct. Sadly his grip is too tight and hopes for the internal forces to take the opporunity vanished after a month.

> This freaked out the Ukrainian government. They are heavily reliant upon foreign support, not really for ground soldiers, but for money, equipment, and morale. It’s a bad look when the very first foreigners to arrive get blown up before they even reach the front.

> The soldiers I talked to were part of this wave. About 200 of them were sent to this base where they did nothing for a few weeks.

The handling of this is borderline hilarious.

> then digging trenches in the woods and waiting for an inevitable Russian ground attack. They both said that they knew for certain they were about to get “run over by tanks” and die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavoriv_military_base_attack

"run over by [Russian] tanks". It is near Lwow. Look at the map.

> then spent the next 1.5 months trekking around empty regions of northern Ukraine, and eventually settled in to guard what all of them swore was the farm and hunting lodge of a rich friend of their commander.

"extremely nice" people again.

> On a typical day, they were given two meals consisting of one piece of chicken (though they guessed it was probably pigeon)

Oh my. I doubt it was a pigeon, probably it's just wasn't an American size.

> On more than one occasion, they saw their rations being taken away, again, either to be used by other units or to be sold off

"nice people"

> One had been in the Marines, another the U.S. Army, the others in other various Western militaries (I don’t want to give too many specifics)

Why?

> Probably my favorite of the many soldiers they described was the Glowie. For those not in the know, a “glowie” is internet slang for an undercover federal agent who does a bad job at blending into online communities. In the Legion’s case, the glowie was a 30-something American with a vague background who anomalously spoke four languages and asked everyone questions about everything.

Pfft.

> Cats on Leashes

> Is this a Ukrainian thing? An eastern European thing?

Never heard this. Though when I had a cat if I brought him out I would have hell of a time to even find him.

Overall this was an interesting read, not without a bias, of course, but author tried to be as neutral as he can be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com