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Comment by UkrainianJew | Hacker News Reader

I find it rather worrying in the long term. Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades. Export oil & gas, import everything else, let the cronies pocket the proceeds, while having most manufacturing, defense and tech exist mostly on paper. People like Rogozin were promoted based on the loyalty and willingness to give a cut of the pie further up the ladder.

Currently this trend appears to be reversing. The country is getting increasingly authoritarian [0], the economy is switching from a highly corrupt trickle-down-oil-money model, to centrally managed industrial economy driven by the war needs.

I don't like where this is going. If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry. If it manages to successfully take over Ukraine, it will very likely press forward to attack other ex-USSR states. If China decides to join the party and rally out against Taiwan, we pretty much have a guaranteed WWIII until mutual exhaustion.

[0] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/14/vladimir-putin-enact...

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As the Spartans famously said: "If".

Ukraine gets massive support from the club of the richest countries on the Earth, and, unlike Germany or France, the Anglo-Saxon behemoths seem to be committed in full. So is Poland, the necessary logistics hub for supplies. Russia is alone, even Iran refused to sell their drones to them.

The full impact of this economic and military imbalance cannot be seen yet. The Ukrainian army is in midst of switching their entire weaponry from the old Soviet models to the new Western ones. This is a grueling logistical task even in peace, much more so in war. But with each new type of equipment mastered (HIMARS, M-777, Panzerhaubitze 2000, in the future possibly Western tanks and jets), the total capability edge of the UAF over their Russian counterparts grows.

You can already see how the Russian offensive momentum has evaporated. They only managed to take very modest pieces of land over the last month or so, and basically none in July.

HIMARS is a very formidable addition to the arsenal, but in general quantities supplied are extremely modest to really turn the tide. Hopefully the deliveries will step up.

They are enough to f*ck up Russian logistics behind the lines. Without a massive supply of shells from the rear to the guns themselves, the Russian artillery is incapable of executing their beloved "bomb everything into pieces" WWI-style doctrine.

And the Ukrainians have destroyed an untold number of Russian ammo dumps in the last weeks. Some of the explosions have been truly spectacular. This isn't something you can easily remedy. Any new ammo dump in range will be quickly spotted by either American spy satellites or local Ukrainian spies that are probably still active in Donbass - and get blasted to hell.

HIMARS is not enough to reconquer the lost territories, true. But it is enough to give Russians a forced operational pause.

The thing that the west is unwilling to do is give the Ukrainians cruise missiles. The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibr and Iskander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.

What difference? They hit random civilian targets far behind the frontline.

This makes people angry, but does not significantly contribute to attrition of the Ukrainian military.

The recent cruise missile hits in Ukrainian cities haven't helped the Russians acquire even a square inch of new territory.

I don't understand this terror tactic either.

* It will only more cement Ukrainians against them

* It will have no negative influence on Ukrainian military nor aviation.

* Ukraine will use those attacks in their own propaganda to get more weapons and money from the West.

So those attacks are a waste of military assets with marginally negative gain. Who in Russian leadership is planning those dumb attacks?

Rationally, this war wouldn't even start.

We are too rational here on HN to try to emulate/parse/analyze the decision making involved. There is a big dollop of madness there.

Think instead of the people who have authority over these weapon systems. How much time they spent training to use those weapons. How important it must feel to them that their weapons are used.

The fact that the intelligence needed to give them valuable targets is a secondary concern. Their main concern is the readiness and cohesion that come from pressing the fire button.

Well west is unwilling to supply modern tanks so Cruise missles look to be def. of the table. Ukraine is even short on basic armored personnel carriers and even regular consumer trucks widely used by military (mostly supplied by volunteers).

This is not really about "willingness". Modern Western tanks are a logistical nightmare, and Ukrainian logistical capabilities to support them are limited. In order not to overextend them, everyone concentrates on doing what is most effective.

In the case of this war at this very moment, it is long range high precision artillery. HIMARS eats rockets like crazy, it needs to be supplied constantly.

Once those supply chains are fully built and safe, they can talk about adding tanks to the mix.

I think it's more of a public explanation than actual reality. Even supplying soviet planes is an issue (cause ooooh it might anger Putin)

For some countries like Germany, yes.

Others are itching for a fight. I wonder if this is true:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/vzp17b/in_poland_a...

Poland is certainly one of the countries that would love to drive Putin to madness.

> The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibar and Islander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.

Do they still have them or have they used most of them up?

IIRC, for all the attention they get, the US has surprisingly few cruise missiles and would use up its stockpiles pretty quickly in a war like that in Ukraine.

Russia is no where near running out of missiles. they still have a ridiculous amount of them.

On paper, certainly.

But a lot of those missiles have been stored somewhere in Siberia for 40+ years. Their condition is probably less than stellar. Who would regularly inspect and maintain random ammo dumps located five timezones away from Moscow in the middle of nowhere?

I suspect that at least some of those missiles are outright out of commission and others are unstable enough to be a danger to the Russians themselves.

Also, see this anti-aircraft gun in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IwqmezeSuQ

Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere?

IDK, but that is hardly relevant to the current situation. We aren't trying to one-up each other in a "who is worse" rhetoric content, but looking at the situation at the Russo-Ukrainian front.

From what I get, Western stuff delivered to the Ukrainians is in working order, while the Russians shells seem to have a fairly high percentage of duds - usually an indicator of a fuse degraded by long and inadequate storage.

And if shells frequently fail, so will other long stored equipment.

It's exactly the same. Two global leaders in military power.

> Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere?

The US almost certainly does, but the Russians might not. They've been shown to have neglected routine maintenance in ways that caused very critical problems for their military (e.g. they lost a lot of expensive advanced vehicles, because their unmaintained knock-off tires disintegrated).

Both these videos are long, but they had a lot of interesting ideas and insight on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 [specifically 33:10] (How Corruption Destroys Armies - Theft, Graft, and Russian failure in Ukraine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg (All Bling, no Basics - Why Ukraine has embarrassed the Russian Military)

They are already running out of Kalibr and Iskander missiles. Why would they started using S300 in Groun 2 Ground role?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-now-firing-s-30...

Given what we’ve seen, the ones that weren’t delivered inoperable due to corruption likely lack targeting infrastructure.

HIMARS might be enough to retake things far away from Russia though. Russias logistics are terrible.

They won’t.

Europeans drag their feet on arming Ukraine and pressure it to surrender (“peace”).

The reason is gas and fear of refugee influx to Europe from hunger in Africa.

Plus Germans paying Russia billions for gas beats any arms supplies possible. And they will not stop doing it.

"beats any arms supplies possible"

Very observably not. Russia seems to be actually incapable of buying any modern weapons for the billions of euros it receives from Germany. Even China considers such cooperation too risky.

The technical level of Russian equipment deployed in the battles in Ukraine has gone downhill since February. Now they are pulling really old stuff (designed or even manufactured in the 1950s-1960s) from storage. And some of their auxiliaries from the separatist republics literally use WWI and WWII small arms.

Money matters in war, but it cannot substitute for a missing/inadequate supply chain. You can't bury the enemy in an avalanche of euros, you actually need to procure the necessary equipment.

There is no need in sophisticated weaponry or even artillery when you have endless literal cannon fodder. Hide or deny losses and drag on just enough to exhaust your opponent.

A year of slow territorial gains? Two? More? Not a problem as long as economy is propped by European money, Germans don’t bother sending enough weapons and Western media is tired of war and looks elsewhere.

Russia already had poor demographics before and now it is possibly spending years losing military age males?

Russia as a low prospect J-curve state might not be entertaining to the western media but it is basically the outcome the US has been gunning for since Gorbachev left, always with a lot of resistance from Germany. After a few more years of setting up alternative gas routes, I'm not sure Germany will even have a way to offer Russia yet another chance.

Russia doesn’t have endless cannon fodder. And has had a lot of difficulty sourcing troops. They are fine losing troops but their army isn’t as big as people imagine. And the logistics needed to get people to the front with basic supplies is hard.

Russia is itself the 2nd supplier of weapons on the international market and buying from the 1st (the US) is pretty pointless as whatever the US is selling is incompatible with the Russian systems. Who you envision Russia would need to buy weapons from?

> even Iran refused to sell their drones to them

"White House says Iran is preparing to supply Russia with weapons-capable drones"

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/politics/iran-russia-weapons-...

They deny this. I suspect we will know soon. If they really go against their word, drones are hard to hide.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-refused-supply-dron...

It seems overall Ukraine isnt doing as well as the constant media spin says they are.

TikTok is full of videos show uk guys running from conscription. I know a whole team of developers who fled to Poland early.I think they lost the morale war, and it's just a matter of time until Nato intervenes directly to start Ww3

There’s also plenty of evidence that says that Russia isn’t doing so well, they have 100s of people in some battalions refusing to fight (likely because all their friends turned back up home dead).

There’s tonnes of HIMARS strikes taking out command and control points of Russias behind the front line. The VDV (Russian paratroopers) and it’s leader ship have been decimated by this war.

I don't doubt that some of their guys dodged conscription. In every war, someone does.

But "losing the morale war" would probably manifest itself in localized frontline collapses, and this does not seem to be happening. The recent retreat in Luhansk oblast wasn't a rout, and other sections of the frontline are barely moving.

You mean, how Russia technically controls 20-25% of Ukraine's territory ?

Do you see what those sanctions against Russian cheap energy are doing in Europe:

- Estonia Goverment fell

- Bulgaria Goverment fell

- UK Goverment fell

- Italy's PM resigned

It's not even August. Do you know what will happen when colder months hit ? :)

"UK Goverment fell" - it didn't, only the PM did. Johnson appointed a sexual predator to be the Chief Whip of the Tory faction in the Parliament and it was one mistake too many. It has nothing to do with sanctions against Russia. The government will continue under a new PM.

"Bulgaria Goverment fell" - Bulgaria has had by now four(?) early elections in a row, which predate the war in Ukraine. The Bulgarian political situation is an internal mess.

"Italy's PM resigned" - Italy has had 69 governments since WWII, nothing unusual there.

"Estonia Goverment fell" - Estonia is very anti-Russian in practice. Their next government is likely to be formed by the very same PM.

The EU has some 30 countries. Unlike Russia or odd exceptions like Merkel, their leaders come and go fairly frequently. Even 8 governmental changes in a year wouldn't be particularly strange in a club of 30 democracies.

Italian and Bulgarian government collapses are connected to the Russian influence in the government coalition partners.

Thank you. So there is some connection. But I would still claim that in case of Italy, a quick change in government is not an unusual phenomenon. Italian governments come and go so fast that most people outside Italy have trouble remembering the current PM's name.

Regardless, let's see how the EU will do without cheap Russian energy.

I predict riots, unrest and MORE goverment changes :)

Also ... quotas for showers, heating ,etc.

That could build even more resentment against Putin, couldn't it?

The UK government fell because Boris was a lying fool to the wrong people. Be careful not to assume that because something big happened it must be the cause of something else.

Specifically, I would say Boris's support for Ukraine is one of the only non-controversial things he has done as prime minister.

And it's the only thing he could be regretted for (depending on who's gonna take his place)

> If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry

Or the current regime will collapse. That often happens with large scale defeats, especially without a democratic outlet for internal change within the system.

I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.)

The worst it will happen to Putin is that he'll be locked in into Russia and have to kill more and more Russian people.

> I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.)

The reference to MAD makes sense only in the context of foreign armies (and with the M only those of major nuclear powers), but if you look at the two immediate predecessors of the modern Russian Federation (the USSR and the Russian Empire), both fell without a foreign army entering the capital, and are hardly unique in history in doing so. And to the extent status as a major nuclear power is relevant to that, the USSR had it just as much as the Russian Federation does.

Why even discuss MAD or nuclear when Putin gets what he wants without it?

Germans finance his war efforts with billions of euros and drag their feet on arming Ukraine.

Europeans generally pressure Ukraine to surrender.

Why risk it? Just wait, time is on his side.

The army of Russia has explicitly been kept underpowered just for that reason and generals get rotated around a lot. A strong army is a threat to Putin. Source : CSIS.

Why should Putin’s regime collapse? Ruble is strong, people got +20% instant raise because of sanctions. Germany pours billions into Russian economy.

Save for Netflix not working anymore, life in Moscow is even better than pre-war.

People in Russia can swallow poverty, injustice, corruption no problem. But they cannot swallow war defeat. This tsar is weak, need a better tsar who wins.

Judging by weak arms supplies by Europeans who don’t want to anger their gas supplier - Putin is far from defeat.

Theirs nothing weak about HIMARS and 500 T72 tanks, this myth of weak arm supplies is nothing more then that, a myth.

Ukraine is getting heaps of weapons and decimating Russian logistics and command and control with it. Enough that even the Russian propaganda is complaining about it.

> Judging by weak arms supplies by Europeans who don’t want to anger their gas supplier - Putin is far from defeat.

The subthread was discussing what would happen in the event Russia was forced to abandon the invasion, if you want to object to discussing that possibility as reasonable, the place is several posts upthread.

(Also, Western aid delivered since the major escalation by Russia this year has been several multiples of Ukraine’s annual defense spending and a sizable fraction of Russia’s annual defense spending. It is not “weak” arms supplies by any reasonable standard.)

Alot of people simply can't imagine other countries might have a fundamentally different way of thinking.

Same hubris that lead to defeat in Afghanistan

> Why should Putin’s regime collapse?

Historically—not universally, of course, but frequently enough to be noteworthy—people have been observed to be displeased with leadership that unproductively transforms large numbers of their youth into corpses.

Listen to recordings of calls to Russian soldiers’s mothers. The families fully support invasion. They are glued to TV and Telegram which explain that Ukrainians bomb themselves and Russian soldiers are brave liberators fighting against gay Nazi Americans.

Besides that soldiers send a lot of stolen goods back home. There was an infamous video from the office of a transport company with dozens of soldiers sending loot like washing machines.

Alcohol consumption increased from an already elevated baseline caused by covid. It does not seem like life is better than before.

Most of the country was miserable, malnourished and in poverty for years anyway. It’s not like Putin’s elites care. It’s basically a serfdom. As long as people obey, and Putin’s clique can build palaces, it can go on for decades.

Russian gdp forecasted to fall 8-10%.

11.2% according to the world bank: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/infographics/impact-sanct...

8 is their internal forecast. The world bank figure is likely more reliable.

> don't like where this is going

I do. Worst case, we wind up with Russia under China’s thumb. Not ideal. But Pyongyang isn’t rolling tanks over its borders.

Best case: a disassembly of the Russian empire. Why Moscow tells Siberians and Tatars what to do is an anachronism, start to finish. It sort of made sense when the Kremlin had its head screwed on straight. Now, it doesn’t.

We're not there by far. Russia is doing really really bad on the battlefront.

But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too.

But, they currently don't have the capacity to strike an amphibious assault + their military seems to be similar to the Russian one.

So yes, it could become worrisome if it happens. But i don't think that China has much to gain with attacking Taiwan from my POV.

Ukraine had found a gas supply in Crimea in 2008, that could replace all Russian gas imports in Europe. That's very different than a chip factory that is set to selfdestruct during an invasion and that needs machines that are literally made by ASML+ Imec ( Europe)

Ps. I was more worried about that part at the start of the war than now.

> But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too.

China has been backing Russia and it's anti-Western allies in the region (e.g., Serbia). Mostly, I think, for the value of keeping the West focussed on Russia in Europe to any “stupid ideas” they might try in their region.

Well, china's growth comes from the west and not from Russia/Serbia.

> Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades.

not 2 decades. it’s been a corrupt inefficient machine since the bolsheviks. the lying and the corruption persisted throughout the ussr. the whole country and it’s precursor are just lies built one on top of the other and the westerners actually believed most of it.

Longer than that. Europeans have remarked on the corruption and inefficiency of the Russian state throughout history.

Russia has plenty of things missing (chips etc.)

This will take much more than just a few years.

Sanctions will be lifted or eased long before tech embargo hits.

Putin has too many points to cause pain for European politicians.

For example grain shortage caused by his naval operations will cause hunger in North Africa. Revolts and refugee influx to Europe will follow.

It’s enough for Europeans to put pressure on Ukraine to surrender. If it doesn’t they will spoon-feed it arms so it will surrender by fall.

I feel like a protracted proxy war in Ukraine was never really on the table.

What we've seen so far is the US and its allies forcing Russia to pay a "price" for its adventurism. The value of this is both to act as a deterrent against future actions and to strengthen Ukraine's negotiating power when it ultimately surrenders.

I suspect that at a certain point everybody will be satisfied with the level of pain exacted, Ukraine surrenders, and Russia ends up with at least a large chunk of Ukraine.

Don't judge people by yourself Ukraine will not surrender.

Europeans will force it to, unfortunately.

Russians already tried to force something, will not work. No Ukrainian president will ever sign because he/she will be overthrown the next day.

Yes Ukrainian people is the bastion and are fighting bravely.

Feels like Europeans (namely Germany and France) will provide as little weapons as possible to exhaust Ukrainians so they get tired and surrender themselves.

Once Ukrainian public is ready, Biden will pressure Zelinsky. Biden has already said “we told him but he didn’t want to listen” hinting that he can throw Zelinsky under the bus if he doesn’t behave.

Surrender (“peace”) would be an awful option for Ukraine because Putin will regroup and in a couple of years launch a new assault on the remaining part of the country.

There won’t be mercy from him, judging by executions on occupied territory.

Poland will continue cooperating with America (who give most of the aid). The current government is anti-Russia and even if they lose elections, the only pro-Russia people are authoritarian right wing nutjobs who probably won't even win a single seat.

Yes Polish people have shown a lot of resilience and deserve great respect in this situation. Batlic states as well of course. Hope they won’t allow Germany sweep Ukraine under the rug.

It might be like this. It's already tremendous impressive how the Ukrainian people stood up to Putin.

But bombing so many civilians means after a while a tremendous loss as well.

It's just speculation and the hope would of course be Putin just getting out of Ukraine but Putin just has much less to loose besides his own death.

Not a critically high price anyway. Gas prices cover everything and complicit German politicians don’t consider stopping paying. Looks like Putin’s gamble played well once again, he knows his European counterparts well.

I also assume that they will have to surrender but the price will be much much higher than Putin though.

This will not motivate Putin to push forward.

Don't worry, they appointed a similar budget thief, and the state is so corrupt it won't be able to recover once gas and oil money are gone

Unfortunately, this will reveal itself to be a stunningly accurate prediction.

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