Road to war: US struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion | Hacker News Reader

Road to war: US struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion

washingtonpost.com

34 pointsethbr022 comments

I’m still stunned at how deeply we’ve compromised Russian intelligence. Not only in calling the invasion, but we’ve helped plan devastating Ukrainian counter offensives.

The US tends to be pretty good at surveillance in permissive environments.

And as part of an invasion, you're moving a lot of logistically-heavy materiel near international borders. And stockpiling it in quantities that look different than exercises.

It would have been somewhat surprising if we hadn't noticed, between the E-8 & RQ-4 flights.

What was most fascinating to me about the article was how little effort Russia put into their diplomatic masquerade. With a few more key meetings or different messaging, they could have achieved a more successful military outcome.

But I guess that failure speaks to how much of an echo chamber the leadership circles have become. Aka "We believe this, so why wouldn't everyone else?"

There may just be some Russian patriots within their intelligence network who felt the invasion was a bad move for Russia and hoped alerting the US in advance would avert it.

Similar happened in the German military before WW2.

The US' response has been incompetent. They're shipping billions of dollars in weapons to a country that every single media outlet admitted was constricted by systemic corruption mere years ago, and less than 30% of the weapons make it to the front lines.

You read that right. 70% of the US' weapons aid to Ukraine mysteriously disappears ($16,100,000,000 so far!). It's likely being sold by corrupt officials or stolen by European criminal gangs.

All of that military-grade hardware is going to be used to fuel European cartel and gang violence, because that's where it's going.

All further weapon aid to Ukraine should be considered another Operation Fast and Furious, but this time instead of arming cartels in Mexico, the US Government is arming cartels and gangs in Europe. Yet another foreign policy disaster, after swinging out of Afghanistan with nothing to show for it.

That's aside from the fact the US likely egged Russia on to invade in the first place, after all their invasion came weeks after Kamala Harris was on a sabre-rattling tour of Europe (she advocated Ukraine join NATO, a red line for Russia).

With friends like the US, why does Europe even need enemies?

70% of weapond being diverted is a pretty bold claim. Can you back that up with a source?

The source is a European NGO on the ground, who claims 30-40% arrives to the front, and reported by US media. [1]

The US had absolutely zero tracking for weapons they were sending. It's just a free-for-all for corrupt officials, of which Ukraine has many (2nd most corrupt in Europe [2] [3] [4]).

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-military-aid-weapons-fr...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20181107104015/https://fraudsurv...

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/corruption-stalling-ukraine-optimis...

[4] http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/91317/

You should realize that Ukraine is an upcoming democracy, but it isn't one ( yet) due to corruption, but this could change relatively fast considering the actions Zelensky took ( if they are not for corruption ofc).

The split with USSR is very recent ( 1991). But they are earning their place in NATO with blood.

The only problem is if we get another Poland/Hungary/Turkeye that tries to control it's democracy ( for in EU)

> earning their place in NATO

And what exactly of strategic value does Ukraine have to offer NATO?

Look at what's happening now.

This right there.

NATO, in its original context, was largely obsolete after 1991. The threat that it was engineered to defend against was gone.

The day the tricolour went up over Moscow, we should have started drafting a post-NATO organization which explicitly included Russia (and the more stable/functional/too-armed-too-ignore post-Soviet states) as equal partners. This would have been important both geopolitically and psychologically. The message should have been clear: we are now on the same team. If someone joins our bloc, we both win. Let's focus on the threats we face (i. e. perpetual Middle East instability, or retiring the Soviet weapons that ended up in unstable hands) together.

Then you don't have 30 years of every NATO and EU expansion being easily interpreted as a dismantling of the historic Russian/Soviet sphere of influence.

NATO doesn't allow members quickly. There were joint NATOmissions with Russia, but Putin didn't like that US intervened in Iraq ( in it's sphere of influence).

Since then the relation degraded.

There's an extensive report of military interventions the last 30 years of Russia.

You should read it ;)

Your first link only says that at the beginning it was only 30%, which isn't a too big surprise considering the chaos at this time and it is talking about non lethal weapons only anyway.

"Jonas Ohman is founder and CEO of Blue-Yellow, a Lithuania-based organization that has been meeting with and supplying frontline units with non-lethal military aid in Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in 2014. Back in April, he estimated that just "30-40%" of the supplies coming across the border reached its final destination. But he says the situation has significantly improved since then and a much larger quantity now gets where it's supposed to go."

That statement doesn't say he's referring to non-lethal weapons, nor does the article say that. Additionally, the bulk of the weapons were sent prior to the "improvements".

So, where's the $16,000,000,000 in weapons that vanished? Do you even know how many weapons that is? Operation Fast and Furious was only 2,000 firearms. This is a far bigger deal.

The US' Brigadier General arrived in August for auditing - this month! So everything was just getting stolen before now?

Pentagon officials have no faith that the US is keeping tabs on the weapons, from another US source. [1]

It's a bit laughable anyone could defend Ukraine politicians, given all the graft. Most recently, the wife of a former politician tried to flee with $28m in cash in suitcases. Totally legit I'm sure. [2]

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/02/congress-pentagon-u...

[2] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/wife-of-former-ukrainian...

Just to add to this, Interpol’s Secretary General, Jürgen Stock, warned of this early on in the war [1]:

“We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond. We should be alarmed and we have to expect these weapons to be trafficked not only to neighbouring countries but to other continents.”

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/ukraine-weapon...

It seems like they aren't worried about it now more after the war.

> Jürgen Stock says once the conflict ends, a wave of guns and heavy arms will flood the international market and he urged Interpol’s member states, especially those supplying weapons, to cooperate on arms tracing.

Seems a bit disingenuous to suggest that the NATO secretary general thinks weapons are being trafficked now when thats not at all what they said.

The organisation has put out a statement due to how CBS decided to frame their comments. In effect its not at all what it sounds like.

https://mobile.twitter.com/BlueYellowUKR/status/155598750045...

> Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect changes since the CBS Reports documentary "Arming Ukraine" was filmed, and the documentary is also being updated. Jonas Ohman says the delivery has significantly improved since filming with CBS in late April. The government of Ukraine notes that U.S. defense attaché Brigadier General Garrick M. Harmon arrived in Kyiv in August 2022 for arms control and monitoring.

Ah. So we have an attaché there now. Surely this BG and his staff will be able to keep track of it all. I find it amusing (troubling?) that CBS felt like they had to add this note. Do they not stand by the reporting, or is there a problem with the implications of that reporting?

It's not the first time the user making similar claims regarding Ukraine, such as [1] falsely claiming the country support nazi groups.

The claim of about 30% is inaccurate in the roots and Jonas Ohman words taken out of context [2]. Anyway, the investigation should be done but the commenter misleading everyone by trying to convert the theoretical 30% into $$$.

Additionally, the links that you provided in other comment misleading even more: 1. Providing a link from 2010 when Ukraine had a president Yanukovych and resulted in the maidan. 2. Survey with 25 responders.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30834924

[2] https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/08/09/taken-out-of-context-...

So much weak whining. Were you crying while you wrote this?

$16B is so little to the US military that even for regular Americans it doesn’t move the needle of outrage like you think it would.

The US spent $2T and 20 years on mujahideen. Do you think anyone even liked those people?

6 months of Russian humiliation and this is the strength of their propaganda? $16B? Lol

It's $16B that could go to something else, even within the US military. I am aware of quite a few things within the US military that have been mysteriously defunded since February/March.

And US taxpayers should be upset about the $2T also.

My man you don’t have a TS clearance and you’re not on a need to know basis. Ongoing US DoD budgets are out of your element. Any public information is useless conjecture or hearsay.

$2T is a different problem and old news. Your $16B is a drop in the bucket and an acceptable cost of doing business.

Just to give you a little insight into the process here: The US annual military budget is around $800B year after year. How many times has the US been able to spend this little money to have a client state destroy so much Russian equipment? Maybe in Vietnam when the US was directly destroying Soviet equipment given to the VC. But that was hugely expensive on the US side

It clearly isn't about the money, it's about the scale of weapons about to be used in Europe to fuel cartel and gang violence. Who do you think is stealing and buying these weapons? Cartels, gangs, criminals, arms traffickers.

The price tag is human life, not $16bn.

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