Putin orders partial Russian mobilisation, warns West over nuclear blackmail | Hacker News Reader

Putin orders partial Russian mobilisation, warns West over nuclear blackmail

reuters.com

80 pointsls15195 comments

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Today I'm getting the same adrenaline rush as on February 24th. While I managed to leave Russia, not all of my friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances managed to secure themselves. I am very concerned for what lies ahead for them and hope to assist them as much as my resources allow.

Surely this has to have significant ramifications to the day to day operations of the country. If people who are drafted refuse then someone needs to decide on the outcome of that. If they draft vital workers of the economy it they will need to fill the vacancies.

It’s almost impossible to judge the outcome of this within the country. They must have prepared that for quite some time.

> If people who are drafted refuse then someone needs to decide on the outcome of that.

Looks like the jail time for that just gets doubled:

https://inshorts.com/en/news/russian-state-duma-okays-toughe...

> According to the bill, deserting a military unit during martial law would attract up to 10 years in jail. Under the present law, desertion by a soldier will attract a sentence of five years.

I'm not sure what the details and exact definitions of words like "draft" and "conscription" are, but the article says that it is only former professional soldiers who are being "mobilized".

To me that sounds more like activating a reserve, rather than drafting. Although that probably doesn't change the fact that most of those 300.000 people are productive members of the Russian economy.

One cannot trust those numbers. They claim 6000 russian soldiers lost and they call 300 000 backup? Doesn't make sense at all. Keeping the numbers low is to calm down public opinion.

To clarify the conscription part, it has been mandatory for all males 18-27 (or 28? I forgot+they keep changing that age +-1) since a long time ago. Medical exceptions and a few others apply, if Russia isn't struggling for numbers, otherwise the exceptions are routinely ignored.

See https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1572270599535214598 for a pretty good description of where it goes from here.

That's not even scratching the surface. Don't forget they are mobilizing up to a million men when the winter is coming. Any logistical slipups (lack of fuel or food) and these will be freezing to death dying of hunger on the front.

And rabid babushkas who are cheering Russias working age male surplus population to go die and be maimed on the front are not exactly thinking much either about who pays for their own retirement.

So is the plan to annex Donbas and then declare all combat in Donbass an attack on Russia as a justification for further escalation?

Dunno why that would change things since Ukraine has already made counter-strikes into actual Russian territory (Belgorod). But then again, Putin lives in make-believe land and the target for these outbursts is probably the population of Russia, not the west.

Bilgorod is actually Ukrainian territory. They are just fighting back what commies took a while ago.

Despite many unsourced updates to the Wikipedia article for the city, I've come to conclusion that it was once part of the Mongol empire. Without verifiable sources it seems hard to state more than that. :(

Let's keep this discussion informative and cordial please.

Youre coping.

They've also (seemingly) made strikes into the recently-annexed Crimea, but that was still during the phase when Russia liked to enjoy that everything was fine and that their men were just tripping over some explosives.

Yes, although Crimea is not Russian territory.

It is as far as Russia is concerned.

It was acquired illegally (according to UN) in 2014.

yes. That seems the obvious play.

Russia will then lean on other "friendly" countries to recognise the annexation(s).

Unfortunately, any unbiased observer will note that the sequencing is "odd".

I will note that it's hard to ascertain what the actual desire of the population in the affected regions is. If the population truly does want to align with Russia then democratically, they should be allowed to make such determination.

The manner in which this is being done does not suggest the Russia narrative is truthful unfortunately. Digging into the diplomatic dialogues leading up to the conflict(s) may shed light on motives / who is driving the agenda (is it really driven from the regions or is this a Putin initiated proxy war with the west).

> If the population truly does want to align with Russia then democratically, they should be allowed to make such determination.

I’m sure in the interest of fairness Russia will find a way to include all the people they murdered and drove out in their referendum.

> If the population truly does want to align with Russia then democratically, they should be allowed to make such determination.

Politics is not so simple as this, otherwise I, as a single individual, democratically want to secede my land from the US, and can stop paying any and all taxes. If you agree the extreme is absurd, then you realize there is a line to draw somewhere.

Yes. Russian military doctrine is also pretty clear in that threats to territorial integrity of Russian federation are grounds for using nuclear weapons. It is basically the implied threat in the referendums announced for this weekend.

Clear sign that initial assault has failed. Time to change tactics.

Russia has 37 million males aged 15-54, which are the extreme ends of what would be considered for mobilisation. Its total workforce is 75 million.

Combined with the ~100K Russian casualties, ~200K combatants, if Putin adds another 150K then this will impact just 1.2% of its combat-age male population. The reduction in workforce is just 0.6%, but it is actually less than that, because most of the initially deployed soldiers were professional soldiers already, and weren't technically part of the workforce when the war started. So just considering the new conscripts, this is more like a 0.2% reduction in the total workforce.

I'm putting this here because I see a lot of discussions where people think that this will somehow "decimate" Russia's population, undermine their economy, strip the workforce bare, or whatever.

For comparison, their ageing demographics and low birth rate means that their population is shrinking by 86K people per month anyway. See: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/29/russias-population...

Realistically, the effect of the sanctions is 100x greater than the additional mobilisation.

As a Russian, who (unfortunately) currently resides in Russia, I can say that so far sanctions had approximately zero effect on everyday lives. No food shortages, no good shortages, no medicine shortages. Planes are still flying (within borders).

So it appears that the economy is more robust than I have originally thought - in February I was expecting a near collapse by now, but there are no signs of it yet.

Yes. You can buy any car you want, the prices didnt budge, stock market is strong, and mcdonalds never ran out of something as basic as fries.

Inflation for Russians is just Tuesday, and the importance of buying new cars is somewhat overinflated for everyday lives.

Since you appear to be commenting my every comment, I have to tell you this. You seem to be wishfully dreaming that sanctions are more effective than they really are. So far, their impact was very light. As a Russian, I'd love them to have a way more severe impact, as I would happily endure great hardships if this would weaken Putin's fascist regime. However, so far, I don't see any evidence of a significant impact of sanctions.

I'm also very unhappy with EU countries imposing an extremely counter-productive measures like visa bans, and seeing how rabid and hateful crowd cheers for them is even sadder, because these people's actions benefit Putin, and do not hurt him at all.

> As a Russian, I'd love them to have a way more severe impact, as I would happily endure great hardships if this would weaken Putin's fascist regime.

As a Russian, I remember being trolled by the following joke, very popular among pseudo-liberals and other russophobic lot:

"When lords will demand that every Russian must have a boot their asses by saturday, they will form a line in Friday to get this over with faster."

I can't stop laughing over how ironic this whole thing turned out.

I understand McDonald's ran out of McDonald's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_in_Russia

> Yes. You can buy any car you want,

No.

In the US, if you want, you can buy and legally own a tank or other military vehicle.

But in Russia you still can't, despite all the mobilizations :(

to be perfectly fair to Russia; there was practically nothing left the West could use to threaten them with regarding sanctions; which is probably why Putin said "Fuck it"; especially since the population is declining.

The impact of harsh sanctions is self-sufficiency. Ironically Germany and the EU is suffering moderately due to the Russian gas shortages.

Well, there is this $300 Billion frozen assets in western banking sector.

Which Putin uses as a yet another example of west's lack of credibility in his rhetoric, which even seems to have some response in Africa and central and eastern Eurasia (basically everywhere non-west)

Plus it's easy internal propaganda, like, "Look, THEY stole YOUR money".

And since Russia's budget is currently profitable, it doesn't really pose an immediate economic threat.

You have outdated information. Turns out sanctions do work https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/economy/russia-economy-bu... If there was no economic threat there would be no 10% public sector cut.

From what I understand, it’s a bit like those kids’ cartoons where the character runs over a cliff and keeps running into mid air. They look down and only then start falling.

Sanctions have little effect on everyday life initially. People can just keep coasting just like the character that ran past the edge of the cliff.

For example why does the average person care if car manufacturing has halted? They have a car already! Chances are that the car they ordered months ago was completed anyway with parts in stock.

It’s when the Kuka robots and Siemens machinery starts breaking down in factories that things start heading downwards.

Still… a downwards trajectory isn’t the same as an instant change! It takes years for the impact to really bite.

Smuggling will help cover some shortages, but at a cost.

Real exchange rates will get increasingly bad.

Russians will simply skip their holidays next year, hold on to their phones and computers a bit longer and live life like normal…

… until they realise they can’t legally enter half the countries in the world, flights are unaffordable and take a route via China, and replacing their dead laptop costs a year’s wages.

Just like the good old communist days Putin longs for.

> and replacing their dead laptop costs a year’s wages

You don't really realise what you're talking about, or did you confuse Russia with Australia?

Would anyone decent enough to actually respond instead of silent minusing, tell me how dead laptop replacement can start costing year's wages, when it's assembled right near the border?

Cuz it really looks like people either have no idea where exactly Russia is (and where the global production centers are) or somehow imply closed borders.

Because at some point the manufacturers will need to choose whether to comply with sanctions, or get cut of the Western markets. Russian market is relatively worthless, so it's not a hard choice, and we're already seeing Chinese vendors leaving Russia.

Vendors are greedy and sanctions are relatively easy to dodge, especially if the customs are told not to interfere too thoroughly. If anything, Apple hardware in Russia now costs ~20% less than it did in January. iPhone 14 is already available, too. Maybe the situation will change in the future, but no sooner than when EU will stop buying oil and gas from Putin.

Vendors being greedy doesn't explain why they would risk losing access to a very profitable markets for a worthless one.

Sanctions are slow. Kazakhstan, for example, only blocked truck transit from EU to Russia a couple days ago.

Vendors do not risk anything. They offload the shipment to a real buyer who then transports goods without vendor officially knowing anything. This buyer can very well be a company established for this one shipment, so no ends are ever found.

And regarding Kazakhstan and transit problems - it has nothing to do with sanctions. See this article with more or less coherent explanation of an issue [0] (it's in Russian but Google translate should help)

[0]: https://iz.ru/1397573/anastasiia-lvova-elnar-bainazarov/gruz...

Regarding jets, it seems the Russia only has the flying stock to keep the current fleet alive until 2025. And only doing so by using current jets as parts for the others. After that, and the flying stock dwindles until other sources are found; a safety nightmare.

https://jalopnik.com/russia-turns-to-cannibalizing-aircraft-...

One effect (as was seen in February) will be an exodus of young, educated citizens. Having discussed the matter with (now ex-) colleagues earlier in the year, mobilization was a big concern for them.

That will have a bigger impact on companies as technology has infiltrated every sector. Of course, it could be months or years before that impact is truly felt.

Well they better get moving quickly, because it is widely expected that from next week you will need to have a paper from the local draft/military office stating that you are exempt from mobilization in order to board a plane or a train, and it is obviously expected that this paper will be very hard for most people to obtain.

> it is widely expected

By whom?

I'd expect the disruption caused by workplaces suddenly losing conscripted workers to exceed the mere "workforce reduction" by a large factor.

You are right that the effect on workforce won't be as bad. But the political effects will likely be huge: for now Russians can pretend there's no war, because it's not them who's dying, it's "some ethnic minorities".

One can't avoid drawing parallels between what's happening now and what happened after Russia's defeat in WW1.

>“We are talking about partial mobilization, that is, only citizens who are currently in the reserve will be subject to conscription, and above all, those who served in the armed forces have a certain military specialty and relevant experience,” Putin said.

https://apnews.com/f64f9c91f24fc81bc8cc65e8bc7748f4

Almost every single ru male under 60 is in the reserve. Thats what state-mandated 12-24 month conscription is all about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia#Russia

Why did you ommit "relevant experience" and "military specialty" part? My military specialty is "computer operator", lol.

Also, 24 months is something from two decades ago.

Because I lived under russian occupation and know how those things work first hand. Their official propaganda newspaper is still called Pravda (truth). Do you really expect this particular part to be true among the sea of other lies?

This is how it started https://www.dw.com/en/how-ukraine-separatists-are-mass-consc... and this is how its going https://vk.com/wall-58177259_1120387 (kidnapped off the street straight to military)

>Also, 24 months is something from two decades ago.

Exactly the people they will force back to military now, up to 60 old. Here you go from st.Petersburg https://twitter.com/KramarenkoMari3/status/15725228546081710... 42 year old with 2 year mandatory service record.

> Because I lived under russian occupation

I'm not quite sure where you are from, but unless you are from Ukraine, it is likely you lived under soviet occupation. In this sense, Russia itself is still under it, too.

No, same way India wasn't under Commonwealth occupation. "Soviet Union" was the colonial empire, but individual countries were occupied by Russia.

This is nonsense. Soviet union was a multinational state run by a very ideological party that suppressed any nationalistic sentiment. In all its 70 years it was led by Russians for maybe 16 or 17 years (Lenin, barely, then Khrushchev, Andropov and Gorbachev).

And all the racism and colonialism magically reappeared in 1990?

There nationalistic tensions that existed since time immemorial, which were suppressed by a state with a powerful state security. Once the state vanished, the hell broke loose.

Same thing happened in India, btw: once the British went away, religious and nationalistic tensions erupted violently.

I'm not aware of any colonialism that far magically appeared in 1990 in USSR/Russia. If you are referring to Ukraine conflict, this is not colonialism, just a regular conquest attempt to score points with some subset of public, which is going disastrously bad. Small victorious wars are always like that in Russia.

Regarding racism, it is nonexistent in exUSSR/Russia. Internet users like to use big words like racism and genocide left and right to label things they don't like, but this will result only in diluting the original meaning of the word. Sure, there are tensions between people of certain nationalities (Armenia/Azerbaijan, Tatar/Bashkir, some others), but it has nothing to do with racism.

How do you explain why the vast majority of Russian losses in Ukraine are ethnic minorities, if not with racism? How do you explain those minorities have no representation in government, if there is no colonialism?

Russia is world’s last colonial empire. It’s entire economy revolves around Moscow parasitizing on everyone else.

> How do you explain why the vast majority of Russian losses in Ukraine are ethnic minorities, if not with racism?

Easily. First, the claim about the vast majority of losses is likely not supported by any verifiable data. MediaZona [0] data does show high figures in Buryatia and Dagestan regions, but Orenburg, Kuban, Stavropol, Chelyabinsk region, are all predominantly populated by Russians.

However, what this map of losses does show, is that the poorer the region is, the more losses it has.

Except for the first wave of personnel sent to Ukraine, many of whom didn't really sign up for the invasion, prior to mobilization nobody was forced to fight in this war*. They are all paid contractors (aka mercenaries) who are paid an approx $3K per month. This is not a lot for people from rich regions, but an insane amount for people from poor regions.

Now, let's look at the regions: The general rule in Russia is that the further you are from the centre, the poorer the region is, except oil/gas rich regions (Tatarstan, Tuymen, etc). Naturally, the further you go from Moscow, you also encounter fewer Russians and more local ethnicities.

Now, a person willing to find racism everywhere would exclaim, "a-ha, Russian racists don't develop provinces with ethnic minorities!" And would be very wrong. The thing is, the maps of development and russian population percentage don't really match. Moscow has fewer Russians percentage (45%) than in dirt-poor neighbouring regions like Tver or Vladimir (~90%), and ethnic-heavy Tatarstan is one of the richest regions.

Another factor is urbanization and population structure. The more urbanized the region is, the fewer birth rate it has. Russians mostly live in very urbanized regions, and have very few children. People in Buryatia live in rural areas, and generally have many more children. And people in Dagestan have many many more people than anywhere in the country.

So mix two and two: Russians are a majority, yet, they generally live in cities, have fewer children, and approximately half of them live in better developed regions. This naturally draws poorer people from rural areas to become mercenaries, and more of them die. It isn't some kind of intentional policy, just the way the things are.

Btw, now that the country is mobilizing, I expect the casualties to even out between regions, so casualties of ethnic minorities and Russians will likely resemble the general demographic structure of the country.

Now, to other claims,

> How do you explain those minorities have no representation in government,

This is not true. There approx 82% of Russians in Russian Federation. If we look at the Russian State Government [1], approx 38% of people appear to belong to ethnic minorities (half of them have Ukrainian surnames, btw). So minorities are actually overrepresented in the government.

> It’s entire economy revolves around Moscow parasitizing on everyone else.

This is very true, but there are just 45% of Russians in Moscow. So on average ethnic minorities benefit much more from this 'paraziting on everyone else'.

[0]: https://zona.media/casualties

[1]: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8...

This is all nice and dramatic, but I actually live in Russia, my father is a retired officer and I call on your bullshit.

Your numbers are all messed up and incorrect (24 months, when it is actually 12, 60 y.o, when the upper limit is 50, 60 is only for generals)

The article you've linked is about Ukrainian separatists, not Russian Armed Forces.

The linked video doesn't give any clues to what is happening and where, so I can only take your word for it (which I won't)

And I actually had to google if Pravda is still a thing, surprised that it is still published in some form - it is really obscure.

Frankly the rhetorics like "I have no idea how the specifics work and given that the name of some old-ass newspaper is "Pravda" anything could happen!" isn't really solid.

Its only 12m since 2006. If you were born in 1980 like the poor soul linked above you served 24 months.

The article I linked about LPR/DPR showed how it was supposed to look like, vk link shows how reality looks like on the ground - Z painted busses with mercenaries roam the streets and kidnap people. Comments under the that clip are from wife of a brand new soldier. I give it a 1-2 months for same thing to start occurring in ru proper.

The reality is nobody knows what is happening other than putin. His whims are being realized ad hoc with no one sane at the wheel. Everyone is lying about everything. Two days ago russia was being invaded by NATO, Yesterday NATO weapons were all of a sudden formidable, 3 months ago russia was about to nuke Britain with supersonic ballistic missiles, Snake Island was a good will gesture retreat and the crashed ru heli with corpses were totally Ukrainina commando, Kherson was regrouping, and we have no plans for mobilization https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1569646984918614016

> Its only 12m since 2006. If you were born in 1980 like the poor soul linked above you served 24 months.

2006 was almost two decades ago.

And it doesn't matter when you when one was born (at least not directly). "Since 2006" means no one served 2 years since 2006. Not "only those born after 2006".

> vk link shows how reality looks like on the ground - Z painted busses with mercenaries roam the streets and kidnap people. Comments under the that clip are from wife of a brand new soldier.

You've linked social media, dude... Like, the most unverifiable source of info, where you can engineer and distribute any piece of information and anyone can write anything posing as anyone. Really?

Especially when there are tons of similar "evidence" from the Ukrainian side and both seem to be engaged in "no, its you who actually has the thing I am accused of".

>And it doesn't matter when you when one was born (at least not directly). "Since 2006" means no one served 2 years since 2006. Not "only those born after 2006".

Seriously? Lets assume you were born in 1980. Its 1998, you just celebrated 18 birthday and found military service notice in the mail. How long would you serve?

As for the link, vk is ru social media. Those girls lying in front of Z bus are 'just catching some Zs' (pun intended) https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1571607567083917313/ph... https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1571607567083917313

So you said recruitment would be nothing like in DPR. Here you go Siberia: https://twitter.com/valya_de/status/1572879890277625858 kidnapped from homes in the morning.

The official newspaper of Russian state is called "Российская газета" (literally "The newspaper of Russia"), "Pravda" is the newspaper of the Communist party, which is a minor party in Duma. Also, fun fact, "pravda" only means "truth" figuratively, there is no equivalent word in English, but it's a noun derived from adjective "right", which surprisingly has almost all the same meanings in Russian as it does in English (direction, opposite of wrong, a privilege) so it's somewhat similar to "righteousness" but with even wider meaning, containing everything that is right. For example the first Russian code of law is called "Russian Pravda".

How about a 32 old IT specialist with no experience whatsoever? https://twitter.com/dasha_reports/status/1572929082014277633

>Victor Bugreev, 32, he is an IT specialist for Sberbank in Moscow, he received a summons yesterday: "I have never served, I have not done military service, I do not have a military specialty, I do not have a military department. I'll go, what to do. Or a criminal case."

Apparently, neither Russia nor "the Western alliance" is willing to settle this war.

Again and again I see on German television that when someone tries to outline the current situation rationally, they are immediately bludgeoned by an emotional opposition. It seems that we Germans have recently become more and more disgusted with putting things into perspective.

Whereas it used to be a punishable offence to relativise the Holocaust (which was a very good general consensus for a long time due to it's impact), it now seems to have been extended to Corona, the Ukraine war and, in fact, any other topic. Actually, one is not allowed to relativise anything anymore - otherwise one is immediately considered an insensitive egoist.

Understanding for the opposing side? Then you are a troll on Putin's side. Conductors and singers are dismissed and declared persona non grata for not explicitly opposing Putin. As if only people with the correct attitude are allowed to perform art. Haven't we been through this before?

I grew up with Babylon 5, and have virtually absorbed its philosophy. "Never start a fight, but always finish it" was one of those phrases. We should have learned from the history of the First World War that more soldiers and more weapons do not solve wars. Not without a clear strategy to achieve certain realistic goals.

So well-paid journalists, who never leave their desks, sit in the talk rounds and demand more heavy artillery. Because of the dead children and so on. But is even one of them asked what specific military goal is to be achieved? To bring Russia to its knees? That they should never be able to make territorial claims again?

Wakey, wakey! We have been through this before. Especially Germany. Didn't end too well, by the way.

And I really seriously ask myself whether anyone wants to end this war at all. Or whether the feigned naivety is just to hide the fact that they just want to be the winner again. And everyone else should get a bloody nose because this time we are on the right side. As always.

> But is even one of them asked what specific military goal is to be achieved? To bring Russia to its knees? That they should never be able to make territorial claims again?

The specific goal is set by the government of Ukraine, not by journalists. And these goals are: "return of all Ukrainian territory, comprehensive multilateral security guarantees, reparations, and war crimes charges." (https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-goals-demands-nato-russ...)

And Germany promised to support Ukraine as long as it takes: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-we-will...

I think that is quite clear.

Excuse me, but this is exactly the naive nonsense I mean.

> And these goals are: "Return of all Ukrainian territory, comprehensive multilateral security guarantees, reparations and war crimes indictments."

Oh, so the goal will be for Ukraine to defeat Russia to the last, Selensky to accept the surrender at the Red Square, and Putin answers to Hague?

The only way to achieve this is to go to Moscow and force the government out of office.

Sounds easy! Just a few more bloody battles in St. Petersburg and Moscow because Putin is not thinking of giving up voluntarily and we are back home by tea time?

Or should the war - as long as it lasts - go on for the next 30 years?

So what is the military strategy now? Throw the Russian forces out of Ukraine and then fight their way to Moscow?

Write Ukraine a blank cheque, blindly provide them with weapons and let them do as they please? And of course, since the Ukrainian army are the good guys and the Russians are the bad guys - did Selensky guaranteed never to take revenge on the Russian population? Is he even capable of giving such a guarantee?

Because war crimes are obviously committed - exclusively - only by the Russians? This is war. So do really think only bad guys do war crimes?

What about reparations then? Will Germany also get a small war profit - after all, the German population suffered from the non-existent economic war and spent a lot of money on artillery?

If your public demands will be low key, what can you sacrifice during negotiations to end the war? Only things that will really hurt.

You reading too much into these proclamations as if they are some absolutes. Ukraine will just try to get back as much as possible, as any country would.

And all these "we will support Ukraine until the end" proclamations also can't be taken literally. If allies would say, "ok, we will support Ukraine for next 4 months, if it's not over by then, the support will stop" that would just be a signal to the enemy to slow burn the war for 4 months while preparing for offensive in 4 months.

I don't know what you're really expecting to be said publicly...

> German population suffered from the non-existent economic war

How can you suffer from something that does not exist?

> Oh, so the goal will be for Ukraine to defeat Russia to the last, Selensky to accept the surrender at the Red Square, and Putin answers to Hague?

Look at the history of Vietnam war and Afghanistan war. In both cases the nuclear power lost against a "smaller" enemy. But did the Vietnam army accept surrender at the white house? Did the Afghanistan army accept the surrender at the red square? No! In both cases the US army and the USSR army simply went home and the war was over. The same will happen in Ukraine.

I find it puzzling how so many people are convinced Ukraine will defeat Russia in the conventional war that’s currently raging. And it’s not just arm chair generals on Twitter, but high ranking government officials in the West, and experienced generals like David Patreus (who today said Russian defeat was inevitable).

How can a nuclear armed country with a 100 million population advantage possibly lose this war? Do these people assume Russia would never mobilise its population? Or would never use its nuclear weapons?

Up until now Russia has been waging this war with its arms tied behind its back and now that the West has artificially prolonged this war with its endless shipment of weapons and intelligence, Russia has been forced to escalate.

The United States was responsible for instigating this war in the first place, by giving false confidence to Ukraine and encouraging them to play hard ball with Russia with regards to NATO membership etc. Now they are drip feeding Ukraine with weapons, just enough to keep the conflict going, ostensibly to make Russia lick its wounds and retreat in humiliation? Not sure if its a deliberate policy but the US is in effect destroying Ukraine & giving it a slow, painful death.

Zelensky has huge responsibility for this war as well. His refusal to take serious Putin's threat of war, despite months of warning with solid intelligence, right up until the cruise missiles started landing, should be evidence enough of his incompetence & that he is well above his head. Now he is trying to make up for his incompetence by needlessly sacrificing tens of thousand of his own citizens lives.

I genuinely find it quite repulsing how he is constantly on TV, be it Oscars, sporting events, begging for arms & aid 24/7. He has been begging for tanks, fighter jets, helicopters & even submarines. He basically wants to command the US military minus the personnel. How delusional can one get? Many find him courageous but I really think he is a narcissist who really thinks his playing a role in a movie. The US has found just the right person who is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

"Today, my life is beautiful. I believe that I am needed. I feel it is the most important meaning in life" - Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Feb 24, 2022

>I find it puzzling how so many people are convinced Ukraine will defeat Russia in the conventional war that’s currently raging.

>How can a nuclear armed country with a 100 million population advantage possibly lose this war?

We must have a different concept of "conventional war" if the assumption is that Russia is going to start nuking Ukraine to the ground.

>Do these people assume Russia would never mobilise its population?

Is the assumption that once Russia mobilises its population, they'll all go "sir, yes, sir" and go storm Ukraine?

Also, the responsibility for this war is absolutely on Russia, for deciding that Ukraine is a part of Russia through either a puppet government or through direct invasion.

> Is the assumption that once Russia mobilises its population, they'll all go "sir, yes, sir" and go storm Ukraine?

The punishment for recruitment evasion is 3 to 6 years of prison (as I was told). Considering Russia has moved the same way as all "civilized" states towards total surveillance and profitable imprisonment, this is very much real.

Neither Russia, nor any other country may nuke the ukrainian territory - it is too valuable and defeats the purpose of the whole operation.

PS: I urge you to research what the word "Ukraine" means.

> We must have a different concept of "conventional war" if the assumption is that Russia is going to start nuking Ukraine to the ground.

Being a nuclear state in of itself gives you plenty advantages in a conventional war, even if they aren’t used.

> Is the assumption that once Russia mobilises its population, they'll all go "sir, yes, sir" and go storm Ukraine?

Russia has like 150 mil in population and they currently plan to mobilize 300k. That's a fraction of percent - I'd expect that there would be more than enough who will.

> Also, the responsibility for this war is absolutely on Russia, for deciding that Ukraine is a part of Russia through either a puppet government or through direct invasion.

Oh please, each member of the conflict, from Russia and Ukraine to Germany, France and the US - all have made multiple conscious consecutive steps to escalate it into a war. Remember how there was Minsk-1, then Minsk-2, and how all this had dragged on? Remember how Nord Stream pipeline sanctions were a thing years before the war? Remember how just before the war Russia demanded security guarantees from NATO? Good times, lots of opportunities.

You may disagree with it ideologically or engage in needless value signaling, but this won't change the reality of multiple cause-effects that brought us where we are.

I blame the political elites, IMO this is just criminal incompetence of politicians, completely detached self-righteousness and a lack of any political will to find compromises. And of course your typical corruption: American Congressional-Industrial-Complex once again demonstrates us how Eisenhower was right in his assertions and that last warning speech.

>Remember how there was Minsk-1, then Minsk-2, and how all this had dragged on? Remember how Nord Stream pipeline sanctions were a thing years before the war? Remember how just before the war Russia demanded security guarantees from NATO? Good times, lots of opportunities.

All of those things happened after the Russo-Ukrainian War had actually started.

This all had been well before February 2022, when the war had started.

One could argue that the half-civil war between Kyiv and Donetsk/Luhansk is also a part of this war (that would imply though that you see the civil war in Syria as a Syrian-American conflict, but why not)

It doesn't change the fact that there were quite a lot of opportunities to deescalate, that Russia was willing to participate in.

Reiterating, all direct and indirect participants consciously took all the necessary steps to turn all this into such a bloody mess.

It could all be nicely and democratically resolved by simply giving Donetsk and Luhansk basic autonomy, while still remaining part of Ukraine. But that was kinda politically challenging, so escalation it is.

DNR/LNR were set up by Russia, so that one was a proxy war between Russia and Ukraine. It turned into a direct conflict when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

> It could all be nicely and democratically resolved by simply giving Donetsk and Luhansk basic autonomy, while still remaining part of Ukraine. But that was kinda politically challenging, so escalation it is.

This. West firmly understood that Ukraine is a deeply divided country [1]. Yet, West peddled the (clearly infeasible) idea of a unitary state. This could never end well for all of Ukrainians.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/01/24...

> Up until now Russia has been waging this war with its arms tied behind its back

That seems irrational of them.

Doesn't every army lose 10's of thousands of soldiers, thousands of vehicles, hundreds of tanks and tens of planes / helicopters to finally start _really trying_?.

The only country destroying Ukraine here is Russia. All these mental gymnastics to say otherwise are just so weird. Russia attacked, Russia continues the fight (they can stop the war at any time, and I would be really surprised if there was any attack on Russia land by NATO in that case, lol)

And that you're talking about delusions of Ukrainian president and not a bleep about the delusions of Russia's wannabe czar, is also interesting... :D (take a huge millitarized country that he scared into preparing for a war for last 8 years since 2014, in 3 days, lol)

You also have to give to Zelensky that his begging is massively successful. He got 10's of choppers, massive ammounts of ammunition, hundreds of tanks, high hundreds of armored infantry transport vehicles, anti air defense systems, radars, advanced anti-radar and anit-ship missiles, tens of advanced MLRSs, and god knows what else. Even if you disagree with arming Ukraine, it's hard to call the behavbior that works delusional.

I'm pretty glad that Russia bleeds on its imperialistic adventures. It occupied my country for decades with hundreds of thousands of troops, and I want Russia to weaken as much as possible, so that risk of that happening again is as low as possible. I'll be all for trade again, when they get rid of their imperialistic mindset at the top.

> You also have to give to Zelensky that his begging is massively successful.

Genuine question: Is the military support received by Ukraine really pro bono? Or will Ukrainian people be handled the bill after this mess ends?

I understand that the support is a mixture of Soviet-era junk and modern equipment. So, I'd guess, there may be more than one answers.

As I understand it it's a huge mixture of many things. From military aid, to financial aid for various pre-defined purposes, both lending and pro bono. Ukraine is also buying equipment in normal ways (likely from borrowed money, or from miltary financial aid).

Some countries seem happy to send equipment hoping that the fight will stay as close to Russia's borders as possible. My country was one of the first to send heavy equipment like tanks to Ukraine, and from all I've read it seems to be for free. Regular people are donating money to Ukr foreign ministry that Ukraine uses to buy military equipment.

If you look at history, US had lend-lease with USSR and Soviets/Russia paid up only part of it over 65 years or so, and a lot of it was written off. So it may take long time to recover the cost, or it may be impossible if Ukraine loses.

There is large overview here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...

https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/

> How can a nuclear armed country with a 100 million population advantage possibly lose this war? Do these people assume Russia would never mobilise its population? Or would never use its nuclear weapons?

Their military is terribly corrupt, how else can you explain Russia rolling out the T62 already?, they are meant to have plenty of T72's but that clearly wasn't the truth.

> Up until now Russia has been waging this war with its arms tied behind its back and now that the West has artificially prolonged this war with its endless shipment of weapons and intelligence, Russia has been forced to escalate.

Ah yes, Russias famous hypersonic missiles, spetsnaz, VDV and T90 hand tied behind their back. Russias be throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Ukraine, but it just doesn't seem to work, they aren't holding back _this is all they have_.

> The United States was responsible for instigating this war in the first place, by giving false confidence to Ukraine and encouraging them to play hard ball with Russia with regards to NATO membership etc. Now they are drip feeding Ukraine with weapons, just enough to keep the conflict going, ostensibly to make Russia lick its wounds and retreat in humiliation?.

The only person responsible for the current ongoing Ukrainian genocide is Russia, Russia alone made the decision to invade and Russia alone made the decision to commit war crimes.

> Not sure if its a deliberate policy but the US is in effect destroying Ukraine & giving it a slow, painful death.

Military aid to Ukraine is the only thing that stands between Ukraine and the end of its people and country. Ironically it seems like it was really good that Russia only kinda invaded in 2014 cause since then Ukraine has been strengthening their military and training for this day.

I suspect is Russia kept on rolling forward in 2014 then Ukraine would be a Russian puppet state like Belarus.

> Zelensky has huge responsibility for this war as well. His refusal to take serious Putin's threat of war, despite months of warning with solid intelligence, right up until the cruise missiles started landing, should be evidence enough of his incompetence & that he is well above his head. Now he is trying to make up for his incompetence by needlessly sacrificing tens of thousand of his own citizens lives.

Zelensky believed the Russians where better people then to invade, he was Cleary wrong.

> I genuinely find it quite repulsing how he is constantly on TV, be it Oscars, sporting events, begging for arms & aid 24/7. He has been begging for tanks, fighter jets, helicopters & even submarines. He basically wants to command the US military minus the personnel. How delusional can one get? Many find him courageous but I really think he is a narcissist who really thinks his playing a role in a movie. The US has found just the right person who is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

He is on TV asking for weapons to help his country stop a active genocide he's doing exactly what he should be doing.

Solid take. It always blows my mind when people in the west try to paint russian military as some sort of "spetznas spec ops elite soldiers from call of duty" tier, all while growing up there I was given a very different story.

A month or so before the war even started, as I was talking to my dad (who used to be a low-level officer back in his days and, unfortunately, currently lives in Russia), he quickly pointed out that Russia is about to embarass themselves big time, as the military is extremely corrupt there. All those tanks that have been presented to higher ups as maintained and functional for decades? As the tradition goes, some local military higher ups just pocketed the money and were relaying the "everything is well and maintained" to higher higher-ups from the outside. That's not just tanks, that's quite literally every single piece of equipment, as long as there was a way to pocket the money by not maintaining the equipment.

My dad had stories from his own military days, where his platoon had been given orders to "dress up the vehicles" to make it look like they are all good and operational when higher ups from outside of the region were visiting. In reality, they all were rusted up and wouldn't survive a 50 mile drive. I kept hearing those stories since I was a child, and the current performance of Russian military in Ukraine certainly affirms them.

Did you ever read about the Vietnam war? Or the war of the USSR in Afghanistan? In both cases a nuclear power effectively lost the war. So it is definitely possible that something similar happens again.

At what point will Russians just rise up? Surely they don't all want to go into the army, if you are being forced to fight why not fight against Putin

This seems like a fairly predictable response at this point. The West has managed to pour enough weapons into the Ukraine that I gather Russia is being pressured. So the escalation spiral continues to wind up.

This continues to be very scary. The West's strategy here is stupid to the point where full scale mobilisation and war in Europe seems possible. This could have just been an Iraq 2.0.

>The West's strategy here is stupid

As opposed to the strategy of appeasing Russia, which resulted in the war we have now?

Look at the numbers: half of Russia’s army is gone. Western armies, apart from Ukraine, hadn’t even entered the conflict.

We cannot win against Russia and we cannot win against China.

The performance of their regular army is not deciding, because they have an immense nuclear arsenal.

It seems to me that we’re sticking our heads in the sand and either like to joke that their nukes don’t work, or that they won’t dare use them.

> or that they won’t dare use them.

What's to be gained by starting a nuclear war with the entire world? Or are you calling them stupid (China and Russia)?

> What's to be gained by starting a nuclear war with the entire world?

Less than a year ago, the question was: What's to be gained by invading Ukraine? Putin is not stupid to start a war with nothing to gain.

And the answer is still "nothing". Russia doesn't really gain anything substantial.

From Russia's point of view it is a huge price to pay for preventing another Turkey-Cuba missile crisis, except this time it is Ukraine instead of Turkey (which Russia considers even worse, given the recent revolution and government apparatus stability) and this time Russia doesn't have as much influence on American continent to deploy its own deterrent.

My point is that the war in Ukraine showed that West has little understanding of Russia's point of view, what price Putin is willing to pay, what he perceives as a gain.

Ah, yep, 100%, westerners impressions of Russia is something directly from fairy tales.

I actually wonder if Russia somehow uses it as a part of it psyops. At least that clearly helped with the sanctions.

Except this point of view doesn't make any sense, because if NATO wanted to get their missiles close to Russia they could put them in, say, Poland, or Finland, instead of Ukraine.

Russia's point of view is that Ukraine must be destroyed, because when it becomes more successful than Russia it would prove how terrible the Russian government is. Except this isn't particularly convincing, so Russia dropped in the Nazi ideology of "inferior Ukrainians", which kind of fits given their approach of leveling entire cities (cf Mariupol).

An alternate theory would assume Russia for some reason _wants_ to lose. Because, honestly, it does look like that. If Putin wanted to make sure Russia remains isolated from the West for the upcoming couple of decades, "resetting" the situation back to late eighties to force its society to choose a different route instead... Except the whole idea seems too absurd even for them.

Then again, none of this matters: we've tried appeasing Putin before, and it only provoked him to escalate. It was a logical choice to try something different this time - and it appears it worked.

> Poland, or Finland, instead of Ukraine

Is Finland as willing to deploy NATOs military infrastructure and become target/source of the first strike?

Consider that you are comparing stable countries with stable government and social institutions to a country that recently had a revolution and whose political drive is based on militant anti-russia rhetorics.

> Russia's point of view is that Ukraine must be destroyed, because when it becomes more successful than Russia it would prove how terrible the Russian government is.

That's not Russian point of view, that's western propaganda talking points. Moreover, this is just cartoonish, I really don't get how people older than teens manage to detach themselves from real life and humanity to believe it THAT literally.

> which kind of fits given their approach of leveling entire cities (cf Mariupol).

Mariuol is a singular case and the photos of it still don't look worse than Baghdad. Consider maybe getting some references before engaging in such rhetorics. Otherwise you might end up shilling for nazis yourself.

> we've tried appeasing Putin before

Uh-uh, sure, that famous dick-swinging bone-throwing lacking-any-reflection supremacist western diplomacy at its finest.

Just think of all it's successes. And the amount of love everyone in the world has towards that always willing-to find-common-ground, compromising, meeting-half-way -there, totally never-speaking-from-the-position-of-power diplomacy.

Oh wait... Oops.

> What's to be gained by starting a nuclear war with the entire world

Who says it would be the entire world? At worst, it will be with a nuclear-capable fraction of the Western world (a really small part of the world)

Besides, somehow I doubt that there won't be a very long and bloody escalation with tactical nukes - no one is going to press "end game for everyone" button until they themselves have lost completely.

>We cannot win against Russia and we cannot win against China.

China declared quite explicitly they don’t want this conflict. They also quietly joined western sanctions.

As for Russia - given how the rest of Russian army turned out to be a bluff, why assume their nuclear potential is any different?

> They also quietly joined western sanctions.

Are you sure that you don't stretch and projecy a few international Chinese companies with substantial business in the West on the whole of China?

It's not just Huawei that left Russian market. The entire Belt and Road infrastructure project is being redirected south to Kazakhstan. And Putin had to publicly admit China has "expressed concerns".

To China, Russia is just a mafia-owned gas station. Nobody's going to fight for that.

> It's not just Huawei that left Russian market.

Wow, it did? Huawei brand shops are open though. You can even buy a RosTest certified Huawei P50 Pro, which was released in August.

In any case, this is just a fraction of Chinese business in Russia, the rest of which doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Currently this looks more like political fluff, rather than anything practical. Shutting down AliExpress in Russia would be indicative, but nothing even remotely similar had happened yet.

> To China, Russia is just a mafia-owned gas station. Nobody's going to fight for that.

Doesn't look that way when looking at Chinese propaganda, but in any case, why would China FIGHT for Russia?

On the mid/long term they want Taiwan back into the fold. And the US and oddly the EU seem to be ready to start a war over that. Which, like I’ve said we can’t win.

The US and Russia were inspecting each-other’s nuclear stockpiles and are/were part of several disarmament treaties which are falling apart one by one. Is there any credible authority claiming that the Russian nuclear arsenal does not fulfill its deterrent role?

Inspecting the stockpiles doesn't verify if the warheads are in operable state, does it?

No, only getting nuked with them does with 100% certainty.

And you really believe that a country that can’t even make ordinary cars is able to refurbish nuclear weapons?

Reminder: Russia is not USSR, it’s USSR’s retarded offspring. It’s only got a minor fraction of capabilities USSR had.

> Western armies, apart from Ukraine, hadn’t even entered the conflict.

..on paper. In reality Ukraine is infested with paramilitary organisations funded and trained by the west, fighting with western technology.

Also calling Ukraine "western", is a bit of a stretch. This conflict and the subsequent propaganda has made us forget how backwards and corrupt Ukraine was, just to rally behind their support and not complain for freezing our assess to death this winter in Europe.

Of course Putin is a deranged lunatic that should let go already. But the idea of a powerless Russia, or even worse, a Russia that is a puppet of China, is terrifying.

>But the idea of a powerless Russia, or even worse, a Russia that is a puppet of China, is terrifying.

This is already the case. Everyone knows Russia's military prowess was a bluff - that's why we've seen another attempt in Armenia; fortunately USA came and filled the power vacuum there. And of course Kazakhstan used that opportunity to humiliate Putin once again.

Russia could theoretically balance between China and India. But it sounds like a complicated act, especially so for a failed state. I think it will end up with making sure Russia ends up being a puppet, but not a very useful one.

> In reality Ukraine is infested with paramilitary organisations funded and trained by the west, fighting with western technology.

Do you have any cites for this?

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/08/19/i...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/05/mozart-group-w...

https://www.injuredoverseas.com/u-s-private-military-contrac...

> half of Russia’s army is gone

Where did you get these numbers from?

Russian army has 1 mil active personnel and 2 mil reserves.

Even the propaganda numbers are much less than 200k killed/wounded, and that's including LNR/DNR combatants.

They can't keep territory because of manpower shortage, but they surely have a million others, they just can't be bothered to get them involved? :-D

What you are talking about are the fictional numbers found in Russian documents. This war wouldn't look anything like it did if those numbers matched reality.

(As for the numbers lost, see https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)

Measuring military manpower by count of formally military personnel is naive or at least "on paper". How many of these soldiers have the vehicles, equipment and weapons to contribute effectively? If current invasion forces are running out of tanks, what should the reinforcements use?

> They can't keep territory because of manpower shortage, but they surely have a million others, they just can't be bothered to get them involved? :-D

Ergo mobilization, that, among other things, changes the way the military and military industrial complex operates and allows allocating resources and setting priorities more freely?

> What you are talking about are the fictional numbers found in Russian documents. This war wouldn't look anything like it did if those numbers matched reality

Well of course, this war looks like it looks cuz the reality of involved force does not match the reality of total force, ergo mobilization.

> (As for the numbers lost, see https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)

Ugh, referring to some blog as a solid source is kinda wierd, but ok, I see

> Russia - 6202, of which: destroyed: 3844, damaged: 143, abandoned: 303, captured: 1911

So, does this mean that you imply that Russia's army is only like 13000 total altogether?

>Well of course, this war looks like it looks cuz the reality of involved force does not match the reality of total force, ergo mobilization.

Except it's not total force, it's fictional force. Those new people will be less trained than real soldiers, will have worse equipment (all the newest stuff already got spent); Russia lost a lot of officer cadre, so their leadership will be (somehow) worse too, and most importantly, they are being sent there by force, so will be less motivated to fight.

Given the collosal failures in Kyiv and Charkov, the new corps, being even worse, will either become a low-grade meat for Ukrainian artillery, like the recent "Third Army" reportedly did, or realize their situation and change sides.

> Those new people will be less trained than real soldiers

Ok, I see you didn't even bother to do a minimal research on the topic at hand. Sorry, but it's really hard to take you seriously when your reasoning is based on assumptions and imagination, instead of specifics and facts.

> all the newest stuff was spent

Yesterday's talking points were that there isn't new stuff at all and it's all old Soviet stuff. Doublethink at it's finest.

So, can you give me some pointers to the explanation how they wouldn’t be worse trained? Especially given the previous attempt, the (already failed) “third army”?

As for “new stuff” - the actually new stuff didn’t exist or was so scarce it didn’t matter. Here I mean the “new stuff” from Russian army point of view. This includes late Cold War. Note how Russia can’t manufacture Armata tanks or BMP3, so it’s switching back to manufacturing 80’s models instead.

It’s good that we finally stopped appeasing every dictator with some cheap energy.

We're setting up a situation here where China will likely end up ascendant. The big thing the West has in its favour is control of financial flows and services which are a huge edge in long periods of peace.

A serious war could break out and it appears neither China nor India are that worried about Ukraine. We're going to end up torpedoing all the systems that keep us wealthy and comfortable as Asia gets serious about securing itself and has a real reason to break away from the US's world order. Russia has a lot of energy to offer other Asian partners, China has motives to support this sort of war and India I don't know what they will decide to do but there are big opportunities here for them.

And in exchange for these strategic blunders, we're getting ... war, corpses, money wasted building weapons and serious threats of nuclear war. This is a really bad situation for anyone in a country that speaks English as an official language. At least, probably a couple of other American satellites are worried too. We're not getting anything here in exchange for warming the situation up by arming Russia's enemies and laughing loudly at their government.

Even if this hadn't led to a partial mobilisation of a nuclear power, sending huge numbers of weapons to a country famous for its corruption was a bloody stupid idea to start with.

We should really thrive to get a better history education into our school curiculums these comments are so malinformed it's actually dangerous.

The parent post is a little glib, but the concern about how China and especially India will react is accurate. There's somewhat of a tipping point happening in world history, as we edge into the post-9/11 era.

> This is a really bad situation for anyone in a country that speaks English as an official language

I know this is pedantic, but if you're going to make an appeal using something like this, at least be more exact and really know your facts. English is by far the most spoken language in countries like the US and UK, but they aren't official languages.

The only other strategy to appease, is not to escalate until we all get nuked. It is not binary. We can't have these tensions each time the US or Russia invades X.

So your strategy would be what exactly?

Do nothing. Whine abit. Work long term for stability.

How would you achieve long term stability with countries that have imperial ambition?

I think he is suggesting that we allow Putin to re-create the old Soviet Union and then hope it stops there.

Mutual restraining deterrent that isn't limited to "end game for everyone" button. We saw what had happened when the SU had collapsed and the only remaining unopposed empire had started wreaking havoc all over the world.

I would assume that if there were more diverse military alliances and less transcontinental ones (looking at you, NATO, can't be responsible if your brain is on safe on another continent), we wouldn't have as much soil polluted by depleted uranium.

You are just shifting the wars to be more localized…

You are saying this like it's a bad thing.

Practically all 21 century conflicts were initially local and would have vented out fast, but there is always some superpower that comes along and starts pushing it's interests, pumping one party with advanced arms and turning every conflict into a clusterfuck blood bath, just cuz it's not their electorate who's dying, so there is no interest in solving it fast.

You should really start to learn about more than the last 100 years of history. Localized and fights between smaller adversaries have always been more destabilizing than bigger standoffs.

> You should really start to learn about more than the last 100 years of history.

Oh please, get off your high horse and stop acting as a superior if all you have is vague accusations of your interlocutor being not as smart as you are.

It is hardly correct to compare post-WWII modern conflicts with early 20 century conflicts, much less with the stuff before that.

The world is different, communication is different, the economy is different - just look at the comments here: ordinary people from all conflicting countries discuss economic repercussions of their countries being at each-others throats.

I wouldn't believe that it has no tangible effect. IMO, people seem really tired of all this shit and most would rather just finish it and be done with it.

Unfortunately, since it is a dick swinging contest between superpowers, the whole tension doesn't vent out as it should, but instead it gets unnaturally prolonged.

And I am not even touching the subject of that this conflict would have never even been a thing if a certain superpower wasn't so hard on expanding it's sphere of influence on a foreign continent, right at the border of another historically competing superpower.

No, my horse is amazing and IMO your opinions are unsubstantiated garbage, just building sandcastles. You are arguing that it's fine to kill a lot of people as long as it's fast and you can overcome the mild inconvience of your own life, insane. Nice talk though.

> You are arguing that it's fine to kill a lot of people as long as it's fast and you can overcome the mild inconvience of your own life, insane.

That wasn't really my point, lol. Like, that wasn't my point AT ALL, did you even read my replies or were you too busy narcissising yourself?

It’s the only conclusion to take from your ramblings… what else did you want to convey?

Well learn to read, then.

You can live in an imaginary world of ponies and rainbows where wars don't happen at all cuz you really-really-really want them not to happen.

Unfortunately in real life they DO happen. And when they do, they turn into a complete shitstorm as soon as something like NATO gets involved.

And thus my point is that you are a cruel monster if you think that the logic of "Oooh, let's give them some weapons" results in anything but a bloody fun show for wealthy white people.

"As soon as NATO gets involved"? It's not NATO who invaded Ukraine, it's Russia. You're blaming the victim - or perhaps the party that decided to help the victim.

And perhaps this is the root of the misunderstanding. You're assuming that Russia somehow "has the right" to invade. That's what many Americans believe about their country, but there's a crucial difference: US is a world power, Russia isn't. Thus it's not possible to "punish" US, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try with other countries. Especially given that now we know what happens if we fail to do that - it was the western leniency towards Russian invasion on Crimea in 2014 that provoked Putin to do it again.

> It's not NATO who invaded Ukraine, it's Russia.

Yes, and? If your point is that we should exclude all the cause-effect from our thought process, then sorry, but no.

> You're blaming the victim

NATO isn't the victim. And all it does is making the power struggle between politicians more fiery.

> US is a world power, Russia isn't. Thus it's not possible to "punish" US, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try with other countries.

I don't really see the logical implication here. The history of the 20th century shows it's very much possible. It's just that people would rather suck up to someone powerful.

Extremely sad to see this blunt rethoric here. The amount of cruelty that Russia is causing in Ukraine (not the Ukraine) is enormous. If we don't fight back it will cause decades of suffering and pain.

Spinning this to a problem caused by the West is extremely naive.

>If we don't fight back

Who is the "we" here?

Edit: To make an attempt at preventing flamebait, I'm asking who the "we" is that is being asked to sign up to fight back directly against Russia, and whether or not there is a proper democratic feedback mechanism in place to support such a fight. I've seen war, and wish to see this one deescalate.

> If we don't fight back it will cause decades of suffering and pain.

What has the West done that will reduce the amount of suffering? Who is suffering less thanks to the US's efforts to make the war more brutal?

It isn't even that obvious that the Ukrainians would be badly off in some hypothetical world where they were conquered by Russia. They will definitely be worse off now that there is a partly mobilised army heading towards their territory. Russia is ramping up the destruction that they are going to unleash. In a predictable fashion, responding to actions by people who aren't interested in reducing suffering, calming things down or promoting peace.

I don't fault the Ukrianian's for defending themselves, but the US deserves a lot of heat for the strategic mess they're manoeuvring in to.

So you’re saying, let me check my notes… let Russia win because of reasons including “reducing suffering” and “Ukraine wouldn’t be that much worse off if Russia conquered it”. This feels like you’re basically saying that Ukraine is not an answer here, because their suffering has been reduced thanks to the west and obviously Ukraine doesn’t think they would be better off if they capitulated, and they’re the only ones who should be able to make that call.

Excuse my Russian but idi nahui with that kind of thinking.

I think the idea was that dick-swinging and escalating this whole deal into a war was kinda an avoidable thing, and now all we see is the sunk cost falacy

> I think the idea was that dick-swinging and escalating this whole deal into a war was kinda an avoidable thing, and now all we see is the sunk cost falacy

It was unavoidable because despite what Russia says they likely started this war over natural resources in Ukraine, they saw that Ukraine was going to become a massive provider of natural resources to the EU and saw that as a threat.

Because, if its really over NATO, why isn't Russia invading Finland?.

> likely

Ehh, "likely". Seems to me like there were quite a lot of much more pressing factors.

> Because, if its really over NATO, why isn't Russia invading Finland?.

Why would it? Russia had warned Finland of repercussions of deploying NATOs military infrastructure.

NATO does not exist in a vacuum and we are not playing magical alchemy here:

Finland is a stable country with solid governmental and social institutions, that cares for the long-term prosperity of its citizens and generally doesn't base its identity on anti-russian rhetorics.

Ukraine, on the other hand, recently had a revolution, collapsed all the stability institutions that it had managed to grow after the SU dissolution, has a government relying on populist anti-russian militant rhetorics and has a president dumb enough to seriously and openly discuss deploying foreign nukes or making their own (Ukraine's atomic industry could produce dirty bombs).

Finland in NATO is sad, but at least it's not immediately dangerous, as Fins are unlikely to be willing to pose as human shields for the US military infrastructure.

Nowadays Ukraine in NATO is a total disaster and at its best would be a repetition of Turkey-Cuba missile crisis, except this time there would be no Cuba and no deterrent.

> Finland in NATO is sad, but at least it's not immediately dangerous, as Fins are unlikely to be willing to pose as human shields for the US military infrastructure.

How is Finland in NATO sad?, Finland has joined the largest defensive military alliance in the world, and they clearly felt as a country that had been invaded by the USSR in the past that they needed more protections.

Russia won't even breathe in the direction of Finland now, because Russia cannot handle NATO and Russia knows it.

> How is Finland in NATO sad?

I was talking about Russian perspective.

> the largest defensive military alliance in the world

Putting aside the question of whether large military alliances are a good or a bad thing, NATOs "defensiveness" and peacefulness is nothing more than a marketing slogan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations

One surely doesn't use toxic depleted uranium munitions for defense.

> they clearly felt as a country

What exactly is implied by "as a country"? Cuz I remember how some Fins were upset that there wasn't any specific voting process, but only a decision of politicians.

> invaded by the USSR in the past that they needed more protections.

If you are referring to the Winter war some years after the collapse of the Russian Empire (of which Finland had been part of), this has all been resolved a long time ago, and all the political will for conflict and related frictions had died out before any of us was born.

> Russia won't even breathe in the direction of Finland now

Did it though? There were no frictions up until Finlands decision to join NATO.

> because Russia cannot handle NATO and Russia knows it.

Russia already feels like it's handling NATO in Ukraine with all those NATO instructors and NATO weapons. Besides, I think by now it should be clear that "I dare you, watchagonnado" politics doesn't bring you to good places.

> Russia already feels like it's handling NATO in Ukraine with all those NATO instructors and NATO weapons. Besides, I think by now it should be clear that "I dare you, watchagonnado" politics doesn't bring you to good places.

Russia says they are fighting NATO itself in Ukraine as a way to try and justify there armies poor performance in Ukraine, I dont think the Russian military actually think its fighting NATO in Ukraine and knows that NATO itself would wipe the floor with Russia, considering the performance of Ukraine using only some second hand NATO weaponry.

> Russia says they are fighting NATO itself in Ukraine as a way to try and justify there armies poor performance in Ukrain

Says who? Cuz this awfully seems like western propaganda talking points, where it's always "we best, they worst"

It is an established fact that Ukraine's army was trained under NATO's instructors and since weapons are not clothing, being second hand doesn't really make it less effective.

(Un)fortunately there isn't really a benchmark against which one can compare Russia's successes or failures, all recent modern conflicts boiled down to hit and run tactics of safely bombing the complete shit out of some far away backwards country, assuming control of the flaming ruins, and then just dropping it for it to deal with the consequences by itself with no fear of repercussions, as it's just too far away.

Take Afghanistan for example: 20 years of campaign undone in like a week and it's not even a real problem for the US, as it all happens to be far away on another continent - they don't even have to deal with Tliban, unlike everyone else around.

> Says who? Cuz this awfully seems like western propaganda talking points, where it's always "we best, they worst"

Its obvious, if you think the Ukrainian military really represents the might of NATO you are kidding yourself.

> It is an established fact that Ukraine's army was trained under NATO's instructors and since weapons are not clothing, being second hand doesn't really make it less effective.

Yes but Ukraine does not have the numbers, nor the latest weaponry at all. Ukraine is pushing back Russia with a hand full of HIMARS and old Russian and Soviet aircraft that have been jerry rigged with HARM missiles and Russia and Soviet tanks, when Ukraine gets F16's and Ambrams tanks the difference will be even starker.

> (Un)fortunately there isn't really a benchmark against which one can compare Russia's successes or failures, all recent modern conflicts boiled down to hit and run tactics of safely bombing the complete shit out of some far away backwards country, assuming control of the flaming ruins, and then just dropping it for it to deal with the consequences by itself with no fear of repercussions, as it's just too far away.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is comparable, it latest 26 days and was conducted thousands of kilometres away from the participants.

Russia cannot take a city that is less than 300km from their border in 6 months.

Thats the comparison.

> Its obvious, if you think the Ukrainian military really represents the might of NATO you are kidding yourself.

I think it is a representative fraction of NATOs might.

You also probably don't assume that LNR/DNR soldiers with mosins assisted by Russian special operation corps represent Russian Armed Forces might, do you? I am not even considering CSTO here.

We have only fractions, but these fractions seem to be more or less on par.

> Yes but Ukraine does not have the numbers

Ukraine has overwhelming numbers, compared to LNR/DNR forces and Russian operation forces combined.

> when Ukraine gets F16's and Ambrams tanks the difference will be even starker.

And so Russia starts "partial mobilization" to match it, so will have to see how it plays out.

> The 2003 invasion of Iraq is comparable.

I don't know why some think it is comparable as it was yet another "bomb a backwards country" and run kind of war. Completely different goals, completely different methods, completely different repercussions.

The state of Iraq army was a joke compared to modern Ukraines, less in size, extremely poorly equipped virtually no air defense, key Iraqi army officers were surrendering or even declaring that they won't oppose the invading force.

The US had simply leveled the whole of Iraq, purged all the infrastructure and what they caputed was already reduced to a stone-age rubble, what a feat!

And the US couldn't care less what happens next with all the people, the territories, with bandits and other paramilitary groups. They just hit and then they simply ran to a safe haven beyond the ocean.

I was actually mostly keeping Iraq in mind when I said that all the previous modern conflicts were kinda meh. No one had fought an actual real modern army before, no one cared about infrastructure (and likely Russia won't be too, judging by recent Zelensky's speech), no one had to care about really controling, managing and restoring captured territories, didn't have to care about reinforcing own borders against retaliations, didn't matter how loyal or opposing the local population would be in a long term, and there was always an option to just run back to a far away safe haven, which they always ended up using. Zero real opposition from other key global players also seems kinda tengible.

Completely and totally incomparable.

> I think it is a representative fraction of NATOs might.

So we agree that a small fraction of NATOs power that represents likely less then most of each seperate country is capable of holding back and likely defeating Russia.

> And so Russia starts "partial mobilization" to match it, so will have to see how it plays out.

Russia started a mobilisation (there’s no word of partial in the actual decree) because they are losing. But I’m sure that a bunch of conscripts in T62s will fare better then the current professional soldiers in T72s and T80s who lost close to a couple months gains in less then a week.

> I don't know why some think it is comparable as it was yet another "bomb a backwards country" and run kind of war. Completely different goals, completely different methods, completely different repercussions.

Iraq was a modern army at the time with dug in defences, they where also half a world away requiring a heavy amount of logistics and planning.

Ukraine is on the border of Russia.

> The state of Iraq army was a joke compared to modern Ukraines, less in size, extremely poorly equipped virtually no air defense, key Iraqi army officers were surrendering or even declaring that they won't oppose the invading force.

Doesn’t look like air defence is doing much for Russia in Ukraine either “what air defence doing” is literally a recent meme that mocks Russias poor air defence.

> The US had simply leveled the whole of Iraq, purged all the infrastructure and what they caputed was already reduced to a stone-age rubble, what a feat!

This is exactly what Russia does except with added rape and torture of civilians

And without the military progress either.

> And the US couldn't care less what happens next with all the people, the territories, with bandits and other paramilitary groups. They just hit and then they simply ran to a safe haven beyond the ocean.

I don’t think that the people digging mass graves for civilians care what’s happening to them either.

> No one had fought an actual real modern army before, no one cared about infrastructure (and likely Russia won't be too, judging by recent Zelensky's speech)

Russia has been bombing infrastructure and civilian targets from day 1, they don’t care about infrastructure either.

> Completely and totally incomparable.

Id still say it’s pretty comparable given it’s distance. But I can understand why others wouldn’t.

It kinda makes Russias army look pathetic, but then again that’s what they are.

You are rather misinformed on specifics and nuances, thus building your arguments on quite a lot of false assumptions, but at this point I'm kinda lazy to address multiple points at the same time.

Consider that quite a lot of what you hear is a wartime propaganda and everyone is lying. But, one could treat this as kind of a poker game and infer quite a lot from it: e.g. in his last speech Zelensky accused Russia of attacking infrastructure. But why would he do that if that was supposedly true from day 1? Why the sudden change of rhetoric on what is supposed to be non-news and yet-another-day-of-the-same-thing? Maybe cuz this time Russians had actually started doing this on purpose, rather than as random collateral?

Same for all the "evil Russians rape and torture" - Zelensky ended up firing the official who was pushing this narrative. Why? Maybe cuz their latest ramblings became so incoherent, it might have caused suspicion and could have hurt the public image?

> Id still say it’s pretty comparable given it’s distance.

Distance to what? IMO, the most comparable thing to Iraq would be Russian campaign in Syria.

> Same for all the "evil Russians rape and torture" - Zelensky ended up firing the official who was pushing this narrative. Why? Maybe cuz their latest ramblings became so incoherent, it might have caused suspicion and could have hurt the public image?

Perfect timing, you can now read the independent UN report that says Russian troops raped and tortured children in Ukraine.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/09/update-chair-ind...

ill quote it for you.

"The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons. The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.".

> Distance to what? IMO, the most comparable thing to Iraq would be Russian campaign in Syria.

Its distance from the countries fighting the actual war, in Iraq countries where fighting a war thousands of kilometres way from them, in Ukraine Russia is fighting on its doorstep and still failing.

Thanks, I'll definitely thoroughly. I can already see that it doesn't actually say "Russian troops raped and tortured children in Ukraine". May I ask why did you decide to lie and misrepresent the report?

Would be curious to compare it with Ukraine's normal numbers.

> Its distance from the countries fighting the actual war, in Iraq countries where fighting a war thousands of kilometres way from them, in Ukraine Russia is fighting on its doorstep and still failing.

Ok, clearly, you haven't read all the parts where I describes the difference of "hit and run" and fighting near the border. The US can't even secure it's border against civilians and had to build a wall. Even it's border patrol is a branch of customs, rather than a branch of military. I feel like you ignore the difference between simple "hit and run" and complex territorial defense on purpose.

West has helped supply weapons and intelligence to reduce the suffering. It also accepted a lot of refugees.

How exactly are more modern weapons making the war more brutal? More precise weapons are strictly less brutal than barely targetted crap Russians use. Longer range weapons can be used to destroy stockpiles of this barely targeted crap before it's used, etc.

Considering the continuous escalation, Ukraine may end up in such a horrendous state, that it would make losing the war from the beginning look like an appealing alternative.

Not to mention the risk of nuclear extinction which is very high. I’ve read that most mechanisms developed to avoid exactly such a scenario were dismantled and the Russian and US government aren’t even on speaking terms. WTF are US and EU politicians thinking?

The rhetoric was purposefully shaped into into an absolute victory or death, but the more realistic outcome would have been victory or end up like Belarus/Georgia.

Would you rather be a slave with all your relatives in a deathcamp or fight the occupier to death?

To give an analogy that Americans might understand: imagine that a drug cartel imposed martial law on USA. Constant torture, living in fear, millions of wasted lives. That's literally the situation in occupied territories(since 2012).

I don't understand how people can think there will be less violence imposed on Ukrainians if they stop fighting. There is plenty of bloody evidence from Russian conflicts since 1990.

>To give an analogy that Americans might understand: imagine that a drug cartel...

Your analogy is wrong, but some border towns might see it as familiar. The analogy you're looking for is more like if Mexico (as a Nation) declared war on the just the states in the US that used to be Mexican territory, and then used their internal drug cartels (that they tacitly let exist, and allow to force project into the continental United States) to help finance and facilitate the war. There's still a ton of things wrong with that analogy, but it's closer to what I think you mean if I'm steel-maning it.

Analogies are hard, I buy your version too.

Only correction would be that a legalized form of the cartel runs the government in Mexico too

My main point is that the legal system and various consequences in occupation are close to those in cartel land.

You’ve said that the only alternative to fighting is being in a deathcamp.

Please post proof of “deathcamps” in Ukraine where families are being systematically murdered. I’m aware of filtration camps: https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/01/we-had-no-choice/filtr...

How about you provide proof that everything will be less violent under Russian occupation?

Most detailed content on war is in Russian and Ukrainian though you might find something in NYT or WSJ. They work directly with sources on ground.

International officials are preparing a report on Izium. They give previews in YouTube Livestreams so far ala https://youtu.be/2N696dD2NmY

Here is a text report in cleansing operations in Kherson https://nv.ua/ukraine/events/hersonskiy-zhurnalist-konstanti...

I don't mean a geographically restricted Nazi deathcamp. I mean whole country will be ruled by a mafia that executes you and your family when they don't like something in your past or present.

> I mean whole country will be ruled by a mafia that executes you and your family when they don't like something in your past or present.

This is despicable indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oles_Buzina

What does this have to do with occupation?

Assassinations are common in Russia too, as are false flag operations.

See apartment bombings that led to second Chechen war.

You’re just confirming there’s no difference between the regimes, really.

I am staying the opposite. This is a crime during peace time. Crimes during military occupation are on a different scale.

Furthermore this could be an assassination by Russian foreign killers similar killings in UK

“Russia does it too” isn’t actually saying the opposite.

> Furthermore this could be an assassination by Russian foreign killers similar killings in UK

That’s what ukrainian investigators are refusing to establish, even though the family of the victim is demanding the official verdict, with no success:

> The head of Ukrainian MIA Arsen Avakov has blamed a Ukrainian nationalist in the murder. All suspects were later released from custody with two (A. Medvedko and D. Polischuk) being placed under house arrest and one - cleared from all the charges. By April 2017 no progress was made in the murder investigation. On 28 November 2017, the case was forwarded from prosecution office into court, even though on 11 July 2016, it was reported a lot of major evidence, including photo robots of the suspects made by eye witnesses, CCTV footage and cell phone monitoring, has been lost from case materials.

> See apartment bombings that led to second Chechen war.

The Second Chechen war had started in August 1999 when Chechen militants invaded neighboring Dagestan (Russian territory), with random skirmishes starting as early as May 1999

The bombings you are referring to had happened in September 1999, like a month after the conflict had already escalated into a war.

It's not hard to check the facts and timelines. Parroting every random legend or a conspiracy theory without critical thinking won't do you any good.

We can look at other countries which are under Russia’s influence or were attacked by Russia such as Georgia, Belarus or Ukraine in its two phases before 2014 and also before 2022. No deathcamps.

In general occupation is less violent than a war by definition. I don’t doubt that they would purge the military and administration, but the outcome would be more or less “Russia” for the majority of the people. Corruption, poverty, abuses of power.

Regarding your link, I don’t believe Ukrainian or Russian sources. They are propaganda organs of the state. When Amnesty International dared criticize Ukrainian war crimes it came under a torrent of abuse, one can imagine what kind of retribution a critical article from a local organization would receive…

AFAIK foreign journalists don’t get any access either and have to make do with what they’re told.

None of the countries you mentioned were permanently occupied.

Abhasia, LNR, DNR have all been clensed of opposition.

LNR and DNR males are being forced into military operations like indentured servants of Russian empire.

What news sources do you believe?

Ukraine was strongly under Russia’s influence for most of its independent history. Given the behavior at the beginning of the invasion, it seems that the Russians were attempting a coup, likely followed by establishing some military presence, similar to Transnistria for example.

Other countries like Eastern Germany, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, etc were under Soviet occupation for decades. I believe that the absolute worst case would have looked like in those countries. The more likely case would be a coup, purge of political apparatus and military bases.

I believe you’re talking about conscription in regards to the LPR and DPR. Yes, that’s bad, but to answer your question in the sibling comment… that’s war. Men have to fight whether they want it or not, unfortunately.

Where can one read from an impartial organization about what happened in the DPR and LPR? Does cleansed mean killed, or that they fled or were arrested? According to https://mondediplo.com/2022/09/09donbass life is as one would expect during war. Terrible…

What do you call it when you are committing entire working age male population of a region to certain death?

> Would you rather be a slave with all your relatives in a deathcamp or fight the occupier to death?

Sounds awfully absolutist.

You know I drive past destruction caused by Russian rockets every day. Talk to people who visit Frontline towns. I think it's ok to have strong opionions.

What's it like to tell victims of agression how they should feel about it?

No one tells you how to feel, it's just hard to take you seriously.

> Would you rather be a slave with all your relatives in a deathcamp or fight the occupier to death?

That's not the real question at hand. There are no deathcamps or slavery IRL and everyone who is not exulted by propaganda and actually has to care for their own skin understands that.

> There is plenty of bloody evidence from Russian conflicts since 1990.

Like what?

I don't understand how people can think there will be less violence imposed on Ukrainians if they are supported by a certain someone with actually plenty of bloody evidence of staging, escalating and participating in wars all over the world.

> That's not the real question at hand. There are no deathcamps or slavery IRL and everyone who is not exulted by propaganda and actually has to care for their own skin understands that.

See bit about all working age men in LNR/DNR being thrown poorly equipped into battle. There is also evidence of farmers being forced to work occupied land for free. What do you call that if not slavery?

>> There is plenty of bloody evidence from Russian conflicts since 1990.

> Like what?

Already mentioned this elsewhere in thread.

> See bit about all working age men in LNR/DNR being thrown poorly equipped into battle

That's not deathcamps. Same argument could be made for Ukrainian conscripts being thrown into battle just as poorly equipped. And it still wouldn't be deathcamps.

> There is also evidence of farmers being forced to work occupied land for free.

A solid one? I've already seen enough "evidence" of Russians eating babies and stealing asphalt and toilets.

> Already mentioned this elsewhere in thread.

Sorry, if there are no specifics, I won't be trying to guess.

Post-Soviet military frictions due to completely idiotically handled dissolution process are so full of myths and legends and are such a complex topic, that in practice most people have no actual idea.

Take for example Georgia of 2008, for which the "common knowledge" is so vastly different from the UN investigation conclusion.

I sincerely doubt Ukrainians would be slaves in death camps

> Extremely sad to see this blunt rethoric here.

Extremely sad to see how everyone has gone so deep into post-truth and magical thinking of "if I don't think about it won't be real", that a cool-headed assessment of facts is now a "blunt rhetoric".

> The West's strategy here is stupid to the point where full scale mobilisation and war in Europe seems possible.

You're right about this. The correct response would have been an immediate complete embargo of Russia and boots on the ground support in Ukraine when the invasion started.

> The correct response would have been an immediate complete embargo of Russia

Non-implementable

> boots on the ground support in Ukraine

Somehow I feel that these are implied to be someone else's boots, but definitely not yours.

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