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Comment by mopsi | Hacker News Reader

This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russians really did think that Ukraine had been subverted to a degree that it would just roll over and die; that leadership would run away and local resistance would be limited to disorganized pockets that riot police could suppress, but their informants and agents just stole the money and reported what the Kremlin wanted to hear. Calling the invasion a "special military operation" shows how it was thought of as a special operation by intelligence services instead of conventional war.

But Zelenskiy responded with "I need ammo, not a ride", and instead of unarmed protesters, Russian riot police convoys driving into Ukraine were met by Armed Forces of Ukraine.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qWthUM_II (Riot helmets and shields are clearly visible.)

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History sure does rhyme. They did the same thing in 1940, expecting to hold a parade in Finland with their front line troops:

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

The US had many of the same expectations about victory in the second Iraq war.

And Ukraine... I've been unable to find any meaningful and direct quote from Russian military/political leaders stating they expected to immediately capture the city, but you can find plentiful US sources predicting exactly that:

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"The sources said that the initial US assessment from before the invasion – which anticipated that the Ukrainian capital would be overrun within one to four days of a Russian attack – remains the current expectation." [1]

"Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) told lawmakers during closed-door briefings on Feb. 2 and 3 that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours, and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths." [2]

---

It seems that the narrative largely swapped to this all being Putin's plan once it didn't work as out like our military/intelligence agencies expected.

[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/kyiv-russia-ukra...

[2] - https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-w...

Putin didn't say it, but then he said he's not planning any invasion anyways. Here you can see various Russian tv personalities, we well as Lukasgenko, saying just that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuR7axsnUjw

And here is Sharij, a pro Russian journalist from Ukraine that's extremely popular, mocking all the reports of destruction of Russian forces on the first day and believing all the Russian lies, such as having destroyed all the anti aircraft systems of Ukraine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7gO6vuI2-BQ

You must also understand that in Russian culture it was common to mock Ukrainians as dumb farmer hicks, while thinking of themselves as highly technologically advanced.

> You must also understand that in Russian culture it was common to mock Ukrainians as dumb farmer hicks, while thinking of themselves as highly technologically advanced.

Where did you get this info from? My experience growing up in USSR (in areas that are now Russia and Ukraine) was totally different. Ukraine had a reputation (well deserved) as a major tech hub. Most of Soviet space industry (military for one) was there -- rockets, missiles, rocket engines, electronics. Kyiv University was one of the major places of learning rivaling MGU (Moscow State University). People from all over the Soviet Union were fighting nail and tooth to be allowed to move and live in Kyiv. Yes, there were folk-jokes (anekdoty) about Ukrainians like about anybody else. This does not reflect in any form upon the fact that Ukraine was very highly developed republic within USSR. 3 out of 7 leader of USSR were Ukrainians (Khrushchev - 8 years, Brezhnev - 18 years in power, Chernenko - 2 years). Ukraine has always been a force to recon with.

EDIT: typos.

But the U.S. did win quickly in the second Iraq War. It rapidly crushed the Iraqi armed forces on all fronts and in all combat scenarios and quickly occupied the entire country with minimal military losses. The post-invasion/occupation insurgency was a different story, partly caused by massive U.S. administrative blunders, but the initial invasion/war was nothing like the current Ukraine-Russia conflict, or the 1940 Winter War with Finland.

The Party Secretary of Leningrad even commissioned Dmitri Shostakovich to compose celebratory music for the occasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_on_Finnish_Themes

It was set aside but was later rediscovered and was first performed in 2001 by a Finnish orchestra.

Except that the Finnish Winter War was eventually a defeat for the Finns, due to the overwhelming force of the Red Army despite its horrendous losses. Finland in fact lost more from the war than it would have lost had it simply accepted Stalin's original territorial demands. I still defend their fighting spirit, but it's a bad moral example for the current war, because one hopes the Russians don't eventually win.

Sure, just the loss of life in that war was severe for a small country.

I am, however, only talking about the Russian assumption of the ease of victory, where reality ended up being very different (7,000-9,000 Russian soldiers dead in a week in that one battle), and the evidence of it in the form of the musical instruments etc for the parade.

Is there a quote of link to the "three days to Kyiv" comment from the Russian Federation?

Not from Putin directly. There were a lot of actions taken by the Russian government which just imply it. High ranking Russian officials that booked reservations for restaurants in Kyiv the week after the invasion, troops taking their dress uniforms instead of food, a pre-scheduled propaganda essay that was accidentally released on the 28th which retained language implying that Kyiv had already been taken and so forth.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/09/russia-putin-propaganda...

Whilst I do not have a YouTube link, I do have seen several Russian pundits imply that Ukrainians would capitulate in 3 days, Russia just has to sneeze their way and they'd keel over, etc.

It's a common cliché. General Aleksandr Lebed claimed during Russia's 1991 intervention in Moldova that his tanks would be able to capture Bucharest in just 7 hours.

There’s not, it was actually General Milley who put this number out there and the media and social media ran with it as if it were an official Kremlin statement.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-w...

and CIA Director Bill Burns https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085155440/cia-director-putin...

TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva claimed two days, so did Margarita Simonyan and many others:

https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144

as for russian invasion plans, good old potato man leaked them live on national TV https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/moldova-next-belarus-president-ma...

He might be a huge goober but ethnic slurs are still against hn policy.

I hate talking about downvotes but it is really odd that you're being downvoted for asking for a source. Source are requested all the time on this website, and only in certain cases do they get downvoted like this. Hopefully your comment won't be gray in a few hours when more people participate in the thread.

I would like to see a source as well, because I want to see sources for all claims I encounter online. Why should I trust a random person on a website?

Very strange how anyone asking for sources abt any politically charged issue on social media gets immediately attacked.

No wonder social media starts to circulate the most bonkers things when no one is allowed to question even verifiable statements.

Its not strange at all, you have a ratio of bots mixed in with people, and quite a number of them seem like those broken Chat-GPT narratives you see.

Political warfare is nothing new. Any intelligent person knows, if it doesn't have sources its not credible.

Quite a few sources were provided after all.

There are reports of captured Russian war plans. Im not sure where i read about it but War on the Rocks and Michael Kofman are credible experts.

I dont actually remember the details of the plan but It was something like:

Massive armor convoy sent to Kyiv alongside the rapid capture of Hostomel airport and a then a giant airlift of troops towards a point very much close to Kyiv.

The disdain the commenter is showing for the Russian invasion plan is misplaced however. Most contemporary reports (Post battle of Kyiv) say that the Ukrainians were indeed caught by surprise, that Russian cyberwarfare managed to take out Ukrainian AA allowing for the helicopter Assault at Hostomel and that although Ukraine was sucessful It was a close call and losses were heavy.

Again you have to Dig a bit to avoid the propaganda narratives. The race to Kyiv was actually a Very Very close battle according to what we know now.

The whole 3 days to Kyiv was actually an overstatement. I believe it was more 13 days to capture Kyiv, 2-3 months for the whole country excluding the West which Russia didnt believe It could occupy without heavy resistance. But thats just written out from memory and i might be wrong on the details.

I believe that the Russian expectation was something similar to 2014, where initial Ukrainian resistance just collapsed or was innefective.

Yes, they even posted premature victory piece:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240

Link to actual russian piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

  > This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is actually a great example of our own propaganda at work. This "Three Days" quote came from one of our Generals, not from Russia.

Putin's statements from early on are all widely available (with English transcriptions) and they do not in anyway sound like the words of someone expecting to annex Ukraine into Russia in short order.

Which raises the question - why were we all fed this story? To what end?

russians claimed two days. Here Margarita Simonyan https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144

She's...a blogger lol

The claim is that the Russian government said they would take Kiev in 3 days which of course was not a claim ever made. IN fact, nothing close was ever said. It was a a US general (Milley I believe) who popularized the "3 days to take Kiev" meme.

It came from us, not them. So why do you think we've been told otherwise?

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