Comment by rainworld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rainworld | Hacker News Reader

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If we side with Ukraine then let's end this as quickly and decisively as possible.

And how exactly are you going to achieve that? The thing about war is that you can’t just decide to win, you actually have to do it.

Stretching this out to years of gradual escalation

This gradual escalation is at least as much to the “benefit” of Western audiences as it is to Russia. Just imagine telling people (Germans in particular) about German tanks in Ukraine against Russia at the beginning of 2022…

Another psyop targeting Western audiences: the notion that Russia is losing[0], can’t or won’t retaliate, even that its strategic nuclear weapons won’t work, and in any case “MAD” will protect us. All these things are very wrong, no matter how mad that makes people here and elsewhere.

[0]: Open your favourite satellite image service, visit an Ukrainian city, count the fresh graves, do the math. Kharkov alone easily has 13k KIAs buried or whatever’s the official count.

Meanwhile: https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/04/14/bbc-news-russian... I‘d say it’s something like 50k total but point is: not even close to what Ukraine has lost. And even if it were, that’s not how you win an existential conflict against a country five times your size.

Finally, I don’t agree with everything but here‘s Mearsheimer with a good overview of the situation: https://youtu.be/v-rHBRwdql8?t=385

Nice of the Russians to support the "Western psyop" by loudly infighting over the losses suffered and struggles to hold the only bit of territory they've managed to capture since their latest conscription waves, following the mass retreats of the autumn, presumably because their numerical advantage left them without any Ukranians to shoot at.

Nice of the Russians to support the "Western psyop"

Yes, but unironically. Decisions Were Made after the US and UK attacked (via Ukraine but fooling nobody) sites of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces at the beginning of December last year.[0][1] They got an immediate answer[2], and a couple more such messages later on, but what the Russians would have realized then (if not earlier) is that you most likely cannot reason with the ruling elites of the dying empire and its rabid little attack Beagle. Let’s hope they find a way still.

following the mass retreats of the autumn

Every drug peddler knows: Getting high on your own supply is the most dangerous thing.

numerical advantage left them without any Ukranians to shoot at.

Pretty bad taste, in light of the footage coming in from Zaporozhye rn.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyagilevo_and_Engels_air_bases...

[1]: Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows a nuclear response in such a case, for good reason.

[2]: Just lol if you think this was an accident: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/22/b-2-stealth-b...

> Every drug peddler knows: Getting high on your own supply is the most dangerous thing.

Well at least one thing you said was true. Say what you like about the Russian propaganda, it's a whole lot less deluded than the people that think it's insufficiently clear about how Russia was only defending itself and how well their military is performing.

Man, it’s like Mac vs. Windows all over again. Except you can count the bodies. If you dare.

I dunno, stanning for Russian performance in this war at this stage feels a bit more like the contrarian holdout insisting that both Mac and Windows fans are wrong and GUIs will never catch on :)

Cute that you've gone from Ukraine's capitulation within weeks being inevitable to pretending to count bodies though.

I’d tread carefully on a day where I’ve burned half a brigade in a fruitless, hare-brained probing/screening effort. But then, treading carefully isn’t something Ukies (and the fandom) are generally known for exactly.

Cute that you've gone from Ukraine's capitulation within weeks

Have I? (Remember: “Kiew within 72 hours” were Gen. Milley’s words.) But let’s assume I did; it certainly would have been the prudent thing to do for them. Must have underestimated their ability to waste hundreds of men day after day after day and just pretend it wasn’t so. And the willingness of Western media to carry their water. And, in fact, the sheer magnitude and shamelessness of the whole propaganda effort. War is peace, baby. And anyway, as Borrell (just recently), Austin and others have observed, the Ukrainian effort would collapse within days if Western were to end. Another one of those facts pro-Ukies just love to ignore.

pretending to count bodies

It’s very easy to become an authority on Ukrainian losses in the West because you’re pretty much the only one showing up for the job. Half a dozen guys, tops. Truly the least interesting question conceivable by man.

I understand that you, as a Brit, are congenitally bound to hate Russia and to desire to stir the European pot but remember: there’s nukes in the mix this time. Should be glad that Russia isn’t in fact losing.

> I understand that you, as a Brit, are congenitally bound to hate Russia and to desire to stir the European pot but remember: there’s nukes in the mix this time. Should be glad that Russia isn’t in fact losing.

They aren’t losing so bad that they took close to 100k causalities to take a city that is 41 square kilometres.

They aren’t losing so bad that we have seen T54s in use by Russia.

Russia won’t ever use nukes in Ukraine and even if they do it won’t change the war in anyway except for increasing support for Ukraine and decreasing support for Russia

This is why Russian propaganda shouts about nukes and red lines but doesn’t actually do anything.

Much like how some people on here are doing the same nuclear doomerism all it is meant to do is increase fear in the west to actually ending this war.

> Have I

Yes, unless you're a different person from the person that possessed the rainworld account in March 2022. Or perhaps that was a Western psyop too!

I'd tread carefully if I'd had to go from being certain about that outcome to being certain the only reason Russia had lost more territory than it gained over the past six months was because "they're not in a rush" and that the flattened ruins of Bakhmut are somehow more valuable than the former Kherson oblast of the Russian Federation. Kudos for keeping the faith though. If only those representing Russia's front line troop factions shared your rosy picture of how things are going.

It would, indeed, be relatively straightforward to become an expert on Ukraine casualties, but we both know that isn't you. And there are indeed nukes in the mix, but remember: sides that are winning a conventional war aren't idly threatening the other nuclear states with them on a weekly basis because that's a more convincing illusion of strength than anything happening on the front line. I mean, even the US in Vietnam (or USSR in Aghanistan, or the US in Afghanistan, I guess) didn't feel so inept on the battlefield they had to bring their ICBM count into discussions.

> Yes, but unironically. Decisions Were Made after the US and UK attacked (via Ukraine but fooling nobody) sites of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces at the beginning of December last year.[0][1] They got an immediate answer[2], and a couple more such messages later on, but what the Russians would have realized then (if not earlier) is that you most likely cannot reason with the ruling elites of the dying empire and its rabid little attack Beagle. Let’s hope they find a way still.

Cutting edge stealth drones which have never been seen anywhere before (particularly the marine ones) are being handcrafted by the US & UK, for ops planned using data from US/UK satellites, then guided in with US & UK C2, to hit Crimea, then we act like we are not at war.

This is incredibly concerning

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