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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

> The US warned anybody who wanted to listen (not many) that Russia was about to attack Ukraine

The fact that anyone needed a warning was ridiculous. It was plain as day that Russia was committed to entering the country either immediately before or immediately after the Olympic games.

You don't bother sending a large part of your navy all the way around Europe and into the Black Sea just for fun. And you definitely don't send supplies of blood to the staging area near your border if it's just a drill or a show of force.

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Everybody I talked to online and offline, all the discussions I saw, dismissed the idea of Russia actually invading as impossible, since "Putin would never do something this stupid, it's just posturing like every other time". Meanwhile, it seemed inevitable to me once Putin started making ultimatums that would never be fulfilled and gave him no way to back down without a significant loss in reputation and standing.

Stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin%27s_December_20... which Putin doubled down on harder and harder until the invasion finally started. Couple that with all the reports of the military and supply build-up, I found it weird that everybody was so skeptical. It felt more likely to me every day that we got new information about what was happening to the point that I didn't see how it couldn't happen.

> Everybody I talked to online and offline, all the discussions I saw, dismissed the idea of Russia actually invading as impossible, since "Putin would never do something this stupid, it's just posturing like every other time".

The Russians had, and continue to have, a very strong presence in online communities aimed at shaping consensus, disrupting community, and obfuscating efforts. it is plainly active here on HN, on Reddit, and on Twitter -- often quite blatently. "hypernormialization" and all that. there was a concerted push prior to invasion across all platforms of "Russia would never do this".

China, NK, Iran, are also very active in this game, though often more focused on specific areas. India, Europe, and even Brazil have also dipped toes in aggressive online efforts, though mostly focused on very specific things, like stymming the flow of Indian ex-pats to Canada (and killing Canadian-Indian activists...), or consensus shaping around Brexit.

It doesn't have to be a Russian psyop to be skeptical of the US government line.

They had been telling us the Cubans have a secret microwave superweapon in the weeks prior to Ukraine going off.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55203844

You mean this? Seems legit enough to me to consider a possibility. This just shows that you and others are unable to properly evaluate and analyze the news that you consume.

A CIA office jam packed with SIGINT capabilities and there's zero hard evidence of this microwave weapon. Just a bunch of anecdotal symptoms that sound like a hangover.

My evaluation and analysis capabilities don't include just believing whatever the CIA says.

Unless you're deep in policy circles and those people you talked to are some of the people who would be crafting a govt response to a Russian invasion, then that's not really what "anybody who would listen" refers to. It's not the internet hoi poloi that Biden was trying to convince, but anyone who could help stop it, or at least formulate govt reactions to it.

Maybe it depends what circles you frequent. Most of the stuff I saw said it was likely. Some of the pro-russia people were like Putin will never.

I thought that Putin was bluffing, based on the low number of the soldiers around the borders alone. 200 000 simply aren't enough to take a country the size of Ukraine. During the wars of the 20th century, the Ukrainian theatre was regularly contested by millions of soldiers at the same time, and basic control of population still requires about 1 soldier to approx. 30 civilians or so, even if the only resistance is guerilla-like. It is much worse with the regular army fighting back.

As we saw, 200 000 definitely weren't enough to take Ukraine, but possibly Putin believed that the country was going to collapse immediately instead of fighting back.

The number of troops was absolutely low. My read at the time was that 100,000 troops (the early build-up) was concerning but could easily be a bluff or a test. The naval movement was the tip off to me, with the blood reserves setting a very short clock on how soon it would start.

I really think the Russians believed they either were going to be welcomed by many Ukrainians, or that a blitz for Kiev would be a quick 3-7 day affair. The downed planes of paratroopers in the first day or two, plus the convoy of trucks that only brought a few days of diesel seem to line up with the second scenario.

Putin seems to get a fair bit of information from people who tell him what he wants to hear. I think he was surprised how poorly went.

I thought the exact number wasn’t well reported. There was talk of “divisions” but it turned out those “divisions” were severely understaffed.

And yet, many people in Ukraine did not believe it until after the invasion began, because they had had numerous false alarms in the years after the Crimea seizure.

I can't speak to anyone in Ukraine as I don't know what was being reported there, but from the basic media reports I saw in western Europe it was clear.

Russia had built up a similar sized ground force in the border in past years, either as drills or threats. Those never included major naval movements though, and definitely didn't include blood supply on the front lines.

As soon as the blood showed up a week before the Olympics everyone should have known it was game on, even if naval actions alone could be written of as not a sure sign.

French intelligence was asserting the US was essentially fearmongering and that Russia would not invade right up until the moment they did.

Well unfortunately that says something about the French intelligence.

I really don't mean this as a condescending arm chair quarterback statement. The intelligence agencies would clearly have access to much, much more information than a civilian. That said, I don't know who, with any level of military understanding, would expect medical facilities and large amounts of blood to be setup and delivered to the front line of fear mongering campaign.

Ukraine was quietly telling everyone to shut up because it was frantically trying to position troops and equipment. Had it been officially acknowledged these trips and equipment would have been trying to smash through an onslaught of refugees fleeing the east, thus helping Russia to face less pushback and effectively ceding the territory as Ukrainians fled and ethnic Russians stayed.

This seems 100% plausible, though its one I haven't seen anything necessarily to corroborate. It makes total sense though and would be a reason for silence.

Edit: rereading this theory, it does read pretty terribly for any civilians living there. Effectively, in that scenario the government decided to mislead the public in order to purposely keep civilians in harm's way rather than allow them to flee (and get in the way). This matches my cynical views of government, but if true it should still piss off a number of people that actually believe governments are there to serve us above all else.

> government decided to mislead the public in order to purposely keep civilians in harm's way

It doesn't look so as Ukrainian government made a huge effort to evacuate the population from the war zone when the conflict started. It's just that they prioritized moving assets to the front (winning the war). Though I agree with you, governments doesn't serve the population but rather themselves.

Just to circle back, I'm pretty sure it was Oleksii Arestoyvich who said it. I can't find the video. I think I saw it on Good Times Bad Times youtube channel.

Absolute legend of a guy.

> French intelligence

What a great idea!

It was only 6 extra boats according to RealLifeLore

That sounds about right. It wasn't a massive naval deployment that concerned me at the time, it was a naval movement at all in coordination of the troop deployment. Honestly, a huge naval movement would have looked more like sabre rattling as they really shouldn't have needed a massive naval force to do what they wanted to do (assuming that was a blitz on Kiev).

Anyway, I just happened to be right once among the countless times I have been wrong about similar situations. My main surprise is that anyone considered the idea of an invasion impossible once blood was being delivered to the line.

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