State of emergency declared as Ukraine launches raid into Russia | Hacker News Reader

State of emergency declared as Ukraine launches raid into Russia

bbc.com

59 pointsSenHeng38 comments

It's a "talking point" (for lack of a more descriptive term) that punches thru the war's workaday background noise to establish without doubt - for Russian audiences too - that all is not going swimmingly in the current military stance of glorious Mother Russia, and that Ukraine is not about to roll over and play dead.

I’m struggling to understand what the plan is. Unless it’s just grab the nuclear power plant and force a trade. But would Russia agree to such a trade?

Maybe it’s just a panic button to force them to spend more manpower on defenses.

A few guesses.

Disrupt supples into Donbas by taking over the train lines.

Capture large number of untrained and unmotivated conscripts that are currently surrendering in large numbers.

It's easier to travel in Russia than in the heavily mined occupied Ukraine. Maybe they're taking the long way round?

Force a buffer zone.

Russia has been using scorched earth tactics in occupied Ukraine, maybe they'll be less willing on their own land?

Additional chips to prevent Russia from insisting on freezing the borders along occupied lands (you take our land, we take yours) during rumoured ceasefire negotiations.

Land swap negotiations.

> Additional chips to prevent Russia from insisting on freezing the borders along occupied lands (you take our land, we take yours) during rumoured ceasefire negotiations.

I like this one. Negate a freeze as a negotiating proposal.

Like 40 guys have surrendered. Not meaningful.

It seems unlikely that they can hold any of this territory. They have no supply lines.

It's quite a bit more than that. I've seen reports of 40-50 surrendering in just one location alone - smaller numbers in multiple reports from other locations.

I find that tricky to believe. This is a fast operation that is probably quite a bit smaller than the Russians are claiming (they claim 1000 guys). I don’t think Ukraine is going to have the manpower to collect a significant number of prisoners even if they are surrendering.

For what it's worth:

https://x.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1821274958879977633

https://x.com/Tendar/status/1821222650191982674

https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1821219526668898710

https://x.com/Danspiun/status/1821218979811119558

Yes I agree, this has to be a limited Ukrainian operation, but the short term impact is still considerable. What the long term goal is, who knows.

The numbers I’m seeing now are about 300 prisoners, which seems believable now that Ukraine seems to be doing a ridiculous number of soldiers into Russia

The nuclear power plant is a Russian talking point. Ukraine is not into nuclear terrorism, not even as quid pro quo.

Setting the power plant up as a goal in people's minds just helps Russian propaganda. Ukraine doesn't go there = Ukraine didn't reach its goal = heroic Russian victory. Let's not proactively fall into this trap.

That doesn’t seem obvious to me at all. Seizing the plant and rigging it to explode as a quid pro quo demand for Russia to leave the Zaporizhia NPP seems perfectly reasonable.

It’s not like “nuclear terrorism” is morally superior to threatening nuclear annihilation via MAD

Its also one of the few exit plans for a raid deep into enemy territory with no logistics.

> Seizing the plant and rigging it to explode as a quid pro quo demand for Russia to leave the Zaporizhia NPP

I honestly don't see that happening. There's a diplomatic game being played around Russia's nuclear threats, I don't see Ukraine being so dumb as to undermine that.

The west is supporting Ukraine. The west wouldn't like if Ukraine starts engaging in nuclear terrorism because that would remove legitimacy from West's support in the eyes of the rest of the world. So, regardless of whether Ukraine would like to do some terrorism, the west is asking it: don't.

This would not be a good bluff from Ukraine, even if it considered nuclear terrorism an option. The prevailing winds blow from the east, as we know all too well since Chornobyl. Blowing up the plant just east of the border would mostly terrorize Ukraine itself.

1. Disrupt logistics/resupply to the frontlines.

2. Force Russia to allocate some of its troops to defense, not just pure 100% towards frontlines in Luhansk and Donetsk.

>I’m struggling to understand what the plan is.

"avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak". russia doesnt defend its borders because putin believes nuclear blackmail is enough deterrence.

I read some experts (armchair or otherwise) and they seem to agree it's a standard military strategy - create an attack strong enough to force the enemy to reallocate troops from the main attack directions.

The details here is that Russia has no forces available quickly enough to react. The exception is their air force and AFU came prepared for that. Their AA defence is unusually strong and it shows in Russian aircraft losses.

The other (pretty obvious) detail is that it's the enemy home territory which just makes Putin look bad.

I'd guess it's mostly about the gas pipeline. The Russians sell cheap gas to Hungary, right?

The lines run through Ukraine though. Seizing the station here is not necessary to stop the flow.

[flagged]

You're certainly welcome here but you're not going to get anywhere by attacking the mainstream/majority view. I'm not saying that the majority view is correct, just that group dynamics ensure that if you challenge it in a provocative way, you'll get rejected the same way an immune system rejects antibodies.

If you want to participate successfully, the only two ways I know are either (1) avoid contentious topics, and/or (2) be careful not to provoke. This may be unfair but there's nothing we can do about it and it's the only thing that has any chance of working.

I've written about this in the past in case any of it is of interest or somehow helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

There is no category for "fair" or "nice" or "just" in how many Russians see Russia.

It is mostly about "strong" vs "weak".

Not sure what the tactical implications are, but I read this and though "hell yeah". Chris Cappy on Youtube does a fairly good analysis usually, and what I like about him is he goes back and corrects his mistakes.

Why does ukraine let Russia’s gas flow through the country (and fund the war)? Wouldn’t it make sense to cut the line?

Because some of the people who are giving the ruskies money for that gas are the same people funding the opposite side of the war.

HIMARS it. Unbelievable the EU is still buying Russian gas.

Why? It's cheap, and it's beneficial to some European states/business, and Russians only get some small money for it from Europe. This trade does not seem to harm Ukraine efforts that much, the support given to Ukraine should overcompensate strongly. Ukrainians do not like Europe paying Russia, but they understand that just stopping gas/oil going from Russia to Europe won't help them much, and may antagonize parts of Europe.

According to President Biden this proxy war is the only thing preventing Putin from launching a hitlerian jihad on the entire European continent (source: the most recent presidential debate) so it's a bit odd seeing the Europeans continue to buy his fuel like they don't have any skin in the game. Granted it's also possible that the situation isn't nearly as dire as some would have us believe, but that's the official story so....

Please explain how Russians are still able to do it? They even blew up their own pipeline to stop EU from buying their gas but somehow those Europeans find the way to still work arou d the embargo’s…

Who believes Russians blew up Nordstream? They were least likely to do it.

Ukraine gets paid for it. They’re gradually stopping it. No need to blow anything up.

It's likely the point of the war was really to clear out Ukraine, not defend the borders. The leader isn't Ukrainian himself and that has effectively been what he did.

Every time I read comments on the internet about the Ukraine conflict I am reminded both how little anyone actually knows about what’s going on over there, and how much propaganda is thoughtlessly regurgitated by the average Extremely Online Geopolitics Aficionado™.

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