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Comment by af78 | Hacker News Reader

The Ukrainians want this war to end, too. The difference is that they want to survive as a nation, so how the war ends matters.

Plus if Russia wins, its appetite will only grow, and another war is just a matter of time.

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Yep, that all sounds great. Now what's your plan for preventing Russia from winning?

The plan so far has not worked.

Hold the line, stop the oil tankers.

Who stops them? Ideally we'd do this without starting WW3.

ideally we can stop hitler without starting wwwii. just give him a bit more of Czechoslovakia bro, this time its enough, bro. i promise.

If only we had spent billions for decades of fighting in Czechoslovakia. Fair point.

if only france and spain had decided to be neutral in the us war of independence we wouldnt be here hearing your navel gazing opinion.

There's been quite a lot done already through sanctions eg:

>Tankers carrying Russian oil stuck idling off Chinese coast after new U.S. sanctions https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/01/13/russian-oil-tankers-stu...

>UK sanctions 30 shadow tankers in largest clampdown on Russian oil trade https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research...

I guess that may all go wrong if Trump drops all sanctions but at the moment it's making things difficult.

just because it hasnt worked so far doesnt mean it won't work. the time horizon matters. is russia gonna give up in 10 years? this is a bad plan. in 1 year? maybe not so much.

That's not a plan. That's a wish. Wars aren't won on wishes.

its not. plenty of OSINT evidence that this is inevitable. YOUR not-plan has no evidence going for it.

It's inevitable that if Ukraine has no funding or soldiers to continue this war, then it will end. I don't think that is being questioned.

why do you want the war to end? is it just a moral calculus of lives lost? how can you be sure that ukraine capitulating to russia will lead to less lives lost than one more year of war? 100,000-600,000 people died in the occupation of iraq, why do you think that a russian occupation of Ukraine will be less bloody?

I don't think it is wise or ethical to spend billions of dollars prolonging a forever-war thousands of miles away.

I also don't think it's wise or rational to presume that every aggressive action necessarily means that the aggressor is Hitler or bent on world domination. Or even that opposing them by sending resources to their enemy is the most effective way to stop it.

For the US, this is an extremely cheap [1] way to counter Russia. Ukraine is doing 99% of the work. We give them money which they immediately give back to us to buy hardware. Or we give mothballed hardware slated for destruction. Most prefer this to a future with dead Americans and US boots on the ground in Europe when NATO countries are invaded by Russia, emboldened by a world that gave up on Ukraine.

[1] as a percentage of the US$850,000,000,000 _annual_ Pentagon budget

Russia can just leave.

Chamberlain tried to bargain peace for Britain at the sacrifice of the Czechs and other nations and in the end his country got bombed to shit anyway. You guys make it seem like Russia has no agency here

I honestly don't know what else Putin would need to say or do to convince you that he is, in fact, a fascist bent on world domination. He's not exactly been shy about it.

It may surprise you but Russia is not winning. It has been exhausting itself for no measurable benefit, at the cost for US taxpayers of roughly a coffee per day.

Up to now, Ukraine has never received the support it would need to win, just enough not to lose. Weapons deliveries been too little, too late, making the war longer and bloodier than it needs to be. In the meantime domestic production has increased to the point Ukraine covers 30% of its needs.

Russia has lost other wars, it can and should lose this one.

How many more billions do we need to send to ensure Russia loses? Any how many more years will it take?

And what does "loss" even look like? Are you genuinely proposing they will simply pack up and head home from all captured territory?

> How many more billions do we need to send to ensure Russia loses? Any how many more years will it take?

You have to compare with how much will it cost if the war continues to grow in scale or intensity. Russia is dedicating more and more resources to its war machine. And I have no reason to think it will stop if Ukraine. In 2022 Putin already said he wanted NATO back to 1991, IOW he wants Eastern Europe defenseless.

Russia's economy is just the size of Spain or Italy: not negligible, but not formidable either. Europe should do more, much more, if only for its own sake.

> And what does "loss" even look like? Are you genuinely proposing they will simply pack up and head home from all captured territory?

Territorial issues are somewhat secondary. What matters is that the defeat is clear and Russia's leaders discouraged from attempting to go to war again. It happened to Russia against Japan in 1905, and to the USSR in Afghanistan. It can happen again.

Nobody wants the Russians to "pack up and head home"; we want them to die on the battlefield and be left there to rot.

How many billions is it worth spending to stop the new hitler from overrunning Europe? The answer naturally depends on who you ask (and how positively they view hitler).

This isn't the US's first go-round with nazis, obviously.

Back in WWII, just as now, there were capitulation proponents.

Then, just as now, they espoused the supremacy of bettering their own position over helping others.

Then, just as now, they advocated for leaving Europe to fall to invaders.

Then, just as now, they allied themselves with American fascists.

Then, just as now, they campaigned on the slogan, "America First" [0].

There's nothing new here, and personally, I'm glad hitler lost. That dude sucked.

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0: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/dr...

Cheaper than US losing global dominance.

Does it sound strange to anyone that during Iraq war there were many embedded journalists covering the war. I don't see that now in Russia-Ukraine war. What could be reasons?

There are some. But my guess is that there's so few because nobody wants to pay for journalism anymore. Reporters want to get paid, especially if they're going to work in a warzone.

The best plan to prevent Russia from winning would be to cut off Russia's oil revenue. Fossil fuel exports are the only way that Russia can sustain their war effort. First, other European countries need to get serious and stop buying from Russia. Second, give Ukraine enough long range missiles to wreck Russia's fossil fuel infrastructure: pipelines, tank farms, refineries, ports, etc. Russia was heavily dependent on foreign technical experts to maintain that infrastructure and has little capacity to do so on their own.

This can be done with very little US funding. And sharing intelligence with Ukraine literally costs us nothing.

If oil is cheap energy, and you cut down oil revenue, how do you prevent Russia from turning oil into cryptocurrency?

Turning oil into cryptocurrency requires electrical power plants and related infrastructure. Russia has very limited industrial capacity to build this stuff anymore. They're still heavily dependent on pre-1991 industrial infrastructure. I think most people don't realize how weak Russia really is.

You're right. How can any state with nuke-backed right to issue ultimatums slowly get weakened like that? If Russia states limits, and convinces U.S. that they will launch if the limits are crossed, and these limits are within the threat budget of Russia, can they not make U.S. agree to things (and vice versa)?

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