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Comment by os2warpman | Hacker News Reader

>He, much like all of military officials in NATO at the time, assumed it was going to be over after they landed in Kiev

Military officials knew with no doubt whatsoever that the Ukrainians would fight like hell, and that they were better man-for-man, dollar-for-dollar, than the Russians.

NATO officials' first-hand knowledge of the Ukrainian will to fight is why they begged their governments to allow shipments of materiel to Ukraine.

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https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-w... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/28/the-battle-for... https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_221723.htm

As a peer mentioned, the 'Kiev will fall in 3 days' came from Mark Milley (US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time), not Russia. Beyond that, the decision was then near immediately made to lock all men of "fighting age" in the country, prevent them from leaving, and begin mass conscription.

This is something that I hope, in the future, will be seen as no less barbaric than slavery. If people want to fight for their country, then they absolutely should. But if people don't want to fight for their country, then they should never be able to be forced to - it's a mockery of any notion of human rights.

There's many things in this world I would be willing to die for, but a country? The notion feels quaint. Of course I realize this means that any country that does set aside such rights would have a tremendous military edge, but perhaps in such a world where human rights are held as more than a placard of convenience, the notion of dying for one's country might no longer seem so quaint.

> There's many things in this world I would be willing to die for, but a country

> human rights

I see where there is a gap in your understanding. Ukrainians and the Ukrainian army aren't fighting for the abstract concept of a geopolitical entity (the country of Ukraine), they're fighting for their people, culture, language, existence, safety, freedom. Russia is proudly performing a genocide in Ukraine [1], and Putin has already stated that Ukrainians are just misguided Russians.

What do you think a Russian occupation of Ukraine would look like? They're already kidnapping children [1] and indiscriminately murdering and torturing civilians.

Yes, it was horrible that every single man of fighting age was conscripted. But desperate times force desperate measures.

1 - in case you've missed the news, Russia is indeed (without trying to hide it, it's all out in the open, their chief of staff and various ministers have talked about it) kidnapping people and specifically children from Ukraine. Those children are being educated to be good Russian citizens, which is genocide as per the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (to which Russia is a signatory), Article II (e).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-...

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...

This doesn't sound factual to me. The children you quoted as being "kidnapped" lived in regions of Russia that voted to secede from Ukraine. They are defacto Russian citizens. Their parents voted for it.

Voting with a foreign military presence doesn't count.

Also, a lot of the kids are orphans (their parents having been murdered by the Russians). And a lot have parents trying to trace them and get them back (there's a whole association for this).

Weird, because we have military bases in a lot of countries that seem to vote.

(guessing you are American) and there have been similar abuses by US troops, like infamously in Haiti in the early 20th century, where the locals had to ask a US Marine for the ballot of the candidate they wanted to vote for.

But I'm not aware of anything of this type happening today. Do the US soldiers in e.g. Rammstein go to police how people vote?

They found parade uniforms in those tanks that stalled out on the way to Kjiev.

Further claims from Ukraine: they've had 30,000 total deaths, are inflicting casualties at a 10:1 rate, have a 'Ghost of Kyiv' single handedly flying around taking on Russia, Russia is out of missiles, and so on endlessly.

They are not a reliable source.

you stand in a room with two doors .one always lies. you use the right door because its a old thing now. Everyone knows its a lie. Why the door and its noise is still around is a mystery .

At this point we can, more or less, objectively assess who has been being honest throughout the war. And as is usually the case in war, the truth is on the side that's winning. The way to do this is simply to look at what each side is saying and contrast it against what happened, which you can easily do with web archives.

The only question is when to start. And I think May 2023 was probably the critical point in the war. That was shortly before Bakhmut would fall, and also shortly before the Ukraine counter offensive would be launched and also ultimately fail. The war was arguably effectively decided by July 2023. So here are state media from May 1st 2023. You can skim forward using the widget in the top right corner.

RT : https://web.archive.org/web/20230501115431/https://www.rt.co...

Kyiv Post: https://web.archive.org/web/20230501000808/https://www.kyivp...

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