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Comment by gzread | Hacker News Reader

Probably not but it changes the calculus of whether Ukraine or Russia will win.

Not necessarily: Money isn’t everything. Russia cannot produce electronics on its own, so only because American companies sell to shell companies that sell to Russia is Russia able to launch missiles and similar high tech weapons on Ukraine and, no, Russia has no chance in hell of winning in Ukraine with the so called (sadly but truly deeply dehumanising) “meat wave” attacks sending in soldiers with little training and just a riffle… So really oil revenues are a way to hurt Russia but not a way to cause them to lose the war, but depriving them of American technology that they need to develop the kinds of weapons that they use to attack Ukrainian cities and power stations and infrastructure probably would

I mean no matter how the war ends ukraine has lost

> no matter how the war ends ukraine has lost

This is nonsense. Lviv is by all accounts a thriving city. And Ukraine's defence-industrial base is now among Europe's finest.

Lviv, the Polish city? Come on let's be real.

> Lviv, the Polish city? Come on let's be real

No, Lviv the Molotov city. Like, yes, if you've already carved up Ukraine in your head, it's obviously losing. By that metric China has been losing to the Mongolians its whole history.

Look, ukraine's economy is destroyed, the men are either dead, disabled, or have fled, and the ones who haven't are being kidnapped off the street to be pressed into service, the grid has been set back by decades, they're deep deep in debt, and everyone knows they aren't getting the mineral-rich east back. It's beginning to look doubtful if they can even keep their black sea port. They have under half the population now than they did when the soviet republic collapsed (granted, mostly due to circumstances unrelated to the war—notably, outmigration.)

So perhaps I was being a bit of a dick by calling Lviv polish, but it will probably take ukraine decades, maybe a century or more, to recover from this devastation, even if against all odds they manage to enforce their absurd demands that russia withdraw. It does matter to a nation to keep its historic lands, and ukraine has already lost about half of all traditionally ukrainian land + crimea. Far western ukraine, including Lviv, has only been considered "ukraine" for a little over a hundred years.

Why do you spell Lviv capitalized but Ukraine not? You are too xenophobic toward Ukrainians?

Be serious. I don't care about any of europe; the rest of the west is doing just fine caring about it incessantly at the top of their voices regardless of who asked. My heart belongs in east africa.

I'll try to be more sensitive with what I capitalize—but I don't really give a damn about either ukraine or russia—both seem like far-right corrupt states that don't take care of their citizens well—though I do feel very sad for the humans caught between them.

> ukraine or russia—both seem like far-right corrupt states that don't take care of their citizens

what makes you think Ukraine is far-right corrupt state, what would you do differently if you would be Zelenskiy (jew btw).

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