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Comment by conradludgate | Hacker News Reader

I imagine they want the people of Russia to feel the economic pain of the war, and vote/protest accordingly.

It does much more than that. Wildberries had 45% of the logistics and large warehouses. This means that every company that produces something will have parcels coming in from Wildberries every day. The businesses that owned the ~$6B of burnt inventory may go bankrupt, too, adding to the chaos.

That sort of is the strategy. Ukraine says they pick targets in Moscow and St. Petersburg that hurt Russia's elites. The trouble is that Russia's elites have little influence over Putin. He crushed that a decade ago.

The battlefront in Ukraine has been stuck for a year. People are dying, but nobody is winning. The front lines don't move much. Nobody really knows what to do. It's very WWI.

Did you know that during WW1, the front lines moves from far west of Ukraine to the far east, and then back again? This war isn't like that.

And it really isn't. Back then the front moved and it mattered. This isn't like that. Ukraine recently hit about 200 ships, not because the front moved and the ships came into range, but because they'd blown up all the defenses along a 200km-long path from the "front" to the ships, so they had free passage. That "front" means much less than in WW1.

> The trouble is that Russia's elites have little influence over Putin.

Well, seems like they better start working on that

I'm curious what happens when elites next to putin start losing their wealth by losing their actual assets

They get shot, thrown out of a window or their jet explodes.

Three simple solutions to eliminate "I want my money". Putin is no joke, he is ex-KGB.

Leaders of Russia who lose a war do not, historically, survive long. Putin spends most of his time in bunkers now, terrified of both attacks from Ukraine and possible coup attempts from his own people.[1]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-bunker...

Putin is only powerful as long as institutions continue to follow him.

He doesnt throw people out of windows himself, he has his state do that.

Move enough people away from supporting him and he's gone.

Prigozin tried to go against Putin with actual army. And he was naive enough to think that he can shot at the king, miss and live.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_rebellion

Prigozin had a chance

When it happened it seemed that the emperor was naked and nobody would protect Putin.

All the military ordered to stop him just did not do anything or joined them.

Tried to bomb him but plane was shot down and that was that.

Only problem is Prigozin called it off, he likely forgot to hide his family

Someone more ruthless in his place could have done more

That rarely works. Russia has been pounding Ukraine yet the Ukrainians are as defiant as ever.

They are also defending and don’t really have a choice, Russia does.

They could have rolled over, if the majority wanted that then there isn’t much the Ukrainian government could do about it.

It kind of works. Imagine that Iran would be able to blow Amazon warehouses in the USA using drones after 4 years of fighting. Sure there would be few fanatics on Fox News wanting to nuke Iran, but most of people would be asking what is the point of bombing Iran in the first place? What's the goal?

Because that's what Russians are facing right now. No gas on gas stations. No online ordering of stuff. Enemy drones are flying daily over their heads after 4 years of fighting, Russians are fearing of another mobilization and for what? What is the goal of this war?

It rarely works (Mitchell and Douhet were famously proven wrong a few short years after WW1). But it is the named reason Kiev gives.

I think it's a matter of perspective. It's Russia's war. The Russian people didn't want this, but they have to live with their leader's decisions. For the Ukrainians, the alternative is surrendering to Putin.

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