I was surprised to find an expression I've never heard before:
cock-a-hoop: adjective, extremely and obviously pleased, especially about a triumph or success.
"Ukrainian commanders are cock-a-hoop. They say HIMARS is tilting the war back in their favour"
Several military bloggers have also said Ukrainian partisans behind Russian lines are providing GPS targeting information of where Russians try to hide the ammo dumps
A lot of mil bloggers are under the impression Ukrainian civilians are helping with targets that are under cloud cover or vegetation cover. I'd be interested to know if this is incorrect and satellites can see everything using many wavelengths
Both Russian and Ukrainian sources agree that Ukrainian civilians are providing extensive field intelligence. That doesn't rule out satellite intel. Also, as the article points out, these ammunition dumps are huge and located in predictable places, so finding them is not hard.
Given the misinformation that western media fell for, it certainly is cringe and bluepilled. It’s like people believe the narrative they want to see and ignore reality.
> Because the Global American Empire is always on the side of what is bad, wrong, or immoral. Here's a simple rule to guide you. If GAE says it's good, it's bad. If GAE says it's bad then it's good. Remember that the empire exists to serve its own interests which are always against the interests of regular people.
No idea why this is being downvoted. I actually think this is an excellent characterization of Russian propaganda.
They have to, because in reality they have less to appeal people with. The ONLY thing that Russia has going to its propaganda is that they're the underdog. Everything else is a lie.
I have noticed that identification with dogs has become very frequent in the past decade, apparently in more territories and among diverse cultures. If there is one thing that does not promise well...
Russia does lose a lot, but I recall earlier in the year that Russia was predicted to win against Ukraine. One is a former global superpower (and current regional superpower) with cutting-edge military technology ostensibly competitive with that of the US (not to mention nukes), and the other is Ukraine.
The world has learned since then that the Ukrainian language seems to lack any words for "I surrender", and that Russian claims of military might may have been rather drastically inflated.
Propaganda stinks from whichever side it comes from, but propaganda accompanied by the invasion of a sovereign state and the killing of civilians by the thousands, stinks even more so.
I thought Russia had good GPS-jamming technology. I guess like many "I thought Russia had ..." statements, we're learning how real and/or widely deployed various capabilities are.
Russia has reasonably effective GPS jamming in Moscow, but it's not exactly mobile. Also, the vast majority of Russian "tech" is made with western parts and tools so they're struggling.
Even if they did jam the GPS signal, it would only reduce the accuracy of the system since the missiles have inertial guidance systems as well. I dont know if the accuracy of such a system under degraded GNSS conditions is public knowledge, but I bet its pretty good.
Probably best not to engage. These people simply do not see Ukrainians as humans with their own agency and really seem to believe they should just lay down and let the genocide happen to them.
They want to fight because they were displaced because of an invasion.
My comment says the war is unnecessary - and that includes the invasion. The civil war in Ukraine between the west and the separatist regions could have ended in a compromise.
You keep saying "civil war." It was nothing of the sort. It was a Russian operation to seize the Donbass after the Maiden revolution. The 2022 invasion is just Russia being more overt instead of relying on "little green men."
> You keep saying "civil war." It was nothing of the sort. It was a Russian operation to seize the Donbass after the Maiden revolution.
Well, to weaken Ukraine; the invasion of much of Eastern Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea were both part of that.
The 2022 “special military operation” was to complete the destruction of the independent Ukraine regime with a decapitation, but failed and was forced to pivot to seizing more land to try to drive the long term dynamic more in Russia’s favor.
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things that Russia has done throughout it's history in eastern europe, it's no wonder that it's neighbors are worried.
That's another funny thing. The only people saying "with the horrendous things the US does..." are either Americans or Russians. People who live in eastern europe are ABSOLUTELY worried about Russia invading them. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukrania of course, Georgia, Chechnia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia. People there don't play this "both sides" bullshit game.
I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat. We're not pushing them hard enough, that's the problem.
> Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?
No you see, this isn't "NATO expanding up to"...
Countries are sovereign to choose their allies. And countries in eastern europe are asking to join a defense alliance against Russia.
Serious question, have you considered that number 1 no one is forcing eastern europe countries to join this alliance, and number 2 WHY do they want to join it? If you haven't, I'll tell you the answer: What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO.
NATO isn't expanding up to Russia's borders. Russia is scaring every country it borders, so they're doing something about it.
It calls itself a defensive alliance but in the last 20 years it has been exclusively offensive. This is, of course, pretty standard orwellian doublethink.
I have considered why these countries want to join. It's for much the same reason inner city kids want to join gangs - a mix of a desire for protection and a desire to be the threat for once.
>What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO
Georgia got whacked for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang. Why were we pouring money into Georgia to sway it towards that point? Well, coz it's a standard empire building tactic to stir shit up on ethnic faultlines along the borders of your opponents. Just ask the British.
I fully understand WHY kids join inner city gangs but we generally try to advise them against it for a reason. Those reasons apply here 100% - it can give you protection, but it can also get you chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a larger turf war.
> Georgia got hit for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang.
Man, Russia is really losing this game then. Because countries keep joining Nato. Findland and Sweden now. Sweden has had a policy of neutrality for 200 years LOL.
Fucking losers. If there's one immutable truth in Russian history, is that its wherewithal has never ever been able to match its ambition.
The Finland border area is where the USSR badly lost the winter war. It's naturally suited to defense.
The Ukraine border area is where the USSR almost lost to the Nazis. It is an exposed jugular. A NATO base in Mariupol could cut them off from their black sea fleet/only warm water ports and their oil fields in the caucausus like the Nazis tried to.
You dont have to be a military analyst to see that Finland and Swedens membership is less threatening than ukraine.
Finland joining NATO is absolutely threatening to Russia. Not far from the border, alongside it, is the only railway to Murmansk and the Kola peninsula, which is of prime importance to Russia.
Scaring Finland into joining NATO after their long held policy of neutrality was an incredibly counterproductive strategy for Moscow.
As said above, all nations sorrounding Russia that have joined NATO, have done so because they were and are afraid of Russia.
Russia has been saying "if Finland joins NATO, there will be consequences" since forever. When Finland actually joins Russia says "yeah no problem it's not really a threat". This is to not lose face, _obviously_, but all these parrots all of a sudden go "oh yeah no problem, you don't have to be a military analyst to see it's not a threat". They're just parrots.
>Finland joining NATO is absolutely threatening to Russia
Right. It absolutely is. Just nowhere near as threatening as Ukraine-with-donbas-and-crimea-and-most-of-its-coast joining NATO.
Theyll probably be more comfortablen with Ukraine joining NATO either if they turn it into a rump state with limited access to the coast and no control over the russian speaking heartland.
In practice, former USSR countries or Finland are joining NATO precisely to be protected from some "brotherly help and selfless liberation" dispensed by the Kremlin several decades down the line.
A collective entity like NATO would have to become collectively mad (not just one president, but many of them) to actively attack Russia, which still has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, theoretically capable of wiping humans off the Earth several times over.
And what would the casus belli even be? The only thing Russia surely has is plentiful natural resources, and it is cheaper and easier just to buy them than to wage an extremely costly and destructive war. The main mining/production regions are deep inland anyway, thousands of miles away from NATO borders.
Unless you buy their idea that "those scheming Westerners envy us our eternal glory and want to force limp-wristed decadent postmodernism and LGBT on us", there are no reasons to attack Russia.
The goal with Russia is not to attack directly but to destabilize and balkanize over the period of many decades. The goal is to be able to threaten it cheaply along a very long and exposed border not invade it expensively.
Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized and Russia was taken over by an American puppet.
>> Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized
It looks like this time the russians will enjoy the North Korean experience as well. Why would anyone be interested to deal with Russia after this invasion of Ukraine?
Most of the hardships of that period were selfinflicted.
You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.
That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.
That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.
Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.
Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.
History repeats itself. The bout of instability that is about to come as a result of this ill-advised, unwinnable war is self-inflicted too.
The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.
But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.
> Russia has agency but that doesnt change the fact that NATO is absolutely an existential threat to it.
NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe (and is evidently willing to make good on those threats, as Ukraine is learning the hard way).
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment on bordering states. And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
>NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe
Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.
And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
The same westerners who are being whipped into a white hot rage about Ukraine collectively shrugged their shoulders about that.
For some inexplicable reason NATO fucking up Libya made Putin paranoid and unwilling to accept the potential for military expansion of this offensive alliance to the most vulnerable sections of the Russian border. I cant think why.
>With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment
Of course they do. Everybody getting caught in this crossfire of western imperialism vs. russian imperialism is scared shitless.
>And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
Putin has always been paranoid. He's ex-KGB, yet all of you apologists claiming that NATO pushed him into the Ukraine war ignore that he's a dictator who invades other countries, assassinates the opposition and media, steals from the Russian people, the list goes on.
Keep on trying to make it as if he had no choice. Or that Russia had no choice.
“Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron” can be better expressed as simply “Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years.”
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly in your comments, including by calling names, personal attacks, and flamewar. This is not ok, and we ban accounts that do it. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Being on the right side of a war, or feeling that you are, is not a reason to post like this to HN—it's a reason to err in the opposite direction, as the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You've been posting like this on lots of other topics too, and in fact your account's commenting history is so flamewarrish that I think we have to ban this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
That happened in 2011. Ukraine and Georgia attempted to join NATO as early as 2008 (and other former Eastern Bloc states did join previously), motivated by (among many other things) Russian interference in Ukraine's 2004 elections and Russia's participation in the Georgian Civil War.
Needless to say, blaming NATO's intervention in Libya for Russian interventionism throughout the multiple decades preceding it is about as bass-ackwards of an understanding of causality as trying to assert that wet sidewalks cause rain to happen.
> Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.
According to the existing international conventions of sovereignty that imply recognising and adhering all previous mutually signed declarations, Ukraine actually cannot choose whatever it wants, as it would violate one of the conditions (military bloc neutrality) under which their sovereignty was granted to them by the USSR in 1990 in the first place, which Russia is a legitimate successor of.
The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine from 1990 [1], states it clearly in Chapter IX: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons".
Ukraine's constitutional sovereignty has always been and still is predicated on following the signed conditions until further official negotiations and subsequent referendums, whether you like it or not.
Russia also promised not to invade or threaten the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nuclear weapons, under the Budapest Memorandum.
You cannot have it both ways, and say that Russia is allowed to threaten Ukraines sovereignty because of a USSR era declaration, when Russia itself is violating declarations that they gave too Ukraine.
It wasn't a civil war. It was a war instigated by Russia with Russian troops on Ukraine's territory with some additional sympathetic local fighters. Where Russia occupies, mass rape and murder happen.
I do think the war could have been avoided too. The last decade has been the pro-Western faction taking the ball and running with it while the pro-Russian faction has been marginalized and sideswept. Ukraine after the USSR has always been in a middle ground between two empires, and the balance has been broken, leading to a war to grab whatever can be grabbed. The Ukrainian nationalists are charging forward in defense while the Russian speaking Ukrainians are staying silent as the Russians invade and the Ukrainian state cracks down on what they see as a fifth column. If I were to be cynical, then I would say that the West gets refugees to use as laborers while Russia makes a profit from oil prices going up.
I meant the pro-Russian faction, which you are correct in that they don't support Putin and are for Ukrainian sovereignty. They did form a major opposition to the current political power and so they are being suppressed accordingly along with the Russian language as part of the war effort.
My post is rather about that the invasion is the final nail in the seam between the pro-West and pro-Russia interests tearing apart, when I don't think that it had to happen. Of course, Putin is responsible for that final nail. His threat of invasion has long been known in a leaked Wikileaks cable, and I think that history could have followed a different path. I think it's similar to how the balance of power shifting quickly has led to blowback like the Iraq War leading to the creation of ISIS where the former generals of Saddam were disenfranchised and resorted to violence to establish an independent state and reclaim political power.
People who were in opposition of the new Ukrainian government are now in opposition of Russia. There are very very few Russian speaking Ukrainians who are “pro-Russia” right now.
I like to look at the price of these missiles and compare them to whatever federal taxes I paid last year. It's amusing to think of how many years one American's federal taxes goes to launching a single strike!
Would you rather your fellow Americans losing their lives instead of Ukrainians defending their country and grinding the Russian army? Because that's the tradeoff being made.
I don't see any reason to believe Putin will attack a NATO member. If the combined strength of NATO isn't sufficient to deter Russia, what is even the point of the alliance?
And in practical terms Russia is suffering heavy losses against Ukraine. The idea that it will be able to take on more potent powers in an open war is wishful thinking.
Even if they don't attack a NATO member, just Ukraine and Moldova and integrate Belarus, they would pretty much screw up all the Black Sea region, Central Europe and the Baltics, including all bordering NATO member states. Which is a direct threat to NATO. So better expend some equipment now rather than human resources and equipment at a later stage when the conflict can't be contained anymore.
It wouldn't help with healthcare, homelessness and hunger in the US either. If the conflict extends, the US would expend resources that could be used to address these issues elsewhere (military + espionage) in order to counter the Russian/Chinese threat. A Russian victory could also embolden China to launch an attack on Taiwan, which pretty much sets the stage for WW3.
45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of healthcare alone. We have the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality rate in the developed world. Our public education systems are some of the most underperforming in the developed world.
The amount of money we've sent to Ukraine so far could end homelessness and hunger in the US three times over.
Killing people on the other side of the world and a proxy war is not a priority for me. Solving these problems for my own countrymen is. No contest.
> The amount of money we've sent to Ukraine so far could end homelessness and hunger in the US three times over.
Homelessness and hunger are complex in the US. Direct cash payments would likely drive up prices long term and not resolve the root causes (NIMBYs, addiction, healthcare). Other solutions are being tried yet money alone won't fix many of them.
Still I do agree US resources are too heavily tilted toward war hawks instead of housing, healthcare, reforms, etc.
Paying for healthcare with a national health plan doesn’t drive up costs in other nations. In fact the Us has the highest healthcare costs and worst outcomes of any developed nation.
While mental health and addiction contribute to homelessness these conditions are wildly exacerbated by homelessness. Housing first has shown startling success rates. The only reason it stopped working was that cities that piloted the programs stopped funding it.
Why did we stop funding it? Dunno, ideological weirdness?
what would it cost you to let Putin take over one of the largest countries in Europe and enslave its people?
Americans are so proud about being the World Police until its time to be the world police and then they try to weasel out of it by nickel and diming everything
America has provided eight launchers and on July 8th said it would send four more. Each one carries a pod of six gps-guided missiles accurate up to 84km...
America’s army tends to disperse and conceal its ammunition dumps across a number of smaller sites. Russia’s army, which relies heavily on trains to move munitions and human muscle to load them onto trucks, has instead created big depots close to railheads...
So, how much effect HIMARS will have seems to depend on how long it will take the Russians to adapt by dispersing their ammunition caches.
Russian military doctrine kinda relies on these central ammunition depots, they will likely have trouble with changing it. They will probably just move the ammo depots further back but the problem is, if they move them out of the range of HIMARS then because of their lack of solid logistics their time to get ammo drastically increases.
This. Russia relies heavily on trains for logistics, so all their main depots will be near a railhead. Then they have to truck the supplies to the front. They're lacking in trucks so the further back they move the depots, the longer the supply route. Putting more wear and tear on the trucks, slowing the supply amounts, etc.
And trying to disperse the depots into smaller amounts doesn't really help; say you cut it in half somehow (ignoring the doctrinal challenges). Then you actually need more trucks, and you need to plan carefully about the supply levels at each mini-depot.
Besides, if you cut the depot size, the Ukrainians will still hit them with HIMARS etc. One or two rockets is enough for most of these sites.
98 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadcock-a-hoop: adjective, extremely and obviously pleased, especially about a triumph or success.
"Ukrainian commanders are cock-a-hoop. They say HIMARS is tilting the war back in their favour"
Several military bloggers have also said Ukrainian partisans behind Russian lines are providing GPS targeting information of where Russians try to hide the ammo dumps
https://archive.ph/uiR8W
https://twitter.com/Mikayla91188348/status/15462116879795937...
A lot of mil bloggers are under the impression Ukrainian civilians are helping with targets that are under cloud cover or vegetation cover. I'd be interested to know if this is incorrect and satellites can see everything using many wavelengths
No idea why this is being downvoted. I actually think this is an excellent characterization of Russian propaganda.
But why is it that you enjoy that?
I think they should just close the 4chan tab and go outside a bit.
> 1 : a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest
I think it fits. Russia loses a lot.
I have noticed that identification with dogs has become very frequent in the past decade, apparently in more territories and among diverse cultures. If there is one thing that does not promise well...
The world has learned since then that the Ukrainian language seems to lack any words for "I surrender", and that Russian claims of military might may have been rather drastically inflated.
When you have a communication department uncaring about "unuseful details", a narration to depicts you in a luring light can always be found.
1. https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1532841072300380161?s=20...
Compromising with an aggressive dictator only delays that fight while making the dictator stronger
My comment says the war is unnecessary - and that includes the invasion. The civil war in Ukraine between the west and the separatist regions could have ended in a compromise.
Freedom is likewise "unnecessary".
Well, to weaken Ukraine; the invasion of much of Eastern Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea were both part of that.
The 2022 “special military operation” was to complete the destruction of the independent Ukraine regime with a decapitation, but failed and was forced to pivot to seizing more land to try to drive the long term dynamic more in Russia’s favor.
"Ukraine CHOSE to join nato, so Russia HAD to invade."
No, the cause of the destruction here is Russia's invasion. Ukraine can choose whatever allies it damn pleases.
You people are either stupid or dishonest.
With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things that Russia has done throughout it's history in eastern europe, it's no wonder that it's neighbors are worried.
That's another funny thing. The only people saying "with the horrendous things the US does..." are either Americans or Russians. People who live in eastern europe are ABSOLUTELY worried about Russia invading them. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukrania of course, Georgia, Chechnia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia. People there don't play this "both sides" bullshit game.
I'm very happy if Russia believes that NATO is an existential threat. We're not pushing them hard enough, that's the problem.
Logically if you want an existential threat to Russia to expand up against Russian borders you must want war, no?
No you see, this isn't "NATO expanding up to"...
Countries are sovereign to choose their allies. And countries in eastern europe are asking to join a defense alliance against Russia.
Serious question, have you considered that number 1 no one is forcing eastern europe countries to join this alliance, and number 2 WHY do they want to join it? If you haven't, I'll tell you the answer: What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO.
NATO isn't expanding up to Russia's borders. Russia is scaring every country it borders, so they're doing something about it.
Oh look, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197737.htm
Because OF COURSE they do, because otherwise they might be next to be invaded.
I have considered why these countries want to join. It's for much the same reason inner city kids want to join gangs - a mix of a desire for protection and a desire to be the threat for once.
>What is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Georgia and Chechnia is EXACTLY the reason why these countries want join NATO
Georgia got whacked for the same reason Ukraine did - because it tried to join our gang. Why were we pouring money into Georgia to sway it towards that point? Well, coz it's a standard empire building tactic to stir shit up on ethnic faultlines along the borders of your opponents. Just ask the British.
I fully understand WHY kids join inner city gangs but we generally try to advise them against it for a reason. Those reasons apply here 100% - it can give you protection, but it can also get you chewed up and spat out as cannon fodder in a larger turf war.
Man, Russia is really losing this game then. Because countries keep joining Nato. Findland and Sweden now. Sweden has had a policy of neutrality for 200 years LOL.
Fucking losers. If there's one immutable truth in Russian history, is that its wherewithal has never ever been able to match its ambition.
The Ukraine border area is where the USSR almost lost to the Nazis. It is an exposed jugular. A NATO base in Mariupol could cut them off from their black sea fleet/only warm water ports and their oil fields in the caucausus like the Nazis tried to.
You dont have to be a military analyst to see that Finland and Swedens membership is less threatening than ukraine.
Scaring Finland into joining NATO after their long held policy of neutrality was an incredibly counterproductive strategy for Moscow.
As said above, all nations sorrounding Russia that have joined NATO, have done so because they were and are afraid of Russia.
Russia has been saying "if Finland joins NATO, there will be consequences" since forever. When Finland actually joins Russia says "yeah no problem it's not really a threat". This is to not lose face, _obviously_, but all these parrots all of a sudden go "oh yeah no problem, you don't have to be a military analyst to see it's not a threat". They're just parrots.
Right. It absolutely is. Just nowhere near as threatening as Ukraine-with-donbas-and-crimea-and-most-of-its-coast joining NATO.
Theyll probably be more comfortablen with Ukraine joining NATO either if they turn it into a rump state with limited access to the coast and no control over the russian speaking heartland.
unless those countries are Panama and Grenada that happened to be inappropriately close to self-important US interests.
In Russian paranoid mind, yes.
In practice, former USSR countries or Finland are joining NATO precisely to be protected from some "brotherly help and selfless liberation" dispensed by the Kremlin several decades down the line.
A collective entity like NATO would have to become collectively mad (not just one president, but many of them) to actively attack Russia, which still has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, theoretically capable of wiping humans off the Earth several times over.
And what would the casus belli even be? The only thing Russia surely has is plentiful natural resources, and it is cheaper and easier just to buy them than to wage an extremely costly and destructive war. The main mining/production regions are deep inland anyway, thousands of miles away from NATO borders.
Unless you buy their idea that "those scheming Westerners envy us our eternal glory and want to force limp-wristed decadent postmodernism and LGBT on us", there are no reasons to attack Russia.
Russians themselves remember the hell that was 90s (westerners do not fully grasp how bad this decade was) when the USSR was balkanized and Russia was taken over by an American puppet.
Theyre determined not to have a round two.
It looks like this time the russians will enjoy the North Korean experience as well. Why would anyone be interested to deal with Russia after this invasion of Ukraine?
Factually, there are opportunities and animosities and hard choices that conditioned explicit positions.
You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.
That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.
That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.
Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.
Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.
The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.
But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.
NATO still exists in the first place because Russia keeps on existentially threatening the rest of Europe (and is evidently willing to make good on those threats, as Ukraine is learning the hard way).
> With the horrendous things we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya... it's no wonder Russians want pushback on NATO encroachment on bordering states.
With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment on bordering states. And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
Russia was on reasonably good terms with Europe for at least 2 decades.
And during that time NATO decided it needed purpose so it decided, among other things, that it needed to destroy Libya.
The same westerners who are being whipped into a white hot rage about Ukraine collectively shrugged their shoulders about that.
For some inexplicable reason NATO fucking up Libya made Putin paranoid and unwilling to accept the potential for military expansion of this offensive alliance to the most vulnerable sections of the Russian border. I cant think why.
>With the horrendous things Russia is currently doing to Ukraine, it's no wonder Europeans want pushback on Russian encroachment
Of course they do. Everybody getting caught in this crossfire of western imperialism vs. russian imperialism is scared shitless.
>And unlike Russian encroachment, NATO "encroachment" is voluntary.
Hardly. Libya didnt ask to be torn to shreds.
Keep on trying to make it as if he had no choice. Or that Russia had no choice.
From the dissolution of the USSR until about the NATO-Yugoslav War, which was...a little over half a decade.
Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron.
“Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years you moron” can be better expressed as simply “Russia has been at war with Europe in Ukraine for 8 years.”
Being on the right side of a war, or feeling that you are, is not a reason to post like this to HN—it's a reason to err in the opposite direction, as the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You've been posting like this on lots of other topics too, and in fact your account's commenting history is so flamewarrish that I think we have to ban this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
That happened in 2011. Ukraine and Georgia attempted to join NATO as early as 2008 (and other former Eastern Bloc states did join previously), motivated by (among many other things) Russian interference in Ukraine's 2004 elections and Russia's participation in the Georgian Civil War.
Needless to say, blaming NATO's intervention in Libya for Russian interventionism throughout the multiple decades preceding it is about as bass-ackwards of an understanding of causality as trying to assert that wet sidewalks cause rain to happen.
And it's not about NATO at Russian borders ( Russia has no problem with Finland for example).
It's about the gas found in Crimea in 2008 that can replace Russian gas deliveries.
Fyi. Donbas is "by coincidence" very rich in minerals ( eg. Lithium)... What are the odds...
If only it was so easy then this would have been over as soon as it started.
Edit: forgot to quote context
According to the existing international conventions of sovereignty that imply recognising and adhering all previous mutually signed declarations, Ukraine actually cannot choose whatever it wants, as it would violate one of the conditions (military bloc neutrality) under which their sovereignty was granted to them by the USSR in 1990 in the first place, which Russia is a legitimate successor of.
The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine from 1990 [1], states it clearly in Chapter IX: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, produce or acquire nuclear weapons".
Ukraine's constitutional sovereignty has always been and still is predicated on following the signed conditions until further official negotiations and subsequent referendums, whether you like it or not.
[1] https://zakon-rada-gov-ua.translate.goog/laws/show/55-12?_x_...
You cannot have it both ways, and say that Russia is allowed to threaten Ukraines sovereignty because of a USSR era declaration, when Russia itself is violating declarations that they gave too Ukraine.
You forgot abot deportations to the Russian far East and Siberia.
Where do you get this bullshit? Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting Russians, half of UA armed forces are Russian-speaking.
>> pro-Russian faction has been marginalized and sideswept
Russia destroyed a lot of goodwill by its actions in Crimea and Donbass. People who supported Yanukovich in 2010, do not support Putin in 2022
My post is rather about that the invasion is the final nail in the seam between the pro-West and pro-Russia interests tearing apart, when I don't think that it had to happen. Of course, Putin is responsible for that final nail. His threat of invasion has long been known in a leaked Wikileaks cable, and I think that history could have followed a different path. I think it's similar to how the balance of power shifting quickly has led to blowback like the Iraq War leading to the creation of ISIS where the former generals of Saddam were disenfranchised and resorted to violence to establish an independent state and reclaim political power.
And in practical terms Russia is suffering heavy losses against Ukraine. The idea that it will be able to take on more potent powers in an open war is wishful thinking.
It wouldn't help with healthcare, homelessness and hunger in the US either. If the conflict extends, the US would expend resources that could be used to address these issues elsewhere (military + espionage) in order to counter the Russian/Chinese threat. A Russian victory could also embolden China to launch an attack on Taiwan, which pretty much sets the stage for WW3.
Homelessness and hunger are complex in the US. Direct cash payments would likely drive up prices long term and not resolve the root causes (NIMBYs, addiction, healthcare). Other solutions are being tried yet money alone won't fix many of them.
Still I do agree US resources are too heavily tilted toward war hawks instead of housing, healthcare, reforms, etc.
Why did we stop funding it? Dunno, ideological weirdness?
Americans are so proud about being the World Police until its time to be the world police and then they try to weasel out of it by nickel and diming everything
America has provided eight launchers and on July 8th said it would send four more. Each one carries a pod of six gps-guided missiles accurate up to 84km...
America’s army tends to disperse and conceal its ammunition dumps across a number of smaller sites. Russia’s army, which relies heavily on trains to move munitions and human muscle to load them onto trucks, has instead created big depots close to railheads...
So, how much effect HIMARS will have seems to depend on how long it will take the Russians to adapt by dispersing their ammunition caches.
And trying to disperse the depots into smaller amounts doesn't really help; say you cut it in half somehow (ignoring the doctrinal challenges). Then you actually need more trucks, and you need to plan carefully about the supply levels at each mini-depot.
Besides, if you cut the depot size, the Ukrainians will still hit them with HIMARS etc. One or two rockets is enough for most of these sites.