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Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

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Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#141

Post by earthbee »

dragonwriter wrote: post #80
rnhmjoj wrote: post #69

Interesting: news[1] just came out of Russia accusing Ukraine of working on a dirty bomb. This makes the letter seem more plausible, if it really preceeds the news. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...

Russia has been a accusing Ukraine of working to acquire nuclear weapons, with US assistance, for quite a while, though the specification that they intend to produce a dirty bomb may be a new twist on it.

Why would they need assistance? Nuclear weapons are 75 year old technology they're not difficult if you already have a nuclear industry to supply the materials.

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#142

Post by the_af »

gorgoiler wrote: post #32

Verified by two anonymous sources, according to a “Bellingcat exec director”, who in turn has been verified by Twitter (which amounts to what, I do not know — verified their name? Their job? That they are competent at their job?) A little tenuous, but maybe this Bellingcat employee is super famous and renowned? It would be interesting if people here can come up with a better chain of verification. Until then, it’s ce…

It's interesting that otherwise smart people here believe that it must be true because two anonymous and unverified sources also say it's true.

And this is purportedly intelligence information coming from the FSB! I mean, military intelligence, what could go wrong with trusting sensitive intelligence of an ongoing war that someone posted on Twitter or Facebook?

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#143

Post by csomar »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #128
sillysaurusx wrote: post #119

It was a tense week, but Russia has lost the war. They can drag it out, but ultimately victory will go to Ukraine. The reasons for this are subtle but obvious. The Russian military machine can't operate outside of Russia. They have no way of transporting fuel, ammunition, food, and other supplies to the front lies. This means that their effective operational capabilities are limited to five days. It's been a hobby of…

What I don't understand, though: surely they can not be so incompetent as to having forgotten that they need fuel? If all success hinged on the airport, then there should have been some plan B in case of losing the airport?

They thought they'd get Kiev in 3 days or less. Apparently, they don't have a plan B.

They are still trying to get Kiev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...

I only have experience through EU4, and Civilization; so take this with lots of salt. But look at the map: Putin is avoiding some cities (Sumy, Okhtyrka, Chernihiv from the East) to get to Ukraine. He is not taking cities and moving forward, he's avoiding them to get to Kiev quickly. This is suicide. If his Kiev plan fails, a major part of his army will be trapped with bad logistics.

Putin is desperate. A quite perilous situation for a man with lots of nuclear nukes.

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#144

Post by daqhris »

golergka wrote: post #120
waffleiron wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dirty bomb thing isn't anything new, and definitely precedes this. Both google and bing have blocked all RT.com results here in Germany, duck.com luckily still lets me search for it. 2009: https://www.rt.com/news/the-price-of-mass-destruction/ >Ukraine’s security service has arrested a group suspected of trying to sell a container of radioactive material. Officials say there was enough of the substance to create…

Believing anything RT have ever written, especially about Ukraine is, to put it mildly, not the best strategy.

I think that OP does not believe in RT.com. Most probably, OP is bringing forward information that corroborates what's wrtitten in the Twitter thread. By reading the post's source, you may understand the intent of the parent comment.

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#145

Post by KaiserPro »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #119

It was a tense week, but Russia has lost the war. They can drag it out, but ultimately victory will go to Ukraine. The reasons for this are subtle but obvious. The Russian military machine can't operate outside of Russia. They have no way of transporting fuel, ammunition, food, and other supplies to the front lies. This means that their effective operational capabilities are limited to five days. It's been a hobby of…

It depends what you define as win.

Its true that russia will find it _very_ difficult to sustain this level of effort for any level of time. Its logistic capacity has been pushed way beyond efficiency.

but with that in mind, whos going to push putin out of ukraine? yes the people can pick off soldiers for the next few years, but thats not peace.

It is currently within Putin's grasp to freeze the conflict as it is now, with eastern ukraine in his possession.

I suspect his options are:

1) stage a dirty bomb, blame it on ukraine, order a general mobilisation.

2) freeze the conflict now, hold on to the "gains"

3) Assainate Zelenskyy

4) Stage some other stupid humanitarian horror(bombing of russian hospital/orphanage/school) general mobilisation

5) carry on, regardless.

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#146

Post by the_af »

greggsy wrote: post #104
fareesh wrote: post #55

Given the recent track record for lies coming out of both Ukraine and Russia, it's probably best to treat everything as propaganda unless proven otherwise in some meaningful way.

> best to treat everything as propaganda unless proven otherwise This comment is always near the top of any HN or Reddit post, and while it’s not wrong, it’s almost a cliche at this point. There is clear misinformation being pumped out, but there is room to discuss should why it might be misinformation, and to understand why someone might have spent time carefully producing it.

It's important that this sort of comments remain on top, because otherwise smart people keep being gullible about disinformation in times of war (and other types as well, of course).

Look how some people are saying "well, it's vouched by two other FSB agents that this guy saying this on Twitter apparently knows, so it must be true!".

Do you see the problem with this line of reasoning?

There's also this thing about believing what people already want to believe it's true (that Russia cannot win, that their army is in disarray, that every Russian was duped by Putin, who is increasingly isolated and making random decisions, etc). Note all of that may very well be true, which is precisely why made up "leaks" helping our minds reinforce these conclusions are so effective.

Gladwell (as much as I find that guy annoying) also made the point that Intelligence only convinces analysts of what they already believed to begin with. I'd say this is doubly so with fake news and fake leaks...

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#147

Post by tonyedgecombe »

hestefisk wrote: post #127
ur-whale wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Northern Africa (maghreb, egypt, etc..) is hugely dependent on wheat from Ukraine and Russia. Wheat prices are through the roof right now [1], it's only going to get worse. So short-term impact pretty much guaranteed. Longer term, much of the euro zone agriculture is very dependent on fertilizers that are either produced using Russian natural gas or directly bought from there. Cost of growing food, if the situation d…

That said, EU destroys an incredible amount of food each year ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit... ). Perhaps some of this could be put to good use. Also don’t forget Australia and America are huge grain producers and should be able to ramp up exports.

Didn't America have a poor wheat harvest last year?

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#148

Post by the_af »

alin23 wrote: post #18

Interesting that posting the translation link directly gets more traction than the link to the original source. I posted this first with the link to the Twitter post saying that the source has been verified with two other FSB contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513... Of course we still can’t know for sure if it’s true, anyone can say anythi…

> But the whole situation reminds me of the HBO rendition of Chernobyl. It’s all based on lies.

Interestingly enough, HBO's Chernobyl was thrilling TV but not particularly good as a documentary of what actually happened, yet people are starting to believe what HBO (and the memories it's based on) tell us is "the truth".

I guess it's all based on lies indeed...

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#149

Post by KaiserPro »

csomar wrote: post #143
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand, though: surely they can not be so incompetent as to having forgotten that they need fuel? If all success hinged on the airport, then there should have been some plan B in case of losing the airport?

They thought they'd get Kiev in 3 days or less. Apparently, they don't have a plan B. They are still trying to get Kiev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... I only have experience through EU4, and Civilization; so take this with lots of salt. But look at the map: Putin is avoiding some cities (Sumy, Okhtyrka, Chernihiv from the East) to get to Ukraine. He is not taking cities and moving fo…

Cities are really hard to capture and hold, with a defender advantage of 1:5(or up to 1:10 of defenders to aggressors. depending on who you believe) napkin maths suggests that a quick city siege is 4 months.

So that blows your time budget out of the water. Kiev is reasonably close to resupply (assuming the logistics is managed properly.....)

Its far wiser to avoid the cities with a bargepole.

Re: Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

#150

Post by dash2 »

AlbertoGP wrote: post #140
dragonwriter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has been a accusing Ukraine of working to acquire nuclear weapons, with US assistance, for quite a while, though the specification that they intend to produce a dirty bomb may be a new twist on it.

Adding to your comment, in the Munich Security Conference on 2022-02-19, Zelenskyy said: “Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFV5nw1UUNY&t=900s That “Budapest Memorandum” is this one: “Until Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, it had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpil…

That would be a very tendentious interpretation. Threats to revisit the treaty of 1994 - in the face of a threatened invasion which already violates that treaty - do not add up to active plans to acquire nuclear weapons.
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