Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Putin’s Worsening Problems

newlinesmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#71

Post by spacemanmatt »

ShivShankaran wrote: post #47
crooked-v wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties, and more likely that their occupying forces just don't have the numbers or cohesion to do anything about the protests without getting picked off piecemeal.

>I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties A significant population of east Ukraine has family in Russia. This is like New York invading New Jersey. Ridiculous and terrible but they are aware that their family and friends live there. There are hundreds of videos of Ukrainian civilians trying to climb aboard moving Russian convoys and blocking their paths and knocking out their mirror…

Putin is a totalitarian. Russian citizens do not see accurate reporting on this war. They're fed more lies than FOX viewers. Their view of the war might just be more distorted than Putin's.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#72

Post by spacemanmatt »

epistasis wrote: post #18
andrewclunn wrote: post #4

If the Ukrainians are allowed to protest, then Russia is fighting this while trying to minimize overt civilian casualties (most likely to avoid video of such acts becoming galvanizing propaganda tools against them). If things go poorly, then what? If Russia then starts fighting to destroy rather than conquer Ukraine intact, then it's a whole different story. This piece reads of wishful thinking.

Russia is doing nothing to minimize civilian casualties. I've made three trips to Ukraine, spent about three weeks total in Eastern Kharkiv in a residential neighborhood with nothing but apartment buildings, shopping, schools, and restaurants, and the utter destruction I have seen of sights I have known has been heartbreaking. Russia's internal propaganda controls are so good that in the early days, two mothers we kn…

> And they have suffered zero consequences for their war crimes in the past.

Bringing me some grim joy that Ukranians have picked off at least 2 high-ranking Russian military. The morale setbacks for Russia, just the ones that make the news, are pretty serious. It's not clear there will be a winner of this war, but the losers are already stacking up on both sides.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#73

Post by spacemanmatt »

ggm wrote: post #17
iab wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way too much hopeful rationalization

It's certainly not blitzkrieg, more blyatzkreig. The western belief was 72 hours to complete. He didn't even make 400 hours, it lost momentum. The materiel by volume and age does not speak well of supply chain logistics. There is no rational plan of battle which puts your weakest armour first. He's lost the media war facing westward, India and China are temporising friends at best. Inward media is paper thin maintain…

As long as western weapons flood in, there's no hope for boosting the morale of Russian troops.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#74

Post by it »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #71
ShivShankaran wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties A significant population of east Ukraine has family in Russia. This is like New York invading New Jersey. Ridiculous and terrible but they are aware that their family and friends live there. There are hundreds of videos of Ukrainian civilians trying to climb aboard moving Russian convoys and blocking their paths and knocking out their mirror…

Putin is a totalitarian. Russian citizens do not see accurate reporting on this war. They're fed more lies than FOX viewers. Their view of the war might just be more distorted than Putin's.

Would you care to name a specific lie and explain how you know it's a lie?

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#75

Post by spacemanmatt »

it wrote: post #74
spacemanmatt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin is a totalitarian. Russian citizens do not see accurate reporting on this war. They're fed more lies than FOX viewers. Their view of the war might just be more distorted than Putin's.

Would you care to name a specific lie and explain how you know it's a lie?

No, because the analysis out more than available to all interested, without my unavoidable editorialization of the topics. This typically isn't the place for it anyway.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#76

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #31
crooked-v wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indiscriminate bombardment of cities does very little to achieve any military objectives, especially when a substantial part of the country 'under siege' is actually entirely untouched by enemy troops. In purely military terms, doing that would be almost the same as just having all that artillery sit around and do nothing while the Ukrainians execute major counter-offenses.

>Indiscriminate bombardment of cities does very little to achieve any military objectives, especially when a substantial part of the country 'under siege' is actually entirely untouched by enemy troops. So all the allied bombings in ww2 were pointless?

[deleted]

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#77

Post by ggm »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #73
ggm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not blitzkrieg, more blyatzkreig. The western belief was 72 hours to complete. He didn't even make 400 hours, it lost momentum. The materiel by volume and age does not speak well of supply chain logistics. There is no rational plan of battle which puts your weakest armour first. He's lost the media war facing westward, India and China are temporising friends at best. Inward media is paper thin maintain…

As long as western weapons flood in, there's no hope for boosting the morale of Russian troops.

Presumably attacking Lviv has dual benefit: close refugee paths (increase terror and social pressure to compromise) and interferes with materiel delivery to the east where the action is.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#78

Post by macrolocal »

wolverine876 wrote: post #53
macrolocal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To bolster empressplay's comment, I read on iz.ru before the invasion that Putin's aims would be (a) to "rescue" Donbass and establish a land bridge to Crimea, and (b) to destabilize NATO. Pundits there also said that claims he intended to attack Kiev were western propaganda. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I disagree. We're not guessing blindly. We have plenty of evidence. Russian media predictions are not evidence, were plainly wrong, and are now plainly propaganda.

They're a proxy for what Putin wants Russians to believe, ie. he wants a withdrawal to the southeast to play well domestically (regardless of his actual goals).

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#79

Post by bladegash »

gruez wrote: post #70
bladegash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, all things going great and your life isn’t under threat, ethics are important and Id encourage people to refrain from lying or harming others. However, you do not always get to choose the situations you face in life and there is a reason war is described as “hell”. People sacrifice more than just their physical well-being (e.g., think along the idea behind Sophie’s Choice). It is just the reality that sabotage,…

>It is just the reality that sabotage, deception, and espionage are used and in many ways just as important for winning wars (aka, survival) as any other military tactic/strategy (just look to influential and studied military tacticians such as Sun Tzu, Cardinal Richelieu, or Clausewitz). If we accept that, then we basically also accept that in war, it's expected that everything coming out from both sides is going to…

I’m not sure what point you are arguing. I think we should be absolutely skeptical of every side, especially the ones we want to believe. Propaganda is absolutely being used by all sides. I’m not going to debate what people should do, as I have no control over that. It’s a tool that has been used because it is effective, regardless of the propriety or rationality of believing the messages.

Re: Putin’s Worsening Problems

#80

Post by hackeraccount »

magicalist wrote: post #35
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Indiscriminate bombardment of cities does very little to achieve any military objectives, especially when a substantial part of the country 'under siege' is actually entirely untouched by enemy troops. So all the allied bombings in ww2 were pointless?

> So all the allied bombings in ww2 were pointless? More bombs were dropped in Vietnam. Pointless was your word but to address the GP, how effective was that militarily? Stationed artillery is not an occupation.

Vietnam probably was pointless because they couldn't bomb where all the weapons were coming from. Bombing Germany in WWII was less pointless because bombs could have an effect on German war material production - and Germany had to defend it like it did. At the end of the day North Vietnam was getting the means to fight it's war from abroad and bombing it back to the proverbial stone age wouldn't stop those weapons from coming in country.
Post reply on HN