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Comment by bryant | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, we're basically watching the real-time implosion of a super-power (if Russia could've been called that), and Chinese institutions will own just about every bit of intangible (and soon tangible) infrastructure that matters.

In his drive to reconstruct the USSR, Putin may have just given that mandate for a communist super-power and counterbalance to the United States to the CCP instead.

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>super-power (if Russia could've been called that)

Russia hasn't been a super power in 30 years IMO.

"if Russia could've been called that"

Yes, they could have. For a long time, they absolutely were. In the sense that their arsenal is still operational and capable of mass death, it still is. But that is the only way that they remain a super-power.

Yeah watch how ex-USSR states at central asia give FU to russia and choose China instead.

>Indeed, we're basically watching the real-time implosion of a super-power

Aren't we basically watching Russia conquer Ukraine?

You haven't been watching the war, have you? Russia can't even take Kyiv or Kharkiv even though they're pretty close to the Belarus and Russian borders...

So far. One can be surprised they haven't taken these cities earlier, but I wouldn't bet Ukraine won't accept Putin's requests at some point in exchange for the end of the war. (commitment not to enter NATO/Europe + demilitarization + recognition of Crimea being part of Russia + independence of Donetsk and Luhansk republics). Neither NATO nor Europe wants to intervene and China will continue to support Russia to compensate for the sanctions.

There is no way Ukraine accepts the same demands that Russia had at the start of the war. I think the most they'll give is recognize the territory Russia or separatists had at the start of the war, and that's only if Russia makes serious push on central Kyiv. No way they give up on NATO at this point knowing Russia could just do it again in a few years

I'm optimistic the Ukrainians will hold on longer than oligarch and military support for Putin...

If NATO wasn't confident that Ukraine would stop Russia, they would have already changed tactics.

Why change tactics when things are working out for NATO

The longer and more devastating the war, the better. Ukraine doesn't have to win for a NATO victory, russia just has to be damaged militarily and fanatically.

I would have agreed with you day one of the invasion but things have shifted dramatically. Now that so much of NATO has put its weight behind it, Ukraine must win. If Ukraine loses it shows how weak NATO is when it unites (which it has done as has been spoken about ad nausea in the media).

I think that is a valid point, but it also very clear to the public that NATO is not putting its full weight behind it, and that it is not willing to engage directly militarily.

I think the public barometer of success will be based more on damage to Russia, than the outcome for Ukraine. If people see Russia suffer for the invasion and know that NATO held back, they will tolerate the outcome

US president just tweeted that Russia will never take Ukraine

https://twitter.com/potus/status/1501359427454132227?s=21

> I wouldn't bet Ukraine won't accept Putin's requests at some point in exchange for the end of the war

Except in the negotiations in Belarus whose content hasn't been disclosed, Putin has never released terms that Ukraine alone could meet; his ultimatum before the war had most of its terms directed at NATO, not Ukraine, though the gun was pointed at Ukraine.

Presumably, terms for Ukraine alone would be much steeper to make up for what he won't be getting from NATO.

Why would Russia want to start with extremely costly urban combat when the ukrainian forces are still a coherent fighting force? I get that it doesn't look good from a reddit-war perspective, but it would have been absolutely suicidal to go for the 2 biggest cities before encircling them or roughing up the ukrainian army first. This isn't a video game where you go for the capital city capture, and Russia isn't fighting a Twitter war. You can focus on the cities all you want, but the reality is that Russia is more interested in encircling cities while they mop up the entire country side; just look at how they have operated around mariupol.

Those are 2 massively populated cities, and the much much better American forces had a very hard time fighting much weaker opponents in fallujah 17 years ago. If you support the ukrainian side, you should stress how critical the situation is on the ground instead of downplaying how bad it is on the ground to make the russians look weak on the internet.

> Why would Russia want to start with extremely costly urban combat when the ukrainian forces are still a coherent fighting force?

Did you not pay attention to the first weekend of fighting? Your analysis is correct but the Russians did try to take the 2 largest cities right away. There's massive wrecked convoys outside both Kyiv and Kharkiv.

And it was extremely costly. And now the Russians look extremely weak.

And now they're slowly making progress doing what you think they should to win. And they will win if the Russian oligarchs and military support them until the end. But that last point is a huge question mark.

They tried to take the gostomel airport, and pushed toward kiev but didn't make actual efforts into pushing beyond the suburbs. The gostomel operation was costly but AFAIK they still hold the airport. The convoys being wrecked are again either unconfirmed or didn't seem to massively alter their progression on that front. Obviously the russians are still taking a lot of losses, but imo it's not nearly close enough to stall them in any significant manner.

(I'd have also expected the russians the be doing way way worse, since the ukrainian army has still been pretty throughouly trained by western advisors in the past 7 years. And after the mess that was the 2008 georgian war, I thought the russian army to be far less capable than the relatively professional army we have seen since they invaded.)

I have not see any effort to actually push through kiev or Kharkov. If anything the push for Kharkov only happened mid last week, and most of the actually important events have been on the crimean/southern front .

>I'd have also expected the russians the be doing way way worse, since the ukrainian army has still been pretty throughouly trained by western advisors in the past 7 years. And after the mess that was the 2008 georgian war, I thought the russian army to be far less capable than the relatively professional army we have seen since they invaded.

Are we watching the same war?

Yes? Just look at the actual situation in the ground beyond the reddit wars (tm).

https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/09...

That's a huge amount of territory gained, especially when you keep in mind that the russians invaded with roughly the same amount of men that Ukraine is defending it's territory with.

This would've been completely impossible back in 2008

I am sure Russia will win territory when they truly want to, I think the issue is how can they hold territory long term. perhaps they can slice the country up into manageable pieces such that insurgency doesn't render the conquest moot, but maybe not.

Agreed completely. I think that Russia will easily "win" militarily and it's foolish to think they are getting demolished in Ukraine but as you said I literally cannot see them holding the territory long term.

Not only because there will be an insurgency but also because the invasion was imo such a foolish, pointless and borderline suicidal move for Russia. the best hope for them and ukraine will be to pull out after "winning" and hopefully negotiate a truce where they don't occupy Ukraine but get the sanctions on them pulled off in exchange.

We are watching them attack Ukraine. Whether or not they'll be able to conquer it is up in the air, and seeing how things are going, I'd bet against it.

Why would Europe not admit Ukraine's neutrality once Kyiv falls, now that we know neither the EU nor the US wants to intervene?

Europe has clearly stated they'll continue to pay for Russia'a natgas even at €120/MWh, which will fund Russia's war for quite some time.

If winning was simply about money and having someone in a building somewhere claiming to run things, then you might have a point.

Also we'd have to make significant revisions to history.

In a way less successful way than expected and while getting their economy squashed in response.

Trying to conquer it, but failing badly.

This is a war of attrition where Ukraine gets enormous supplies from rich Western countries for free, but Russia cannot replenish any equipment loss. No one will sell them new Soviet-style helicopters and fighter jets that their pilots are qualified to fly.

Every piece of heavy equipment that is destroyed with Javelins, NLAWs and Stingers is an irreplaceable loss for the attacking army. Unlike defense, you cannot sustain your attack if your offensive equipment gets blown into pieces or runs out of fuel.

This will end in a collapse of massive proportions.

Could be China to the rescue here, and Ukraine turns into the first proxy war between the US and China.

If China aids Russia they may see the same sanctions Russia does, the CCP above all else wants the Chinese GDP to continue to grow. Maybe in 50 years if China becomes a wealthy nation they might start throwing stones but for now, they benefit from playing both sides and letting Russia get weakened and desperate.

We can't sanction China like that. We need too much of what they produce. The only thing that Russia produces that the West needs is oil and gas, which has not been sanctioned.

Also wheat, some rare metals and maybe even electricity soon if they are able to retain control over Ukraine NPPs (well only if EU considers them green enough).

We can certainly hurt them with sanctions.

A) The Russians absolutely have second sources for era Soviet equipment.

B) Their factories were the original source for a lot of this equipment. Russia is still the second largest arms dealer in the world, only behind the US. I'm sure Putin has no problem delaying export shipments if it comes to that in a "pray I don't alter the deal further" kind of way. And buying back some of his past customers' arms for a deal on future sales is probably something that could be made to happen.

I read that Russias manufacturing capabilities were already suffering before the war (possibly due to the covid supply chain issues, not sure), and that they are likely a few months out from being able to get manufacturing capacity to a level that could replace current losses (and may not even be able to due to sanctions).

Also, there are videos going around on twitter of Russian trains loaded with civilian cars and trucks supposedly headed to the front line. Assuming those videos are true, that means Russia is running out of military equipment. It is certainly possible that they are doing this for strategic reasons (maybe civilian vehicles use less gas, so easier to support logistically, etc..). But either way, this doesn't look good for them.

They don't need to immediately replace them. Russia has lost about a hundred tanks. They have nearly 13,000. They've lost about a dozen Su-27s, they have about 500.

And I'm a little more afraid for Ukraine having seen those civilian cars. It feels like Russia is going to start playing very dirty during the upcoming siege of Kiev. It sort of evens the playing field if the defenders also have to watch their backs everytime an unmarked civilian car drives by. It's a dirty move right out of Russia's playbook.

How many of those 13 000 tanks and 500 Su-27s are in deployable condition?

The former Soviet Union was excellent in production of impressive statistics, but the reality on the ground didn't quite match. And the Soviet way of thinking is very much alive in Putin's power circles. It is cheaper to produce impressive numbers than to actually take good care of equipment, and some people will swallow those numbers without thinking twice.

Westerners from well-run countries tend to trust government figures. This may work in Sweden or even in the USA, but in case of Russia, consider every published statistics as suspect.

Those are the accepted figures, not simply taking Russian state provided figures at face value.

In the videos I saw, the cars were marked with the "Z". So at least for those particular vehicles, dirty tricks may be out of the question.

One other possible advantage is that Ukraine soldiers might be reluctant to fire anti-tank missiles at civilian vehicles from long range (I assume that the markings would be hard to see from that distance). And the missiles might cost more than the vehicles themselves, so might be a waste regardless. Small arms fire would probably be sufficient to stop the vehicles, but that would have to happen at closer range. So maybe the idea is that they can get in closer to the engagement point before receiving fire. Also, they can probably move faster and use less fuel, which considering their logistic challenges might actually be the main motivation.

So yeah, I could see this being strategic and not a desperation move. But either way, not the best look for their military. Hard to justify all of that spending on advanced hardware if at the end of the day they end up using civilian vehicles.

You can repaint a car about as easily as you can put a Z on it. And the Z on the train means that a conscript doesn't take lot shots at it just because they missed that the first few cars had a Z on them.

This is just false; the only way you could say russia is failing badly to conquer ukraine is if you only read the ukrainian government's PR releases. It's been like a week and a half; even the Americans took a longer time to go through the extremely weakened state of Iraq in 2003. I get supporting ukraine but there's no need to fall for delusional war propaganda, just look at the map and tallies of confirmed casualties (for example we only have proof of 2 actual russian air losses, a far cry from the 35-40 claimed by the ukrainian side). It's totally counterproductive and does not help the ukrainian side to be so wildly optimistic when the situation on the ground isn't.

"for example we only have proof of 2 actual russian air losses, a far cry from the 35-40 claimed by the ukrainian side"

We have way more than two Russian air losses proven.

This OSINT page maps them fairly well.

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Interesting, oryx has usually been very reliable in the past but there are a few glaring discrepancies in his list. I can see at least a few pictures of double counted losses, and there seems to be comments on that in the article too. For example they show the gear of a downed pilot as proof of a shutdown aircraft (which is true!) But also show the wreckage of the plane he ejected from as another air loss...

The AN transport plane loss is also contested from what ive seen elsewhere. They also don't seem to be listing most confirmed ukrainian losses but that does not necessarily discredit their russian list

But yes it seems my own figure was wrong and outdated by a few days, yet even in the best case scenario we are a very very far cry from the ukrainian figures. It's really not even close, considering they claimed 25 aircraft kills a week ago and most of those pictures are from the past 3 days

Not yet, as they haven't conquered any part of Ukraine. If they stopped their offensive today, they would be pushed out in days.

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