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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

Ukraine did a spectacular job to stop the full-scale invasion in the initial hours, days and weeks when there wasn't much international help yet though (and I guess from that moment on the war didn't go quite according to plan from the Russian PoV).

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Let‘s not underestimate the corruption within Russian intelligence services, that resulted in invasion without any meaningful military planning. They spent the budgets corrupting Ukrainian elites and brainwashing population of the Eastern Ukraine, probably taking a cut in their own pockets, but they were not expecting to be held accountable for the result. The success of Ukraine in early days was in the element of surprise. Their resistance was not expected by Russian leadership, and the invasion itself was not expected by the middle ranks of Russian military. It did not go according to the plan, but plans change, and this war demonstrated weaknesses of all major powers - in a way, Russia did tick some boxes. As successful Ukrainians were in that moment, NATO has lost the war for them failing to mobilize in time, also taken by the surprise (as if CIA weren’t warning months ahead that this is going to happen). If Patriots, tanks and ammo would start flowing in the first weeks, maybe we would see peace in Istanbul accords in 2022 already.

Ukraine took out a Yandex data center, which made the pro Trump bot traffic drop.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0k0g57mk3zo

The article you linked to says nothing about the connection to pro-Trump bot traffic fyi

They did a spectacular job, but there were already quite a few NATO weapons shipped to them since 2014.

Ukraine could've done much better if they'd mobilized and fortified their borders before the invasion. But Zelensky refused to do so (despite warnings from the U.S.) because war with Russia was hugely impopular with voters in Ukraine before the actual attack. They'd much rather stick their heads in the sand.

So a lot of their territorial loss can be attributed to his inaction. If they'd laid several million landmines in the Donbass the Russian attack would've been stumped and the occupied Crimea would've been easy prey.

Did they have capacity to do that at the time? Maybe Russia's first move would simply be elsewhere. there is a lot of border to mine especially when you include belarus.

They could've acquired the landmines from the U.S. since Biden was in the White House at the time.

If you mobilize your armed forces and move all your soldiers to the border and dig them in you'll dissuade an attacker from invading.

That's the thing though, between russia and belarus its over a 1000 mile border they would have had to secure.

They did. Why do you think Mariupol took so long to fall? Fortifications and the neo-nazi Azov Battalion.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_fortress_belt

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