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Comment by Marha01 | Hacker News Reader

The whole invasion scenario as it happened makes zero sense unless Russia planned to take over the capital city. Why send airborne troops to the Hostomel airport, or large armored columns towards Kyiv, if you don't plan to take over the city?

Then there is state-owned news media publishing stuff like this:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-state-news-accidentally-p...

> "The period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end," the article reads. "Did someone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kiev? That the Russians will forever be a divided people?"

Russia only stopped outside Kyiv because they had to (the resistance was much greater than anticipated), not because they wanted to.

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Ah, but you're missing perhaps the most probable scenario from the Russia side. Their primary goal for Ukraine was not particularly extreme - they wanted Ukraine to agree to remain a neutral country outside of NATO. That's asking basically nothing relative to the cost of a real war, and so I do think they expected those negotiations to succeed, because it's like being given the choice of setting your [uninsured] house on fire or agreeing to never buy fire insurance. Yeah both suck, but one is clearly much worse.

And this is even more likely given that negotiations for the end of the war started on February 28th, 4 days after the war began! Furthermore, the large convoy was completely inappropriate for actual military purposes and Russia didn't even have the logistics in place to keep it running. It makes no sense from a military perspective, but is 100% logical from an intimidation one.

I do think the airborne troops were a genuine decapitation strike attempt, as is tried in most of every war. It rarely works, but there was a chance it would (and in such a scenario you'd want a draft of the 'victory speech' written, much as we wrote a public obituary for the Apollo astronauts before they embarked for the Moon). But even if it failed, it also plays into the intimidation.

And those negotiations would have indeed almost certainly succeeded if the West didn't jump in and encourage Ukraine to "just fight". And I think the West did this expecting to rapidly inflict a 'strategic defeat' on Russia. Nobody got their quick victory, and instead we ended up with a real war that I don't think anybody thought would happen.

  > And those negotiations would have indeed almost certainly succeeded if the West didn't jump in and encourage Ukraine to "just fight".

Myth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078088

> Ah, but you're missing perhaps the most probable scenario from the Russia side. Their primary goal for Ukraine was not particularly extreme - they wanted Ukraine to agree to remain a neutral country outside of NATO.

> And those negotiations would have indeed almost certainly succeeded if the West didn't jump in and encourage Ukraine to "just fight".

Nope, Russians wanted far more than just neutrality. The March–April 2022 peace negotiations in Istanbul ultimately failed because Russians refused to let go of their most controversial demands: severe reductions and restrictions of Ukrainian military.

Key Military Reduction Demands:

• Personnel Limits: Russia demanded that the Ukrainian standing peacetime army be capped at 50,000 to 85,000 troops (compared to the much larger forces Ukraine maintained or later negotiated in subsequent frameworks).

• Weapon and Equipment Caps: Strict quantitative and qualitative ceilings were demanded on Ukrainian military hardware, including deep restrictions on armored combat vehicles and tanks, artillery and rocket systems, combat aircraft and anti-air assets

• Missile Range Bans: Moscow demanded a complete prohibition on Ukraine acquiring or possessing long-range missile systems.

• Foreign Aid and Alliances Ban: Ukraine was required to renounce NATO aspirations, ban foreign military bases or troops, and prohibit joint military exercises or Western military aid.

• Veto Power: Russia insisted on a security guarantee structure that would grant Moscow (along with other permanent UN Security Council members) a veto over any international intervention if Ukraine were attacked again.

Source: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-20...

This is basically capitulation, and absolutely unacceptable for any sovereign state. No serious national leader would agree to this, and Russia refused to compromise. Ukrainians had no choice but to fight. The demands would result in a nation that is so defenseless that they would inevitably end up as a Russian vassal state in the near future.

Your source is the Atlantic Council, a neocon warmongering think tank backed by the US military industrial complex. In your link they cite themselves and Radio Free Europe, which is a US propaganda outlet formed during the Cold War, initially funded by the CIA. Just look up what the negotiators involved said. This is from Davyd Arakhamia, who headed the negotiations:

"[Russia] really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO. In fact, this was the key point. Everything else was simply rhetoric and political 'seasoning' about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah." [1] The article continues, "When asked why Ukraine did not agree to this point, Arakhamia replied that there was no confidence in the Russians, because they were ready to promise anything."

That's exactly how they would act if they didn't really care about much of anything except the NATO aspect. There was even the posturing between the two parties on who was making more of a compromise in the agreements [2], which reflects not only how successful they were, but was a clear sign of it being on the verge of being signed. Basically everything was being set up to have a 'I'm going to sue you for $20 billion dollars, but I'll settle it out of court right now for $50.' I imagine Russia simply did not imagine it could possibly fail, because it makes no sense for it to fail. Then the West enters the stage.

[1] - https://www.yahoo.com/news/head-ukraines-leading-party-claim...

[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20220404023417/https://www.teleg... (archive since The Telegraph currently seems down?)

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