mopsi

  > Any political action under violence, and then the threat of violence (whether it be by so called "revolutionaries" or an army) resulting in the opposition capturing power undemocratically is exactly that - a coup ...

There was no-one to threaten, because Yanukovych's support base evaporated overnight after he became responsible for getting a large number of protesters killed. Even his own party broke with him. He had no supporters left.

  > Again deliberately avoiding the context with selective facts that are irrelevant. /---/ remember the tape leak about the US planning who to install in Ukraine?

The "context" is a standard mishmash of Russian tropes and the phone call you keep bringing up is a perfect example of that. Nobody in the real world cares about Nuland, she's just an insignificant US state department bureaucrat (you can test yourself by trying to name any of her successors). Her phonecall with the US ambassador to Ukraine, discussing whom they'd prefer to see in the next government, is supposed to be a huge smoking-gun evidence of a "coup", when really, it's not. You and I could discuss whom we'd like to see as the next leader of China after Xi, but that does not make us kingmakers nor mean that we're plotting a coup in China.

Next week, the US is holding midterm elections. At any given moment, there are probably hundreds of phone calls taking place between all sorts of people discussing whom they'd like to see in the House and Senate. A bunch of Ukrainians are probably discussing among themselves who would be the best for them too. You'd be a fool to characterize that as "planning who to install" in the US. Of all the Ukraine-related talking points, this one is easily one of the laziest.

  > Benett has also said that all the negotiations were very carefully coordinated with the US, Germany, France and UK. And once Putin and Zelensky compromised and agreed to a deal and a ceasefire, the West then blocked it because they wanted to "keep striking Russia". 

If you're relying on English subtitles, then they're a well-known mistranslation. Bennett meant that he coordinated his peace-mediation visit with Ukraine, the US, France and Germany. Initially the US expressed skepticism about the potential of his visit, while France was supportive. Bennett himself gave a 50/50 chance. The discovery of Bucha massacre made them conclude that the mediation effort was pointless and they stopped (mistranslated as "blocked") pursuing it further.

Russian propagandists took this lengthy interview out of context and clipped different parts together to show Bennett saying that "the US, Germany and France BLOCKED Ukraine from signing peace with Russia and FORCED Ukraine to continue fighting". That's an obvious distortion.

Despite all the huffing and puffing about other people falling for propaganda, you're the one who's fallen for a cheap trick here.

  > It's all in the public domain, even if you wish to ignore it:

You said that "Putin had publicly said that if Ukraine joins NATO, Ukraine would do so without Crimea and the Eastern regions." There is no such public statement, that's why you can't find a better source than hearsay on a blog.

  > Sure, if you wish to resort to technicalities and legalspeak, that is partly true. But the delaration of independence, and subsequently the constitution of Ukraine proclaimed that it would not join any military alliance.

The declaration of independence makes no mention of neutrality, nor does the constitution: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Act_of_Declaration_of_Indepen..., https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ukraine,_1996

Neutrality was mentioned only once in the earliest declaration of sovereignity (July 1990) as an aspirational goal. It was not included in subsequent legislation like the 1993 law on the main directions of Ukraine's foreign policy or the 1996 constitution, because it was considered an obstacle to cooperation with European regional security frameworks. So contrary to your claim, Ukraine did not make a commitment of neutrality to anyone.

  > You had to carefully choose your words to write that sentence, didn't you? Otherwise NATO invasions post 1975 shows how little the Western superpowers have cared about international law or sovereignty ...

The words of the Helsinki Final Act were very carefully chosen by Russians, who initiated the security conference with their Budapest Appeal of 1969. "Inviolability of frontiers" (borders) was their central focus. The Helsinki Final Act is enormously important, because it was consensus-based: it took years to negotiate the final text, which all European governments agreed to in every single word. And as I've said twice already, no country besides Russia has claimed another country's territory as its own, so this "everyone's the same" narrative doesn't hold water.

  > Ofcourse, those who support the "revolution" obviously don't like when it is labelled a coup

A legislature voting to hold early elections is not a coup by any common definition.

  > The medals, the manufactured controversy over the dates are all irrelevant

No, they're not. The official campaign medal says that the invasion of Crimea began on 20 February 2014. The first Russian troop movements (810th marine brigade) were observed on the same date. That's the difficult thing with lying: you have to have a really good memory to cover all the ways that the truth can slip out.

  > Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has publicly stated in an interview that he took a message from Putin to Zelensky that Russia would not invade Ukraine if he publicly committed to not join NATO.

This is another factually incorrect statement. Benett met Putin on 5 March 2022, nine days after the invasion had started, so this claim is anachronistic and could not have happened the way you describe it. All these Russian narratives depend on the listener being lazy and not checking basic facts like the order of events.

  > Zelensky was willing. But all subsequent negotiations (before and during the war) failed because the western superpowers always dissuaded him from signing and committing to "permanent neutrality" - the original condition on which the USSR had granted independence to the Ukrainians

Ukraine was not "granted" independence by anyone, but USSR's central institutions imploded and Ukrainian SSR's parliament declared Ukrainian SSR independent from the USSR, prepared legislation for handing power over to a new state with new institutions, and held a referendum to gain a mandate for that. Ukrainian SSR did not sign any treaties that placed an obligation of neutrality as a precondition for independence.

  > Nearly 2+ decades back, Putin had publicly said that if Ukraine joins NATO, Ukraine would do so without Crimea and the Eastern regions.

He made no such public statement. The statement alone would've been a severe violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

  > And ofcourse, this is again something to be seen in isolation, and we should all ignore the development of the cold war, right? Selective picking of a political event without the underlying context is easy to twist to fit some narrative. Post WW2, as Russia supported the independence of western colonies, and communist revolutions everywhere, the western superpowers again turned hostile towards USSR.

There's nothing to twist. The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did everything the Russians asked of them, for which Russians thanked them with tremendous suffering over the following 50 years. WWII had not yet ended and the Cold War had not yet begun, when Russians were already carrying out mass deportations of civilians to Siberian labour camps. The first major action was in 1941. The goal was to exterminate the professional class (managers, merchants, politicians, doctors, teachers, etc) who were authority figures in the society and could pose a challenge to the communist dictatorship that Russians had set up.

The Cold War was triggered by the same Russian suppression of independence of other European nations during the final phase of WWII and in its immediate aftermath. After all that, is it really a surprise that the phrase "Russian security concerns" is now met with ridicule? How about restoring British rule over India to satisfy "British security concerns"?

  > In other words, Russia as a superpower is not doing anything different to what western superpowers do (or have done).

As I said, this is false. Since the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, Russia is the only country to have invaded another European country by force and declared its territory to be its own.

  > The west was more successful here as the western backed coup managed to overthrow the democratically elected Russian friendly

There was no coup in Ukraine. Coup is commonly defined as an illegal takeover of power by a small group of people. In Ukraine, the national parliament voted to hold early elections and the next president was elected by 18 million voters soon thereafer. This does not fit anny

  > Russia recognized the coup for what it was - a foreign backed coup - and so immediately annexed Crimea (to protect its own military interests).

Can't be true. The Russian military campaign medal "For the Return of Crimea" issued to the participants inscribes the start of the campaign as 20 February 2014. The public tender for manufacturing them was issued 17 December 2013. That was months before the "coup". Photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Medal_Fo...

  > Zelensky was elected on a platform to unite the people /---/ He in fact exacerbated the issue by using violence against East Ukrainians, triggering a civil war.

I honestly don't know what "civil war" you are talking about. By the time Zelensky was voted into office in 2019, the fighting in Eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian forces had virtually ceased and did not restart until the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

  >  All that said, a major reason for Russians dropping the advance towards Kiev, and later tactically withdrawing,, was because of request for urgent negotiations by the west and Ukraine.

Sour grapes.

  > As is any media outlet, funded by the government, like the BBC, NPR, DW or PressTV.

BBC, NPR and DW are not under the editorial control of their respective governments, as can be witnessed from their coverage, which is often unfavorable, especially NPR of Trump. RT has no such independence. RT's editorial decisions are taken by Alexey Gromov, the first deputy chief of staff of the Putin's administration. Unlike Trump, notice how Putin, Lavrov, et al never complain about the domestic press being unfair, because they are the press. Don't like an article? Pick a phone and the article disappears, sometimes with its author.

  > Stalin's main concern was always Hitler and Germany, for historical reasons.

Stalin infamously misjudged Hitler's intentions and dismissed mounting warnings that Germany was preparing to attack the USSR, which caused catastrophic losses when Germany did eventually attack. Entire armies vanished into thin air, millions of soldiers were taken prisoner in a few months. Stalin was paralyzed by disbelief and issued a flood of nonsensical orders that made things only worse. Stalin expected the fruitful cooperation to last at least until Germany had defeated the UK. During their alliance, Russians were providing strategic products like oil in huge quantities to Germany. Cargo trains carrying grain were arriving at border stations even on the morning of the German attack.

  > No one can confidently say that if Poland had acquiesced to Russian terms to provide right of way to the Russian military, and for a stage hold territory, backed by British and the French guarantees of sovereignty, Soviet Russia would not have withdrawn after defeating the Germans.

There is literally a counterexample in the neighboring Lithuania. Lithuanian government accepted all demands, and Russian forces did not leave until 1994, causing enourmous amounts of suffering over 50 years of occupation. This happened all across Europe. Most of Central and Eastern Europe was covered by communist dictatorships under Russian control until the USSR collapsed in 1991, and military forces took further few years to remove, last ones left by 1994.

  > And ofcourse, you guys have always upheld that, have you? (cough NATO invasions cough). Look up every western action against another country that was done without UN approval - it's all illegal to the rest of the world. Like I said, you guys have no moral standing to preach to the rest ...

The Helsinki peace process and the agreement reached there has little to do with generic anti-American rhetoric. The Helsinki Final Act is rarely mentioned by talking heads on social media, so I'm not surprised how few people have heard of it, but it is one of the foundational documents in international relations. In 1975, representatives from all European countries (except for Albania and Andorra) - east and west, north and south, and some from the middle too - assembed in Helsinki to agree on how to reduce Cold War tensions in Europe in the name of regional security and cooperation. One of the key adopted principles was that no European country may invade another country by force and declare its territory to be its own. Since 1975, Russia has been the only country to violate this principle by declaring four Ukrainian regions integral parts of the Russian Federation.

It is such a blatant violation of established norms that even some of Russia's closest allies like Belarus have not recognized it.

Take your time to set up the tools and just build something small. Create a personal website, or a calendar that helps to track friends' birthdays, or something else of that sort. It's a good way to calm yourself down, because it will give you a good picture of both the capabilities and the limitations of AI.

I've found it very liberating that I can handle some of the tedious parts of a project to AI. In the end, I spend perhaps the same amount of time on a project, but more of it goes to important work and less gets wasted on plumbing.

The other side of the same coin is that the core audience probably prefers such style, and that's why companies use it and AI now mimics it.

I cannot imagine a typical suburban American consumer tolerating a chatbot as blunt and direct as Linus.

  > NATO members were already preparing for the proxy war with Russia by sabotaging diplomatic negotiations 

The only proxy forces in this war have been the "people's militias" of the fictious and short-lived Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, which compromised of unmarked members of Russian armed forces, security services, and people under their direct control. Nothing else comes close.

  > As for Russia's initial battle loses ... Russia had surrounded Kiev, and the only reason it stopped was because Zelensky and the EU superpowers offered to negotiate with them.

The assault on Kyiv failed because the airborne assault did not manage to establish a usable bridgehead that the ground forces were supposed to link up with. Instead of a rapid advance toward Kyiv, Russian ground forces were met by fierce Ukrainian resistance and ran out of fuel, food and ammunition, because they had brought supplies for only a few days. After resupply efforts failed, Russian forces became sitting ducks and had to withdraw or face wipeout.

  > Cambodia rejects the use or threats of force and does not side with any of the parties in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Hun Sen has declared. The premier stated that support for any party in what he believed had evolved into a proxy battle between the former USSR and US-led NATO countries would violate the Kingdom’s own policy of non-alignment with military blocs.

He changed his position soon thereafter:

  Prime Minister Hun Sen has reiterated that Cambodia does not support the forceful occupation of one country by another, in comments that apparently referred to the Russian-Ukraine conflict as an “invasion”. “We don’t support the invasion of one country by another. This is our absolutely firm position,” he said while presiding over the inauguration of National Road 21 connecting Kandal province to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. “This is not a small issue because it creates a bad habit for the world: the stronger nation attacking the weaker one. So, if the stronger nation attacks the weaker one, will they attack us [Cambodia]? Then who will help us? This must be clear-cut. This is why we must have a clear position,” he explained.

Good of you to mention bullying. He spoke about that too:

  Cambodia was one of 141 countries to co-sponsor the draft resolution of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on March 2 condemning Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine. Hun Sen revealed recently that there were countries that allegedly lobbied for Cambodia to abstain on the Russia-Ukraine vote, but did not state which ones.

https://phnompenhpost.com/national/politics/pm-kingdom-again...

  > This is what the Russian media recently claimed - https://rt-english.com

RT is trash-tier propaganda outlet, on the same level as Breitbart and Infowars. It deserves no attention.

  > And when you mention that it is only prudent to also mention that Soviet Russia made that pact only because the French and British refused to make a pact with USSR, against Hitler, in the first place.

It's also prudent to mention the reason for refusal. Russia demanded the right to place troops into Poland and expected the French and the British to coerce the Polish government into accepting it, yet again under "security concerns". Poland was naturally opposed to the presence of foreign soldiers on their soil, out of fear that the troops would never leave. History proved them correct. The forces that entered Poland during WWII remained in Poland until 1993 and were instrumental in establishing and sustaining the Russian-controlled communist dictatorship.

Stalin was simply shopping around for a way to exploit the looming German-Polish war and gain an opportunity to invade Poland. The French and the British did not agree to pressure the Polish government, so Stalin struck a deal with Hitler who had no such inhibitions.

  >  It did pre-emptively use the military against many of them when their governments refused to cooperate with it

The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania accepted all demands and in return they were overthrown from the very same military bases on their soil that were supposed to satisfy Russian "security concerns". National governments were replaced with communist dictatorships under Russian control, and the entire countries remained under full military occupation until 1994. During this period, Russians committed genocide against the local populations, through actions such as mass deportations to Siberian labor camps.

  > USSR never desired to conquer Finland

Facts speak a different story. Immediately at the start of the war, Russians established the Finnish Democratic Republic and its government and signed a treaty with it that subordinated Finland to the USSR. Finnish DR was supposed to take the place of the legitimate Finnish government, much like Russians set up puppet governments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which "asked" to be absorbed into the USSR, to add a veneer of legitimacy to the conquest. After the invasion failed, the Finnish DR was quietly disbanded.

  > Only a moron would believe that Russia has no right to be considered about its "security", or sphere of influence, and thus it is ok to ignore it.

Only morons go around yapping about "Russian security concerns" when Russia itself is the main threat to peace and security in Europe. Russia has severely violated the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which established guiding principles for security and cooperation in Europe. Among other things, it was agreed in Helsinki that using force to violate territorial integrity and redraw European borders was unacceptable conduct for any European state.

Had you picked Ericsson or Nokia, there wouldn't even have been anyone comparable to put on the right side of the expression.

It's really strange to see that for so many people "tech" means just a handful of US megacorporations, none of which produce critical products like medical equipment or marine engines or industrial robots or railway signaling systems.

  > And without NATO support, it is apparent that Russia would have achieved all its military objectives in Ukraine a long time ago.

Let me guess, in three days?

The invasion plan crumbled before Ukraine got any foreign aid worth mentioning. The airborne attack of Hostomel airport was successfully repelled, leading to failure to capture Kyiv, leading to failure to decapitate the military command structure, leading to successful coordinated counterattacks on the overstretched invasion force.

Five years and 1.5 million casualties later, Russia has still not managed to recover where it was a few weeks into the war, because it had no realistic plan B after the surprise attack failed.

  > That's just normal wartime propaganda - both sides have claimed that civilians are being deliberately "targeted". 

Sure. That's why we need to go beyond claims and investigate facts. Russian terror on Ukrainian civilians is widely documented. Eg, in Kherson, where Russian attacks are known as "human safari". UN: "From July 2024, Russian forces have recurrently killed and injured civilians in an area stretching over more than 100 kilometres along the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Province. The drone attacks have been widespread, systematic and conducted as part of a coordinated state policy. /---/ The circumstances of the attacks, the videos, and the explicit threatening text posts demonstrate that Russian armed forces and those supporting them have committed acts or threats of violence for the primary purpose of spreading terror among the civilian population, in violation of international humanitarian law." https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/05/un-commissio...

  > And how many of those from the Global South has offered anything more substantial than words in this war?

Morocco provided tanks, Cambodia sent military specialists to teach demining, Sudan provided mortar ammunition, etc. The "South-vs-North" dichotomy is artificial and mainly lives as yet another Russian propaganda trope. The territorial integrity of sovereign states is such a fundamental principle that it is understood and valued around the world, perhaps even more so in countries that have themselves suffered foreign invasions and colonization and are still recovering from the long-lasting damage.

  > I obviously have no idea where you plucked those numbers from as I have never read anything similar

Stated by the Russian MoD, widely circulated by all major Russian news outlets, including the state-owned TASS: https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/28046063

Russian war correspondents openly ridicule such statements, as well as comments like yours, according to which everything in Ukraine has already been blown up five times over. Yet the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. Russian official recruitment target is 34k soldiers per month, of which about 29k gets filled. Losses have been 37k this month, expected to reach 50k by the end. Territorial gains since the start of the summer, the most advantageous time of the year, have been 180 sq km in total, which is a rounding error in a country of 603 000 sq km. The numbers speak for themselves.

  > The only reason Finland retains its independence, government and armed forces is because the pragmatic Finnish leaders capitulated to Russian security concerns, agreeing to all their terms.

Not quite so. In the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939, Hitler and Stalin agreed how to divide Eastern Europe. Germany was given a free hand to invade Poland, Russians were expected to attack at the same time from east, but stalled and attacked Poland a few weeks later. After German and Russian forces had met in Poland and held a joint victory parade, Russians set their sights on Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which Germany had left to them with the pact. Map: https://konzervativizmus.sk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/36990...

All four got ultimatums demanding military bases on their soil to satisfy Russian "security concerns". Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania accepted the demands. Those bases were then used as staging areas for overthrowing national governments and installing puppet regimes loyal to Moscow that unleashed widespread terror against the local population to keep them under control. These oppressive puppet governments survived for half a century, until the end of the USSR. Latvia suffered the most. By the end of the 1980s, Latvians were on the verge of becoming a minority in their own country due to resettlement policies of Russians into Latvia.

Finland was the only one that refused the demands and took up arms and gained a victory by remaining independent instead of following the tragedy of its southern neighbors.

This is why Russian "security concerns" is not a phrase anyone can take seriously in North-Eastern Europe. Everyone's already seen what it means. Talking about Russian "security concerns" in a serious tone is like walking around with a giant "IDIOT" painted on your forehead.

  > As for Putin's comment on Poland and Hitler, the context was that Poland had helped Hitler and Germany in the division of Czechoslovakia, but when the Poles refused to give up the Danzig corridor, Hitler, who looked down at the Poles, decided to make an example of them and attack them.

Once again you fail to separate artificial pretexts from the truth. In Hitler's own words: "Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies, of the settlement of the Baltic problems." (23 May 1939 speech to his top military commanders, later used as key evidence at the Nuremberg trials as a proof of premeditated plan for conquest of Poland.)

Hitler was ideologically motivated to conquer Europe using North American westward expansion as a model (mixed with German agrarian romanticism), and what Poland did or didn't do had ultimately little importance. Putin, too, has an ideological worldview that was drilled into him at the KGB: the security apparatus mentality of a totalitarian dictatorship, layered on top of a much broader Russian imperialism, which is rooted in centuries of territorial expansion and the subjugation of other peoples. Russia didn't come to span 11 timezones through acts of kindness, you know.

And the second reply to him calls his father-in-law an orange turd. Gotta love how social media has erased class divides; even the onepercenters can't escape what peasants think of them.

  >  Ukrainian estimates put their potential there at 20 million soldiers

That is the theoretical maximum potential if you conscript absolutely everyone, every single male, in eg 20-45 age range: https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2026/ By that measure, Ukraine has millions of soldiers available, too.

That is pratical only in the event of total societal breakdown like Nazi Germany in its final months when there was no economy left and institutions like schools, hospitals, factories and utilities had ceased to work. Everything was thrown to the front while the people in cities were malnourished, had no power nor running water, and died of minor diseases due to lack of medical supplies.

Putin is too afraid to even announce a regular mobilization and resorts to dirty tactics coercion of poor rural ethnic minorities to fill the ranks, because the backlash that would follow a general mobilization would be a major threat to Putin's grip on power. Look up the effect of soldiers' mothers movement during the Chechen wars, or how the forced conscription into the Soviet-Afghan war (620k people over a decade) contributed to the disintegration of the USSR. Educated middle-class people accustomed to European lifestyle won't go to the front to get slaughtered like IQ 80 villagers who are up to their necks in payday loans; they will resist and cause major disruption among the productive urban population that keeps the country running.

These millions of soldiers exist only on paper. The actual situation on the ground is pretty dire. Ukraine hit another all-time record yesterday, killing or disabling 2250 Russians in a single day. The entire month of October is trending to hit a record too, 50k casualties in a single month. Russian recruitment target is 34k per month.

Except that Ukraine's position is not deteriorating, but it's significantly better than a year or two ago due to strike drones that became operational in March/April 2026, and expected to improve further when FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles become operational in large numbers in late 2026/early 2027.

You are using some very poor sources if they have given you the idea that Russia has 20 million soldiers to mobilize. Russia is facing a severe shortage of manpower too, made worse by the fact that they rely on constant costly attacks by small groups of infantry that have very short lifespans, whereas Ukraine is increasingly automating the war and relying on unmanned weapons more and more. For example, Ukraine reached parity in drone strikes in early 2026 and is now carrying out more drone strikes than Russia. It's increasingly rare for Russian soldiers to meet any Ukrainians before they die; about 80% Russians die by drones as drones have become significantly more lethal. In 2024, drones killed about 1/3 of soldiers on impact. Now they kill about 2/3 of them.

Also, the "slow but steady advances" are a complete Pyrrhic victory if you look at the numbers. Russia has gained less than 1000 sq km this year at a cost of at least 100 000 lives. Ukraine is over 600 000 sq km in size. The daily number of casualties hit a new record a few days ago, exceeding 2000, about half of which are deaths. Russia has no hope reaching the territorial control it had 30 days into the war, let alone anything beyond that. It is by all objective measures one of the worst military disasters in the entire Russian history.

No point in deploying them in advance. Finland has proper winters and with the freezing/thawing cycle, the mines would end up god knows where. I myself once discovered an unexploded WWII aerial bomb that popped up out of nowhere one spring on a field that was in constant farming use.

A little too vague for my comfort.

  > That means that once a peace deal is signed, Ukraine will need to be permanently armed to the teeth, much like South Korea. That would ensure they can defend themselves without NATO membership. If Putin doesn't like that outcome, well he shouldn't have invaded in the first place.

Russia demands heavy restrictions on the size of the Armed Forced of Ukraine, essentially turning it into a small, lightly armed, and easily defeatable infantry force, with a veto on any foreign military assistance to Ukraine if Russia were to attack them again. The goal of this is cartoonishly obvious, and makes a peace deal unrealistic, too.

Direct monetary figures are misleading, even if adjusted for inflation. The USSR got 5.3% of the total economic output of the US during 1941-1945 (combined). Ukraine got about 0.45%.

I went through the standard validation many times and the entire process felt like a security theater. For example, I had to upload a scan of my ID, but I know for a fact that in my jurisdiction no private entity can access government databases to validate that it is a genuine ID and not a photoshopped image. The government provides a SSO that third parties can use, but none of the main cert issuers implemented it, even for EV certs. They just trusted a JPEG.

It's like those arcane verification checks used by US-based services that ask for utility bills, as if they had any way of verifying an invoice issued by a small utility provider in rural Finland.

  > It is a fact that Russia is fighting a NATO trained, NATO armed, NATO supported and NATO financed Ukrainian army.

The idea that Russia is fighting the entire collective might of NATO is a popular and a convenient excuse in Russia to explain its failures, but that's very far from the truth. The most powerful member of NATO, the United States, accounts for about 60-65% of the combined military spending of all NATO members, but its support for Ukraine since the end of 2024 barely registers on charts: https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/_processed_/1/5/csm_mi...

In other words, 2/3 of NATO (by expenditure) is not participating in supporting Ukraine. The ten largest supporters of Ukraine (by contributions as a share of national GDP) are in fact all countries that share a border with Russia and prefer to help Ukrainians kick Russians on an already established battlefield instead of waiting until their borders get violated too.

  > Otherwise, why is Zelensky worried that the US might cutoff intelligence access to it?

Cutoff from US sources is very painful, because the US has the best early warning system for detecting ballistic missile launches and loss of access leaves Ukrainian civilians without a chance to seek shelter before the missiles hit. Military value of such revenge attacks is near-zero. It is just pure terror against the civilian population like Hitler's V2 raids against London, and it's deeply shameful of the US to contribute to the terror by withholding information.

  > While most Europeans might be ignorant about it, the rest of the world recognizes the simple fact that this is actually a proxy war between western superpowers and Russia (+ China), where neither side actually cares much about Ukraine and sees it as a pawn.

Trump's temper tantrums over his inability to force Ukraine to do what he wants clearly disprove the "proxy war" narrative, another popular Russian propaganda trope. As to the rest of the world, here's how the vote went on a UN resolution that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a violation of UN's charter and demanded a full and unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...

Likewise, popular opinion of Russia has also sharply fallen. South America saw an especially sharp drop, scroll down to "Changes in Disapproval of Russia's Leadership Between 2021 and 2022" chart: https://news.gallup.com/poll/474596/russia-suffers-global-re... Researchers summarised: "Despite significant Russian efforts to spread disinformation about the conflict, the massive shift in attitudes toward Russian leadership demonstrates that the geopolitical significance of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not lost on most of the world’s population."

  > It is common knowledge that Ukraine moved most of their Air Force assets to other countries, to prevent its destruction. It was the right move, but also makes them less useful as it isn't immediately available when needed.

Interesting way to gloss over the fact that the Ukrainian Air Force never had the 674 airplanes and 284 helicopters that the Russian Ministry of Defence claims to have destroyed. Not even close. Do the fantasies about the destruction of Ukraine's drone manufacturing industry come from the same sources?

  > All these battle tactics, and some battle victories, doesn't change the basic maths of warfare though - even with the limited support from allies, Ukrainian military is outnumbered and outgunned by the more powerful Russian military and thus cannot defeat it alone. That is why they are losing - they have lost soldiers, territory, their citizens, their economic infrastructure and economy incapacitated to the point of no return.

Almost all of that was true of Finland as well when Russians invaded in 1939, but the Winter War is considered a Finnish victory, because Finland retained its independence, government and armed forces, and Russians failed to conquer and absorb the country, despite enormous numerical and material superiority. The Finnish term for the outcome is torjuntavoitto, literally translated as "repelling victory".

  > Comparing Putin to Hitler is laughable.

Why? Putin brings him up quite often in his long pseudohistoric rants and has said that it was Poland's fault that Germany invaded. In the interview given to Tucker Carlson, he said that Hitler was effectively forced into the invasion after Poland refused to give in to Hitler's ultimatums. "Great" minds think alike, it seems.

Dead wrong on both points. Having a license to publish something on a website does not mean that the publisher has the right to grant sublicenses or transfer the license to someone else. For example, stock image licenses are normally non-sublicensable and non-transferable.

  > Don't forget, against a NATO trained, NATO armed, NATO supported and NATO financed army.

The tendency among Russian apologists to belittle Ukraine at every opportunity and deny its independence is a defining trait, isn't it. The credit for keeping the Russian invaders at bay goes to Ukrainian drone manufacturers and drone crews, who are responsible for about 80% of all battlefield deaths. NATO countries have neither comparable expertise nor gear.

  > Russia has destroyed most of Ukraine's local missile and drone manufacturing units this year

"Mostly" sounds modestly, if we take into account that Russia claims to have destroyed Ukrainian air force about three times over, yet Ukrainian MIGs keep flying. Likewise, the remaining drone manufacturers must be working overtime then, because the monthly Russian casualties in September were the highest of 2026, climbing from 32k in January to 46k in September. There are early reports that at least some Russian frontline units are no longer receiving reinforcements as they did before, because the people allocated for this year have been expended and there is no-one left to replace them. Earlier this year, Ukraine estimated that the breaking point would be somewhere around 50k casualties per month.

  > With Ukraine, their major goal is to ensure that it remains a neutral state whose army and territory can't be used to economically or militarily threaten Russia ever.

The only place where I see such narratives besides the dead comments on HN is Russian state TV. Elsewhere, even among the Russian domestic experts, taking these propaganda narratives seriously is a quick way to discredit oneself. Hitler said that he invaded Poland to break Anglo-French encirclement of Germany and secure the country against aggression, yet we don't take such nonsense seriously, do we?

In WWII, it took the USSR 14 months to fight against Germany all through Ukraine, for about 1.4 million killed. The current Russian war against Ukraine is in its 56th month, losses are ~0.6 million killed and Russia holds about 19% of Ukraine, having gained 0.3% over the past year with ~140k killed.

The numbers speak for themselves on who's winning and who's losing the war.

Confusing crawlbots for spambots missed the far bigger story: Russian government has encouraged adoption of digital services and centralization of them into a small number of handpicked "winners", who form the backbone of state surveillance system. This made the modern infrastructure a very attractive target. Ukrainian strikes on the datacenters are comparable to AWS, Google, Stripe and Dropbox going down, with no timeline when the services would be restored. It's been a week and Yandex still shows everything in red: https://status.yandex.cloud/en/dashboard

  > The US banning open weight models arguably keeps that path open. 

Difficult to see how that could be implemented in practice. Ok, let's imagine only Anthropic and OpenAI hold a US government license to provide AI services in the US. But what would stop US companies from sending the data overseas for processing? Locking that down would require a huge paradigm shift, given how fast and loose they currently are with their (and especially customers') data.

Unfortunately, they don't. Dynamics: https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/_processed_/1/5/csm_mi...

  > People are not snatched off the streets in Russia

"The authorities in Penza, a regional capital of around half a million south-east of Moscow, got unlucky: one of the most recent enlistment round-ups of men in the region was filmed by the men’s furious wives. After the clip of men being forced off to war spread across social media, the local military commissar, the police and even the Defence Ministry had to scramble to explain themselves and brand the viral video “fake news”. But by all appearances, the round-ups in Penza region have been going on for at least six months."

https://en.zona.media/article/2026/06/23/penza_raids

  > 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

No, the notion of Ukraine falling in three days did not come from Milley. It was a common sentiment in Russia at the time and nowadays it's considered a massive intelligence failure that is openly spoken about.

Vladimir Chirkin, the commander of Russian ground forces 2012-2013:

  "Everyone, if you recall, started saying in February 2022 that the war would be over in three days. We'll beat them all now," said Chirkin in an interview on November 27 with Russian radio outlet RBC. "But unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I would give our entire Russian intelligence community a failing grade," he added.

  In the RBC interview, Chirkin said that Moscow had "traditionally" miscalculated the balance of power, underestimating its enemy and overestimating the performance of its own forces. Chirkin said that Russian leadership had been misled into thinking that 70% of Ukraine's population supported a pro-Russian government. "It turned out to be exactly the opposite. 30% for us and 70% against," he said. "During the first few weeks, we were taught a seriously cruel lesson."

The bots may still depend on resources provided by Yandex, eg by using their AI services to compose messages. API goes down, bots fail to generate text, botspam disappears.

  > The war logically follows from Russia’s security goals.

This framing is found only in propaganda put out for foreign consumption. Professionals like Kozyrev, who was the minister or foreign affairs of the Russian Federation (1990-1996) and in charge of rebuilding RF's international relations after the disintegration of the USSR, have openly called this bullshit that only manipulated idiots believe, because the "security goals" argument makes no sense whatsoever if you spend more than 10 seconds on it.

According to Kozyrev, instead of a patchwork of dysfunctional countries at war with each other like in the former Yugoslavia (with overspilling effects on Russia), EU and NATO integration helped build modern, peaceful and predictable countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which in practical terms meant "free-of-charge security" (his term) for Russia. What's there to complain about?

Furthermore, Mearsheimer et al treat countries as monoliths and completely ignore the competing interests of groups and individuals within them. Russia of the early 1990s was a flawed democracy; today it is a totalitarian dictatorship. The war against Ukraine is a downstream effect of the destruction of Russian democracy and consolidation of absolute power into the hands of Putin's security apparatus gang. Putin wants to be remembered as a "great ruler" and that's all there is to it; a small man who managed to gain absolute power, no different from Hitler.

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  > It never amazes me to encounter people who still don't know that Russia is not a democracy, that Russians have no voice and can't influence the direction of the country, that Russia has no elections and Putin (self-proclaimed President) is not a democratically elected leader.

And none of this matters, because Russia has no tradition of democracy and has always been ruled by dictators who derive their legitimacy through other means; mainly through their success in expanding the empire. The more you steal and the more people die in the process, the greater leader you are. Putin is a continuation of that tradition and enjoys widespread support among a population that shares the same vision: that Russia is a chosen nation and that being conquered by Russia is a privilege.

Russian history offers an excellent counterexample in the downfall of the USSR when Gorbachev and others lost their legitimacy. Formally, they remained the top figures in the government; in practice, people gradually stopped following them over a period of a few years as everything was disintegrating (shortage of basic products, pointless war in Afghanistan, disasters like Chernobyl, etc). The people simply chose new leaders from among themselves and turned their backs to Moscow.

For example, a police station might've simply ignored orders from the ministry of internal affairs and instead followed the recommendations of a popular local figure (often a factory manager, uni professor, journalist, artist or writer). As districts increasingly acted this way, Moscow gradually lost control over the police force, which became decentralized and locally run. In the end, bosses in Moscow could yell all they wanted into a phone, but that did not move a single police officer on the ground.

Russian central government is currently nowhere near such loss of legitimacy. Tens of millions of people carry out the orders of their Führer every day. Some have stepped into a foreign country while carrying a gun. Others are milling artillery shells or programming cruise missiles. Some are sitting on HN trying to convince the world how their Führer has no other option than to murder Ukrainian children every night.

There is no pushback worth mentioning. Last year, out of 140 million people living in Russia, only 38 were arrested for anti-war protests. Add a few hundred more for anti-war posts on the social media. Completely insignificant numbers. Russians on HN will gladly explain how oppressive the climate in Russia has become and how difficult (gasp!) it is to protest, but they fail to recognize the downstream effects: that Ukrainians have to pay with their lives every single day for the cancer that the cowardice of Russians has unleashed. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are in mortal danger right now on the frontline, trying to stop what Russians are too afraid to confront themselves.