>no draft
The sensible humans of HN continue to be hilariously misinformed:
643 karma · joined April 12, 2018
The sensible humans of HN continue to be hilariously misinformed:
Millions are gone for good. Damage is measured in the hundreds of billions. TPPs are gone. Good chunk of the land gone, most of the coast.
Men are getting abducted on the streets, into the trenches within days or weeks. Others drown or freeze to death on the Western borders, attempting to flee. Hundreds of thousands in hiding. Villages without men. Towns with 2% buried already.
Every day the hole gets deeper. Every day a bit faster.
And you talk about “achievements”. This is not a video game.
Unless you’re some Beltway creature. Unless you’re one of the “Holden Bloodfeasts” of the world. In that case it’s nothing but a long, long list of “achievements“, I suppose.
As they keep saying. If they mean it, too, nukes will fly.
No. The losses we have on tape—what and where—paint a clear picture: They were not prepared and paid for it.
It’s true that the depth of Ukraine’s misery sometimes gets exaggerated, by Ukrainians themselves and by friendly Western journalists. With a singular purpose: to ensure continuation and increase of deliveries.
So what you’re doing here amounts to attacking a straw man.
>ignores reality and correctness
That is: The daily flood of gore. Funny numbers from the ever-dwindling crowd of “OSINT” peddlers. Bromides from Kopemans and Copelees.
Threatened? They tried that two or three times but Ukraine never stopped being Ukraine. Always losing a couple million people between these attempts.
As Chinese FM Wang expressed today: The rest of the world is not fooled by the West’s rhetoric. They see the hypocrisy and the warmongering, they understand the true intent.
And again. Unlike the West, China continues to show much restraint. Less than it used to, true. But they have quite a bit of room left to escalate. The West has not. Not where it doesn’t get painful and dangerous.
Which is probably where we’re going. So be it.
The reason it was “de-escalatory”: It helped Iran prove what it sought to prove: no AD in the world will stop their missiles from getting through. For Israel it provided the face-saving “99.9%”.
Also, the Ukraine situation has no Jordan, Iraq, accessible ocean (ask the Turks about that) to operate from.
This is a failure to understand the situation—China’s restraint so far. And that for the West such actions come with consequences now.
China’s (again, rather limited) involvement will not decrease. There is much the West can do to increase it.
The other would almost certainly end up being called WW3, and would likely involve at least a limited nuclear exchange.
Yeah and then they lost 10 GW of electricity generation capacity in a week. More today, more to come. Maybe that was it. The Americans seemed to think so.
>not the kind of war Russia ever thought about
Did the NATO ubermenschen of March ‘22 imagine getting themselves fried in musty old Soviet bunkers? Did they imagine they’d end up burning a cool quarter trillion and still lose? Did they picture their fancy schmancy hangar queens stuck deep in mud, being among the easiest prey for the new threats? Did they picture entire Patriot batteries gone in one strike? Did they unironically think they could “just drive around” or punch through the minefields? Did they ever consider the logistics of something that wasn’t a three week airland wet dream? Barrels? Shells?
Did Ukropians think twice before dooming themselves demographically and economically, for updoots and likes?
Good news, this isn’t even the funny part yet.
So in short, 1–2 destroyed, 0/4 destroyed by Ukraine. Also, even Budallo said six A-50U remaining.
Also, they are not “irreplacable”. A-50U production got restarted, there’s a number of airframes to upgrade/refurbish, plus there’s the A-100 project.
13241 / 334623 = 0.040
One and a half years of believing sanctions + weapons + training + the greatest ever kontrastnupol were going to do the trick. They really thought it was going to work.
Really strange seeing people (often gleefully) parrot these talking points, unaware of their own malaise.
On top of that, there's inflation and the value-added tax, which mean that, once all the extra costs have been covered, only about €50 to €70 billion will be left over to spend on actual hardware. "The longer you have this money sit around somewhere, the longer factors like inflation and interest payments have to eat away at this pile," Loss said.[0]
There has been some criticism from European allies, and within Germany, that so many big orders have been placed in the United States.
Depriving local industry. And of what use is this anyway. Why on earth would Germany need ballistic missile defense etc.
>quickly
Two years in, the entire West still cannot outproduce Russia. Let alone Russia plus friends. For the most part, dependable large orders—necessary for expansion—aren’t coming. Overall, deindustrialization is only accelerating.
Italy just ordered 132 L2s for 2027–2037. Pathetic timeframe. These tanks will be obsolete by then.
>NATO wants America in
There is no NATO without the US. Something could conceivably carry the same name but it would not be the same thing. NATO is and has always been an instrument of American control over Europe.
>angry orange political candidate
Remember when Trump ordered a reduction of the occupation force in Germany (35k then)? Well, Serious People got Very Nervous and the military stalled the order. In fact, the generals were in a state of barely concealed mutiny then. And now there’s 50k.
So, rest assured: Germany will be Kept Down for the foreseeable future.
[0]: https://www.dw.com/en/what-happened-to-the-german-militarys-...
Granted, a widespread problem, but, in my experience, nowhere as bad as in contemporary Germany. Why is that?
But it does inform me sometimes!
Cost of doing business.
What strange talk is this. They annexed them, period. 17 months ago.
If you were to remove the Russian forces from these two oblasts (as well as Crimea and Zaporizhzhia) these proxy forces would collapse immediately.
In 2024 (which is now) there is precisely one proxy force in this war. That would collapse immediately without support. You can’t spell its name without “rain”.
Sorry, khikhil, zrada was baked in from the start. Link related.
Anyway, you rationally bought the ticket, hope you’ll rationally enjoy the ride. Hope things never stop making sense to you.
I’m just here to correct people who are wrong.
Z-enjoyers like to quip that the only true friend the Ukrainian people have is Putin’s soft heart. The good news for everyone but Putin is that the West has enough to send to give Ukropia the 1945 ending, fulfilling the self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing I can do to change that.
Russia's folly is convenient for the West though.
I’m positive that things are going to get quite inconvenient in the EU then. The US, too, God willing. What goes around comes around, and not necessarily from the same direction. Believe it or not, not everyone enjoys life under these regimes as much as you seem to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Directorate_of_Intelligen...
A bloody eighty-year+ history of using Ukrainian nationalism against the Soviet Union/Russia and yet people waffle about “freedom”, “democracy”—the works.
I still dont understand
Step 1: Don’t get high on your own supply. Anyone’s supply.
[0]: http://archive.today/2024.02.01-224034/https://www.thetimes....
[1]: https://reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-likely-recession-...