Isn't this a war between brothers, after all? I want to hope that Russian soldiers will stop in front of the babushkas that obviously will never leave their houses, and show some compassion.
That kind of humanity is of course much harder to experience when bombing or using drones, but I do not know if they're being used.
The NYT are running interviews w/ Russian citizens; w/ the premise that a lot of them are perplexed as to why Putin ordered all of this, especially bc there are a lot of friends/relatives cross border.
So far Russia's done precision strikes and is simply rolling troops down roads. They won't encounter much resistance.
A month (or more?) ago Zelenskiy said he's not sending Ukrainians to die. Today there's a lot of tough talk but there's no indication that Ukrainians will put up a fight and die en masse...
According to a friend of mine who served as a flight engineer in the red army until somewhen in the nineties your post pretty much nails it.
He called a former Ukrainian colleague today. According to him Russia obtained complete air souvereignty today. Ukrainian air defence was destroyed by sea-launched cruise missiles. Regular Ukrainian troops are not fighting. They leave their weapons behind and go away. High ranked russian staff promised not to chase them. To the majority of Ukrainian soldiers it just feels not right to shoot russians. So Russia covered a lot of ground today without firing much. Extremist formations on both sides and Russian mercenaries are the ones who do real fighting.
This is consistent with the media insofar as you would usually expect: x killed troops in y, z troops caught, strategic installations damaged etc. You cannot get these reports if one side literally throws their guns away and goes home.
In my friend’s opinion Kiev will fall within the next few days if not tomorrow, the government will either flee or get captured and he joked there will be elections next week.
This is very false, there have been forces deserting, but not in any significant numbers.
While in the morning, attack was sudden and situation looked very bleak for Ukraine, towards the evening, army has been more or less mobilized and started to take back territory.
Unfortunately, the worst is to come.
>In my friend’s opinion Kiev will fall within the next few days if not tomorrow, the government will either flee or get captured and he joked there will be elections next week.
Not to deminish that they're people but that's basically a weekend in Chicago... For a "full scale invasion" it's nothing and would indicate that there won't be much resistance.
Because the media and everyone make it sound like it's about to be trench warfare and then urban warfare for years and the original parent I responded to implied soldiers would be gunning down babushkas...
It's bad but it's obviously modern warfare and there likely won't be massive casualties because the Ukrainians aren't marching to die since the west already abandoned them.
We were told Russia would be rolling tanks through the mud and fighting in trenches... Lots of propaganda.
And an hour ago I watched Biden say sanctions are as bad as missiles SMH...
Anyhow, the west abandoned Ukraine, I really doubt too many Ukrainians are eager to die for nothing.
Just the most absurd line of argument from OP -- there are tons of videos of dead Ukrainian soldiers, burned out tanks/APCs, videos of indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilian centers, jets firing on residential buildings, cruise missiles striking civilian airports, at least one video of a child on a bicycle being hit with a mortar.
Because the confirmed number of military KIA in the first hours of the war is only "several dozen" it's "a weekend in Chicago". Just incredibly ghoulish.
What would you have suggested? and the consequences of say putting US or NATO troops in Ukraine?
I agree we should have an even stronger response to Russia right now in terms of just completely crushing their country economically. And perhaps provided more air defense weapons.
But I wouldn't take a bet that Putin wouldn't call our bluff (of troops sitting in Ukraine). And if it's not a bluff......
Precisely. It is revolting some of the sentiments on HN regarding this make me sick.
To believe that Ukrainians will just let their country be run over is naive, what bugs me is that they are left to hang in the wind rather than that they receive help, that's the one thing that Putin really fears right now judging by his performance earlier, clearly aimed at persuading the public in the West that he would rain nuclear destruction on any country that decides to interfere.
Because they are under the - in my opinion mistaken - belief that they will be able to deal with this using sanctions and external pressure alone. For some reason people seem to want to believe that the counterparty here is rational even if all of the evidence is against that.
It is very much like the run up to World War II, when countries were making all kinds of deals with Hitler regarding neutrality because they believed that that would keep them out of the firing line, when in fact it enabled a war on a much larger scale than would have ever materialized if the allied sphere had immediately struck back. But even the United States only responded after Pearl Harbor. So, now we have a real problem, and the people of the Ukraine get to choose between abandoning their country, fighting back or living under the Russian jackboot for as long as it takes to plunder their country.
Well, I'll be frank: between nuclear holocaust and Ukraine going back to 1989, I pick the latter. Sucks to be Ukrainian right now, I know, but this is the time to be smart: France was overrun in a month too, and looked pretty pacific under occupation for a pretty long time, but eventually...
You mean good enough to buy NATO-grade American weapons, surely. But anyway, obviously the allegiance matters - if anything because they already got troops and missiles deployed there, so the risk for Russian assets is too high - you can hit St. Petersburg from Tallinn with little more than a fishing boat.
Besides, there is no reason for Putin to claim those, nor a real strategic value. Ukraine has value: the pipelines, the coast, the Dnieper, and the example for Belarusians not to get ideas once Lukashenko goes. That it would remain a Moscow satellite was basically the agreement post-1990, this makes it more explicit. Sucks for self-determination and all that, but again, avoiding nuclear holocaust is probably worth losing the occasional battle.
I'm going on the assumption that you haven't visited those countries or you would realize that the sentiment runs a lot deeper than being allowed to buy NATO grade American weapons, those countries have Russian occupation in living memory and very much won't go back to those days without a fight.
> Besides, there is no reason for Putin to claim those, nor a real strategic value.
The strategic value of Lithuania or the North of Poland for Russia can not be underestimated.
> Sucks for self-determination and all that, but again, avoiding nuclear holocaust is probably worth losing the occasional battle.
It isn't the West that is threatening nuclear holocaust here, Putin did just that on live television and if that threat works this time I don't see any reason why it would not work the next.
Historically appeasement of dictators never ends well, I don't see why this would be the exception.
> you would realize that the sentiment runs a lot deeper than being allowed to buy NATO grade American weapons
Oh but I referred to sentiment at the other end of the alliance.
> if that threat works this time I don't see any reason why it would not work the next.
Eh, I don't completely disagree, but the risk/reward calculation of invading a full NATO member with deployed military infrastructure is undoubtedly different - if anything because the stay-behind capabilities in those areas would be very difficult to uproot.
> Historically appeasement of dictators never ends well
The luxury of getting rid of dictators in certain countries by swinging a bigger club, effectively ended in Hiroshima in 1945.
France was invaded because the liberals in France and UK refused to act against Hitler when he first invaded Poland and Austria, or when he and Mussolini supported Franco's coup d'etat in Spain in 1936, crushing a popular anarchist revolution and destroying any notion of hope across Europe for the decade to come.
France/UK argued that helping elected governments (or people's militias) against their invader could ignite war spreading throughout Europe, so they would rather not irritate these angry dictators. Where did this strategy get us? It's hard to imagine just how different Europe (and probably the rest of the world, for better or for worse) would be today if the western powers had intervened at that time.
It's also worth noting already at the time, social-liberal democracies from the USA to France were very unwelcoming of refugees from the nazi regime. Let's make sure to make them welcome no matter what our governments say, there's quite empty housing for everyone!
> No, France was invaded because they didn't shore up their Northern border.
Technically correct, yet completely misses the point. If you don't want to be bullied, don't let someone bully anyone else. To be clear, i'm extremely hostile to any colonial Empire (Russia/USA/France/etc) and i'm certainly not a fan of military intervention.
My point is not to compare modern Russia to the nazis, but rather that this laissez-faire policy in regards to military invasions of sovereign territories doesn't exactly have a history of leading to a more peaceful situation overall (see also: France in Mali, USA in Iraq/Afghanistan, China in Tibet, Turkey in Bakur).
Some of their country, probably yes. All of it, including Donbass and the coast, probably not. After all, anybody who felt strongly about the Donbass was already there fighting. Ukrainians might well decide that they can live with a landlocked country, if the alternative is annihilation.
Russians are literally driving on Kyiv as we speak. 3 million people live there and it's the seat of government. I'm not sure what to tell you if you think the Ukrainian military is going to abandon the fight.
And I imagine that many places would rather opt out of becoming another Chicago. "This is nothing, people elsewhere have it worse" can be applied to a majority of the world's population. It's a useless argument.
The Ukrainian army was 400k strong and quite experienced. They're badly out-teched, especially in the air warfare department, but they will make it up with morale - they're defending their motherland.
Russian army just does what it's been told. They're risking their lives to make a select few oligarchs a couple billion richer each. They don't want to be there.
If this doesn't end within a week, it'll take years. Putin knows this, hence the offers of unconditional surrender.
The government still isn't recommending fleeing. They want to stay and fight--not preside over refugee flows to Poland.