I almost can't believe the Russian army is so... trashy.
For the army of a state willing to be completely independent of the West to use an American web based service for military purposes, and to do it in a way other people can see it is sloppy to the point of tragedy.
Or maybe that's an elaborate attempt to do psychological warfare?
Seeing the videos of destroyed Russian equipment I am a bit surprised how familiar it looks to what it was when I was forcefully drafted into soviet military some 30+ years ago. There are maybe few new types of personnel carrier vehicles which I do not recognize but everything else is decades old, and even back then in 80s it was not any high tech (except for T-80 maybe). As an example, to coordinate artillery fire we used paper maps and mechanical rulers to convert target coordinates into azimuth and elevation angles. Officers would carry secret reference table books with them which were used to apply a ton of corrections: ambient temperature, wind direction, mass of the charge and the projectile and drift due to rotation of the projectile etc. All that was manual, calculated on paper, slow and error prone. I remember myself back then wondering why we couldn't use simple calculators to do this math quickly. The dead reckoning equipment (which was based on mechanical gyroscope) had such high error that after few tries we decided to never turn it on again - after few kilometers of drive it would place us some 500m off the actual position.
Sure, maybe some electronics are upgraded nowadays, it is hard to tell from those videos. But the stories of Russians being lost on their way, it rather looks that nothing much has changed.
To be fair, I believe being able to compute ballistic parameters with pen and paper give you an advantage in a total war where every communication is jammed, network is hacked and energy supply is sparse.
There's an anecdote I've heard from at least 2 people now about an international military exercise here in Europe where they were working with some kind of big artillery and lost either comms or power so their computers were offline. Everyone just shrugged and pulled out their maps and rulers while the Americans sat there completely lost and didn't shoot even once for the rest of the day. It seems insane to me to not have at least two people on each team who can do the math on paper if necessary!
Of course it's trashy. Everything is. Many readers of HN are well aware that most of software is shit. It's not surprising that this extends to military equipment too.
As an example from the other side, the British BOWMAN comms system used to be understood as Better Off With Maps And Nokia.
This is a pattern I've been seeing again and again ... from the outside everything looks neat and nice, but under closer inspection, it's trash and wired together with duct tape and hopes... from software to military to medical to... you name it
I believe the name for this thing is "the devil in the details" - reality has a surprising level of detail, and the more you go into detail, more murky and shitty things appear to be.
In fact I am amazed that complex things, like, say, the internet, work at all !
This is the absolute worst in the intersection of the public and private sector (hence military and medical being prime examples). The private sector can afford to invest in quality and when the public sector is given the funding to have in-house experts working full-time, the results are excellent. But as soon as there's an open tender, quality takes a dump. Every corner than can be cut, will be cut, and what's worse, even competent contractors are incentivised to produce broken and rigid systems in pursuit of lucrative maintenance contracts.
Exactly, you need to work in tech to understand the sheer unprecedented achievement that the JWST is, for instance. To be frank, I quite don't believe it yet, and I hope they will one day publish a postmortem (postvivem?) on how they did it.
The internet itself is really, stupidly simple. There is a fair amount of complexity in managing it, and that bites back fairly frequently, but the vast majority of the complexity and crazy stuff is above the level of basic connectivity.
As we saw with the Facebook outage on October 4th, there's an insane amount of hidden complexity at the lower levels that end users never ever see. For home consumer uses its simple enough, but those methods aren't good enough for industry usage? AWS isn't buying off the shelf gear and plugging in cat-5 ( or 6) cables like a consumer-level user would.
There's nothing really complex about BGP. The management system Facebook uses, as I said, bites back occasionally. AWS does a lot of fancy things, but from the actual networking perspective it's not any different than plugging in cables.
As I said, the crazy complexity is above the network level.
Some units have also been communicating in the clear on civilian bands. There seems to be a severe shortage of military electronics on the Russian side.
Or, just purely from a UX standpoint, you can use a military receiver with an interface like this https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0083836/800wm and then look up the coordinates by hand on a twenty year old paper map. Or you can drop a pin on gmaps and text it to Sergey at the artillery battery. If you don't care about opsec, which is easier?
Do you have such opinion because in less than a week the Russian army with the directive to minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure has not occupied the second largest country in Europe with difficult terrain (a lot of cities, rivers, and forests) and huge army generously supplied for 8 years with modern western weapons? Do you remember how much time it took the US to win the Iraq War? And Iraq is a smaller country, with much denser distribution of population centers, simpler terrain, and smaller technically outdated army. Also the US clearly used air bombardment much more frivolously, which has resulted in a huge number of civilian deaths.
But my guess is that you simply get your information from clearly biased media.
> Do you have such opinion because in less than a week the Russian army with the directive to minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure
You've got to be kidding me. Maybe you've missed the indiscriminate artillery and rocket attacks on population centers such as Kharkiv?
And the Russian army hasn't failed at occupation. It's miserably failing at capturing anything of note, properly conducting sieges ( Kharkiv was resupplied multiple times), basic logistics, basic air operations.
> But my guess is that you simply get your information from clearly biased media.
If you're going to accuse people of using biased sources, it would be good for you to include some examples of clearly unbiased media, so that they can compare and learn.
From their POV. I mean if the "sloppy" approach works (in this specific case) roughly as good as whatever military specific alternate approach they have(1), then it makes sense to use that, to not disclose the capabilities of alternate approaches to their enemy (the US).
(1): That is assuming they have one, if not ... I would be both quite surprised and somehow not really surprised like both at once.
The point is that they should have one. The fact that they are using services like these indicate that they do not, or that it is poorly implemented and not accessible to the right people on the ground invading Ukraine.
After seeing the relatively poor performance of the Russian military this past week I'm not surprised but I would have been surprised two weeks ago.
Nancy Pelosi (I think... Some senior senator with access to extra intelligence info) says Putin's new puffy face look isn't plastic surgery, but instead side effects from cancer treatment.
Senior leadership thinks he went off half cocked because he's running out of time.
Propaganda? Sure. Even if it's true.
He apparently couldn't keep the ol' convoy up today either...
It seems more like field officers and quartermasters have had every incentive to lie about readiness and equipment. Audits of the same have the same incentive to lie. So on paper a unit has tons of equipment in working order. In reality maintenance hasn't been performed, spares have been sold off under the table, and in general most of the paperwork is faked.
Eh, it’s only trashy because they’re not on our side. If it was our allies doing it, it would be considered scrappy, ingenious, clever, resourceful, etc.
Some positive adjective that denotes using a resource in a way no one expected.
People need to be a little less naive and skip conversations like this. There’s a 40 mile (65km) convoy heading for the capital of Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians are about to die. Rather than complaining about how Russia is using 21st century technology from the West, perhaps discussing real solutions would be more beneficial?
No, this _is_ people doing something. This is people reaching out in a chaotic way to attempt to interrupt/disrupt an apparently in-use insecure method of designating artillery targets. This method of disruption does seem legitimate, and appears that if successful in reaching someone at Google in a position to make a decision, a real difference could be made.
Meanwhile, you're suggesting "This does nothing" when in fact, it's a legitimate avenue because, to use your specific quote, "all is fair in love and war".
On reflection, I'm completely flummoxed why you would suggest this has no potential. In fact, it seems to be the exact opposite, and quite interesting that these pages are being taken down nearly as quickly as they're posted here. These things taken together suggest that this idea is perceived as dangerous to someone
What do you suggest people do? Get on the phone with their congressperson and have them send in a bomber squadron? As far as immediate impact, reporting this in the hopes that it gets taken down seems about as good as anything feasible at the moment.
The "congress", or rather the military and civilian executives (Congress hasn't really weighed in yet) don't want to be in a position of having two large nuclear forces in direct conflict. For very good reasons.
Ukraine had nuclear weapons. Ukraine has weapon grade nuclear reactors, which produces plutonium. Ukrainian engineers developed equipment and rockets to produce nuclear weapons for USSR. Tactics of using nuclear weapons was part of my education.
Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons. They inherited some when the USSR fell apart, but they returned them to Russia to be dismantled in return for guarantees from the west and Russia.
The Chinese did not have nuclear weapons when the US fought them in the Korean War. Neither the Chinese nor the Soviets were (officially) involved in the Vietnam War. The US and Russia have danced around very carefully in Syria; the only direct conflict I know of involved Russian "mercenaries". In none of those cases did the Soviets or the Russians signal that they would use nuclear weapons; likewise, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was given covert military support by the US, but there was no direct conflict.
NATO operations in Ukraine carry a very large risk of accidental escalation, in addition to Putin's threats.
Ukraine had no nuclear weapons 8 years ago. Ukraine has all required equipment and nuclear materials (weapon grade Uranium, Plutonium) to create nuclear weapons at will. Are you sure that Ukraine has no will to defend itself?
> The US and Russia have danced around very carefully in Syria; the only direct conflict I know of involved Russian "mercenaries".
Turkey shot Russian airplane.
> NATO operations in Ukraine carry a very large risk of accidental escalation, in addition to Putin's threats.
I'm sorry to inform you, but war between two nuclear nations has much larger risk of escalation when NATO will play the role of coward.
According to what I've read and watched on YouTube (such as the interesting, if inevitably biased series "Russian Roulette" by ViceNews that I recommend you watch with your brain on and Wikipedia ready to look up every mentioned character), the Ukrainian army had such difficulties with basic supplies that I can't imagine them developing actionable weaponry at all, conventional or nuclear.
Even if some scientists could technically build a bomb, the hard part with nuclear arsenal is not the bomb itself but the launching device.
"Discussing real solutions" sounds about as substantial a suggestion as "throw your hands up and say there's nothing more we can do". People are already talking. It's not suggesting anything more concrete than what's already being done in this conversation.
Who, exactly, do you think the “we” is in this scenario?
You’re the one that came in complaining about how nothing is being done and offering a suggestion of… talking, which is what is already happening.
When people rightfully pointed this out to you, you suddenly involved “we”. You’re the one that has instigated this meta-discussion, and you just don’t like that people called you out on it.
Nah, i’ve got a thick skin. I’ve been on the Internet for over three decades. I’ve been doing this since the Usenet days.
I’ll let you guys get back to saying how bad the Russians are for using Google maps. Forget I even brought up the brainstorming idea.
Quite honestly I should have know people would go with “you first”. But when I go with “me first” people spend the entire time talking about how it’s a bad idea, missing the point completely
A lot of people here probably don’t even remember the Cold War.
It’s all about to get pretty real.
Considering all the people who are going to die, I had to try.
I mean this conversation could go somewhere. I'm sure someone here can get access to the maps backend and redirect a few missiles if the rumors are true. This crowd is probably 99th percentile in working out the details.
(That is to say, probably not competent at it, which is better than "definitely not")
Also, you can bet concrete actionable suggestions made here will bubble up to silicon valley execs by the morning.
In situations like these, I believe the best thing a distant westerner can do to weight against escalation is to keep cold headed, try our best not to fall prey to endoctrination, remind anyone involved to not burn bridges, to never consider others are fundamentally different, etc.
If we were in Kyiv right now it could be different, but maybe not. Actually, the Russian invasion has been very low intensity so far and to be frank, if not for the nonstop calls for more action from warmongers on the internet, I would still believe we are still well within the range of peace negociations.
I'm conscious how naive this sounds, but after all the Putins and the Bushs can only go to war when their people are filled with enough hatred, that's the first ammo that's ever manufactured.
I was calling russian army a paper tiger for a long time, citing immense corruption and deterioration of all public institutions in Russia under Putin. Military isn't public, but that's just more opportunities for corruption and theft.
My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there. No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the quality good enough? (With all that corruption!)
Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the first time in history when decaying russian institutions and imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war (1980), Chechena war (1994).
Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in the fallout from a resounding defeat.
I would agree that Russia and China bluff their strength but there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time.
My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.
> there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment.
I don't know about China, but Russian exports are mostly soviet-era models, and they are known to have huge maintenance issues. Also note this: in the USSR they knew how to build things, but modern Russia can't. We have no electronics industry, no machine industry, we can't really make commercial airplanes, and we can't build a decent car. How would country with such capabilities make state of the art military equipment?!
> To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time.
I'd rather trust my national security on equipment that's subpar but reliable and predictable, instead of trying to make my own and failing. Kind of like home security: I'd rather buy a lock for my front door that may be not perfect rather than trying to machine my own better version, even if I technically know how it works and could maybe make a working prototype. Military development is really, really expensive and extremely hard to do right when your state is still developing and running low on qualified engineers, physicists and mathematicians.
In any case, having recent russian weapons is more than enough when your neighbours are equipped with leftovers from the fifties.
Length of this convoy is different every hour and it's been out there "ready to take Kyiv" for days now. If the soldiers are already out of food, it's as good as a heap of scrap. If you fancy thinking about "3D-chess mastermind military tactics", then how about the fact that Ukraine seemingly does not even bother to deal with the convoy, and they have working ballistic rockets, think about that.
Indeed, this convoy has made a variety of seemingly contradictory impressions on those reporting. The strongest possibility may be that the reports we're receiving aren't very accurate.
Pop the leader with a Javelin. Pop a couple more vehicles that try to get around it. Presto, instant traffic jam and the Russians have repeatedly shown they clump up in traffic jams. Now you hit the vehicles in the rear, you're not likely to need sophisticated weapons to do that.
Now you have a huge mess that you can rain mortar fire on.
Finland did a lower-tech version of it to them long ago with trees rather than mud as the barrier.
65km convoy means, what, 6000 vehicles and 30k people ? How do you control with 30k soldiers a city of 3Mil that freely distributed guns to residents ?
This isn't a videogame or binging the latest show on NetFlix. Not sure why so many are convinced a war should take a couple of hours in time to turn over to the sports highlights of the day. I'm seeing lots of "Putin thought this..." and "Putin thought that..." with absolutely no evidence of what Putin thought. It seems like wishful thinking on the part of people who have given themselves ADHD and get upset when a story doesn't wrap up quickly like on tv.
Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got captured during an operation. The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general.
And what did Putin lose in that country anyway? The entire population hates Russians and are willing to die for their freedom. Let's say he can capture it. They have no natural resources of interest or anything like that. Meanwhile his own economy, that was already as tiny as the Benelux, goes completely to the shitterhole.
> The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general.
Once again, there is no solid source for this that doesn't circle back to some social media post.
I don't think there's currently way to confirm whether any of these claims are true or not, not until the conflict is over.
I have long figured their nuclear forces would prove to be barely function if called upon, but I didn't realize how deep the rot was on the conventional side. Those get used in exercises.
How much time did Americans spent to conquer Iraq? Russians are besieging Kiev in mere days and probably will finish the entire operation in few weeks. This is unprecedented efficiency against a huge ukrainian army fed by the entire West with weapons and instructors, which just had 8 years experience of constant war against donbass.
You are comparing an invasion to an invasion plus an occupation, which makes no sense.
Saddam had a very powerful army at the time, and the US military walked through it like it was nothing. Occupying Iraq and building a new regime went terribly, as almost all such projects do. Even if Russia manages to conquer Ukraine entirely, which is a massive if, I've seen absolutely nothing in the past 6 days to make me think that an occupation by them would be anything other than a horrid disaster.
Aside from pure propaganda, I have no idea what information you could be looking at to come to the conclusion that Russia is executing the invasion well at this point.
This is a bizarre perspective, especially because our lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us that the invasion itself occurs simply and uneventfully. Remolding the conquered land to become invader friendly is, on the other hand, an endeavor that both the US and Russia know is infeasible and a losing proposition.
Honestly, it seems like taking a lot longer on the invasion, and therefore killing a lot more of your enemy combatants might be a better strategy than dealing with them as insurgents after a swift take over.
Bombing cities and killing civilians is a great way to create insurgents. Every time a country blows up a person's home or kills their family members there is a chance that person picks up a gun and starts fighting back.
Shouldn’t it be down already? It’s a US asset, it’s expected to be down in war zones. Was it available all along in Iraq?
Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap for everybody but mostly the attacker.
Besides, GMaps could require login for Ukraine, and only be allowed for people with a track record of being in Ukraine. Since Google follows you everywhere.
>Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap for everybody but mostly the attacker.
I suspect the locals only know the directions for routes they commonly travel (eg. for work/groceries/school). If you're fleeing, you'll need it just as much the invaders does.
It's a US asset that tips the balance of military power towards individuals.
Someone can use Google Maps to plan a peaceful protest or a Molotov cocktail strike more easily than a missile strike. Why would you expect them to take that capability away from people they've publicly sided with?
Maybe you’re joking? Your quote is generally intended for biasing in favor of preserving relationships, but is less relevant when someone is sending missiles and armor columns to blow up your country. You can assume malice here — no problem if you’re wrong.
Russian armies historically do very badly at first, then improve markedly after being banged around a bit. That's normal for armies of conscripts who don't undergo expensive, realistic training.
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII, about half soldiers. 13% of the population. The US lost only about 400,000, about 0.13% of the population. France and UK, about 1%. The USSR still won.
Both Ukraine and Russia were part of the USSR. Ukraine also lost millions. I am not sure which point you are trying to make. Russia losing millions of people over Ukraine really would be something.
I haven't seen a single reliable message in Russian social media from conscript's mothers and, believe me, they would not have been quite. And no, you can not hide use of conscripts from relatives on such scale.
"‘I’m panicking — where is my child?’ Conscript soldiers are being sent to fight against Ukraine, their relatives say. Here’s what their families told Meduza."[1]
That's a Latvian source. May be propaganda. Other sources saying the same thing track back to that one.
The Russian army has "contract soldiers", who signed up, and "conscripts", who are drafted to serve for one year. I've been looking for good counts. Most conscripts are in the army; The navy, air force, and strategic rocket force are mostly (entirely?) contract soldiers.
The Soviet Union lasted for some 70 years, not everything was bad. For instance I quite like their cinema and science fiction children shows. My point being, someone raised under the Soviet Union would still be able to find a few things to look back with nostalgia.
I can understand this yeah, but why would you register your new legimate business under such extension. Sure everything was probably not bad but do they have Soviet Union hairstyle salon or what :)
> Why would anyone register a domain with such extension is beyond me
Because it's fun? Most sites where probably registered before the war and aren't necessary serious. You can have a good time with a soviet styled website or even community, all with matching url and flags and stuff.
I'm sure that is true and sister reply rightfully pointed out the parallels to the nazi dictatorship. I personally find both rather distasteful, but I think that ironic usage would very well fall in the "joke" territory.
I feel like the US military would have to be completely incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this point considering the size of their budget.
I can't help but think they are planned opposition at this point, whether willing or unwilling.
> I feel like the US military would have to be completely incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this point considering the size of their budget.
Or, you know, unwilling to start a nuclear war.
Which dismantling the 50%+ of Russia's conventional military committed to Ukraine would very possibly lead to.
I don't think what the EU and US are doing in Ukraine can be termed appeasement. Punishing sanctions, rumblings of NATO and EU expansions, open and extensive weapons transfers, and full-throated support of the Ukrainian government is hardly what we did in Czechoslovakia.
The "we will go to open war with you" line is the borders of NATO and the EU, which haven't currently been violated. It's not an unreasonable line to draw, given the potential consequences of nuclear armed states doing battle.
It is very, very likely. Russian leadership see Ukraine as a Russian province, and the heart of the russian motherland, and they will treat western armies there as invaders - they are prepared to risk everything to keep that from happening.
“Which aircraft? Oh, this one? It’s not a military operation, just our pilots doing some sightseeing. Just like your lads did in Crimea in 2014, you remember?”
It doesn't matter what Russians think, it matters what Dughin's fanboys holed up under Altai Mountains think.
Go back to 1986, and imagine what the Soviet response would be if NATO would have breached the Iron Courtain and would have fighter planes and tanks in Kiev. This is what we're dealing with here.
They probably think that being czar-for-a-week of a nuclear wasteland is something that's only attractive when literally all other options are exhausted.
When we talk about the risk of a nuclear escalation we talk about the risk of this or that country launching nuclear armed missiles at an other country.
How would the posession of nuclear reactors factor into that?
Ukraine is the post-nuclear country. Ukraine has 4 working weapons grade nuclear stations.
If Russian will capture nuclear reactor, they can convert it to nuclear landmine, because reactor uses enriched Uranium, to create equivalent of 10k Chornobyl's.
Ukraine has know-how and nuclear materials (Plutonium) to create nuclear weapons at will. The only thing that stopped us is USA, Britain, France, and Germany, which used Budapest memorandum as leverage against Ukraine to prevent that.
I'll be the first to admit I don't know a lot about nuclear power, but I'm pretty sure you're talking nonsense. To say that a nuclear power reactor uses weapons-grade uranium is akin to saying that a car works by lighting its gas tank on fire. For nuclear power you want a carefully controlled reaction, while for an explosion you want to release as much energy as possible as quickly as possible.
Now, maybe if Russia captures a reactor they could send a scientist down to repurpose its parts to make an improvised nuke, but if that's the goal, what would be the point? It's not like Russia doesn't have nukes already.
Just having plutonium and knowledge is not enough to build a nuclear weapon. No country has ever developed nukes while its main territory was being invaded. For one, even if you can build a device, you'd need to test it at least once. What would you do if you had nukes and you detected that the non-nuclear-capable country you're invading has just run a nuclear test?
You are talking nonsense. I will write it again just for you: Ukraine has 4 nuclear stations with 15 weapon grade nuclear reactors which are producing Plutonium and use enriched Uranium.
The point is to use the nuclear reactor like a nuclear landmine, to blow up at retreat, to do maximum amount of damage. It's called «scorched earth tactics».
Ukraine, as part of USSR, developed nukes decades ago. Ukraine is the fist post-nuclear country in the world.
Oh, so you mean "weapons-grade" in the sense that it can produce plutonium. Maybe, but so what? Also, all nuclear reactors use enriched uranium.
Nuclear reactors can't produce nuclear explosions, for the reasons I said previously. Even the Chernobyl incident wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion. It's no more possible to turn a nuclear reactor into a nuclear bomb, than to turn a gas generator into a molotov cocktail.
I don't know where you heard this absurd notion of a "nuclear landmine", but anyone who talks about exploding nuclear reactors is just spreading sensationalism.
Yes, Ukraine had nuclear weapons. Had. It has since dismantled all of them and doesn't have the infrastructure to make new ones. As such, it would have to develop them again. They have to build the machines to build the weapons and then they have to test the weapons to make sure the machines are building them correctly. Then they need some delivery system, which is a problem entirely separate from merely making a device that can produce a nuclear explosion. Good luck doing all that while infrastructure is disrupted by an invasion.
It was not unlikely two weeks ago that Russia launches a full scale war on Ukraine. I don’t know how or why this false assertion spreads the way it does.
"Putin is crazy." 8 years of warning that he will do a thing if a red line is crossed and he does it? The jingoism permeating the west is the crazy thing. People are swallowing propaganda whole and blindly repeating talking points designed to create animus against a foreign power. No mention of the war crimes conducted by literal nazis of azov battalion in the Donbas that we begged outing to intervene over for 8 years...
We have a lot to hate about putting,but it comes from his inaction to solve a genocide on his very border. Instead, he only acted when russia was threatened. Sounds logical to me.
Yeah, I mean even Putin doesn't know the real odds.
It probably depends a lot on the exact circumstances/timing. And in the war, circumstances change all the time.
Putin wants us to believe it's a Dr. Strangelove situation, where no humans make a choice and therefore nuclear annihalation is a guarantee if we cross a line. But that's false.
Any line Putin draws can be tested and shifted along various axes: who crosses it, how bad it is for Russia, how egregious the violation is, how well it can be argued that it's not a violation, how long it takes to confirm that a violation has taken place, how certain he is that a violation has taken place, who authorized it, how long it takes to confirm who authorized it, etc.
And we don't know for sure that Putin can unilaterally initiate a world-ending strike without anyone in the chain second-guessing him.
They also had like 12 000 tanks but 50% of them can't even move. Same with warheads.
Oh yeah and they can't deliver them anywhere. Then can deliver only a few. Others are short range or should be dropped from old planes that can't even fly.
Wikipedia says as part of START[1], russia has 1457 warheads. Suppose 50% are broken. That's 728 warheads. Even one warhead landing in each of the top 50 cities in the US[2] would be devastating.
>Oh yeah and they can't deliver them anywhere. Then can deliver only a few. Others are short range or should be dropped from old planes that can't even fly.
Source? As of 2009 they have 383 ICBMs. Keep in mind each ICBM can hold multiple warheads because of MIRV. Presumably there's less now because of START, but the ones they decommissioned are the old/unreliable ones, so it's fairly reasonable to assume most of their warheads can be delivered.
Russia also has enough nuclear weapons, in unknown places (likely off the US coast), to do a lot of damage to the US. They will almost certainly use them in the face of an existential threat (like being at war with NATO directly), so NATO will do everything possible to avoid that contingency.
Putin would not have invaded if he were not desperately at risk of losing power.
Nobody is super-rational all the time. If he does get ousted he will certainly be killed. His replacement is, by reversion to the mean, very likely to be less rational.
We've seen how the US military faired in Afghanistan one of the poorer country on the planet... Attacking Russia would result in a nuclear war that would wipe mankind out earth.
Ukraine became the aggressor when it tried to join a hostile military alliance that Russia is not allowed to join right on russias border. That people attempt to justify this as Ukraines unassailable right shows you the sheer power of western propaganda. Imagine if Mexico played host to Chinese and Russian missile launchers pointed at our major cities jn the same way Poland does.
> Imagine if Mexico played host to Chinese and Russian missile launchers pointed at our major cities jn the same way Poland does.
By the same argument that this justifies attacking Ukraine, you must think the US would be justified in attacking Canada if Mexico hosted the Chinese and Russian missiles you describe.
To prove just how unreasonable it is for Ukraine to think they would need a military alliance oriented against Russia, Russia invades Ukraine?
>Imagine if Mexico played host to Chinese and Russian missile launchers pointed at our major cities jn the same way Poland does.
The fact that Mexico doesn't probably says something. I'm sure there's a lot of money in hosting Chinese military assets.
All this is to say nothing about the incongruities between your explanation and the many and varied lies about why the invasion that was happening both wasn't an invasion and wasn't happening...
For the army of a state willing to be completely independent of the West to use an American web based service for military purposes, and to do it in a way other people can see it is sloppy to the point of tragedy.
Or maybe that's an elaborate attempt to do psychological warfare?