Not a question, only my best wishes as an early NAFO member.
You are in my thoughts, and not only: I have also been donating, flagging trolls, countering misinformation, encouraged politicians and done what I can but I still owe your people.
I feel I can admit this here without feeling I am bragging since this account is anonymous and will stay so. My goal by saying it is to say you are bit alone and also hopefully to encourage others to take small steps to help, like asking a politician, supporting civilians (or frontline heroes) by donating, flagging misinformation etc.
Hard to tell. It's a full (and dynamic) range. In general the life is mostly the same. Except we need to hide from missiles and drones, help UAF. Some of us have an additional burden of killіng the russkies ;)
Oh, we also need to know the location of the closest nuclear shelter.
In my country we have alot of male Ukranians who have come to escape conscription. The attitude they have to the war is not very romantic. One of the companies I contract for has developers in Ukraine who are constanly hiding from conscription (ie changing location within Ukraine) because leaving now is too risky. So I wonder how does a person who is engaged in the war effort (you do military tech research) see this
I see it similarly. It's not easy, both for refugees and those who are still here in Ukraine. However, everyone has a unique story and reasons to see it in a specific light.
I know a LOT of people who are hiding, and at the same are doing everything they can, donate and develop high-tech stuff for UAF.
The world isn't black/white, however, we know for sure that we MUST do everything so that the russia is stopped and this happens "never again".
Thanks for responding. It is interesting that you work for the armed forces yet are aware of people who are hiding from conscription. Having experienced war I am aware how senseless it can become. People do not realize how terrible war can be, regardless of whose side you are on. Conscription is also a tool that is often used to get rid of undesireable people (ethnic minorities, opposition, etc). In my opinion forced conscription should be a war crime.
Forced conscription is the sad reality for many countries.
I was conscripted. I see it as my duty, a part of my social contract, a way to pay back to generations before who put their lives on the line in the fights for freedom.
I was lucky it was peacetime, but I am fully convinced I would have gone anyway as a young person without responsibility for children and citizen of a country worth fighting for.
For me (again as someone who served in peacetime in a peaceful country) it has been both educational and a career booster at points, it seems around here there are (civilian) jobs were military experience, even just conscription, is seen as a a major advantage or even a requirement.
What about someone that does not feel very "in debt"? Anyway by 'forced conscription' I mean mainly being forced to pick up a weapon and placed into a situation of kill or be killed by someone who was also put into that same situation by the opposing side
You're comparing "both sides" as equal, however please consider that this is an unprovoked agression against Ukraine. Russians invaded the foreign territory and are killing and torturing civilians.
On day 2, they sent dozens of mobile crematoriums towards my city. Yes, they were prepared to burn "non-conformist" civilians.
Ukrainians, on the other hand, just don't want to be wiped out.
I understand this is emotional for you but I am certainly not saying that both sides are equal. However, the fact is that both sides are using forced conscription and I find that to be deplorable in strongest terms. Patriotic Ukrainians have every right to fight for their homeland. But if you need to force people to fight for their country then it is a bunch of false patriots sending their own people into death.
Let me share with you my experience. A lot of people are comparing Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Serbia's aggression on Croatia and Bosnian and Herzegovina. In some sense it is a very valid comparison. You can read up on the war yourself, however I want to draw your attention to cities that had mixed ethnic makeups. Just like there are Russians who don't want anything to do with the invasion there were Serbs who didn't want to do anything with Greater Serbia. Moreover, there were Serbs from this latter camp that stayed behind in either Bosniak or Croat controlled towns thinking they were safe because they did nothing wrong. However, during the war the bravest and most motivated fighters were those with heavy criminal backgrounds or ultra-nationalistic leanings. Due to their prowess this group of people were promoted and often had a say who will get called up for conscription. Eventually Serbs that stayed behind became a target for exploitation, especially property rights - "sign over your house or we send your kids to battle". I don't want to go further but I guess you can imagine how such scenarios can play out.
I'm sad to hear this to be honest. Wasm3 is (was?) an awesome Wasm interpreter that was ahead of the rest in terms of performance (about 3-5x slower than native, and about 3x faster than the typical Wasm interpreters).
I hope Volodymyr the best as he tries he keep things afloat with the Russia invasion in Ukraine. Hope the war will be soon behind us.
Agree, it is one of the best WASM interpreter! Even better than some of the runtimes we can get here and then
Performance is very good and architecture and beauty of the code is definitely impressive.
> I regret to inform the community that since my house was destroyed by russians who invaded my country, Wasm3 will enter a minimal maintenance phase. At this time, I am unable to continue the development of new features. However, I am committed to keeping the project alive and will actively review and merge incoming Pull Requests. I deeply appreciate your understanding and support during this difficult period. Your contributions to Wasm3 are now more valuable than ever.
The linked tweet (edit: from September 2022) shows a video of the destroyed house and invites people who want to help to donate.
If you had lived under Stalin for 15 years and directly experienced 4 million of your countrymen being starved to death under his dictats, the concept of "good" side and "bad" side is messy. Especially when you don't have full access to information - no internet, no newspapers, no radio.
The Finns fought on the "bad" side as well, due to the Soviet Union having tried to invade them already two years previously. Ukraine had likewise tried to get independence in 1917 which led to a 4 year civil war which they unfortunately lost.
US is still battling with its confederate past many years later, it's insane to ask country that's had barely 30 years of independence to go through this quicker.
Yeah. Considering the Soviets had just killed millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomar when WWII started, I don't think from the Ukrainian perspective either group invading Ukraine at the time was the 'good side'. Many Ukrainians thought siding with Germany was their best chance to gain an independent country after the war. Unfortunately, we know now that the Nazis were never going to let that happen, and it did lead a lot of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis in committing terrible atrocities. But it was a much more complicated situation than that they fought for the bad side. "Slava Ukraini" reflects their desire then and now for independent self rule, not any moral failings during WWII.
> Neonazism does indeed enjoy broad support there.
This is a lie
The very Wikipedia you linked
> Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine.
And once Azov got integrated into the army it shed its neonazi members.
This is how propaganda works: take a kernel of truth and spin a whole tapestry of lies out of it
People are not cardboard cutouts. We do not boycott Ford cards because Henry Ford was a nazi sympathizer. We can condemn that and yet recognize him as an industralist who changed society.
On your point B: is it surprising to you that favorable views for a controversial public figure from the past known specifically for fighting against russian forces and for being extremely pro-Ukraine went significantly up in a year after Russia invaded Ukraine and forced ukrainians defend against them?
No matter how controversial Bandera’s ties to nazis were, I am almost certain that his recent rise in popularity is motivated primarily by the pro-ukrainian national identity part and not the pro-nazi part. Enemy of my enemy can be a useful ally at the moment, and all.
Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine.[9] Many Ukrainians hail him as a role model hero,[10][11] or as a martyred liberation fighter,[12] while other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east, condemn him as a fascist,[13] or Nazi collaborator,[10] whose followers, called Banderites, were responsible for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians during World War II.[14][15] On 22 January 2010, Viktor Yushchenko, the then president of Ukraine, awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine, which was widely condemned. The award was subsequently annulled in 2011 given that Stepan Bandera was never a Ukrainian citizen.[16] Bandera gained further prominence following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.[17][18][19]
"Bandera's favorability appeared to shoot up rapidly, with 74% of Ukrainians viewing him favorably according to an April 2022 poll from a Ukrainian research organization."
After full scale invasion support of Bandera increased because he was vocal proponent of independent Ukraine, not because he was a nazi collaborator.
It is an argument in bad faith to cite him as a marker of support for 'neo-nazism' in Ukraine, doubly so during time when adversary is coming and is very open about stripping you of your national identity, language and history.
Well, we have sort of the same debate in germany, where people want to praise Hitler, because he build the Autobahn and because he ended mass unemployment. But it is still Hitler we are talking about and consensus is, the holocaust weights stronger - and Bandera was literally involved in it all, so for me the same metric should apply.
And about Asow - what I can say for certain is, that we have some very hardcore Neonazis here in town - and they are literally friends and strongly connected with the Azow people - that's kind of all I have to know about them. But I do know more - and it is not good. Those guys aren't fighting for democracy.
You are clearly not arguing in good faith.
Comparing Bandera to Hitler is utterly ridiculous, and I am Jewish myself, so I'm not exactly standing in line to protect UPA/Bandera.
Regarding Azov, I am native Russian speaker with many friends from Ukraine, there are legitimately orgs/groups that you can call out for being open nazis, but if all you can do is comment on Azov in 2023 then you are simply delusional or misled by Russian propaganda, I'm sorry.
Are there any official Nazi regiments or heros officially admired by the US? (In Russia you have the motorcyle gang with strong links to neonazism who are buddies with Putin edit: but upon a quick check, that might have been propaganda from the other side).
Azov on the other hand is not a "Nazi regiment", it's had troubling beginnings but it was cleared up as it was brought into army ranks.
EDIT: misread the question, in US there aren't 'regiments', but denying the fact that army is rife with supremacists is plain silly.
[Any] Army by itself is a magnet for these sorts of folks, and it takes active effort to weed them out, not something that a country at war can easily afford.
There were a few people there who flirted with neo nazism back in 2014. They were rooted out swiftly. There is a reason why every time you ask Russians for proof that Azov is Nazi they show the same old and / or manipulated photos.
Today Azov has representatives of most minorities in Ukraine, including "ethnic Russians" and Jews.
Meanwhile, one of the founders of Task Force Rusisch said something along this in an interview (IIRC and I don't speak Russian natively):
> Let's not mince words, I am not a "nationalist", I am a nazi.
> yet point out and criticize that Neonazism does indeed enjoy broad support there.
This is extremely misleading (and I personally would argue wrong, but I assume good faith on your side) given that Ukrainian support for neo nazism is comparable to countries in western Europe, while russia who attack them is has a lot more neo-nazis, both in absolute numbers but also by percentage.
As for the Azov regiment, here is what wikipedia writes (emphasis mine):
> and allegedly continuing association with far-right
groups and neo-Nazi ideology,
Anyone who has followed the war in Ukraine can tell you that Jews and other minorities are heavily represented in modern Azov, including high profile members, which makes accusations about Azov being nazies somewhat ridiculous.
Again, I assume good faith on your side, but please be careful so you don't spread Russian "Z" narratives. It is incredibly damaging.
I hope you have a different roof in a safer location now.
It's a good reminder for everybody outside Ukraine that the war isn't just the news or the maps from the mil-vloggers; it's also lots of people who are homeless because their house has been bombed or demolished, their town occupied, and their lives disrupted in a myriad of ways.
I really hoped someone will help get rid of Putin from inside RU by this moment (I believe there are plenty of who may not necessary love him).
EU should really put more cash on table to help UA.
And perhaps naive of us to assume that the war in Ukraine is a product only of this one man and his ideas and/or party. Unfortunately Russia seems unusually united in this "operation."
EDIT: don't usually complain about downvotes, but WTH people, what did I say that's controversial? Seems some people think this is somehow pro-Russian? It's not.
It's that opening statement that invokes memories of how the ruscist regime justifies the mass murder. It's the first thing the reader sees and it sets the tone/perception. I was confused as well, had to reread the thing.
The Russian sociopolitical culture is very imperialist, which is no surprise given that the country is one of the few remaining colonial empires in the most traditional sense (i.e. the metropole milking vast occupied territories), and it cannot really exist as a single entity without this kind of politics.
That said, leadership does matter. These kinds of ideas find support in Russian society when they are put front and center, but without someone to actively do that, people just grumble about "them not respecting us as they used to" etc.
At the same time, Putin does not represent the most radical manifestation of this ideology, either. Someone like e.g. Strelkov could truly go all in on "gathering the lands", as Russian historiography usually describes re-occupation.
*> Putin does not represent the most radical manifestation of this ideology, either
This is my concern. I'm no expert on Russia, but I can see this from a distance, and it's scary. A way of talking about the world that sounds so 19th century, but seems to be making a comeback.
(FWIW I think American imperialism as we saw in Iraq is terrible as well, and I condemn both.)
> really hoped someone will help get rid of Putin from inside RU by this moment
For normal citizens it means to risk own death. The people who think this way would rather leave the country.
For oligarchs and elites, yes only putting complete economic lockdown could work. No way to travel and buy yourself or your kids comfy western way of life.
Unfortunately sanctions are lax. Eg. Putin's wife lives in EU just fine I think. The people hurt mainly are regular citizens, I have a buddy who cannot open a bank acc in EU because of some evil namesake on top. Whereas oligarchs are fine, if you have money the banks are open to you worldwide. And even if sanctions were stricter crypto laundering now undermines all of them. Quite depressing this all
> For oligarchs and elites, yes only putting complete economic lockdown could work. No way to travel and buy yourself or your kids comfy western way of life.
I don't think that can work. Russian elites absolutely value power over Western way of life. Sanctions are only needed to starve Russian economy to a point where it cannot finance war - and it has been a mixed success so far, but in principle can work.
> Russian elites absolutely value power over Western way of life
some elites maybe, but their kids will only be after a couple of generations. It's one thing if you yourself cannot spend time in London but if your kids and relatives also cannot leave and buy a new iphone suddenly you have people to answer to.
You know what I mean. iPhone is catch all standing for quality status-signaling cars, furniture, food, any electronics, etc etc. The dinosaurs who still remember USSR will be fine without those but for later generations it'll be a shock if Chinese knockoffs is all they can have now like the plebs.
Those later generations are currently reaching prime age and they are leading comfortable shock-free life that just reinforces their understanding of how there can be no consequences for association with Putler.
It's clear that they are immune while if you are a regular person not associated with government and elites you are hurt by war and sanctions. So what do regular people do? Try to be associated with government and elites as best they can. How? By supporting whatever the government does.
I think you underestimate how simply a desire to have nice life and signal high status can change political outcomes
I kinda misspoke, it's not just laundering per se, more like crypto being a workaround for sanctions generally. If you have crypto in some countries there are ways to withdraw it into cash and buy your kids iphones for days without much kyc. Remember Binance's ties to Russia. Or you can buy guns for your war from North Korea and pay them crypto. But yeah, for laundering there are mixers and friendly banks. NK uses Macao I heard. Russia probably HK.
Russians had zero problem with storming an airport to try to kill jews. The reason they arent doing anything isnt because russians are scared. The reason is most russians dont want russia to loose the war and surrender to Ukraine and give up Crimea. Even Navalny said he would continue the occupation of crimea if he replaced Putin.
Those weren't "ethnic Russians", but rather their Dagestan colony which is quite Islamic and well, they obviously follow the same outrage news cycles hating on jews.
Russia is a giant patchwork of colonies being held together by strongmen and the "ethnic Russians" more or less drain and extract the resources of every minority and send the money all to themselves in Moscow and St Petersburg.
You're completely right here, but I need to add: "ethnic Russians" are too a colony of Moscow, as the federal power puts all Russian regions in the position economic depression with how the mechanism of taxes and internal debt are implemented. Almost all regions are "dotational", which means that the federal government gives them money to cover their budget deficits, but this was not always the case.
This isn't about ethnicity, this is about strongmen in Moscow draining the country to fuel the ambitions and comfort of muscovites.
Don't forget the regions that supply natural resources for this gas station of a country. They feed Moscow with oil, diamonds, etc. Some of them I think used to require a visa for russians to enter until Putin.
They are the same Russians as others, thousands of them are killing Ukrainians right now, for money mostly.
Promise to get paid 2000$ per month is enough motivation to go to the other country thousands of kilometers away from their home and kill everyone there and probably die.
There is an epidemic of people dying inside RU after criticizing Putin, the closer the circle of "business" the more notorious the fall through a window. The rest goes to prison under false accusations when they are public figures; this is the problem of not to have separated the political power from judicial power, among other things.
Those business also makes me to think that the next one is not going to be better. Anyway, the hope should never lost, life is full of twists and turns.
PS: I don't have Russian friends so my opinion is just based on what I see externally.
> To get more Ukrainians killed for no gain of territory?
How do you see alternative options?
I don't see "okay guys, let's wrap it up" as a thing invaders will accept. It will also mean "you will never return home" or "your family is under occupational regime right now, good luck" for a lot of locals, and that's unlikely this option will be accepted by them.
I think some context may help. Russian government media clearly wrote that Ukrainians should be eradicated as the idea with language forbidden (they say it's "Russian spoiled by Polish" and civilians "suffering the hardships of occupation for the support of nazi regime (with further clarification that everyone is a supporter)". I'm not paraphrasing or exaggerating. I'm almost quoting.
So it's not like they plan to stop on "already captured territories". It would be more of a delay before the next round, like the past few years long ceasefire before 2022. This way the question gets reduced to "at what rate do you want to see your country being dismantled?".
> EU should really put more cash on table to help UA.
More high-tech weaponry like rockets, drones and other stuff will lead to lesser Ukrainian casualties with bigger territorial gains, so that's a better option compared to the current state of things.
Large scale wars usually go on until one of the sides can't continue anymore. Ukrainian government don't have plans to stop anytime soon and surrender may shatter the rest of the country in multiple ways, effectively ending somewhat normal functioning for years or decades to come. Also, military draft goes on and enlisted soldiers will go to battle. So it would be nice and wise to give them some technological advantage.
> People talk lightly about the lives of others when its not theirs on the line
Also, people talk lightly about giving up territory when it's not the territory with their homes on the line.
Agreed, and even if Russia was "content" to "only" take the territory they currently have occupied, and Putin could somehow sell this to his population as a "victory" ... the long term situation would be a nightmare.
They would not stop undermining the independence of Ukraine, and would in fact be emboldened to do more. There would be no "peace", there'd be hybrid warfare incursions constantly, they'd start crowing about Russian language rights even more, and use it as a justification for meddling probably at an even more intense level than before. Every election would be undermined, people assassinated, bought off, manipulated.
Remember Russia last year changed its constitution to include Ukrainian land in its borders. Lands which it currently doesn't even occupy.
They have spent the last 10 years selling their population on the line that Ukrainians were doing some sort of genocide on the population in the Donbas -- so just imagine if Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were split in two, as they are now?
Official Russian ideology is Russo-supremacist, with an Orthodox Christian nationalist veneer. This is not the USSR era, with its "brotherhood of peoples" propaganda. Its right wing nationalist, and imperialist on that basis, and has shown itself willing to attempt to enforce this.
Eventually they'd either get their way and turn Ukraine back into a client state, or invade again.
Russia needs to be pushed back, its defense lines broken and its trade relationships properly severed, its energy exports denied access to the west until a substantial foreign policy shift is made by its leadership.
Oh, and removed from the UN security council or the security council just abolished.
To get less Ukrainians killed and less territory lost.
Russia is still attacking, still trying to conquer more land. It's going incredibly slowly and at tremendous cost in Russian lives, but with less resources for the defender, it wouldn't go away; it would go faster.
The only way to end this is to make clear to Russia that they cannot win this. And for that, Ukraine needs a lot more support.
Or, if they trade safety for foreign rule, getting killed in the next Russian war of expansion where undoubtedly citizens from formerly Ukrainian territories would be the first sent into the "who needs tactics if you have numbers" assaults. They don't have a non-violent option, no matter the sacrifices they'd be willing to make.
Of course in our “freedom of speech” democratic western culture you can’t say this. How dare you?
Ukraine on its own can’t win this war. Russia has way more reserves, people and resources. Not even talking about nuclear weapons. Do you really think Russia will accept losing this war? A nuclear superpower? Last resort they can send some nukes. So, why continue sending more weapons and money to a war which if escalates we all lose?
I think you misunderstood me.
I meant last, last resort.
When Russia’s existence is threatened, when they have no other options, I think they won’t hesitate to blow up the whole world.
There is no way Russia lets off nukes in Ukraine or around this issue. They would have done so already if they were that stupid. It would be completely mutually assured destruction, assuming their nukes even work.
Not to mention Russian civilians are downwind from Ukraine anyways. Radiation fallout would poison the entire region.
Even the use of a "tactical" nuke or chemical weapons would be a red line that NATO would treat as an escalation that would end with the complete elimination of Russian defensive lines from the air and the end of Russian air supremacy in eastern Ukraine, and I'm sure Biden has communicated this very clearly to Putin behind the scenes.
Russia is treading a strategically thin line. Unless Trump gets back in the Whitehouse.
And funny to see you put "freedom of speech" in quotes, while you post in a completely public forum without sanction. Shoot your mouth off wrong in Russia and you'll end up in a jail cell. It sounds more like your problem is that you expect people to just ... agree with you? But the problem is you're wrong.
Behind Ukraine is a giant contiguous geographic area of allies with supplies and armaments superior to Russia's, and an economic & industrial capacity many multiples of it. What is required, is will from leadership and a population that doesn't fall for Russian propaganda, like you have.
This is exactly what the problem is. If you don’t agree with the mainstream “save Ukraine” mantra, then you “fell for Russian propaganda”. The only accepted opinion is to fight at all costs. Nothing else is accepted. How is this democratic? I’m not for Russia, nor against, but don’t support of killing even more people.
If there would be freedom of speech, then you could discuss this openly and publicly. I believe in Russia you can also post on the internet, at least anonymously.
There is the right way (pro Ukraine) and the wrong way. Why?
So, how exactly will Ukraine win this war? And at what cost? How would Russia accept losing? I believe you don’t have an answer.
Nobody is stopping you from having your opinion, or voicing it, so stop blathering like you're being censored.
Your privilege is showing -- or are you just used to being agreed with and getting your way?
As for the cost -- the expense is human lives and untold misery. Which is the unacceptable cost of every war. Which is why bullies use it as a tool, in hopes that their foe will submit because the cost is unbearable.
It's brutally unpalatable and inhumane to continue with war. But the alternative is worse.
BTW last week Putin made it clear that no "peace" at the current borders will be permitted and that their original goals remain, which is (at a minimum) the merge into Russia of all the Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts, the elimination of the gov't in Ukraine (and presumably its replacement with a puppet regime), and no EU membership and certainly no NATO protection.
So basically 1/2 the territory of Ukraine, including its most productive agricultural and industrial lands, the bulk of its Black Sea coastline, and it become a client state.
It is not our war (I’m not Ukranian, nor Russian). I understand that it is bad and unacceptable that Putin does this and I also want to stop it, but not at all costs. To me enough lives were already lost and I don’t see how can we win.
Maybe this is unacceptable to many people, but I prefer the interest of my own country, my family and friends. I’m open to help, but again, not at all costs. I don’t see how is it in our interest to be at war with Russia (I’m from Europe).
How Ukraine can win? With enough weapons and ammo from one side and with real sanctions from the other side.
Last few years they receive some ammo, but just enough to not loose the battle. And sanctions are a joke. Russians are easily selling goods to EU, money easily flowing to Russia. There are backdoors for each sanctions.
Don't see how it is in EU interest? If Russia will occupy Ukraine then they could invade EU states next. Estonia for example. There are already threats coming from Russian state TV. They are ready for war. And they don't care who to invade and kill: Nazi in Ukraine, Nazi in Estonia, Nazi in Poland etc. Call any nation a Nazi and there will be legions of Russian soldiers who are ready to kill everyone (including children and elderly people, they will rape, torture and kill everyone) for promise to get paid few thousand euros per months.
Do you really think so? Ukraine received all the ammo in the world already, but they not really making progress anymore. How and what exactly will change in the upcoming future? I’m curious about concrete things, instead of just talking about that “they can not loose” etc. So far, the details are unclear to me.
If Russia attacks the EU or NATO, then we’ll need our weapons to fight them. I think there is ZERO chance that they do that. As NATO is just simply more powerful and Russia is not stupid. It would be called the 3rd WW.
Few dozens of modern tanks, few dozens of short range missiles. A dozen of aircrafts made in USSR.
Doesn't sound "all the ammo in the world" for me.
Yes, they received a lot of close range defensive weapons, but almost nothing offensive.
Regarding invasion to one country in NATO - why not? Other armies are extremely weak, with ammo depots for few weeks of active operation. And everybody are terrified to do any offensive because "crazy Russians have nukes and we need their oil and natural gas"
Ukraine is eating through ammo (mainly 155mm howitzer shells from what I understand) because the war is in a WWI-style stalemate due to the lack of air superiority at the front from either side. All they can do is pound each other over and over again along the front line. There's no way to advance.
Likely if the west provided jets, this would change drastically.
I actually agree Russia is not stupid enough to engage in a direct attack on a NATO nation. They would likely move next against in Transnistria, Georgia, etc. And I don't see what would stop them, if they have success in Ukraine.
But they will engage in hybrid warfare against the west (already were), and they will be twice as emboldened if they are given Ukraine.
This is a country that felt free to unleash radioactive poisons against persons on UK soil, shoot down a civilian airliner, etc. Why do you want to appease them?
If west provided modern jets last year, if west provided long range missiles last year, and mainly: if Ukraine was allowed to use them against invader's military target on their soil - there would not be a stalemate now.
There are airports, ammo depots and other facilities less than 100 km from Ukrainian cities, and Russians are safe(mostly) there.
While at the same time Russians every day continuing their terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Russia is a terrorist state, but world doesn't care if they can have profits from Russia.
At first I felt like maybe this was a reasonable strategy from the west, because it allowed NATO to escalate capabilities slowly without at any point performing actions that would have looked like a direct attack on Russian home soil, justifying military action against the west, etc.
But after this summer of letting the Ukrainians flounder along the front in a stalemated counteroffensive, I am frustrated. The F16s should have been there this summer.
And now Avdiivka will become this winter's Bakhmut and the US could very well end up with a Putin-allied Trumpler in the Whitehouse next year.
I have a feeling that west doesn't want Ukraine to win. They want to bleed Russia, to make it weak, but to stay in one piece and with current government.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, there is no powerful politician like Reagan nowadays.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
We had decades of peace and prosperity and now hard times are coming.
Do you really think Russia will give up the already occupied territories? Crimea?
I think this could happen when Putin would be removed and NATO would deploy to Ukraine.
Just sending more and more weapons will not change anything.
They already have given up lots of occupied territories. Guess why? Because of the advances of Ukrainian army. If west will send more weapons, without restrictions to use them against Russian army - all territory of Ukraine could be liberated from occupation.
If you think that west should give up and let Russians win and keep occupied territories - you should learn European history better.
Remember "peace for out time" agreement with Hitler in Munich 1938?
So aggression gets rewarded by handing them something they wanted. Do you really think that this is the end, this is all they wanted and from now on they are peaceful world citizens?
Every time you hand something to aggressors you need to hand them more the next time.
How many km between russia and the border of the country where you live?
For me it's 0.
You either help Ukraine now or be ready to fight yourself sometime in the future.
It's like in the winter you are cold and you pee in your pants. It will be warm for a moment end then what?
I don’t disagree, but what exactly means stopping Russia? How would you define what is “winning”? So, “that Russia doesn’t do that anymore”? Russia is a nuclear superpower, who can stop them? The NATO? But that’s 3WW.
As I stated in my other comment, I don't think Russia would use nukes, only when their core existence is threatened.
I'm not advocating to NOT to help Ukraine, I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is our plan. Which is still unclear. You and all others here have absolutely zero idea.
I'm a very cautious person and before committing to sending more weapons, at least I'd like to know what is our strategy. How we're going to win?
But of course, it's also an option to send as many weapons as we can without any further strategy and let as many Ukrainians die as can, without even understanding what winning means. This is somehow the only accepted solution currently. And if you don't like that, then you are pro Russian fallen for Russian propaganda.
I don't get your question "who can stop them?" The Ukrainians have already done so, to a large degree. Nobody imagined Ukraine lasting more than a week of invasion, but they did so, and then retook large swathes of territory and forced the Russians into a defensive posture.
The mistake the west made was not having confidence in the Ukrainians early on, and not supplying them with the tools early on and into last winter. We let Russia pull back and build intensive defensive lines that would be impossible to breach without air support.
As for nuclear weapons... they are not tools to win wars.
The first country to use a nuclear weapon as an offensive weapon will be turned to glass. It's just not a tool that even Putin is stupid enough to use.
They don't make you a powerful offensive power, just a powerful defensive one. And nobody has ever suggested invading Russia, despite their paranoid claims to the contrary.
To be fair, I/O is a place where C++ really dropped the ball, too. The <iostream> part of the C++ library is unfortunately a complete mess. This is not really a “win” for C++ as much as it is a failure for both languages.
I think it is hard to advocate for either C or C++, for greenfield projects, these days.
I guess the field I was imagining was greener than that. But yes.
In many cases you can just interface to the C libraries. But cross language coding has never been perfect, and yes, sometimes it's better to continue using the same language.
It's not hard to write an RAII wrapper around a C library, and the careful allocate/free is code you have to write either way (e.g. I'd write a wrapper in C++ if I need to use a C library with resource handling).
C is the easiest to interface with. Every language has to be C-compatible.
I would not choose C or C++ just because I depend on libfftw, or simdjson, or most other things. If the code that needs to talk to the library is less than 10% of the total program (exact percentage just made up), then I'd still use Rust.
So many of the CVEs against rust crates are actually against the bindings for things like ssl, glibc, and libcurl. I think accepting small growing subsets of ssl and curl for native implementation would be a good idea. And relibc too I suppose. Go went this route, and while it caused some headaches porting to new kernels, it has lots of benefits too.
That story seems to be about missing code/functionality, more than anything about a vulnerability. There is way more unsafe out there than there should be. Bindings are are one of the very few cases that must have it.
It depends on the company, the team skills, the tools they are used to have, the difference when moving into Rust, eg CUDA in C++ with NSight and Visual
Studio plugins from NVidia, versus Rust.
Yeah, but you can equally ignore fgetc and friends in C. My only point here is that IO in the standard library is not very good in either language.
IMO a parser should be reading the entire file, and then parsing as a block of memory, by default, for most use cases these days. That way you don’t have to think about IO while you are parsing. Streaming parsers are niche these days for good reasons.
I usually put all the resource freeing at the end of a function under a goto label, or only a few lines within the allocation, so it's easy to visually confirm everything is cleaned up. The way this commit frees the resources inside of if blocks is not how I would have done it. And if I find I let a leak in the code I usually refactor to make the correctness more obvious.
In this example, the fact that m3_ParseModule takes ownership of the wasm pointer is very tricky. It looks like there is still a leak but there is not.
> it's easy to visually confirm everything is cleaned up.
Yes and no.
It's easy to not make a mistake in a function. It's basically impossible to not make this mistake in 1'000 functions.
Especially as code evolves over time, being 99% perfect about this, or even 99.9% perfect, is just not good enough. Not nearly enough.
And this reminds me of something Schneier said, that everyone can make a cryptographic algorithm that they themselves cannot break. That even as a professional, having your algorithm broken is not even embarrassing.
Similarly, very good coders are not even embarrassed when they fail at memory management. People may be better or worse at it, but even the best of us are terrible at it.
I once knew a very good coder who bragged about how apparently he's the only one able to write code that's not buggy like this.
To prove a point, I spent an hour reading his opensource project and found several resource leaks, at least one of which was remotely triggerable.
It's easy to do it right once, usually, but no these mistakes happen all the time.
> if I find [… typo words(?) omitted … ] a leak in the code I usually refactor to make the correctness more obvious.
This seems to contradict that it was easy to avoid in the first place. Yes, refactor can help. But there's a bit of learned helplessness, in that this is actually the language's fault, and it doesn't have to be that way.
> To prove a point, I spent an hour reading his opensource project
> and found several resource leaks
Sounds like some interesting case studies. Could you share some?
> > if I find [… typo words(?) omitted … ] a leak in the code I
> > usually refactor to make the correctness more obvious.
I should rewrite this as - if I find a leak that I accidentally introduced, I will refactor in the process of correcting it, to make the mistake harder to repeat and the correctness easier to confirm.
There are non-language mechanisms that help code run safely, like Wasm, which is a sandbox. Also msan and asan should be used more.
Thinking that changing the language is the right way to fix all the problems you mentioned still seems like a premature assumption. The fact that 100% perfection is worth pursuing at all costs is theoretical and you could be losing things more valuable in the process - e.g. FFI bindings suck, and the added fragmentation in having so many languages in the craft is a pernicious cost with a multitude of aspects to it.
Can't be more specific without doxing myself, I'm afraid.
There are non language ways to make things safer, sure. Take C++, one can do things other than RAII to avoid resource leaks, and it'll be a good pattern. But RAII is right there.
In C++ one can be disciplined about object ownership. But I find that in Rust "doing the right thing" is not optional.
Static and strong typing have similar virtues.
You can write fine software in assembly. Steve Gibson apparently does.
I'm not saying there are any silver bullets. I do appreciate that five minutes spent now being forced to think about object ownership, can save a six month project down the line refactoring to remove all shared_ptrs.
Not accidentally creating copies, because RVO has many conditionals on when it happens.
No silver bullets. But in my opinion C is always worse than at least a C++ subset deliberately chosen. Plain C is because you enjoy the journey, not because you'll get there faster or better.
In C++ you can refactor to RAII encapsulate, when a resource is leaked. In C you can't.
> To prove a point, I spent an hour reading his opensource project
> and found several resource leaks
This is asking a lot, but if you enjoy that, I would be thrilled if you could do the same for some of my C projects - nusort and werm under github.com/matvore.
In a way I'm surprised the language standard for C hasn't been extended to have a standardized RAII "hook" concept?
I don't think it's that far outside of the core language philosophy. Though it would take years for it to make it through to all toolchains and actually be adopted.
For some people, “invisible” function calls are the devil incarnated and against the alleged C philosophy of “what you see is what you get”.
Arguably a compromise would be that you still have to write the resource-freeing calls explicitly, but the compiler would verify that you didn’t forget them. On the other hand, that’s what linters could already do.
