While it looks like it’s interesting, I can’t help but feel that the informational content is zero of maybe even negative.
There is absolutely no way for the lay internet user to corroborate one word of it that isn’t already public information. Whether it looks or feels plausible is also meaningless: it could “feel right” because it is, or because someone took effort to design it this way.
So best thing for me is to ignore it and forget I read it, lest something I read in it confuses me later for a reputable source.
I’m not saying it’s not genuine, it might be, just that to me it is 100% indistinguishable from a prank or psyops.
The word for this is LARP (Live Action Role Play). This is where some message board troll uses publically available information and plausible extrapolations to pretend to be some "high level insider" leaking something.
When the prediction doesn't pan out, the usual response is "two more weeks." Qanon is the most notorious and successful example of this phenomenon. You don't normally see these on HN, but they are common on anonymous message boards. Perhaps this is a "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" mainstream conspiracy theory being propagated as an official narrative for war propaganda purposes?
Or the admin got this sent randomly from someone. Maybe an FSB operative, or maybe a convincing troll, or Russian or Ukrainian or frankly any intelligence service.
It’s completely unknowable. Any heuristics for determining authenticity go out the window, because they would be used by a faker too.
Hell, even concluding it’s a fake is dangerous, because what if that’s the intention? Next thing you might be wondering if this is reverse psychology and trying to conclude things from something that really has no informational content to the lay user.
I wouldn’t take at face value a journalist saying “this is what an FSB operative says, trust me”. Leaks from “senior anonymous official” are dozen a penny. Journalists typically indicate how they verified the provenance of leaks they publish, and hopefully keep the unverifiable stuff off their pages.
As for the guy’s track record... this sounds like a niche source. Some fairly small slither of the population can indeed infer more by knowing this guy well, for everyone else is “trust me he’s good”. Certainly not informative to me.
Agree, even if it completely genuine there doesn't seem anything that useful in it. What I find interesting, if true, it might be a first sign of more, actually corroborated information coming out in the coming months and years.
In the first days of the Snowden leaks, I was very skeptical (and got a lot of heat because of it), because, although intuitively it sounded true and fairly aligned with my world view, he seemingly didn't say anything that one couldn't just come up with and at the time only one news paper has seen the actual documents, vouching for it.
I found it interesting for the purely operational aspect: management ask for analysis without context, doesnt like answer so force better number, bubbles up for months to the top, war is declared on the basis of analysis, all is fucked because analysis was devoid of meaning.
Now, need to fix the shit and Z stands for Nazi, Zelensky is war hero, Chechens dont understand why they were erased even before killing one civilian and there s no way it ends with a win for Russia.
Love it cause even if completely fake, it's probably 100% true :D
Creating a long fake is riskier than a short fake. Making mistakes is a risk, and so the more content the more risk.
As for the “reality” of working as an analyst in FSB it seems pretty accurate. Even if not true, it carries a certain truth.
The general analysis is consistent with what most people I’ve spoken with think. Russia is in a bad spot. They need to turn the narrative on Ukraine (one idea we thought of was a dirty bomb from waste)… I don’t think the content can prove it is authentic or not. Maybe when the author is found an punished we’ll hear about it.
The intelligence war has been amazing. The early game of leaking operational plans was incredible. To say “we have so much access we can burn it with abandon” is a huge flex.
The real time intelligence enabling the Ukrainians to respond precisely has also been incredible. From OSINT analysis to the OSINT crowd sourced collection using geolocation tagged videos and photos. Truly a new operational environment for an army to fight in.
Then all the perception management. Truly remarkable achievement. This will be in the textbooks as a case study, if… you know, we make to a point where we still have textbooks
> Creating a long fake is riskier than a short fake. Making mistakes is a risk, and so the more content the more risk.
But this isn't really a long piece. It's very short in actual content, only padded with prose.
And what exactly is the risk anyway? That someone will identify it as Ukrainian disinformation? That's very low stakes, which we know because it has already happened with other bits of "info".
The Kadyrov FSB leak being Ukranian counter information is quite plausible. Maybe they got tipped off by NATO and after neutralizing the chechens, they claimed it was a FSB leak.
What I found interesting was unconditional acceptance of "we did happy result analysis because otherwise we get criticize as always, had we knew it will end with failed conquest we would totally make truthful analysis to save Russia". Totally.
The info about Putin not being the only one in charge of pushing the "red button" is new. Hopefully it is also true, but afaik there hasn't been any concrete info about that, quite the contrary, the feeling is that all the world risks getting into nuclear war because of one "madman".
> the feeling is that all the world risks getting into nuclear war because of one "madman".
Which, from a game theory perspective is exactly what he would want you to feel. If people don't believe he will press the red button, then the red button doesn't deter anyone and there is no nuclear deterrence.
We did not believe he was going to invade Ukraine, although the US did warn us weeks or even months in advance. I'm not going to make the same mistake again and prepare for the worst.
Verified by two anonymous sources, according to a “Bellingcat exec director”, who in turn has been verified by Twitter (which amounts to what, I do not know — verified their name? Their job? That they are competent at their job?)
A little tenuous, but maybe this Bellingcat employee is super famous and renowned?
It would be interesting if people here can come up with a better chain of verification. Until then, it’s certainly a fun bit of alt-fiction / creative writing.
It's interesting that otherwise smart people here believe that it must be true because two anonymous and unverified sources also say it's true.
And this is purportedly intelligence information coming from the FSB! I mean, military intelligence, what could go wrong with trusting sensitive intelligence of an ongoing war that someone posted on Twitter or Facebook?
I don't consider myself super smart, but i read a lot of news on the non government controlled websites (vc.ru, tjournal.ru, exler.ru for instance), that usually have an audience that is more intelligent than the average population. The common motif from those who worked for the Russian authorities that this is indeed the case in various parts of the government, total corruption and incompetence and talented people usually don't stay long.
It also comes together with what we see about Russian army progress in Ukraine, looks like quite a failure considering how much armed forces they have.
Don't get me wrong, it definitely seems plausible. But wouldn't a disinformation tactic be to spread plausible but slightly distorted "insider info"?
I'm saying it's weird to trust a piece of military intel (precisely the kind of intel that gets frequently faked) just because some journalist claims two unnamed FSB spooks he happens to know "say it's legit". Well, would you trust unnamed experts on any other security related matter, just because someone on Twitter says so? And specifically in a context where we know disinformation is being spread left and right?
I think the biggest issue I know off is their response to the OPCW leaks [1], where they argued that they agree the leaks are authentic but they suddenly have proof that no one else had access to to change the narrative.
> A draft version of a letter seen by Bellingcat and not publicly released by either ‘Alex’, Wikileaks or any of the journalists who have covered the so-called scandal, proves that a chemical attack did occur.
This seems super suspicious and is a deus ex machina that undermines all material inconvenient to the US. I don't find the "screenshot" very convincing, especially with the source being the director general of the organisation in question.
If it's true then that should give it more credibility, as most probably Bellingcat is a CIA-cover organisation itself, so I suppose they do know their direct field adversaries.
Given the recent track record for lies coming out of both Ukraine and Russia, it's probably best to treat everything as propaganda unless proven otherwise in some meaningful way.
> best to treat everything as propaganda unless proven otherwise
This comment is always near the top of any HN or Reddit post, and while it’s not wrong, it’s almost a cliche at this point.
There is clear misinformation being pumped out, but there is room to discuss should why it might be misinformation, and to understand why someone might have spent time carefully producing it.
I think it's good that's it's always near the top. There should be a sticky added to the top of every political post here. Something like:
> Reminder: there's a war going on and one of the main weapons in modern warfare is propaganda. The propaganda will come from both sides and also from third parties. Be mindful that any political articles may be intended to manipulate you.
It's important that this sort of comments remain on top, because otherwise smart people keep being gullible about disinformation in times of war (and other types as well, of course).
Look how some people are saying "well, it's vouched by two other FSB agents that this guy saying this on Twitter apparently knows, so it must be true!".
Do you see the problem with this line of reasoning?
There's also this thing about believing what people already want to believe it's true (that Russia cannot win, that their army is in disarray, that every Russian was duped by Putin, who is increasingly isolated and making random decisions, etc). Note all of that may very well be true, which is precisely why made up "leaks" helping our minds reinforce these conclusions are so effective.
Gladwell (as much as I find that guy annoying) also made the point that Intelligence only convinces analysts of what they already believed to begin with. I'd say this is doubly so with fake news and fake leaks...
> But the whole situation reminds me of the HBO rendition of Chernobyl. It’s all based on lies.
Interestingly enough, HBO's Chernobyl was thrilling TV but not particularly good as a documentary of what actually happened, yet people are starting to believe what HBO (and the memories it's based on) tell us is "the truth".
It looks genuine, but it could also be a fake written as part of Ukrainian information war.
While everything in this article looks very plausible, it could just as well be written by an outsider with good understanding of Russian politics. In that case it could be a bit skewed to paint a more optimistic picture (or if you will pessimistic from Russia's perspective).
As mentioned a lot of places, Ukraine psy ops aren't as long. Longer = more chances for mistakes. This has been vouched for by multiple people with contacts in the FSB who all say this is most likely genuine. One of the people to vouch for it is a Bellingcat employee.
It also mentioned a false flag op to make Ukraine look like it's been developing nuclear weapons. News just broke of that today from Russian media, entirely in line with the letter. Huge coincidence if it's fake.
> This has been vouched for by multiple people with contacts in the FSB
I've only seen this being vouched by one guy on Twitter (Christo Grozev), or maybe I'm missing something? It seems very authentic, just very weird that an FSB guy would publicly post something like this.
I just had a flight of fancy; a russian intelligence agent who is worn out and somewhat cynical. I suspect most whistleblowers would probably prefer not to have a "codename", but it brought back memories of books I read when younger; and the name "Smileskiy" came to mind. Maybe the name might raise a sardonic chuckle to its new owner.
> Ukraine psy ops aren't as long. Longer = more chances for mistakes
But this piece isn't really long in information density. What mistakes could be made? This piece says very little except asserting that Russia cannot win this war and that their intelligence analysts were duped into preparing scenarios they were told wouldn't be used in practice. This can be told in a single paragraph or stretched with prose and "color", which is what happened here.
The piece is very short in this sense, and has very little content that could be botched by mistake.
This article from almost two weeks ago, noted that while it was at that time new for the claim to be used associated with urgent action, it had been made several times before.
At least Russian state media has been talking about it since "military exercises", that either they plan or some hazy they might have been making dirty bombs.
when was the last time bellingcat published anything that was not in favour of the western spin? Perhaps the houthi drone strike, but even then you could view it as downplaying houthi's capabilities.
The claimed "fact" that bellingcat somehow has FSB contacts that are willing to verify material seems like even bigger stretch.
Yes, they publish very little that would upset their backers, but the nice thing about them is that they tend to share evidence. When there is not much public evidence (like in this case) they are the first to say so.
Grozev was a traditional investigative journalist before he worked for Bellingcat. They have also worked with The Insider and many other traditional investigative journalism outfits in the east. It is not at all implausible that they should be able to contact two FSB people for feedback (especially when one of them is retired).
Good point about the news of nuclear weapons. I missed the fact that this post was published before the news went live. It is conceivable that Ukrainian intelligence could know about these plans, but this post being a genuine FSB leak is a much more probable explanation.
The Russians are using the old "Saddam Hussein has WMDs" meme. Just replace Saddam with Zelenski and throw in the "fighting facsism" theme to reuse some Cold War propaganda that the Soviets were brainwashing everyone East of the Iron Curtain with.
Bellingcat is just as independent and believable as CrowdStrike or ThreatConnect. The usual CIA proxies with the business to verify lies and propaganda.
In this case it sounds like QAnon, just a bit better.
Whether fake or not, it is definitely adding some perspectives I didn't see up until now. For example, I have not considered the possibility of Kadyrov position not being very stable if he loses (or already lost) his soldiers in something that was supposed to be short and glorious war.
Same with how does Russia keep their Syria effort supplied when their logistics in Ukraine are already stretched.
So this is definitely written by some analyst, but who knows if from FSB.
I would recommend Kamil Galeev threads to anyone interested in the history of Russia and Ukraine, he has written a ton of threads about a lot of different aspects to the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, which all look very well researched to me. I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions though.
Is there any proof that Chechens soldiers have suffered heavy losses? There were rumors that Ukrainian army bombarded them after the Chechens themselves leaked their positions by posting videos on tiktok/instagram/telegram. The Kadyrov part in this text seems to be built on these rumors.
edit:
the part i am referring to:
Kadyrov's lost his mind. Almost started another conflict with us. It's possible that the Ukrainians spread misinformation that we gave away the locations of Kadyrov's forces in the first few days. They got pounded while marching in the most terrifying ways, they hadn't even started fighting and they already got a certain place torn apart. Then it begins, "the FSB leaked info to the Ukrainians!". I don't possess such information, and say that it's 1% to 2% likely that this is true (I don't want to completely eliminate the chance).
Let's not forget the US eye in the sky. I wonder if the US has now the ability to track the movement of every single tank, anti-air defense, troop carrier, across a whole country. It seems plausible to me.
I can't remember details but I'm positive I've read about such a capability being developed in the 70s or 80s. I think it was an airborne radar system similar to AWACS except looking at the ground, combined with computer systems that would analyze the data to identify troop movements. With the military resources available today (drones, satellites, ...) and the massive increases in computing power it wouldn't surprise me if they track troop movements in near real-time.
specially trained can accomplish the task of tracking a moving object. according to the theories of image recognition and geolocation. embed that software on a swarm of satellites and voilà. add to that any other kind of metadata (heat, size, height, video, image, speed...).
military tech that is operated from the sky is an absolute advantage in this century.
I'm not 100% sure it was OSINT, but i know for sure a potent OSINT tool was lended(or sold, not sure on this) to Ukrainian government less than a day after the Russian invasion.
Whistleblower in times of war is less likely. Going public with secret info is exponentially risky because of information overload and lethal punishment.
Exile, sedition or refuge-seeking would be more rewarding to a top-notch professional wanting to spill the beans to the West.
Aye, if this revealed facts that could get people killed, or get you shot for treason.
If you say "we're stressed, things are not great, the Chechens are unstable" thats... not a direct leak; nothing super actionable there. Maybe enough to be hanged in Putin's wartime Russia, but nothing that will stop an offensive.
There is no way this is from a Russian security officer. We can unpack this part by part -- all merely my opinion + common sense:
- RF nuclear deterrence: this part is designed to allay fears of NATO citizens of getting directly involved in the fight. In what universe does a Russian spook undermine his nation's deterrence? So, garner public support for direct NATO involvement by claiming that military chain of command in RF strategic forces is non-functional, and (for bonus point) the weapons may not even work!
- Famine: this part is directed at the people of what is known as "global south". Under-reported in the West, the "global south" is either sitting this out or is voicing objections of Western hypocrisy and actually rooting for the Russians. Putting a little bit of fear of starvation in that demographics may provide political cover for their political classes.
- Chechnya: in the same alternate universe, a Russian FSB agent fans the flames of resentment of the locals in a separatist-ready corner of Russian Federation.
- Soleimani: this part is interesting. RF, of course, was not 'tricked' by Soleimani into getting involved in Syria. They got themselves a nice little piece of property (for ever, btw, for free!) on the Mediterranian. So little blackwashing of Iranians as well.
p.s. of course having this circulate in Russia will go a long way to demoralize the Russian public. It is transparent psyops.
If we are going technical, then I'd say he revealed some "secret facts". I was interested to read details on inner working of FSB as a system: I'm a programmer, I look at systems made of humans as I look at software systems, I feel elated when I manage to localize a bug.
Asking analyst to perform an analysis of highly unlikely scenario and punishing them for unflattering reports is a failure mode. All this story explains how this stupid war became possible: the decision was made by the very top officials, it was done in a total secret, it was based on flawed reports, which were flawed because for analysts they seemed as an unimportant nuisance.
I know that this is just a twitter-news, and I'm in doubt about it. But I struggle to find a good hypothesis explaining actions of Putin. I do not value much hypotheses like "Putin is a madman" or "Hanlon's razor": they may be valid explanations, but they do not allow us to predict future. A madman and a fool are unpredictable by their very nature, so these hypotheses sounds for me like "it is a random and unpredictable in advance process". Hypotheses like this seem to me to be a result of an intellectual laziness.
But this "whistleblower" gives some explanation. Pretty detailed explanation, allowing to predict, for example, a coming investigation for a failure of a plan. It is hard to predict where it will go then, but... It is a doubtful report, but if we assumed this text as truth, then we would get a more or less firm ground to speculate of what is going next. We can predict future. And then we can compare our predictions with our future observations. It will give us ability to assess likelihood of the hypothesis.
So the "whistleblower" had given us some secret facts. And therefore he is not a "whistleblower" but whistleblower. Though the possibility of him being an impostor was not ruled out.
I'm an amateur, so I rarely push myself to a point of making real predictions. Mostly I think in hindsight: I just observe what happens, and see how it aligns with different hypotheses. It is not rigorous enough for a modern scientific method, but it works good enough to me.
To be more rigorous means not just making a single prediction, but making a lot of predictions, drawing distribution of probabilities over them, and it would need some kind of informational system to fix it because it would be a lot of predictions, too many for my memory.
My way is easier. The most threatening to a validity is a hindsight bias: it is really hard to overcome it, even when you know about it. There are other threats to a validity, but I think not it is a right place and time to dive into this topic.
> this specific text does not seem useful to me in this regard
My guess it is because you didn't interested in a management and inner workings of organizations including long-term social processes taking place in organizations, and suchlike. I do not try to reproach you on this, to tell you that you should be interested -- no. I'm just trying to explain the difference.
Science can see facts because of theories. Some people say, that science grows from objective facts, but it is not so simple. Science can see facts because it have a theory. Theory says what is a fact, and what is an unimportant noise. A precession of an orbit of Mercury was deemed in XIX century as an important fact, because classical mechanics and Newton gravity told so. When you have no theory, then the precession would be at best an unremarkable curiosity, at worst it would go unnoticed.
I have some ideas of how organizations work. I wouldn't call it a theory, because it is not, it is unsystematic and mostly intuitive, but I use it as a theory nevertheless. And it allows me to see facts in places where people who have no theory at all see a random noise.
So my guess is: you see nothing useful in this text, because your understanding of an organization is not nuanced enough. (Once more: it is not a reproach, I do not think that everyone must be interested in what is interesting to me.)
The critical question is what substance of fact does this information actually bring to the discussion that we haven't already heard?
It reads like a 4chan LARP rant, merely restating existing propaganda (true or false) talking points just repackaged into something that might appeal to the HN crowd.
It could just be my ignorance, but is world hunger really as inevitable as they say. Couldn't other countries step up production or tap into their grain reserves?
>World hunger is unavoidable... I can't tell you what the higher ups were thinking when they decided to go through with this operation
Northern Africa (maghreb, egypt, etc..) is hugely dependent on wheat from Ukraine and Russia.
Wheat prices are through the roof right now [1], it's only going to get worse.
So short-term impact pretty much guaranteed.
Longer term, much of the euro zone agriculture is very dependent on fertilizers that are either produced using Russian natural gas or directly bought from there.
Cost of growing food, if the situation doesn't improve, will increase dramatically.
So, in other words, major increase in food shortages is a likely scenario indeed.
That said, EU destroys an incredible amount of food each year (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit...). Perhaps some of this could be put to good use.
Also don’t forget Australia and America are huge grain producers and should be able to ramp up exports.
> Northern Africa (maghreb, egypt, etc..) is hugely dependent on wheat from Ukraine and Russia.
I dont think the US and Europe really care about that, they will send some token supplies but its not going to change their decision about Russia just because people in Africa are starving.
The only way to guarantee sustained Ukrainian grain production is for the Russians to withdraw or for Ukrainians to surrender. I don't think the Ukrainians are obliged to surrender to stop people in other countries from starving. This is on Russia.
Would the Ukrainian agricultural sectors continue to operate effectively if Russia fully occupied the country, knowing that their wealth might be stolen? Would Russia move to bring their own oligarchs in to colonise and control production? Either way the restoration of production would take much longer than if Russia simply retreated.
Medium term certainly, but short term, who knows. Prices go up, supply chains become interrupted, factories that process food go out of business. And it’s not like poorer countries in Africa can simply buy their way out of any supply issue the way the West can.
> Couldn't other countries step up production or tap into their grain reserves?
Stepping up production isn't easy, since most arable land is being used for food production already. You'd have to increase farming efficiency. (Which is possible, but not easy; nobody wants to do inefficient farming, so if, as a farmer, you haven't raised efficiency, it's likely that you don't know how, or simply cannot, due to other constraints, such as availability of machines and fertilizer).
In the West just not wasting food is an easy first step. Businesses are most guilty of this. If there was a genuine crisis regulating food waste would help.
>The Blitzkrieg failed. It's entirely impossible to complete the job at this point. If in the first 3 days Zelensky and some holders of power were captured, all key buildings in Kiev were taken, and the order to surrender was given, then yes. Resistance would be minimal.
that is their main miscalculation. The FSB in Russia these days are fat lazy pigs who can only racket business and screw the lives of basically defenseless regular people. When it comes to real work they fail. They were living in the dreamworld of their own propaganda and thought that it would be like Crimea - minimal resistance due to supposed large pro-Russian population. If they did at least minimal work - like say just watched Ukrainian humor shows over the last several years like i did (mostly by Zelensky production btw) they would have known that there is no such pro-Russian population in Ukraine anymore and the resistance would be opposite of "minimal".
This reminded me of a quote by Kissinger: "What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to justify. Popular literature and films often depict the opposite – policymakers as the helpless tools of intelligence experts. In the real world, intelligence assessments more often follow than guide policy decisions."
To me it looks like regurgitated points from https://el-murid.livejournal.com/ (in Russian), which is sophisticated (as opposed to spewing blatant lies) propaganda outlet hiding the payload within a series of perfectly correct and logical statements.
It “smells right” to a Western audience, but seems a little too good to be true.
Right now objective #1 for Ukraine is to get NATO to implement a no-fly zone. NATO are reluctant because of the risk of escalating into a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia. The payload of this letter is the claim that the Russian nuclear deterrent is in a state of disrepair, or that cooler heads will prevent it being used. And thus if we believe this, there should be no reason for NATO not to grant Ukraine its wish.
This. While I believe the part about chaos and surprise and fake reports it also makes it seem that Russia is weak - which is probably dangerous to assume (of any undefeated opponent).
However, one positive note to get out of this in any case is that with the current trajectory, even without any further outside intervention going beyond the current state of affairs will likely bring the Russian special operation to an end, be it that supplies are running out or people just start to lose overview or just that you cannot succeed if maybe 20-40% of your forces are gone even before you capture one bigger target. Russia supposedly already lost 10% of their attack army and they don't have a lot to show for it. It also explains their attack patterns getting more weird, uncivilized and cruel (e.g. "we have to do something", even if it is firing on nuclear power plants).
Next step likely will be Belarus troops and supplies entering the game, which makes it more obvious that Moscow was absolutely clueless. Belarus was on the brink of a regime change just last summer - the order to go to war with Russia against Ukraine will send Belarus over the edge, I am virtually certain about that.
Great translation, and could possibly be interesting to confirm a handful of things that are guesses. Like others, I am, however, skeptical as to whether this is a genuine whistleblower. Essentially the piece says mostly things the west knows, thinks it knows or wants to think it knows.
So, I found myself reading it again looking for what the key piece of fear, uncertainty or doubt they could want to sow.
I think it would be this one:
> Does the possibility of a localised nuclear strike exist?
>
Yes.
Dangling the Silver Bullets will put fear in civilians and politicians alike. The obvious hope is that it will change narrative and negotiations.
> it's not one person who makes the decision, at least one person will refuse. And there's many people there, there isn't some "single red button".
I've read conflicting words on this one the last few days (from supposed Russian sources), the latest I saw when asked if Putin can trigger it by himself was someone saying "we don't know" and in the next breath "it's complicated".
That was the first time I’ve ever read something that seemed plausible but also made me feel like I was being carefully sucked into a Q-anon type world of “analysis” and “reporting”.
Nobody can tell if this is fake or not, surely the "reports" part sounds very familiar to anybody who worked in big corporations filled with yes men and people willing to please their superiors to make a career.
This part sounds plausible, given how Russia is structured.
The first 3 days are critical. You need to smash a hole deep in the defence. Then gather logistics to carry on. however you are horrifically exposed until you shore up your flanks.
if you don't break the spirit of the defenders then you're in deep shit.
for what its worth, the german invasion of france almost failed, because the entire column got bunched up in the Ardennes. Had the french acted in time, the germans would have been destroyed.
Plus, because the french were so motorised it allowed the germans to piggyback on the infra.
That is how they work..."in theory". Reality can be swiftly influenced by a single actor, acting at their own whims, then end up changing the pace of the confrontation.
Blitz or not, the destruction of wealth occuring in Ukraine will make it easily enter the club of thrird-world countries whose existence is sustained by international donations. The harsh sanctions on the invaders will make more cumbersome the task of trying to extract value from the conquered land. This will not impact negatively on UKR rebirth. RU may win the battle, but the longer the resistance lasts, they'll have on their hands a worthless asset, internal powerfights and regional humanitarian crises.
You obviously never worked in a team where your boss wanted something impossible and everyone was afraid of loosing their jobs or whoever was not afraid already left/was let go.
This one was definitely a red flag for me regarding authenticity.
It seems far more like a slow surge offensive, siege technically. Look at US in Iraq, shock and awe was more akin to "blitzkrieg" and even that campaign took 3 weeks to secure Baghdad.
I'd say one theory I have to back this up is that Germany was briefed by Russia about the imminent invasion and Germans were asked to stall sanctions until Sunday (3rd or 4th day of invasion) as it will be over by then. When it became clear that invasion is not going to plan, Germany changed their stance 180 degree. Unfortunately I cannot give source for that, but you can follow official German briefings from when the invasion started until Sunday to see the behaviour matches.
>Germany was briefed by Russia about the imminent invasion and Germans were asked to stall sanctions until Sunday (3rd or 4th day of invasion) as it will be over by then.
Do you have a source for this? I can't find anything to support this, then again the internet is quite flooded with articles with similar search terms.
This is virtually guaranteed to be a deliberate disiformation piece written by an actual FSB officer for that purpose. Maybe it's only intended for splitting the Western alliance, but it could also be used for a false flag attack to further justify Russia's aggression. Or, slightly less nefarious, it could be intended to "explain" if something went wrong with the occupation of a nuclear power plant.
In a war like that, people should not trust anything coming directly from an intelligence agency, whether published deliberately or allegedly leaked by a "whistleblower", unless it contains actionable and independently verifiable information. (Even if the latter is the case, by the way, it's the bread and butter of misinformation to mix less valuable real information with misinformation.)
I've also flagged this thread because it's clearly political and pointless discussing this on HN.
HN is indeed a place for curiously engaging in surveillance capitalism while ignoring or minimizing "skeptically" the most important issues confronting the world.
HN was great in 2008 to remind us that developments in software development meant that starting a web app was now cheap enough to actually disrupt old businesses. but that was a long time ago.
It was a tense week, but Russia has lost the war. They can drag it out, but ultimately victory will go to Ukraine.
The reasons for this are subtle but obvious. The Russian military machine can't operate outside of Russia. They have no way of transporting fuel, ammunition, food, and other supplies to the front lies.
This means that their effective operational capabilities are limited to five days.
But after analyzing 100 of something (or in my case probably closer to 23), you start to notice some patterns.
The reason Midway was the end of the war for Japan was that it eliminated their ability to carry supplies and troops beyond their borders. At the time, aircraft carriers were the only way to do this. No aircraft carriers meant no protection from aircraft, which meant no way to move troops on boats.
At the heart of it, Japan losing WW2 was as simple as that.
Russia is in an equivalent situation. There's no way for them to carry fuel beyond their borders. Ukraine exploited this weakness brilliantly. Any time Russia tried to send fuel, kaboom.
Russia losing this war is as simple as that. They lost the war the day they lost the airport. No airport means no way to transport large quantities of fuel without relying on trucks. And Russia doesn't have a lot of trucks -- not on the scale of a 150,000 troop invasion.
The question is, what now? All eyes are on Putin, of course. But his goal was to topple Ukraine's government. And governments can't topple unless you invade them. No amount of shelling from afar -- indeed, even a nuke, though there is a limit -- will topple Ukraine.
That means Putin's options are extremely limited. It either makes him more dangerous or less dangerous, depending on how you look at it. Everyone now knows (including Putin) that he can't project power beyond his borders.
The only hope that Russia has of winning this war is to stop, retrain, and focus on logistics from the ground up. That would require purging every general who thought it was a good idea to move troops in with no supply line. Russia historically has been a fan of purges, so this isn't impossible. But it will take time.
> That would require purging every general who thought it was a good idea to move troops in with no supply line.
Russia had already purged generals in 00s — there's been a LOT of weird "accidents" happening to experienced and charismatic generals after the second Chechen war.
That's one of the reasons behind what's happening now.
What I don't understand, though: surely they can not be so incompetent as to having forgotten that they need fuel? If all success hinged on the airport, then there should have been some plan B in case of losing the airport?
It's not necessarily anyone forgot they need fuel. It's more likely every readiness report filed in the past several years has said "everything is awesome". The reality being that nothing is awesome and actual readiness is a small fraction of what the paperwork says.
So the general staff assume everything is awesome and they've got plenty of supplies and logistical ability. Now the disparity between the state of their forces on paper and reality become known. Even if the military planners assumed reported status was exaggerated by some amount, the reality is likely worse than that assumption.
Keep in mind the Russians have been building their forces up on Ukraine's borders for months now, in winter. Even if everything was great that's a lot of food and fuel needed just for soldiers to sit around and more to actually conduct exercises. Then after months of burning through stocks of food and fuel they go on the offensive which takes even more food and fuel.
I only have experience through EU4, and Civilization; so take this with lots of salt. But look at the map: Putin is avoiding some cities (Sumy, Okhtyrka, Chernihiv from the East) to get to Ukraine. He is not taking cities and moving forward, he's avoiding them to get to Kiev quickly. This is suicide. If his Kiev plan fails, a major part of his army will be trapped with bad logistics.
Putin is desperate. A quite perilous situation for a man with lots of nuclear nukes.
Cities are really hard to capture and hold, with a defender advantage of 1:5(or up to 1:10 of defenders to aggressors. depending on who you believe) napkin maths suggests that a quick city siege is 4 months.
So that blows your time budget out of the water. Kiev is reasonably close to resupply (assuming the logistics is managed properly.....)
Its far wiser to avoid the cities with a bargepole.
This conflict has the potential to further weaken Russia and trigger breakaway separatist republics, at least in the North Caucaz while also transforming it into a Chinese satellite like Mongolia, Kazahstan and Kyrgyzstan. It was a really stupid move on Putin's part.
Its true that russia will find it _very_ difficult to sustain this level of effort for any level of time. Its logistic capacity has been pushed way beyond efficiency.
but with that in mind, whos going to push putin out of ukraine? yes the people can pick off soldiers for the next few years, but thats not peace.
It is currently within Putin's grasp to freeze the conflict as it is now, with eastern ukraine in his possession.
I suspect his options are:
1) stage a dirty bomb, blame it on ukraine, order a general mobilisation.
2) freeze the conflict now, hold on to the "gains"
3) Assainate Zelenskyy
4) Stage some other stupid humanitarian horror(bombing of russian hospital/orphanage/school) general mobilisation
As the article says, assassinating Zelenskyy would make things worse, because Russia will no longer have anybody with similar authority to negotiate on Ukraine's behalf.
> 1) stage a dirty bomb, blame it on ukraine, order a general mobilisation.
Equivalent to #5.
> 2) freeze the conflict now, hold on to the "gains"
This would be the smartest move. But it would also signal that Russia admits defeat, which may work against Putin. After all, his goal is to hold on to power.
> 3) Assainate Zelenskyy
Putin is certainly trying. It may be media exaggeration, but supposedly he's survived three attempts.
If it happens, though, I don't think it will tip the scale -- Ukraine won because there are competent people in charge, and because Zelenskyy didn't flee. Zelenskyy dying would still leave competent people in charge.
> 4) Stage some other stupid humanitarian horror(bombing of russian hospital/orphanage/school) general mobilisation
Equivalent to #5.
> 5) carry on, regardless.
It's impossible for Russia to make progress, because they have no way of carrying fuel, ammunition, food, and other supplies to the front lines. Any time they try to extend their lines into Ukraine, they're cut short, because five days later the front line runs out of fuel. And they can't guard their supply lines because they never achieved air superiority.
Russia should retreat to the breakaway provinces and try to hold those and to ethnic cleansing to solidify demographics in their favor. kill zelensky just out of spite though it doesn't affect outcome much. try to hang onto the port they captured and the nuke plant maybe.
by should I dont according to moral laws but just to get something militarily out of the whole evil mess.
Thanks for this, I certainly enjoyed your analysis.
The only quibble I have is that option 1 would allow Russia's allies cover to provide help (assuming they they choose to) even if that fails, it would provide a chance to get the russian population on side.
> Вас просят (условно) рассчитать возможность правозащиты в разных условиях, включая атаку тюрем метеоритами. Вы уточняете про метеориты, Вам говорят - это так, перестраховка для расчетов, ничего такого не будет
They ask you (hypothetically) to work out the probability that human rights could be protected in various circumstances, including using meteorites to attack prisons. You try to clarify about the meteorites, they tell you it's just to be confident in the estimations, nothing like this would actually happen.
I see the word "метеорита" in the original source, which is indeed meteorite (+ declension). I do not think it could be mistranslated as artillery or missile, although I am not a native Russian speaker (I had to learn Russian at school for 3 or 4 years and I have forgotten most of it, it was a long time ago). I think the writer was going for a metaphor, a made up example of being tasked with preparing for something considered so improbable that the preparation was de-prioritized.
Interesting: news[1] just came out of Russia accusing Ukraine of working on a dirty bomb. This makes the letter seem more plausible, if it really preceeds the news.
The dirty bomb thing isn't anything new, and definitely precedes this. Both google and bing have blocked all RT.com results here in Germany, duck.com luckily still lets me search for it.
>Ukraine’s security service has arrested a group suspected of trying to sell a container of radioactive material. Officials say there was enough of the substance to create a dirty bomb, which could have posed a serious threat to the entire region.
> While the uranium Ukraine gets from Russia for its reactors is low-enriched, reactor waste is quite enough to make a so-called dirty bomb. The country possesses manpower and know-how to do that as well as delivery vehicles for nuclear payload, which don’t have to be too sophisticated.
> According to Ukraine's security forces, they have seized nuclear material from a criminal gang that was trying to sell it. The substance is said to be Uranium-238, which can be used to create a so-called 'dirty bomb'
edit: Clarification for the many downvoting, this is in response to OP specifically saying "This makes the letter seem more plausible, if it really preceeds the news".
I am bringing this up not as facts that Ukraine is building a dirty bomb, but as a fact that Russia has been talking about the possibility of them doing so for a long time now.
I think that OP does not believe in RT.com. Most probably, OP is bringing forward information that corroborates what's wrtitten in the Twitter thread. By reading the post's source, you may understand the intent of the parent comment.
Russia has been a accusing Ukraine of working to acquire nuclear weapons, with US assistance, for quite a while, though the specification that they intend to produce a dirty bomb may be a new twist on it.
You could see this - and possibly a false flag operation - as Russia's justification in using nuclear weapons against Ukraine because 'they did it first'.
Why would they need assistance? Nuclear weapons are 75 year old technology they're not difficult if you already have a nuclear industry to supply the materials.
For the Russian side of things it's just their "the US is the source of all our problems" narrative. The accusation is stupid on its face as the US has done a great deal to try to stop nuclear proliferation. You can argue about its motivations but not its efficacy.
I read about it like two weeks ago. They are desperate to find a justification for their war crimes. Given that Putin himself has been caught saying multiple lies, there is no point giving any credibility to them. Their "special operation" is not going to plan and they will be trying to use any trick to find some support for their atrocities.
It is perhaps history's most justified war. (In that it has so many contradictory justifications)
1. Ukraine is run by the first Jewish Nazi president. So obviously they needed to be denazified
2. Russia does not want a NATO country on it's borders. That is why it invaded a country with four NATO borders
3. Ukraine has WMDs!
4. Ukraine is actually just a part of Russia, and the Soviet Union just messed up and drew a random border. No reason to care what the Ukrainians think
> Russia does not want a NATO country on it's borders. That is why it invaded a country with four NATO borders
Not commenting on the other points but I think the general idea was to create a border state between Russia proper and said NATO countries, maybe out of the whole Ukraine with a Russian puppet as president, or out of several Ukrainian statelets. If it matters I do live in one of those NATO countries bordering Ukraine.
I also thought the Ukraine as a neutral independent buffer state would be best for everyone. The problem is that Russia won’t allow Ukraine to be independent. It has to be a puppet state at least. There is a deleted Russian state news article describing their ambitions. This article was meant to be published after Russian victory in two days, but things obviously didn’t go as plannend.
Russias hyper aggressive policy against Ukraine has bitten them in the ass. I believe a softer approach would have been better. Focus on strengthening economic and cultural ties. Have Ukraine to be Russia sympathetic country instead of a Russian controlled one.
That idea seems to be less relevant since there are Baltic states and Norway already bordering Russia.
Edit: If Russia really needs buffer - it is big country, they can create it inside Russia`s border.
But they do not need this buffer because Russia`s army compared to NATO is nothing - buffer would not help. But Russia has more nuclear missiles then NATO. And that is more powerful then some mythical buffer zone.
the general idea was to install a Yanukovych 2.0 to disallow exfiltration of black money percentages to liberals, and not to the Russian oligarchs and connected presidency where it historically belongs to. democracy and free markets are a major disruption to their extortion business model.
plus they need Mariupol and the protected black sea harbors.
“Until Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, it had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical but no operational control. Russia controlled the codes needed to operate the nuclear weapons through electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system, although this could not be sufficient guarantee against Ukrainian access. Formally, these weapons were controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States.”
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly commented on the Budapest Memorandum by arguing that it provides no true guarantee of safety due to Russia's coercive power. On 19 February 2022, Zelenskyy made a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he said «Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. ... If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.» Putin used Zelenskyy's comments as part of his claims that Ukraine could develop nuclear weapons. Critics have disputed Putin's claims. This treaty has since been violated by Russia at the outbreak of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
That would be a very tendentious interpretation. Threats to revisit the treaty of 1994 - in the face of a threatened invasion which already violates that treaty - do not add up to active plans to acquire nuclear weapons.
Recently not Putin but President Zelensky himself stated that Ukraine could develop a nuclear bomb:
Ukraine’s President Zelensky hints at developing nuclear weapons after NATO declares it will not confront Russia [0]
Another interesting info:
The recent clashes at the administrative buildings near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) could be a result of Ukraine storing documents on perspective developments of nuclear weapons there [1]
I found it in top 3 results of googling 'zelensky nuclear bomb'.
It is unfortunte that discussion about the Ukraine war is so absent from HN. I understand that it is a complex topic that may drown HN's real purpose, but the HN readership use to have really insightful takes on most topics.
I suspect the signal to noise ratio on any such discussion would be high. There are knowledgable folks in HN on non tech topics (as well as users living in Ukraine and Russia, presuming either are still able to access the site) but any discussion would likely be overrun with folks that have no particular knowledge but strong opinions they want to share instead.
I mean, at a bare minimum there have to be a bunch of military history / military theory / military hardware buffs on here.
That would fall pretty squarely into intellectually stimulating debate where a lot of people learn stuff territory right?
I’m personally curious as hell what non-classified information is available on how many RF boomers are running around, armed with what, and how closely they’re being shadowed by USN fast attack boats and I bet someone on here knows.
You can sort of understand why, given that there's also a lot of low-quality posting as a result; this thread is already full of claims of "fake", and we have no real way of substantiating this.
Insightful takes on topics outside of IT and maybe natural/applied sciences are probably actually rare in HN. It is at least my impression on these few areas I have some expertise. Topics related to culture and stuff most people in the world don't have any experience with (violent dictatorships for example) are genuinely hard to explain even for people with real insight and knowledge.
And regarding trolls in HN: this topic here is also full of comments "it's all fake", "where is the proof?" etc. It's the tactics troll factories used for years in every corner of the world. It's one of the main methods to erode the trust in societies. So, are these comments from trolls or from genuine smartasses? I don't really know.
From what I noticed on many social networks is that Russian information warfare is working on spreading their propaganda. They will be coming to derail any conversation with lies, deflection and other manipulation techniques to sow doubts in the reports coming from Ukraine. They are quite crude so it is very easy to spot them if you know what to look for.
I think their propaganda is mostly targeted at people who already made up their mind or those who don't read beyond headlines.
HN may not be a target network for such effort, because most people here are quite smart.
Everyone is affected by propaganda. There’s a quote from a famous magician (maybe Penn?) that smart people are the easiest to fool because they think they’re too smart to be fooled.
HN is mostly trolls, shills, libertarians and far right types, and weird bubble millennial who seem to aggressively hate everything and just want to get rich. greed and fear rule this forum and the result is very anti-intellectual.
you will notice politics and actually real world concerns mostly by the absence, or the completely predictable what-about responses so the greedy people can try to get back to work.
I dont care about being banned my conscience is clear.
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part. -- Edmund Burke
To make a somewhat contra-positive corollary;
If you want to remove politics you need to remove humans. -- Me
There are a lot of communities that are functioning way better after they implemented a strict no politics policy. It's a strawman argument. Especially considering the populous of hackernews of which 90% don't believe that they can be manipulated by advertising because they are too intelligent. It's gonna be a shitshow.
As soon as you have more than two people you have politics, regardless of whether it is small "p" politics or big "P" politics. Politics is a function of human communities, there is a 100% correlation.
I suspect what you were looking for is not "no politics" but "be conservative in what you say and liberal in what you hear", i.e. think more of the group than yourself. Or for those who can't read between the lines; "don't be selfish".
No, I mean strict ban on sight no politics like it helped usenet and irc communities in the 90s and helps slack, discord, reddit and other forums right now. Stay on topic or gtfo.
Again, it's been tried. Doesn't work for a place like HN that doesn't limit itself to topics where touchpoints with politics can be completely avoided. If you think otherwise, at least have an argument for why it should work better this time.
Better yet, seems many believe they are absolutely immune to Russian psyops, and of course the West would -never- psyop its own citizens. I've been even called a russian propagandist for linking to WaPo, a well-known Kremlin outlet.
What does it say about quality if you use a trash account and don't bother with grammar-checking? Those things would seem to belie your stated position.
I think the existing HN guidelines / norms should be sufficient for maintaining civil and constructive discussion. A lot of times public policy is directly relevant to technical topics, and who’s going to be the arbiter between legitimate political discourse and unacceptable (to whom?) politics?
Just stick to curious, good-faith discussion. Downvote flame war and personal attacks to reinforce these norms, but respond instead of downvoting for difference of opinion/viewpoint
It's very hard to believe whatever either side is reporting. And before you say that's what Russian bots want you to believe, I'll add I lost my trust after Iraq war reporting (like who in their right mind confuses plot of The Rock (film) and WMD in real life), and then after Trump's victory in 2016 (media I was following at the time were making it out to be a sure fire thing for Hillary which is opposite of what happened).
I remain a skeptic and will wait for 5+ years to see what actually happened.
>It's very hard to believe whatever either side is reporting.
You have more then Russian and Ukrainian news, there are reporters from other countries present on the ground, probably mostly English sources are link but I assure you for example there are Romanian reporters there and filming stuff, there are reporters filing refuges and asking questions. There were some Russian free press reports too you could have read/watched until recently too(maybe dig in archives)
There are trolls posting fake images but if you ignore the hot new posts from social media you can get a good enough picture of reality.
It seems so easy to fall into a false balance trap. But while Western media is certainly flawed, there’s a fundamental difference between honest mistakes and intentional lies. The truth is very unlikely to be half-way between the two.
Compare: The 2016 election mispredictions were one of the most discussed topics for months in the aftermath. The Bush administration’s WMD claims are still regularly discussed, at least outside of Fox News. Journalists have in general become more skeptical of US government claims as a result ever since. That’s widely considered a good thing.
On the other hand: Russian media, as should be obvious for anyone with better memory than a proverbial goldfish, doesn’t even care how today’s message contradicts yesterday’s. The sanctions are ineffective and a grave act of war and must be stopped immediately and actually don’t work. Ukraine will never be attacked, and is actually Russian, and commits an anti-Russian genocide, and isn’t a nation, and will no longer be a nation if it doesn’t surrender immediately, and isn’t actually being attacked. It’s so inconsistent with itself that you don’t even need a second source to spot the lies.
I might feel nice and wise and balanced, but I don’t think these are circumstances where believing “both sides” is intellectually defensible.
I agree with you. Domestic media also seems to be extremely biased. I hope this whole conflict comes to an end and we learn at least a little bit of the truth.
Too well written, too human, too considerate to be a FSB Whistleblower. At least a real agent not just a regular business analyst. So strong indications of a fake.
The analysis of world hunger is not supported by this current analysis, even if Russian and Ukraine are leading grain producers. The analysis will be updated as the conflict drags on.
People in Russia are human too. A lot of those who go into "national security" type jobs start out with their heart in the right place. I can't imagine what it is like to slowly realise that, actually, you're the bad ones.
It's a matter of priorities. An FSB official will see world hunger as an opportunity, and will think of this as "so these people completely unrelated to us don't want to go hungry, what can they give us in return?"
This is since during most of the contemporary history of Russia, other countries saw a lot of different opportunities here and very few people.
It reads like a lore-dump pickup in a video game. The sort of thing you would find in plain sight in Call of Duty or similar. Maybe COD is more realistic than i thought...
Well thank you for that incredibly useful contribution.
No, not all information in this note is fake, that is complete nonsense, so now, if you don't mind, please point out exactly which bits you believe are fake and why?
There are no references to verified facts in the note. This is just a private opinion. If one person came up with something, it does not mean that everyone thinks so.
You are saying it is fake, so now the onus is on you to prove that it is fake. You didn't say 'it's an opinion' you said 'All information in this note is fake.' That is a statement of fact, no longer an opinion, so now, just like you claim the article should have done you have to back up your claim with facts. And if not then you should retract your claim.
Okey, your right here. My comment is just my opinion. For my opinion all information in the note seems to be fake.
I did not use the correct wording, sorry, English is not my native language, so I may express some thoughts not quite the way you expect. I'll be more careful with this, thanks for your comment.
The fact that there was no order of mobilization or sending dissidents to the frontlines is verifiable, for example (people were expecting this to hit on March 4th).
There is absolutely no way for the lay internet user to corroborate one word of it that isn’t already public information. Whether it looks or feels plausible is also meaningless: it could “feel right” because it is, or because someone took effort to design it this way.
So best thing for me is to ignore it and forget I read it, lest something I read in it confuses me later for a reputable source.
I’m not saying it’s not genuine, it might be, just that to me it is 100% indistinguishable from a prank or psyops.