It may only be a ceremony but in case you never met a human before, ceremony is a non-trivial thing with them. It procuces real effects which matter.
Nobody thinks a document protects a president from a spy or assasin directly. Obviously a spy will sign an nda without blinking.
But the document and the ceremony around it absolutely does produce a real world effect on everyone else, and one that matters, both in explicitly defining things that you absolutely can not leave up to most people's simple judgement, and in getting them to classify what this document says differently than the 5 different terms of service they probably agreed to that week.
Enforcement is almost the dumbest aspect to even talk about. The threat of enforcement (in this case) is a token. But that does not make the formality a token.
And even the threat of enforcement is more than a token for most of the people involved, since they are all local. It's only a token for the exception case of a visitor.
I suspect many potential visitors would appreciate the need to maintain secrecy, but not appreciate just how much needs to be made secret. For example - the article refers to food. This may seem like an innocuous detail, but could allow an adversary to poison the food before its delivered to the bunker. The NDA servers to spell out exactly how little a visitor should tell the outside world.
Even just afterwards saying “they served Pepsi with lemon” leaks information - Pepsi and lemon are both available to the bunker, which may be enough to determine the area it is in, if you know that only one shipment of Pepsi got through.
That’s an important point that I didn’t bring up in my post.
The story mentions specific items of secrecy. But most NDA forms provided by lawyers speak only in broad generalizations about what information must be kept confidential. The best terms would be tailored to the specific situation. But the cost of legal help is high and people’s empowerment to write for themselves is low.
Given that a Dutch journalist had to have spelled out to him what exactly is meant by not giving targeting information in near real time to the Russians I can totally see the need for this. Some people are too dumb to appreciate the effects of their actions and will through stupidity (often hard to tell from malice) create serious problems in the pursuit of their personal goals.
He was asked politely first to remove the content, refused because 'it was his right', then was asked officially, still refused, then was arrested and expelled from the country after his Ukrainian press accreditation was revoked.
His employer claims that they did not know that this was forbidden, whereas war zone journalism 101 is pretty much 'don't share targeting info with the enemy'. The rocket attack that he covered has missed their intended target and within minutes he put a bunch of pictures online of where they had landed. Pretty bad episode, and ND (the newspaper he worked for) lost a ton of credibility with their positioning around this, they should have just admitted their mistake and move on, instead they focus on how the guy was treated. As far as I'm concerned he was pretty lucky, they could have easily believed he was spying for the Russians directly rather than just being monumentally stupid. I guess he couldn't wait to get his War Photo prize or something to that effect.
It’s war time there. The Russians may call it by other words, but hopefully we’d know better.
He may have been responsible for helping target and kill many civilians. He was asked to stop and he didn’t. Why didn’t they politely ask again, while maybe offering a cup of tea or something? It would be nice if they would have, but like we said it’s war time there.
> He may have been responsible for helping target and kill many civilians. He was asked to stop and he didn’t. Why didn’t they politely ask again, while maybe offering a cup of tea or something? It would be nice if they would have, but like we said it’s war time there.
Exactly. It's a luxury to treat a bratty punk with kid gloves, and some people don't have that luxury.
He's lucky he didn't get shot, I take it everybody is by now aware that there is a war going on there. The difference between 'Russian spy' and 'Dutch journalist' is in this case small enough that he should have been grateful at the restraint shown, especially given that he had ignored multiple summons to remove the content.
But it's not like he just took the pictures, he immediately posted them on the internet. The damage was already done and their anger was somewhat justified.
Given that he's a professional and supposed to know better, what he did is difficult to distinguish from spying.
I can't believe I actually need to say this, and I'm not even sure whether responding to such lunacy is a good idea, but:
No. Mass rape, kidnapping and murder of civilians is not how wars have historically been won, and they are certainly not "necessary". Wars are won when the enemy no longer has the ability or willingness to fight. Committing atrocities against civilians rarely accomplishes anything more than increasing of the enemy, unless their situation was already hopeless to begin with.
>I can't believe I actually need to say this, and I'm not even sure whether responding to such lunacy is a good idea, but:
>No. Mass rape, kidnapping and murder of civilians is not how wars have historically been won, and they are certainly not "necessary"
I cant believe I actually need to say this but trucks leave tire tracks in the dirt. You're gonna have a hell of a time dragging an army (especially a conscript army that needs far more ideological motivation than a professional army) across a country without leaving some ancillary destruction behind.
There is massive, massive, incredible difference between those things happening as "ancillary destruction" and those things being part of "the mindset needed to win a war"
There have been very few semi-symmetrical conflicts in the last ~70+ years. The fire-bombing of Tokyo, Dresden and total destruction of a substantial number of civilian infrastructure in Germany and Japan were considered absolutely necessary to win the war. Similarly the mind-number number of casualties the Soviet army sustained even in the battle of Berlin, at the end of the war or the losses it absorbed in the battles of Kharkiv, in the defense of Moskau and St. Petersburg have no parallel in modern warfare.
>The fire-bombing of Tokyo, Dresden and total destruction of a substantial number of civilian infrastructure in Germany and Japan were considered absolutely necessary to win the war.
I think this only helps my point, because with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the bombings of London, Dresden, Tokyo, Stalingrad and many other cities were of absolutely minimal value in ending the war except insofar as it damaged military targets in those cities - and in many cases it was outright counterproductive (e.g. London).
Name a single war, or battle in which atrocities against civilians have helped the aggressors, in a situation where the defending side wasn't already militarily defeated (e.g. German or Soviet occupied countries)? It didn't help in Chechnya, Vietnam, or Yugoslavia (either during WWII or in the 90s).
Even the impact of the nuclear bombs is heavily debated. The Imperial Japanese military still wanted to continue the war, and the Emperor was less concerned with the plight of civilians than what was going to happen to himself after the war.
The only universally effective method of winning a war is destroying the enemy's ability to fight. Cruelty towards non-belligerents is not required to do this.
Well... for all the atrocities the Germans committed the Poles that I have talked to that survived the war were uniformly appreciative of the restraint of the German officers and conscripts occupying their villages[+], as opposed to the Russians who pretty much destroyed the country they supposedly liberated, killing and raping civilians as they went along.
So there definitely are differences in how the rules of engagement are interpreted from one actor to another. Needless to say this doesn't justify anything the Germans did and I acknowledge that Russia was instrumental in beating the - actual - Nazi's but still, that difference does stand out.
It's a pretty tricky thing because technically the Russians were 'on our side' and the Germans were clearly the enemy and just writing about it in an objective way is hard enough keeping in the back of your mind everything else that the Nazi's were up to.
+ Note that the Germans committed plenty of war crimes in Poland as well and that there were quite a few really bad things that happened in areas under German occupation, but on a relative scale they were considered the 'lesser of two evils' from the point of view of the civilian population that was not directly in the crosshairs of the Germans.
As a German who got some first / second hand accounts from children of Polish survivors and Polish survivors I disagree. The German army and other occupying forces did awful things in Poland and not just to the Jewish population. Just because the violence and killing was maybe more methodical and less unstructured like randomly raping civilians, doesn't make it any less awful. Even the initial attack that resulted in the occupation of Poland was done without regard to the lives of the civilian population.
Yes they did. And still compared to the stories about the Russians they showed considerable restraint. This is not about absolutes, it is about relatives.
Having no control over your army and the atrocities it commits because the higher ups simply don't care at all about the kind of image they are projecting is exactly the reason why things are utterly out of control in Ukraine today. Lack of discipline, lack of enforcement and in general using the army as a weapon of terror is what is happening, there is zero restraint.
I cannot speak to rape nor Russia vs Germany, but for the suffering of the Poles at German hands I am compelled to add this from my eyewitness family history lest German abuse of Poland be discounted.
It is not often discussed, but millions of Poles, not just Jews or Jewish Poles were killed in concentration camps.
This (sans "millions" which is my own research finding) was my grandfather's observation as a US officer liberating such camps- there were a lot of non Jewish Poles in such places.
"Lebensraum" came through Polish genocide from what I can tell.
Although the part where non-Jewish poles were in concentration camps, while true, also led to them being forced to participate in the genocide, which still was primarily directed at Jews, while everyone else was doing (mostly) forced labor. The conditions in the forced Labour camps were obviously horrible and children especially routinely starved while in captivity with their mothers.
All 6 siblings of my partner’s grandmother were killed on arrival in Ausschwitz, as were her parents. She was spared by Mengele and subjected to experiments.
Ultimately weighing atrocities against each other is not super productive. But the myth of a “clean Wehrmacht” had been so persistent and convenient that it took decades to root out in German main stream opinion.
They don't really do "stand around and argue for 10min and then finally bust out the tazer when you still won't get in the damn car" enforcement in war zones.
Much like everyone making a purchase online will 'agree to the terms and conditions' without reading them, many jobs get so many NDAs thrust at them that they'll sign without reading them.
If you repair office coffee machines for a living? You might visit 4 office buildings a day, and they'll all hand you a pile of paperwork telling you not to take photos, not to connect things to their computers, that you should evacuate if you hear the fire alarm, and so on. Hardly anybody reads such things before signing them.
If you're actually signing, with signature, a legal document without reading it, you reap what you sow. Ticking a checkbox on a site is not the same legally binding agreement that an NDA is.
How naive are you? You need a lawyer and pay for that lawyer. And time off to argue in court and handle all the details. Are you familiar with the constraints of minimum-wage workers?
Courts might as well make decisions based on income. Income and working conditions already filter out a lot of theoretical rights for the working poor before even getting a court date. And come to think of it, there are all sorts of examples where the income of plaintiffs or defendants even matter expressis verbis...
Sites that use "By using this service, you agree to X." do not hold up in court almost at all.
Sites that use "By checking this box, you agree to X." there is some semblance of a binding agreement but there's a lot of wiggle-room in court. User doesn't understand, wasn't made clear, wasn't actually the user, etc. can all be argued.
Sites where you sign your name in some way, shape or form, tend to be treated more fortified - a la Docusign, which employs an extensive set of protections against forgery and cases of misunderstanding. These cases probably couldn't be argued in court on the premise of sort of 'unintentional' agreement like the prior two could be.
This of course extends to written documents.
Unless you're signing NDAs with a checkbox (which would be kind of reckless on the issuer's part), then NDAs hold much more weight in court in most cases as there is very little ambiguity as to whether or not the signee actually meant to sign it.
For some foreign journalist or diplomat sure but against a local journalist, maintenance crew, cleaner, etc who all most likely sign the exact same NDA for sure Ukraine can enforce it if the person is unable to escape the country (which for males aged 18 to 65 is really hard at the moment for example)
edit: Also as a journalist if you actually do leak such information after signing a piece of paper saying you would not who would actually trust you with any kind of secret information in the future?
I would love to be a fly on the wall when someone tries using that excuse in a war zone xD In a way I'm thankful for it. It means that most people never even came close to real consequences of their actions...
I'm not sure how the legal system in Ukraine works but for criminal charges you typically you need to prove intent. "Stupidity" would probably be a valid excuse in that case because it implies lack of intent, at least pertaining to the charge of betraying the country.
Every opinion should be attacked from all angles to prove its validity. Saying that people are contrarian for expressing a counteropinion is asking for people not to attack a position, which would lead to false opinions being propagated.
Sorry to rant about the presentation rather than the content, but this blog is another great example for horribly inaccessible typography.
Unlike other sites I've seen linked on HN this one uses a reasonable body font size of 16px, i.e. the browser default font size. However it uses a font that at 16px renders as the equivalent of the Windows default sans-serif font at 14px.
What's worse, block quotes are rendered at a calculated 13.6px, which makes it the equivalent of the default font at a minute 11px!
I know most HN users will likely not care about this as HN comments are set to a mere 12px (making HN the only site on the web I regularly visit that I have to zoom in to at least 150% to use comfortably) but this just borders on cruelty. It's not even good from an aesthetics point of view as at a fixed width of roughly 30rem (working out to roughly 70 characters per line) the article occupies less than 1/3rd of the screen.
There's clearly some intent behind the design as it uses a non-standard font and makes other seemingly deliberate choices but every choice seemingly just compounded on making the site harder to look at.
For many years, I did set font-size. And now I can't exactly remember why I stopped. Taking a look at some browser previews across OS'es and and browsers, I do see that it's too small. I'll bump it.
> I don’t know who would enforce the NDAs for Zelensky’s bunker
Leaking this information would be enforced by court under "Leaking the state secrets".
I'm not a lawyer, but if I remember correctly, in Ukraine you can't be prosecuted for leaking the secret information unless it's clearly labeled as secret and you signed a consent to access it. If you don't sign, you are not supposed to get access.
So this is the case, where to access the secret bunker they have to know what is the secret and sign they understand the implications.
Edit: in some cases before the war it was better to not consent. This would limit access to certain data, but would also give more freedom in case you want to travel or work abroad.
No, I brought it up specifically because they were specifically told not to do that and signed the NDA. He was heavily criticized by other members of congress for endangering Zelensky.
But in this case, Cruz and Rubio shared a picture of their screens on Twitter, while on a call, revealling at the very least that Zelenskyy was on a video call at that moment in time.
No, other senators said that they were explicitly asked by Ukrainian Ambassador to not share anything on social media. Cruz and Rubio then just went and shared.
Is it at all possible that other senators were asked to not share anything but that the two people you mentioned made some special arrangement, perhaps to drum up American popular support?
> Is it at all possible that other senators were asked to not share anything but that the two people you mentioned made some special arrangement, perhaps to drum up American popular support?
No, that idea doesn't pass the smell test. They're minority party representatives, and my understanding is Cruz (at least) has a reputation for being obnoxious and selfish, even among his co-partisans. There's no reason to think those two would get some kind of special permission, and plenty of reason to think they were being careless and/or selfish.
I lived in both Ukraine and US. They barely know what "senator" even means, yet alone know their names. Most people cannot say how many major political parties there are in US, they have their own parties. I'm pretty sure even Ukrainian president doesn't really care about US internal politics, only about external.
> I'm pretty sure even Ukrainian president doesn't really care about US internal politics, only about external.
Ukrainian people: maybe; Ukrainian president: absolutely not (and there's was a great example of how the two can intersect just a couple of years ago). An understanding of a country's internal politics is vital to understanding, predicting, and influencing its external politics.
What a strange position for a lawyer to take. Contracts primarily keep honest people honest: hey, we agree to do these things, and if either of us is unsure we can look back and see what we agreed to. If you don’t agree up front, don’t sign.*
And NDAs have plenty of value (oh, I can’t talk about what I’m working on? Good thing you let me know!). Yes, they can also be abusive and that is worth addressing, but they can also enable a lot of valuable things.
* in some cases, such as employment, this kind of negotiation isn’t meaningfully possible, which is where legislation is useful.
They can't. Russia simply cannot control the tens of millions survivors of it's brutal invasion even if they manage to defeat the Ukrainian army in the field, which they can't. The attrition rate of troops, equipment ( which is why they've started using stuff from the reserves which was made decades ago, and probably has been maintained even worse than the supposedly combat ready equipment), morale and the general Russian economy are unsustainable. I honestly don't know how all of this could end, but Ukraine "losing" the war is extremely unlikely. Russia claiming a "win" over some very limited gains is a possibility , but that's not sustainable either. Best case scenario is a coup and immediate ceasefire, peace, one way tickets for most of the Russian high command and many of the frontline troops to The Hague. One can only dream.
> They can't. Russia simply cannot control the tens of millions survivors of it's brutal invasion even if they manage to defeat the Ukrainian army in the field, which they can't.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If the Russians are brutal enough (and continue to be brutal) and the survivors have some place to flee too, they might be able to hold on to quite a bit if they can defeat the organized military by "evaporating" away those that would challenge them.
> They can't. Russia simply cannot control the tens of millions survivors of it's brutal invasion even if they manage to defeat the Ukrainian army in the field, which they can't.
Well, there's no need for millions of survivors in wars. Right now, Russia is keeping it's line about "Ukraine is Russia" and with that, reasonable restraint towards civilians compared to Syria, but, if that is no longer "necessary" or "reasonable" in their point of view, using nukes and leaving no survivors is a cheap, cost-reducing strategy.
I wasn't even talking about some kind of occupation. Even securing some sort of political victory is impossible at this point. NATO|West will be going all in into that one and we simple don't have the army\logistics or production to compete in any possible way.
Either this shit is over by September or we are going for the red button in August.
That is another discussion; this is looking more like a war with Russia where the outcome the west is pursuing is the end of Russia as it is known today. Probably not going to be over that quickly.
Anyway. An NDA is silly and unnecessary when you have far more powerful laws governing state secrets, treason etc. than anything under civil law.
I agree with the other comments that this NDA serves a very useful purpose, by detailing all the non obvious forms of information that could be a risk, impressing on people the seriousness of keeping that information confidential, and ensuring they have no excuse to claim they were not fully informed.
It also provides a route to prosecute someone who might be caught sharing information they shouldn’t maliciously, but where treason etc could not be proved.
Absolutely the opposite, it's even more necessary as a signal so that people recognize the gravity of the situation and are held accountable otherwise. It'd be probably a criminal matter not a civil one.
It also gives them legal cover if they need to charge someone with something.
AKA just today they announced a 'mole' high up in the civil service.
We lost the previous war with RF, then paid a huge price for that in 1932-1934. 7 million adults (this number is accepted by RF in 2008) and 23 million children (this number is not accepted by RF) were murdered by hunger during «Holodomor».
We will do everything possible to avoid repeating of the genocide, but RF is a strong opponent with a lot of resources, so we need to be smarter, see better, be better equipped, and be faster. Otherwise, they will just push us inch by inch to Western border.
Or to people in occupied territories, whoever needs it. Life has ups and downs. Thank God I'm doing OK these days, so the only appropriate response to that prosperity is to share freely. Then if/when the tides turn, someone will be able to show the same kindness. So yes, I would like to help if you can specifically say how to do so.
I mean... I am Russian-Ukrainian. I'm more or less aware.
I doubt there is a way for Russia to win here in any meaningful way. Russia already lost too much armor without gaining anything but a land route to Crimea (which it needs to secure somehow).
Russia does not have any modern tech of its own production and population that is not a supportive as the government would like. Even now real support is not as widespread but it will only get worse with economy going south. People are cheering while they still feel safe and relatively comfortable.
I highly doubt Russia can do much without WMD here. And using WMD's will be a loss anyway.
Agreed. The really big question to me is this: Ukraine is steadily building up momentum and capabilities, if they turn this war around, and there is a fair chance of that happening Russia will be pushed back, possibly out of the east of Ukraine and maybe even out of Crimea. That would cause some real trouble and might trigger Russia to make desperate moves.
Having spent way too much time down this rabbit hole, here's an opinion I synthesized from those way smarter than me.
If Russia fully mobilizes (ie, declares this a war, calls up reserves, etc) AND the west slows their support, Russia can win.
Ukraine has the people and the will to win, but without heavy weapons, ammo, the training to use western weapons and logistical support that's not enough. Right now Biden is trying to pass a $33B support bill. But Congress is playing their stupid politics and if it doesn't pass the alliance will probably fracture and Ukraine will also likely lose support from other Western nations.
Russia is currently manpower & materiel constrained. They can fix the former by fully mobilizing. The latter is harder to fix, but they have destroyed Ukraine's production. So they if Ukraine is cut off from Western arms shipments....
But even after winning Russia still has the problem of occupying Ukraine. It's not clear that's possible with flattening the country.
Very big if here. People over here are not very eager to go to the frontline. Painting Z on your car is one thing. Marching to your almost certain death is another.
>heavy weapons
I was under the impression that heave weapons are on their way already though? Old but usable T72's from Poland and some tanks\howitzers from other countries.
Surely they still need fuel, ammo and training but right now it looks like Ukraine has some time.
> occupying Ukraine.
I think the current plan is to destroy as much as possible (fuel, storages etc), cut off from support as much as possible and maybe enter Moldova.
Yes, a Russian victory requires (at least) two massive IF's.
I'm mostly just pushing back against the narrative that a Ukrainian victory is inevitable. If it's seen as inevitable, then it becomes easier to justify not delivering the help they need.
Or the opposite, which I think is more likely: if it is not seen as inevitable then that will justify not delivering the help they need, ensuring the outcome matches the prediction.
The biggest problem right now is to maintain unity across all of the countries that are on the other side of this line, Russia has a much easier job there than the West, with Hungary and Switzerland as the latest in the pack of useful idiots carrying Putin's water for him. With friends like that you don't need enemies.
Most probably the Russians already know where the bunker is located, the same as the Ukrainians know where Putin is at any one moment, the ties between the Russians and the Ukrainians are so mingled that it's impossible for spies/undercover agents not to exist on both sides, close to the highest levels.
It's just that the Russians blowing up Zelensky's bunker would not help them all that much, at least for now. I'd say the inverse is also true, killing Putin at this exact moment won't bring peace and a Russian surrender (whatever that might mean) immediately.
The location is well known because that bunker was built under the USSR. And it is strong/deep enough that only a powerful nuclear explosion would endanger it. This is a very serious bunker we're talking about.
What they [Russians] might not know is all the modern exits and connections (to the metro system and elsewhere) that have been built since then, or things like supply chains for food, location and current state of the air filtration or communication systems.
BTW, since we're talking about bunkers: the US military in their what-if-shit-hits-the-fan plans has a very hard nut to crack with the Chinese air force, which brilliantly built their aircraft hangars deep inside mountains. It may not be immediately obvious, but the best way to counter an air force is to destroy the aircraft before they take off. Doesn't work if the hangar-bunker is 100% resilient to any kind of a conventional bomb that you could drop on it.
Just wanted to say this is not something particularly special to the Chinese. For example in Sweden they build the (cold war) airbases around the country underground. They would use regular roads (that were widened in particular places) as runways. You can visit one of those near Gothenburg: https://www.guidebook-sweden.com/en/guidebook/destination/ae...
I’m not sure about that. I don’t see how anyone else in Russia has a personal stake in this war.
The problem is Putin being killed is not the same as Putin dropping dead. Whoever took over would have an imperative to take vengeance on whoever killed Putin, just on general principle, so it very much depends how it was done, who did it and what information was out about that.
The "fortress under siege" mantra has had a long life in Russia (and in now the former USSR), maybe the 1990s were a short reprieve in that respect (when parts of the Russian elites genuinely wanted to integrate the Western institutions) but generally speaking I'd say that ever since 1917 most of the Russian elites have seen the outside world as "them", as the "other that wants us down". It's not a "one man thing".
This "hitlerification" of Putin hides a lot of facts on the ground, to the detriment of the West, which is why maybe they've dialed that discourse down a little in the last two weeks or so.
Nobody thinks a document protects a president from a spy or assasin directly. Obviously a spy will sign an nda without blinking.
But the document and the ceremony around it absolutely does produce a real world effect on everyone else, and one that matters, both in explicitly defining things that you absolutely can not leave up to most people's simple judgement, and in getting them to classify what this document says differently than the 5 different terms of service they probably agreed to that week.
Enforcement is almost the dumbest aspect to even talk about. The threat of enforcement (in this case) is a token. But that does not make the formality a token.
And even the threat of enforcement is more than a token for most of the people involved, since they are all local. It's only a token for the exception case of a visitor.