If only the Taliban had received half a trillion of military and financial support. If only China had shipped them thousands of FPV drones per day and given them access to low-latency satcom and a trillion-dollar ISR ecosystem.

> how do you win them over

Putin would have loved to. But, finally, even he has realized that that brotherly ship has sailed for a while. Luckily for him there’s an alternative: he just has to make sure Ukraine doesn’t come back from this in any threatening fashion any time soon. An effort that’s well underway and intensifying.

His other option would be what the West’s darling is doing in the Middle East, genocide. But Putin is not a monster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes

Has nothing to do with it.

> It's basic human nature.

No it’s the nature of a proxy war, the nature of a gambler with no post-war future, the nature of hubristic technologists with software for brains.

Results e.g.: https://x.com/andrii_sybiha/status/2079998734637658585

The firing of Fedorov should tell you something about how well this latest gambit/escalation is working. And about the chasm between PR and reality. Syrskyi knew where this is going. And he knew what the AFU are in dire need of: men, not robots.

Women in the AFU are volunteers and serve different roles.

Ukrainian liberal media writes about it, but only in Ukrainian. Not for western consumption.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48686525

Points: 6

# Comments: 4

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKxeuY7bMAEwZ30.png Indeed.

Spade? That’s a shovel drenched in blood.

So, it’s not hard to see why they haven’t—so far. And why they are pursuing their (slow and costly, sure) conventional military, economical, and demographic long-term neutering of Ukraine. And let’s not forget the enormous economic/budgetary cost to the EU.

Also, Russia retains a number of ways to escalate inside of Ukraine: bridges, dams, depopulation of frontline cities. China could finally abandon their stance of being mostly neutral.

The problem is that Ukraine/West keep escalating and the day when Russia’s calculus changes may yet come.

For the US and friends is terrorizing the enemy, his forces, his civilian population into giving up. Is feeding a civil war until he crumbles.

> bomb the living shit out of anything armoured

That’s absolutely not what’s missing in Ukraine.

> and then push forward with your own armour.

And then, as soon as you assemble let alone move in the open, you get wrecked. No one has an easy answer for this. The answer is what we’re already seeing: attrition.

> Iran

Iran prevailed in an highly asymmetric conflict by successfully attriting US/Israeli air defenses and surviving their attacks, depleting their arsenals. Which was their goal, not “levelling Tel Aviv”—however much they would have liked to.

Finally, what Israel is facing in Lebanon right now is but a pale imitation of what’s going on in Ukraine. But bad enough. One can imagine what just a couple days of Ukraine-level losses would do to them, militarily and politically. No matter their air superiority.