9 ms·

No need to declare captured Russian tanks, other equipment of invaders as income

142 points by occamschainsaw 5y ago

tyropita 5y ago
Just imagine regular Ukrainian folks commuting to work in their personal tanks. What a time to be alive!
- hef19898 5y ago
  Well, they are propably not allowed to keep them, just sell them for tax free revenue.
  - justinclift 5y ago
    "I'm hanging onto it for the next time they try this shit..." :)
  - xattt 5y ago
    If an individual is concerned enough about tax implications of a new acquisition, the individual probably has enough foresight to consider the cost of fuel.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Private ownership of military weapons usually is less about fuel..
eqvinox 5y ago
Speaking as a German, what this tells me is that Ukraine is ready to join the EU in terms of bureaucracy :D
- Mo3 5y ago
  Thought the same. This is the German wet dream.
  - nosianu 5y ago
    Having lived in the US for almost a decade, I did not see any less bureaucracy (for example, two tax returns - Germany is a federation too but I only need to file one). I also hear nightmare stories from other countries far surpassing anything we Germans could cook up, for example from India or from some African countries (not exclusively). "German bureaucracy" is a nice meme, I highly doubt that it even remotely reflects reality accurately. I don't mean that there isn't a lot, I mean that I doubt it's significantly or even any more than elsewhere. It's also highly subjective, depending on what part one is exposed to. Everybody only ever interacts with a tiny part of the overall system after all, and it very much depends on the context, so I doubt there can be a single answer that is meaningful except for media headline generation and effortless quick comment posting. Also, the exact same bureaucracy and rules can save effort, be good for society overall or even lives, or (and) it can be a great hindrance to progress, again depending on the exact context.
    - Mo3 5y ago
      I doubt you have ever penetrated deep enough into the favorite German pastime. I have a dedicated Nextcloud just to store and maintain order in my postal communication. I‘ve moved to the Netherlands in recent days though and the difference is very notable.
      - nosianu 5y ago
        > I doubt you have ever penetrated deep enough into the favorite German pastime. You don't know me. Many years ago, early nineties, I worked in the kitchen of a New Jersey summer camp for over two months through a student exchange program. At one point I decided to show them what "German" and "order" really means. I cleaned up the large pantry. Before, it was what you expect when you hear the term. A somewhat dark place with lots of food stuff in a lot of shelves. When I was done it was a bright room with every single can and every single label of hundreds of different cans and packages aligned to within less than a millimeter with the edge of the shelve and with each other. Every single label pointed exactly forward. Nut a speck of dust anywhere, and light flooded the room and between shelves. The contrast between before and after was stark. The camp manager walked through and did not say a word. My work as an ambassador of German-ness was done :)
netsharc 5y ago
This and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30525759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30525759 ... The Ukranian government seems to be very media-savvy, but for me this is noise compared to signal (important government declarations about the conflict, not about income tax on seized equipment), I feel like saying "My god man, can't you be a little serious, there's a fucking war going on!".
- wasmitnetzen 5y ago
  Morale is very important in a war, especially if you're the side with the technological disadvantage. I feel like a lot of the Ukrainian gov communications tries to keep up the morale. It also shows that the Government is still able to work, also an important signal to the country.
  - senectus1 5y ago
    its also a great way to motivate a subset of society... and redirect their efforts from looting to making sure the russians dont re-take their kit.
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  Sometimes a laconic demeanor is exactly what the troops need from their leadership.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It's a great little piece of propaganda. It conveys that ordinary citizens have been capturing abandoned Russian vehicles, and tacitly encourages them to continue to do this. It gets Westerners sharing it because of the black humor of having a tax policy on captured enemy vehicles. (And there seem to have been a lot of them; those interested can follow along on https://twitter.com/UAWeapons https://twitter.com/UAWeapons who post identifying captions in English. As always, take with a pinch of salt.)
- MaysonL 5y ago
  Imagine the Russian soldiers' parents reading this, and then getting a phone calls from their sons, now POWs, but still alive.
pjc50 5y ago
The Ukranian social media propaganda operation is just incredible, and they should keep at it because I think it's been a big part of the massive popular support in the West causing rapid government and NGO response to the invasion. Conversely they've been pretty effective at stopping information about their own disposition of forces being posted to social media, or at least it's not being retweeted anywhere I've seen.
- yossarian1408 5y ago
  It's not their propaganda operation, it's ours.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    You're flattering yourself too much. Ukrainians had the last 8 years to train and practice. They're one of the best now. Others will be coming to ask them for help, not the other way around.
  - matwood 5y ago
    It's a combination. The US releasing intelligence early on as it came out cut the knees out of the Russian disinformation campaign. So much so, I suspect it may become the new doctrine. Ukraine, and Zelensky in particular, have also taken full advantage of social media.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    https://en.interfax.com.ua/about.html https://en.interfax.com.ua/about.html looks pretty Ukranian to me?
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      yossarian1408 means that CIA/MI6 are almost certainly running Ukraine's PR.
      - fmajid 5y ago
        Your misplaced faith in the competence of the CIA is almost adorable. Small countries like Israel or Ukraine actually have to have competent intelligence services because their survival depends on it.
trhway 5y ago
a farmer stealing an armored carrier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPD1w1bZVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPD1w1bZVI Various Ukrainian people and organizations declared bounties for killed Russians and captured hardware. I suppose the bounties aren't going to be taxed too :)
- PedroBatista 5y ago
  I think it's a finders-keepers situation. The owners were nowhere to be found and probably was blocking someone's driveway.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
thro1 5y ago
If anyone wonders why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxRJIwXj3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxRJIwXj3s Gypsy snatched the tank, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2EYOWBmBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2EYOWBmBY Ukrainian farmer stole a russian tank.
- thro1 5y ago
  Better source: https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498332007650275339 https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498332007650275339
- brabel 5y ago
  Funny, but you know those are fake, right?
  - the_duke 5y ago
    There are countless images and videos on Telegram/Twitter of abandoned and captured Russian vehicles, including many not used by Ukrainian forces. Some of them are surely staged for Psyops, but by sheer volume plenty of them must be authentic.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - thinkingemote 5y ago
      One can examine each image and see if the object displayed in it is unique. I saw one news report which had multiple photos of the same object but taken from different angles and it must be said, from different people. Authentic very much so, however the number of images needs to be normalised with the number of objects.
      - the_duke 5y ago
        There is a whole "OSINT" (open source intelligence) community doing just that and publishing counts. They also try to geolocate the images via terrain and buildings using maps, satellite images, etc to disambiguate. Pretty odd way to pass the time ... but they seem to be confident in substantial Russian losses.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Now this is some next-level unexplained wealth trolling.
spacemanmatt 5y ago

tyropita 5y ago

Just imagine regular Ukrainian folks commuting to work in their personal tanks. What a time to be alive!

hef19898 5y ago
Well, they are propably not allowed to keep them, just sell them for tax free revenue.
- justinclift 5y ago
  "I'm hanging onto it for the next time they try this shit..." :)
- xattt 5y ago
  If an individual is concerned enough about tax implications of a new acquisition, the individual probably has enough foresight to consider the cost of fuel.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Private ownership of military weapons usually is less about fuel..

eqvinox 5y ago

Speaking as a German, what this tells me is that Ukraine is ready to join the EU in terms of bureaucracy :D

Mo3 5y ago
Thought the same. This is the German wet dream.
- nosianu 5y ago
  Having lived in the US for almost a decade, I did not see any less bureaucracy (for example, two tax returns - Germany is a federation too but I only need to file one). I also hear nightmare stories from other countries far surpassing anything we Germans could cook up, for example from India or from some African countries (not exclusively). "German bureaucracy" is a nice meme, I highly doubt that it even remotely reflects reality accurately. I don't mean that there isn't a lot, I mean that I doubt it's significantly or even any more than elsewhere. It's also highly subjective, depending on what part one is exposed to. Everybody only ever interacts with a tiny part of the overall system after all, and it very much depends on the context, so I doubt there can be a single answer that is meaningful except for media headline generation and effortless quick comment posting. Also, the exact same bureaucracy and rules can save effort, be good for society overall or even lives, or (and) it can be a great hindrance to progress, again depending on the exact context.
  - Mo3 5y ago
    I doubt you have ever penetrated deep enough into the favorite German pastime. I have a dedicated Nextcloud just to store and maintain order in my postal communication. I‘ve moved to the Netherlands in recent days though and the difference is very notable.
    - nosianu 5y ago
      > I doubt you have ever penetrated deep enough into the favorite German pastime. You don't know me. Many years ago, early nineties, I worked in the kitchen of a New Jersey summer camp for over two months through a student exchange program. At one point I decided to show them what "German" and "order" really means. I cleaned up the large pantry. Before, it was what you expect when you hear the term. A somewhat dark place with lots of food stuff in a lot of shelves. When I was done it was a bright room with every single can and every single label of hundreds of different cans and packages aligned to within less than a millimeter with the edge of the shelve and with each other. Every single label pointed exactly forward. Nut a speck of dust anywhere, and light flooded the room and between shelves. The contrast between before and after was stark. The camp manager walked through and did not say a word. My work as an ambassador of German-ness was done :)

netsharc 5y ago

This and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30525759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30525759 ... The Ukranian government seems to be very media-savvy, but for me this is noise compared to signal (important government declarations about the conflict, not about income tax on seized equipment), I feel like saying "My god man, can't you be a little serious, there's a fucking war going on!".

wasmitnetzen 5y ago
Morale is very important in a war, especially if you're the side with the technological disadvantage. I feel like a lot of the Ukrainian gov communications tries to keep up the morale. It also shows that the Government is still able to work, also an important signal to the country.
- senectus1 5y ago
  its also a great way to motivate a subset of society... and redirect their efforts from looting to making sure the russians dont re-take their kit.
CapricornNoble 5y ago
Sometimes a laconic demeanor is exactly what the troops need from their leadership.
pjc50 5y ago
It's a great little piece of propaganda. It conveys that ordinary citizens have been capturing abandoned Russian vehicles, and tacitly encourages them to continue to do this. It gets Westerners sharing it because of the black humor of having a tax policy on captured enemy vehicles. (And there seem to have been a lot of them; those interested can follow along on https://twitter.com/UAWeapons https://twitter.com/UAWeapons who post identifying captions in English. As always, take with a pinch of salt.)
MaysonL 5y ago
Imagine the Russian soldiers' parents reading this, and then getting a phone calls from their sons, now POWs, but still alive.

pjc50 5y ago

The Ukranian social media propaganda operation is just incredible, and they should keep at it because I think it's been a big part of the massive popular support in the West causing rapid government and NGO response to the invasion. Conversely they've been pretty effective at stopping information about their own disposition of forces being posted to social media, or at least it's not being retweeted anywhere I've seen.

yossarian1408 5y ago
It's not their propaganda operation, it's ours.
- emteycz 5y ago
  You're flattering yourself too much. Ukrainians had the last 8 years to train and practice. They're one of the best now. Others will be coming to ask them for help, not the other way around.
- matwood 5y ago
  It's a combination. The US releasing intelligence early on as it came out cut the knees out of the Russian disinformation campaign. So much so, I suspect it may become the new doctrine. Ukraine, and Zelensky in particular, have also taken full advantage of social media.
- pjc50 5y ago
  https://en.interfax.com.ua/about.html https://en.interfax.com.ua/about.html looks pretty Ukranian to me?
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    yossarian1408 means that CIA/MI6 are almost certainly running Ukraine's PR.
    - fmajid 5y ago
      Your misplaced faith in the competence of the CIA is almost adorable. Small countries like Israel or Ukraine actually have to have competent intelligence services because their survival depends on it.

trhway 5y ago

a farmer stealing an armored carrier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPD1w1bZVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPD1w1bZVI Various Ukrainian people and organizations declared bounties for killed Russians and captured hardware. I suppose the bounties aren't going to be taxed too :)

PedroBatista 5y ago
I think it's a finders-keepers situation. The owners were nowhere to be found and probably was blocking someone's driveway.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

thro1 5y ago

If anyone wonders why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxRJIwXj3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxRJIwXj3s Gypsy snatched the tank, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2EYOWBmBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2EYOWBmBY Ukrainian farmer stole a russian tank.

thro1 5y ago
Better source: https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498332007650275339 https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498332007650275339
brabel 5y ago
Funny, but you know those are fake, right?
- the_duke 5y ago
  There are countless images and videos on Telegram/Twitter of abandoned and captured Russian vehicles, including many not used by Ukrainian forces. Some of them are surely staged for Psyops, but by sheer volume plenty of them must be authentic.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    One can examine each image and see if the object displayed in it is unique. I saw one news report which had multiple photos of the same object but taken from different angles and it must be said, from different people. Authentic very much so, however the number of images needs to be normalised with the number of objects.
    - the_duke 5y ago
      There is a whole "OSINT" (open source intelligence) community doing just that and publishing counts. They also try to geolocate the images via terrain and buildings using maps, satellite images, etc to disambiguate. Pretty odd way to pass the time ... but they seem to be confident in substantial Russian losses.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

Now this is some next-level unexplained wealth trolling.

spacemanmatt 5y ago