17 ms·

Analysis of the situation in Russia, claimed to be by an active FSB analyst

219 points by azalemeth 5y ago

geeky4qwerty 5y ago
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. Fog of war is thick right now.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war
giords 5y ago
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.
sss111 5y ago
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
- ur-whale 5y ago
  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. [1] https://live.euronext.com/en/product/commodities-futures/EBM-DPAR https://live.euronext.com/en/product/commodities-futures/EBM...
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > 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.
    - roca 5y ago
      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.
      - greggsy 5y ago
        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.
    - ur-whale 5y ago
      > its not going to change their decision about Russia just because people in Africa are starving. Up until the point where the problem spills over the borders and into Europe.
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    That said, EU destroys an incredible amount of food each year (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit-leaving-eu-farming-agriculture 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.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
- phatfish 5y ago
  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.
- codeflo 5y ago
  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.
- watwut 5y ago
  Imo, chances are, it is yet again bad analysis. Regardless of whether this is trolls writing or not. Prices of food will go up tho.
  - watwut 5y ago
    So, I gother it might not be bad analysis. The hunger thing is more about further east then further west where is more dependence on these.
- perlgeek 5y ago
  > 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).
thriftwy 5y ago
Looks fake. I can't imagine an FSB official caring about world hunger, especially as the prime concern.
- phatfish 5y ago
  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...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jnwatson 5y ago
  Even if the FSB are universally psychopaths (which they aren’t), global famine is a destabilizing force that can be leveraged.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  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.
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    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.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
- 5y ago
trevorboaconstr 5y ago
Fake, disinformation, psyops, whatever you want to call it.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  Maybe. In practice, you just don't know and are speculating.
  - plasticisbad 5y ago
    Speculating...every single time? Let's not pussy-foot around.
- alin23 5y ago
  I posted this first with the link to the Twitter post saying that the source has been verified with two other FSB contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513?s=20&t=njpeqkXTF3yN8q1eKb9siw https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513... Of course we still can’t know for sure.
ur-whale 5y ago
As an interesting side, the site gulagu.net (mentioned in the article) is unreachable from where I am right now.
keymone 5y ago
christo grozev says it's probably not fake, according to his two fsb contacts (though they disagree with some of the author's conclusions): https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513 edit: missing word
- the_af 5y ago
  But where is the "chain of trust" here? Why should we trust either Grozev or his two anonymous "FSB contacts"? Especially on a subject where every side has incentives to lie, distort or exaggerate the truth.
  - keymone 5y ago
    he's a reputable investigative journalist with a track record.
kcabdelta 5y ago
alin23 5y ago
Interesting that posting the translation link directly gets more traction than the link to the original source. I posted this first with the link to the Twitter post saying that the source has been verified with two other FSB contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513?s=20&t=njpeqkXTF3yN8q1eKb9siw https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513... Of course we still can’t know for sure if it’s true, anyone can say anything. But the whole situation reminds me of the HBO rendition of Chernobyl. It’s all based on lies.
- the_af 5y ago
  > 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". I guess it's all based on lies indeed...
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Could be fake of course. But if I had to put money on it I'd say this is real
mongol 5y ago
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.
- pjc50 5y ago
  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.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  I think it's understandable. 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.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > out to be a sure fire thing for Hillary which is opposite of what happened She could have probably won but Comey decided at the very end to open the email investigation again. That generated negative publicity for her.
  - simion314 5y ago
    >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.
itsailor 5y ago
All information in this note is fake. Check facts. Without emotions. Update: Look for rebuttals, not confirmations, to verify information.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  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?
  - itsailor 5y ago
    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.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      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.
      - itsailor 5y ago
        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.
    - throwaway290 5y ago
      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).
eterevsky 5y ago
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).
- junon 5y ago
  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.
  - eterevsky 5y ago
    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.
    - tazjin 5y ago
      For what it's worth, the talk about Ukrainian nuclear weapons was in Russian internet before this letter appeared. The idea doesn't originate from it. (Not writing this to suggest anything about its authenticity, just adding information)
      - petre 5y ago
        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.
trhway 5y ago
>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".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Don't forget that the Russians practically trained Ukraine for 8 years and they got additional training/arms from the west in the meantime. Russia was getting much less efficient in Ukraine and the situation was pretty dire ( water was cut off)
twa999 5y ago
thank you bellingcat journo, I totally believe you.
Luc 5y ago
'Meteorites' is a mis-translation for artillery or missiles I assume.
- quantum_mcts 5y ago
  No, literally "meteorite" in original text. It is used as an example of a completely implausible event.
  - Luc 5y ago
    I don't think so, nobody's (yet) "attacking prisons with meteorites". "And later out of nowhere they really do drop a meteor and wait for everything to be according to your analysis" But perhaps it's a metaphor rather than a mis-translation.
    - quantum_mcts 5y ago
      Yes, it is a metaphor. I know that because I speak Russian and read the original. Indeed, that's a weird metaphor even for a Russian ear.
      - Luc 5y ago
        This https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301354358636546 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301354358636546 suggests that prison = Russia, meteorite = sanctions.
- newby 5y ago
  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.
- d1sxeyes 5y ago
gorgoiler 5y ago
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.
- the_af 5y ago
  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?
  - Yoric 5y ago
    Agreed. In times of war, we should assume that everything is a fake, especially if believing is oh so very tempting.
  - tylergetsay 5y ago
    Has bellingcat made any big mistakes? They're kind of a big name in OSI
    - waffleiron 5y ago
      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. [1] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201026212840/https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/10/26/unpublished-opcw-douma-correspondence-raises-doubts-about-transparency-of-opcw-leaks-promoters/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201026212840/https://www.belli...
itsailor 5y ago
The more I read foreign media, the more I am convinced of how one-sided they assess the situation.
- spoils19 5y ago
  All information in this comment is fake. Check facts. Without emotions.
- forum_ghost 5y ago
  what is the domestic media that you read which is that balanced? Absolutely everything on this seems to be extremely biased, to the point, I simply assume it all to be entirely fake until proven otherwise.
  - itsailor 5y ago
    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.
belter 5y ago
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. "FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief" https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/ https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/ Now...a more interesting analysis would be Putin latest video with the Aeroflot flight attendants of yesterday: https://liveandletsfly.com/putin-aeroflot-flight-attendants/ https://liveandletsfly.com/putin-aeroflot-flight-attendants/ So for months was isolating himself from COVID, sitting with his own Generals: https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/L0WI8.kjuFrSXLM78cVtQQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtjZj13ZWJw/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2022-02/417de5d0-98c2-11ec-bf3f-aa47d35384f3 https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/L0WI8.kjuFrSXLM78cVtQQ--/Y... visiting Presidents, like 300 feet away...then suddenly mingling around in close contact with everybody? Was the distance thing just a power trip?
- trhway 5y ago
  Putin is green screened into that video. His hand in particular cuts the microphone magician style.
  - konart 5y ago
    The hand is just closer to the camera.
  - belter 5y ago
    Those claims have been debunked, but hats off to Zelensky for trolling Putin on that one with his own mic move...
    - rossmohax 5y ago
      Check his right hand at 8:39 frame by frame: https://youtu.be/I3JpOy_fOmA?t=512 https://youtu.be/I3JpOy_fOmA?t=512
onemanstartup 5y ago
3 days to Blitzkrieg? - Fake.
- geeky4qwerty 5y ago
  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.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    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.
    - waffleiron 5y ago
      >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.
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  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.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  Thats how blitzkriegs work 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.
fareesh 5y ago
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.
- greggsy 5y ago
  > 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.
  - esperent 5y ago
    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.
  - the_af 5y ago
    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...
avodonosov 5y ago
A "whistleblower" should reveal some secret facts. Here we have a collectiol of opinions, even if by an FSB worker.
- daqhris 5y ago
  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.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    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.
- forum_ghost 5y ago
  It has a few facts, but entirely upside down. Seems to me, this is a very fine example of copypasta in a certain style. Whistleblowing or not, "leaks" such as this, even if fake, can easily result in a death penalty in war time. No way it's real.
- ordu 5y ago
  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.
helge9210 5y ago
I've seen this text in Russian several days ago. To me it looks like regurgitated points from https://el-murid.livejournal.com/ 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.
rnhmjoj 5y ago
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. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence-says-ukraine-making-nuclear-dirty-bomb-2022-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...
- terramex 5y ago
  It preceeds this news, I've seen original post translated into polish two days ago. edit: here https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/64199473/translator-z-rosyjskiego-ciekawa-analiza-na-uwage-/ https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/64199473/translator-z-rosyjskiego-... and this was given as original source: https://t.me/Tsaplienko/1785 https://t.me/Tsaplienko/1785 (last edited: Mar 4 at 18:29)
  - 3np 5y ago
    OP also looks to be from Mar 4, if you go to the FB post
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  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.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    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.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      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
romland 5y ago
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". I believe this is the only point of the piece.
CodeArtisan 5y ago
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).
- varispeed 5y ago
  From the videos I saw, I'd say they are mostly gone. There may be a handful that managed to stay alive and escaped.
- cm2187 5y ago
  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.
  - daqhris 5y ago
    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.
  - Merad 5y ago
    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.
m00dy 5y ago
It has the same probability as it would have been written by Ukrainian intelligence service officer.
praptak 5y ago
Side note: if they really thought of sending "politically undesirables" to the front, they must be desperate. And in Russia, of all places! Don't they know what happened when frustrated soldiers came back from the front?
- the_af 5y ago
  Well, some [1] news are reporting Ukraine is either sending or considering releasing people from prison to fight the Russians. [1] non Russian news outlets, if you google you'll get many hits
  - paganel 5y ago
    It was on the news 4-5 days ago, didn't hear anything new about that, maybe they reconsidered? Not sure.
  - praptak 5y ago
    The context matters. Do they send prisoners against their will, or offer a deal?
    - petre 5y ago
      Yes they claim to offer a clemence deal: fight the Russians and somehow get pardoned.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cm2187 5y ago
Even if it turns out not be genuine, he still makes some very good points. The last part about nothing indicating Putin is suicidal in particular.
- MrMan 5y ago
  I agree - you dont have to accept this as legitimate to engage in a discussion of the points raised.
hughrr 5y ago
This sounds like when I was a solution architect working for a large consultancy a number of years back. They don’t exist now.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  Who was this?
- richardfey 5y ago
  Was it your fault?
  - hughrr 5y ago
    No comment
sillysaurusx 5y 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. It's been a hobby of mine to analyze decisive battles from history -- or rather to parrot 100 Decisive Battles https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/dp/0195143663 https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/... 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. Time is not on Putin's side.
- golergka 5y ago
  > 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.
vbezhenar 5y ago
This is obvious fake.
jonathanstrange 5y ago
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.
- MrMan 5y ago
  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.
- worik 5y ago
  > I've also flagged this thread because it's clearly political and pointless discussing this on HN. This is political like the choice of technology is political. I.e. everything is political. This is meat hook reality blasting apart comrades of ours on both sides. This is not a debate about whether Putin should be impeached for hanging out with Aslan Usoyan.
h2odragon 5y ago
Reminds me of some of the Qanon greentext posts; especially "the biden HQ is falling apart we know the arrests will begin tomorrow".
- jessaustin 5y ago
  "The walls are closing in."
rich_sasha 5y ago
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.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  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
  - watwut 5y ago
    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.
  - grugq 5y ago
    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
xhevahir 5y ago
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."
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  And when they don't they create new positions to "stovepipe" assessments around intelligence orgs, e.g. the DNI.
aaron695 5y ago
aklemm 5y ago
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”.
xhevahir 5y ago
"...Erdogan's "Southern stream" into 4 directions and thus began Syria, and this was after Soleimani..." I haven't paid much attention to this stuff in recent years, so I googled these and found an interesting article: http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Energy/gas_war.shtml#Putins_Turkish_Gambit http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Energ...
realitysballs 5y ago
If you look at as a fictional depiction of what might be happening it does have some entertainment value
nzealand 5y ago
> There exists a rule, that if you try to substitute quality with quantity you only ruin everything. This is brilliantly put.
worik 5y ago
Having read the (translated) document and the comments here I think people are missing the point looking for facts in the document. If it is genuine it is a very good insight into morale.
jl6 5y ago
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.
- rizkeyz 5y ago
  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.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  NATO is never going to establish a no fly zone over Ukraine. Anyone who thinks that they are is living in a dream world.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Yeah, this guy has definitely been living in a dream world for some time: https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-05-22/h_6ecbb18224dc7ef55170557a28047547 https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-puti...
stjohnswarts 5y ago
This is all of very limited value and could be fan fiction or exactly what the title says. So take it with a kilogram of salt.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
miningmaven 5y ago
Today other sources are saying similar things about preparations leading to invasions. https://twitter.com/alexgabuev/status/1501713416574193673?s=21 https://twitter.com/alexgabuev/status/1501713416574193673?s=...
miningmaven 5y ago

219 points by azalemeth 5y ago

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. Fog of war is thick right now.

chinathrow 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war

giords 5y ago

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.

sss111 5y ago

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

ur-whale 5y ago
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. [1] https://live.euronext.com/en/product/commodities-futures/EBM-DPAR https://live.euronext.com/en/product/commodities-futures/EBM...
- sumedh 5y ago
  > 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.
  - roca 5y ago
    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.
    - greggsy 5y ago
      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.
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    > its not going to change their decision about Russia just because people in Africa are starving. Up until the point where the problem spills over the borders and into Europe.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  That said, EU destroys an incredible amount of food each year (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit-leaving-eu-farming-agriculture 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.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
phatfish 5y ago
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.
codeflo 5y ago
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.
watwut 5y ago
Imo, chances are, it is yet again bad analysis. Regardless of whether this is trolls writing or not. Prices of food will go up tho.
- watwut 5y ago
  So, I gother it might not be bad analysis. The hunger thing is more about further east then further west where is more dependence on these.
perlgeek 5y ago
> 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).

thriftwy 5y ago

Looks fake. I can't imagine an FSB official caring about world hunger, especially as the prime concern.

phatfish 5y ago
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...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jnwatson 5y ago
Even if the FSB are universally psychopaths (which they aren’t), global famine is a destabilizing force that can be leveraged.
azalemeth 5y ago
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.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  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.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
5y ago

trevorboaconstr 5y ago

Fake, disinformation, psyops, whatever you want to call it.

ur-whale 5y ago
Maybe. In practice, you just don't know and are speculating.
- plasticisbad 5y ago
  Speculating...every single time? Let's not pussy-foot around.
alin23 5y ago
I posted this first with the link to the Twitter post saying that the source has been verified with two other FSB contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513?s=20&t=njpeqkXTF3yN8q1eKb9siw https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513... Of course we still can’t know for sure.

ur-whale 5y ago

As an interesting side, the site gulagu.net (mentioned in the article) is unreachable from where I am right now.

keymone 5y ago

christo grozev says it's probably not fake, according to his two fsb contacts (though they disagree with some of the author's conclusions): https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513 edit: missing word

the_af 5y ago
But where is the "chain of trust" here? Why should we trust either Grozev or his two anonymous "FSB contacts"? Especially on a subject where every side has incentives to lie, distort or exaggerate the truth.
- keymone 5y ago
  he's a reputable investigative journalist with a track record.

kcabdelta 5y ago

alin23 5y ago

Interesting that posting the translation link directly gets more traction than the link to the original source. I posted this first with the link to the Twitter post saying that the source has been verified with two other FSB contacts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30574210 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513?s=20&t=njpeqkXTF3yN8q1eKb9siw https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500197460626624513... Of course we still can’t know for sure if it’s true, anyone can say anything. But the whole situation reminds me of the HBO rendition of Chernobyl. It’s all based on lies.

the_af 5y ago
> 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". I guess it's all based on lies indeed...

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Could be fake of course. But if I had to put money on it I'd say this is real

mongol 5y ago

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.

pjc50 5y ago
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.
Ygg2 5y ago
I think it's understandable. 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.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > out to be a sure fire thing for Hillary which is opposite of what happened She could have probably won but Comey decided at the very end to open the email investigation again. That generated negative publicity for her.
- simion314 5y ago
  >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.

itsailor 5y ago

All information in this note is fake. Check facts. Without emotions. Update: Look for rebuttals, not confirmations, to verify information.

jacquesm 5y ago
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?
- itsailor 5y ago
  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.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    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.
    - itsailor 5y ago
      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.
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    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).

eterevsky 5y ago

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).

junon 5y ago
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.
- eterevsky 5y ago
  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.
  - tazjin 5y ago
    For what it's worth, the talk about Ukrainian nuclear weapons was in Russian internet before this letter appeared. The idea doesn't originate from it. (Not writing this to suggest anything about its authenticity, just adding information)
    - petre 5y ago
      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.

trhway 5y ago

>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".

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Don't forget that the Russians practically trained Ukraine for 8 years and they got additional training/arms from the west in the meantime. Russia was getting much less efficient in Ukraine and the situation was pretty dire ( water was cut off)

twa999 5y ago

thank you bellingcat journo, I totally believe you.

Luc 5y ago

'Meteorites' is a mis-translation for artillery or missiles I assume.

quantum_mcts 5y ago
No, literally "meteorite" in original text. It is used as an example of a completely implausible event.
- Luc 5y ago
  I don't think so, nobody's (yet) "attacking prisons with meteorites". "And later out of nowhere they really do drop a meteor and wait for everything to be according to your analysis" But perhaps it's a metaphor rather than a mis-translation.
  - quantum_mcts 5y ago
    Yes, it is a metaphor. I know that because I speak Russian and read the original. Indeed, that's a weird metaphor even for a Russian ear.
    - Luc 5y ago
      This https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301354358636546 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301354358636546 suggests that prison = Russia, meteorite = sanctions.
newby 5y ago
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.
d1sxeyes 5y ago

gorgoiler 5y ago

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.

the_af 5y ago
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?
- Yoric 5y ago
  Agreed. In times of war, we should assume that everything is a fake, especially if believing is oh so very tempting.
- tylergetsay 5y ago
  Has bellingcat made any big mistakes? They're kind of a big name in OSI
  - waffleiron 5y ago
    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. [1] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201026212840/https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/10/26/unpublished-opcw-douma-correspondence-raises-doubts-about-transparency-of-opcw-leaks-promoters/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201026212840/https://www.belli...

itsailor 5y ago

The more I read foreign media, the more I am convinced of how one-sided they assess the situation.

spoils19 5y ago
All information in this comment is fake. Check facts. Without emotions.
forum_ghost 5y ago
what is the domestic media that you read which is that balanced? Absolutely everything on this seems to be extremely biased, to the point, I simply assume it all to be entirely fake until proven otherwise.
- itsailor 5y ago
  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.

belter 5y ago

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. "FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief" https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/ https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/ Now...a more interesting analysis would be Putin latest video with the Aeroflot flight attendants of yesterday: https://liveandletsfly.com/putin-aeroflot-flight-attendants/ https://liveandletsfly.com/putin-aeroflot-flight-attendants/ So for months was isolating himself from COVID, sitting with his own Generals: https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/L0WI8.kjuFrSXLM78cVtQQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtjZj13ZWJw/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2022-02/417de5d0-98c2-11ec-bf3f-aa47d35384f3 https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/L0WI8.kjuFrSXLM78cVtQQ--/Y... visiting Presidents, like 300 feet away...then suddenly mingling around in close contact with everybody? Was the distance thing just a power trip?

trhway 5y ago
Putin is green screened into that video. His hand in particular cuts the microphone magician style.
- konart 5y ago
  The hand is just closer to the camera.
- belter 5y ago
  Those claims have been debunked, but hats off to Zelensky for trolling Putin on that one with his own mic move...
  - rossmohax 5y ago
    Check his right hand at 8:39 frame by frame: https://youtu.be/I3JpOy_fOmA?t=512 https://youtu.be/I3JpOy_fOmA?t=512

onemanstartup 5y ago

3 days to Blitzkrieg? - Fake.

geeky4qwerty 5y ago
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.
- varispeed 5y ago
  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.
  - waffleiron 5y ago
    >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.
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
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.
KaiserPro 5y ago
Thats how blitzkriegs work 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.

fareesh 5y ago

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.

greggsy 5y ago
> 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.
- esperent 5y ago
  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.
- the_af 5y ago
  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...

avodonosov 5y ago

A "whistleblower" should reveal some secret facts. Here we have a collectiol of opinions, even if by an FSB worker.

daqhris 5y ago
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.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  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.
forum_ghost 5y ago
It has a few facts, but entirely upside down. Seems to me, this is a very fine example of copypasta in a certain style. Whistleblowing or not, "leaks" such as this, even if fake, can easily result in a death penalty in war time. No way it's real.
ordu 5y ago
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.

helge9210 5y ago

I've seen this text in Russian several days ago. To me it looks like regurgitated points from https://el-murid.livejournal.com/ 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.

rnhmjoj 5y ago

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. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence-says-ukraine-making-nuclear-dirty-bomb-2022-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...

terramex 5y ago
It preceeds this news, I've seen original post translated into polish two days ago. edit: here https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/64199473/translator-z-rosyjskiego-ciekawa-analiza-na-uwage-/ https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/64199473/translator-z-rosyjskiego-... and this was given as original source: https://t.me/Tsaplienko/1785 https://t.me/Tsaplienko/1785 (last edited: Mar 4 at 18:29)
- 3np 5y ago
  OP also looks to be from Mar 4, if you go to the FB post
dragonwriter 5y ago
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.
- varispeed 5y ago
  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.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    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

romland 5y ago

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". I believe this is the only point of the piece.

CodeArtisan 5y ago

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).

varispeed 5y ago
From the videos I saw, I'd say they are mostly gone. There may be a handful that managed to stay alive and escaped.
cm2187 5y ago
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.
- daqhris 5y ago
  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.
- Merad 5y ago
  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.

m00dy 5y ago

It has the same probability as it would have been written by Ukrainian intelligence service officer.

praptak 5y ago

Side note: if they really thought of sending "politically undesirables" to the front, they must be desperate. And in Russia, of all places! Don't they know what happened when frustrated soldiers came back from the front?

the_af 5y ago
Well, some [1] news are reporting Ukraine is either sending or considering releasing people from prison to fight the Russians. [1] non Russian news outlets, if you google you'll get many hits
- paganel 5y ago
  It was on the news 4-5 days ago, didn't hear anything new about that, maybe they reconsidered? Not sure.
- praptak 5y ago
  The context matters. Do they send prisoners against their will, or offer a deal?
  - petre 5y ago
    Yes they claim to offer a clemence deal: fight the Russians and somehow get pardoned.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cm2187 5y ago

Even if it turns out not be genuine, he still makes some very good points. The last part about nothing indicating Putin is suicidal in particular.

MrMan 5y ago
I agree - you dont have to accept this as legitimate to engage in a discussion of the points raised.

hughrr 5y ago

This sounds like when I was a solution architect working for a large consultancy a number of years back. They don’t exist now.

hestefisk 5y ago
Who was this?
richardfey 5y ago
Was it your fault?
- hughrr 5y ago
  No comment

sillysaurusx 5y 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. It's been a hobby of mine to analyze decisive battles from history -- or rather to parrot 100 Decisive Battles https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/dp/0195143663 https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/... 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. Time is not on Putin's side.

golergka 5y ago
> 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.

vbezhenar 5y ago

This is obvious fake.

jonathanstrange 5y ago

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.

MrMan 5y ago
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.
worik 5y ago
> I've also flagged this thread because it's clearly political and pointless discussing this on HN. This is political like the choice of technology is political. I.e. everything is political. This is meat hook reality blasting apart comrades of ours on both sides. This is not a debate about whether Putin should be impeached for hanging out with Aslan Usoyan.

h2odragon 5y ago

Reminds me of some of the Qanon greentext posts; especially "the biden HQ is falling apart we know the arrests will begin tomorrow".

jessaustin 5y ago
"The walls are closing in."

rich_sasha 5y ago

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.

secondaryacct 5y ago
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
- watwut 5y ago
  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.
- grugq 5y ago
  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

xhevahir 5y ago

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."

blaser-waffle 5y ago
And when they don't they create new positions to "stovepipe" assessments around intelligence orgs, e.g. the DNI.

aaron695 5y ago

aklemm 5y ago

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”.

xhevahir 5y ago

"...Erdogan's "Southern stream" into 4 directions and thus began Syria, and this was after Soleimani..." I haven't paid much attention to this stuff in recent years, so I googled these and found an interesting article: http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Energy/gas_war.shtml#Putins_Turkish_Gambit http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Energ...

realitysballs 5y ago

If you look at as a fictional depiction of what might be happening it does have some entertainment value

nzealand 5y ago

> There exists a rule, that if you try to substitute quality with quantity you only ruin everything. This is brilliantly put.

worik 5y ago

Having read the (translated) document and the comments here I think people are missing the point looking for facts in the document. If it is genuine it is a very good insight into morale.

jl6 5y ago

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.

rizkeyz 5y ago
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.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
NATO is never going to establish a no fly zone over Ukraine. Anyone who thinks that they are is living in a dream world.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Yeah, this guy has definitely been living in a dream world for some time: https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-05-22/h_6ecbb18224dc7ef55170557a28047547 https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-puti...

stjohnswarts 5y ago

This is all of very limited value and could be fan fiction or exactly what the title says. So take it with a kilogram of salt.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

miningmaven 5y ago

Today other sources are saying similar things about preparations leading to invasions. https://twitter.com/alexgabuev/status/1501713416574193673?s=21 https://twitter.com/alexgabuev/status/1501713416574193673?s=...

miningmaven 5y ago