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I'm surprised by how many people are unquestioningly believing every bit of propaganda the side they supports puts out. How do you know they're doing poorly? Wh

I'm surprised by how many people are unquestioningly believing every bit of propaganda the side they supports puts out. How do you know they're doing poorly? Where is your information coming from and how have you verified it is correct? Quite a bit of what is being put out by pretty much everyone with an audience is laughably not plausible. Do you believe Ukraine's story that Russia paratroopers to plummeting to their deaths in large numbers because of missing parachutes? Some of the stories are absolutely ridiculous and I'm not sure if we're meant to believe them or if they're there simply to make everything else more credible in comparison. This isn't just Ukraine doing it, it's everyone all around coming up with these stories that defy logic. Russia might indeed be doing poorly but I don't see how anyone outside of the war theater, or even most in it, have much confidence in knowing the state of things very well.

thematrixturtle 5y ago
I think most casual observers, myself included, expected to see the Ukrainian government fled/killed, a new puppet leader installed and Russian tank columns occupying Kiev within a week of the invasion starting. And this seems to have been what Russia expected as well, at least if the notorious plan "leak" on Belarus state TV is to be believed. The fact that this has clearly failed to happen indicates that the war is not going as planned. For comparison, it took the US three weeks total from launching their invasion of Iraq to taking over Baghdad, despite there being approximately 5x more distance to cover and Iraq fielding an army twice as large as Ukraine.
- vdsk 5y ago
  Let's just not forget that the US bombed Iraq (including its civilian infrastructure!) so much during the 13 previous years, and also imposed sanctions that delayed any Iraqi recovery. Ukraine, despite its obvious problems is not in this situation. Russia would have probably been able to decapitate the Ukr gov in a week in 2014, though.
sofixa 5y ago
There's plenty of OSINT available ( Oryx was even mentioned in the article). Take a look around, the only "side" which doesn't make it abundantly clear the Russian advance is an objective failure on every possible front - terrible logistics, ad-hoc consumer equipment like mobile phones used for communication, poorly maintained everything, low morale, hell, even poor planning and navigation ( lots of vehicles stuck in the mud), is the official Russian government propaganda. They've been thoroughly discredited by the lying before the war, and the accidentally published article about it's successful finish ( which is further indication of what the original Russian plan was).
rmbyrro 5y ago
This seems a pretty unbiased source (although western) and they corroborate that reality didn't meet expectations. [1] Maybe we (and the Russians) actually underestimated the Ukrainians a lot more than overestimated Russians... [1] http://www.iswresearch.org http://www.iswresearch.org
- atoav 5y ago
  Both. If I would travel back in time two years and tell myself the issues one of the armies were having in the battle at Ukraine, I wouldn't have assumed it was the Russians. So it is both: Russians doing fat worse than expected and Ukrainians are doing much better than I feared they would do.
mhh__ 5y ago
OSINT + unless the Ukrainians are dressing up as Russian conscripts raiding supermarkets for food, some things are by their nature apparent.
glogla 5y ago
It has been two weeks and Russia lost 12000 soldiers and 1200 vehicles, while capturing one major city (Kherson). They have also made no gains in last week. That is somewhat of a fiasco for someone who is supposed to have deployed order of magnitude more soldiers, tanks and airplanes than their opponent, and claimed they will win in few days. EDIT: thanks for the correction, got the cities mixed up.
- ciphol 5y ago
  Kharkhiv hasn't been captured. It hasn't even been surrounded. [1] You are probably thinking of Kherson (a much smaller city, population 300k, in southern Ukraine). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#/media/File:2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...
- fractallyte 5y ago
  And the number of injured soldiers is usually 2-3x greater. Which means that Russia potentially has up to 36,000 troops out of action - that's between a quarter and a third of their entire forces in Ukraine!
  - glogla 5y ago
    It is 12000 casualties, so that is already the sum of wounded, surrendered and dead.
simonh 5y ago
Some of the stories coming out of Ukraine are implausible, yes, but I wouldn't say 'quite a bit'. We have huge amounts of on the ground reports on social media from ordinary Ukrainians, and these reports are very consistent. That would be impossible for the government to co-ordinate. My girls play internet video games and in the early days you could talk on chat servers to Ukrainian kids about what was happening. The only way to spin a false narrative is thorough censorship and control of the internet and public media, and we just don't have that in the west. We do have high levels of surveillance, and a tiny amount of editorialising on social media compared to Russia and China, but not state censorship and suppression capable of obstructing public discourse.
xdennis 5y ago
Vehicles stuck in mud, running out of fuel, expired food, sending old buses to Ukraine, using cope cages are defense, Russian soldiers stealing food, soldiers arrested by policemen, and the interminable list of tanks and armored vehicles being towed by farmers. I've never a war in which farmers just take tanks! How incompetent are the Russians?
atoav 5y ago
How I know Russia is doing poorly? Easy: The war is still going on. There is a lot information that is indeed very unreliable, but undeniable Russia has not yet won the war. A thing that Putin himself said on Russian television could be easily done within two weeks. We are now way past that and there is no end in sight. Now if we take that indicator of bad performance seriously we can wonder what got into the way of the Russians. And there are some suggestions like badly maintained vehicles, lack of logistics (fuel trucks), vehicles that are unable to drive offroad, bad morale, lack of airsupport and so on. Now we can take all these theories and try the ones that fit the perceived reality most — not looking at individual instances but on trends — and the theories that fit that picture best win (for now). The fact is, that Russian explainations don't square with what can be observed long term. Ukrainian explainations are propagandistic (and sometimes lies), but they fit what can be observed if you look onto the bigger arcs of development much better.
wolverine876 5y ago
> people are unquestioningly believing What makes you say they are unquestioning? There's a lot of evidence of Russian military incompetence, including that they are struggling against a much smaller, much less-funded and less-equipped military.

thematrixturtle 5y ago

I think most casual observers, myself included, expected to see the Ukrainian government fled/killed, a new puppet leader installed and Russian tank columns occupying Kiev within a week of the invasion starting. And this seems to have been what Russia expected as well, at least if the notorious plan "leak" on Belarus state TV is to be believed. The fact that this has clearly failed to happen indicates that the war is not going as planned. For comparison, it took the US three weeks total from launching their invasion of Iraq to taking over Baghdad, despite there being approximately 5x more distance to cover and Iraq fielding an army twice as large as Ukraine.

vdsk 5y ago
Let's just not forget that the US bombed Iraq (including its civilian infrastructure!) so much during the 13 previous years, and also imposed sanctions that delayed any Iraqi recovery. Ukraine, despite its obvious problems is not in this situation. Russia would have probably been able to decapitate the Ukr gov in a week in 2014, though.

sofixa 5y ago

There's plenty of OSINT available ( Oryx was even mentioned in the article). Take a look around, the only "side" which doesn't make it abundantly clear the Russian advance is an objective failure on every possible front - terrible logistics, ad-hoc consumer equipment like mobile phones used for communication, poorly maintained everything, low morale, hell, even poor planning and navigation ( lots of vehicles stuck in the mud), is the official Russian government propaganda. They've been thoroughly discredited by the lying before the war, and the accidentally published article about it's successful finish ( which is further indication of what the original Russian plan was).

rmbyrro 5y ago

This seems a pretty unbiased source (although western) and they corroborate that reality didn't meet expectations. [1] Maybe we (and the Russians) actually underestimated the Ukrainians a lot more than overestimated Russians... [1] http://www.iswresearch.org http://www.iswresearch.org

atoav 5y ago
Both. If I would travel back in time two years and tell myself the issues one of the armies were having in the battle at Ukraine, I wouldn't have assumed it was the Russians. So it is both: Russians doing fat worse than expected and Ukrainians are doing much better than I feared they would do.

mhh__ 5y ago

OSINT + unless the Ukrainians are dressing up as Russian conscripts raiding supermarkets for food, some things are by their nature apparent.

glogla 5y ago

It has been two weeks and Russia lost 12000 soldiers and 1200 vehicles, while capturing one major city (Kherson). They have also made no gains in last week. That is somewhat of a fiasco for someone who is supposed to have deployed order of magnitude more soldiers, tanks and airplanes than their opponent, and claimed they will win in few days. EDIT: thanks for the correction, got the cities mixed up.

ciphol 5y ago
Kharkhiv hasn't been captured. It hasn't even been surrounded. [1] You are probably thinking of Kherson (a much smaller city, population 300k, in southern Ukraine). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#/media/File:2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...
fractallyte 5y ago
And the number of injured soldiers is usually 2-3x greater. Which means that Russia potentially has up to 36,000 troops out of action - that's between a quarter and a third of their entire forces in Ukraine!
- glogla 5y ago
  It is 12000 casualties, so that is already the sum of wounded, surrendered and dead.

simonh 5y ago

Some of the stories coming out of Ukraine are implausible, yes, but I wouldn't say 'quite a bit'. We have huge amounts of on the ground reports on social media from ordinary Ukrainians, and these reports are very consistent. That would be impossible for the government to co-ordinate. My girls play internet video games and in the early days you could talk on chat servers to Ukrainian kids about what was happening. The only way to spin a false narrative is thorough censorship and control of the internet and public media, and we just don't have that in the west. We do have high levels of surveillance, and a tiny amount of editorialising on social media compared to Russia and China, but not state censorship and suppression capable of obstructing public discourse.

xdennis 5y ago

Vehicles stuck in mud, running out of fuel, expired food, sending old buses to Ukraine, using cope cages are defense, Russian soldiers stealing food, soldiers arrested by policemen, and the interminable list of tanks and armored vehicles being towed by farmers. I've never a war in which farmers just take tanks! How incompetent are the Russians?

atoav 5y ago

How I know Russia is doing poorly? Easy: The war is still going on. There is a lot information that is indeed very unreliable, but undeniable Russia has not yet won the war. A thing that Putin himself said on Russian television could be easily done within two weeks. We are now way past that and there is no end in sight. Now if we take that indicator of bad performance seriously we can wonder what got into the way of the Russians. And there are some suggestions like badly maintained vehicles, lack of logistics (fuel trucks), vehicles that are unable to drive offroad, bad morale, lack of airsupport and so on. Now we can take all these theories and try the ones that fit the perceived reality most — not looking at individual instances but on trends — and the theories that fit that picture best win (for now). The fact is, that Russian explainations don't square with what can be observed long term. Ukrainian explainations are propagandistic (and sometimes lies), but they fit what can be observed if you look onto the bigger arcs of development much better.

wolverine876 5y ago

> people are unquestioningly believing What makes you say they are unquestioning? There's a lot of evidence of Russian military incompetence, including that they are struggling against a much smaller, much less-funded and less-equipped military.