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Sources inside Russia claim that even the military and intelligence service didn't see the war coming, and they certainly performed like it. Maybe a few days be

Sources inside Russia claim that even the military and intelligence service didn't see the war coming, and they certainly performed like it. Maybe a few days before it started, but certainly not for weeks or years.

simonh 5y ago
That’s all about timing though. It was obvious Russia hadn’t finished messing with Ukraine over Donbas, and even well beyond just that. What nobody knew was exactly what Putin would choose to do about it and when.
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
The only way that could be true is that if the “military and intelligence services” of Russia were as wholly compromised and counterproductive as they clearly are in the west. Putin specifically has been talking about the unacceptable nature of NATO expansion in violation of the agreement not to expand east since at least 2008 and the Russian state has been warning about it and aware of it happening at least from the mid 90s. How the military and intelligence services of the Russian state could not have seen this coming is beyond the credible for anyone that has paid attention to anything for the last 30 years. Not that it would have really made any significant difference that there were only verbal agreements, since America’s track record and credibility of keeping treaties is approaching zero, but it was agreed following and as an negotiated component of the unraveling of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It genuinely baffles me that so many in the general low information public are frequently just sucked in by the very same vortex of manipulation by the US government in particular, regardless of their formal education level. It’s just one “unforeseeable” event after another, and yet it’s always preceded by people loudly trying to warn against it. What concerns me, as someone who is involved in having an interest in knowing what is actually going on in the world regardless of the propaganda of any interested party and who has a very good track record of accuracy over decades; is that this is all being orchestrated and a consequence of intensely irrational and emotionally disturbed people having taken over in the west in general. Forget climate change, kids, if you survive the fallout at all, the climate warming will be the least of your problems the way things are going and are being pushed right now. All it takes is a single miscalculation on the part of the western central planners and the west has proven itself singularly competent at miscalculations; even if they are often deliberate and intentional, the most obvious examples of course being Iraq and Libya. Let me put it this way, folks, things are way more of the rails than people think, and not in a good way, regardless of all the “mean girl” empire propaganda about how the Russian military and intelligence services didn’t see it coming, that is more about filling a competency and intelligence gap through projection. The Russian military has wie literally been preparing for the confrontation of the belligerent USA and those who control it for decades now and they’ve been talking about it for decades now. Just because people haven’t paid attention or want to ignore that, doesn’t change reality. America is the belligerent in this over many decades now and they forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status. A phrase describing extreme manipulative and abusive behavior while decrying the consequences of one’s actions comes to mind. It’s been Americas MO for many decades now because another unspoken pillar of American might and even global financial control, is the ruse of American benevolence and morality, when in reality it is a very psychopathic, manipulative, and abusive national psychiatric profile that has dominated America for many decades, way before anyone alive today. Just look at American history, America keeps oddly finding itself being victimized into reluctant warfare? Poor little America, always seemingly finding itself being pressed into war where after the fact there is always at best the strong indication that something is extremely not right. We, all of humanity, are dealing with a psychosis of National Münchhausen Syndrome to garner the attention that feeds the American machine of manipulation. It is actually a very run of the mill toxic and abusive relationship the current form of America has with humanity. However, as with all toxic and abusive relationships, the people in such relationships have an extremely difficult time recognizing it, let alone escaping it.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  tl; dr; Putin lies, so do you.
- alexvoda 5y ago
  You are just repeating the points of John Mearsheimer and Vladimir Pozner. I, too, fell in that trap in the early days of the Z-war. Those points are mostly bullshit. Thankfully they do not appear to be as trending on YouTube as they were a month ago. I will not spend extra time explaining to you why those points are just Russian propaganda.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I think it's deeper than that. There is some truth in the above comment, certainly about the invasion of Iraq [0]. Where it goes astray is doubling down on this model to explain the entirety of the Ukraine situation with the US as the only actor, resulting in ridiculous backfit statements like "America ... forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status". Relativism can be handy, helping you see biases and assumptions of your native culture, but you always needs to keep it subordinate to actual reality. The reality here is that Russia has aggressed beyond its borders [1] and is unequivocally committing genocide, at which point I have a hard time being concerned about the ways the West may have effectively hurt Russia's feelings and "made" them lash out. There is indeed a geopolitical game of economic empire that the US/EU have been succeeding at, but that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. [0] In fact continuing the tangent, the memetic points of the original article are quite applicable to Iraq. Basically USG forcibly spreading the memes of "democracy", "corporate sanctity", and of course "USD as world reserve currency". Witness the overwhelming popular support for attacking Iraq in 2003 that has now been seemingly memory-holed by its one-time supporters. In 2003, the need to attack Iraq was manifestly implicit based on everpresent memes, which have now been de-emphasized. [1] We can examine the modern notion of the nation-state with fixed borders as itself being a modern-Western invention, but it's likely better described as a quality of the "centralized state" of the article. And pragmatically the concept seems to function as a reasonable Schelling point.
watwut 5y ago
The leader of "soldiers' mothers" committee was guessing it will happen months ago in an interview. If she could do it, the military leaders and intelligence service surely could have a guess too. They were running the war in Ukraine since 2014.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  There was a war in Ukraine since 2014. But that is a far cry from predicting the scale of invasion and mass murder that happens now.
  - watwut 5y ago
    To be clear, she did not predicted that "war will continue as is". She said something of the lines of "Of course there will be bigger war in Ukraine. I hear about army moving to the border from all sides. This is not exercise, no, this is not how exercises look like". That was paraphrase, not quotation. But specifically she was guessing based on what she heard about units movements. And also, as for mass murder, knowing enough about Russia army behavior in past conflicts, it is not like it would be reasonable to expect them to not commit at least some mass murders. Military not knowing as in "some low level unit" being clueless is perfectly plausible. Military as in "no one in leadership had any idea" is not really.
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      I can also predict the US is going to have a major war. When exactly? Well, that's the big question...
      - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        Not a relevant comment. Many people predicted at the start of 2022 not just that Russia would have a major war, but that is was very likely to happen a) within a few months and b) with Ukraine. Why? because as parent comment have already explained, Russia was massing troops on the border.
yucky 5y ago
The war has been ongoing since 2014, it didn't just start in February. How would somebody not see that coming?

simonh 5y ago

That’s all about timing though. It was obvious Russia hadn’t finished messing with Ukraine over Donbas, and even well beyond just that. What nobody knew was exactly what Putin would choose to do about it and when.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

The only way that could be true is that if the “military and intelligence services” of Russia were as wholly compromised and counterproductive as they clearly are in the west. Putin specifically has been talking about the unacceptable nature of NATO expansion in violation of the agreement not to expand east since at least 2008 and the Russian state has been warning about it and aware of it happening at least from the mid 90s. How the military and intelligence services of the Russian state could not have seen this coming is beyond the credible for anyone that has paid attention to anything for the last 30 years. Not that it would have really made any significant difference that there were only verbal agreements, since America’s track record and credibility of keeping treaties is approaching zero, but it was agreed following and as an negotiated component of the unraveling of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It genuinely baffles me that so many in the general low information public are frequently just sucked in by the very same vortex of manipulation by the US government in particular, regardless of their formal education level. It’s just one “unforeseeable” event after another, and yet it’s always preceded by people loudly trying to warn against it. What concerns me, as someone who is involved in having an interest in knowing what is actually going on in the world regardless of the propaganda of any interested party and who has a very good track record of accuracy over decades; is that this is all being orchestrated and a consequence of intensely irrational and emotionally disturbed people having taken over in the west in general. Forget climate change, kids, if you survive the fallout at all, the climate warming will be the least of your problems the way things are going and are being pushed right now. All it takes is a single miscalculation on the part of the western central planners and the west has proven itself singularly competent at miscalculations; even if they are often deliberate and intentional, the most obvious examples of course being Iraq and Libya. Let me put it this way, folks, things are way more of the rails than people think, and not in a good way, regardless of all the “mean girl” empire propaganda about how the Russian military and intelligence services didn’t see it coming, that is more about filling a competency and intelligence gap through projection. The Russian military has wie literally been preparing for the confrontation of the belligerent USA and those who control it for decades now and they’ve been talking about it for decades now. Just because people haven’t paid attention or want to ignore that, doesn’t change reality. America is the belligerent in this over many decades now and they forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status. A phrase describing extreme manipulative and abusive behavior while decrying the consequences of one’s actions comes to mind. It’s been Americas MO for many decades now because another unspoken pillar of American might and even global financial control, is the ruse of American benevolence and morality, when in reality it is a very psychopathic, manipulative, and abusive national psychiatric profile that has dominated America for many decades, way before anyone alive today. Just look at American history, America keeps oddly finding itself being victimized into reluctant warfare? Poor little America, always seemingly finding itself being pressed into war where after the fact there is always at best the strong indication that something is extremely not right. We, all of humanity, are dealing with a psychosis of National Münchhausen Syndrome to garner the attention that feeds the American machine of manipulation. It is actually a very run of the mill toxic and abusive relationship the current form of America has with humanity. However, as with all toxic and abusive relationships, the people in such relationships have an extremely difficult time recognizing it, let alone escaping it.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
tl; dr; Putin lies, so do you.
alexvoda 5y ago
You are just repeating the points of John Mearsheimer and Vladimir Pozner. I, too, fell in that trap in the early days of the Z-war. Those points are mostly bullshit. Thankfully they do not appear to be as trending on YouTube as they were a month ago. I will not spend extra time explaining to you why those points are just Russian propaganda.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I think it's deeper than that. There is some truth in the above comment, certainly about the invasion of Iraq [0]. Where it goes astray is doubling down on this model to explain the entirety of the Ukraine situation with the US as the only actor, resulting in ridiculous backfit statements like "America ... forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status". Relativism can be handy, helping you see biases and assumptions of your native culture, but you always needs to keep it subordinate to actual reality. The reality here is that Russia has aggressed beyond its borders [1] and is unequivocally committing genocide, at which point I have a hard time being concerned about the ways the West may have effectively hurt Russia's feelings and "made" them lash out. There is indeed a geopolitical game of economic empire that the US/EU have been succeeding at, but that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. [0] In fact continuing the tangent, the memetic points of the original article are quite applicable to Iraq. Basically USG forcibly spreading the memes of "democracy", "corporate sanctity", and of course "USD as world reserve currency". Witness the overwhelming popular support for attacking Iraq in 2003 that has now been seemingly memory-holed by its one-time supporters. In 2003, the need to attack Iraq was manifestly implicit based on everpresent memes, which have now been de-emphasized. [1] We can examine the modern notion of the nation-state with fixed borders as itself being a modern-Western invention, but it's likely better described as a quality of the "centralized state" of the article. And pragmatically the concept seems to function as a reasonable Schelling point.

watwut 5y ago

The leader of "soldiers' mothers" committee was guessing it will happen months ago in an interview. If she could do it, the military leaders and intelligence service surely could have a guess too. They were running the war in Ukraine since 2014.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
There was a war in Ukraine since 2014. But that is a far cry from predicting the scale of invasion and mass murder that happens now.
- watwut 5y ago
  To be clear, she did not predicted that "war will continue as is". She said something of the lines of "Of course there will be bigger war in Ukraine. I hear about army moving to the border from all sides. This is not exercise, no, this is not how exercises look like". That was paraphrase, not quotation. But specifically she was guessing based on what she heard about units movements. And also, as for mass murder, knowing enough about Russia army behavior in past conflicts, it is not like it would be reasonable to expect them to not commit at least some mass murders. Military not knowing as in "some low level unit" being clueless is perfectly plausible. Military as in "no one in leadership had any idea" is not really.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    I can also predict the US is going to have a major war. When exactly? Well, that's the big question...
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      Not a relevant comment. Many people predicted at the start of 2022 not just that Russia would have a major war, but that is was very likely to happen a) within a few months and b) with Ukraine. Why? because as parent comment have already explained, Russia was massing troops on the border.

yucky 5y ago

The war has been ongoing since 2014, it didn't just start in February. How would somebody not see that coming?