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What would that even mean, concretely? It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. Russia admits it. (And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extr

by foldr 5y ago

What would that even mean, concretely? It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. Russia admits it. (And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extreme Russian incompetence is the other explanation on the table.)

eps 5y ago
But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine. Propaganda works by selecting some facts and amplifying them, all the while hiding others. Note how Ukrainian military losses are never reported, for example. Photos of destroyed Russian tanks are all over the place, but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. The coverage is very selective to paint a specific picture.
- foldr 5y ago
  I’m not denying that Ukrainian propaganda exists. My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. Oddly, lordnacho seems to suggest that they are less inclined to believe this the more evidence for it that they see. The mere fact that Ukraine still is not occupied by Russia tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. You can just copy-paste that comment for virtually every army out there. Ukraine is holding up because it is massively supplied with modern weapons that they never had in the first place by foreign powers: this is clearly a proxy war, not a bunch of peasants pushing back well-armed Russians.
    - foldr 5y ago
      You can’t copy and paste my comment for ‘every army out there’, as some armies are winning wars and aren’t incompetent. That’s such an odd thing to say that I almost feel you must have intended to write something else. I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the rest of your comment. Yes, Ukraine has Western aid. That doesn’t negate Russian incompetence or mean that Russia is somehow actually winning. For example, it doesn’t explain how the Moskva was unable to defend itself against a small number of current-generation sea-skimming missiles (a threat that’s been around for at least a couple of decades).
    - Const-me 5y ago
      This became true as the war continues. Wasn't the case in February. Western intelligence was expecting Russians to capture Kyiv within several days of the war [1] Therefore, western countries refused to supply heavy weapons. They remember the 7 billion of military equipment they supplied to Afghanistan [2] [1] https://www.newsweek.com/us-expects-kyiv-fall-days-ukraine-source-warns-encirclement-1682326 https://www.newsweek.com/us-expects-kyiv-fall-days-ukraine-s... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-l...
    - multjoy 5y ago
      The Ukrainian army has been massively scaled up since 2014, with western assistance. Remember, the Russian invasion already happened when they marched into the Crimea. This is just a continuation.
  - eps 5y ago
    One doesn't need to read news to know that this war isn't going well. Trying to go against a nation that most Russians perceive as brotherly using an army comprising 16 year old conscripts ain't going to go well. Glaring motivation and morale issues, underpaid officers, rampant negligence, indifference and theft - ask any Russian and you will get an earful of how rotten the army is even during the peace time.
    - justsomehnguy 5y ago
      > army comprising 16 year old conscripts LOL? It's not like 18 y.o. are significantly older, but claiming they are 16? >> which is mandatory for all male citizens ages 18–27, with a number of exceptions
      - eps 5y ago
        The vast majority is still conscripted as early as possible. 18 or 16 - still kids :-/
    - wiseowise 5y ago
      > Trying to go against a nation that most Russians perceive as brotherly Brotherly, but not in equal sense. More like stupid little brother that can't take care of himself. It is widely known that Russians, for some reason, consider themselves superior out of all Eastern Europe Slavs.
      - eps 5y ago
        That's just not true. Leave alone being "widely known". The stupid (or rather gullible/inane) angle is a fairly recent government spin to justify the aggression.
        wiseowise 5y ago
        Are you Russian? Or just plain ignorant? > The stupid (or rather gullible/inane) angle is a fairly recent government spin to justify the aggression. By "recent" you mean since imperial time?
- mellow-lake-day 5y ago
  >But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine. That was because after the soldiers said that the feed got cut off and Ukraine didn't hear back from the soldiers until Russia said they were captured. So up until as it was revealed they were captured, the worst was assumed. >but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment There are many photos like this, did you even bother to look? Oryx's blog for example has 1,040 photos of destroyed/captured Ukrainian equipment
  - eps 5y ago
    > There are many photos like this Not in the mainstream press.
    - wiseowise 5y ago
      And?
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    To the extent that I want Ukraine to win, I'm also ok with western media joining their propaganda effort.
    - zasdffaa 5y ago
      I'd prefer to be given the truth. Explicitly asking to be deceived, well I can't understand that.
      - spacemanmatt 5y ago
        Yeah, that's never been the way journalism works, though. Read multiple sources, figure out what truth you believe you can infer. That's all there is. Tolerating propaganda from friendly sources who are at war is hardly asking to be deceived.
        4y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mattmanser 5y ago
It's perspective. Successes might be exaggerated, things that the Russians actually find a minor inconvenience turned into a major problem, and nothing negative or embarrassing is published about the Ukrainians. For example, is it 100 soldiers refusing to fight, or 100,000? The former is noise, the latter is an actual problem. Remember the flag burning photos they used to regularly show in the middle East? It always looked like a huge crowd, but I remember seeing the regular photos and eventually realizing it was often a tiny crowd of people. It might only be 20 extremists that the camera was tightly focused on. They often had the camera zoomed in and low to the ground and slightly pointed up so you couldn't clearly see how empty the area was. And that was a natural consequence of the photographer/TV crew wanting to make money. They wanted to make it look really packed/busy because it sells more pictures/attracts more viewers.
- foldr 5y ago
  I don’t see that it is a question of perspective. The scale of Russian losses is well documented, and we know that Russia has failed to remove Zelensky from power or occupy a significant area of Ukraine. Thus by any reasonable measure the whole Russian operation has been a disaster so far. Could that change in future? Sure. I’m afraid this subthread is an example of HNers being too clever by half. Sometimes the simple narrative that you find in major media outlets is the truth. It’s honestly quite interesting to see the mental gymnastics that people have to engage in to somehow convince themselves that this war is going well for Russia - and not because they support Russia, but merely because they hate the idea of agreeing with the New York Times.
  - marvin 5y ago
    And it's not even that clever just to deny the facts for the sake of being contrarian. There's definitely a pro-Ukranian bias in Western media and on twitter, but there's still more than enough signal in there to determine that the war isn't going well for Russia. Hell, just looking at Putin's facial expressions tells you as much, and that's just one tiny piece of information. A little bit of selection bias doesn't mean that the signal disappears.
  - 5y ago
rabite 5y ago
Early on in the Falkland Islands war the British destroyer HMS Sheffield was sank by anti-ship missiles launched from Argentine aircraft. The British Navy was considered at that point the most well trained and equipped in the world. It was widely celebrated across South America as evidence that cunning Argentines were well on their way to an unprecedented victory against the foolish British invaders who underestimated the grit and determination of the Argies. The British, of course, went on to trounce the Argentines. Specific facts which are true themselves but have their significance wildly misrepresented (either through the ignorance of journalists or manipulativeness of military media personnel) to partisan media are very common forms of wartime propaganda. Ships are generally considered thought to be easy to sink with the right ordnance when parked along a coast, and it is not uncommon for a military we consider relatively incompetent to be able to sink some of those owned by a G7 power.
- foldr 5y ago
  The thing is that the British did come very close to losing, and their carrier groups were enormously vulnerable. The whole operation was a huge gamble. So I’m not sure if it should give much comfort to the Russians. Also, the Russians have had plenty of time to read the board of enquiry report on the sinking of HMS Sheffield. The same mistakes shouldn’t be repeated again.
  - rabite 5y ago
    The British considered destroyers an acceptable risk (and likely losses). You know when you park ships in a sea theater going hot that you're going to lose some. This is just how war works, and nobody can universally prevent losses of materiel by reading British naval reports. To say that the British came very close to losing marks you as a victim of that wartime propaganda. Sinking that single ship, the Sheffield, caused Argentina to lose 30% of their jets. At that rate, at most, they could have sunk two more ships if they were lucky. When you look at the basic realities of materiel exchange it becomes comical to ever suggest that the British were ever at a disadvantage, but here we are decades later and the idea that the British were ever so close to losing a water war against Argentina is still in people's heads. Quod erat demonstrandum! If the British were prepared to lose some ships over something as economically and tactically insignificant as the Falkland Islands, what will Russia be willing to lose to not have a NATO supply line run straight up to a massive land border marching distance from Belgorod?
throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
>(And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extreme Russian incompetence is the other explanation on the table.) that is very likely the case, because the Ukrainians have lied before and afterwards about similar ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_patrol_boat_Vasily_Bykov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_patrol_boat_Vasily_Byk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_frigate_Admiral_Makarov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_frigate_Admiral_Makaro... check out the talk pages. each ship was confirmed to have been sunk by some authorities and had a highly detailed account of the event published by some media
- yakak 5y ago
  It seems like mostly fog of war combined with media's incentives to have great stories. Really the Ukrainian military is not going to connect it's PR department up to its tactical to get a real soldier to confirm which class of boat was hit. It also serves them quite well that Russia might not understand which threat cost them the Moskva.
polotics 5y ago
The incompetence story is at this point only a cost-saving exercise to avoid paying combat-death compensation to Russian sailors wives and orphans. What a class act from the not-so-clean-anymore bandit Vlady. Btw. check out IC3PEAK March it's right on!
wrp 5y ago
> It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. If you are interested in some backstory on the Moskva, Michael Kofman covers some in an interview[1]. It seems to be true that two Ukrainian missiles struck it and it sank sometime later, but the rest of the story is uncertain. Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. [1] https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantage-and-russias-stark-choices/ https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantag...
- nosianu 5y ago
  > Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. You know, that is the kind of truth that actually adds to the story of how bad Russia is doing rather than mitigating that story. Unless that wasn't their flagship (in that fleet), but I never saw that part of the narrative disputed.
- indymike 5y ago
  > Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. Fire sinks ships. In WWII most ships that went to the bottom didn't blow up. They caught on fire, and eventually, sank or were scuttled. If Moskva wasn't ready to fight, was defenseless, or even sea-worthy, what does it say about leadership to put it in range of anti-ship missiles? Finally, the story on Moskva is that it was sunk by a country that barely has a Navy.

by foldr 5y ago

eps 5y ago

But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine. Propaganda works by selecting some facts and amplifying them, all the while hiding others. Note how Ukrainian military losses are never reported, for example. Photos of destroyed Russian tanks are all over the place, but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. The coverage is very selective to paint a specific picture.

foldr 5y ago
I’m not denying that Ukrainian propaganda exists. My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. Oddly, lordnacho seems to suggest that they are less inclined to believe this the more evidence for it that they see. The mere fact that Ukraine still is not occupied by Russia tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. You can just copy-paste that comment for virtually every army out there. Ukraine is holding up because it is massively supplied with modern weapons that they never had in the first place by foreign powers: this is clearly a proxy war, not a bunch of peasants pushing back well-armed Russians.
  - foldr 5y ago
    You can’t copy and paste my comment for ‘every army out there’, as some armies are winning wars and aren’t incompetent. That’s such an odd thing to say that I almost feel you must have intended to write something else. I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the rest of your comment. Yes, Ukraine has Western aid. That doesn’t negate Russian incompetence or mean that Russia is somehow actually winning. For example, it doesn’t explain how the Moskva was unable to defend itself against a small number of current-generation sea-skimming missiles (a threat that’s been around for at least a couple of decades).
  - Const-me 5y ago
    This became true as the war continues. Wasn't the case in February. Western intelligence was expecting Russians to capture Kyiv within several days of the war [1] Therefore, western countries refused to supply heavy weapons. They remember the 7 billion of military equipment they supplied to Afghanistan [2] [1] https://www.newsweek.com/us-expects-kyiv-fall-days-ukraine-source-warns-encirclement-1682326 https://www.newsweek.com/us-expects-kyiv-fall-days-ukraine-s... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-l...
  - multjoy 5y ago
    The Ukrainian army has been massively scaled up since 2014, with western assistance. Remember, the Russian invasion already happened when they marched into the Crimea. This is just a continuation.
- eps 5y ago
  One doesn't need to read news to know that this war isn't going well. Trying to go against a nation that most Russians perceive as brotherly using an army comprising 16 year old conscripts ain't going to go well. Glaring motivation and morale issues, underpaid officers, rampant negligence, indifference and theft - ask any Russian and you will get an earful of how rotten the army is even during the peace time.
  - justsomehnguy 5y ago
    > army comprising 16 year old conscripts LOL? It's not like 18 y.o. are significantly older, but claiming they are 16? >> which is mandatory for all male citizens ages 18–27, with a number of exceptions
    - eps 5y ago
      The vast majority is still conscripted as early as possible. 18 or 16 - still kids :-/
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    > Trying to go against a nation that most Russians perceive as brotherly Brotherly, but not in equal sense. More like stupid little brother that can't take care of himself. It is widely known that Russians, for some reason, consider themselves superior out of all Eastern Europe Slavs.
    - eps 5y ago
      That's just not true. Leave alone being "widely known". The stupid (or rather gullible/inane) angle is a fairly recent government spin to justify the aggression.
      - wiseowise 5y ago
        Are you Russian? Or just plain ignorant? > The stupid (or rather gullible/inane) angle is a fairly recent government spin to justify the aggression. By "recent" you mean since imperial time?
mellow-lake-day 5y ago
>But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine. That was because after the soldiers said that the feed got cut off and Ukraine didn't hear back from the soldiers until Russia said they were captured. So up until as it was revealed they were captured, the worst was assumed. >but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment There are many photos like this, did you even bother to look? Oryx's blog for example has 1,040 photos of destroyed/captured Ukrainian equipment
- eps 5y ago
  > There are many photos like this Not in the mainstream press.
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    And?
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  To the extent that I want Ukraine to win, I'm also ok with western media joining their propaganda effort.
  - zasdffaa 5y ago
    I'd prefer to be given the truth. Explicitly asking to be deceived, well I can't understand that.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      Yeah, that's never been the way journalism works, though. Read multiple sources, figure out what truth you believe you can infer. That's all there is. Tolerating propaganda from friendly sources who are at war is hardly asking to be deceived.
      - 4y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mattmanser 5y ago

It's perspective. Successes might be exaggerated, things that the Russians actually find a minor inconvenience turned into a major problem, and nothing negative or embarrassing is published about the Ukrainians. For example, is it 100 soldiers refusing to fight, or 100,000? The former is noise, the latter is an actual problem. Remember the flag burning photos they used to regularly show in the middle East? It always looked like a huge crowd, but I remember seeing the regular photos and eventually realizing it was often a tiny crowd of people. It might only be 20 extremists that the camera was tightly focused on. They often had the camera zoomed in and low to the ground and slightly pointed up so you couldn't clearly see how empty the area was. And that was a natural consequence of the photographer/TV crew wanting to make money. They wanted to make it look really packed/busy because it sells more pictures/attracts more viewers.

foldr 5y ago
I don’t see that it is a question of perspective. The scale of Russian losses is well documented, and we know that Russia has failed to remove Zelensky from power or occupy a significant area of Ukraine. Thus by any reasonable measure the whole Russian operation has been a disaster so far. Could that change in future? Sure. I’m afraid this subthread is an example of HNers being too clever by half. Sometimes the simple narrative that you find in major media outlets is the truth. It’s honestly quite interesting to see the mental gymnastics that people have to engage in to somehow convince themselves that this war is going well for Russia - and not because they support Russia, but merely because they hate the idea of agreeing with the New York Times.
- marvin 5y ago
  And it's not even that clever just to deny the facts for the sake of being contrarian. There's definitely a pro-Ukranian bias in Western media and on twitter, but there's still more than enough signal in there to determine that the war isn't going well for Russia. Hell, just looking at Putin's facial expressions tells you as much, and that's just one tiny piece of information. A little bit of selection bias doesn't mean that the signal disappears.
- 5y ago

rabite 5y ago

Early on in the Falkland Islands war the British destroyer HMS Sheffield was sank by anti-ship missiles launched from Argentine aircraft. The British Navy was considered at that point the most well trained and equipped in the world. It was widely celebrated across South America as evidence that cunning Argentines were well on their way to an unprecedented victory against the foolish British invaders who underestimated the grit and determination of the Argies. The British, of course, went on to trounce the Argentines. Specific facts which are true themselves but have their significance wildly misrepresented (either through the ignorance of journalists or manipulativeness of military media personnel) to partisan media are very common forms of wartime propaganda. Ships are generally considered thought to be easy to sink with the right ordnance when parked along a coast, and it is not uncommon for a military we consider relatively incompetent to be able to sink some of those owned by a G7 power.

foldr 5y ago
The thing is that the British did come very close to losing, and their carrier groups were enormously vulnerable. The whole operation was a huge gamble. So I’m not sure if it should give much comfort to the Russians. Also, the Russians have had plenty of time to read the board of enquiry report on the sinking of HMS Sheffield. The same mistakes shouldn’t be repeated again.
- rabite 5y ago
  The British considered destroyers an acceptable risk (and likely losses). You know when you park ships in a sea theater going hot that you're going to lose some. This is just how war works, and nobody can universally prevent losses of materiel by reading British naval reports. To say that the British came very close to losing marks you as a victim of that wartime propaganda. Sinking that single ship, the Sheffield, caused Argentina to lose 30% of their jets. At that rate, at most, they could have sunk two more ships if they were lucky. When you look at the basic realities of materiel exchange it becomes comical to ever suggest that the British were ever at a disadvantage, but here we are decades later and the idea that the British were ever so close to losing a water war against Argentina is still in people's heads. Quod erat demonstrandum! If the British were prepared to lose some ships over something as economically and tactically insignificant as the Falkland Islands, what will Russia be willing to lose to not have a NATO supply line run straight up to a massive land border marching distance from Belgorod?

throwaway0x7E6 5y ago

>(And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extreme Russian incompetence is the other explanation on the table.) that is very likely the case, because the Ukrainians have lied before and afterwards about similar ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_patrol_boat_Vasily_Bykov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_patrol_boat_Vasily_Byk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_frigate_Admiral_Makarov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_frigate_Admiral_Makaro... check out the talk pages. each ship was confirmed to have been sunk by some authorities and had a highly detailed account of the event published by some media

yakak 5y ago
It seems like mostly fog of war combined with media's incentives to have great stories. Really the Ukrainian military is not going to connect it's PR department up to its tactical to get a real soldier to confirm which class of boat was hit. It also serves them quite well that Russia might not understand which threat cost them the Moskva.

polotics 5y ago

The incompetence story is at this point only a cost-saving exercise to avoid paying combat-death compensation to Russian sailors wives and orphans. What a class act from the not-so-clean-anymore bandit Vlady. Btw. check out IC3PEAK March it's right on!

wrp 5y ago

> It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. If you are interested in some backstory on the Moskva, Michael Kofman covers some in an interview[1]. It seems to be true that two Ukrainian missiles struck it and it sank sometime later, but the rest of the story is uncertain. Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. [1] https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantage-and-russias-stark-choices/ https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantag...

nosianu 5y ago
> Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. You know, that is the kind of truth that actually adds to the story of how bad Russia is doing rather than mitigating that story. Unless that wasn't their flagship (in that fleet), but I never saw that part of the narrative disputed.
indymike 5y ago
> Kofman describes the Moskva as an antiquated rust bucket, with its defensive systems likely not even functional. Fire sinks ships. In WWII most ships that went to the bottom didn't blow up. They caught on fire, and eventually, sank or were scuttled. If Moskva wasn't ready to fight, was defenseless, or even sea-worthy, what does it say about leadership to put it in range of anti-ship missiles? Finally, the story on Moskva is that it was sunk by a country that barely has a Navy.