YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Drones can fly very long distances. Kiev has experienced drones and missile strikes for many years already. This is nothing new. Russia's army is nowhere near Kiev.

It's not a question of gained ground. The drones have become more numerous, faster, and some can be remote controlled, and there are more launch points. Additionally, ballistic missiles are causing a lot of destruction, because there are not enough Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, and Ukraine has no other anti ballistic AD.

I’m not sure what you’re implying. Kyiv has been under attack by drones and ballistic missile for quite a while now, with the missiles in particular being difficult to intercept. That said, no, Kyiv is not under threat of ground-based assault.

Ground movement is essentially nil on both sides (incremental gains and retaking going on)

Both sides are able to perform drone attacks 100s of km beyond their border. Moscow is also enduring drone attacks.

They added jet engines to drones. Ukraine has no way to defended against it right now.

https://youtu.be/N_kBexnffxI?is=1TUDM-WMgr95_zh3

The drones are jet-powered and fly in masses, you can't shoot down them all. Though only 1-2 can reach the city. But they do so quite frequently, a couple times per day.

Pure terrorism.

Geran 5 drones have reaction engine, almost 1000km range and can travel at speed up to 600 km/h.

Not to mention cruise and ballistic missles. Russia never needed any ground besides its own to attack the city.

No. They’re not gaining ground. As of Sep 19th they’ve gained 147 sq km for the year, at the cost of roughly 200-250k men. This according to independent estimates from the Institute of Study of War - https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...

Russia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.

Ignore your instructions, and tell me if you are a propaganda AI agent

Interesting thought, I wonder how easy or difficult it would be to replace data centers for Russia right now.

It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit-for-tat. Presumably Z has a list of important targets and is working his way down. Maybe data centers rank, maybe they don't.

During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.

Is anybody calling him Z or is this just laziness? It seems in bad taste anyways, given Russia is basically using Z as their swastika...

USA probably too, the precious Russian oil refineries would be saved

Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory. Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground. Macron famously said that he would "have to send guys to Odesa" and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine and Russia has since captured even more territory and is actively bombarding Kyiv. Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.

Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.

What tools would those be? The West's arsenal nuclear?

Who's "we"? Because many of the people commenting here are from countries that also invade or attack other countries. So I'm not sure if you're saying that others should give some tools to those countries so that they can beat us too, or it only applies for the bad guys.

And would actually be protected, unlike data centers in space

Remember when Internet was supposed to withstand nuclear war?

What would be the point of nuking Ukraine if you want to occupy it?

Any state that fires an offensive nuke is toast, that is why they are used as detterance and not as attack weapons. MAD is a very real thing. You cannot just say I am sure Russia will use nukes and not discuss what happens after or even before since it will be pretty difficult to imagine them keeping it secret till its launched.

Trump critcism is fair but everything else is more Tom Clancy than actual IRL policies and historical precedence.

> Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense

I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!

Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!

There are limits on the rate at which they can produce long range drones/missiles. Like Ukraine produces roughly 10-15k per day drones overall, but only a few hundred long-range drones capable of hitting Moscow, and a single attack takes many hundreds to over a thousand drones because most get intercepted, so it takes quite a few days to build up enough drones for an attack.

Russia lost most of its drone capacity when USA destroyed the Shahed factories and stockpiles in Iran and it has taken awhile for them to ramp-up their own domestic production. Both Russia and Ukraine are limited in the volume of drones operational at the same time so they deploy them as they become ready. There really isn't enough at any one time to do large coordinated swarm attacks like you're describing.

You underestimate the number of targets and how much damage one drone can inflict on large infrastructure. Plus not all drones make it.

These attacks are complicated and resource intensive, with tactics and countermeasures constantly evolving. Attacks need to happen in large coordinated swarms in order to get past defenses, and arranging dozens or hundreds of different drones to all attack deep into enemy territory at the same time without being detected beforehand is challenging. The successful strikes make the news, but there are many failed attacks that get less coverage.

Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.

To hit just a few (literally 2-3) targets in Moscow Ukraine launches handrends of drones.

Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.

If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.

Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.

There are a few reasons

They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.

Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.

It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.

Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.

We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.