Summary: It was just a 1-day "training" session, for a very small number of civilians. In context - obviously a PR exercise / trial balloon / warm-up for larger & more serious things. (Poland's government is, ah, kinda obviously scrambling to improve the country's capacity for self-defense.)
baybal's comment is now dead, I'm not sure why. It has some grammar mistakes, but I've seen much worse comments on Hacker News get upvoted. I think baybal was trying to make the point that Ukraine needs a large volunteer force to stay in this war? This sentence:
"This is all shows that you can't fight something like Russia with professional army only if you are a country of only 44m people."
is correct, if the implication is something like "Only with a mass draft can a nation of 44 million fight against a nation 143 million people."
I think we all understand that the situation in Ukraine is very difficult right now.
Ukraine has almost 50 million inhabitants and I estimate about 15 million males which are eligible for military duty. The problem isn't recruits, its training and arming them in the field. You need ammunition, clothes, tents, food, water, fuel, transportation and sanitation to keep them in top condition.
Ukraine cannot switch over to a wartime economy, since that would quickly ruin the country. Only a small percentage of Ukrainian males are currently under arms (I estimate 300.000 or less).
Ukraine currently has the backing of most Western nations, but it's likely support for the war sag if prices and economic conditions worsen in the U.S. and Europe.
Population is not that different and the motivation and defensive advantage the Ukrainians have, should even it out at least a bit.
But... When you look at GDP it is $1,578B[0] vs $112B[1] - e.g. more than 12x. And this is with an extremely heavily sanctioned Russia. In terms of industrial manufacturing and technologies, the difference is even more shocking.
That's why this full on fight is bound to bring only suffering, misery and an even greater defeat. Real shame though - I have been to Uzhhorod and Lvov and those are great places with great people. Their leaders though...
Ukraine is already on the 7th or 8th wave of mobilisation for their men, they're long past the stage of "we're only going to rely on our professional soldiers".
If anyone is interested in some speculative explorations of scenarios, to game out the end of the Russia-Ukraine war, then you might be interested in "If a Western nation joins the fighting in Ukraine, what will happen?"
Baybal is a complex case (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654137, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190265), and his comments are always dead on arrival. That is, they weren't dead because of the content of that particular comment, but because he has a history with the site of not always following the rules. Whether the fault is with him or with the rules is up for debate, but the current compromise is that all his comments start out dead. These comments on this thread seemed useful and insightful, so I vouched for them to make them visible. Presumably others did the same.
Really pointless. Poland has no oil and gas. In a conventional war that drag say 5 years, most people there will die of sickness and starvation rather than bullets kr shrapnels. And today as can be seen from Ukraine, we dont fight conventional war. It will be more like surgical drone strike. And once it escalate to tacticle nukes or dirty bombs, civilians rag-tag defenses will just be bodybag counts for surviving historians. It is better they focus on diplomacy and elect responsible and smart people like those in Hungary, Serbia and Italy now. Try to avoid weak and fumbling leaders like those in USA, UK, Germans and Finlands. Take a look at Singapore where vast majority of their leaders (their congress and their public admins) have doctorate and masters. A single diplomatic advisor from Singapore to Ukraine probably would be way more effective than all USA HIMARs. Historical Polish armies tend to lose in vast majority of wars...with an occasional divine-like wins those of medieval Hussars. Hoping for divine wins are not a good long-term defence strategy.
The important aspect here is that it previously criticised for shifting resources from a career military.
A 300k active service military would be of course nothing to scoff at, especially with a lot of long range weapons.
But what we see in Ukraine is they had biggest army in Europe, and they also wanted to go mostly professional, but their core force, the most well trained soldier took an enormous hit, and is melting away.
Soldiers whom they spent years preparing are still humans, and are dying to artillery, air strikes, and zerg rushes of Russian "disposables" (draftees, Wanger mercenaries, and LPR/DPR levy.) These highly trained soldiers are not trading their lives meaningfully when they sit in trenches, and can't attack because the frontline is so stretched out, and manpower is drained for menial tasks.
This is all shows that you can't fight something like Russia with professional army only if you are a country of only 44m people.
A degree of differentiation in between career warriors who will spend a decade or more in the military vs. somebody who will go for a 2-3 year contract, and reservists with minimal training is absolutely essential.
Israel maintains a 1 to 3 split in between professional soldiers, and the good part of their reserve (people who regularly train, fit, and had good scores in tests.) The ratio is way bigger on the paper though.
Putin clearly stated he has no such intentions and even if he had the poor performance of his armed forces will make him think twice before attacking NATO countries.
After the Cold War the U.S. searched the Soviet archives for evidence of plans to attack NATO, but all these turned up nothing. The Soviet Union never had the intention to attack Western Europe and all their posturing was merely to make us believe they were stronger than they actually were.
Yes, they'd won the Second World War, but only at enormous human cost. For every German soldier killed at least 5 Soviet soldiers lost their lives.
If Putin told me the sky was blue, I'd go outside and check. To describe Putin's relationship with the truth as "tenuous" would be far more generous than he deserves.
> Watching Russian convoys sport the Soviet flag pretty much signals their intention:
It was this flag [1], not any Soviet flag. Which, in this context, makes a lot of sense, as the current government in Ukraine tries to extricate itself as much as possible from them actually having been on the good side during WW2 (with the well-known exceptions), i.e. on Russia's side . I used to know a person closed to me who had fought on the wrong side, around the same parts where this war now takes place (Odessa, Crimea, all the way to the Don river), so I'm not commenting about this from half a world away. And no, it was not "obvious" that that was Russia's intention.
> the good side during WW2, i.e. on Russia's side (with the well-known exceptions)
There are some pretty fucking big exceptions there, my friend. The USSR was perfectly content to cooperate with Nazi Germany for their own benefit until they got backstabbed.
What scenario are they training for exactly? Highly unlikely Russian/Belarus army would be able to get anywhere near Polish border let alone cross it. And if nuclear war is their concern how is such training going to help? Their concern is understandable given history but very misplaced. And their nationalist politicians benefit greatly from rallying around the flag (much like Russia hmm).
As a Pole living in Poland and very much not a fan of the current government, I still greatly appreciate the preparations, regardless of the obvious propaganda value.
Looks like the Finns and the Swedes are thinking along the same lines. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Finland was not a member of NATO and was previously viewed as a neutral country during cold war. Their prioritisation of territorial defence went hand in hand with this and was in context of having fought wars with Russia in modern period. It's not really comparable to Poland's situation which was already in NATO prior to this. A nuclear war is more likely than a territorial invasion of Poland. If they want to prepare for war they should base their planning on likely scenarios. Unless it's just politics.
At least the training will help their emotional state - to feel prepared, ready and confident that they'll have all options at their disposal in the event of an invasion is not without utility. Plus, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainian civilians effective resistance shows how even untrained civilians can be an asset, with the implication that they could have been even more effective with some training.
The risk, IMHO, is that you'll get folks doing a day or two of training thinking that makes them experienced combat troops. Overconfidence will certainly hurt you in a real conflict. (The same applies to those who think playing Counter-Strike counts as combat experience).
Unless they are a little kid or machismo simpleton, I don't think anyone who's done a couple days of a "noob basics for tender civilians" training is gonna mistake themselves for an experienced soldier. Especially not when they're exposed to plenty of "real" coverage of a real war, right next door.
We, Romania, had not fought the Russians in centuries until 1941, we did quite all-right. On the other hand the Polish did fight the Russians for centuries before that, they got their statehood obliterated as a result. Romania and Poland have long been historical neighbours of the Tsarist Empire/USSR.
Russia had a force for 240 to 260 thousand stationed across the border with Ukraine at the eve of February 24. They are a highly mechanised force, with more artillery firepower than of any NATO military except Turkey, and Greece.
It was only because Ukraine was uniquely prepared to give Russia a symmetric response using a lot of raw firepower, they managed to withstand their first attack wave.
If that force of 250 thousands would have rolled into Europe instead, you would've been fucked. Do you realise that?
They would have lost their air superiority in a day or two. We have at least 200 immediately available meteor, and they have 13 planes on which those wouldn't be fully effective (basically the NEZ would be less than 60km for their Su57. Maybe.) We also have hundreds of MICA NG, and tbh, even our old MICA would be enough for most of Russian aircraft.
And I'm not even talking about US missiles, who are probably better than MICA.
Without air support, I don't see how you invade Poland and cross rivers.
One way I found I could read FT was to search the article name in Google and the link actually takes you to the full article. Not sure if a bug or feature that works for everyone though
Not common among white collar friends. Many people I talked with are more likely to run than defend the country which day by day is ruined by conservative and corrupted politicians
So your white collar friends are going to sit and enjoy life while the good times roll but flee the second hard times come? If I had a friend that only came over for a BBQ and couldn't be bothered to help me in a time of need, that isn't a friend...
Sounds like there are deeper issues than "conservative" politics in the nation.
As one of those white collars in Poland, I think some of that hesitancy against defending your country is because current ruling party seems very anti-intellectual and it seems like a lot of country supports them, so intellectuals think "If they wan't tnis, let them have it with all the consequences". Me: I'm preparing to defend my country, but it's no use if I'm just sent to meat grinder by incompetent politician-ass-kissing generals.
Not having any relation to Poland, I perfectly understand them. You only get one life, and many of us have other priorities (like their family's well-being) other than being torn to pieces under artillery fire because the corrupted politicians preferred to look the other way and feed the monster, while ignoring so many omens over the past 20+ years.
> So your white collar friends are going to sit and enjoy life while the good times roll but flee the second hard times come.
Seems reasonable. Why would anyone want to spend their last moments bleeding out from avoidable violence?
> If I had a friend that only came over for a BBQ and couldn't be bothered to help me in a time of need, that isn't a friend
For many people the modern relation with the state can be mediated through nationalistic fervor or through comparison of services provided. You seem to see it through the former, so you'll need to exercise some empathy to see the latter.
For the US and most of the rest of the world, when the 0.01% families are fighting, dying in droves, and seeing their wealth, bodies, minds and souls shattered along with the rest of us, sure I'll consider defending my home even though that happens to temporarily align with their interests [1] [2] [3].
But until then, the elite bought it, the elite broke it, the elite are welcome to defend it. Don't include me in an armed forces that only ever enforces elite demands when I empirically, functionally have not had a proportionally effective political voice my entire voting life. Not my monkey, not my circus.
I guess people learn from history, and Polish history teaches sad lesson that Poland seems to be a good candidate for another WWII experience where there are no victorious... To Polish politicians I would have one thing to say, send your kids to fight and do not push whole country to the war nobody wants.
But it's never just a single leader like "Zelensky" it's the whole system and a big group of people. But at least Zelensky is trying to fight corruption by restoring the anti-corruption laws and planning other reforms because that's some of the conditions to get more money from the west. But of course now the war complicates things even more...
Russia's government officials have vaguely threatened nuclear war against multiple European countries this year alone. NATO is standing together for now, but some major political parties in key NATO members have connections to Russia.
Russia also loudly denied any plans to invade Ukraine until they rolled across the border. And they've been repeatedly caught committing barbaric atrocities against civilians in occupied territories.
So if the Poles want to sign up for military training, then more power to them. Being willing to defend your loved ones and your country is a noble endeavor. You don't even need a specific reason. And if the Poles want the ability to defend themselves without being utterly reliant on their NATO allies, that's their right.
Whenever I dug in more deeply, Russia has warned about using nuclear weapons to preserve its own territorial integrity.
One could argue that declaring Donbass Russian is a semantic trick to "justify" using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. But where is the threat against EU countries?
The Russian ambassador to London has just declared that they won't use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (Sky News). Is he lying? Possibly, but that contradicts open threats.
USA here, filled with ridiculous information each day from the mass media news. Please do not repeat this escalation talk about nuclear threats. I was reading some news site in German and saw the day that a "threat" was made.. by the Prime Minister of Turkmenistan or someone similar. It is a "brain off" meme and an escalation.
If you wait until you are actually being invaded to start preparing for it, you're gonna have a bad time. It takes about 6-9 months to properly train a new soldier, so you need to start planning for a cadre of soldiers well in advance of any actual invasion.
Honestly, even waiting until the first rumblings of a possible invasion seems to start preparing contingency plans is too late, because once the rumbling start, people will complain that anything that visibly attempts to resist it is "too provocative."
It depends which corridor you are standing, there are many who believe Russia is about to send their troops to invade Poland. Reality to many is still what is told on TV, and TV in Poland is far from being objective or promoting proper public debate, they instead push narratives that increase emotions..
they instead push narratives that increase emotions
Isn’t this the default mode of operation for the media? Are there any countries (Nordic?) where most of the media isn’t corrupt, fear mongering, clickbaity etc?
But we knew since more than 8 years ago that Russia's hand would be forced when it comes to Ukraine. You can't say the same about Poland or any other country in the EU for that matter.
Readit News
"This is all shows that you can't fight something like Russia with professional army only if you are a country of only 44m people."
is correct, if the implication is something like "Only with a mass draft can a nation of 44 million fight against a nation 143 million people."
I think we all understand that the situation in Ukraine is very difficult right now.
Ukraine cannot switch over to a wartime economy, since that would quickly ruin the country. Only a small percentage of Ukrainian males are currently under arms (I estimate 300.000 or less).
Ukraine currently has the backing of most Western nations, but it's likely support for the war sag if prices and economic conditions worsen in the U.S. and Europe.
But... When you look at GDP it is $1,578B[0] vs $112B[1] - e.g. more than 12x. And this is with an extremely heavily sanctioned Russia. In terms of industrial manufacturing and technologies, the difference is even more shocking.
That's why this full on fight is bound to bring only suffering, misery and an even greater defeat. Real shame though - I have been to Uzhhorod and Lvov and those are great places with great people. Their leaders though...
0. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/ukraine-gdp/
1. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/russia-gdp/
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/if-a-western-nation-joins-t...
A 300k active service military would be of course nothing to scoff at, especially with a lot of long range weapons.
But what we see in Ukraine is they had biggest army in Europe, and they also wanted to go mostly professional, but their core force, the most well trained soldier took an enormous hit, and is melting away.
Soldiers whom they spent years preparing are still humans, and are dying to artillery, air strikes, and zerg rushes of Russian "disposables" (draftees, Wanger mercenaries, and LPR/DPR levy.) These highly trained soldiers are not trading their lives meaningfully when they sit in trenches, and can't attack because the frontline is so stretched out, and manpower is drained for menial tasks.
This is all shows that you can't fight something like Russia with professional army only if you are a country of only 44m people.
A degree of differentiation in between career warriors who will spend a decade or more in the military vs. somebody who will go for a 2-3 year contract, and reservists with minimal training is absolutely essential.
Israel maintains a 1 to 3 split in between professional soldiers, and the good part of their reserve (people who regularly train, fit, and had good scores in tests.) The ratio is way bigger on the paper though.
We now see that Russia has difficulties getting draftees to fight abroad, so it is hard to imagine that Poland is at any particular risk right now.
Poland has absolutely 0 natural geographical barriers.
Except for Baltic Sea to the North, Mountains to the South, Oder River to the West and Bug River to the East...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Poland
Dead Comment
Putin clearly stated he has no such intentions and even if he had the poor performance of his armed forces will make him think twice before attacking NATO countries.
After the Cold War the U.S. searched the Soviet archives for evidence of plans to attack NATO, but all these turned up nothing. The Soviet Union never had the intention to attack Western Europe and all their posturing was merely to make us believe they were stronger than they actually were.
Yes, they'd won the Second World War, but only at enormous human cost. For every German soldier killed at least 5 Soviet soldiers lost their lives.
If Putin told me the sky was blue, I'd go outside and check. To describe Putin's relationship with the truth as "tenuous" would be far more generous than he deserves.
It was this flag [1], not any Soviet flag. Which, in this context, makes a lot of sense, as the current government in Ukraine tries to extricate itself as much as possible from them actually having been on the good side during WW2 (with the well-known exceptions), i.e. on Russia's side . I used to know a person closed to me who had fought on the wrong side, around the same parts where this war now takes place (Odessa, Crimea, all the way to the Don river), so I'm not commenting about this from half a world away. And no, it was not "obvious" that that was Russia's intention.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Banner_(Soviet_Union)
There are some pretty fucking big exceptions there, my friend. The USSR was perfectly content to cooperate with Nazi Germany for their own benefit until they got backstabbed.
Looks like the Finns and the Swedes are thinking along the same lines. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
The risk, IMHO, is that you'll get folks doing a day or two of training thinking that makes them experienced combat troops. Overconfidence will certainly hurt you in a real conflict. (The same applies to those who think playing Counter-Strike counts as combat experience).
We, Romania, had not fought the Russians in centuries until 1941, we did quite all-right. On the other hand the Polish did fight the Russians for centuries before that, they got their statehood obliterated as a result. Romania and Poland have long been historical neighbours of the Tsarist Empire/USSR.
It was only because Ukraine was uniquely prepared to give Russia a symmetric response using a lot of raw firepower, they managed to withstand their first attack wave.
If that force of 250 thousands would have rolled into Europe instead, you would've been fucked. Do you realise that?
And I'm not even talking about US missiles, who are probably better than MICA.
Without air support, I don't see how you invade Poland and cross rivers.
FT is merciless, everything seems to be behind the paywall.
Deleted Comment
Sounds like there are deeper issues than "conservative" politics in the nation.
Seems reasonable. Why would anyone want to spend their last moments bleeding out from avoidable violence?
> If I had a friend that only came over for a BBQ and couldn't be bothered to help me in a time of need, that isn't a friend
For many people the modern relation with the state can be mediated through nationalistic fervor or through comparison of services provided. You seem to see it through the former, so you'll need to exercise some empathy to see the latter.
For the US and most of the rest of the world, when the 0.01% families are fighting, dying in droves, and seeing their wealth, bodies, minds and souls shattered along with the rest of us, sure I'll consider defending my home even though that happens to temporarily align with their interests [1] [2] [3].
But until then, the elite bought it, the elite broke it, the elite are welcome to defend it. Don't include me in an armed forces that only ever enforces elite demands when I empirically, functionally have not had a proportionally effective political voice my entire voting life. Not my monkey, not my circus.
[1] https://www1.udel.edu/htr/Psc105/Texts/power.html
[2] https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...
[3] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine
But it's never just a single leader like "Zelensky" it's the whole system and a big group of people. But at least Zelensky is trying to fight corruption by restoring the anti-corruption laws and planning other reforms because that's some of the conditions to get more money from the west. But of course now the war complicates things even more...
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics-2/zelensky-plans-a...
Russia also loudly denied any plans to invade Ukraine until they rolled across the border. And they've been repeatedly caught committing barbaric atrocities against civilians in occupied territories.
So if the Poles want to sign up for military training, then more power to them. Being willing to defend your loved ones and your country is a noble endeavor. You don't even need a specific reason. And if the Poles want the ability to defend themselves without being utterly reliant on their NATO allies, that's their right.
Whenever I dug in more deeply, Russia has warned about using nuclear weapons to preserve its own territorial integrity.
One could argue that declaring Donbass Russian is a semantic trick to "justify" using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. But where is the threat against EU countries?
The Russian ambassador to London has just declared that they won't use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (Sky News). Is he lying? Possibly, but that contradicts open threats.
End This War, not Endless War
Honestly, even waiting until the first rumblings of a possible invasion seems to start preparing contingency plans is too late, because once the rumbling start, people will complain that anything that visibly attempts to resist it is "too provocative."
Isn’t this the default mode of operation for the media? Are there any countries (Nordic?) where most of the media isn’t corrupt, fear mongering, clickbaity etc?
this is absolutely what I see in the USA .. all year
Deleted Comment
There's a reason why Russia's neighbors are suddenly eager to join NATO or increase military readiness.
Russia just wanted to remove the puppet installed by US and install their own puppet