[cladopa]

People are not perfect. I went to Ukraine just days before the invasion. Travel and Hotels in Kiev had become extremely cheap. You asked the Ukrainians about the possible invasion. "Not going to happen" everybody said."Russia talks always aggressively, but never does anything".

They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days.

Days after that I was back is Austria and could not stop thinking about some of the people I spoke with being dead.

Since that I have also been in Dubai and Saudi Arabia as an entrepreneur and engineer. "What are you going to do when drones are used against your infrastructure?" If you followed the Russian war and first Iranian strike it was obvious that drones were going to be used against them. "not going to happen" again.

The have lost tens of billions for lacking proper preparation. They could have been protected spending just hundreds of millions of dollars over years.

It is about humans, not AI.

[wiseowise]

> They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days.

Ukraine has been preparing since 2014. Without preparation there would be a Russian talking head right now in Kyiv.

[jakub_g]

According to [0] the military was basically doing under-the-radar preparations in the last few weeks before the attack, because the official narrative was that nothing's gonna happen.

> A small group of officers at HUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, did begin quiet contingency planning in January, prompted by the US warnings and the agency’s own information, one HUR general recalled. Under the guise of a month-long training exercise, they rented several safe houses around Kyiv and took out large supplies of cash. After a month, in mid-February, the war had not yet started, so the “training” was prolonged for another month.

> The army commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, was frustrated that Zelenskyy did not want to introduce martial law, which would have allowed him to reposition troops and prepare battle plans. “You’re about to fight Mike Tyson and the only fight you’ve had before is a pillow fight with your little brother. It’s a one-in-a-million chance and you need to be prepared,” he said.

> Without official sanction, Zaluzhnyi did what little planning he could. In mid-January, he and his wife moved from their ground-floor apartment into his official quarters inside the general staff compound, for security reasons and so he could work longer hours. In February, another general recalled, table-top exercises were held among the army’s top commanders to plan for various invasion scenarios. These included an attack on Kyiv and even one situation that was worse than what eventually transpired, in which the Russians seized a corridor along Ukraine’s western border to stop supplies coming in from allies. But without sanction from the top, these plans remained on paper only; any big movement of troops would be illegal and hard to disguise.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/feb/20...

[Tomis02]

What's the choice here? Start saying "Russia will attack" and then see 20% of your population flee, while Putin sits and waits until your economy runs into the ground, and THEN attacks? There's no good choices here.

[the-smug-one]

I'd say that Ukraine were very prepared for the invasion, though? They managed to survive for the first 2 weeks, leading to a long-term war. The Donbas war had already been going on for 8 years, and I don't think Ukrainians were under some illusion that those weren't Russians.

[blitzar]

On the flip side, all around the world you have "leaders" talking about imaginary conflicts with foreign countries that we must spend billions (they have a friend who really should get the contract) to prepare for and if the other side (tm) gets in your whole family will be killed instantly.

[fifilura]

Killing of families is what happened in Ukraine in the Russia controlled territories.

[teiferer]

In hindsight, it's easy to be smart. You picked two examples where somebody said "never gonna happen" and then it happened. How about the countless examples where somebody said the same and then the thing actually didn't happen?

Take millions playing the lottery. To each of them, I can confidently say "you won't win, not gonna happen". For almost all of them I'll be right. There will be one who wins, were I was wrong, and they will say "see, told you so". That doesn't mean my prediction was wrong. It means you are having a reporting bias.

[hnfong]

GP also probably had a sampling bias. The ones who were actually concerned about the impending Russian invasion presumably fled out of the country (or at least, away from the major cities to rural areas that probably see less fighting)

[_heimdall]

I was in a neighboring country in Europe at the time, not Ukraine, but we didn't see any Ukrainians move into our area until a few weeks after the war started.

That's not to say the country wasn't prepared though. If the GP did talk to people on the ground days before it started, saying it won't happen would match the public propaganda at the time coming out of the Ukrainian government and their allies. They knew it was coming and seemed to decide they were better to faint like the weren't ready and avoid public panic before it started.

[sofixa]

> They did not properly prepare and as a result lost 20% of its territory in days.

They did though. While nobody actually believed Putin would be dumb enough, the Ukrainian army was still, just in case, extremely busy on preparing defences, organising stockpiles, preparing defensive tactics.

[_heimdall]

> While nobody actually believed Putin would be dumb enough

I'm not sure why you'd say nobody thought they would invade. To me it was clear in December the year before when the Russian navy began sailing the long way around Europe, getting in the way of Irish fisherman and confirmed days before the invasion when they had stockpiled medical personnel and blood on the front lines.

[mmmmmbop]

You must have made a fortune from shorting Russian stocks in December 2021.

[anonymars]

When the US warned, days before, of the imminent invasion, the broad reaction was still one of "the boy who cried wolf"

[_heimdall]

And I didn't understand why anyone thought the warning was wrong. Who sends their navy around Europe, collects 100k troops on the border, and ships blood reserves to the front for a training exercise?

[sofixa]

Because it was just so dumb. Putin had previously done things to sabre rattle to get concessions, and talks were happening at the same time, so many thought he wouldn't be dumb enough to invade, but just wants more to negotiate.

[_heimdall]

Whether it was a smart choice is separate from whether they were actually going to do it though. The naval movement was a big red flag IMO, but by the time blood supplies were brought up it was clear regardless of an outside perspective of the strategy.

[lotsofpulp]

It was clear when they captured Crimea.

[_heimdall]

Sure that plays a role for sure, though I don't think anyone in 2014 was predicting a broader invasion 8 years later.

[lotsofpulp]

Crimea was Feb 2014, and then in Jul 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down by "pro russian separatists" in eastern Ukraine. Seems like they were laying the groundwork for a while. I have no idea what portion of this wikipedia article is true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya_(confederation)

But it seems Ukraine had questionable control of the eastern parts of the country long before the 2022 "official" invasion.

[_heimdall]

I'm not sure, though, how any clear line could be drawn between 2014 and 2022. It was clear, at least to me, once the Russians stacked up military assets in a way they hadn't previously.

There was at least one other buildup of around 100k troops in the intervening years, but I don't think they moved their naval assets from the north or bring blood supply to the front.

It seemed to me like they went quiet for most of the 8 years, I'd be curious what you may have seen that made it more clear based mainly on the 2014 invasion(s).

[vasco]

> Since that I have also been in Dubai and Saudi Arabia as an entrepreneur and engineer.

Why would we listen to anything related to right or wrong from you then if you don't care?