Come Back Alive - delivered the first deep-strike drones https://savelife.in.ua/en/
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation - bought the famous spy satellite https://prytulafoundation.org/en
KOLO Charity Foundation - run by the Ukrainian tech community https://www.koloua.com/en/
Razom - US-based foundation https://www.razomforukraine.org/donate/
Canada-Ukraine Foundation - Canadian NGO, organizes winter aid for civilians https://www.cufoundation.ca/
Ukrainian World Congress https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/
Exen - Polish volunteer who delivers used vehicles to the front https://pomagam.pl/4x4dlaukrainy
United24 - the government fund https://u24.gov.ua/
Blue/Yellow - Lithuanian NGO supplying the Ukrainian military https://blue-yellow.lt/en/
Stopify - Latvian initiative, donations collected via Ziedot.lv https://stopify.org.ua/
Weapons to Ukraine - Czech initiative https://weaponstoukraine.com/en
Help99 - from Estonia's LIFT99 startup hub, convoys refitted trucks and drones to the front https://www.help99.co/donate
Aktion Deutschland Hilft - German humanitarian aid https://www.aktion-deutschland-hilft.de/
Thanks to everyone who suggested additions. Please keep adding foundations from your country in the comments.
Including KOLO dispersing medical equipment that I donated, and I can vouch that they are effective and very efficient.
Since the very start, they already raised over €121 million.
In my eyes one of their highpoints which demonstrates their trustworthiness is the ~20 million dollars payment they received this year by undisclosed European (I think it was European) entity (government or private donors maybe)
And to be fair not all Come back alive projects are long term, they provide cars, cables, laptops, portable power stations etc., but these do not engage public enough, so their media team focuses on more interesting projects.
What "long term" means is also differs, they put a lot of effort into their training centers, but now the training cycle of one person is several months (I assume, I don't know exact terms), which is not that long.
Also, Czech initiative https://weaponstoukraine.com/en and 69th Sniffing Brigade https://www.help99.co/donate is doing awesome work.
Glory to the Heroes!
And this group: https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/
at this point the article 5 could be in circulation even without Ukraine being mentioned..
Irenology is the real cure for all of this though. political action or inaction will never bring, build, foster or protect peace because it is all rooted in polemology.
Otherwise it’s just going to war.
So they can deny everything and play the victim.
They know the NATO countries won’t call article 5 for that.
And that benefits Russia
Edit: thanks for answers, this helps.
And, most importantly, you weren’t sent to the slaughterhouse and are still alive, thanks to your choice.
FWIW, thank you for making this choice.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_during_the_...
(This is incomplete, I think there is a fourth or a fifth wave, probably since about summer 2026.)
The Soviet Union arguably had some of world's finest engineering talent, but many of those most skilled left as soon as they could. Some of these, or their children, would go on to found startups.
.. were not Russians. USSR itself incorporated besides its native Russian talent 2 talent powerhouses of Ukraine and Armenia. Ukraine was the industrial powerhouse. Armenia was the USSR's silicon valley with hightest per capita of scientists in USSR. There is also Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to consider, all of them active in relative high tech engineering.
This war won't be over until the Russian army starts conscription in Moscow. The Czar will happily empty out the villages in Siberia and the Caucasus.
No. I am sure that most young people with a conscience remaining. And it is mostly people without a conscience who leaving.
Russia is an extremely poor country, and literally governed by mafia. So generally it is impossible to leave Russia if you are not in top 10% by wealth, and it is almost impossible in Russia to get in those top 10% if you have conscience.
When Crimea was annexed the writing on the wall was clear, so I made The Grind a priority, got fairly close to the top 10% (the real gap is corruption and having connections; net worth is something you have one day and lose the next one), and was able to leave with enough cash to keep me more than just afloat. And almost everyone I knew who was able to outsource their skills and wasn’t blind to what was happening, did the same thing: grind, save, move, settle down, live.
And then, when the war escalated into a whole different phase, I know some folks left Russia with a lot less than what I had - not piss poor but nowhere close to the top 10%. They had it a lot rougher, but the danger to their wellbeing and lives was more immediate. So I know you’re wrong about wealth being a requirement for leaving - it’s a huge boon that makes it a lot easier, but it’s certainly not a hard requirement.
I'm not from an even remotely wealthy family, not a mafia and was able to move to the EU. Not exceptional by any means.
Quick search says that it is like 1.5k+ that get Russians in top 10%. How do you imagine leaving country with salary that way less then that, when there is practically no way for you to get job permit or asylum, and you will get yourself deported the second your travel visa expired?
> Software engineering is (was) an affordable way to climb the social ladder
But aren't those only supports my point? Among those 10% who has access to immigration, how many there are software engineers? And except them (and mafia members) who else can afford to move out of the Russia?
> I'm not from an even remotely wealthy family
5k+ USD Software Engineer salary in the Russia is literally top 2%. Sounds rather exceptional by me
It's easier for some professions as they have more mobility and skills are transferable. But I've seen people from all sorts of backgrounds.
There are some folks involved into crypto/gambling/other questionable companies but I would say they're minority and rarely move to EU/UK/US because of regulations and taxes.
Your point is a good one but there are many people who left even when they couldn't really afford to and are stuck somewhere, but still won't return.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/30/are-trump-officials...
But the only thing that matters is to remain in power. And invading your neighbors country have get those people exactly that.
Within the narrow scope of this discussion, yes. Ukraine would have a harder time hitting data centers around Moscow if they didn’t share a land border.
What Russia is doing in Ukraine is closer to America in Vietnam or Israel in Gaza than anything even Trump has done recently. And I doubt you’ll find many on this forum defending even the latter.
I made analogy. You collapsed three different situations to a singular “it”.
If we continued for three years and put troops on the ground.
The bombing campaigns are similar. But it’s not quite comparable given we didn’t actually raze Iran’s power plants, we just threatened to.
To be clear, I’m making no moral argument here. Just a comparison of tactics.
Out of these four, at least Syria is better off. Everything, literally everything is better than what the Assad regime was. The gruesomeness of Assad and his regime is on a level not seen since 1945.
Afghanistan was an utter failure of all of Western societies. Yes, we provided a generation worth of women with access to schools. But we never provided a way for Afghanistan as a country to stand on its own feet, instead we looked away while one half of the military didn't exist on paper and the other half raped children for funsies (look up "bacha bazi").
Libya... now that is mostly upon us Europeans. Ghaddafi, I'm glad this prick is gone, but again we didn't do anything to meaningfully help Libya grow, and by the time Putin began supporting oppositional warlords, the game was lost.
And Iran... oh dear god what a mess, dating back to the history of the US using Kurds for their aims and then letting them to die without support. This entire shitshow was a disaster from start to finish, even if the idea was noble - the Mullahs slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors the start of this year, it would have been incredibly unethical to just stand aside again.
Lolwut ? The Al-Qaeda head-chopper is in a distinct league of his own. He even had a US bounty on him before it was waived away. (US sponsored head-choppers are saintly you see)
He has already massacred thousands of civilians after he declared peace and took power last year. His presidency is Western appointed, not one elected. At the current rate of slaughter, within the next few years, he is going to make Assad like an innocent baby.
After a decade, he will be the next Osama bin Laden for commencing War on Terror 2.0 and his brand revamped into Evil #1 for upcoming generation of brainwashed US citizens.
these are still generations with much violence and suffering.
its hard to watch and for a long time even in academia etc. its been plain as day there are other approaches to bring people together than to force people together through violence, or to try and 'develop' places by forcing your own local developments on some remote peoples.
Before it was Afghanistan, Khorasan was a century-long trap for the Arab armies in the 7th century.
If the last two millennia have like a single lesson, it’s don’t invade Afghanistan.
The idea of nobly saving people is just “think of the children” on the nation-state level. It sounds great but gets used for every politician’s own ends.
Well, there's the saying every nerd should know, "with great power comes great responsibility". We have to be caretakers of those who cannot defend themselves, but all we care about is making money, and that ruins the mission from the start.
It certainly does not. There is a huge and growing [1] (albeit still below ‘22 peak) tech outsourcing industry there.
Plus, likely Europe’s most advanced defense-industrial base for drones and, increasingly, missiles of all kinds. Being on the right side of a war works wonders for morale.
[1] https://itcluster.lviv.ua/en/gradual-market-stabilization-wh...
Ukraine's estimated population in 2022 was around 40 million. Various numbers provided by UN officials to Ukrainian govt officials have at various times put Ukrainian population (in govt controlled areas) at 35 million [1], 32 million [2], 22-25 million [3]. This with adult men being actively blocked from leaving Ukraine.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-ukrainian-po... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/200-000-500-000-men-could-leave-... [3] https://www.novinite.com/articles/238511/The+Uncomfortable+T...
To be fair, I have never understood this obsession with Ukrainian numbers as some kind of proof that Ukraine is doomed. There are people that have sent their families abroad and returned to Ukraine to fight Russia. There are certainly also ethnic Russians that do not want to help Ukraine in this war, but on other side they do not want to join Russia either, as they would be sent to die for sure. Many reasons for many people what they do and why.
During WW1 my home country lost 50% of population, as many people escaped frontline - most of them returned and rebuilt everything.
I am very sure that Ukrainians after war will rebuild Ukraine - probably that will be another European center competing with Germany - unlike Russians, that are abroad now as they won't rebuild Russia - as Russia very surely will collapse. What would be built in the place of Russia is rather hard to tell right now, but I do not think that many Russians will want to return to that where they would be out of place in those new countries, just like they are out of place in modern Russia.
yeah, hating papers is our national trait at this point, given Diia and stuff XD
So the talent has left, but not because they disagree with Putin actions.
> On the first anniversary of the invasion, rallies took place in the main cities where Russian exiles settled, including Tbilisi, Vilnius, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and London, with turnout in the hundreds. In Yerevan, protesters burned a picture of Putin.
> In November 2024, at least a thousand people marched through central Berlin behind Navalnaya, Yashin and Kara-Murza, with parallel rallies in cities including Prague, Vilnius, Yerevan, Lisbon and San Francisco.
> Another Berlin march followed in 2025, after the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion.
And not just EU/US but moreso in other countries, where the migration wave was much bigger, eg Georgia and Armenia; after those protests many Russians were banned from entering Georgia after a visa run, yet others continued protesting anyway. Just google it for christ sake?
Also to me, as a Russian immigrant, protesting from another country doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, at this point your comments in this thread are pure ragebait and not worth spending time replying to.
Thought the same.
What are you talking about? Just look at the amount of humanitarian visas getting by Russians. We like literally talking about hundreds per country on average (not hundreds of thousands, HUNDREDS). So participation in mass protests is like the fastest way to be deported back in Russia and get 8 years in jail.
EU is doing exactly that by denying humanitarian visas. Just look at absolute numbers of such visas.
For 90 percent of refugees from Russia if you participate in totally peaceful protest in front of Russian embassies, you will get yourself arrested, immediately deported, and will go straight to Russian jail for 10 years.
I did a quick search and what we get in example of Finland:
(https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/08/24/finland-has-deported-15...)
- 1k+ km land border with forests
- tens of thousands Russian survivors hunted by Putin crossing it
- only 186 per year granted asylum
- for everybody else any contacts with Finnish officials = deportation and jail
I think it is rather dangerous to peacefully protest in front of Russian embassies when near those embassies a lot of agents deployed to hunt Russians down and hand them down to Putin.
it really never was. apart from a few one-off examples they have nothing if interest and quality.
very valuable, very high tech.
for nginx/intelij - you can find a few good examples in any country on earth.
does not make the country good in tech.
The Yandex that stayed in Russia is a ghost of the past.
Maybe this would remind ordinary russians that killing innocent civilians every day in Kyiv is not good
Ordinary Russians think the war's bad too. Only difference is you and I can say that without getting 15 years in a (very harsh) prison.
Maybe Russians outside Russia.
Of course almost everyone thinks war is bad, but many seem to think it's justified - different thing.
There seem to be a wide support for the idea that Russia is threatened (economically and to an extent military) by the global West, and also that Ukraine is not entitled to be independent and also many of the official lies about the background.
Good lies have a nugget of truth in them, and this is the case also here.
Russia's economy is not growing (compared to EU, US), fertility rate is down, the revolution in Ukraine undermines the stability of the Russian regime, the attempted coup in Belarus was also a threat, NATO is arguably expanding - lately as a reaction to the war but nonetheless, EU is expanding into post-Soviet states both offering membership but also trade agreements which undercut Russia's ambition to be an economical hub in the region, etc.
They just care that they have what they need, that they don’t struggle too much in life.
In the US people will vote for whoever will make their life easier. To some degree there is morality/ethics/ideology but that’s usually grounded in something that effects you day-to-day
Examples from republicans: Keep out the immigrants or you won’t have a job. You don’t want trans people in the bathroom with your kid. Democrats are socialists which is morally repugnant (and will raise your taxes!)
From dems: republicans are trying to control women (reproductive rights), republicans will cut social programs, etc.
Nobody _really_ cares about wars in Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, etc aside from it effecting them at home.
(Really caring would involve donating, protesting, volunteering, etc — plenty of people talk/have opinions)
War affects an ordinary Russian in very negative ways: the possibility of conscription (w/ risk of injury/death), complications for travel, sanctions on goods and services, and the economic opportunity cost (money wasted on war that could have gone to productive uses, plus reduced economic output due to drone strikes on yandex, wildberries, refineries).
That's just not compatible with ambitions of its corrupt leaders who want to be a root-level player, not "one of NATO countries". And I'm not sure how legitimate is prioritization of wants of corrupt leaders over well-being of your compatriots.
Russia actually have been a member of Council of Europe (PACE, etc.) since 1996 but it was expelled in 2022. If they had a good record in Council of Europe they could really go for NATO membership eventually.
What happened is that nato realized that if Russia joins, it will loose the reason to exist (i.e. if the old enemy joins the alliance what is the need for such an alliance anymore?)
So nato bureaucrats understood that they will loose well-paying positions and rejected even initial talks.
E.g. from a conversation between Clinton and Putin in 2000:
> Clinton: I am serious about being ready to discuss NATO membership with Russia. I recognize that domestic considerations inside Russia will prevent this for now, but over time Russia should be a part of every organization that holds the civilized world together.
> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea.
Regarding "reason to exist", there's always a concern about Middle-East, China, etc.
Funny enough that you remember it was as "Russia applied but was rejected" but from this talk it's clear Putin is much less interested in Russia joining NATO than Clinton.
You can find full text here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33393-document-3-memorand...
Literally no one thinks that. Look at the last election in Russia.
There were like 10 pro-Putin pro-war parties and one pro-Putin maybe-we-a-lil-bit-try-to-stop-the-war joke party. And that last party was banned from participating because of copyright infringement (they used fonts from Microsoft).
People there, from young age live with constant repetition of same soviet style messaging: “west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten); we won WW2; USSR was best in the world at X, Y, Z; Kiev Rus Vikings; inheritors of eastern Rome something…”.
Those messages are indistinguishable part of national (almost personal) pride, even for a lot of russian speaking people that currently live outside of Russia.
(If I would be raised in muslim family, I would be muslim; if I would be raised in russian info space, most likely I would support 3day operation to save Russian people from fashists)
That’s not surrender because Russia started this invasion without provocation. It wasn’t under attack and Ukraine hadn’t joined NATO.
Russia had no reason to invade except as a show of force.
If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?
There is a lot of discussion about veterans and moscovites saying otherwise, but I wonder how loud their collective voices are to the Kremlin. From the outside, I have a dim view of that.
>>>If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?
Ahem, some facts: 1. Putin is representation of "collective Russian" mind 2. Collective Russians at this moment believe that they are winning the war. 3. Any withdrawing would be interpreted as betrayal and sure death for Putin(and he knows that) and new instance of his replacement, that would need to implement whatever collective Russians think.
Unfortunately, but the only way to end this war is a Russian military defeat, as no withdraw would ever happen and suggesting something like that is a fantasy, that ignores reality of how Russians are thinking. Yeah, it would have been better if NATO was involved, but on other hand Europeans and USA are too afraid to man up and chew bubble gum and kick some ass - they are now reverse of that chew something that is not bubble gum and take in the ass and Putin likes some young ass.
With internal turmoil, yes. To maintain the lines in Ukraine Russia needs to constantly send in troops and materiel.
Eventually Russia may decide not to do so. And then there is no magic "pause the frontlines" button if they do.
There is plenty of precedent for this in Russian history too. The Russian Revolution collapsed the frontlines in WWI. The Soviet Empire collapsed with the fall of communism and concomitant internal turmoil.
Russian propaganda puts a lot effort into treating Russia as some sort of force of nature that cannot be deterred or reasoned with, that will advance and hold Ukraine at all costs.
It isn't true. They're humans like the rest of us, not a natural, unstoppable force.
The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that. What was the plan. And blaming the West (which won‘t be 100% justified) will not help. And he may feel that now he is applying good pressure too, with those drone strikes and knocked out refineries.
That is actually not true at all. People in Ukraine know that it is not about territory but about sovereignty.
The problem of giving up territory is that you will run out of it. The goal of Ukraine is to survive as an independent state, not to hold the ground.
There is wrong assumption here that Russia wants only those territories and not whole Ukraine. Also, the Ultimatum was sent to NATO, when Putin invaded Ukraine... and it includes aim to use force against half of Europe and justifications to use it against other half as well. Also, just like it was with Hitler, allowing him to swallow those territories did not prevent WW2... that was also in plans of Stalin to use Hitler as puppet.
So, the maximum of Russian gamble is to take over most of Europe and given that he also threatened Macron, Putin does not see Russia equivalent in power to anyone in Europe but only USA. He is that stupid - he thinks, that anyone should bow to him, because he has 4000 nukes.
Maybe you can trick our naive western friends, but not me.
Being an indifferent somnambula is not the same as being against war.
Who do you think is killing Ukrainians?
It's not Putin himself, and it's not some kind of professional army.
Those are ordinary Russians who decided to join the occupational army, and who are launching drones and rockets at Ukraine every day.
Yabloko is the sole officially registered party to openly oppose the Russian war in Ukraine, openly calling "for peace and freedom". The party planned to partake in the 2026 Russian legislative election under their anti-war slogan.[29][30] However, in August 2026, the party was barred from running by the Supreme Court of Russia due to a lawsuit by Rodina.
Since then I think they simplified the system and just forge the results outright.
tl;dr Other parties are Putin-like, and if/when a genuine alternative emerges, Putin deals with them ruthlessly. Example: Navalny was the charismatic leader of a small but popular rival party with anti-corruption policies. He was initially delegitimised (not allowed to partake in the 2018 elections due to [likely fake] charges of embezzlement), then poisoned (nearly died), then imprisoned, and then killed while in prison.
Consider the terrifying message that sends to would-be political rivals...
Estimate range is big because lots of civilians died in cities that ended up occupied.
[1] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/10/06/i-m-used-to-walking-...
"innocent civilians every day in Kyiv is not good".
Estimations for how many civilians Russians killed in Chechnya range from 45,000 to 80,000.
From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 to December 2025, 14,999 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 40,601 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU).
Russia could stop this invasion any time and not a single Russian would be hurt. Pure Kreml propaganda on HN, how sad.
Are we looking at the same thing? Was it deleted somewhere?
2) The UN estimate is considered on the low end because it looks into confirmed deaths while many civilians were killed in cities that became occupied and we have no numbers from there.
Since Mariupol fell to Russia, they never counted the dead. There are horror stories of the bodies not being buried for month after surrender, and in some cases, Russians simply pawed over the places with many dead (a prominent example is the theater in the city center, but there were more).
The numbers you are quoting are the "counted" ones. Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, Kherson, saw a lot of deaths that were never counted.
Sorry to bring another conflict into the picture, but it's useful to illustrate the point. In Gaza, the "health ministry" used a different "technique" to count the dead. Normally, to establish that someone died, there has to be a qualified medical professional at the scene, they also have to get a hold of identifying documents (or else, they will be counted as "John/Jane Doe", but in the morgue, much later). In some "special" cases a non-medical professional may record a death (they are usually defined using the language like "the head is more than 50 cm away from the rest of the body" etc.) But they switched to "incorporating reports from the news sources" (i.e. if some newspaper reported X people killed in some event, they just added X to the tally).
After the front line stabilized in Ukraine, they had no reason (or excuse) to count their civilian casualties in the way Gaza administration did, so, they never incorporated those who were never properly reported. And that's why we have a relatively "low" numbers. If Ukraine is ever able to regain control of the territory captured after 2022, these numbers are bound to go much, much higher, as they will have to deal with eg. property ownership and would have to either declare the previous owners as deceased, or actually find them.
Slava Ukraini!
The audacity of those bots these days.
A bit like some of the conscripted Ruzzian orcs, eh?
Simple, Putin talked about this for decades, you can read about it:
The goal is the re-establishment of the Russian empire in it's largest borders, beginning with his massacres in Chechnya and the invasion of Georgia.
Russia settled Russians in Ukraine to control/destroy it for decades (like in the Baltics, Georgia and in many different places, the usual Russian tactic). Then Russia instigated a civil war in Ukraine and finally invaded Ukraine in 2014, so there were fights in Donbass back then with deaths (Russia also shot down a Malaysian plane in 2014 from Donbass).
"Your weapons are murdering Russian civilians right now, but you don't care, why?"
Because those Russian civilians voted and supported a dictator who wanted and wants to invade Europe and re-enslave the population. And Russians loved it, they loved it plundering and murdering and torturing people in Europe before and they will again.
Russia encouraged Serbs to start WW1 because Russians wanted to invade Europe through their puppets on the Balkans, later invaded Europe in 1939 in a joint military operation with the Nazis/Germans and will do so again whenever Russians see the chance to do so.
I would prefer no war but a big wall, mile deep minefields and drone/ballistic/SDI defenses instead to keep Russians out and stop them from invading Europe again, but I guess Russia needs to first lose this war to make this a reality.
Looks like Ukrainians don't believe in "turn to him the other cheek".
When Russians will take responsibility - like decent humans do and start to ask for forgiveness to Chechens and others that they have invaded and killed(in Chechnya alone death of Chechens was up to 300 000) and genocided - the list here is quite long for hundreds of nations(that would even be a reason to spawn religion), but up till that is not happening Russian decency level ends in Bucha.
What led to it? Putin wanting to re-establish the Russian empire as he said and wrote many times about.
It's a mystery to me, Hitler wrote exactly what he wanted to do, he did it and people were surprised. Putin wrote exactly what he wanted to do, he did it and people were surprised. A mystery.
You could face a 15-year prison sentence for calling for peace on social media, or you could be forcibly conscripted.
Furthermore, rallies are equally persecuted. All rallies are outlawed due to the COVID restrictions, and these restrictions have never been lifted.
So far, all the West has done is target ordinary, poor Russians instead of oligarchs and the Tsar himself.
Their quality of life has plummeted, but would you risk your life to speak out against this?
Westerners are only brave in the comments. Come to Russia and show us how it's done. A country where everyone with power or guns serves the Tsar almost directly. Including the courts, the police and the army.
You don't f*cking understand what has happened to the country. It's become a dictatorship.
The question why people who do not agree with the government should also pay the price for a war started by their government/country is not specific to this war.
The beautiful thing about US war is that it never gets back home. The moment it starts, the populance starts pulling back support. But if you are shooting random people in the desert and middletown nowhere's McDonald's are functioning, its all gravy.
Have you checked the diesel prices?
Americans are truly obnoxious and out of touch from reality.
The beautiful thing about US war is that it never gets back home.
Which I contest, because it resulted in high diesel prices, which may just be the push for the republicans to lose the midterms. If so, Trump becomes a lame duck, which changes course quite a bit from the republicans winning the midterms. So the war does get back home in some way.
Makes me wonder how much compute is already being built in bunkers under mountains.
Not worth paying 100x for the bunker to save 1x worth of computer stuff.
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/build-design/safer-under...
It's a severe engineering challenge to hide massive heat exchangers on the scale of the datacenters built in the industrial area near Dulles (coordinate example: 38.9817915,-77.417775). Find those on a map and observe the scale of their cooling and generator systems and then try to find anything comparable that's been built underground.
Just wanted to make the point you don’t have to pay to excavate the cave :)
edit: 61.9340107, 5.5084207 are the coordinates
https://new.abb.com/news/detail/5924/abb-solutions-power-eur...
There are mines with plenty of space in them, and heat removal can be done with water cooling. But who is going to pay 50% more for that when it isn't needed 99.99% of the time?
Huh? The ones I know of have plenty of connectivity. The real issue is your first, that people prefer to just put their stuff in two countries over paying premium for having their servers under ground.
Although I personally would expect some sort of decentralisation option to be more effective. It's difficult to even theorise because we don't know exactly what sort of damage these strikes are doing and what countermeasures are already in place. If this strike has caught Yandex by surprise after almost 5 years of hot war then they really should hire a dude to check up on current events every so often. They must have some sort of contingency planning around a Ukrainian strike.
But yeah, the economic incentives are creating unicorns and centralizing compute/capital/etc.
So you build your stuff inside a mountain and run a bunch of big ass liquid cooling loops to heat exchangers in the atmosphere outside the mountain. The requirement of the cooling system being out in the open air means it can also be hit by air strikes, an adversary doesn't need to penetrate the mountain, just take out its cooling.
You'd have to build a fully underground cooling system that goes to a nearby river (or huge lake) and use the cold water from that, which would get costly quick.
Helsinki gets its water from the 120 km Päijänne Water Tunnel, which cost €200-250 million (adjusted for inflation) to build. Peak flow is 10 m^3/s by gravity alone and up to 20 m^3/s with pumps, which should be enough to cool a 1 GW data center. You could increase the cost by 2x (because real wages have gone up), by another 2x (because middlemen have destroyed productivity), and by yet another 2x (because everything is more expensive in America), and it would still be pretty reasonable.
Musk comes up with a crazy idea.
Investors, "analysts" and sycophants go to great lengths to defend it.
Rational people wonder if everyone is losing their mind.
Musk profits.
Recall that while he managed to hire the right people to get reusable rockets cheap enough for Starlink, it was also the case that in 2016 he said that SpaceX was aiming to use the 2018 Mars launch window for what is now Starship, and also that some time around 2018 it would be possible to summon your Tesla car from the other side of the country and it would find its way to you autonomously and only stop for charging.
Hyperloop was stupid and failed, and it also killed in a few places development of public transport, which of course means people continue to buy cars.
Edit: I guess the scale isn't comparable to a, for example, Google data center though.
[1] https://www.ironmountain.com/data-centers/colocation/our-dat...
[2] https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-pr...
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russian-satel...
Do you need many acres of land to host a heat exchanger?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=london+un...
You could probably drill sideways into rocks and pump heat into the mountain for a certain period of time, but on a multi-month or year time scale, it would catch up with you after you had saturated it.
- "Just make them wage some wars, they'll bury it themselves".
Also Yandex is a large cloud provider, they host a lot of government-connected companies.
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-hits-russia...
You could potentially bury them in the ground, assuming you don’t use a generator for backup power. To my knowledge, this is not done today except in urban areas where an underground vault is used for power and comms.
https://www.decommsystems.com/resources/what-goes-into-an-il...
The reason why Ukraine, Russia and Iran are targeting data-centers is because they are easy targets with a lot of expensive equipment, but they don't really impact the military operation. So, they aren't high priority targets. Bomber airplanes, air defenses, launchers for ballistic missiles, command centers, factories manufacturing strategic military equipment, telecommunications, energy infrastructure would be the examples of high priority targets. The data-centers are more of a "we have excess drones, why not use them?"
I find it hard to believe that the military will intentionally use civilian data-centers for its own purposes. At least, not for the core of its operations (for auxiliary functionality: maybe). Military data-centers are likely to be in protected locations, perhaps using different h/w that addresses the cooling problem.
Also, it's a bit myopic to think that AI is having such a universal and large impact on society. Jobs that provide essential goods and services are, by and large, unaffected by AI. Farmers, construction workers, cooks etc. don't really use any of the AI stuff on the day to day basis, if at all.
Perhaps an economic justification can be found for placing something so far up the gravity well that its adversaries can no longer physically approach it. Distributing the resource across many satellites would further confound any attack.
Increasing the cost of effect on a single target from $1,000 to $1,000,000,000 makes a difference. Especially when that 2nd option is likely to trigger additional multilateral strategic responses. If the only way to delete your adversaries data centers is with things like nuclear weapons, lasers and multi-stage rocketry, your adversary may have already won the game.
Unless you're talking about an adversary who has ~no launch capability then the person trying to put the data center out of reach is always going to be massively disadvantaged in terms of the physics.
Welding lasers are pretty cheap, the two hard parts are a big enough apperture to focus 500 km away, and adaptive optics, both of which have already been demonstrated decades ago in astronomy.
I'm not saying Iran and North Korea already have such capabilities, but I am saying I think neither would have trouble building it six months ago if they'd wanted to.
The active thermal control system (ATCS) on the ISS uses an ammonia loop and radiators measuring 13.6 x 3.12 meters, or about 42.5 square meters. It can dissipate 16 kW, which is enough for 16 H200s, or one-quarter of a rack on Earth. For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.
https://codedtrip.com/en/blog/data-centers-in-space-disastro...
Starlink gen 3 satellite is designed to dissipate 250 kW. You are talking about an already solved issue, with real hardware already being built today.
Perhaps, but the parent comment posited that some people would pay the premium for orbital data center due to much better security. At $200 per kg to orbit, it could make sense.
Or will we see civilian datacenters with their own defensive drone swarms, and a couple of phalanx-style point defence systems for good measure?
If all you seek is to destroy (how en-vogue...) then that's more than perfect; not just destroy what's there but also make sure that by virtue of what remains (debris) nothing will get re-built.
As the market goes, so goes the multiple being granted to SPCX. That is, when the AI bubble contracts on the multiples being granted, SPCX will decline dramatically. In my observation HN typically widely can't differentiate properly between the real AI economy being developed and the multiples being temporarily granted in the stock market, it's common on here that people think they're the same thing ('when the AI bubble ends'). Back in reality what is going to happen is an implosion of the multiples when the growth slows (or suddenly stops due to an economic shock), and despite that the AI economy broadly will radically expand regardless over 10, 20, 30 years. See: the Internet build out (and market valuations), it will occur much the same conceptually.
He is on his way to become the first ($100 trillion) supervillain. Until 2 years ago, he stood at the center of most of the good news, then he got a few calls from Putin and he became unhinged from our (obscured) point of view. Nowadays he's a dark pattern.
Capitalism culminates in him, and he has to decide what to make of the world. He is our de-facto king, while on a personal level he has to decide what to do with his fortune. Put it into smart contracts for an AI to use and rule the world? Giving it to his kids would be underwhelming, not what he lived for.
People joked that mankind existed to bring forth the machines and would then become superfluous. The irony of it. Well, it seems irony has mr Musk. He sees the petty online bickering and he sees himself as alone, as the only adult in the room, who has to decide the fate of humanity, and his power in many domains puts him to the task.
He has his fiduciary responsibility that puts the interests of his share-holders first. He sees that as a healthy check on his power. At the end of all his calculations he has responsibilities akin to the Star Wars Emperor. Just like many white men, who come spend the remainder of their days in function and in defense of their property. Not in defense of life.
So Musk needs his antagonist to arrive on the scene, so he can repurpose his empire for the good the antagonist brings, as he represents a complete overhaul of the way life is lived. So the jury is out on mr Musk, and may he always remember his status as an American is just a hustle gone wild. Similar to the dynamic of how a liar has to keep extending his web of lies. He will make it into a machine that will carry his burden going forward. And then what? When, if ever, will he remember he is an African, and a friend of his own antagonist? His final words may sound like: Luke, I am your Father!
It's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.
Musk is a textbook narcissist. His consistent pattern is to make grandiose promises - literal future faking - fulfil a small percentage of them, then make even bigger and more grandiose promises and hope investors have a short memory. (They do.)
As a narcissist his primary relationship orientation is contempt for others. He's more interested in damaging projects he doesn't like - like the left-leaning community on the original Twitter, using promises of Hyperloop to kill high speed rail, ignoring the CSA from Grok, and of course the USAid fiasco - than seeing through the projects he claims to be developing to completion.
He fits in perfectly with Thiel, Altman, and the rest. The tech is sometimes interesting, but the alignment is fundamentally hostile to the rest of humanity.
Different problem.
Cooling can be done in space, it's a normal problem; not easy, nothing in space is easy, but on the scale of space it is normal.
However, at the temperature you would run a chip at, a radiator you make for space will just work better, reject more heat, if you leave it on the ground.
We get convective cooling down here as well as radiative. At operational temperature, convection more than makes up for the atmosphere being a heat bath at ~20 C or whatever.
But does it make sense to do it?
No.
You are overstating the engineering difficulty. Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100MW.
(the sarcasm is intended; there are some usecases for "space servers", around stealth for sure; to "scale it like a terrestrial DC" though ... dunno; not matter how I turn it, it just seems crazy expensive)
Will starlink build its own edge ? Maybe. We'll see. Whether it makes sense to have this infrastructure "colocated in space" if you're not also the owner of the "connection infrastructure in space" though? It'll come down to cost. If I were anyone else but SpaceX ... that's where my eyes would be.
>Internet Connectivity for AS200350 (YandexCloud)
https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/asn/200350?from=1791331...
Also, Yandex have a ban on any pro-russian ads and pro-military stuff (curiously so, not so much against drugs and crime).
Among other things, they actively lobbied for more internet censorship (because as major player they benefited from being white-listed and not affected by them).
People cheering in this thread do not realize that a lot of patriots in Russia will actually support full Yandex demolition.
Oh well. Some people never learn.
No or they wouldn't be hit.
It probably is incomprehensible to a western mind.
Also, I find it hard to believe that at this point any major Russian company is allowed to be aligned with Ukraine, let alone have an intelligence sharing with them.
Anyway, Russia as a country decided to invade a neighbour, attack their infrastructure, etc. "Sow the wind reap the whirlwind".
I don't know that it can end from anything short of that.
The severity of the attacks on Russian borders have I believe still a limited effect on the course of the war, but I suppose it certainly won't hurt Ukraine's chances to in some form survive this war.
No, it has been merely hit (usually once) and typically repaired in the span of a few days. The whole "double-digits percents have been destroyed" typically comes from not so high quality news agencies. Some things were destroyed more thoroughly, but their margin is largely negligible.
My dude, it’s one of the most heavily censored search engines on earth
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-yandex-says-sec...
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/russ...
I'll be curious to see how it affects the mood around HN.
EDIT: How curious - the article above removed all mention of disinformation - but you can still see it in the URL....
shouldn't these be underground? would it even matter if they were, ukraine would just make mole drones..
We should never celebrate hitting civilian infrastructure. Russia right now is bombing bridges in Kyiv, it's awful.
All wars end with diplomacy or when one side is dead or completely out of resources
Example quote from Azure documentation:
> Azure Government is used by the US Department of Defense (DoD) entities to deploy a broad range of workloads and solutions.
Calling such a DC a civilian target is essentialy incorrect now, and has been for years.
its also important to understand that government isnt non civilian, in this context its non military
I didn't misinterpret, you are using incorrect terminology.
First, a long-running SEAD / DEAD campaign by Ukraine last year and early this which thinned Russian air defence throughout occupied territories and left Russia with difficult deployment decisions for what remained.
Second, improvements to drones (speed and EW resistance) and expanded production - meaning the air defence can be saturated.
Third, Russia's vast geography itself, leaving countless approaches to targets impossible to defend.
A mystery really...
Can we use it to judge which accounts were bots?
Yandex: > 99 % https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/as13238
Scaleway: 90 % https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/as12876
Google ASN is at 98.7% https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/as15169
Great will be when all huge data center are visited by free range unknown drones, like what happened to the Wildberries.
Destroying heating units in Ukraine also affects innocent users in much worse ways than losing a datacenter.
The vast majority of Russians loved the war mostly because they made lots of money from it. Just when Ukraine started hitting oil infra people no longer liked the war. I am sorry for those 10% of Russians who didn't want the war and can't move abroad.
20% of Russians were ready to vote for an anti-war party in the last elections before it was illegally removed from the ballots, and many more don't support the war. The people who do are mostly old or live in small towns with no access to education. I doubt many of them are Yandex Cloud users.
I assume - one would need to check - that the majority of people who left Russia after 2022 did not support the war, so those left should be on the lower end.
"20% of Russians were ready to vote for an anti-war party in the last elections"
Yes, as I've said, approval dropped when Ukraine hit oil infra and gas prices went up, I can see 20% as a number. Nevertheless as show by approval ratings after 2014, that number was lower until people got hit by the impact of the war themselves.
[Edit] People didn't keep that money but spent it so others profited from that money too.
This is what happens in wars - beside war racketeers - salaries go up. There is a lot of research on how German profited from WW2 (and before) for example for most of the war. WW2 too seems most researched from what I see on how everyone profits until things get worse and end.
This is impossible, even in a dictatorship.
The starvation years of the DPRK in the mid 1990s directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union might be the closest that such a state has come to the situation getting so dire that the people could have theoretically risen up, no matter the consequences, but for a myriad of reasons the North Koreans were unable to.
Same random people who works and support military machine with money and labor.
The more damage Ukraine does to them the better. Maybe then these Russians who allegedly don't like Putin will get their shit together and do something about him. He's their responsibility. They are, like it or not, supporting his war simply by existing in the Russian economy. If the entire country really wanted him gone they could get him gone.
Downplaying the role of aggressor and portraying the victim as somehow to blame is really something, which leads me to think that you either did not fully think this logic through or that you are a Russian shill.
https://unn.ua/en/news/the-russian-attack-damaged-a-restaura...
Interesting take. Last I checked, those datacenters hosted software that targeted a children's school.
I guess for some definition of "innocent".
If - I assume there is - there is a post shared on HN about Israel and Gaza we can discuss that genocide there.
(1) 89% of Russians approved Putin and the 2014 Crimean invasion
According to Putin.
Lewada, the pollster which got sacked later as a "foreign agent", got 86%
I'm also surprised that people can't see this simple solution to the situation.
I hope that Putin will not attack again the electricity and power in Ukraine , hopefully the retard is scared now that Ukraine will bring the cold to the Moscowites and I am not happy for the children in Moscow to suffer because of the adults not giving a shit about the criminal they elected.
And I'm sure these data centers were also used for military purposes, no way they weren't in the current russian environment.
The general decency of condemning any/all types destruction won't apply here.
For the entire September, Russia conducted 10+ strikes on all key telecom, and internet provider data centers in Ukraine.
Now it is just a return
Russia went all in on "digital sovereignty." This is partly because the Russian government cares deeply about censoring what their citizens can see (which they can't do if those citizens consume content from American services), partly because the American services themselves cut Russia off because of sanctions-related concerns.
This makes Russian datacenters a much more attractive target for the Ukrainians. While Russia can (and does) bomb Ukrainian datacenters, the fact that Ukrainians are so reliant on US infrastructure (and could rapidly move local workloads to western clouds if the need was great enough) makes such operations far less attractive. It's much easier for Ukraine to strike some facility near Moscow than it is for Russia to strike Ashburn, Virginia.
Given the geopolitical concerns from both the east and the west, this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.
China is the only true winner of that war.
[0]: https://medium.com/@hayekesteloo/china-vs-ukraine-ft-investi...
Russia is economically becoming a vassal state just like north Korea is.
The East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan.
And they already have huge economical leverage there.
Russia is basically falling apart. But in a dictatorship, stuff like that is only seen sudden, when it collapses.
Putin seems to be making many of the mistakes of pre 1991.
The simplest solution would be to reboot the Siberian Republic [1] as a Chinese suzerainty. Ideally after Putin dies as part of a deal to the new ascender. Maybe together with giving them personal co-ownership in some major ventures there.
> East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan
Siberia and Outer Mongolia remain closer and thus cheaper and more-secure sources than anything coming in over ocean, which in essence means from Australia, South America or Africa.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Republic_(1918)
Russia is recently bluffing a bit there, Putin had a visit for the first time recently, I think it's China related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute
China is already owning the area with investments and a lot of workers/projects there are already Chinese. Seems like Russia already lost control ( unofficially)
The same can be said about the US <> EU/Russia in this conflict. Why bother helping Ukraine/Europe win the war if you consider them at least partly hostile? Better to let them fight your own enemy (Russia) and trade with both sides to your own advantage.
But hopefully Europe becomes more independent. The US has become too unstable
Yes, and that helped turn the US into the global hegemony it is today. No wonder China wants a wack. Power doesn't need a conscience.
That’s a kind of neutrality.
And now the US has joined them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-diesel-midterms-12ba...
Turns out digital sovereignty is a bad idea in terms of state security.
Don't put all eggs into one basket they told ya!
> this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.
Which was equating outside of Ukraine with USA, which is a logical error. Moving the goalposts does not invalidate the point. I have zero interest in discussing those probabilities (0 vs 0). The argument stands. This is hn
3/ "This summer, faced with the inability to conclude a war that began nearly five years ago, Putin opted for a new round of escalation.
4/ "In June, the Russian Armed Forces began systematically targeting warehouses belonging to the Ukrainian company Nova Poshta, prompting a retaliatory strike on Wildberries warehouses; in September, strikes on Ukrainian data centres began, and a response followed swiftly.
5/ "In other words, one shouldn't assume that no one had thought to attack data centres before; it is simply that Putin decided to take this step right now.
6/ "This move effectively lifted the constraints that had previously bound Ukraine – a country that generally adheres to certain rules of engagement and, with few exceptions, does not initiate attacks on clearly civilian targets.
7/ "Ukraine had been prepared for this scenario almost from the very start of the war – and even before that. Even prior to the invasion, when it was clear to everyone that it was virtually inevitable, a law was passed allowing for the temporary storage of state registries abroad.
...
47/ "The issue is therefore extremely serious — far more so than the strikes on Wildberries, which result in economic damage but do not threaten the functioning of the state itself.
48/ "I believe Putin may have committed his second-biggest blunder since the invasion of Ukraine. He has literally started throwing stones inside a glass house without realizing how fragile that house is. The very system he built prevents him from grasping this;…
49/ …he makes decisions without consulting or listening to anyone, living in his own cozy bubble.
https://bsky.app/profile/chriso-wiki.bsky.social/post/3mxgts...
But sure, let me try that tinfoil hat on.
> Given the geopolitical concerns from both the east and the west, this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.
The argument is Europe can decide to move servers out of USA and Ukraine is fine because Ukraine does not need servers in USA. They need servers in other countries. That was the logic issue with OP.
Your post is completely unrelated to mine or the above. Maybe wrong thread
> the text I quoted says Ukraine mirrored some of its critical data abroad, something russia decided against
My only point was op was confusing Ukraine hosting abroad with hosting in the USA, and wrongly concluding this affects EU hosting in the USA from this. To this you contribute that Ukraine decided to host abroad and Russia did not.
So what? That is not bringing any new facts or argument to the conversation. But the bluesky account is interesting nonetheless.
Complete bullshit, Russia has been targeting civilian infrastructure from the very beginning. The only thing that changed is that Ukraine is now running out of advanced air defense, so that more of the attacks are getting through.
Both sides instead regularly frame it, for propaganda purposes, as being targeted without ever saying as such - 'A [enemy] [drone/missile] struck a beach full of civilians' for instance. That's completely accurate, but misleading because most people think that means the beach was targeted, as opposed to 'we shot down an incoming drone that was headed for a military base and it crashed into a beach'.
The reason things look so different now is because civilian facilities are being targeted. And this isn't just in Ukraine obviously, as per this topic. Ukraine has also had this capability to completely destroy civilian facilities for years. We're only getting these headlines, and likely many more to come as winter approaches, because this Pandora's Box has been opened.
Your comment doesn't really distinguish between DELIBERATE and COLLATERAL damages to civilians and their properties. I do not know what was in your other comments that were flagged, but Yandex data centers are LEGITIMATE TARGETS as they are linked to Kremlin businesses and works for them. So, they are not civilian facilities - same way as Alabuga college students that are assembling military drones - they are legal military targets, regardless of their age and not being in Army.
Nope, Ukraine only recently developed long-range strike capabilities.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/28/russia-militar...
Search for "Kherson human safari". Russians are deliberately targeting civilians, this is proven beyond any doubt.
How many do you think they would have managed to kill? 200 is quite easy to see happening from air defense mishaps, occasional mistargeting, and other such issues - but it's off by orders of magnitude if we assume a targeted campaign against civilians. A campaign against civilians would have multiples of that number per day in such a location.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_safari_(terror_campaign)
They killed 200 and wounded 2,000. This is information from a year ago.
> but it's off by orders of magnitude if we assume a targeted campaign against civilians.
No, it is not. It's not like they are only attacking civilian targets or concentrating all the drones allocated on that section of the front on Kherson city. Also, Ukrainians regularly eliminate such small drones, so only a fraction manages to actually get through and injure/kill someone.
There are many sources linked on that Wikipedia page extensively documenting Russian human safari in Kherson. There are many videos, such as this one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4n03xg981o
The evidence is overwhelming.
Apart from human safari, there is also issue with hostage situation in Oleshki and thousands of dead by Russians using them for target practices and not allowing them to leave.
All I'm seeing is two sides continuing to escalate and respond to each other while the rest of the world watches.
> Wildberries (essentially Russia's Amazon)
And military supplier newly owned by Putin's buddy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_strikes_on_Wildberri...
Ever heard of Game Theory?
Trump sucks at it. And by the looks of it, you're not very good either.
Russia bombed Ukrainian infrastructure since the start of the war. Power plants were frequently targeted last winter. The only reason why Russia is more successful now is because Ukraine is running out of advanced air defense.
> Russia could've made whole Ukraine in a literal dead state long ago -- it only takes few rockets to permanently knock out nuclear power plants and water treatment plants. Yet they didn't. I wonder why.
Because Ukraine would strike Russian nuclear power plants in response? Also, political fallout (in addition to the nuclear one) from targeting nuclear power plants would be massive. Sanctions from China and India would be on the table, which would quickly send Russian economy to the gutter.
Who started this war again?
Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041619
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/oct/04...