Arguably, if food is short, that would in fact be an argument for self-defense.
Very, very seldom would such a situation wind up in court.
And if it was a jury trial, what jury would convict?
Based on the available evidence… I’d say “yes”.
I’ll just point out that you can train someone to use a MANPAD type SAM a lot quicker than you can teach them to fly an airplane, any airplane, much less a fighter plane.
I’m probably not the only one who suspects that the US is tracking Russian ships very carefully, and is giving real time reports to the Ukranians on specific locations, down to a few meters.
I agree, tracking ships is probably one of the easiest tasks today.
If there were a non-ukrainian submarine lurking about in the Azov taking out warships, would the russians be able to spot it easily?
A simple phone call from a resident of Berdyansk was probably all that was needed in this case.
- As Ukraine has no subs at all, the answer is yes.
- Knowing the ship took a torpedo is a lot easier.
- Knowing which Navy was responsible is another story.
The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world with an average depth of 23 feet and maximum depth of 46 feet. It would be a death trap for any submarine.
In the Azov? It had better be a suicide run, because there is only one way out and the Russians have very good ASW capabilities.
ETA: Given the above depths, you couldn’t even get a modern sub in there.
Now I have this image of a Virginia class submarine with a draft of 32 feet stuck on the bottom of the sea.
Better move would be a US submarine (SSGN like the USS Florida) lurking in the Mediterranean, not even entering the Black Sea, but firing off 154 Tomahawks at Russian targets in Ukraine.
Oh, sure. That wouldn’t piss anybody off at all.
The Baltic is closer and there would be little question in the minds of the Russians who was responsible.
Sure, I didn’t mean secrecy. I just meant that if we must use subs, there’s no need to get into the Sea of Azov.
That’s possible, but as I said upthread I’m not sure how real time the communications are between the intelligence and the ability to act on it.
You would need someone that could ID Russian ships, tho that’s probably not too hard in these circumstances. But they also need to know who to call to get a timely response. So, probably someone with intelligence contacts.
Well phrased!
If there’s no need for secrecy; there’s no need for subs.
If anyone’s curious, here’s what the port area looked like pre-raid per Google Maps (how did we ever survive without this??). Google Maps Looks like there is berthing space for about 8 medium-size ships there in normal times, hard to say how many of them are now out of commission. One thing I did notice, I can’t see any rail lines directly connecting the port to the main trunk line, so any supplies moving out of the port will have to go by truck to reach the front line troops, or be moved to then be re-loaded onto railcars. Not a great situation logistically speaking and given the Russian’s issues with logistics…
We shall see.
The Ukraine army should just wait until they clear the ship, make the port usable again, and get another ship full of equipment in there.
Then blow that one up too.
What if they build a third castle make the port usable a third time, would that work?