Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 1)

I swear, I am NOT looking for funny russian fails …

it just seems those are everywhere …

also FSB did not make it perfectly clear why they waved the truck through onto the bridge - once the knew it was loaded with explosives … or was the x-ray pic just to find out if the driver has TBC? … questions over questions

What the hell was that crap. It looks like the Antiques Road Show.

Two crew, 11 (possible) passengers. One survivor? I only saw one person.

A large portion of those trucks are civilian transport carrying basic goods for the people of Crimea. The bridge is a legitimate military target, but grocery distribution trucks are not.

Latest satellite images of Crimea bridge:

No frito pie in Sevastopol this weekend.

I only see vehicles on one side of the damage. Are they the worker’s cars doing repair work?

Artillery, the “King of Battle”:

Then they shouldn’t be driving on a primary military supply route.

It’s not like there are any safer routes into Crimea at the moment.

Look, if they’re on the bridge and the bridge is attacked, that’s unfortunate collateral damage. If they’re lined up for a ferry and they’re attacked, that’s an unwarranted attack on civilian targets.

However we might parse the law of armed conflict and the extent to which dual purpose transport and logistics equipment in enemy territory lined up to enter the active conflict zone might be fair game for targeting, it’s undoubtable that the bulk of the suffering stemming from delays and losses will fall on the civilian population of Crimea.

That’s the real sobering part of this discussion.

Plus, how do you distinguish between trucks carrying food for civilians and food for troops? Will the Russians pinkie-swear what the load is?

If you’re blowing shit up, why not just blow up the ferry terminal itself? That way you neutralize all the trucks.

while I agree, those are not really legitimate military targets, the FSB X-ray 5 posts up seems to be indicative of russia transporting explosives and military ordinance in civil trucks (otherwhise, how would they have waved through a truck with lots of boooooms in it)? :wink:

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yes, probably smartest to use your ordinance on the logistics bottlenecks - truth to be told, I can’t visualiza the Ukr. going after individual civil trucks (of obv. reasons)

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… also, here a bit more on the frag-warhead for the himars - the ones we debated upthread … as those are already being used

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/y2c09z/ukrainian_soldiers_inspecting_an_aftermath_m30a1/

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… that is really impressive (vehicle seems to have been at the periphery of explosions, given the spacing between peppers …

  • what is incredible is that at the flick of a switch you convert a himars from “huge sniper rifle” to “huge shotgun”

CBC news story here is a bit of a sidebar, but Canada has been accepting quite a number of Ukrainian refugees via the Ukrainian emergency travel visa. This particular story is about the thousand or so who chose to settle in Newfoundland. Why NL I have no idea – it’s a gorgeous part of the country and a great place to visit, but not the sort of economy that is conducive to readily finding employment. The story centers around what looks like a perfectly lovely family that I’d love to have as neighbours, but they’ve yet to be able to find permanent accommodation and the husband, an IT professional, has yet to find a job. But at least they’re out of the war zone. (Bonus points for the lovely family: they brought their dog with them – it may be a wartime emergency, but they weren’t about to abandon Fido!)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ukrainian-work-nl-demergian-1.6614527

another of those “only in Russia” pieces:

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First drone vs drone dogfight in the history of warfare? (The Ukrainian drone won)

Cordwainer Smith wrote a short story when he was very young about just that eventuality.

Putin is threatening WW3 if Ukraine joins NATO.

Russia is updating old T-62s.