Don the Con seems to like that rhetorical flourish as well. Great company.
He sort of tried that, sugesting that he might upgrade the ‘special military operation’ to a war. Maybe that means something in Russian doctrine, but to everyone else it was a joke.
Not that Putin cares about rules but would making it a declared war change things legally or diplomatically or strategically for the civilized world?
The rest of the world already views it as a war, so it wouldn’t change anything internationally.
It would have some legal consequences in Russia, but this isn’t terribly important since any legal impediments to operations cause by the status of the conflict as SMO vs war can either be ignored or removed by having the Duma change the law.
You mean:
Putin: Now look here world, I’m not even really trying here with this SMO. This is the kindler gentler approach to Russian foreign policy. We’re being oh so careful to handle Ukraine and all the Ukrainians with kid gloves. Why darn near none of them have so much as been inconvenienced so far. And tghe few that have have been fully compensated. Fully. Compensated.
And what thanks do we get for purging all those Nazis? Mean old Ukraine has been bombing our troops. That’s not nice of them. Not nice at all.
You don’t want to see what happens When Big Daddy Putin and Big Mother Russia stop playing nice and get serious about this effort by starting a war, now do you?
There was no plan! Just Telegram posts run wild:
There appears to be a minor issue with the Kerch bridge again.
yep … google traffic shows traffic jams on both ends of the bridge, but no car traffic on it … compatible with a bridge out of commission
still not clear what hit if it was hit by something
I guess tomorrow we will know more
It’s almost tomorrow there now. Already getting light in a couple of the videos. Still can’t see the extent of the damage and there’s only speculation on what caused it. Apparently one Russian source is claiming unmanned surface vessels (i.e., marine drones), but it could be Storm Shadows, could be another vehicle bomb (though I think the Russians have been more serious about searching vehicles before letting them onto the bridge since the last incident), could even be simple structural failure either from unrepaired damage from the last attack or just poor initial construction or lack of maintenance. A while back there were photos circulating of alleged cracks on support piers, and cracks in steel-reinforced concrete in a saltwater environment are very bad news.
If maritime drones did take out a support pillar, that’s much worse from the perspective of making the bridge operational again than the last attack, which just unseated a couple spans.
Note: we still don’t have any evidence of what sort of damage has actually been done aside from that dimly lit video showing a gap between two of the decks.
Support down, span down confirmed by Russian stooge leader of Crimea.
The Guardian is reporting Crimea bridge damage and traffic backed up. No info on what happened. Yet.
Interesting. It’s probably linked to the bridge incident.
Deleted.
Russian Ministry of Transport now saying no damage to bridge supports, just surface damage to road deck.
Of course, the Russians lie.
A little duct tape and crazy glue and she’ll be right as rain.
From the BBC this morning: Crimea bridge: Russia blames new Crimea bridge attack on Ukraine - BBC News
There was a story earlier in the week about Ukrainian drones being intercepted over Crimea, though not near the bridge.
another huge PR win for UKR, … showing the russians are completely unable to protect their own “tentpole” infrastructure from attacks …
… again …
unfortunately the (way more important) trainline seems to be ok (confirmation pending) … I wonder what the UKR gameplan is there?
To make Putin look impotent, force Russia to devote resources to protecting the bridge, and send the message that Crimea is not part of Russia.
Also, to take out whatever target they could hit.