I’m of the opinion that it’s still best to listen to Fleming. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
Make it clear this was unacceptable, move more assets into Poland and Eastern Europe, and keep supplying Ukraine. No need to really do more unless it happens again.
It could potentially lead to a no-fly zone over western Ukraine, or Poland shooting down any missiles over Ukraine that come near its border.
Russian missile hitting a Polish farm? I’m thinking high probability of a mistake or malfunction, but will second Ian Fleming’s sentiments.
Why would Putin want to attack NATO countries right now?
Perhaps his advisors are telling him that NATO is weak, and will capitulate easily if challenged. Because they know that’s what he wants to hear.
Perhaps he’s just testing the boundaries. Just how much he can get away with. How about sending missiles to an airport in Poland next? Electrical infrastructure next? Just where is NATO’s line?
Poland may invoke Article 4 (which isn’t Article 5):
Russia’s statement:
Don’t believe anything until the Kremlin denies it.
I agree, do more of the same but ^2 (squared, turbocharged, whatever you want to call it)
… let the Ukr do the fighting and arm them with missile defense and long range himars up to their eyebrows, so they can keep doing what they do best …
kick the russians where it hurts them most - and then kick them again!
b/c it is clear by now that he is not the 4d-chess-genious that he pretended to be … more of an ill informed narcistic ego a-hole in a death-spiral
those cruise missiles dont land somewhere “by chance” - they fly where they are programmed to fly to
I generally agree, but these are Russian weapons, so it’s possible someone sold one of the guidance chips for a pack of cigarettes and caused them to go off course.
the fog is dense here …
I just saw a tweet showing a part of a motor of a SAM rocket (with long numbers as model type) that was identical to the debris seen in poland … but the tweet disappeared:
also:
so there might be a chance that this is a S-300 missile (used by both Ukr and RU forces) …
again, lots of fog of war here …
The S-300 missile doesn’t have the curvature near the fins:
The Kh-55 does, though:
Insanity? As deranged as this whole thing has been, trying to figure out rational reasons behind Putin’s actions seems futile.
Decent chance it’s an accident, either Russia’s or Ukraine’s. Obviously Ukraine is going to blame Russia, regardless of the truth, they’ll want to exploit this to get more supplies at the minimum.
Russia is terrified of NATO getting involved. They go out of their way to avoid antagonizing them. I don’t put any stock in the “maybe Putin is just dumb as shit and all his advisors are lying to him so he bombed a farm!”
This is almost certainly accidental, but still think it results in increased Western weaponry to Ukraine.
They are guided, but I guess it’s possible someone fat fingered the coordinates. Maybe they should have used what.three.words instead.
Orwell’s doublethink:
I don’t see how either of those is relevant.
That was my first thought.
To kill nazis or satanists. Or maybe Martians. It’s not like he had a good reason to do any of this.
Wikipedia says that Ukraine used to have Kh-55s, but scrapped about 487 of them and returned about 587 to Russia. Current operators are Iran, China, and Russia.
I mistook the photo of the damaged missile as being from today’s incident, which it apparently was not.
These people know weapons: