Russia can’t win the war. Their most successful military playthrough would still land them as losers. The geography they gain will be grossly outweighed by everything they lost by trying to get it and the closer to a battlefield victory they get, the worse of a position they’ll be in after everything has resolved.
It’s like if you’re about to be banished to an uninhabited Island and, before you get sent off, you decide to use all your supplies hunting down your ex-wife to try and rape her one last time. Capturing her, at the cost of all of your food, oil, clothing, tools, and other supplies just isn’t worth it. You’ll hurt her and she’ll have to heal from it but she’ll have friends and charity to help her through. You’re just going to the barren island with crumbs and shreds of cloth.
It’s not a win.
But that all said, the presentation that Russia is acting terroristically by bombing grannies is probably just poor reporting - I’d guess. They’re bombing the electricity infrastructure and, occasionally, missing the target. That’s not intentional. It is terroristic - if the aim is to freeze the people into submission - but it’s not bombing grannies while Ukraine bombs ammunition depots.
Evil as it may be, it may be a sufficient blow to the health of the Ukrainian workers that they’re unable to supply the troops in the field.
That said, I feel like Russia is missing the one of the most effective room heaters is a human body. If Zelenskyy starts telling people to group up into shared apartments, during the winter, that will probably be enough to render Russia’s attacks null.
I have seen a variety of articles say that but I have not seen any that provide any reason to think that these hits were anything other than a mix of bad aim and fighting going on from/to various civilian buildings.
If, during the start of the war, Russia was deliberately targeting hospitals then it would be easy enough to ask Maxar to take sample images from towns under attack and count the pock marks hitting random buildings and those hitting hospitals - per square foot of the footprint. From there, you can say conclusively that Russia was targeting hospitals or not hitting them. No one did that and anything other than that is subject to confirmation bias.
If newspapers couldn’t be bothered to do that, I’m certain that the US military has been doing something along those lines to figure out what Russia’s game plan is. They know, factually, whether Russia is targeting civilians or just accidentally hitting stuff while trying to hit their military targets. I don’t see, in any articles, any quotes from military figures that make the claim.
All I see are accusations that they hit hospitals in Syria (reportedly - but likewise given no proper sourcing ever) and, ergo, they’re doing the same here. They haven’t even established it for Syria, yet, as best I can tell.
Right now, Russia has knocked out something like 80% of Ukraine’s electricity and they’ve bombed a half dozen random civilians in cities like Kyiv and Lviv. I’m not inclined to think that their target is the civilians. I’m sure that they could do better than that, if it was their goal. The thing that they’ve made good headway on - knocking out the power - that’s probably the target.
I agree that seems more likely from an Occam’s Razor POV. I think the Russians are more than capable of using terror tactics and one could argue targeting the electrical grid might be slotted into that category in of itself. However Russia has a definite limit to its guided munitions supply. I doubt they are wasting them much, if at all, to deliberately hit hospitals just to show how brutal they can be. The simple fact is that in addition to cruise missiles they have been using a lot of less accurate missiles, like old anti-shipping missiles, that are not designed for highly precise strikes. It would not be much surprise if some of those (or even the occasional more accurate munition) are hitting wide.
Would that include Mitch McConnells Aluminum plant in Tennessee? If something like that where liquidated, would a lot of people be out of work? Seize it, someone buys it and the money goes to UK? But keep it open under new US owners?
It would include Rusal, the aluminum plant partially owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. His portion of the company would be liquidated and the money earned for the sale given to UKR. UK is United Kingdom.
The missile in Poland was potentially a big story, but now that it’s been determined it was almost certainly an errant Ukr. anti-air missile, the story focus should be back on the infrastructure strikes.
Yesterday is another reason Ukraine needs modern air defense systems. The rockets are more accurate and effective. They also should be less likely to wander way off course.
Ukrainian air defense (and Russian) is actually very good. It was one area of advanced tech that the Soviets/Russians both concentrated on and excelled at. See the video I linked to earlier. Any missile fired has to come down somewhere if it doesn’t hit its target - it has nothing to do with being unsophisticated.
Ukraine does need more air-defense assets, but not because what they have doesn’t work well - it does. It’s just that attrition is whittling away at its stock of missiles.
The fund, which has been negotiated between Forrest, Kyiv, Washington, Canberra and London for nine months, will be launched on Thursday. It will be led by BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers.
Yes. temporary power outages can be done with drones. No explosives needed. Just drop carbon filament ribbons on substations. This was done in the Kosovo war.
It would serve 2 purposes. Russian people will experience short term outages first hand without casualties. Putin looks foolish for killing Ukrainians by aggressively doing the same thing.
There are people in civilian life who recover dead bodies as a profession, including accident and crime scenes. They don’t all become shattered wrecks. Yes, war adds additional stress and tension, but there’s nowhere in Ukraine without that.
For some this is actually fulfilling work. They’re doing a tough job that most people see as essential. And they’re not having to kill anyone to do it. They can relieve emotional suffering for the living. They don’t have to witness the prior suffering and dying.