And to be clear what I meant is that they didn’t sink any. There is also the question of whether those were all Soviet subs. Some were probably NATO.
No, they didn’t, but that’s something that can obviously happen when you’re firing depth charges, and the Swedes were prepared to deal with the consequences. It was their territorial waters after all.
Thanks Ravenman!
I was under the impression that the Swedes allowed the sub at Hårsfjärden to escape, in order to avoid a big ol’ brawl with the Soviets. Apparently not.
I don’t think that’s plausible at all.
Do you have a cite saying Russia is deliberately violating airspace to make a point? Judging by the map in the BBC article it seems like a mistake and an easy mistake to make.
Maybe they could be merged, there’s really no difference between them.
It seems the FSA now claim to have shot down one of the rescue helicopters using a TOW.
Now where did they get a TOW, I wonder…
There are plenty of them on the black market. Nowadays the US gives its proxy fighters Stingers instead. Much more range and much more accurate.
Good for Turkey, assuming the aircraft did enter their airspace.
The amount of Putin bots on the internet is pretty weird. I can’t tell how many of them are Russians vs. Western conservatives trolling Obama. They act like Russia has a history of dominating ME countries and Turkey just made a huge mistake because Putin means business! No half measures! No mercy! Roar!
Maybe the Kurds will get some Russian toys out of this.
I trust Turkey on this one. Russia has a consistent reputation for deception.
What’s so hard about believing it was a Russian jet in Turkish airspace?
Nothing. I meant vis a vis smoothing Russian-NATO relations, the best we could think is that Turkey thought they were shooting down a Syrian jet rather than a Russian one.
I wasn’t necessarily talking about this incident. It’s possibly that this time it was an accident (and possible that the Russians simply don’t care enough to worry about it…or didn’t until this happened). Doesn’t negate the fact that Russia has a history of violating other countries air space, that they have been specifically warned in the case of Turkey not to do this and have been asked to coordinate their air strikes and haven’t bothered to do so.
This seems like a big deal. Is it? The news says this is the first Russian plane downed by a NATO country since the 1950’s.
I see that the price of oil is up, gold is up, U.S. bonds are up(!) and (due to oil) the stock market is up slightly! :smack:
I’m hearing the Russian pilots are dead now after ejecting safely? I hope they weren’t killed by Turkish soldiers, that’s too much of a provocation and probably a war crime.
According to CNN:
Probably the worst part of this, from Russia’s perspective, is this:
Shooting the pilot(s) right out of the air kind of indicates how much fury there is over the Russians being in Syria. Though, I imagine, if a US, French, UK or other coalition fighter was shot down over ISIS territory they might similarly be shot from the air by angry fighters on the ground. 
It’s not like Assad’s side has been taking prisoners.
The early reports I read was that the rebels claimed they were shooting the parachutes so that they could keep gliding into government held territory. Not easy to believe but I can imagine that capturing them alive would have been preferable to rebel leaders- either to kill on video or to use as a bargaining chip.
It seems likely that the Russian pilots were killed by anti-Assad forces on the ground in Syria. In other words, the very people they were trying to drop bombs on. If you look at the map, while the plane was shot down over a spit of Turkish land, the plane itself crashed in Syria.
It also seems likely that the Turks shot the plane down not only for violating their airspace but more likely because it was bombing anti-Assad rebels aligned with Turkey.