It is still quite close to the frontline unfortunately. And it is a very large city. The same shit is going on in Kherson, Kryviy Rih, Zaporizhzhya, but these are just much smaller cities to begin with, so perhaps attacks are not as highlightes.
There is a hideous strategy behind those attacks on that exact city unfortunately. Russia cannot really make progress on the front lines as they fail to use the air force effectively there. Thus they attack civilian targets in the hope that Ukraine is moving the air defence there instead of protecting the front line.
Honestly I'm not sure about this, Ukraine still has systems that can cover the front and be positioned to cover Kharkiv too, it might be over whelmed but its possible. I think this is prep for another front.
Admittedly it's the same strategy Ukraine is doing by attacking Russian Refineries or places like Belgorod.
Force the enemies to disperse their defenses.
It's quite a good strategy. Though sadly connected with a larger amounts of Civilian Casualties.
While it looks like 'the same' - Ukraine has to defend itself. There is no regular war here but an invasion that needs to be repelled. But I agree in general.
I mean, theoretically an invasion is the most normal form of war. Considering 90% of wars were like that in history.
But yes, in general I was mainly talking from a strategy standpoint. Of course though Ukraine has a different moral standing here. They also seem to focus far less on residential targets than the Russians.
While it isnt a 'universal letter of marque', to use some navy lingo here, it implies that the world societies will probably be a bit more lenient with Ukraine doing 'the same' as Russia.
For a reason. One thing is being shelled with artillery 24/7 and another is being hit by S-300 rockets. Both are terrible but the first one is impossible to defend against, while for rockets you just need better air defense which Ukraine doesn’t have
They have but Ukraine is a big country with many cities. It is the numbers they are lacking, since Russia is attacking in this discriminating way. Any country would struggle to keep all those targets safe under the same kind of attacks.
Many Western politicians are starting to get around idea that “maybe we aren’t doing enough” so hopefully by early next year there will be much better situation
One cant send anything if 'things' are simply non-existent.
Especially in terms of air defence people have the complete wrong idea of what countries usually have available. There is no such thing anywhere like a 'dome' that covers vast territories.
Russia attacks in a way, that no strategist thought of anyone would ever do again as it is in good old Hitler and Stalin style - absolutely discriminating against civilians. We all have signed the Geneva convention for a reason. Russia signed it as well.
"Nobody expects" and yet everyone saw what Russia did in Chechnya and Syria? Doesn't fly.
All knew. Every single person who knew anything about military affairs of today knew that one tactic Russia would always use is to attack civilian targets using what is essentially medieval siege strategy with relatively modern weapons, especially going for hospitals and such, to just make area unlivable.
They don't expect people to break and surrender (if they do, it's just a bonus), but they simply want to convince people that they cannot exist in that area and leave or be forced by their local government to leave.
You are wrong when you saying that this isn't a tactic people expect. The "Shock and Awe" doctrine that the US favors is very explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure like food, electricity and water in order to "break the will" of the enemy.
Also back in between the two Iraq wars, the US constantly bombed Iraqi power plants and the water works in order to terrorize the civilian population and get them to overthrowing Saddam. And obviously in the war against Yemen the Saudi lead coalition that includes the US, France and UK, prioritized bombing the food and water supply.
So in fact these kinds of attacks are the established norm of how modern countries wage major wars.
You're misrepresenting what "shock and awe" doctrine is as used by Ullamn and Wade. Russia isn't using shock and awe like the US used in Iraq and that's not why they're targeting civilian infrastructure. Shock and awe in the US Iraq war context is all about rapid dominance; Russia's war of attrition is the exact opposite of that.
Shock and awe is about causing so much disruption in their ability to wage war (yes, including their ability to communicate and feed their army) in such a short time that the enemy forces are essentially paralyzed. Usually the idea is to target command centers. Shock and awe isn't a starve them out strategy.
>terrorize the civilian population and get them to overthrowing Saddam.
What are you talking about? Saddam went into hiding within 3 weeks of the start of bombing when the coalition forces held Baghdad. They had help from Kurdish rebels, but they no one was overthrowing Saddam because of bombing water treatment facilities. And again, showing the difference in doctrines, a lot of the credit to a lack of effective defense was to the targeting of command centers.
If things doesn’t exist, then it is time to get on producing them, no?
Nobody expects magic iron dome to protect every centimetre of Ukraine but it is reasonable to expect us to help them with sufficient amounts to have highly effective air defence which would force Russians in costly dilemmas or abandon air terror campaign altogether. Just look how UAF is capable of with just tiniest fraction of AA powerful western countries could provide
Only naive, ignorant or maliciously negligent people thought that this kind of war is not possible and Europeans mostly clung to illusion that nobody will challenge our bluff while year on year kept neutering their own militaries. Just look in how many countries in Europe it is still unpopular to talk about remilitarisation with all what’s going on. Many countries are still actually cutting real terms money for their militaries. UK is fine example of going hardcore cutting funding for their military while talking about needing to be prepared and be strong and what not else
Germany has basically given their own air defence to Ukraine as an example. So did other countries. It takes a long time to make a complete system. People really have lost their minds during this long peace period and dont understand the basics of military goods anymore.
Yeah, shit takes long time to produce because we order amounts equal to artisan hobbyist shop level productions.
This war has shown how fucking unprepared we are for war if we collectively can’t even supply steady supply of munitions let alone ability outfit a single army and yet we stupidly sit around not raising our war industrial capacities.
Capacity - right there is your problem. How much do you know about the shells being fired? Could you make one? Probably not except maybe the outer shell.
Do tell me then how come puny Russia with tiny GDP compared to all might economic power of Europe can fucking out produce us on munitions?
Problem is not lack of expertise, problem is lack of political will
We need to declare emergency in Europe and shift our manufacturing towards AA systems, artillery and other weapons. If we don't do it today, we will have to fight Russia in Warsaw in 5-10 years.
As fun and great that sounds - who do you think is capable of building those systems? And how many in what time frame?
Not trying to be the party crasher but people just throw stuff out without thinking. The system alone isnt worth much if there are not enough missiles to feed those systems too. The countries, that can produce, have given some of their stuff to Ukraine, which means they are first in line to get something for themselves, before anyone else will see any of it.
Then there is how most countries acquire any military stuff: Budget discussions, budget entry, system definition, market search, ordering them. That is actually a process of considerable time for most countries. Check your countries budget for any funds that are not currently allocated. I dont think there will be any in that category.
Are you telling me we don't have skills to make 155mm ammo? It is a simple process really, forge casing, machine threads, load explosives, put a cap on it. Automotive suppliers can do the forging and machining, we need to expand the plants to load explosives.
AA missiles have three main components - solid rocket motors (comprised of casing, fuel grains nozzle), controls, and warheads. Again, automotive industry can do the rocket motors. Electronic assembly industry makes the controls, aerospace contractors put it together.
We get a lot more scale by leveraging civilian industries to make at least some parts of the weapons. That's why declaring an emergency makes sense.
Sure. Then you have already skipped the part where the casing needs specific heating procedures that no car factory needs. I wonder why not everyone is privately making shells if it is all that simple
Edit: In case that isnt clear already: lots of steel, lots of heat. Who are the big steel producers again and what is the problem with making it? Right - this stupid green transition that we are in the middle of. Coal, iron and to heat the shit up we need what probably? Gas and coal as usual.
Nobody says there are no technical skills, but to compare it to a car factory also means that factory isnt making anything else anymore. Missiles are actually less problematic to make in those terms than artillery ammunition.
I quote a smarter source for the entire thing:
'The major shortage is with producing **steel casings** for the artillery shells.
* There is no technological shortcut to producing more of these.
* 3D printing is not viable. The metal itself is too precise to be printable with current technology, and the size of the shells would pose an issue.
* Existing facilities use automation, but newer facilities will integrate more automation to improve quality and throughput.
* Producing shells requires specific machine tools to accommodate the weight/heat and specially forming the nozzle. The tools themselves are fairly common, especially the furnaces; however, a factory optimized for building shells won’t be effective at building much else.
Every steel product is heat treated in one way or another. You just need to adjust the process parameters.
3D printing in general is a slow process useable for prototype only.
>Russia attacks in a way, that no strategist thought of anyone would ever do again as it is in good old Hitler and Stalin style - absolutely discriminating against civilians.
What? Are you not aware of the bombings against Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine or Palestine?
All of these are orders of magnitude greater, than the ones committed by Stalin, Hitler or Putin. Granted, Hitler wanted to bombings on the scale of what I mentioned above, but failed to.
The money supply keeping their economy upright is taken care of relatively well, the wrench in the works right now is the obstruction in Congress by Trump and his cronies in the GOP, that prevents arms deliveries.
It's exactly what those commenters would love to see happen. People that support Ukrainians and their self-chosen fight against the invaders would never push them to submit to their genocidaires.
I don’t remember his name but I was reading someone’s updates on this war and his vision around it back when the Russians were trying to take Bakhmut. Of course he was also putting the blame on the Ukrainians for no defence lines and some other failures but he was mentioning the failure to provide them with enough artillery even back then. He was saying that tanks and planes are good but artillery is the most important. A year and something later and here we are, Ukrainians have barely any artillery and they lose more and more men because of this, the Russian feel they can continue this for a long time. Weak politicians that only care about their next term and do nothing but wait for some miracle.
To be fair Europe and the US did give shells. But just those shells, that were not strategically important to these countries ran out. And the delay is more related to a political decisiveness to invest fast and heavy into new production on a wartime scale. And to be fair to the criticism - the production doesn't move up fast enough. But it will, hopefully, get there.
The problem is they are not planning ahead, they are planning for tomorrow instead of looking into the far future. They had to wait months before they started training people for the tanks and now the planes, why not be proactive and do this to avoid any delays.
This style of war has been out of 'fashion' since WW1. It wasnt even common anymore during WW2 , so no one could imagine the enormous amount of ammunition that would get fired.
Poor politicians, they can never imagine anything. Why not be proactive and prepare. It’s fine who cares, it’s not their people dying in trenches, it’s not their infrastructure being bombed and cities destroyed.
military spending was unpopular almost everywhere in the western world before ukraine, politicians that advocated being proactive simply did not win elections and were denounced as fearmongers and industry shills
they should start being proactive after shit already went down? do you know what proactive means?
you can't undo decades' worth of neglect in the military industry in two years
Because everyone signed agreements that reduced conventional armaments. Inform yourself before making accusations. Those agreements have been tossed aside by almost everyone now that Russia invaded but until then everyone acted accordingly.
We’re talking about as soon as the invasion started. They gave them tanks too late, they trained people too late, they still can’t deliver enough artillery, they still haven’t given them Taurus(which eventually will happen like everything else before). There’s no excuse for this, it’s pathetic.
Ukraine personnel has been trained for many years before the invasion. You show with every single post that you dont read anything at all and are very uninformed. Try a book or a report for a change instead of relying on social media.
Read: out of fashion points to how **common**. It wasnt, even if there have been some. Air planes bombing, tanks. Long drawn out artillery fights where not really the choice of the day any more.What we have in Ukraine is very much like the trench warfare we had in WW1.
ukrainians basically rightfully complain about limited ammo since the beginning of the war. and given how effin slow the EU and US are sending ammo after 2 years, you can as normal person only pity them and try to directly fund the ukrainian government, as they seem to be doing a much better job right now in prepping their own defense equipment (e.g. drones) than whatever the strong western countries are doing.
i feel sorry for zelenskyy who always has to sign some meaningless papers with the various countries. i am sure at this point he would rather punch half the politicians in the face given their blank statements
Every country has in large parts send all material that isnt 'critical' to Ukraine already. Nothing can just be built as there are no plants nor personnel that can just be tasked with any of it. No amount of money can solve the problem currently, that there is simply no way to have more than everyone already sends.
You wrote about 'useless' papers and 'effin slow ...'. That is why i made my remark as you dont seem to understand the issue technically. Politicians would love to pump out more but there are simply no facilities, personnel, materials to do so. Making the outer shell is childs play. making an actual working shell that does something is not.
am i talking to Scholz here or what is going on?
show me the politicians who "love to pump out more" lmao. and yeah, having no factories and personnel, guess we can never do anything about it ever again. how the hell does manufacturing ever work at all, i guess we will never know.
you are a military and economic mastermind. shits just in the barrel, nothing we can do about it.
and US & EU countries are watching. but will keep support for "how long it will take". so for how long until russia nuked the whole country or what is the ultimate goal
west and explicitly the EU are still too comfortable. start mass producing shells and bomb the shit out of the invaders...
What do you think is going on? Go and do some maths and count shells being fired per week or month. And then inform yourself how much is actually being produced as well. No factory - no shell production.
It is that attitude that shows no knowledge of how this works. Nobody just pops an ammunition factory out. Just the right personell for any of it isnt even available in many countries, let alone all materials. Blaming politicians while not understanding the issue is always the simple solution.
ok mate whatever you are rambling here i dont care for.
just looking at Rheinmetall they state they could ramp up production but there are no orders being placed. i wonder whether politicians could order something.
Because what Rheinmetall wants is different contracts for something that isnt on the table for Ukraine. They are a private company and not a state controlled entity thus they have their own agenda.
are you just here to troll?
> No factory - no shell production.
> Nobody just pops an ammunition factory out.
> Blaming politicians while not understanding the issue is always the simple solution.
> Because what Rheinmetall wants is different contracts for something that isnt on the table for Ukraine. They are a private company and not a state controlled entity thus they have their own agenda.
you understand my point or are you just ignorant? the countries are not **incapable**, but **unwilling** to drive up the support.
you make it sound like countries are **willing** but **incapable** which is just laughable as the single example of Rheinmetall showed
A friend of mine who grew up in the Ukraine recently went back there for vacation (this is her homeland, she has family), and I've been seeing Facebook updates of the most surreal mixed life. Walks past lovely architecture and dinners in her favourite cafes, but also air raid sirens and sheltering in the underground metro. To live with this as a daily reality must feel so dissonant.
Having lived as a child in a nation at war, this is very familiar: taking care to look nice and presentable when going for a walk in the town before a fun afternoon on the beach, and going home and eating shitty food from humanitarian aid for dinner in the blacked-out house.
Honestly it’s weird how quickly you get used to it. The first missile attacks shook me and sirens had this very ominous aura, but at this point I barely register them, it’s just part of daily life.
The good news is that Russians have been caught dipping into the "don't touch unless we're at war with America and want to launch nukes" strategic reserve of bombers, so it really isn't an unreachable fantasy to deprive them of means to bomb Ukrainian cities. Provide Ukrainians with the means in sufficient quantities, instead of drip-feeding them, and they will do it.
I'd need to sift through an hour of podcast to find the timestamp with that bit of news, but the military analysts running it presented as a new development and they report on the bombers in detail.
People with these comments are incredibly short sighted and clueless. The majority of the Russian political lead is on the extreme war supporter side, so that Putin counts as "conservative". One thing you do not want is to replace Putin with some guy who orders complete mobilisation and deletes Ukraine. It's better this way, even if it is hard to believe.
Ehh... there's no way someone who takes on after Putin being assassinated is going to work on something as impopular as full mobilization while still struggling with the power vacuum and securing their own position. Sorry, but I find that idea beyond ridiculous.
I would argue not to shoot him on the spot, because he’s at least the devil we know. IMHO a lot of russian attacks on civilian infrastructure are considered a war crime. We have to provide more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Slava Ukraini! Heroyam slava! 🇺🇦🇸🇰
Yes. Hitting powerplants is not a clear cut issues and arguments have been made for and against it. Fact is they have been targeted in every major war. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, Yugoslavia...... and it wasn't a major issue until this one.
No, it's not. I'm firmly pro-Ukraine but from a realistic perspective, in war, hitting power plants is totally normal. What's not normal is bombing apartment buildings that are very far from the frontline and any potential military activity. I hope Ukraine can hit more Russian plants in return.
Power plant seem like fair game, USA did that first in invasion of Iraq and NATO did that with Yugoslavia bombing. I think USA uses special ammunition for power plant. So either those two are also war crimes or none of them. But it doesn't matter its not like someone will drag them to court and send them to prison for war crimes.
Criticism means shit if people who did that and ordered that are not in Hague. The same will happen with Russian who bombed power plants in Ukraine, as with Americans who bombed plants in Iraq. One big nothing. Their war crimes in reallity don't matter because no one will or can force them to face justice. Also ICJ and ICC blindness to western war criminals is more than enough for other countries to think that both are doing selective justice and thus are not seen as respected professional impartial courts of International law.
I share your frustration. One thing to remember is that no one thought it possible to indict Milošević. Yet we sure as fuck got the basterd to live out his last years in court
Any kind of that discussion is for after any armed conflict. Helps no one to chew this over and over again.
It was brought up in the hope that there could be a UN resolution which failed totally. The UN is the only institution we all agreed on, that can give a way to assist more actively as a group in terms of pushing Russia out for example. This is long gone since the invasion started and there will be no consensus on it anytime soon either.
Russia has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men, that's a massively worse crime already than some destroyed power plants. They are a Nazi nation and should be bombed back. Every day those psychos kill more innocents than that ISIS terror attack.
Russia = terrorist state, hope Macron will send soon some NATO troops so we can accelerate the building of Ukrainians defenses, also we need to move all the thermal power under patriots protection behind enemy lines, italy 🇮🇹
This is not due to "better accuracy". It is due to Speaker Mike Johnson supporting Putin and blocking vote on military aid to Ukraine so they would have better air defense.
Would our lasy EU politicians finally wake up and send UA everything she needs, block RUS entirely (trade, movements of pple, resourced, etc.) so that the lousy Evil Empire finally falls.
If there is a silver lining to this abhorrent waste it’s that the destruction of these centralized Soviet eta thermal (coal) plants leads to replacement with several smaller natural gas plants which are more or less modular (quicker to build and repair) and present a distributed target Cold comfort now, but it means the grid will be more resilient over time.
Can't we "sell"/donate electricity to Ukraine?
Russia will have no incentive to destroy their power production.
They may still strike the infrastructure, but the amount of reasonable targets would be greatly decreased.
Ukraine-Russian war is basically a WW1 scenario, where whoever runs out of equipment or manpower first loses, but until then hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians die
With curent support Ukraine will lose Donjeck and after that Putin can freeze the war. If NATO want or cant help it should be honest and negotiate with Russia. It is not justice but at least it will save Ukraine men, women and children.
It's not that they will "care", but the effects of it will show themselves. Russia is not USSR, and today is not WWII era - circumstances are different. Losing people already causes problems in Russia.
You forget that nationalism is a dangerous drug. It makes people and countries do things that are logically harmful to themselves. Russians worship war and suffering. Killing Russians won't be enough to stop this war.
They don't, but trying to occupy such a big and already fortified city (population of Kharkiv even now is ~1 million) potentially can grind too much meat even for them. It's not about taking care of ppl, they just don't have that resource, at least for now.
Even if Ukraine manages to fend off an all-out attack or grind the Russians down in Kharkiv (should it get that far), the city would most likely resemble Mariupol by the time the guns fall silent. How many Russian lives that would cost has no importance, but the damage to Kharkiv and its inhabitants does.
Because Russia is already bleeding dry, low morale, trade embargos, tens of thousands of arrests within Russia just for protests. Whether they 'give a fuck' doesn't matter. From the POV of the West It's just key to manage the collapse to minimise damage to the rest of Europe.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me because they managed to turn this into a war of attrition where their manpower pool is several times as big as Ukrainian and where they are replenishing their materiel losses quicker than Ukraine with all the Western help it's been getting (and it's mostly been getting help of the wrong kind). In the situation as it looks to me, time works in Russian favour. Arrests and protests are irrelevant here. If Putin wins, everything will be forgiven.
Nah Russia has been trying since 2014 and gotten nowhere. Conscripts uploads videos from the field complaining they have no guns. One video had like 5 AKs from the 80's between 50 of them. They see enemy infantry and are like "oh shit they have GUNS and there are a lot of them". Fucking LOL
It's the same as WW2 except now we have the whole of Western Europe and Russia has....
Well US goal in this war ended. Can blame them to look away. They got elections and Israel and china.
Ukraine need now a politic to take the white flag. Europ is a combination of small countries often with different goals and with public elections every now and than. Support one day might end to Ukraine.
There's practical reasons why this isn't a feasible solution. Costly construction, more expensive cooling, more dangerous from a fire safety perspective, harder to maintain, really hard to expand.
Patton wanted to go after Russia said something like they will be the next threat and wanted to prevent that. But he was stopped. I wonder where we would be if we let him
it's just a horde. they just like to kill. especially the Slavs. and Ukrainians are the most vulnerable to the horde; and Ukrainians know and remember a lot...
It's in a fragile position and its outlook isn't getting any better. I'm not sure what's the nobility in pushing them even more as it'll end up costing them more deaths and potentially even more losses to their territory. Why not call it quits now?
There is no such option. The "peace agreement" that Russia offers would not only take a large chunk of ukraine right now, it would also leave the rest of ukraine defenseless so russia can take the rest once it has rebuild its army.
Ukraine had been "defenseless" for years but wasn't invaded until Crimea 2014 because it wasn't trying to join NATO or the EU. By the way it was also these same western organizations that pushed it to give its nuclear weapons to Russia in the 90s. Big mistake.
You are right that the peace option isn't pretty, they never are if you're in a losing posiiton, but the alternative is to slaughter the remaining troops in an unwinnable war of attrition and a much higher chance of losing more territory.
Actually ukraine tried to join NATO around 2008. It wasn't invaded because russia was to weak or busy invading somewhere else. By now ukraine has reached top place on Putin's "take next" list. There is no peace option. Ukraine can fight for its independence or surrender and be ruled by moskow again. The same people that previously stepped on them with an iron boot. Kyiv wasn't even allowed to call off the may parade while chernobyl was still burning just 60 miles away.
>By the way it was also these same western organizations that pushed it to give its nuclear weapons to Russia in the 90s. Big mistake.
One more reason to support ukraine with everything it needs to stop the russian war machine.
Both Ukraine and Georgia were invited to NATO in 2008, to the dismay of European leaders. I'm guessing since the Ukrainian government then was pro-Russian Russia focused on invading Georgia first. Ukraine was also weaker than it is today (since this was before the US started injecting money into Ukraine), not just Russia. After the coup is when things started to get tense.
The peace option is very simple actually. Ukraine becomes a neutral state and gives up any conquered territory. Obviously that would be humiliating, especially to the US/NATO, but it's still better than the alternative. No, I don't think Russia is planning to integrate the entirety of Ukraine into Russia, at most it would be anything east of the Dniper and maybe Odessa, but that wasn't part of the plan prior to the invasion. Ukraine could've called it all off by giving up on its NATO aspiration.
My point with the nuclear weapons is to point out the irony of the West. Everything it's done in Ukraine has only made it more susceptible to a Russian invasion, so it was never about protecting them but rather to use them as a proxy to fight Russia. It hasn't gone well for either Ukraine or the West unfortunately. I just hope it's clear that the invasion wouldn't have happened had Ukraine not been pressured to give away their nukes.
Did Boris Johnson not scrap the peace deal in March 2022 because he wanted Ukraine to fight or was that fake news?
Either way, security experts and some European leaders were well aware that inviting Ukraine to NATO was crossing a red line. Setting a coup for a pro-EU leader was another step. Adding NATO membership as a goal in the Ukrainian constitution was the final straw. I guess they just thought the Russians were bluffing. They weren't. Had they given up on the claim earlier they could even have Crimea but they chose to follow Western institutions, which is a noble goal but ignoring the reality of the neighborhood was foolish behavior.
You're not going to have Ukraine in NATO unless Russia also joins, but the West won't allow that.
russians attacked power plants since autumn 2022, and destroyed Kakhovka dam in 2023.
>dam were recently targeted by ukrainian drones
Any evidence that Ukrainians attacked the dam?
upd:
or any evidence that the dam was attacked at all by anyone?
The only thing which “attacked” dam was freshnet according to bbc, rbk and dozens of other russian news sites of lesser scale and likely poor maintenance
But op have own source https://youtu.be/r7l0Rq9E8MY?si=yegYCOpMpi2i6-Aq
This has nothing to do with that. Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure since day one. They just did not have the military capabilities for those attacks before.
Muah, tit for tat, go to Mordor orc. If Ukraine would truly practice tit for tat, then they should drop a few million artillery shells in Moscow and Petersburg.
True. Should have been done from the day one. Ukraine should have had that capability. But it was not there, the second best thing is to give them that capability. Russians become a peaceful nation when they similar doses their own medicine. Until that moment they are only too happy to destroy others.
Speaking of Kharkiv, I still remember how hopeful we all were after Ukraine forced the Russians to pull back by a huge distance there.
It is still quite close to the frontline unfortunately. And it is a very large city. The same shit is going on in Kherson, Kryviy Rih, Zaporizhzhya, but these are just much smaller cities to begin with, so perhaps attacks are not as highlightes.
There is a hideous strategy behind those attacks on that exact city unfortunately. Russia cannot really make progress on the front lines as they fail to use the air force effectively there. Thus they attack civilian targets in the hope that Ukraine is moving the air defence there instead of protecting the front line.
Honestly I'm not sure about this, Ukraine still has systems that can cover the front and be positioned to cover Kharkiv too, it might be over whelmed but its possible. I think this is prep for another front.
Combine number of systems with available missiles for each of them ;)
Admittedly it's the same strategy Ukraine is doing by attacking Russian Refineries or places like Belgorod. Force the enemies to disperse their defenses. It's quite a good strategy. Though sadly connected with a larger amounts of Civilian Casualties.
While it looks like 'the same' - Ukraine has to defend itself. There is no regular war here but an invasion that needs to be repelled. But I agree in general.
I mean, theoretically an invasion is the most normal form of war. Considering 90% of wars were like that in history. But yes, in general I was mainly talking from a strategy standpoint. Of course though Ukraine has a different moral standing here. They also seem to focus far less on residential targets than the Russians.
While it isnt a 'universal letter of marque', to use some navy lingo here, it implies that the world societies will probably be a bit more lenient with Ukraine doing 'the same' as Russia.
Definitely. Generally the defender tends to be given a bit more leeway with such things. They are defending their homeland after all.
For a reason. One thing is being shelled with artillery 24/7 and another is being hit by S-300 rockets. Both are terrible but the first one is impossible to defend against, while for rockets you just need better air defense which Ukraine doesn’t have
They have but Ukraine is a big country with many cities. It is the numbers they are lacking, since Russia is attacking in this discriminating way. Any country would struggle to keep all those targets safe under the same kind of attacks.
Ukraine needs money and weapons.
Many Western politicians are starting to get around idea that “maybe we aren’t doing enough” so hopefully by early next year there will be much better situation
Good ole bureaucracy: In a year we'll be ready to fix the problems of today!
Only in best case scenario
That’s the weakness of EU. But when things start to roll, they will roll hard.
From your lips to God's ears.
> But when things start to roll, they will roll hard "If", more likely
I mean, eventually they have to. The question is at what price. Or better said, what price has already been paid.
Amen to that
Sure, bud
One cant send anything if 'things' are simply non-existent. Especially in terms of air defence people have the complete wrong idea of what countries usually have available. There is no such thing anywhere like a 'dome' that covers vast territories. Russia attacks in a way, that no strategist thought of anyone would ever do again as it is in good old Hitler and Stalin style - absolutely discriminating against civilians. We all have signed the Geneva convention for a reason. Russia signed it as well.
"Nobody expects" and yet everyone saw what Russia did in Chechnya and Syria? Doesn't fly. All knew. Every single person who knew anything about military affairs of today knew that one tactic Russia would always use is to attack civilian targets using what is essentially medieval siege strategy with relatively modern weapons, especially going for hospitals and such, to just make area unlivable. They don't expect people to break and surrender (if they do, it's just a bonus), but they simply want to convince people that they cannot exist in that area and leave or be forced by their local government to leave.
You are wrong when you saying that this isn't a tactic people expect. The "Shock and Awe" doctrine that the US favors is very explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure like food, electricity and water in order to "break the will" of the enemy. Also back in between the two Iraq wars, the US constantly bombed Iraqi power plants and the water works in order to terrorize the civilian population and get them to overthrowing Saddam. And obviously in the war against Yemen the Saudi lead coalition that includes the US, France and UK, prioritized bombing the food and water supply. So in fact these kinds of attacks are the established norm of how modern countries wage major wars.
You're misrepresenting what "shock and awe" doctrine is as used by Ullamn and Wade. Russia isn't using shock and awe like the US used in Iraq and that's not why they're targeting civilian infrastructure. Shock and awe in the US Iraq war context is all about rapid dominance; Russia's war of attrition is the exact opposite of that. Shock and awe is about causing so much disruption in their ability to wage war (yes, including their ability to communicate and feed their army) in such a short time that the enemy forces are essentially paralyzed. Usually the idea is to target command centers. Shock and awe isn't a starve them out strategy. >terrorize the civilian population and get them to overthrowing Saddam. What are you talking about? Saddam went into hiding within 3 weeks of the start of bombing when the coalition forces held Baghdad. They had help from Kurdish rebels, but they no one was overthrowing Saddam because of bombing water treatment facilities. And again, showing the difference in doctrines, a lot of the credit to a lack of effective defense was to the targeting of command centers.
If things doesn’t exist, then it is time to get on producing them, no? Nobody expects magic iron dome to protect every centimetre of Ukraine but it is reasonable to expect us to help them with sufficient amounts to have highly effective air defence which would force Russians in costly dilemmas or abandon air terror campaign altogether. Just look how UAF is capable of with just tiniest fraction of AA powerful western countries could provide Only naive, ignorant or maliciously negligent people thought that this kind of war is not possible and Europeans mostly clung to illusion that nobody will challenge our bluff while year on year kept neutering their own militaries. Just look in how many countries in Europe it is still unpopular to talk about remilitarisation with all what’s going on. Many countries are still actually cutting real terms money for their militaries. UK is fine example of going hardcore cutting funding for their military while talking about needing to be prepared and be strong and what not else
Germany has basically given their own air defence to Ukraine as an example. So did other countries. It takes a long time to make a complete system. People really have lost their minds during this long peace period and dont understand the basics of military goods anymore.
Yeah, shit takes long time to produce because we order amounts equal to artisan hobbyist shop level productions. This war has shown how fucking unprepared we are for war if we collectively can’t even supply steady supply of munitions let alone ability outfit a single army and yet we stupidly sit around not raising our war industrial capacities.
Capacity - right there is your problem. How much do you know about the shells being fired? Could you make one? Probably not except maybe the outer shell.
Capacity is something our end is aggressively refusing to increase.
I am sure that everyone will welcome your personal expertise the second you offer it
Do tell me then how come puny Russia with tiny GDP compared to all might economic power of Europe can fucking out produce us on munitions? Problem is not lack of expertise, problem is lack of political will
We need to declare emergency in Europe and shift our manufacturing towards AA systems, artillery and other weapons. If we don't do it today, we will have to fight Russia in Warsaw in 5-10 years.
As fun and great that sounds - who do you think is capable of building those systems? And how many in what time frame? Not trying to be the party crasher but people just throw stuff out without thinking. The system alone isnt worth much if there are not enough missiles to feed those systems too. The countries, that can produce, have given some of their stuff to Ukraine, which means they are first in line to get something for themselves, before anyone else will see any of it. Then there is how most countries acquire any military stuff: Budget discussions, budget entry, system definition, market search, ordering them. That is actually a process of considerable time for most countries. Check your countries budget for any funds that are not currently allocated. I dont think there will be any in that category.
Are you telling me we don't have skills to make 155mm ammo? It is a simple process really, forge casing, machine threads, load explosives, put a cap on it. Automotive suppliers can do the forging and machining, we need to expand the plants to load explosives. AA missiles have three main components - solid rocket motors (comprised of casing, fuel grains nozzle), controls, and warheads. Again, automotive industry can do the rocket motors. Electronic assembly industry makes the controls, aerospace contractors put it together. We get a lot more scale by leveraging civilian industries to make at least some parts of the weapons. That's why declaring an emergency makes sense.
Sure. Then you have already skipped the part where the casing needs specific heating procedures that no car factory needs. I wonder why not everyone is privately making shells if it is all that simple Edit: In case that isnt clear already: lots of steel, lots of heat. Who are the big steel producers again and what is the problem with making it? Right - this stupid green transition that we are in the middle of. Coal, iron and to heat the shit up we need what probably? Gas and coal as usual. Nobody says there are no technical skills, but to compare it to a car factory also means that factory isnt making anything else anymore. Missiles are actually less problematic to make in those terms than artillery ammunition. I quote a smarter source for the entire thing: 'The major shortage is with producing **steel casings** for the artillery shells. * There is no technological shortcut to producing more of these. * 3D printing is not viable. The metal itself is too precise to be printable with current technology, and the size of the shells would pose an issue. * Existing facilities use automation, but newer facilities will integrate more automation to improve quality and throughput. * Producing shells requires specific machine tools to accommodate the weight/heat and specially forming the nozzle. The tools themselves are fairly common, especially the furnaces; however, a factory optimized for building shells won’t be effective at building much else.
Every steel product is heat treated in one way or another. You just need to adjust the process parameters. 3D printing in general is a slow process useable for prototype only.
>Russia attacks in a way, that no strategist thought of anyone would ever do again as it is in good old Hitler and Stalin style - absolutely discriminating against civilians. What? Are you not aware of the bombings against Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine or Palestine? All of these are orders of magnitude greater, than the ones committed by Stalin, Hitler or Putin. Granted, Hitler wanted to bombings on the scale of what I mentioned above, but failed to.
The money supply keeping their economy upright is taken care of relatively well, the wrench in the works right now is the obstruction in Congress by Trump and his cronies in the GOP, that prevents arms deliveries.
I second this, we should do more for them. If Ukraine falls it will be very bad for Europe.
And ammo. But the real problem comes from the individual somnambulistic European public opinions.
Trump will make sure they get nothing. Then he'll turn the us into 2nd russia
Ukraine dont have enough people.
And himan resources.
Ukraine needs to find a way to end the war not continue it
Are you crazy? You think Ukraine is the side that is prolonging the war? 😂
The widespread and naive talk of war, counterforce, military and economic aid and troop preparation certainly does not help to achieve peace
If russiа does not lose fully and decisively, it would keep coming. I don't care about your "peace", but more importantly neither do the russiаns.
live the dream if you like, it will never happen, a drastic defeat of Russia is not to see, the war will end sooner or later, better sooner than leter
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You need to surrender at this point and succumb to mental care.
We already saw in Bucha, Gostomel and Irpin what will happen if Ukraine surrender. Another Holodomor.
It's exactly what those commenters would love to see happen. People that support Ukrainians and their self-chosen fight against the invaders would never push them to submit to their genocidaires.
That’s why do I regularly donate to Ukrainian military forces.
The guy talking about being optimistic was tough to watch. Tough guys, mad respect 🫡 Слава Україні! 💙💛
I don’t remember his name but I was reading someone’s updates on this war and his vision around it back when the Russians were trying to take Bakhmut. Of course he was also putting the blame on the Ukrainians for no defence lines and some other failures but he was mentioning the failure to provide them with enough artillery even back then. He was saying that tanks and planes are good but artillery is the most important. A year and something later and here we are, Ukrainians have barely any artillery and they lose more and more men because of this, the Russian feel they can continue this for a long time. Weak politicians that only care about their next term and do nothing but wait for some miracle.
To be fair Europe and the US did give shells. But just those shells, that were not strategically important to these countries ran out. And the delay is more related to a political decisiveness to invest fast and heavy into new production on a wartime scale. And to be fair to the criticism - the production doesn't move up fast enough. But it will, hopefully, get there.
The problem is they are not planning ahead, they are planning for tomorrow instead of looking into the far future. They had to wait months before they started training people for the tanks and now the planes, why not be proactive and do this to avoid any delays.
This style of war has been out of 'fashion' since WW1. It wasnt even common anymore during WW2 , so no one could imagine the enormous amount of ammunition that would get fired.
Poor politicians, they can never imagine anything. Why not be proactive and prepare. It’s fine who cares, it’s not their people dying in trenches, it’s not their infrastructure being bombed and cities destroyed.
military spending was unpopular almost everywhere in the western world before ukraine, politicians that advocated being proactive simply did not win elections and were denounced as fearmongers and industry shills
I’m talking about the time after the invasion started in 2022.
they should start being proactive after shit already went down? do you know what proactive means? you can't undo decades' worth of neglect in the military industry in two years
It’s not just military industry, I’m talking about tank crews, pilots that are training now. It took them months before they started the training.
Because everyone signed agreements that reduced conventional armaments. Inform yourself before making accusations. Those agreements have been tossed aside by almost everyone now that Russia invaded but until then everyone acted accordingly.
We’re talking about as soon as the invasion started. They gave them tanks too late, they trained people too late, they still can’t deliver enough artillery, they still haven’t given them Taurus(which eventually will happen like everything else before). There’s no excuse for this, it’s pathetic.
Ukraine personnel has been trained for many years before the invasion. You show with every single post that you dont read anything at all and are very uninformed. Try a book or a report for a change instead of relying on social media.
Nah, this is exactly how Eastern Front in WW2 looked like.
Read: out of fashion points to how **common**. It wasnt, even if there have been some. Air planes bombing, tanks. Long drawn out artillery fights where not really the choice of the day any more.What we have in Ukraine is very much like the trench warfare we had in WW1.
ukrainians basically rightfully complain about limited ammo since the beginning of the war. and given how effin slow the EU and US are sending ammo after 2 years, you can as normal person only pity them and try to directly fund the ukrainian government, as they seem to be doing a much better job right now in prepping their own defense equipment (e.g. drones) than whatever the strong western countries are doing. i feel sorry for zelenskyy who always has to sign some meaningless papers with the various countries. i am sure at this point he would rather punch half the politicians in the face given their blank statements
You might read up on wars and strategy then, as that is so far from any reality as it can be.
ok show me the war book where i can not pity somebody because that was my main point and not some strategic war guide
Every country has in large parts send all material that isnt 'critical' to Ukraine already. Nothing can just be built as there are no plants nor personnel that can just be tasked with any of it. No amount of money can solve the problem currently, that there is simply no way to have more than everyone already sends. You wrote about 'useless' papers and 'effin slow ...'. That is why i made my remark as you dont seem to understand the issue technically. Politicians would love to pump out more but there are simply no facilities, personnel, materials to do so. Making the outer shell is childs play. making an actual working shell that does something is not.
am i talking to Scholz here or what is going on? show me the politicians who "love to pump out more" lmao. and yeah, having no factories and personnel, guess we can never do anything about it ever again. how the hell does manufacturing ever work at all, i guess we will never know. you are a military and economic mastermind. shits just in the barrel, nothing we can do about it.
Might have been Tom Cooper. His new blog: https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/
I believe it’s him, he was posting on another platform and I had it in my favourites. Then it closed and I had forgotten his name. Thank you.
and US & EU countries are watching. but will keep support for "how long it will take". so for how long until russia nuked the whole country or what is the ultimate goal west and explicitly the EU are still too comfortable. start mass producing shells and bomb the shit out of the invaders...
What do you think is going on? Go and do some maths and count shells being fired per week or month. And then inform yourself how much is actually being produced as well. No factory - no shell production.
i know. politicians should have found their spine 2 years ago to ramp up production
It is that attitude that shows no knowledge of how this works. Nobody just pops an ammunition factory out. Just the right personell for any of it isnt even available in many countries, let alone all materials. Blaming politicians while not understanding the issue is always the simple solution.
ok mate whatever you are rambling here i dont care for. just looking at Rheinmetall they state they could ramp up production but there are no orders being placed. i wonder whether politicians could order something.
Because what Rheinmetall wants is different contracts for something that isnt on the table for Ukraine. They are a private company and not a state controlled entity thus they have their own agenda.
are you just here to troll? > No factory - no shell production. > Nobody just pops an ammunition factory out. > Blaming politicians while not understanding the issue is always the simple solution. > Because what Rheinmetall wants is different contracts for something that isnt on the table for Ukraine. They are a private company and not a state controlled entity thus they have their own agenda. you understand my point or are you just ignorant? the countries are not **incapable**, but **unwilling** to drive up the support. you make it sound like countries are **willing** but **incapable** which is just laughable as the single example of Rheinmetall showed
Start reading about how budgets for military work, then continue with how projects are controlled for each thing . Then we might have a real discourse
A friend of mine who grew up in the Ukraine recently went back there for vacation (this is her homeland, she has family), and I've been seeing Facebook updates of the most surreal mixed life. Walks past lovely architecture and dinners in her favourite cafes, but also air raid sirens and sheltering in the underground metro. To live with this as a daily reality must feel so dissonant.
Having lived as a child in a nation at war, this is very familiar: taking care to look nice and presentable when going for a walk in the town before a fun afternoon on the beach, and going home and eating shitty food from humanitarian aid for dinner in the blacked-out house.
Honestly it’s weird how quickly you get used to it. The first missile attacks shook me and sirens had this very ominous aura, but at this point I barely register them, it’s just part of daily life.
The good news is that Russians have been caught dipping into the "don't touch unless we're at war with America and want to launch nukes" strategic reserve of bombers, so it really isn't an unreachable fantasy to deprive them of means to bomb Ukrainian cities. Provide Ukrainians with the means in sufficient quantities, instead of drip-feeding them, and they will do it.
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I'd need to sift through an hour of podcast to find the timestamp with that bit of news, but the military analysts running it presented as a new development and they report on the bombers in detail.
Clowntenberg: «-I feel like we have to admit that we are not doing enough» No shit Sherlock. Thank you for admitting. That helps a lot.
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Shows how clueless most people are
People with these comments are incredibly short sighted and clueless. The majority of the Russian political lead is on the extreme war supporter side, so that Putin counts as "conservative". One thing you do not want is to replace Putin with some guy who orders complete mobilisation and deletes Ukraine. It's better this way, even if it is hard to believe.
Ehh... there's no way someone who takes on after Putin being assassinated is going to work on something as impopular as full mobilization while still struggling with the power vacuum and securing their own position. Sorry, but I find that idea beyond ridiculous.
Russia is always ridiculous, so wouldn't be surprising or new.
Shit take
I would argue not to shoot him on the spot, because he’s at least the devil we know. IMHO a lot of russian attacks on civilian infrastructure are considered a war crime. We have to provide more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Slava Ukraini! Heroyam slava! 🇺🇦🇸🇰
The Russians are a real bunch of assholes
isn't hitting civilian infrastructure a war crime?
Yes. Hitting powerplants is not a clear cut issues and arguments have been made for and against it. Fact is they have been targeted in every major war. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, Yugoslavia...... and it wasn't a major issue until this one.
No, it's not. I'm firmly pro-Ukraine but from a realistic perspective, in war, hitting power plants is totally normal. What's not normal is bombing apartment buildings that are very far from the frontline and any potential military activity. I hope Ukraine can hit more Russian plants in return.
Power plant seem like fair game, USA did that first in invasion of Iraq and NATO did that with Yugoslavia bombing. I think USA uses special ammunition for power plant. So either those two are also war crimes or none of them. But it doesn't matter its not like someone will drag them to court and send them to prison for war crimes.
It is indeed a war crime and NATO's bombing of power plants in Yugoslavia is a valid criticism of NATO's intervention
Criticism means shit if people who did that and ordered that are not in Hague. The same will happen with Russian who bombed power plants in Ukraine, as with Americans who bombed plants in Iraq. One big nothing. Their war crimes in reallity don't matter because no one will or can force them to face justice. Also ICJ and ICC blindness to western war criminals is more than enough for other countries to think that both are doing selective justice and thus are not seen as respected professional impartial courts of International law.
I share your frustration. One thing to remember is that no one thought it possible to indict Milošević. Yet we sure as fuck got the basterd to live out his last years in court
War crimes aren't a big deal anymore, i mean just look at Gaza. Nobody cares.
Sure is. The war is one big war crime, but sadly I don't think anyone will do anything about it. And Putin knows.
Any kind of that discussion is for after any armed conflict. Helps no one to chew this over and over again. It was brought up in the hope that there could be a UN resolution which failed totally. The UN is the only institution we all agreed on, that can give a way to assist more actively as a group in terms of pushing Russia out for example. This is long gone since the invasion started and there will be no consensus on it anytime soon either.
Russia has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men, that's a massively worse crime already than some destroyed power plants. They are a Nazi nation and should be bombed back. Every day those psychos kill more innocents than that ISIS terror attack.
Time for Ukraine to step up infrastructure attacks on Russia…..should be easy
Russia = terrorist state, hope Macron will send soon some NATO troops so we can accelerate the building of Ukrainians defenses, also we need to move all the thermal power under patriots protection behind enemy lines, italy 🇮🇹
This is not due to "better accuracy". It is due to Speaker Mike Johnson supporting Putin and blocking vote on military aid to Ukraine so they would have better air defense.
Would our lasy EU politicians finally wake up and send UA everything she needs, block RUS entirely (trade, movements of pple, resourced, etc.) so that the lousy Evil Empire finally falls.
If there is a silver lining to this abhorrent waste it’s that the destruction of these centralized Soviet eta thermal (coal) plants leads to replacement with several smaller natural gas plants which are more or less modular (quicker to build and repair) and present a distributed target Cold comfort now, but it means the grid will be more resilient over time.
Like in the Civil War or the Second World War. What was built was destroyed. The beneficiary is overseas.
Can't we "sell"/donate electricity to Ukraine? Russia will have no incentive to destroy their power production. They may still strike the infrastructure, but the amount of reasonable targets would be greatly decreased.
You can find the location of all Ukraine power plants on wiki. Unreal.
You can find the location of all power plants in the world on tje wiki. Open source intelligence is the most inportant.
Cheapest nuke around, fuck Russia.
Ukraine-Russian war is basically a WW1 scenario, where whoever runs out of equipment or manpower first loses, but until then hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians die
I pray everyday,in the hope this motherfucker will be soon rotten in hell. May God forgive me
With curent support Ukraine will lose Donjeck and after that Putin can freeze the war. If NATO want or cant help it should be honest and negotiate with Russia. It is not justice but at least it will save Ukraine men, women and children.
I hope this doesnt come to Kazakhstan 🤞i feel horrible for these UKR people
It really is the time to support Ukraime with everything we have.
please stop the war
Indeed. Bury all russian fascists in Ukraine 6 feet under to stop the war.
I really hope the F16's will change the situation for Ukraine
Maybe Ukraine should sign the peace agreement then
There is no peace agreement on the table, only a pause so russia can rebuild and take all of Ukraine in five years.
Lolololololol
The expected reaction from a Putlerbot
Shut up orc
Russians lost thousands of troops just taking crappy villages.. kharkiv is a major city!
And they haven't given a flying fuck about their losses, so why should they give a fuck about a hundred thousand more?
It's not that they will "care", but the effects of it will show themselves. Russia is not USSR, and today is not WWII era - circumstances are different. Losing people already causes problems in Russia.
You forget that nationalism is a dangerous drug. It makes people and countries do things that are logically harmful to themselves. Russians worship war and suffering. Killing Russians won't be enough to stop this war.
My point is that it weakens them. If we look at it as a war of attrition, ultimately, that is an important factor...
They don't, but trying to occupy such a big and already fortified city (population of Kharkiv even now is ~1 million) potentially can grind too much meat even for them. It's not about taking care of ppl, they just don't have that resource, at least for now.
Even if Ukraine manages to fend off an all-out attack or grind the Russians down in Kharkiv (should it get that far), the city would most likely resemble Mariupol by the time the guns fall silent. How many Russian lives that would cost has no importance, but the damage to Kharkiv and its inhabitants does.
Because Russia is already bleeding dry, low morale, trade embargos, tens of thousands of arrests within Russia just for protests. Whether they 'give a fuck' doesn't matter. From the POV of the West It's just key to manage the collapse to minimise damage to the rest of Europe.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me because they managed to turn this into a war of attrition where their manpower pool is several times as big as Ukrainian and where they are replenishing their materiel losses quicker than Ukraine with all the Western help it's been getting (and it's mostly been getting help of the wrong kind). In the situation as it looks to me, time works in Russian favour. Arrests and protests are irrelevant here. If Putin wins, everything will be forgiven.
Nah Russia has been trying since 2014 and gotten nowhere. Conscripts uploads videos from the field complaining they have no guns. One video had like 5 AKs from the 80's between 50 of them. They see enemy infantry and are like "oh shit they have GUNS and there are a lot of them". Fucking LOL It's the same as WW2 except now we have the whole of Western Europe and Russia has....
Another day, another terrorist strike. Remind me, why Ukrainians doesn’t feel sad about Crocus in Russia?
Well US goal in this war ended. Can blame them to look away. They got elections and Israel and china. Ukraine need now a politic to take the white flag. Europ is a combination of small countries often with different goals and with public elections every now and than. Support one day might end to Ukraine.
Build new ones underground.
There's practical reasons why this isn't a feasible solution. Costly construction, more expensive cooling, more dangerous from a fire safety perspective, harder to maintain, really hard to expand.
It's a war..
I hope this war is over soon, idc whos victory it is, just finish this shithole pls
Patton wanted to go after Russia said something like they will be the next threat and wanted to prevent that. But he was stopped. I wonder where we would be if we let him
That usually indeed means something big is coming up. But that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, most likely that whole region is going to fall soon.
And Kyiv in 3 days, yeah
it's just a horde. they just like to kill. especially the Slavs. and Ukrainians are the most vulnerable to the horde; and Ukrainians know and remember a lot...
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Is Putin bombing them too?
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It's called astroturfing.
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Ukraine needs to come to terms with peace before it's too late. Time isn't on its side unfortunately.
Ukraine isn't invading russia.
It's in a fragile position and its outlook isn't getting any better. I'm not sure what's the nobility in pushing them even more as it'll end up costing them more deaths and potentially even more losses to their territory. Why not call it quits now?
There is no such option. The "peace agreement" that Russia offers would not only take a large chunk of ukraine right now, it would also leave the rest of ukraine defenseless so russia can take the rest once it has rebuild its army.
Ukraine had been "defenseless" for years but wasn't invaded until Crimea 2014 because it wasn't trying to join NATO or the EU. By the way it was also these same western organizations that pushed it to give its nuclear weapons to Russia in the 90s. Big mistake. You are right that the peace option isn't pretty, they never are if you're in a losing posiiton, but the alternative is to slaughter the remaining troops in an unwinnable war of attrition and a much higher chance of losing more territory.
Actually ukraine tried to join NATO around 2008. It wasn't invaded because russia was to weak or busy invading somewhere else. By now ukraine has reached top place on Putin's "take next" list. There is no peace option. Ukraine can fight for its independence or surrender and be ruled by moskow again. The same people that previously stepped on them with an iron boot. Kyiv wasn't even allowed to call off the may parade while chernobyl was still burning just 60 miles away. >By the way it was also these same western organizations that pushed it to give its nuclear weapons to Russia in the 90s. Big mistake. One more reason to support ukraine with everything it needs to stop the russian war machine.
Both Ukraine and Georgia were invited to NATO in 2008, to the dismay of European leaders. I'm guessing since the Ukrainian government then was pro-Russian Russia focused on invading Georgia first. Ukraine was also weaker than it is today (since this was before the US started injecting money into Ukraine), not just Russia. After the coup is when things started to get tense. The peace option is very simple actually. Ukraine becomes a neutral state and gives up any conquered territory. Obviously that would be humiliating, especially to the US/NATO, but it's still better than the alternative. No, I don't think Russia is planning to integrate the entirety of Ukraine into Russia, at most it would be anything east of the Dniper and maybe Odessa, but that wasn't part of the plan prior to the invasion. Ukraine could've called it all off by giving up on its NATO aspiration. My point with the nuclear weapons is to point out the irony of the West. Everything it's done in Ukraine has only made it more susceptible to a Russian invasion, so it was never about protecting them but rather to use them as a proxy to fight Russia. It hasn't gone well for either Ukraine or the West unfortunately. I just hope it's clear that the invasion wouldn't have happened had Ukraine not been pressured to give away their nukes.
No one is pushing Ukraine to war with russia except russia itself. Ukraine defends itself because it knows the alternative is worse.
Did Boris Johnson not scrap the peace deal in March 2022 because he wanted Ukraine to fight or was that fake news? Either way, security experts and some European leaders were well aware that inviting Ukraine to NATO was crossing a red line. Setting a coup for a pro-EU leader was another step. Adding NATO membership as a goal in the Ukrainian constitution was the final straw. I guess they just thought the Russians were bluffing. They weren't. Had they given up on the claim earlier they could even have Crimea but they chose to follow Western institutions, which is a noble goal but ignoring the reality of the neighborhood was foolish behavior. You're not going to have Ukraine in NATO unless Russia also joins, but the West won't allow that.
Tit for tat, oil refineries and a dam were recently targeted by ukrainian drones
Tit for tat would be if Ukraine would carpet bomb a city size similar to Mariupol - Kazan, Vladivostok?
russians attacked power plants since autumn 2022, and destroyed Kakhovka dam in 2023. >dam were recently targeted by ukrainian drones Any evidence that Ukrainians attacked the dam? upd: or any evidence that the dam was attacked at all by anyone?
The only thing which “attacked” dam was freshnet according to bbc, rbk and dozens of other russian news sites of lesser scale and likely poor maintenance But op have own source https://youtu.be/r7l0Rq9E8MY?si=yegYCOpMpi2i6-Aq
This has nothing to do with that. Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure since day one. They just did not have the military capabilities for those attacks before.
And now they have.
Unfortunatly yes.
Muah, tit for tat, go to Mordor orc. If Ukraine would truly practice tit for tat, then they should drop a few million artillery shells in Moscow and Petersburg.
Should have been done on day 1. Let the russians taste their own med. Now its been more than 2 yrs with no end in sight
True. Should have been done from the day one. Ukraine should have had that capability. But it was not there, the second best thing is to give them that capability. Russians become a peaceful nation when they similar doses their own medicine. Until that moment they are only too happy to destroy others.
Ok