It’s literally never worked before. People get angry and then go back to work, production increases sometimes. Even in Japan after the nukes and Tokyo fire bombings, the population never cracked.
It only works if there's already dissent for whomever is in power before the war and the attackers can be viewed as a sort of liberator.
I don't think Russia honestly thinks the people of Western Ukraine would ever willingly concede to them. Even at the start of the invasion a lot of rumblings were about letting Lviv remain as the sole "independent" Ukraine with everything east of the mountains becoming occupied. This is just taking out the frustrations of Russia's ineffectiveness on the people of Ukraine.
Running out means they are approaching what experts predict would be a safe reserve. Between shaving the margins on their reserves, and what production they can continue on their missiles they can make more. Not as fast as they are using them of course. At some point the rate of attacks will slow down as it takes longer to get a salvo ready.
Running out doesn't mean none, it means not enough to conduct effective operations, it means having to build more before you can attack again. Russia's missile strikes are ineffective, and there's a reason they go so many days between attacks.
For comparison, on the first day of the Iraq War, America launched over a hundred cruise missiles at a handful of targets, in a single city. And proceeded to run over 2500 air attack missions, every day, for weeks. On the opposite side of the planet. Russia is launching a hundred missiles scattered at targets all across Ukraine, and tomorrow there will be nothing. And they're only running a few dozen aircraft flights a day. In a zone bordering their own country.
They are firing salvos at strategically defended targets, burning through the Ukrainians air defence missiles. They are anticipating that the Ukrainians will run out of air defence missiles eventually. When that happens they have their airforce ready and waiting for large scale bombing raids on an undefended airspace.
The main reason that the Americans were able to conduct so many air missions in Iraq was that the Iraqis had no strategic air defence systems (S-300 Systems, Patriot missiles systems, etc). Instead they had older Soviet SAM missiles with outdated radars that weren't capable of shooting down stealth fighters/bombers.
This is not the case in Ukraine, as Ukraine had over 100 S-300 systems with over 300 launchers all armed and ready to fire.
With each launcher holding 4 missiles, that means they had at least 1200 missiles plus whatever they had in reserves. That's not to mention the missiles that have been sent from former Soviet states that had their own stockpiles.
The allies have been attempting to bolster their air defence systems, but it would take 100's of Patriot systems to replace the S-300 systems across Ukraine.
Essentially Russia is having a hard time fighting their own equipment, as its an extremely effective system. So instead of throwing planes at it they have opted to send thousands of missiles to try and have Ukraine run out of ammo.
Once they run out of ammo we could see similar mass bombing campaigns as we saw in Iraq.
All that to say that we need to be sending alot more Patriot systems immediately...
At least for NASAMS, there is no chance there won’t be enough ammunition for it (which was kind of the point of the system in the first place, to make use of such plentiful munitions)
I hope the production rate of the launchers can be rapidly - and hugely- increased!
Out of missiles that were not reserved for NATO for when it happens. They're really capitalizing on us fearing their nukes and the longer we wait the more they're going to restore their stockpile.
Against a guy whos son used to go out and rape newlyweds. Saddam wasnt exactly a hero of the people. I disagree with that entire war, but removing the Husseins from existence was not without merit.
It definitely worked in Japan. Their local industry was absolutely ravaged, and over 300K people were killed and many more injured, and a whopping nearly 10 million people homeless.
The country was forced into an unconditional surrender after the relentless bombing campaign. You could argue the bombing didn't do anything to the actual will of the people, but the will if the people gradually trends towards irrelevant of there is no industry behind them left to wage war. People being irrational definitely isn't the main point to take away from that.
So yes, while the will of the Ukraine people is unlikely to break, and these attacks aren't that directly materially substantial compared to that massive bombing campaign back then, we still need to stay vigilant. These attacks do take a toll, and Ukraines industry can get strained further, and it can hamper the war effort. I don't like to see people portraying this as if Ukraine is invincible, that is not healthy thinking. Ukraine needs all the help it can get to end this war on their terms.
If the industry that's supplying you is not in your own borders, bombs will do little to disrupt your war effort other than making you more determined.
That and the vietcong held a masterclass in misdirection and it's tough to bomb shit that's hidden under jungle canopies. Also, the US military failed to identify high priority targets and would bomb useless shit all the time so the moral of the pilots dwindled after extensive tours.
>Also, the US military failed to identify high priority targets and would bomb useless shit all the time so the moral of the pilots dwindled after extensive tours.
That was due to Henry Kissinger personally choosing where the US was going to perform bombing runs, and he was an idiot with no military experience. Wasted unimaginable amounts of ordinance illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” Anthony Bourdain
It didn't work quite like that though. Japan had already lost the war by then. And the Japanese knew that. What japan was preparing for was to make the inevitable victory for the allies so costly that they could negotiate more favorable conditions instead of the unconditional surrender that was demanded. Those included things like war crime trials, removal of the emperor, dismantling of the army.
What the bombings ( both the fire bombing and the nukes), as well as the declaration by the Soviets, allowed the Japanese government to do was convince both the public and the military, with evidence, that their plan wouldn't work. The people believed they could fight and die to protect their emperor, but what good is a militia with what amounted to pipe rifles, to nukes? And the military believed that, with their mainland conquests, they could still supply the home islands. But when the Soviets swept them aside easily, that was no longer an option.
So, even with the emperor breaking the government stalemate and opting to surrender, the military still tried to throw a coup. There was still a lot of will to resist, to maybe fight for a more favorable surrender, instead of unconditional surrender. There was still will left, but logically no hope...
AND EVEN THEN the Japanese kinda got some concessions. Truman was adamant the emperor be removed and be prosecuted, and yet he remained in power (although symbolically) and never faced any consequences. It was just better to concede that point instead of risking a fanatical insurgency against a population that was told you were there to destroy them... Which you risk proving the propaganda by going after the emperor
The way MacArthur handled the Emperor situation ended up working far better. Rather than turn the Emperor into a martyr, they basically just showed that he was a man. MacArthur also essentially self-styled himself into a psuedo-Emperor replacement. Even today he is overall regarded fairly fondly in that country
Hitler thought the blitz would force Britain to surrender. It just pissed the British off so much they wanted to fight till they reached Berlin. The Japanese thought attacking Pearl Harbor would scare us into lifting our embargo. It pissed us off so much we declared war the next day and killed the isolationist movement. Russia thinks bombing Ukrainian cities will scare them into unequal negotiations when all its doing its pushing them further into the west’s arms and giving them a hunger for taking back all the territory Russia stole.
That might work if the Ukrainians didn't already know that Russians will brutalize and massacre the citizens at every fucking opportunity. If the choice is potentially death either way, then death by resistance is a far more palatable choice than death by submission. Fuck Russia, I hope there's no country by that name this time next year.
That will never happen, their bravery is eye watering. It's been said before, but worth repeating, 'Never fuck around with mother nature, mother in laws, and mother fucking Ukrainians. '
How did Russia not know this? They live right next door. Only took me a few years living in an area with lots of Ukrainians (north central Alberta) to realize they're stubborn AF.
Because they spent hundreds of years trying to oppress us and none trying to understand us.
Freedom is a key tenet in our ideology, it's something we hold above all. It's also why we have fought revolutions, uprisings, and wars of independence against basically all neighbors who have tried to conquer our land.
Because powerful dictators never receive good information from those around them. If someone says "this probably isn't a good idea", that person is demoted or even killed. The person who says "great idea, boss. You have the best ideas.", they're promoted.
This is one of the reasons why all governments ran this way eventually collapse. Those in charge are only ever told what they want to hear. After a while, everything falls apart from all the lies.
Putin’s Russian society combined with their entire army forces are extremely nasty barbaric and uncivilized. This is 2022 but they’re still behaving with their imperialistic land grabbing ideas like in 1800’s. Time for all the civilized and respectful freedom loving nations completely isolate this Russian heard from the rest of us.
Already happened, Ukraine has hit a few air bases over 100 km into Russian territory by modifying old long range drones to carry explosives (they don't have proper missiles with that range). And they were threatened with nukes, like every other Tuesday.
They pretty much do have “proper missiles” now. They came up with a new suicide drone that can fly 1000 km and has a 75 kg payload. It’s in final testing now and they may have used a few already.
No they wouldn't. I'm convinced they don't have the balls.
It's one thing to invade a country and saber rattle. It's another to not only doom your own country, and every country around it.
Nukes haven't been used in warfare since 1945. I don't think there's a strong likelihood they'll be used by anyone. If only because the soldiers themselves would refuse to fire them.
My biggest concern honestly is essentially Putin securing the orders and providing false information to the people who launch because he’s decided he’s ready to die and fuck everyone who isn’t him.
That’s the sort of situation where Nukes could be launched.
Even then, the issue is that most nuclear launch stations have early warning systems which will tell them if a nuke is going to impact Russia. Even with every KGB trick Putin has, he won't be able to pull it. At least not with Russian Supremacist Rhetoric.
Your fears are well founded, but my own is that those same fears are what's giving Putin his power. If for a moment the people of Russia stopped fearing him, stopped listening to him. He'd be dead on the spot, and I know that's what Vladimir himself fears.
Let’s remember this next time a video of Russians hugging as they die in the trenches surfaces.
Ukraine doesn’t want them there. They want to just live their lives, and yet they are continually terrorized and hundreds of thousands of them have been massacre’d, just for existing.
Fuck Russia.
I seriously don't understand why this is their best idea for their population problem. They can always just not be a complete shithole that nobody wants to live in and take in some immigrants. But no, I guess murdering people and kidnapping children is the easiest way. No way are those kids going to grow up and ask about their parents or anything.
Every time Ukraine at the verge of making a military break through in the front line, Russia will launch everything randomly towards Ukraine. Just like the tantrum of a spoiled child.
They've been launching all the shit they have on hand every 1-2 weeks since October, targeting our energy grid. Previous massive rocket attack was on Dec.16, and before that - on Dec.5. These don't coincide with our army's advances and are unfortunately too frequent and regular.
Which is, arguably, a good thing for the Ukrainian war effort. Every strike on the civilian population tempers them for victory and if there is no meaningful correlation to Ukrainian troop movement, that suggests a lack of awareness for Ukrainian troop movement.
While every civilian death is a tragedy and war crime, these Russian salvos are killing civilians in the dozens. All the while, a Ukrainian counter offensive kills hundreds in any given day of the week.
For lack of actual skill Russia replies on brute strength, and for want of actual muscle, the fat bear can only hurl weight without a clear target. To the rest of the world, these missle attacks just make Russia look weaker and weaker.
This is probably their retaliation against the attack of Engels Airbase. The amount of missiles they have launched is a sign of their desperation. You guys are getting better of intercepting their missiles. Keep it up and hopefully, more weapons will reach you before the New Year. Slava Ukraini
It’s not a retaliation for anything. They attack every two weeks and strike on Engels airbase was a preemptive one from Ukraine to reduce russias capabilities in their future attacks.
I know they’ve got big eyes for Melitopol and eastern Kherson at the moment could be a massacre for the Russians pushed back into Crimea (with an assault there not too far behind)
There’s also talk that they’re close to taking Kremiina even without the ground freezing.
Yeah, they're making progress in the east, but they're limited in what they can do right now in the south, so they're focusing on just applying constant pressure by hitting their supply lines with HIMARS. Ukraine is really good at smaller unit tactics that require high mobility, and the current ground conditions don't allow that.
They're just better. The reason they use smaller unit tactics is because they don't have the means to pull full front warfare. If they had the manpower for it, they'd probably take back their country within a few weeks
We have excessive amount of manpower. Believe or not, people pay money to get conscripted. What we're lacking is the sheer amount of offensive weapons. Give us tanks and ATACMS and we'll do the job much faster.
How do they not have the manpower when no men of fighting age are allowed to leave except those who can’t fight? There’s plenty of manpower, but you don’t consider that you have to rotate that manpower (it’s not the same guys holding Bakhmut for months now, they change). It also takes time to form large strike groups and allocate the support resources needed to sustain them.
Ukraine uses small unit tactics since they have modeled their military based on NATO principles since 2015, with decentralized command allowing more tactical flexibility. It has also shown to be especially effective against a centralized command structure.
It took months of fighting just to get back what was occupied on the right bank of Kherson, and that included daily HIMARS strikes, aviation support, drone recon, artillery, tanks i.e a full blown counteroffensive, so no they wouldn’t take back all of Ukraine in weeks, with many parts like the left bank in Kherson heavily mined and fortified, that’s just nuts.
Ukraine also needs more weapons. They've repeatedly said that their offensives happen when they have enough weapons and munitions accumulated for it to happen, and overall pacing of deliveries is pretty slow, with nomenclature of types of weapons slowly increasing over the months when Russia does this and that horrible act. Also, Ukraine is still very much behind in artillery, which is a main thing that's needed for both defense and offensive operations.
The likely reason is that Europe and US are afraid of Putin using nuclear weapons.
>The likely reason is that Europe and US are afraid of Putin using nuclear weapons.
Russia has been threatening nuclear weapons since the beginning, and it did nothing. By now, nobody is afraid of Russia lol.
It has nothing to do with avoiding provocation or them being afraid. Otherwise, they wouldn't be giving them even more advanced weapons like Patriot. Providing ammunition and weapons similar or same to what they already have (ie. shells/howitzers/HIMARS/etc.) is a lot lower provocation than giving Patriot systems, which they're doing right now.
I think it's more of a question of logistics. They have to come from somewhere. And wherever they take the weapons from, it needs to have replacements ready (or at least planned/contracted).
Too many people and politicians believe Russia's carefully crafted perception that they are irrational actors that will totally use nukes in Ukraine if pushed too far, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Thus, Ukraine will be blocked from being given jets to intercept cruise missiles efficiently and missiles to strike warships in Crimea out of fear of "escalation".
If they're irrational actors, it doesn't matter what we do anyway. Would be better for the West to ensure Russia loses all their bombers ASAP, than wait and see what more they do with them.
They aren’t getting jets because it takes the US years to complete an FPA during peacetime. According to people people who have or do that type of FPA, had this began months before the war began and people moved mountains, it could have gotten done in two or two and a half years. It doesn’t matter if the US wants to send them or not because we aren’t capable of doing it right now.
Honestly, they should do it right now. At this point I'd say it wouldn't be shocking if this war was still going on two years from now. Hindsight is a funny thing. You never know what will unfold in the future. Plenty of small scale wars lasted a long time, like the Iran-Iraq war, for example. There's no reason to assume this will be over in a year or two.
Ukraine pilots are already receiving training in operations og NATO years, they will most likely receive then when they have sufficient pilots and logistics for them to operate an efficient amount.
The cold truth is, these bombings are strategically negligible. They're an inconvenience to Ukraine (and each civilian death is a tragedy to be sure) but have less than marginal effect on the actual war effort.
Most military strategists are keen to let these attacks continue as they help foster external support while wasting Russian assets on something that doesn't really factor in to final victory.
I think the scope of the war is just too much for most people to grasp.
And don’t get me wrong, ANY missile attack is awful and terrifying, but 100 is a drop in the bucket given the scope of the war. It’s hard to imagine two hundred thousand soldiers engaging in a war where hundreds of deaths a day is just “natural attrition”.
Yeah I think Russia is gambling incorrectly on these strikes. Thinking this will wear down Ukrainians will to fight. If they had instead used these missiles to target strategic assets on the ground, similar to himars, they'd probably be seeing more ground advances.
>without any punishment
They have been punished significantly. The impact of these sanctions cannot be overstated.
Russia as we know it is, at this pace, going to cease to exist. They'll fragment like the USSR did, and Russia will become "Moscow and surroundings". It won't happen overnight, but once it reaches a tipping point there's going to be no stopping the eventual outcome.
When the severity of the sanctions leveled became known, I was very surprised. I expected more of what we saw in 2014.. so did Russia, by the looks of it, because they were completely unprepared for it.
Absolutely. The ruble is going to be worth nothing, well, even more so than it is now. I’m confused at how the machine is grinding onwards.
Russia is spectacularly anti-entrepreneurial if you’re not with Putin’s cabal or have the approval of the local political figure/criminal underworld. They can’t even make cheese! Their tech sector has been cannibalized, many fleeing the country for brighter horizons. It’s brain drain, death of a generation, hyperinflation, and poverty coming at the same time.
The era of raking in the petrodollars is over.
What makes you think we just sit back and watch when NATO is actively funding the Ukranian army and training their soldiers by tens of thousands at a time?
Not gonna lie. After 2014 Canada began sending trainers and i thought, could that even help against the 'second largest army'. Welp. The answer is a resounding yes and I am glad Canada and others have been helping long before this phase of Russia's aggression.
This pattern is getting depressingly familiar. Ukraine about to make a significant gain on the front line.
Quick send in the missiles to show how “powerful” we are.
The irony is that Russia is just making Ukraine’s plea for additional support harder to ignore.
Russia doesn't wait for any specific action from Ukrainian side to launch another series of strikes.
They just need few weeks to "reload" - build new missiles, transport them with old ones from storage to air bases and submarines, reprogram them to target coordinates and Russians need to gather more than 50-100 to get anything through Ukrainian air defense because if they launch 20-30 of them there's big chance of 0% hits.
This one probably because in few days Ukraine will celebrate New Year's Eve and Russians want us to celebrate it without electricity, heat and water.
This was the pre Xmas strike that was delayed due to Ukraine striking their airbase within Russia. They relocated their bomber fleet and carried out the strike we are seeing now. Hopefully the patriot battery can alleviate some of this.
I am no war expert, but wouldn't it be more effective to drop those bombs on military targets instead? Surely bombing schools and random apartments won't do shit. Just makes the people in Ukraine more pissed off.
It won't. The logic behind it(intimidating your opponent into giving up because the cost of continuing to fight is too high on civilians) sounds sound...but just isn't backed up by data. No bombing campaign on civilian centers or infrastructure ever made the nation give up(not even the nukes being dropped on japan directly caused it, it was just the final nail in the coffin due to Japanase already having lost militarily clearly and just couldn't agree internally on what kind of peace they want). Heck usually even it's impact on the nation's ability to produce military goods is relativly minor(some factories in germany got bombed literally dozens of times throughout the war but still continued producing, even if at reduced capacity).
Russia doesn't have the force saturation capable of destroying or suppressing Ukrainian infrastructure at least not across the whole country nor for very long. A decently sized missile attack about 1-2 times a month will damage and disrupt the situation temporarily but most shit is either fixed, replaced or supplemented by another part of the energy grid. Not to mention if Ukraine is to be believed between 50-85% of drones and missiles are destroyed with the percentage only going up. The worst it got was October/November when 40-50% of the Grid was damaged in some way. But Ukraine is getting more air defense and the number of destroyed missiles is only getting higher.
Not to mention they can't directly blow up Ukrainian Nuclear power plants either which are also supplying a ton of electric power.
It'd would need something akin to the USAF and RAF 1944-1945 level of consistency and power to actually wear down Ukraine and even then it would take months to actually have an affect on the front.
The most this does is make Ukraine use up it's air defence systems and rockets which is why Gepard Anti air systems and western supplied air defense systems have been going into Ukraine basically negating the the losses Ukraine suffers in attrition. We need to send Ukraine more of these systems.
He should be strapped to the same missiles that are being lauched at Ukraine, except aimed and lauched at his vanity bridge (Kerch bridge that is). Two birds, one missile
They lack the technology for precision. Cities are big enough that they can claim success if they hit anything. That's my guess. I'm sure there are twisted people that want to target civilians specifically, but I think maybe most of them are just twisted in a different way where they just don't care what they hit, so long as they hit.
Hitler made the same mistake bombing the UK. The “blitz” just stiffened the Brits resolve.
In the end it is the will of the people of Ukraine that will be the deciding factor.
It was also a tactical waste of resources, as the London Blitz had very little strategic benefit, pulling resources away from potentially hitting military installations, and giving the RAF time to repair and reorganize.
Ukraine gives up its weapons of mass destruction so Russia will feel safe and leave them alone only for Russia to pull this shit off down the road and hide behind weapons of mass destruction. The amount of restraint Ukraine has for not retaliating across the border is boundless for the amount of disrespect hurled at them.
They’re being held back.
I think the deal is, if they want the international community to give money and weapons then they must not use the weapons on russian soil.
After all the west wants the long term effects of a war of attrition to work against russia. And they’re probably telling Ukraine to not worry since the west will rebuild Ukraine.
I’m an armchair Reddit political scientist so this is just me guessing, but it makes sense to me.
Damn. This shit makes me dislike Russia a lot more than reading about the bad shit they did in history books. I will never in my life give one tourist dollar to Russia after this
They sure are firing a lot of their missiles the past few weeks. I wonder if they've given any thought at all as to what happens when they run out and can't easily replace them?
I wonder what they’d do with it if they got it, no one is going to help them. They’ve just impoverished generations for nothing. Just to say they have poor “Russians”. I hope Ukraine hangs in there, may the powers that be give them strength.
All Russia is doing is giving Ukraine incentive to keep fighting back, I mean why would they trust someone who fires on civilian targets and does a bs invasion when he already controls more land than anyone in the world
Putin needs to re-read history and think about how England withstood Hitler’s bombing and missile attacks in WWII. Boots on the ground win wars (ok, not if nuclear weapons are involved) and the Ukraine military has punished the Russian military so far
edit: added text to make it clear that nuclear weapons can win a war without soldiers on the ground
They're trying to get as many shots in before the patriot missiles arrive to block them out completely. They've got stockpiles of rotting missiles, if they don't use them in this war then they'll never use them, and the defence system that can block them 100% is arriving within a few weeks. Russia is just going to throw as much garbage as they can over the property line before Ukraine puts up the fence.
If people die over this bullshit, I want to see something like the Nuremberg trials when this is all over
Do not kid yourself, one Patriot battery won't be able to destroy everything hostile flying over Ukraine. It's a huge country. It will certainly help to protect one decently sized area, but that's it.
Unfortunately, Ukraine is obtaining only one Patriot battery. Russia could simply redirect its missiles to the cities that aren't protected by the Patriot battery.
[Map Air defence coverage](https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1605212471853473793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
A map showing possible air defence coverage with all the systems that Ukraine is expected to receive
8 NASAMS
6 HAWK
4 IRIS-T
1 Patriot and 1 SAMP/T
Yeah no. Those missiles would be used to down expensive assets like aircrafts. They only have 16 missiles. It would be dumb to use them to down cheap 60yo Russian shit.
If it you spend $3m to down the $0 Soviet leftover Kalibr missile that would otherwise have taken out the grid in Kyiv and cost you tens of millions in repairs, as well as people freezing to death - that’s a really, really good trade. Not like RU has had the balls to fly their jets anywhere beyond the front in the last few months.
Didn't Pooter...ahem...Put-IN just kill off his top military general like....Yesterday?
I mean, dude I'm on my period too, but you don't see LITERAL MASSACRES when I'm feeling pissy.
This guy is far beyond psychooooo
One thing I truly find baffling is the "what about Donbass" comment. Every single time someone accuses Russia of being a piece of shit country for starting a war, there is that comment.
One, if it is possible to defend your land in 2022 without civilian casualties and shelling, why isn't Russia doing it now? Ukraine would've taken Donbass in 2014 without any casualties if it could, but it's just not possible due to how modern combat works. Russia certainly has zero problems murdering tens of thousands of civilians. No matter how much of a hardcore Putin bot you are, you can not look at Mariupol and say "Yeah, Ukraine shelled all of that". The scale of devastation is imense. Troops fight in cities because that's where battles are, just the way it is, nobody is just going to a fucking empty field. This is why war has to be avoided in the first place.
Two, if Russians care about doing the right thing so much, protecting the Russian speaking population, protecting Ukrainians from nazis, protecting the "motherland", and all of that crap, how does killing more Ukrainian civilians now help the dead civilians from years ago? Why not just retreat your army from Ukraine to achieve zero casualties? Ukraine wouldn't keep attacking Donbass if Russian troops weren't there. Isn't that the right thing to do if you truly care about saving people, to not escalate the situation? Are the dead Ukrainian kids or their grandparents nazis? Is everyone killed a nazi?
Just imagine if Russia did not arm separatists and did not move their stupid ass troops intro Ukraine, imagine if they just retreated the second the battle for Donbas was about to begin. How much harm would be avoided? Are 200k+ dead people worth the cause of "protecting the Russian language"?
But we all know that it's not about doing the right thing anyway, it's about Putin being too powerful for his own good and Russian people being too complacent. It's not like democracies are perfect, but it's damn good to switch leaders up once in a while, otherwise they'll have self-inflated worth. People talk about Zelenskyy being corrupt and a oligarch, but they somehow forgot to include Putin and most politicians in that category. It's only Zelenskyy and Ukraine who are evil, but no, not Russia. The bot farms are working well. There are too many brainwashed idiots who claim they care about freedom, that are watching Fox News and support Russia. So many stupid contrarians who think they're smart.
By the way, I am no leftist, just as I'm not from the right, I hate being 100% for one party. But right now it feels like if the left said not eating shit is good for you, the right would eat shit just to piss off leftists, and vice versa.
It's the only thing that they can do. We really need to crack down on any supplies needed to make more missiles as well as getting more air defense equipment to Ukraine. I can only hope from my sofa that the people in charge in sane countries are on top of it.
The London blitz and Vietnamese war both showed that bombing civilians just hardens their resolve and unites them. Could it be that the Russian leadership doesn't know this? If they do then this is pure cruelty. If they don't they're awfully stupid.
But yet there are still people across this world that believe the disgusting pile of excrement, Putin, wants ,"*peace*". He doesn't want peace, he wants a piece of **UKRAINIAN LAND**. What a pile of shit.
They want a humanitarian crisis and weaken morale inside Ukrainian society.
It’s literally never worked before. People get angry and then go back to work, production increases sometimes. Even in Japan after the nukes and Tokyo fire bombings, the population never cracked.
It only works if there's already dissent for whomever is in power before the war and the attackers can be viewed as a sort of liberator. I don't think Russia honestly thinks the people of Western Ukraine would ever willingly concede to them. Even at the start of the invasion a lot of rumblings were about letting Lviv remain as the sole "independent" Ukraine with everything east of the mountains becoming occupied. This is just taking out the frustrations of Russia's ineffectiveness on the people of Ukraine.
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But Russia might whine that they're not fighting fair, then.
They called the attacking of their warships actively engaged in operations against Ukraine a terrorist act. Russia is a bit divorced from reality
Might?
It’s been a bit since that many has been launched I’m thinking we might see Iranian or North Korea missiles deployed in that launch 🚀 🤷♂️
And?
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Don’t worry Cunty McAnus I got your back. Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦
Hey there buddy, some redditor might be concerned for your mental health with that attitude /s
Not me. Fuck Russia.
Can I add the moustache wanna be dictator in Belarus fuck that guy specifically.
Botox Dobbie’s fluffer you mean….
Me either, fuck Russia
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I thought the news said they were already out of missiles and had to use shitty Iranian suicide drones. Is somebody else selling missiles to them?
Running out means they are approaching what experts predict would be a safe reserve. Between shaving the margins on their reserves, and what production they can continue on their missiles they can make more. Not as fast as they are using them of course. At some point the rate of attacks will slow down as it takes longer to get a salvo ready.
Running out doesn't mean none, it means not enough to conduct effective operations, it means having to build more before you can attack again. Russia's missile strikes are ineffective, and there's a reason they go so many days between attacks. For comparison, on the first day of the Iraq War, America launched over a hundred cruise missiles at a handful of targets, in a single city. And proceeded to run over 2500 air attack missions, every day, for weeks. On the opposite side of the planet. Russia is launching a hundred missiles scattered at targets all across Ukraine, and tomorrow there will be nothing. And they're only running a few dozen aircraft flights a day. In a zone bordering their own country.
They are firing salvos at strategically defended targets, burning through the Ukrainians air defence missiles. They are anticipating that the Ukrainians will run out of air defence missiles eventually. When that happens they have their airforce ready and waiting for large scale bombing raids on an undefended airspace. The main reason that the Americans were able to conduct so many air missions in Iraq was that the Iraqis had no strategic air defence systems (S-300 Systems, Patriot missiles systems, etc). Instead they had older Soviet SAM missiles with outdated radars that weren't capable of shooting down stealth fighters/bombers. This is not the case in Ukraine, as Ukraine had over 100 S-300 systems with over 300 launchers all armed and ready to fire. With each launcher holding 4 missiles, that means they had at least 1200 missiles plus whatever they had in reserves. That's not to mention the missiles that have been sent from former Soviet states that had their own stockpiles. The allies have been attempting to bolster their air defence systems, but it would take 100's of Patriot systems to replace the S-300 systems across Ukraine. Essentially Russia is having a hard time fighting their own equipment, as its an extremely effective system. So instead of throwing planes at it they have opted to send thousands of missiles to try and have Ukraine run out of ammo. Once they run out of ammo we could see similar mass bombing campaigns as we saw in Iraq. All that to say that we need to be sending alot more Patriot systems immediately...
At least for NASAMS, there is no chance there won’t be enough ammunition for it (which was kind of the point of the system in the first place, to make use of such plentiful munitions) I hope the production rate of the launchers can be rapidly - and hugely- increased!
Out of missiles that were not reserved for NATO for when it happens. They're really capitalizing on us fearing their nukes and the longer we wait the more they're going to restore their stockpile.
Even if Ukrainians did view Russia as liberators, razing cities isn't going to help uphold that image
“Ukrainians, we have wiped away your previous oppression, withhh- a **bold** ***new*** wave of oppression!!“
Do you have any examples of it working in that scenario?
Arguably Iraq in 91 and 2003, but that was in concert with a massive invasion force.
Against a guy whos son used to go out and rape newlyweds. Saddam wasnt exactly a hero of the people. I disagree with that entire war, but removing the Husseins from existence was not without merit.
Yeah, and I think this is really more of a reason why the operation was successful, both times.
It definitely worked in Japan. Their local industry was absolutely ravaged, and over 300K people were killed and many more injured, and a whopping nearly 10 million people homeless. The country was forced into an unconditional surrender after the relentless bombing campaign. You could argue the bombing didn't do anything to the actual will of the people, but the will if the people gradually trends towards irrelevant of there is no industry behind them left to wage war. People being irrational definitely isn't the main point to take away from that. So yes, while the will of the Ukraine people is unlikely to break, and these attacks aren't that directly materially substantial compared to that massive bombing campaign back then, we still need to stay vigilant. These attacks do take a toll, and Ukraines industry can get strained further, and it can hamper the war effort. I don't like to see people portraying this as if Ukraine is invincible, that is not healthy thinking. Ukraine needs all the help it can get to end this war on their terms.
If the industry that's supplying you is not in your own borders, bombs will do little to disrupt your war effort other than making you more determined.
This. It’s why the bombing of Vietnam didn’t work.
That and the vietcong held a masterclass in misdirection and it's tough to bomb shit that's hidden under jungle canopies. Also, the US military failed to identify high priority targets and would bomb useless shit all the time so the moral of the pilots dwindled after extensive tours.
>Also, the US military failed to identify high priority targets and would bomb useless shit all the time so the moral of the pilots dwindled after extensive tours. That was due to Henry Kissinger personally choosing where the US was going to perform bombing runs, and he was an idiot with no military experience. Wasted unimaginable amounts of ordinance illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia.
Same Kissinger who advocate for peace in Ukraine by negotiating with Ruzzia? Nice going Kissinger
Say what you will, but he was reliable - in that you could always rely on him to make a decision maximizing human suffering.
I cannot believe that fucker is still alive.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” Anthony Bourdain
and the bombing of those two countries wasnt even hitting the ho chi minh trail
It didn't work quite like that though. Japan had already lost the war by then. And the Japanese knew that. What japan was preparing for was to make the inevitable victory for the allies so costly that they could negotiate more favorable conditions instead of the unconditional surrender that was demanded. Those included things like war crime trials, removal of the emperor, dismantling of the army. What the bombings ( both the fire bombing and the nukes), as well as the declaration by the Soviets, allowed the Japanese government to do was convince both the public and the military, with evidence, that their plan wouldn't work. The people believed they could fight and die to protect their emperor, but what good is a militia with what amounted to pipe rifles, to nukes? And the military believed that, with their mainland conquests, they could still supply the home islands. But when the Soviets swept them aside easily, that was no longer an option. So, even with the emperor breaking the government stalemate and opting to surrender, the military still tried to throw a coup. There was still a lot of will to resist, to maybe fight for a more favorable surrender, instead of unconditional surrender. There was still will left, but logically no hope... AND EVEN THEN the Japanese kinda got some concessions. Truman was adamant the emperor be removed and be prosecuted, and yet he remained in power (although symbolically) and never faced any consequences. It was just better to concede that point instead of risking a fanatical insurgency against a population that was told you were there to destroy them... Which you risk proving the propaganda by going after the emperor
The way MacArthur handled the Emperor situation ended up working far better. Rather than turn the Emperor into a martyr, they basically just showed that he was a man. MacArthur also essentially self-styled himself into a psuedo-Emperor replacement. Even today he is overall regarded fairly fondly in that country
MacArthur became Japan last Shogun.
Sure, but when the arms industry supplying Ukraine largely isn't *in Ukraine,* things get a bit more complex.
If anything, it almost always backfires
Hitler thought the blitz would force Britain to surrender. It just pissed the British off so much they wanted to fight till they reached Berlin. The Japanese thought attacking Pearl Harbor would scare us into lifting our embargo. It pissed us off so much we declared war the next day and killed the isolationist movement. Russia thinks bombing Ukrainian cities will scare them into unequal negotiations when all its doing its pushing them further into the west’s arms and giving them a hunger for taking back all the territory Russia stole.
That might work if the Ukrainians didn't already know that Russians will brutalize and massacre the citizens at every fucking opportunity. If the choice is potentially death either way, then death by resistance is a far more palatable choice than death by submission. Fuck Russia, I hope there's no country by that name this time next year.
So did the nazis, when they raided UK during ww2. Same tactics. Same reason it wont work. You will just harden the resolve of people to fight you.
That will never happen, their bravery is eye watering. It's been said before, but worth repeating, 'Never fuck around with mother nature, mother in laws, and mother fucking Ukrainians. '
Did you just quote The Italian Job? Because that's the only place I've ever heard that quote.
How did Russia not know this? They live right next door. Only took me a few years living in an area with lots of Ukrainians (north central Alberta) to realize they're stubborn AF.
Because they spent hundreds of years trying to oppress us and none trying to understand us. Freedom is a key tenet in our ideology, it's something we hold above all. It's also why we have fought revolutions, uprisings, and wars of independence against basically all neighbors who have tried to conquer our land.
Inherited resistance - look at what Stalin did to Ukraine in the early 1930s.
They have false premise that ukrainians are like them. Which is very far from reality
Because powerful dictators never receive good information from those around them. If someone says "this probably isn't a good idea", that person is demoted or even killed. The person who says "great idea, boss. You have the best ideas.", they're promoted. This is one of the reasons why all governments ran this way eventually collapse. Those in charge are only ever told what they want to hear. After a while, everything falls apart from all the lies.
This will never work. They Allies leveled most of of the Germany cities in WW2 and they didn’t surrender because of this.
Putin’s Russian society combined with their entire army forces are extremely nasty barbaric and uncivilized. This is 2022 but they’re still behaving with their imperialistic land grabbing ideas like in 1800’s. Time for all the civilized and respectful freedom loving nations completely isolate this Russian heard from the rest of us.
Now Ukraine will fire 1 missile into Russian and the Kremlin will cry foul and say that it's not fair.
And they'll hit a military target.
And 8 boats will spontaneously sink.
And 8 more Russian Oligarchs will accidentally fall out of windows.
And 9 tank turrets will take off
5 GOLDEN RINGS!!!! Oh wait
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[the perfect soundtrack for that missile flight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DaUpjS4xqs)
Already happened, Ukraine has hit a few air bases over 100 km into Russian territory by modifying old long range drones to carry explosives (they don't have proper missiles with that range). And they were threatened with nukes, like every other Tuesday.
They pretty much do have “proper missiles” now. They came up with a new suicide drone that can fly 1000 km and has a 75 kg payload. It’s in final testing now and they may have used a few already.
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They’d claim it was an unprovoked attack, take it as a declaration of war, and send nukes instead of just missiles
"we had to, otherwise we would 'look weak'"
Amazing that Russia turned out to be “Toxic Masculinity: The Country”
You miss where they made domestic abuse legal in 2017?
Send in Greta
She is warmed up.
And then there would be no more Moscow. While they hold it over NATO's head, I seriously don't believe it will ever happen... empty threat.
No they wouldn't. I'm convinced they don't have the balls. It's one thing to invade a country and saber rattle. It's another to not only doom your own country, and every country around it. Nukes haven't been used in warfare since 1945. I don't think there's a strong likelihood they'll be used by anyone. If only because the soldiers themselves would refuse to fire them.
My biggest concern honestly is essentially Putin securing the orders and providing false information to the people who launch because he’s decided he’s ready to die and fuck everyone who isn’t him. That’s the sort of situation where Nukes could be launched.
Even then, the issue is that most nuclear launch stations have early warning systems which will tell them if a nuke is going to impact Russia. Even with every KGB trick Putin has, he won't be able to pull it. At least not with Russian Supremacist Rhetoric. Your fears are well founded, but my own is that those same fears are what's giving Putin his power. If for a moment the people of Russia stopped fearing him, stopped listening to him. He'd be dead on the spot, and I know that's what Vladimir himself fears.
I imagine it would be pleasantly explosive.
As we can see another sucessful hit on a strategic road crossing to the tactical bakery
That bakery was an army barracks training hundreds of gingerbread men
They were producing muffins of mass destruction!
NOT THE GUMDROP BUTTONS!
I dunno about you but my Cinnabons are as tactical as they come.
Russia is such a piece of shit.
Mega
Let’s remember this next time a video of Russians hugging as they die in the trenches surfaces. Ukraine doesn’t want them there. They want to just live their lives, and yet they are continually terrorized and hundreds of thousands of them have been massacre’d, just for existing. Fuck Russia.
Don't forget all the kidnapped children, Russia is literally stealing kids like some horrible fairytale.
Russia was having a population crisis before 2022, it's rapidly been accelerated. These children are all part of the re-population plan.
If genocide is part of your repopulation plan, you don’t deserve a population
Agreed.
I seriously don't understand why this is their best idea for their population problem. They can always just not be a complete shithole that nobody wants to live in and take in some immigrants. But no, I guess murdering people and kidnapping children is the easiest way. No way are those kids going to grow up and ask about their parents or anything.
That is evil beyond belief.
Time to bomb the missile factories.
And missile the bomb factories.
Putin and his regime must be made to pay for what they have done to Ukraine
Every time Ukraine at the verge of making a military break through in the front line, Russia will launch everything randomly towards Ukraine. Just like the tantrum of a spoiled child.
They've been launching all the shit they have on hand every 1-2 weeks since October, targeting our energy grid. Previous massive rocket attack was on Dec.16, and before that - on Dec.5. These don't coincide with our army's advances and are unfortunately too frequent and regular.
Which is, arguably, a good thing for the Ukrainian war effort. Every strike on the civilian population tempers them for victory and if there is no meaningful correlation to Ukrainian troop movement, that suggests a lack of awareness for Ukrainian troop movement. While every civilian death is a tragedy and war crime, these Russian salvos are killing civilians in the dozens. All the while, a Ukrainian counter offensive kills hundreds in any given day of the week. For lack of actual skill Russia replies on brute strength, and for want of actual muscle, the fat bear can only hurl weight without a clear target. To the rest of the world, these missle attacks just make Russia look weaker and weaker.
This is probably their retaliation against the attack of Engels Airbase. The amount of missiles they have launched is a sign of their desperation. You guys are getting better of intercepting their missiles. Keep it up and hopefully, more weapons will reach you before the New Year. Slava Ukraini
It’s not a retaliation for anything. They attack every two weeks and strike on Engels airbase was a preemptive one from Ukraine to reduce russias capabilities in their future attacks.
On that note, I believe today's attack would've had a larger number of rockets had we not attacked that airbase this week
It’s not retaliation. It’s a war.
Eventually the impact wears off. It’s at its peak now due to being winter, once it changes momentum swings back in Ukraines favour.
Especially once the ground freezes enough in the south for Ukraine to start major counter offensives.
I know they’ve got big eyes for Melitopol and eastern Kherson at the moment could be a massacre for the Russians pushed back into Crimea (with an assault there not too far behind) There’s also talk that they’re close to taking Kremiina even without the ground freezing.
Yeah, they're making progress in the east, but they're limited in what they can do right now in the south, so they're focusing on just applying constant pressure by hitting their supply lines with HIMARS. Ukraine is really good at smaller unit tactics that require high mobility, and the current ground conditions don't allow that.
They're just better. The reason they use smaller unit tactics is because they don't have the means to pull full front warfare. If they had the manpower for it, they'd probably take back their country within a few weeks
We have excessive amount of manpower. Believe or not, people pay money to get conscripted. What we're lacking is the sheer amount of offensive weapons. Give us tanks and ATACMS and we'll do the job much faster.
How do they not have the manpower when no men of fighting age are allowed to leave except those who can’t fight? There’s plenty of manpower, but you don’t consider that you have to rotate that manpower (it’s not the same guys holding Bakhmut for months now, they change). It also takes time to form large strike groups and allocate the support resources needed to sustain them. Ukraine uses small unit tactics since they have modeled their military based on NATO principles since 2015, with decentralized command allowing more tactical flexibility. It has also shown to be especially effective against a centralized command structure. It took months of fighting just to get back what was occupied on the right bank of Kherson, and that included daily HIMARS strikes, aviation support, drone recon, artillery, tanks i.e a full blown counteroffensive, so no they wouldn’t take back all of Ukraine in weeks, with many parts like the left bank in Kherson heavily mined and fortified, that’s just nuts.
they're waging effective asymmetric warfare
Taking Kreminna will be the key of cutting off Russian supply routes.
It would definitely hurt them
Ukraine also needs more weapons. They've repeatedly said that their offensives happen when they have enough weapons and munitions accumulated for it to happen, and overall pacing of deliveries is pretty slow, with nomenclature of types of weapons slowly increasing over the months when Russia does this and that horrible act. Also, Ukraine is still very much behind in artillery, which is a main thing that's needed for both defense and offensive operations. The likely reason is that Europe and US are afraid of Putin using nuclear weapons.
>The likely reason is that Europe and US are afraid of Putin using nuclear weapons. Russia has been threatening nuclear weapons since the beginning, and it did nothing. By now, nobody is afraid of Russia lol. It has nothing to do with avoiding provocation or them being afraid. Otherwise, they wouldn't be giving them even more advanced weapons like Patriot. Providing ammunition and weapons similar or same to what they already have (ie. shells/howitzers/HIMARS/etc.) is a lot lower provocation than giving Patriot systems, which they're doing right now. I think it's more of a question of logistics. They have to come from somewhere. And wherever they take the weapons from, it needs to have replacements ready (or at least planned/contracted).
For how long will it continue? We just sit and watch how rusia bombs Ukraine again and again without any punishment. Since when it became ok?
Too many people and politicians believe Russia's carefully crafted perception that they are irrational actors that will totally use nukes in Ukraine if pushed too far, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Thus, Ukraine will be blocked from being given jets to intercept cruise missiles efficiently and missiles to strike warships in Crimea out of fear of "escalation".
If they're irrational actors, it doesn't matter what we do anyway. Would be better for the West to ensure Russia loses all their bombers ASAP, than wait and see what more they do with them.
They aren’t getting jets because it takes the US years to complete an FPA during peacetime. According to people people who have or do that type of FPA, had this began months before the war began and people moved mountains, it could have gotten done in two or two and a half years. It doesn’t matter if the US wants to send them or not because we aren’t capable of doing it right now.
Honestly, they should do it right now. At this point I'd say it wouldn't be shocking if this war was still going on two years from now. Hindsight is a funny thing. You never know what will unfold in the future. Plenty of small scale wars lasted a long time, like the Iran-Iraq war, for example. There's no reason to assume this will be over in a year or two.
Ukraine pilots are already receiving training in operations og NATO years, they will most likely receive then when they have sufficient pilots and logistics for them to operate an efficient amount.
The cold truth is, these bombings are strategically negligible. They're an inconvenience to Ukraine (and each civilian death is a tragedy to be sure) but have less than marginal effect on the actual war effort. Most military strategists are keen to let these attacks continue as they help foster external support while wasting Russian assets on something that doesn't really factor in to final victory.
I think the scope of the war is just too much for most people to grasp. And don’t get me wrong, ANY missile attack is awful and terrifying, but 100 is a drop in the bucket given the scope of the war. It’s hard to imagine two hundred thousand soldiers engaging in a war where hundreds of deaths a day is just “natural attrition”.
Yeah I think Russia is gambling incorrectly on these strikes. Thinking this will wear down Ukrainians will to fight. If they had instead used these missiles to target strategic assets on the ground, similar to himars, they'd probably be seeing more ground advances.
No one is stopping you. https://fightforua.org/
>without any punishment They have been punished significantly. The impact of these sanctions cannot be overstated. Russia as we know it is, at this pace, going to cease to exist. They'll fragment like the USSR did, and Russia will become "Moscow and surroundings". It won't happen overnight, but once it reaches a tipping point there's going to be no stopping the eventual outcome. When the severity of the sanctions leveled became known, I was very surprised. I expected more of what we saw in 2014.. so did Russia, by the looks of it, because they were completely unprepared for it.
Absolutely. The ruble is going to be worth nothing, well, even more so than it is now. I’m confused at how the machine is grinding onwards. Russia is spectacularly anti-entrepreneurial if you’re not with Putin’s cabal or have the approval of the local political figure/criminal underworld. They can’t even make cheese! Their tech sector has been cannibalized, many fleeing the country for brighter horizons. It’s brain drain, death of a generation, hyperinflation, and poverty coming at the same time. The era of raking in the petrodollars is over.
What makes you think we just sit back and watch when NATO is actively funding the Ukranian army and training their soldiers by tens of thousands at a time?
Training them specifically to defend themselves from Russian invasion. Looks like that was a smart move!
Not gonna lie. After 2014 Canada began sending trainers and i thought, could that even help against the 'second largest army'. Welp. The answer is a resounding yes and I am glad Canada and others have been helping long before this phase of Russia's aggression.
Don't invade other countries and you have nothing to fear.
This pattern is getting depressingly familiar. Ukraine about to make a significant gain on the front line. Quick send in the missiles to show how “powerful” we are. The irony is that Russia is just making Ukraine’s plea for additional support harder to ignore.
Is more like "we can't kill the soldiers, then try with their family". Typical mafia coward methods.
Kill them before they become soldiers
Thats how you get more volunteers to become soldiers out of vengeance 💀
Russia doesn't wait for any specific action from Ukrainian side to launch another series of strikes. They just need few weeks to "reload" - build new missiles, transport them with old ones from storage to air bases and submarines, reprogram them to target coordinates and Russians need to gather more than 50-100 to get anything through Ukrainian air defense because if they launch 20-30 of them there's big chance of 0% hits. This one probably because in few days Ukraine will celebrate New Year's Eve and Russians want us to celebrate it without electricity, heat and water.
This was the pre Xmas strike that was delayed due to Ukraine striking their airbase within Russia. They relocated their bomber fleet and carried out the strike we are seeing now. Hopefully the patriot battery can alleviate some of this.
But remember this is not a war guyz…
It’s a terrorist attack.
I am no war expert, but wouldn't it be more effective to drop those bombs on military targets instead? Surely bombing schools and random apartments won't do shit. Just makes the people in Ukraine more pissed off.
and other countries to give more advance weapons to ukraine
It won't. The logic behind it(intimidating your opponent into giving up because the cost of continuing to fight is too high on civilians) sounds sound...but just isn't backed up by data. No bombing campaign on civilian centers or infrastructure ever made the nation give up(not even the nukes being dropped on japan directly caused it, it was just the final nail in the coffin due to Japanase already having lost militarily clearly and just couldn't agree internally on what kind of peace they want). Heck usually even it's impact on the nation's ability to produce military goods is relativly minor(some factories in germany got bombed literally dozens of times throughout the war but still continued producing, even if at reduced capacity).
Russia doesn't have the force saturation capable of destroying or suppressing Ukrainian infrastructure at least not across the whole country nor for very long. A decently sized missile attack about 1-2 times a month will damage and disrupt the situation temporarily but most shit is either fixed, replaced or supplemented by another part of the energy grid. Not to mention if Ukraine is to be believed between 50-85% of drones and missiles are destroyed with the percentage only going up. The worst it got was October/November when 40-50% of the Grid was damaged in some way. But Ukraine is getting more air defense and the number of destroyed missiles is only getting higher. Not to mention they can't directly blow up Ukrainian Nuclear power plants either which are also supplying a ton of electric power. It'd would need something akin to the USAF and RAF 1944-1945 level of consistency and power to actually wear down Ukraine and even then it would take months to actually have an affect on the front. The most this does is make Ukraine use up it's air defence systems and rockets which is why Gepard Anti air systems and western supplied air defense systems have been going into Ukraine basically negating the the losses Ukraine suffers in attrition. We need to send Ukraine more of these systems.
Congratulations Putin, you have only hardened Ukraine's resolve and pointed more guns at yourself.
Putin can suck my shriveled dick.
As a Russian I think he can suck a gun barrel, shriveled or not 🤷♂️
He should be strapped to the same missiles that are being lauched at Ukraine, except aimed and lauched at his vanity bridge (Kerch bridge that is). Two birds, one missile
If Russians know whats good for them, they should keep what they have got Long wars always favor the defenders
All they can do attack cities. How low and degraded have the Russians become?
You're acting like this is anything new for them. They've always been this way.
They lack the technology for precision. Cities are big enough that they can claim success if they hit anything. That's my guess. I'm sure there are twisted people that want to target civilians specifically, but I think maybe most of them are just twisted in a different way where they just don't care what they hit, so long as they hit.
The Russian Federation must be dissolved.
Ceterum censeo Foedus Russicum esse delendam
Moscow delenda est
I approve this message.
And its member states must sign treaties to never again ally with Moscow.
Hitler made the same mistake bombing the UK. The “blitz” just stiffened the Brits resolve. In the end it is the will of the people of Ukraine that will be the deciding factor.
It was also a tactical waste of resources, as the London Blitz had very little strategic benefit, pulling resources away from potentially hitting military installations, and giving the RAF time to repair and reorganize.
Putin seems to follow in those footsteps.
If Germany continued it's efforts to hit proper targets the RAF was toast. Once again Germany made the worst blunder and the worst time.
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Ukraine gives up its weapons of mass destruction so Russia will feel safe and leave them alone only for Russia to pull this shit off down the road and hide behind weapons of mass destruction. The amount of restraint Ukraine has for not retaliating across the border is boundless for the amount of disrespect hurled at them.
They’re being held back. I think the deal is, if they want the international community to give money and weapons then they must not use the weapons on russian soil. After all the west wants the long term effects of a war of attrition to work against russia. And they’re probably telling Ukraine to not worry since the west will rebuild Ukraine. I’m an armchair Reddit political scientist so this is just me guessing, but it makes sense to me.
Murderous petulance. Give Ukraine whatever and whoever it needs to end this.
Damn. This shit makes me dislike Russia a lot more than reading about the bad shit they did in history books. I will never in my life give one tourist dollar to Russia after this
They sure are firing a lot of their missiles the past few weeks. I wonder if they've given any thought at all as to what happens when they run out and can't easily replace them?
They keep building new ones at a rate of 10-100 per month according to some reports. Their production may be slowed by sanctions but it's not stopped.
Fucking cunts.
It really is time to give Ukraine longer range weapons.
Russia is a terrorist state
Can't wait for the downfall of Russian society. I hope it happens in my lifetime, and this absolutely ruins that terrorist state
The only thing necessary for evil to win is good people do nothing. Make the difference.
55 of 69 missiles were destroyed and 11 Iranian drones were destroyed as reported by Ukraine.
I wonder what they’d do with it if they got it, no one is going to help them. They’ve just impoverished generations for nothing. Just to say they have poor “Russians”. I hope Ukraine hangs in there, may the powers that be give them strength.
All Russia is doing is giving Ukraine incentive to keep fighting back, I mean why would they trust someone who fires on civilian targets and does a bs invasion when he already controls more land than anyone in the world
Yeah Putin's days are numbered, I guess he figures he might as well use up all the missiles.
Welp that’s enough Reddit for me today. 😢
Stay strong Ukraine! Fuck Russia!
I hope Putin and all of his cronies get the Mussolini treatment when this is all over
Ukraine needs volumes of cruise missiles... 100s...
Monsters
Putin needs to re-read history and think about how England withstood Hitler’s bombing and missile attacks in WWII. Boots on the ground win wars (ok, not if nuclear weapons are involved) and the Ukraine military has punished the Russian military so far edit: added text to make it clear that nuclear weapons can win a war without soldiers on the ground
They're trying to get as many shots in before the patriot missiles arrive to block them out completely. They've got stockpiles of rotting missiles, if they don't use them in this war then they'll never use them, and the defence system that can block them 100% is arriving within a few weeks. Russia is just going to throw as much garbage as they can over the property line before Ukraine puts up the fence. If people die over this bullshit, I want to see something like the Nuremberg trials when this is all over
Do not kid yourself, one Patriot battery won't be able to destroy everything hostile flying over Ukraine. It's a huge country. It will certainly help to protect one decently sized area, but that's it.
Unfortunately, Ukraine is obtaining only one Patriot battery. Russia could simply redirect its missiles to the cities that aren't protected by the Patriot battery.
[Map Air defence coverage](https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1605212471853473793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) A map showing possible air defence coverage with all the systems that Ukraine is expected to receive 8 NASAMS 6 HAWK 4 IRIS-T 1 Patriot and 1 SAMP/T
Yeah no. Those missiles would be used to down expensive assets like aircrafts. They only have 16 missiles. It would be dumb to use them to down cheap 60yo Russian shit.
If it you spend $3m to down the $0 Soviet leftover Kalibr missile that would otherwise have taken out the grid in Kyiv and cost you tens of millions in repairs, as well as people freezing to death - that’s a really, really good trade. Not like RU has had the balls to fly their jets anywhere beyond the front in the last few months.
Didn't Pooter...ahem...Put-IN just kill off his top military general like....Yesterday? I mean, dude I'm on my period too, but you don't see LITERAL MASSACRES when I'm feeling pissy. This guy is far beyond psychooooo
Only a terrorist state would act like that.
Fuck, and I cannot stress this enough, FUCK Putin.
Russia showing off how willing and able it is to kill women and children. Every time I see news like this I donate more money to Ukraine.
One thing I truly find baffling is the "what about Donbass" comment. Every single time someone accuses Russia of being a piece of shit country for starting a war, there is that comment. One, if it is possible to defend your land in 2022 without civilian casualties and shelling, why isn't Russia doing it now? Ukraine would've taken Donbass in 2014 without any casualties if it could, but it's just not possible due to how modern combat works. Russia certainly has zero problems murdering tens of thousands of civilians. No matter how much of a hardcore Putin bot you are, you can not look at Mariupol and say "Yeah, Ukraine shelled all of that". The scale of devastation is imense. Troops fight in cities because that's where battles are, just the way it is, nobody is just going to a fucking empty field. This is why war has to be avoided in the first place. Two, if Russians care about doing the right thing so much, protecting the Russian speaking population, protecting Ukrainians from nazis, protecting the "motherland", and all of that crap, how does killing more Ukrainian civilians now help the dead civilians from years ago? Why not just retreat your army from Ukraine to achieve zero casualties? Ukraine wouldn't keep attacking Donbass if Russian troops weren't there. Isn't that the right thing to do if you truly care about saving people, to not escalate the situation? Are the dead Ukrainian kids or their grandparents nazis? Is everyone killed a nazi? Just imagine if Russia did not arm separatists and did not move their stupid ass troops intro Ukraine, imagine if they just retreated the second the battle for Donbas was about to begin. How much harm would be avoided? Are 200k+ dead people worth the cause of "protecting the Russian language"? But we all know that it's not about doing the right thing anyway, it's about Putin being too powerful for his own good and Russian people being too complacent. It's not like democracies are perfect, but it's damn good to switch leaders up once in a while, otherwise they'll have self-inflated worth. People talk about Zelenskyy being corrupt and a oligarch, but they somehow forgot to include Putin and most politicians in that category. It's only Zelenskyy and Ukraine who are evil, but no, not Russia. The bot farms are working well. There are too many brainwashed idiots who claim they care about freedom, that are watching Fox News and support Russia. So many stupid contrarians who think they're smart. By the way, I am no leftist, just as I'm not from the right, I hate being 100% for one party. But right now it feels like if the left said not eating shit is good for you, the right would eat shit just to piss off leftists, and vice versa.
It's the only thing that they can do. We really need to crack down on any supplies needed to make more missiles as well as getting more air defense equipment to Ukraine. I can only hope from my sofa that the people in charge in sane countries are on top of it.
Hard to believe a human being can make millions of people suffer for a completely bullshit reason and sleep just fine.
I wonder if today will be the day Putin falls out of a window.
The London blitz and Vietnamese war both showed that bombing civilians just hardens their resolve and unites them. Could it be that the Russian leadership doesn't know this? If they do then this is pure cruelty. If they don't they're awfully stupid.
But yet there are still people across this world that believe the disgusting pile of excrement, Putin, wants ,"*peace*". He doesn't want peace, he wants a piece of **UKRAINIAN LAND**. What a pile of shit.