Murphy's Law of Combat #6: Friendly fire isn't.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
As the meme goes "What air defense doing?"
Though in some cases you can truncate it to "What air defense?" and it works just as well.
Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian-occupied temp barracks in Makiivka has killed/wounded hundreds of Russian soldiers in a single strike. The attack was acknowledged by both sides.
It's apparently one of the single most devastating strikes in the entire war so far. Russia says it was a HIMAR-- are they already in theatre?
It's apparently one of the single most devastating strikes in the entire war so far. Russia says it was a HIMAR-- are they already in theatre?
Waiting for the resident apologists to shout how this is a "declaration of war" or somesuch, because striking your enemy's military assets is bad, but blowing up apartments and hospitals is okay.
HIMARS have been in theater for months now. A couple months back they were blowing up Russian ammo and fuel dumps near the front left and right forcing Russia to move them further back but extending Russian supply lines.
This is one of the things that contributed to the Kharkiv offense. According to wikipedia, they've been operating in Ukraine since late June. Which isn't shocking because one of their advantages is the ability to be transported by C-130 cargo aircraft, which means it can be deployed nearly anywhere on earth within a few days. It's a notable advantage over the tracked MLRS system which fires the same rockets/missiles but is notably bigger and heavier, with the disadvantage of half of the payload size (6 rockets per salvo per HIMARS rather then 12 on an MLRS). OTOH, if you can just shoot and scoot(AKA fire and move your butt out of there ASAP before the warheads even reach their target) then you can always reload somewhere else and do it again.
M142 HIMARS - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Russia has apparently claimed to have destroyed 44 HIMARS but they claim far more then have been confirmed deployed(which is something like 16 last I checked) in Ukraine so maybe they were blowing up British fishing Trawlers in the north sea and just thought they were HIMARS. Of course, none of those claimed kills have been confirmed by anyone outside the pro-Russia media space so most likely they just made it the fuck up.
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Joe Biden and the federal government plus Fox News are wrong on how we should treat Europe and Ukraine with their energy policy. Why are we still charging Europe that much for energy when even the Germans have to resort to candles, and closed factories which the Ukrainians are doing even more?
Energy is kind of an inelastic good for Americans, but for Europe, it is an inelastic good completely. Without it, people will die, but if your federal government, the lay down of why it's better to force Americans somewhat, and big energy companies to take a hit is that they will stop being American allies. They will form pro-Russian governments to stop freezing in the winter.
This reminds me of the ruins of Europe from World War 2, where the US got the bigger end of the stick from being in North America with Canada, and Europe got the short end from suffering from World War 2. (Along with China, USSR, etc.) Do you know what we did to stop that? We created the Marshall plan, not we don't need to do that, we simply need to lower or subsidized the price of Europe's energy bill with LNG, but no one even thinks about it in DC.
Energy is kind of an inelastic good for Americans, but for Europe, it is an inelastic good completely. Without it, people will die, but if your federal government, the lay down of why it's better to force Americans somewhat, and big energy companies to take a hit is that they will stop being American allies. They will form pro-Russian governments to stop freezing in the winter.
This reminds me of the ruins of Europe from World War 2, where the US got the bigger end of the stick from being in North America with Canada, and Europe got the short end from suffering from World War 2. (Along with China, USSR, etc.) Do you know what we did to stop that? We created the Marshall plan, not we don't need to do that, we simply need to lower or subsidized the price of Europe's energy bill with LNG, but no one even thinks about it in DC.
Now it is true that the European economy has taken a very big hit from gas scarcity, extremely high energy prices and also the sanctions (due to proximity there was a lot of trade with Russia).
But don't fear that this will harm relations to the US. Most Europeans feel that they themself made the decision to help Ukraine despite the cost. It is not seen as a favor to the US. So the US are not held responsible for the downsides at all. Instead people are finally appreciating the contribution of the US both to Nato and in form of material help for the Ukraine more than before. Because finally they see the excessive and costly military might of the US applied to something they actually agree with instead of questionable adventures in the middle east and antagonizing China.
Of course there are always some idiots falling for the Russian propaganda that sees all of non--Serbia Europe as puppets of the US, but there are not too many of them.
But don't fear that this will harm relations to the US. Most Europeans feel that they themself made the decision to help Ukraine despite the cost. It is not seen as a favor to the US. So the US are not held responsible for the downsides at all. Instead people are finally appreciating the contribution of the US both to Nato and in form of material help for the Ukraine more than before. Because finally they see the excessive and costly military might of the US applied to something they actually agree with instead of questionable adventures in the middle east and antagonizing China.
Of course there are always some idiots falling for the Russian propaganda that sees all of non--Serbia Europe as puppets of the US, but there are not too many of them.
People have probably read by now that Putin called for a 36 hour ceasefire to mark Russian Orthodox Christmas, which runs 6-7th January. This comes after Russia intensified its shelling of civilian population centres over New Year and Dec 25th.
Ukraine rejected the ceasefire, arguing it was a ploy to regroup, and that they could have peace by leaving invaded land. Russia also damaged any faith others may have had in its sincerity by bombing a fire station on the day before the ceasefire was due to come into effect, so suspicion is pretty justified.
Well, the time has come and... Russia has already opened fire 14 times in the first three hours, as well as launching an attempt to take a village, as per the governor of Luhansk.
It seems clear this was just a propaganda tool from the start: call for ceasefire, and then blame all continued fighting on the enemy.
Ukraine rejected the ceasefire, arguing it was a ploy to regroup, and that they could have peace by leaving invaded land. Russia also damaged any faith others may have had in its sincerity by bombing a fire station on the day before the ceasefire was due to come into effect, so suspicion is pretty justified.
Well, the time has come and... Russia has already opened fire 14 times in the first three hours, as well as launching an attempt to take a village, as per the governor of Luhansk.
It seems clear this was just a propaganda tool from the start: call for ceasefire, and then blame all continued fighting on the enemy.
Unlikely: there barely are any British fishing vessels in the North Sea.
To wander slightly off-topic and explain, one of the major propaganda claims for Brexit was to restore the British fishing industry, based on this myth that the EU had screwed it. However, the reality of the decline of British fishing is threefold. First a technological one with increasing movement towards larger industrial trawlers requiring far fewer crew, secondly collapsing fish stocks meaning there's much fewer fish to catch, and thirdly that lots of British fishermen sold off their boats and licences to foreign industry - this being due to the way the British government oversaw licences, not the EU. Naturally, having now left the EU, the Brexiteer politicians have done nothing at all to assist the fishing industry, because all they cared about was the myth for its PR value, not the fishing itself.
I was going to express suprise there was apparently no planning for this but then I remember all that shit about trying to negotiate something with the EU and how utterly botched that was and realized there's no shock to be had.
They're apparently very embarrassed about violating a ceasefire no one agreed to
Not about bombing civilian infrastructure though.
One of the ironies of Brexit is that the British mostly export the fish they catch and import the fish they eat: the British developed a taste for fish mostly found in other waters during preceding centuries. And of course having left the EU, this means the British fishing industry have lost out being hit by trade tariffs to export their fish, and consumers have lost out with trade tariffs on imported fish, so everyone loses. It's like Brexit in a nutshell.
Kind of shows the inherent idiocy in unilaterally declaring a ceasefire, doesn't it? One might've thought that since its not practical to abide by a ceasefire that nobody else agreed to, they therefore shouldn't have unilaterally declared one. Especially not immediately after bombing a fire station, destroying any faith in sincerity there might have been.
But of course, the point of the declaration wasn't actually to pause fighting over Russian Orthodox Christmas.
Eh, I can't really fault Russia for that. Now, the whole invasion is obviously unjust, and there's all sorts of war crimes and the mistreatment of their own soldiers to condemn them for, but attacking before a ceasefire isn't that unusual, nor not abiding by a ceasefire that the other side has rejected.
That's not to say that the ceasefire was offered in good faith, though.
That's not to say that the ceasefire was offered in good faith, though.
But unfortunetely the reverse is true as well. No one wants to eat cod here so its fine if that goes to Britain.
Sure-- but functional ceasefires are negotiated between the two parties. There was zero attempt to do that here. Just declaring one unilaterally, continuing to act exactly as before, and then blaming the enemy for also continuing as before-- it all points to the government having zero intent to genuinely pursue a ceasefire.