Russian War Crimes (Part 2)

One can only hope the mistakes made here are not repeated elsewhere.

Because the reservoir of the Kharkova dam has been virtually emptied , the UA now has the opportunity to make a mechanised pontoon crossing across the river into an undefended area.

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Probably good to keep in mind that this is definitely not the Russian main line of defense.

https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1667938082375475202

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New Zealand’s state radio system appears to have given unfettered editorial control to a Russian intelligence asset.

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It’s striking that a lot of the rewrites outlined in the article contain precisely the kind of things that you would hear across social media (including on here) and being espoused in the right wing press , particularly in the US , at the outset of the war. It’s both remarkable and disheartening how susceptible people still are to obvious Kremiln propaganda.

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They’ve blown another dam.

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1668138926068867073

The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.

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About PATRIOTS defense, how they are working, their history and their use in Ukraine.

Freed link: https://archive.is/20230611132200/https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-patriot-missile-is-an-unsung-hero-of-ukraine-war-db6053a0

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One of their talking heads on Russian tv was saying they should blow up every dam in the country. Confirming exactly the kind of mindset described in The Guardian article.

Thanks, that was a fascinating article. I’d heard that “hitting a bullet with a bullet” phrase before but I assume the PATRIOT warhead is actually producing a cloud of fragments so if it explodes in the flightpath of a hypersonic missile the incoming missile’s own kinetic energy will essentially destroy itself.

I’m curious how they test these. There is a missile testing facility near where we live and the air-force uses Learjets to test them on - or at least the detection systems. They aren’t actually shooting the planes down although if we are ever invaded by billionaire businessmen we are presumable well protected. Presumably to live test the system requires an incoming missile - although I suppose that is essentially what they are doing in Ukraine.

This article is a bit daft. You can say exactly the same of Germany, France, UK, US, China, whatever. ‘Centuries of violence’. Yeah, exactly.

Also, the tendency towards self-destruction within humans is no Russian speciality by any stretch of the imagination.

Thanks for sharing that. Presumably, the launcher system would be susceptible to provide the location to Russia’s radar of the launch system on every interception, and they’d need to continually need to move the launcher location around? Perhaps there are more than 1 launcher system per Patriot system? I am just trying to get my head around the fact there are 2 Patriot systems and how critical the actual launchers are, given they at least are detectable to some extent.

Although its morbid to think that there needs to be a commercial benefit to justify the supply of these defence systems, its clearly a win-win here for the USA and Ukraine in terms of proving that these systems can take down state-of-the-art Russian technology.

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I would have thought it’s both of commercial and military benefit. There is a huge military exercise going on this week in Germany (we had a note through the door explicitly warning against using private drones!) This has been planned for a few years but it is pretty likely that the data garnered over the last year or so from Ukraine will have had some baring on what they are testing.

Historically , yes you can. But when you consider what Russia has been responsible for just in the last twenty years or so , i.e. Grozny , Georgia , Aleppo and now Ukraine then you can see why the author makes a distinction.

It doesn’t make that theory more accurate though. In recent decades, the NATO countries haven’t covered themselves with glory either during their Middle East wars, have they? Unfortunately, violence and a tendency towards self-destruction seems to be a full part of our species, and comes to the fore all the time, everywhere.

No they haven’t , but neither have they gone in for the wholesale destruction of cities and civilian populations.

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Look out for the war in Lybia, for the second Iraq war. Entire cities have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, millions their houses.

I don’t want to transform this discussion in whataboutism regarding NATO, but I don’t think that the current war is worse than what the NATO did in these countries some time ago. For every war crime committed in Ukraine, you’ll find one in Lybia or Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Not just that, but also China and North Korea would both need to rethink any posturing against the West as a large chunk of Chinese military hardware is either Russian or reverse engineered from Russian hardware and North Korea do much the same with Chinese hardware.

But in saying that, Kim Jong Un is bat shit crazy, so who knows how he would understand and interpret this information

… however there still seems to be a lot in ‘high places’ that perpetuate ancient colonial dominance views which are an encouragement to Russia and ‘others’ to follow such distructive ‘ways’.
Thinking very much of Macron here (though unfortuneately he’s not the only one), really makes you wonder what they learn in these elite ‘schools’?

But that’s precisely what you are doing , and by doing so you are excusing , or at least minimising , Russian barbarity today.

There’s also the fact that Western military actions in the countries you mention at least had a genuine , if sometimes misguided , predicate. The Russian invasion is a naked act of aggression and conquest. And now it is failing it has morphed into a campaign of total destruction for its own vengeful sake.

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