Residential building struck by a missile in southwestern Kyiv Saturday morning
twitter.com
twitter.com
Solid-fueled combined with that kind of trajectory means either an MLRS or an AA missile. (neither artillery shells nor cruise missiles use solid fuels)
This cannot possibly be an MLRS rocket because they are fired in huge salvos and fall without smoke (all fuel is burnt by that point). You won't mistake that for anything else, believe me.
AA launch gone haywire for some reason is my bet. The small explosion is also telling (AA missiles have small warheads, they are all fuel). This would mean either Buk, S-300, or Strela-10 as they are I think the only AA systems in the area. Since that happened yesterday (?) in the Obolon', Kiev, my second bet is that it belongs to Ukrainian Military since it's not taken yet, or wasn't at the moment this was posted.
Remember: what you're getting right now is almost pure white noise, from both sides. The full picture will be available much later. Don't trust my words either, verify everything yourself.
This would not have happened in an alternative universe where Putin is a good leader who was actually trying to improve the lives of Russians.
This is going to be a disaster for the Russian people as well.
[1] https://www.voanews.com/a/icc-may-investigate-possible-war-c...
OTOH, ICC has no practical power to bring Russian personnel (other than those captured in combat by Ukraine) before it for trial, and the US “invade the Hague” law on the ICC might prove a model for Russia should the ICC gain custody of Russian personnel somehow.
And there was no immenent threat of Ukraine entering nato anyway. This is just Russia using it as excuse.
Nothing obvious about Russia needing to annex surrounding countries again.
Putin in his speech blamed Lenin for giving away the territory of the Russian empire in creating a Ukrainian Republic, and claimed that Ukraine is not a real country so does not deserve sovereignty. He later said its leaders are drug dealing Nazis, presumably including the Jewish Russian-speaking president.
Nothing the Russian state says about the origins of the conflict seems very credible. A more plausible origin is Putin’s megalomaniacal imperial ambitions and paranoid fear of being eventually displaced by a homegrown pro-Europe, pro-democracy movement in Russia.
Ideology seems to be part of it but Russian security concerns are part of it too. Suggesting that NATO expansion was a mistake is not the same thing as blaming this war on NATO.
Anyone who does blame NATO should ask themselves why Ukraine wanted to join in the first place (because the Ukrainians know the Russians won't respect their sovereignty).
This pushes the justification for Putin's response away from "unprovoked and savage".
IMO I think the US is partially responsible for this crisis. We've never stopped expanding our influence, for better or worse. Perhaps we pushed a little too hard here.
</armchair>
(edit: changed pro-russia to pro-Putin. E2: Flipped again)
But none of that matters, it's just a figleaf to justify an attack, if not for 'NATO' then for some other bullshit reason.
Everything you said was true years ago as well, a form of it was even true during the Cuban missile crisis, as the US had missiles at the border of the soviet union too, there is nothing unique or newfound geopolitically about the timing here to support this “security issue”.
Russia creates contexts for invasion. It hands passports out to pro-Russian residents in parts of Ukraine, and then invades to “protects its citizens” so that it could theoretically be judged the same way as other countries that do interventions.
Adding all of that to an ideological retcon from 100 years ago, and all you have left is an irrational madman who wants to be in the footnote of a history book as attempting empire rebuilding.
Putin’s own advisors are afraid of him and cant give him a straight answer about anything, they're afraid of the international consequences of this as well.
None of this supports the idea of a leader doing anything in the interest of Russians or the concept of a Russian empire.
We’ll never even get to know what an independent Donetsk and Luhansk even means. Microstates? Districts of Russia?
This is just all way off and a mess. Its come down to just choosing a side and watching the results unfold.
It is already disaster. Putin has basically threw Russia back to a stone age. I've no idea how long it'll take for him to go one or the other way and for Russia to recover back to anything resembling normal life.
According to Rob Lee's twitter it appears Grand Parent's deduction is correct because previously a Ukranian Su-27 that blew up in Kiev was being falsely reported as Russian jet.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1497083662814244864
I have to note how difficult it is right now. "Ukranian side" (it is not clear who the original disseminator network is) appear to be using footages of ARMA 3 and DCS: World overlayed with voice and artifacts from Twitter's compression algorithms really can fool many to believe Ukraine is putting up fierce resistance.
The latest disinformation seems to be a seemingly staged conversation between a Ukranian driver and a Russian APC squad. I don't know who stands to benefit from these disinformation campaign but :
1) Ukranian side can raise morale by selling perception that Russia is poorly equipped and suffering from poor morale.
2) Russian side would purposefully allow such disinformation to spread for an element of surprise, might even be the one manufacturing it.
It is probably a combination of the two but from today's executive order from Putin to launch an all out offensive from all direction will be telling.
Send in the poorly equipped, inexperienced troops in first to feign false sense of security and send in your regular well equipped army.
White noise on all sides and I am noting too, just how difficult it is to get the real story but it seems Twitter makes this extra difficult and its not clear who is leaking these fake disinformation stories and to whom it is aimed to ultimately benefit.
We simply do not know what is happening but I am leaning towards #2, today's encirclement and seige of Mariupol, which was long touted as putting up effective resistance by pro-Ukraine twitter accounts, seems to have collapsed in a matter of hours, sort of like the "Ghost of Kiev" myth
> https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1497083662814244864
It's Russian Su-27. Text is in Russian language on the plane. Ukrainian army uses Ukrainian language only for 20+ years.
Rob Lee, who has been independently reporting about Ukraine since 2014, is fairly credible and does not appear to stand to gain anything from accusations that he is pro-Russian
all text is in russian on that plane, in fact, you can see the same text on that picture (top right corner) and the picture from the tweet.
(genuine question - are there not other kinds of missiles in use?)
Ground to ground is either MLRS (doesn't look like it at all) or ballistic (absolutely not)
AT missiles are typically obturated, don't have that amount of smoke either, and won't cause that kind of damage (they are designed to leave a small hole)
https://twitter.com/ASBMilitary/status/1497518912287789059
Russia MOD: “In attempts of repelling a rocket attack on the military infrastructure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, failure occurred in the missile guidance system of a Ukrainian AF Buk-M1 medium-range air defense system and the missile hit the corner of a residential building."
These things don't have a set price. They have a price of "How much can you afford?"
That's actually a "normal" question when thinking of it in terms of one saas company to another, but I actually think that question is almost nonsensical when thinking of it as a company selling to a major government. "Err, what is this 'afford' word you use? I do not think it means what you think it does."
"How much can we charge to ensure we are not leaving money on the table?"
'How much can you afford' has a deeper meaning. It's not how much money is in your wallet definition of "afford". It's more like how high can we push that number before your backside no longer clinches. It's a sales person's wet dream situation. It was never meant to be understood as "we can't afford your asking price, so give us a lower rate'.
The overall missed point is that there is no set price. The prices are negotiated per purchaser.
This is the M270 system which was developed in the 1970s and 1980s to meet the US Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) requirement. It was just a way of naming the requirement, kind of like “JSF”, and it stuck.
At the time rocket launchers were most commonly referred to as Multiple Rocket Launchers (MRL) and were mostly simple truck-based variants.
However MLRS had been used to refer to the capability by others in the past and it was never trademarked or limited to the US requirement and the M270. Over time it became common to refer to any modern integrated multiple rocket launcher as an MLRS, leaving the MRL naming only for less sophisticated types.
'MLRS is a registered trademark of Lockheed Martin Corporation.'
https://trademarks.justia.com/759/79/mlrs-75979459.html
But for some reason as trademark class 28, toys and sporting goods, with the statement 'toys, namely scale models of military vehicles'.
After some searching: apparently, they mean this:
https://www.brickmania.com/mlrs-multiple-launch-rocket-syste...
Trademarks only apply to their registered class—did they seriously trademark the term just to limit who could sell toys named with it?
That is quite a bizarre trademark and I didn't expect it.
https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=mlrs
https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=multiple+launch+rocke...
I'm amazed that they were granted those trademarks. As I said, MLRS has become a very generic term and from the start it was a US Army name, not invented by Lockheed-Martin.
Not only is it small (like you pointed out) AA missiles also tend to focus on fragmentation damage (expanding metal rings, directed frag etc).
Source: I used to be an explosives expert in the military.
Edit: Completely forgot to mention fuzing systems. This missile detonated on contact with the building. I have yet to come across an AA missile that detonates on contact with an object. All (effective) AA missiles use proximity sensors (radar, thermal, etc) to detonate near their target.
Also, if it was a misfire, most modern missiles have fail safes that disable the detonation of the main charge in case of an accidental firing.
Again, I could be wrong and this could be an AA missile, but all signs point to no; it isn’t.
Not saying I don't believe you, but I'd caution everyone during this time to take what they see online with a grain of salt. It's propaganda season.
Personally, the red flags from your post were that you have hardly any post history, you came out claimed to be a munitions/explosives expert, usually you don't have to do that, the knowledge speaks for itself. Your rebuttal didn't seem to be as strong compared to GPs reasoning, and it ended with a conclusion that seemed to be more of an opinion, not objective reasoning.
--
I don't think the ad hominem attack by (epgui) and (jaquesm) is warranted, it definitely isn't "Fact". I reply to many topics both political and technical, as does everyone. If I have such a consistent track record of "patently unreasonable comments" then you should be able to support your argument.
Again, I did not mean any offense by my initial statement.
I know my comment is ad hominem, but track records count for something, and while they have no bearing on the value of an argument, they sure should affect your degree of suspicion and scrutiny of said argument.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-13_rocket
EDIT: typos
As you said though, the full picture will come out later. Hopefully they'll find some identifiable weapon fragments eventually.
what do you mean with "taken"? who takes what?
A widely circulated video showed a Ukrainian jet that was shot down in Kyiv at night by Russian AA less than 48 hours ago. The odds are not great on your second bet.
So whatever the direct cause the responsibility for all this lies with the Russians.
This should be remembered, those responsible in its operation should be reprimanded, and those civilians and their families should be compensated by the Ukrainian government. It should not be used as propaganda, it should be admitted as a mistake.
Taking into account how the Russians handled MH17, as a Dutch person I may be a bit biased but I think this is wholly on them.
Russia is responsible, no matter how you want to dress it up. RCA. Or do you actually believe that reparations payments take into account which party did the damage?
These are just the basic facts. No special expertise needed, of the sort the "I can tell what kind of missile this was by observing the smoke it makes" guy must possess. Shifting moral responsibility for collateral damage from the aggressor to the defender based on the limitations of the defender's arsenal does not seem right.
Now the only question remains: are you spreading this propaganda intentionally?
Edit: following guidelines
Believe me I know where you are coming from.
your argument is:
1. US deployed nukes to Turkey, 2. to which USSR responded symmetrically by attempting to deploy nukes in Cuba, 3. to which US responded with blockade 4. and therefore Russian invasion to Ukraine is justified 5. because NATO may deploy nukes in Ukraine
4. simply doesn't follow from previous 3 points because the assumption in 5. is incorrect in three ways:
1. Ukraine is not in NATO so NATO doesn't have the capability to deploy nukes there 2. If NATO needed nukes close to Moscow - they ALREADY HAVE where to do that - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland 3. US was responding with blockade to ACTIVE DEPLOYMENT PROCESS of nukes, which isn't happening in Ukraine
Letting a megalomaniacal dictator that has clearly lost command of his senses run amok, especially when in control of a large nuclear arsenal is a risk we can not really afford, and appeasing such a person will only feed into the cycle of demands.
But what exactly do you propose?
this is bullshit. NATO is not expanding, NATO is not the actor that is able to perform that action, rather it's emergent property of sovereign countries choosing to join NATO.
So who is Putin to tell what sovereign countries can or cannot do? If he's so unhappy with a choice that sovereign country is making with regard to joining a defensive alliance, maybe he should offer something better instead and not behave like a crazy lunatic dictator?
There is nothing valuable in "look at it from Putin's perspective" argument when his perspective is tyrannical.
Edit: Oh, assuming we all know location - NE of Sikorsky Int Airport, next to novus supermarket.
> Some claims that the missile strike on the apartment building in Kyiv could be from a Ukrainian S-300 air defense missile, so its still worth keeping an open mind about what munition was responsible.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1497501462447984642
That's a good question, what happens with an anti-air missile if it fails to hit something in the sky? Does it disable itself before hitting ground?
Also, you can look at my comment history if you think I'm pro-russian.
It's a sad state of things where someone asking a legit question has to add this disclaimer.
As someone in an uninvolved third country, I don't understand why hackernews is cheering for one side: Politicians and diplomats executed some realpolitik type moves and it backfired into a hot war.
A conventional war several thousand kilometres away shouldn't affect me regardless of the outcome but media has been trying to project this as world war 3, more and more countries are seemingly getting involved (and GitHub issues are being created to block Russian users). Makes it scary.
I mean, Putin has made a number of nuclear and 'significant' threats in the past week. It shouldn't be surprising that this would concern a great number of people.
Think of it as sort of akin to the very early days of COVID-19. There were far more unknowns than known facts, it immediately became politicized which poisoned the discourse, and multiple historical precedents demonstrate how much worse it could have been. (And of course, it also isn't over...)
Today this is Russia attacking Ukraine. But Europe is deeply interconnected, war is definitionally out of control, and there are multiple historical precedents demonstrating how bad this can get.
I do hope your faith that this stays "just" a regional disaster holds true, but right now do not see reason to share it.
Anyway, the revolution overthrew a pro-Russian, anti-EU president. So there you go.
. a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.
Putin is a madman that should have been deposed long time ago, but current media hysteria is on the next level.
Because sometimes there is an actual good side and an actual evil side. Not all good and evil is relative.
There's no good vs evil in international diplomacy.
The simplistic version of the Nazi's rise to power is that they did so by labelling Jews and other minorities as evil.
That reinforces my point. Doesn't it?
(And were the British any better? See: Bengal Famine)
The whole world thinks that Russia is doing an evil thing, just as the whole world thinks Nazi's did an evil thing.
You claimed literally "There's no good vs evil", while there clearly is.
Same with Stalin's USSR.
> The whole world thinks that Russia is doing an evil thing
100+ countries abstained from voting in the resolution condemning Russian actions. That includes India and China which account for 30% of the world population. So the "world" clearly isn't part of whatever propaganda echo chamber you're in.
The world, like me, doesn't care what happens in a distant corner in Eastern Europe.
In any case, geopolitics isn't good vs evil: countries just pursue their strategic interests. Realpolitik
So they didn't vote in favor of Russia, did they? Even friendly China didn't vote in favor of Russia.
> The world, like me, doesn't care what happens in a distant corner in Eastern Europe.
Just because you don't care, doesn't make it right.
> they didn't vote in favor of Russia, did they?
In a resolution like this, abstaining is effectively the same as voting against.
> Just because you don't care, doesn't make it right.
You're just trolling at this point
I agree with your sentiments totally but no debate is being stifled. HN on the whole is supporting the side that the vast vast majority of the world is siding with. There are good reasons to in most people's minds.
Supporting one side and allowing others to disagree is compatible with no censorship.
We are seeing, however, that Russia is doing what China is doing and enacting stronger censorship. Is that a positive sign or not? I would say that it is a sign of a repressive regime.
A discussion is also different from a debate. Its an important difference in how you approach conversations online.
But this is geopolitics we're talking about: There isn't a good side and an evil side.
>But this is geopolitics we're talking about: There isn't a good side and an evil side.
Are you stating that as an absolute fact? There's never been an evil side in global geopolitics? Is it possible for there to be an evil side in geopolitics in the future?
And maybe over time they transform into one another (e.g. political parties trading tactics over hundreds of years).
But still, for a given moment in time, it's possible to point to the side that's doing the majority of the evil.
My family in law lived under the Soviets, while they were still "winners". You think they liked that regime? Please don't say stupid 1 liners and expect to sound smart.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–2022_Russo-Ukrainian_cr...
Excuse me, what? How is that not blindingly clear who the aggressor is here?
Like the Azerbaijan Armenia war that happened last year or the Saudi Yemani war sometime ago?
I'm really wondering why this one is different.
Also, this could be a test case watched by China for a possible invasion of Taiwan, as has been mentioned.
There also are a few more countries that Russia has thus far only targeted with rhetoric but could target for (re)annexation next, depending on their post mortem cost/benefit analysis of how it went in Ukraine once this is over.
It also shows how little the rest of the world can do when a nuke-owning nation just starts a war unilaterally.
I saw this as a headline from several news websites already. So are you sure you weren't influenced by that?
Reality is that the Taiwan situation is very different from the Ukraine situation and China itself thinks of it that way.
> Russia has nukes.
India and Pakistan, TWO nuclear weapon weilding countries, had a brief air engagement a few years ago. Nothing on HN. No sides. No GitHub issues..
You could call brief when Russia invaded the eastern parts of it in 2014.
Putin 3 days ago warned that any Western "interference" would have "consequences you never experienced in your history". Is Poland/Germany sending anti-tank and anti-air missiles in Ukraine now an "interference"?
I think it doesn’t count as interference, according to arcane rules of international law. For example, during Cold War, US and Soviets would routinely openly arm combatants in their proxy war, and it didn’t count as actual offensive actions.
For comparison, many voices in US are calling for instituting a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine. What that phrase means is they want NATO to commit to shoot down all Russian planes over Ukraine. NATO shooting down Russian aircraft will obviously will be taken as act of war by Russians.
Yemen is too. https://upload.vaa.red/2hjyom#565284ae60ef9dfd699d3810c00600...
It is the missing white woman syndrome applied to geopolitical conflicts.[1] A war or terrorist attack affecting North American and European countries is more important and deserving of constant attention than similar things happening elsewhere in the world.
[1] Missing white woman syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome)
If e.g. Russia occupies Ukraine and Ukrainian insurgents are supplied or based from Poland and Russians fire across the border, or if Russia/Turkey fire on each-other when a Russian warship tries to pass through the Bosporus, or if Russian warplanes get shot down over Lithuania on their way between Belarus and Kaliningrad, or if Russia responds to economic sanctions with large-scale cyber attacks against the UK or France, (or, or, or...) we could quickly end up in a situation with two great nuclear powers actively firing at each-other.
I guess HN treats it also differently because of the real risk to nuclear escalation.
Yes, Russian trolls are present even here; we just shouldn't feed them.
This has been planned for months. It didn’t backfire into anything. Putin likely made up his mind weeks ago and there was nothing anyone could do. All of his demands were completely ludicrous, and either he knows it or he really has lost his mind.
> cheering for one side
Yes, in a completely unprovoced war not far from where I live, I side with the country being attacked.
I'm sorry, but what the actual fuck man?
From another comment here I learnt that there were targeted attacks on Russian population inside Ukraine and racist laws. Not something a democratic country would do (if true)
> that the people kicked out
People don't organically get together and _successfully_ kick out a regime without foreign support.
And the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is also clear.
> People don't organically get together and _successfully_ kick out a regime without foreign support.
Seems like they did, didn't they? And it also seems like they are kicking Russians ass right now, don't they?
If you cannot see the difference between the two then you don't want to see. Please show evidence of Ukrainians attacking other Russian speaking Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians presidents first language is Russian. So he's going to commit genocide against himself? Haha give me a break!
Even if a warhead isn't armed, a heavy missile moving very fast hitting a heavy building moving very slowly makes for a lot of impact energy. Unspent fuel (solid or otherwise) will also readily start secondary fires and be dangerous for rescuers and emergency crews.
Well, sure. But it is also worth keeping in mind that SAMs wouldn't be flying in the first place if Kyiv wasn't being attacked by Russians.
Even some air-dropped munitions you might not expect, like the bomblets from cluster bombs, will self-destruct before they hit the ground if their sensors don't detect a target within their damage radius. Modern weapons go to considerable lengths to proactively auto-disable/self-destruct after deployment.
Edit: thank you to everyone who educated me on the subject.
> Not surprisingly, the Ukrainian government mounted a campaign four years ago to secure international approval for the name of its capital city. There is even a popular Twitter hashtag, #KyivNotKiev.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/how-to-pronoun...
Normally it's just Киев/Київ.
"On 17 May 2016 the Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations informed the UN that the short name to be used for the country is Czechia." [1]
The official full name in English continues to be "the Czech Republic". [2]
[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/czechoslovakia
[2] https://unterm.un.org/unterm/Display/record/UNHQ/NA?Id=42750...
Wikipedia has a good discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_the_Czech_Republic
Kiev -> Kyiv. Kharkov -> Kharkiv. Zelensky should be spelt Zelenskiy (as per his official social media). Vladimir -> Volodymyr, Mikhail -> Mykhailo, etc...
On his Twitter, he spells it Zelenskyy
By dragging the swift ban germany is basically making sure that russia has the money to continue its massive offensive.
Germany would have been quicker to sanction poland or romania over minor disputes than it is to sanction a dictator that they have been happily doing business with.
As with almost any legal question the answer will depend heavily on specifics not easily determined from a few minutes of video clip.
>Can Putin or whoever is responsible be charged in court for this?
Assuming it does constitute a war crime then theoretically: yes.
In actuality: no, because of course you can't just waltz in and arrest the dictator of a nuclear power.
The “rules based international order” is a sham and always has been. This is made obvious by the US based empire’s total disregard for other states’ sovereignty when it doesn’t suit them.
For what it’s worth I oppose this war as I oppose virtually all wars. It’s tragic and I wish it were unnecessary.
Yawn.
Of course the victor writes the rules, but the International Criminal Court has the support of most of the UN. If you believe democratic society is fundamentally a good thing then it follows that the Pax Americana has been, in aggregate, a tremendous success in normalizing and codifying international law.
Is the current state of affairs imperfect? Of course.
"Winners write history" is such a boring, undergraduate take on geopolitics.
The period of relative peace in which we live is called the Pax Americana because it's primarily driven by US military hegemony and there's no escaping that fact.
For what it's worth, I'm not American.
The ICC is a great example of why “international law” is a dead letter if not a total fraud. I’m sure you’re aware that the US based empire doesn’t acknowledge its authority. The US based empire permits the ICC to act only when it serves the empire’s interests. So much for normalization and codification.
Finally, I never said “winners write history.” I said they write the rules. Conflating the two is intellectually sloppy or a straw man. So much for reading comprehension.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...