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Founder and creative director of Bellingcat (definitely not pro-russian) advises being careful with this one:

> 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.

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> worth keeping an open mind about what munition was responsible.

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.

> 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.

> I don't understand why hackernews is cheering for one side

Because sometimes there is an actual good side and an actual evil side. Not all good and evil is relative.

When it comes to something as vastly complicated as global politics, I disagree wholeheartedly.

That argument is what tyrants thrive on. Sometimes you need to decide.

I would argue that stifling debate with black and white thinking is more responsible for allowing tyrants to thrive.

The grandparent of this sub-thread was talking about "cheering for one side". That is a far far long way from "stifling debate".

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.

Answering "why are you cheering for one side?" With "cuz the other side is evil" is stifling debate.

But this is geopolitics we're talking about: There isn't a good side and an evil side.

I'm sure Ukraine has done some bad things. But Russian invading is worse than anything Ukraine did, so most people on HN are mad at Russia.

>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?

Calling the other side evil is what tyrants thrive on.

I am absolutely happy to call the Russian government evil, I don't live too far away from Salisbury so it's not exactly a theoretical discussion.

I mean, Russians would have definitely called the West and Ukraine as evil in their domestic channels. No?

There's no good vs evil in international diplomacy.

Do you have the same sentiment for Nazi's?

This isn't a sentiment.

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)

What point? That there is no good or evil side?

> Calling the other side evil is what tyrants thrive on

> There's no good vs evil in international diplomacy.

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.

The Nazi's certainly didn't think of themselves as evil. They called the other side evil/Jews evil.

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

> 100+ countries abstained from voting

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.

Just refuting your statement that the world sees one side as evil. We, the rest of the world, have no horse in the race.

> 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

There's a yin-yang effect going on, certainly. But, taking this metaphor further, if you look at the taijitu, there is a predominantly yin side and a predominantly yang side.

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.

Like world war 2. Very complex to decide between the Nazi's, the West, and Stalin.

History is written by the winners

Stalin wrote a lot of history after his victories. Yet he had to close his borders because everybody wanted to get out.

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.

From my uneducated perspective on the other side of the world, this looks like a mostly unilateral act of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. Is that not the case?

From my equally uneducated perspective, I understand that this started with the 2014 revolution that the Russian government calls a coup.

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.

> A conventional war several thousand kilometres away shouldn't affect me

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.

If you dont understand the impact that wars in east europe affect everyone’s life everywhere you havent paying attention to history since world war 2. Several thousand kilometres are basically next door.

Oh, please, since 1990 there were multiple wars in Europe and literally next door nobody gave a fuck about. Serbia/Kosovo, Bosnia, Moldova, Libya, Syria.

Putin is a madman that should have been deposed long time ago, but current media hysteria is on the next level.

If Putin didn't control a few thousand nukes, this wouldn't be as newsworthy, for sure. Probably he wouldn't even try to invade Ukraine in that case.

Wow.

How does a coup in literally another country justify invading it? (Add: sorry, I should not have phrased it so sharply since you state it as an uneducated perspective.)

Funny how you could call it either a "revolution" or a "coup", and they both mean more or less the same thing, but "coup" delegitimizes it, while "revolution" legitimizes it.

Anyway, the revolution overthrew a pro-Russian, anti-EU president. So there you go.

Thanks for supporting my point. Additionally, 'coup' in my view has the connotations of a regime overthrow by a militant minority, which does not seem to have been the case.

Interestingly enough I had the same understanding as you and it appears to be wrong (unless the definition has changed as they seem to be wont to do in recent years). I was under the impression that a coup was when the military seized power from the civilian government and a revolution was when the civilian populace tore down the current government. This is the current definition that google returns and it does not support that understanding:

. a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.

And if you look at the Ukrainian resistance right now, it seems they prefer a democratically elected leader over a Russian puppet dictator. Strange, right?

>has been trying to project this as world war 3

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.

The recent history doesn't seem like it backfired into a hot war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has to have been in planning and staging for at least several months.

It’s likely been at least a year in the making. Troop build ups were noticed in March 2021.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–2022_Russo-Ukrainian_cr...

Operation like this takes years to plan and prepare, and if anything it comes surprisingly late, given that civil war continued for 8 years in Ukraine. You would think they would act sooner then risking losing Donabas to Ukrainians. My guess it was delayed by Covid.

That is a great point. I always figured that if this was going to happen that it would be at the moment when America was most confused, the transition period from one president to the next, but you are right, that coincided with COVID which may well have screwed up their timetable.

One dictatorship invaded a democratic country to reinstall a puppet dictator that the people kicked out.

I'm sorry, but what the actual fuck man?

Again, from my unparticipating 3rd country vantage point, both are either dictatorships and democratic countries depending on your standards.

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.

You are parroting Russian propaganda here. I know Ukrainians personally, and the truth is very clear.

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!

> I don't understand why hackernews is cheering for one side

Excuse me, what? How is that not blindingly clear who the aggressor is here?

Does hackernews take part in cheering a side in every other war too?

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.

The conflict between Azeris and Armenians causes a lot of tragic death and displacement on both sides with no sign of permanent resolution, but is not imminently threatening to cause a direct fight between two nuclear powers or spark off a Europe-wide war.

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.

Scale and danger and consequences. Ukraine is a big country. Russia has nukes. It also has a huge territory, so anything significant happening in or to Russia has a high chance to be or to become important.

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.

> A test case watched by China for a possible invasion of Taiwan

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..

What's going on now in Ukraine is not brief.

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"?

> 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.

AFAIK, they have had multiple engagements. The fact that they managed not to glass each other gives me some hope for humanity.

> Ukraine is a big country.

Yemen is too. https://upload.vaa.red/2hjyom#565284ae60ef9dfd699d3810c00600...

Because many people on HN have personal morality perhaps.

if powerful countries / economies are attacked that have a very low appetite for any form of risk then the media will treat it differently. Also the sad thing is it's not about human casualties but how much wealth is lost. If everyone would have their wealth tied up in Azerbaijan then I bet a war there would be reported on very differently.

I guess HN treats it also differently because of the real risk to nuclear escalation.

I just looked at your comment history. It's quite obvious what and who you represent so whataboutism and other discourse steering techniques are more than expected.

Yes, Russian trolls are present even here; we just shouldn't feed them.

> I'm really wondering why this one is different.

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)

You are wrong. It's about the escalation potential.

Because this site is dominated by people from Western countries. As simple as that.

Even China isn't supportin Russia here. So no, it's not only "the west"

From where does this "only" come from?

> Politicians and diplomats executed some realpolitik type moves and it backfired into a hot war.

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.

> 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?

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.

From what I've seen it's probably a BUK instead of an s300 but most sources agree that it's ukrainian. The missile was probably trying to intercept another one and something went wrong so I doubt it's intentional

From what I've heard it's a Buk-M1 with a failing guidance system that was used to intercept a Russian missile attack on military infrastructure. Why it failed is guesswork but missing maintenance/deterioration is rather likely.

Many anti-aircraft missiles self-destruct (by triggering the warhead) if they lose their target or run out of range. I believe this is a standard feature for most modern implementations. This minimizes the possibility of collateral damage, especially if you are using it over your own soil.

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.

Anybody who has spent some time with simple model rockets knows that even they do not always go where they are expected. I have seen model rockets do some pretty remarkable "surprise" trajectories. It is very easy to understand how a far more complicated SAM launched in an urban environment could fly off course and into a building.

S-300 warhead should auto-destroy itself if lost the target. Source: military department of Moscow State University.

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