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Comment by ChildOfChaos | Hacker News Reader

I mean all I see when I look online is Russia attacking Civilians and not caring who they attack.

Yes there is a degree of restraint because they are trying to take the country over, they cannot burn it to the ground, but they don’t really seem to care about civilians and keep committing war crimes, just now they directly bombed near a hotel and train station, people trying to flee the country.

Saying they are ‘pro-civillian’ seems far fetched and doesn’t seem to match the facts

The British government is leading a 38-nation referral of Russia to the ICC to probe war crimes and a direct quote from the British Government foreign secretary just now reads: “Putin’s military machine is targeting civilians indiscriminately and tearing through towns across Ukraine"

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> just now they directly bombed near a hotel and train station, people trying to flee the country.

I've just read that the explosion near Kiev's train station (if that's what you're talking about) was due to a Russian missile that got intercepted by Ukrainian defense.

It would make zero sense for Russians to be using their weapons against anything non-military at this point given that, if reports are true, there's still plenty of Ukrainian military resistance to be dealt with.

I'll just drop these 2 of dozens of examples here:

https://youtu.be/8ekA9skT7QQ

https://youtu.be/YMMxwA4lvbA

We have footage of cluster bombs striking civilian apartment buildings in Kharkiv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZuKEwuZznw

There are counter claims that that building was being used for recruitment for the Azov battalion.

like seriously, lol. their intelligence were crappy enough to miss a bunch of air defense systems but they know that in some specific building is an recruitment for azov

The specific building is the regional administration, and recruitment there was advertised in Ukrainian telegram channels.

All that excuses nothing.

there is recruitment to regional defense everywhere right now.

This might be why they are starting to bomb everywhere now.

now. residential area in kharkiv https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM33LeNXwAsuKHy?format=jpg&name=...

That’s what they said about a different building that got bombed in Kharkiv, a University Economics building, that the intended target was “Azov Battalion” across the street. They can’t seriously be bombing many different buildings and claiming they’re all “Azov Battalion.” Azov mainly operated around Mariupol too, not Kharkiv.

The Azov Battalion is the cause of everything, it seems. They're recruiting everywhere, I'm surprised it itself isn't the whole of the Ukrainian defenses now, if I believed all of the Russian shills.

/s/Azov Battalion/Ukrainian National Guard/

Yeah, they have around 2500 members, but that's totally a reason to lose 2000 people a day in an unprovoked invasion and tank your entire country's economy while doing it.

Would be nice if Europe and the US would seize Putin and associates' accounts and donate them to Ukraine.

It's basically akin to Canada deciding to invade the US because of the existence of the Proud Boys.

Well, it's a little different. For one, Ukraine took all of these militia groups and made them a standard part of their military's operations. Apparently they've been working to defang the rhetoric of this particular group, but for Putin to pretend like he gives a shit about fascism given that he's currently the highest profile fascist world leader is a bit ridiculous.

> Would be nice if Europe and the US would seize Putin and associates' accounts and donate them to Ukraine.

I agree with this. Ukraine already has sustained tremendous damage, and of course it will get much worse before this ends. Take everything possible from Russia and give it over to Ukraine to help rebuild. Assuming they win. God I hope they win.

$600B of reserves of RF, which are frozen, is the cost of a just single major city. It's not enough to cover loses from Russian war, because Ukraine lost 2 major cities (Donetsk, Luhansk) and whole Crimea at the beginning of the war. Everything confiscated will be just a little fraction of lost value.

IMHO, RF should give Cuban and other territories, confiscated by USSR, back to Ukraine as compensation for 8 years of war and massive destruction of Ukrainian cities.

It is important to distinguish between strategic and tactical decisions.

Russia has made a strategic decision to avoid heavy bombers due to the high likelihood of civilian casualties.

Some platoon commander launched a rocket barrage for whatever reason. Command discipline isn’t perfect, especially among new recruits, so individual deviations are to be expected.

Don't forget, every media outlet that isn't Russian is going to show those incidents to the world to make that bad guys look bad. We're also not likely to see any wins against Ukrainian military targets for both political and practical reasons. So it's very hard to tell from these reports what the overall picture really is.

Why I can see losses of Ukrainian army, while you cannot? They are not hidden by Ukrainians, because it's impossible to hide them in time of TikTok and FB. They are recorded and posted by civilians to YT, FB, TikTok and reported by Ministry of Defense. If MoD lie in FB, then users will correct them in real time.

>> Why I can see losses of Ukrainian army, while you cannot?

Because we look in different places. TikTok and FB posts are isolated incidents and don't offer meaningful statistics. I'm sure if I want to see dead Ukrainians I can find that on Russian media sites. None of it is meaningful to the big picture. We really can't see the big picture numbers.

That footage is not of a cluster bomb. Cluster bombs consist of many small bombs that spread over a large area and don't all detonate at once but instead detonate over longer period of time in order to maximize casualties and make area difficult to access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_munition.

NATO used cluster bombs in the 1990s bombing of Serbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%A1_cluster_bombing. If it is a war crime now, it was a war crime then, where are the prosecutions of those responsible? It has been 20 years and I don't see anyone being held accountable.

I think we are now seeing a clearer picture of what happens when there is a conflict in an urban area. In the past we got to see a video from a plane guiding a bomb to the building from above (Iraq wars) and assumed it was an isolated military installation. Then we saw news footage of residential buildings in various states of destruction and just never associated that with the above video of bombs dropping on buildings. If you drop bombs near residential area, there will be destruction in that residential area. Look at what truck bomb did in Oklahoma City bombing - that was one makeshift (but large) bomb that detonated outside a building and according to Wikipedia "The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars".

Maybe this war will finally get people to see how destructive and wasteful they are but somehow I doubt it.

> I think we are now seeing a clearer picture of what happens when there is a conflict in an urban area

Now? Have you heard of Stalingrad?

I don't speak for GP but I think they mean "clearer picture" as in: literally live-streaming the frontline, in HD, worldwide.

> I think they mean "clearer picture" as in: literally live-streaming the frontline, in HD, worldwide.

We have to understand this before we can cope with what is happening? Asking a bit much, in my opinion.

And have you perhaps heard: Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

The problem with history lessons is that pictures are b&w and static so it seems like it was all over long time ago and now we are OK. The problem with Iraq and Syria is that they are over there where wars always happen so it's nothing unexpected to westerners (whose governments probably had a role in starting those wars). Even Yugoslavia was 30 years ago and back on Balkans so who cares (I am from there and I do care). With Ukraine at least some Europeans are now getting an idea how bad war is but I suspect a lot are still ignorant and cheer for fighting to continue until "victory".

THERE IS NO VICTORY FOR REGULAR PEOPLE IN THESE CONFLICTS. THEY LOST EVERYTHING.

It seems to be impossible to explain to most people that war is bad for them and the only people who "win" are the politicians and their rich sponsors. I will count myself lucky if I manage to die before we get into a nuclear war.

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