When 2 countries are at war, with active combat going on, is an act of terrorism possible? Isn’t it just a normal thing in war to destroy infrastructure?
What's even better is that recently, Russian government proclaimed some oblasts of Ukraine to be Russian territory, _even the areas they never controlled_, such as Zaporizhzhia city or Sloviansk. Russian government is not all there.
Even better, Russia shelled what they considered their own city (Zaporizhzhia) in retaliation for the strike on the Kerch Bridge.
How many wars didn’t violate the rules of war?
Also see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing, where a train got hit while passing a bridge, which was the real target. 20-55 civilians were dead, but ICTY found no wrongdoing, because the train was just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and pilot failed to notice it.
Regardless of the law, I think it's pretty sickening to watch Russians military attacks that inadvertently killed civilians. Im no less revulsed by us doing it.
Is raping and torturing civilians against the laws of war?.
Cause we have plenty of evidence of that alone, let alone the evidence of Russians directly targeting civilian buildings and evacuation corridors.
It is, which is why Lyudmila Denisova made up accusations in order to get more weapons for Ukraine. She made the mistake of getting caught doing it and so was fired. A lot of people assume that this was an isolated incident. I dont.
There is a lack of independent observers of war crimes (there are satellite photos of dead bodies, but that in itself doesnt prove war crimes were committed) as well as powerful incentives for Ukraine to lie about this on an industrial scale - Ukrainian military supply lines are utterly dependent on western sympathy not drying up.
The UN recently released a independent report that says they uncovered evidence that Russian soldiers raped and tortured civilians in Ukraine, including children.
> https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/09/update-chair-ind...
> The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons. The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.
> It is
So you are in agreement with me Russia commits war crimes, good to know.
The UN recently released an "independent" report refusing to assign blame for shelling on Zaporizhia.
I would like to trust the UN but when the truth of what happened in Zaporizhia was so very obvious and they made no comment on it after a thorough investigation, they undermined their status as an impartial investigator.
Rape is a difficult allegation to prove at the best of times. During the fog of war, with no impartial observers and a paucity of evidence other than witness testimony it becomes nearly impossible. This is pretty much where we are.
>Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons.
How do you prove that attacks are indiscriminate? For 50 years Israel has been accused of this after killing thousands of children and has successfully batted away the accusation with "well, we were firing at militants, civilians just happened to be there whoops".
This (among other things) set a precedent under international law that the standard of evidence required to prove mens rea was almost impossibly high.
So far we havent had anything like the Srebrenica massacre (clear cut evidence of militants caught on camera admitting to massacring civilians) we've just got a lot of unreliable witnesses, a lot of accusations flying and a lot of largely western leaning institutions that are as credulous of Ukrainian accusations of warcrimes as they are incredulous of Russian accusations.
>So you are in agreement with me Russia commits war crimes
I suspect everybody of committing war crimes but I trust nobody to actually investigate and punish them.
I realize this puts me in a minority. To most people, this war seems to be a team sport and demonstrate the same level of introspection as a knicks fan or somebody wearing a MAGA hat.
The Russians level entire cities, the leader of the DPR even explicitly said they where going to kill all Ukrainians they couldn't 'convince', threatening to kill them all.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/15798208107...
We have videos of the Russians committing war crimes if you really need that.
Here Russia killing two unarmed civilians, caught on camera.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/11/europe/ukraine-video-russ...
Here's a link to an article, cause I don't want to link the video. Of a Russian soldier castrating a Ukrainian PoW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_and_castration_of_a_Uk...
Here's a link to a Russian tank obliterating a car with civilians on it, on camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQz1UUkmuqM
Here's a article that mixes video and witness testimony which says Russia executed 8 civilians.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/russia-bucha...
So will you finally admit Russia commits war crimes, or will video evidence suddenly not be good enough?.
Surgical precision drone strikes at weddings for example, where it turns out nobody there was a terrorist.
I dont remember this happening before.
Being reminded that it is legal under our interpretation of international law doesnt make it feel any better. The same would apply to virtually all Russian attacks too.
"3 civilians killed by bomb in terrorist attack on bridge" is how we used to report ISIS doing the exact same thing.
Im not sure if a seat at the UN is the difference between this being a terrorist attack and a glorious act of bravery.
Meanwhile, Russia retaliates by hitting residential buildings with rockets. I am eager to hear what you think of that.
I think they share your willingness to enthusiastically excuse collateral murder in pursuit of military advantage.
Enthusiastic supporters on both sides of this war are strikingly similar.
One is just not like the other, no matter how you spin it.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrai...
They are more alike than not, no matter how you try to spin it.
Tell me of a single major conflict that didn’t involve civilian casualties. I will wait. It is terrible, but unavoidable, especially given the circumstances that Russia has created in Ukraine, unprovoked.
There are major differences between the participants with regards to intent. Intent of their actions. Russian soldiers have raped, tortured and executed civilians. There have been mass graves found in the liberated territories.
I don’t see how you can equate these with the destruction of a bridge that is vitally important to Russia’s control and supply of Crimea and southern Ukraine. The intent would be to deprive Russia of re-supply and access. The intention of mass killings, torture and rape, is to kill and torture people. There is no legitimate strategic objective for these actions.
Therefore, I suppose he can only call this an act of terrorism.
But also blowing up things up to and including civilian infrastructure. Lots of bridges, etc. were attacked for years. This is a guerilla insurgency. Wikipedia says:
They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. They assassinated government officials and PDPA members, and laid siege to small rural outposts. In March 1982, a bomb exploded at the Ministry of Education, damaging several buildings. In the same month, a widespread power failure darkened Kabul when a pylon on the transmission line from the Naghlu power station was blown up. In June 1982 a column of about 1,000 young communist party members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On 4 September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard.
So even if USSR "won", or supported the local secular government, they'd get attacked, similar to how the Taliban would fight the USA in the last 20 years and eventually make our army leave too (this year). The USA used this force to, in the words of Brezhinski, national security advisor "make the soviets bleed for as much and as long as possible": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0
Unfortunately, the longer a protracted proxy war like this goes on, the more civilians are killed. After the Soviets "won" in Afghanistan, the ensuing proxy war claimed the lives of 2 million Afghan civilians! https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War
In Ukraine, the CIA thought Russia would quickly make the government in Kyiv capitulate and agree to Putin's demands, so they started training Ukrainian paramilitaries to do the work of Mujahideen, here is an article in Yahoo News about that from before Feb 24:
https://news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-...
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-...