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Comment by manholio | Hacker News Reader

If so, provoking this Russian vengeance strike is the best feat of the Ukrainian army by a mile. If you can bleed 1 billion in military spending with the cost of a few deaths and an lorry filled with explosives, that's by far the most effective way to win a war: you will quickly bankrupt Russia while your own army is still able to fight.

Sounds much like the V2 rocket program used by Hitler to punish the British for their continental bombing incursions; it was largely irrelevant militarily but very expensive.

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Do you know how much money ru gets from fuels alone? From eu region alone? Billions... This means ru can shot for days these kind of rockets and they will still be at profit... I really doubt Ukr is wants this kind of terror. Loosing civilians can be sometimes much worse compared to loosing troops

No one wants to see civilians die. But killing civilians doesn't change Ukrainian military strength at all.

That's why such an attack is stupid and barbaric. It changes nothing about the war and just manages to waste Russian money and kill innocent people.

If Russia's best response is really just attacking Universities and parks, it means that the Ukrainian army is invisible to Russia and Russia has no ability to strike the troops.

Russia seemingly just confirmed what we all were thinking, they have no ability to beat the Ukrainian army anymore, and have decided to simply attack civilians out of frustration.

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In contrast, the destruction of the Crimean bridge destroys one of two railroads that are supplying the Russian army in the south. Logistics for troop supplies are ruined.

The strategic implications are obvious, and Russia seemingly has no way to stop the Ukrainian southern counter-offensive... And now has roughly 1/2 of the military supplies moving forward.

Except they haven't only destroyed universities and parks. They have also hit the power plants in most of the cities. Kharkov was out of electricity in the morning, so were parts of other major cities. Now imagine electricity being out but in winter.

As I said earlier: it'd suck. But it wouldn't hamper the Ukrainian military at all.

Indeed, this is likely going to have the opposite effect. Ukrainians are going to ask NATO for even more weapons, such as anti-missile systems and better air defenses. Making the Ukrainian military even more powerful.

I really don't think that this terrorism of civilians is a good strategy at all. Everyone has accepted the fact that civilians are "soft targets" that are incredibly difficult (maybe impossible) to defend. We don't need a reminder from Russia for that fact.

All these attacks do is prove the depravity of the Russians. Not just of Putin, but also the military commanders who carried out and executed these attacks.

People in charge of Russia likely care little about Ukranian civillians and care deeply about appearing strong to Russian war supporters.

They do have other things they need to spend on.

Russia is a net food exporter, but probably they do not grow all they need. Smuggling needed foreign tech, and laundering money, has to be expensive. Paying off internal supporters might be a bigger drain.

Russia's major limitation is not in its exports. The sanctions are designed to prevent it from importing critical military technology that would allow it to replenish its weapons stocks. Apparently this is causing major problems for missile manufacturers. Eventually Russia will find ways to replace these suppliers (with likely inferior ones) but by they don't have time for that now.

With current sanctions, Russia can still earn money selling fuel to the EU, sure, but they have trouble spending it! They are already using more older missiles, having gone through the majority of their newer ones at the beginning of their invasion, when they thought it would be quick and easy.

They do have thousands of missiles left, although mostly the older, smaller ones as far as anyone can tell, and it's not easy for them to replace any of them.

in light of recent events, I see that Iran is helping them with some new tech

Over 85% of the components in rockets like Kalibr and other high accuracy cruise missiles are sourced outside Russia, much of it formerly coming from the West. While they may or may not have the money to pay for new missiles, Russia continues to have a difficult time replacing those losses. Russia had very large stockpiles of these missiles before the war, but they've chewed through them at a prodigious rate. From all estimates I've read, they are feeling the pinch, because their logistics are a mess on a good day and the sanctions make sustainment (particularly for high precision munitions) very challenging. Russian logistics were not designed for this type of long, drawn out campaign and it is showing on the battlefield.

And it has to spend billions to do anything including mantaining it's production capability. I doubt they are profiting from war. No war is profitable on the short term even when it goes according to plan which definitely isn't the case.

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