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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story

I understand why "Russia fires on Poland" is news.

Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

Because there's no intentionality involved, and it's unlikely to escalate into a military conflict. "Ukraine fires an S-300 at a Russian missile but it misses and kills a couple people in Poland" is a tragic accident, probably newsworthy, but not in the same way as Russia or Ukraine deliberately launching missiles into Poland would.

I think Russia deserves most of the blame for this incident, since it wouldn't have happened if they weren't trying to destroy their neighbor.

Zelensky continuing to insist the missile that hit Poland was launched by Russia would be news I suppose. I think that's what he was saying early on, but I haven't been following the story; maybe he gave up on that once more information came out.

Probably because Ukraine didn't fire on Poland they fired on armament launched by Russia.

> Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

Because that's not what happened? That's spin. In fact Ukraine jumped on this story only once the AP published it. It's popular to attribute this to Ukrainian propaganda in some circles, but (heh, again getting to the actual subject at hand) that's not something you can report unless you can find evidence.

All the facts we know point to the Ukrainian government being just as fooled by the AP story as we were.

And it’s not impossible to dream up a world where that kind of mistake would actually get Article 5 moving.

Ukraine is still insisting that they didn't fire the missile. It's not an oversight or a misinterpretation.

Ukraine should know not from AP whose missile it was, but they are still in denial, can you imagine?

Two main reasons

1) Article 5. If Poland is attacked NATO would have to use whatever force was needed to protect it. In Russia's case, that means war against a nuclear power. In Ukraine's case, it means telling them NATO'll stop delivering weapons and Ukraine can fight Russia alone unless they apologize. Even if there was a war with Ukraine, it's not a nuclear power and wouldn't last long against NATO.

2) It was an accident. Russia launching on Poland could have been intentional. Ukraine almost certainly did it by mistake. (BTW, Russia apologizing in an hour and paying reparations would likely also have had no long term effect). Since it was an accident Ukraine probably blamed Russia thinking it was Russia since they didn't think they had done it. And by "blamed" I mean, it was after the AP story brought it to light. So more like denied it was them. Fog of war and all.

> Russia launching on Poland could have been intentional.

If we assume that Russia is dying to give NATO an excuse to escalate, i.e. that they're insane and want to destroy the world.

If you replace "Russia" with "Putin" it's possible that he would rather end the world than lose in Ukraine. And it's possible that he would need to generate the escalation to justify ordering the ICBMs to fly, otherwise the commanders might decline.

There's a celebrity Putin created by propaganda who is a rabid foaming maniac, and there's the real Putin, who hasn't ever seemed particularly irrational, or even overly adventurous. There's also a war with Russia, a whole country, that a lot of people have sought to reduce to Putin, but as adults we don't have to pretend that Russia is an appendage to a single great man's will.

The real Putin isn't irrational, but he is fairly adventurous, launching wars for territory against smaller neighbors quite a bit (I think 5 times now.) But there is also the "Putin has terminal cancer" rumor, where he wants to reassemble Greater Russia or blow up the world trying, as he's running out of chances to shoot his shot.

> Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

The same reason that a lot of people assumed that "Russia fires a single missile at Poland" was not an obvious, tragic accident from the get-go. Motivated thinking.

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