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Comment by PakG1 | Hacker News Reader

Only one of those sectors would justify the act. This is a case of not caring about collateral damage. Most of us will not be in a position to say whether or not the collateral damage was acceptable in order to attain the goal. But we can't pretend that the collateral damage was nonexistent.

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It may hurt economically by affecting things like aviation, but is unlikely to directly cause any loss of life. Humans aren't very sensitive to indirect loss of life that only shows up in statistics. It's similar to blowing up Russian oil refineries and gas infrastructure, in that it will impact civilians, but unlike such attacks it won't directly kill civilians. If this already concerns you, you should be very concerned about the economical sanctions imposed on Russia over this war, which have a much greater impact.

It's fine to have opinions over how wars should be fought and where to draw lines, but sadly implementing those opinions and having them survive contact with the reality of war is only realistic if all parties agree on the battlefield. We pretty much just have the Geneva Conventions for this, which Russia has been ignoring[1] anyways by attacking targets like grain silos.

[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/arti...

Duh. Attacking an oil refinery or lubricants factory would also have "collateral damage" in terms of impacting civil society. So does attacks on port infrastructure. There are very few "strategic" targets that don't.

I feel much better about this kind of "collateral damage" than Russia blowing up Ukrainian grain silos, apartment buildings, and hydroelectric dams.

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