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Comment by WXLCKNO | Hacker News Reader

> more adventurous > Kyiv

Understatement of the year

The funny thing is, coming from Washington DC, I felt about or more safe in Ukraine as I do here day to day. I wasn't worried about being carjacked, I wasn't worried about someone with mental health or drug problems robbing me, and I wasn't worried about being shot (as I write this it feels hyperbolic to say but I live about 10 mins walking from the capitol and in the two years I've been here there have been multiple carjackings and shootings in my neighborhood -- even a Congressman was held up at gunpoint next door to me). The idea that missiles could come raining down was scary, but there are shelters everywhere and it felt like the likelihood of getting hit was pretty low being in random bars/restaurants and not any government/military/infrastructure facility. Maybe I was calculating the odds all wrong in my head, but I didn't feel particularly unsafe while I was there (that said, wouldn't go further east or to Odessa right now).

They have hit apartments and hospitals before so its not only military/government/infra targets any longer. I'm surprised they haven't been sold an iron dome or a similar system by now to be honest.

They can't really afford to pay for such systems, the EU and US are propping up their economy right now. But also Israel refused to sell or give them the iron dome tech for rather bizarre sounding reasons: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-rules-out-giving-ukr...

They've already been sold the whole suite of Western air defense systems in addition to the ex-Soviet gear they've already had. Patriot, HAWK, Gepard, etc.

That didn't help the childrens hospital that was hit 9 days ago unfortunately. 40 people died in that strike.

The hospital toll is only 2 (other sources claim 3) dead. https://t.me/vitaliy_klitschko/3267

This is tragedy. I find it so weird, though, - rocket hits hospital (!) and only 2 dead, both adults, and 16 injured.

Air sirens had already started so most people had moved down to the basements. Probably some people who couldn't, or who were caring for those that couldn't be moved were caught in the blast.

Brutal thing to do. At least they didn't go for a double-tap, just for the lulz.

Unfortunately the West can only provide air defense systems, not magic lasers that automatically shoot everything down every time. This is classic terrorism, where the defender has to be right every time, but the attacker only has to be right once.

Let's be glad what they only managed to 'hit' a hospital with only 1 missile from the pack of 6.

Hamas managed to overwhelm iron dome just with their jury-rigged home built rockets: https://scitechdaily.com/iron-domes-vulnerability-how-hamas-...

It wouldn't stand a hope against Russian missiles.

It is also a numbers and a money game. Those Russian missiles are as numerous as they are cheap.

The Shahed style drones are cheap, but the ballistic and cruise missiles hitting Kyiv and Odesa certainly are not.

Compared to a Patriot missile?

The solution is to take out where the missiles come from. I.e. down the bombers.

Precisely, and doubly so for the glide bombs.

Yeah, I've seen that (and some of it unfortunately is not directly from missile attacks but falling debris after missiles were intercepted) but apart from some horrendous cases, the likelihood still seemed relatively low that they'd target the bar/hostel/restaurant I happened to be in, and without enough time for me to get to a shelter. The only time I was really nervous was when an air raid siren went off when I was in the train station at Lviv and I wasn't sure whether to go to a shelter or the train (I chose the latter which was good because the train left on time)

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