Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[Prozac]

15 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Being a product of and having served during the Cold War it was easy for me to say kill all the Russians when this thing first started.  As the reports started to come in and having seen the nasty side of war I actually had a small amount of compassion for the Russian conscripts who are mowed down like cannon fodder in Putin's invasion.  Reading some of the follow on like the article below...KILL THEM ALL.

Two Russian soldiers raped Ukrainian mother after killing husband as her four-year-old son cried

Another such moment: a Russian APC intentionally targeting & needlessly destroying an obviously civilian vehicle & killing the elderly couple inside. Warning: video is disturbing. 

 

[Hunter Rose]

12 hours ago, Prozac said:

Another such moment: a Russian APC intentionally targeting & needlessly destroying an obviously civilian vehicle & killing the elderly couple inside. Warning: video is disturbing. 

 

 

War is hell, but videos like that mean I I could give a shit about high gas prices...just send as much armament to Ukraine as we can so they can kill as many Russian invaders as possible.

 

[fire4effect]

18 hours ago, Prozac said:

Another such moment: a Russian APC intentionally targeting & needlessly destroying an obviously civilian vehicle & killing the elderly couple inside. Warning: video is disturbing. 

 

Looks like they were escorting a fuel truck and that had them pretty trigger happy. Also BIG IF the Ukrainians are using civilian vehicles with Javelins in the trunk to pop off at the Russians (I have no way to know if that's true or not so I can't say) it puts everyone on the road at risk. Still is a damn tragedy and the Russians to blame for starting this whole thing in the first place.

[ClearedHot]

MANPAD rips tail off MI-28

 

[slc]

 

Tail boom…

 

[GrndPndr]

Shoot down was with UK Built weapon (probably).  They're all excited:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-missile-shoots-down-first-russian-helicopter-in-ukraine-war-tztnmxqr2

[DirkDiggler]

Good looking Flanker, maybe parts plus 12.

[12xu2a3x3]

dude not wearing a g suit, seems so odd

[VigilanteNav]

Would not have predicted this prior to Feb 24.  "Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv".  Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 3 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)    Got to give a shout out to any California and Florida (and any others) Guardsman who participated in the SPP and other events through the years and up until the invasion.  CHEERS!  

[Lawman]

Would not have predicted this prior to Feb 24.  "Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv".  Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 3 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)    Got to give a shout out to any California and Florida (and any others) Guardsman who participated in the SPP and other events through the years and up until the invasion.  CHEERS!  

Anecdotes speaking to the organization of their withdrawals. This was taken along the Sumy axis after 4th Guards got its ass handed too it.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[fire4effect]

4 hours ago, VigilanteNav said:

Would not have predicted this prior to Feb 24.  "Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv".  Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 3 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)    Got to give a shout out to any California and Florida (and any others) Guardsman who participated in the SPP and other events through the years and up until the invasion.  CHEERS!  

To those who toil in anonymity especially the NCOs. What you do matters.

[Prosuper]

6 hours ago, Lawman said:

Anecdotes speaking to the organization of their withdrawals. This was taken along the Sumy axis after 4th Guards got its ass handed too it.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I wonder if those guys left behind were officers, the enlisted guys have had enough. Explains total lack of control and discipline with looting and murder.

[Sim]

Ka-52 vs Anti-tank missile. 

[TheNewGazmo]

Ka-52 vs Anti-tank missile. 

That is awesome... he probably didn't even know what hit him.

[Sim]

What does LOAC say about this? (NSFW). Person appears to be personal security of Saakashvili from ~2014 (Nazik Hizanasville)

[uhhello]

3 hours ago, Sim said:

What does LOAC say about this? (NSFW). Person appears to be personal security of Saakashvili from ~2014 (Nazik Hizanasville)

Bro. Don’t click on that unless you want to see a couple dudes get snuffed out who are breathing their last agonal breaths. 

Edited April 5, 2022 by uhhello

[tac airlifter]

8 hours ago, Sim said:

What does LOAC say about this? (NSFW). Person appears to be personal security of Saakashvili from ~2014 (Nazik Hizanasville)

LOAC says you aren’t supposed to murder wounded prisoners.  I notice some of the Russian victims are zip tied.  There have been a lot of those videos— you can find Ukrainians killing tied up Russians with knives fairly easily.  It’s terrible.  War is terrible, and in this case neither side is innocent of wrong doing.

 That said, this was a war by Russian choice and for Ukrainian survival.  If Russia invaded Florida and I was running around with a piecemeal group of volunteers while every other nation sat around watching atrocities inflicted on my family…. Well I have some bad news for the LOAC office.

[fire4effect]

1 hour ago, tac airlifter said:

LOAC says you aren’t supposed to murder wounded prisoners.  I notice some of the Russian victims are zip tied.  There have been a lot of those videos— you can find Ukrainians killing tied up Russians with knives fairly easily.  It’s terrible.  War is terrible, and in this case neither side is innocent of wrong doing.

 That said, this was a war by Russian choice and for Ukrainian survival.  If Russia invaded Florida and I was running around with a piecemeal group of volunteers while every other nation sat around watching atrocities inflicted on my family…. Well I have some bad news for the LOAC office.

Happened more than once on all sides in WW2. One of the more high profile examples Ronald Speirs - Wikipedia

Right or wrong Normandy really really was for all the marbles and anything that slowed or prevented mission accomplishment was not taken very lightly. Thankfully I never had to face their dilemma. I can't imagine. Disarmed Enemy Forces - Wikipedia was a designation given to German POWs after Germany's surrender in 1945 for the simple practical expediency of not having to provide a care and feeding at a level commensurate for POWs under the Geneva Convention.

 

 

[FLEA]

14 hours ago, fire4effect said:

Happened more than once on all sides in WW2. One of the more high profile examples Ronald Speirs - Wikipedia

Right or wrong Normandy really really was for all the marbles and anything that slowed or prevented mission accomplishment was not taken very lightly. Thankfully I never had to face their dilemma. I can't imagine. Disarmed Enemy Forces - Wikipedia was a designation given to German POWs after Germany's surrender in 1945 for the simple practical expediency of not having to provide a care and feeding at a level commensurate for POWs under the Geneva Convention.

 

 

Was kind of eluding to this earlier. We all want to see war crimes as this black and white thing but it's not and the fact is, states will attempt to blur the borders and boundaries of it as best as possible to serve their interests, including the US. The only definitive assurance is that your state will suffer less scrutiny if it comes out the victor. 

Its sort of why I don't put much stock into all of these cries about Russian war crimes because I can clearly see that what they're doing isn't really that far removed from our own state targeting processes, but they are doing it without the advantages of advanced sensory ISR or PGMs. I'm not saying there were war crimes committed by Russia, there certainly were; but most of the stuff I've seen right now is going to fall on an individual level and not on a state level. Now what is worth observing is if Russia internally disciplines those cases which is what we normally expect of our own military in this case (and why we won't sign in or participate in the ICC).

Again, not sure how many people on here are shooters or involved in targeting, but it is and always had been completely legal to kill civilians in war. Witnessed multiple times where we assessed a military target had the requisite necessity and proportionality to justify striking without regards to nearby civilian collateral. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by FLEA

[DirkDiggler]

 Surprising that the Russian military hasn’t been able to counter Ukrainian’s asymmetric advantage in UAS this far into the war.

[VigilanteNav]

It's wild seeing this play out with a new and evolving type of threat that we are still attempting to deal with.  I remember that time downrange when we would deploy SF troops around the aircraft for Counter UAS ops during EROs.  Of course, one time they ended up shooting at our own UAS.    

Edited April 6, 2022 by VigilanteNav

[Prozac]

4 hours ago, FLEA said:

but it is and always had been completely legal to kill civilians in war. Witnessed multiple times where we assessed a military target had the requisite necessity and proportionality to justify striking without regards to nearby civilian collateral.

PROPORTIONALITY is key here. While civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war, it is still not ok to commit murder. Have a look at the multitude of evidence of Russians executing civilians with their hands tied behind their backs & tell me they’re not guilty of war crimes. How about deliberately targeting hospitals and clearly marked shelters? How about raining down artillery on residential areas with no military targets in sight? Not exactly proportional now is it? Have the Ukrainians been operating 100% in accordance with LOAC? Probably not. But it’s their neighborhoods, their cities, their farms that have been invaded here. They can’t possibly be guilty on the same scale as the Russians because they aren’t ransacking Russian neighborhoods, raping their women and killing their children. Putin and his enablers are absolutely responsible for all of this reprehensible activity & frankly a hanging at The Hague is far to easy on them. Once again I’ll remind you that there is no gray area here. Only one side is guilty of a violent invasion & subsequent atrocities. There is NOTHING that justifies that. Not an expanding NATO, not an actor turned president who Putin doesn’t like, not Ukraine defending its own claims to Donbas. NOTHING JUSTIFIES RUSSIA’S ACTIONS. NOTHING. Fuck Putin and all of the Russians (and anyone else) supporting him by covering their eyes and ears to everything but the absolute garbage the Russian state is spreading.
 

One final note here: It’s sickening and offensive to those of us who have served and still believe in our country that we have American military members making a moral equivalency between our own targeting processes which, while less than perfect, are NOTHING like what the Russians have done in Ukraine. It literally turns my stomach. 

[Best-22]

2 hours ago, Prozac said:

One final note here: It’s sickening and offensive to those of us who have served and still believe in our country that we have American military members making a moral equivalency between our own targeting processes which, while less than perfect, are NOTHING like what the Russians have done in Ukraine. It literally turns my stomach. 

Russian misinformation seeks to:

 

1. Sow division between existing divides (political, racial, etc)

2. Introduce enough "noise" that you give up trying to find the objective ground truth, or start to feel that "both sides are the same anyways" (through false equivalency, historical revisionism, multiple conflicting reports or versions of the same event, and so on) 

It rarely is overtly pro Russian, and often aligns with some of our previously held beliefs in some way. This makes it hard to spot and easy to spread..

Some users on this site exclusively post things that align with one or both of the above. It doesn't mean they are part of the Russian propaganda machine, but they have likely fallen victim to it. 

 

I agree with everything you posted, calling out BS like this helps clear up some of the noise. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Best-22

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, Prozac said:

PROPORTIONALITY is key here. While civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war, it is still not ok to commit murder. Have a look at the multitude of evidence of Russians executing civilians with their hands tied behind their backs & tell me they’re not guilty of war crimes. How about deliberately targeting hospitals and clearly marked shelters? How about raining down artillery on residential areas with no military targets in sight? Not exactly proportional now is it? Have the Ukrainians been operating 100% in accordance with LOAC? Probably not. But it’s their neighborhoods, their cities, their farms that have been invaded here. They can’t possibly be guilty on the same scale as the Russians because they aren’t ransacking Russian neighborhoods, raping their women and killing their children. Putin and his enablers are absolutely responsible for all of this reprehensible activity & frankly a hanging at The Hague is far to easy on them. Once again I’ll remind you that there is no gray area here. Only one side is guilty of a violent invasion & subsequent atrocities. There is NOTHING that justifies that. Not an expanding NATO, not an actor turned president who Putin doesn’t like, not Ukraine defending its own claims to Donbas. NOTHING JUSTIFIES RUSSIA’S ACTIONS. NOTHING. Fuck Putin and all of the Russians (and anyone else) supporting him by covering their eyes and ears to everything but the absolute garbage the Russian state is spreading.
 

One final note here: It’s sickening and offensive to those of us who have served and still believe in our country that we have American military members making a moral equivalency between our own targeting processes which, while less than perfect, are NOTHING like what the Russians have done in Ukraine. It literally turns my stomach. 

You are missing the point. But lets assume for a minute you didn't join the military assuming it was going to be rainbow farts from gilded unicorn assholes. In EVERY single instance of outrage you expressed above, I can pinpoint a near EXACT equivalent that happened in the US GWOT. Mishandling prisoners of war. Abu Ghraib, 2003. Striking hospitals marked as shelters? Doctors Without Borders, Kunduz, 2015. Raining artillery down on residential neighborhoods? al-Aghawat al Jadidah, Mosul, 2017. Raping and pillaging Ukranian villages? Mahmudiyah Iraq, 2006. I could name half a dozen for each of these actually but those were the best specific examples that most mirror the circumstances you point to above and as I said in my original post, its going to be really hard to pin some of these because Russia doesn't have access to advanced aerial sensors or PGMs that we do (and they are not required to). Futhermore, Zelansky muddied those waters further by giving every civilian in Ukraine a rifle and telling them to go out and kill Russians. I don't fault him for that, this is a war of survival for them, but recognize that makes it really hard to throw charges at Russia, charges, not accusations, and make them stick. 

More important to the overall point though, you lack the nuance of how LOAC is applied, where it hails from and the international audience it caters to. You brought up the Hague. Did you know that the United States of America (the country you said you still believed in) is actively sanctioning the ICC and has placed entry bans on ICC investigators tasked to investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ever ask yourself why that is? Ever ask yourself how the news stories about the incidents I outlined above were portrayed in the rest of the world? Ever open up a Pakistani newspaper article on drone strikes? 

7 minutes ago, Best-22 said:

Russian misinformation seeks to:

 

1. Sow division between existing divides (political, racial, etc)

2. Introduce enough "noise" that you give up trying to find the objective ground truth, or start to feel that "both sides are the same anyways" (through false equivalency, historical revisionism, multiple conflicting reports or versions of the same event, and so on) 

It rarely is overtly pro Russian, and often aligns with some of our previously held beliefs in some way. This makes it hard to spot and easy to spread..

Some users on this site exclusively post things that align with one or both of the above. It doesn't mean they are part of the Russian propaganda machine, but they have likely fallen victim to it. 

 

I agree with everything you posted, calling out BS like this helps clear up some of the noise. 

This is just silly. You guys just want to chock everything up to Putin apologetics and in reality i'm just telling you how shit is going to play out as I see it which is that Putin has sufficient fog and noise in Ukraine to effectively conceal a case against the state for war crimes based on Zelansky's decision to arm a civilian populace which massively distorted any cases against distinction and the lack of advanced targeting technologies, mainly sensors and PGMs, which allows Russia greater leniency and presuming proportionality. Just War Theory makes it pretty clear that combatants are innocent of Jus-ad-Bellum and therefore no matter how idiotic or stupid Putin's reason for entering Ukraine is, nothing justifies the extrajudicial killings or Russian POWs that are presumed innocent unless tried and found guilty of war crimes. 

If someone understands something better than you don't just dismiss it as propaganda, ask them to explain it. I can write pages on here about LOAC, Just War Theory and the Geneva conventions. If you were a shooter at some point, and you did some shit that bothered you, you probably talked to a Chaplain and a JAG a few times about this stuff, and they probably gave you some things to read, and you probably read a shit ton about it because you wanted to sleep at night. But hey man, what do I know. 

One last thing, Russia is not winning the information space right now. Ukraine is. And if you don't believe Ukraine is targeting American and Western European citizens in that information campaign, you are completely naive. And they are not doing it because they want to "be our friends" or "help us lead the free world." They are doing it because they are acting in their own country's interests, as ALL states do. There are "reasons" we are hearing very little about how the snake isle defenders suddenly ended up in Russian custody, what is happening in the inner ranks of the foreign legion, and how Russian prisoners are being treated in Ukraine. If we go balls to the wall break all hell lose against Russia so be it. But lets make sure we are doing it because its in our interests and not because its in Ukraine's interests. 

[Best-22]

16 minutes ago, FLEA said:

Noise

So essentially your point is "America is bad too and who's to say what the truth is because it's all so murky" , "Ukraine does propaganda too!" 

 

Your whole post is a real life example of method 2:

58 minutes ago, Best-22 said:

2. Introduce enough "noise" that you give up trying to find the objective ground truth, or start to feel that "both sides are the same anyways" (through false equivalency, historical revisionism, multiple conflicting reports or versions of the same event, and so on)

It's like I predicted the future.

 

I'm sure you're an expert on the LOAC and just war theory, but that doesn't mean we can chalk up all of Russias crimes to a simple targeting error because they don't have enough PGMs... do you think we're all stupid? The more details that come out the harder time you're going to have selling the "russias just acting in its own self interest like all rational states" line. I'm looking forward to seeing you flail around with that.