Russian invasion of Ukraine

Very rep indeed.

What is that flag, and who is that man?

The flag is the flag of Belarus who today announced they were 'deploying a joint a military group' with Russia aimed at protecting their borders. Though reading more about it it's thankfully pretty tame and doesn't amount to much more than they've already been doing.

Edit: they also gave bunker boy a tractor for his birthday.

Meanwhile the president of Tajikistan is said to have given him two pyramids of melons 🍈 🍉

Might be a bit more than that.
Reports of Shaheed drones entering Ukraine from Belarus. I’d say that’s an escalation of sorts.

Jet fuel can melt steel beams

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1579544919794159618?s=20&t=j29os4JH_sKvSPk1qT1Csg

If you want to and can help….
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/379606/#comment16717543

big rep mr goat

I can't stop thinking about the girl that tumbled down into the pit. There is some things you just can't be unseen and forgotten. Almost the worst part is the evil "Da" you hear in the background.

I think i've caught a glimpse of that in the news on local TV. Right after some lady was talking about her relatives that were stuck in the basement, rotting there in water for weeks because the pipes got blown out during explosions.
Kinda glad my girlfriend was on her phone at the moment.

Seriously, how does Russia recover from this?
Do average Russians that "aren't into politics" even care about their own image and the way they're going to be perceived?

Sometimes I wonder if all of this is some cunning info warfare from Ukraine. I mean they would have the means for it, but the awful thing is that Ruzzia is just that horrible. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the mobilized. They have just no chance of survival unless they desert at the first opportunity. Ukraine deserves revenge, but what would be sufficient.

Valid point. That famous box of teeth might've not been what we thought they were

https://www.bild.de/politik/international/bild-international/did-these-gold-teeth-really-come-from-victims-of-torture-81536330.bild.html

You know that this is the most despicable newspaper we have in Germany?

So if news report are correct then Mykolaiv was hit by 8 missiles of the S-300 type. Each of those reportedly cost $115m, meaning Putin blew $920m on an an attack that killed just 7 people.

Of course, the most important thing here is the loss of innocent lives –one of them an 11 year old kid– but you can't help but also think how fucking incompetent this was. Apparently Putin fancies himself as a military strategist and reportedly micromanages all the way down. I just imagine this attack must have been the end result of some tortuous meeting with nobody having the guts to challenge their boss on a completely rubbish decision.

Also, in my opinion, this could be evidence of an increased chance that he make good on this threats to use nukes. If he thinks shooting super expensive surface to air missiles at blocks of flats can achieve something, then why not do a'tactical' nuke attack?

Aha. No sorry, didn't. Is the the german equivalent of the sun?

Each of those reportedly cost $115m, meaning Putin blew $920m on an an attack that killed just 7 people.

It’s less to do with the number, more to do with striking fear, like the V1/2 rocket.

(Still a huge amount of money to terrorised people needlessly).

Think you could say that.
Awful publication, or better put all of Springer Media is awful.

I was not convinced by those teeth from the beginning, was just an awful lot of them.
But it's clear that the Russians do terrible things in Ukraine, so to go digging for news to discredit the Ukrainian side is interesting.

Bild aside, I think it's in everyone's interest that the Ukrainian news is scrutinised. There's no doubt that they're winning the information war, but if it's to be trusted it needs to be scrutinized and of course hold up

To be honest I don't really see anything wrong with ukrainians doing their best to summon support with a information warfare. The gold teeth case seemed to have possible alternative explanation, but I guess nobody knows what really happened until all graves are opened and victims examined. Then again each and every dying or maimed human is an awful loss so really there are plenty of reasons to hate ruzzians already. What I'm mostly worried about is how on earth are we going to be able to live next to such monsters.

One S-300 missile system is estimated to cost some $115 million, the cost of each missile is over one million US$.

https://defense-update.com/20130518_how-dangerous-is-the-s-300.html

So nothing to see here and this is the export cost, I doubt it's anywhere near that for Russia.

Agreed. I of course support it, but also hope that they're "playing by the rules" so they can be scrutinized and come out the other side in good light. It would be devastating for Ukraine if their reports turned out to be propaganda detached from the truth

Ah, each rocket costs less of course. Fair point.

As awful as it is to say, the more Russians waste what little munitions they have on poor Ukrainian civilians and not at the Ukrainian army - the better for the Ukrainian war effort. It is a strategically dumb (and desperate) thing to do.

Has anyone found a recent expert analysis of the air-defence issue? I thought Ukraine was supposed to have been fairly well protected with lots of NASAMS by now.

That's what I was thinking the other day. It was a weak, stupid thing to do. It shows how worried Putin is about his domestic audience. Similar motive to his laughable success story about catching the bridge bombers. I don't think our press reported the missile strikes very well. They went 100% with the civilian tragedy angle, war crimes, etc. Whereas the main story should have been the strategic angle, that it was actually a defeat for Putin. It shows he's lost control. There are lots of parallels with the awful things the Nazis resorted to when they were losing.