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Honestly, I don't get the point of calling a small attack like this on a civilian target a victory. I understand bridges and other infrastructure with military value, military targets in general etc., but this is a basically random building. The fact that the ministry owned it seemes a very stretched motivation, not to talk about "several ministries have offices in this district"... I mean, it's Moscow city, like the city of London, it's basically just offices.
I feel like we should not cross the line where we justify attacks on civilians, and let Russia be the only one committing war crimes by doing that (and hopefully paying the price).
There has never been an airport without military value. Because of this, they are often the first assets that are attacked or seized when besieging a city.
Completely agree, and in fact I mentioned myself that attacks on infrastructures from my PoV would be justified, as they have military value.
Why should Ukraine be Jesus? Always being hit and strictly hitting back only within their borders. Makes no sense. Russia destroyed airports, dams, energy plants, schools and hospitals for more than a year. A drone attack in an airport in Moscow is more than justified at this point.
Wake up Russians, don't want war then stop it now while you can.
It is not an airport, it is a building "near" an airport. I said myself that I would understand attacks on infrastructure as this is used to support the war efforts.
Also, the reason I guess is because attacks on civilian targets give by definition no military advantages whatsoever in the war.
"Waking-up" the population seems to be a potential reason, but then again why not doing it while attacking actual military targets? And this whole argument is anyway debatable as I doubt you can own the spin of the news when all the information is anyway in the hands of the government, which means that what the actual effect on the population will be is not under your control.
From what I've seen so far, I'm willing to give Ukraine the benefit of the doubt here. They were so far very much focussed on military targets. Even in this case they seem to be attacking office buildings night time when they're presumably empty. This looks like an effort was made to minimize civilian casualties. And if we trust russia, we don't know what the targets were, because they claim they intercepted all of the drones.
Russia is attacking apartment blocks during night and shopping centres daytime for over a year now. They are aiming to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible it seems.
So much for facts. Now what military purpose could these drone attacks have? To me it seems like one expected outcome is to force russia to move some of its air defence back to Moscow. So far russia felt safe enough within its own borders to the point where they used their S300 systems in ground attack mode to terrorize Ukrainian cities. Due to the nature of these AA rockets, these were also hard to intercept. So the only defence from these might be to force russia to actually start using them for their intended purpose. It seems that in some way Ukraine already tried this approach when they attacked military bases deep in the russian territory, but in those cases russia just moved strategic bombers further away and continues to lob missiles from there. Also military base is much smaller than Moscow and likely already had some AA defence present there.
Yeah, I think the benefit of the doubt on the target is in order, but this still does not changes much in terms of what people find justifiable in the political discourse.
I also think that saying that attacking civilian targets has military value by forcing the relocation of defense is a slippery slope, to be honest. This seems to be automatically would justify any civilian attack during a war, don't you think? Like if for a second you wear the shoes of a Russian military, attacking civilians in Lviv becomes reasonable, not a war crime, to spread the air defense of Ukraine thin. It seems tautological to me, at least.
I don't think there's much evidence that Ukraine targeted civilians. Previously they managed to hit office building where presumably the infamous unit 74455 (aka Sandworm unit that was behind many cyber attacks on Ukraine including the multiple power grid attacks) had its offices. So I wouldn't assume they are hitting civilian targets. They are hitting goverment offices that are closely tied to military or are directly part of russian military. And even then the attacks are done at a time when personnel is not present.
So to me it looks like they might be hitting targets that are military in nature if maybe less important overall with the added bonus of forcing russia's hand in terms if AA equipment use.
I agree that hitting civilian targets to force russia to relocate AA hardware would be very slippery slope and in my opinion unacceptable, but I don't see Ukraine doing this. And honestly I don't think it would be good strategy anyways, russia is perfectly fine with sacrificing their citizens, they would at best do some minimal effort if not outright just ignore it. So actually hitting military apparatus instead is much smarter choice for Ukraine.
No no, I was not claiming that this happened (many attacks on civilians), I was more discussion on the general principle of doing so and what the reaction is from people.
Even in this case, it seems that the building might not have been the target, which is fair enough, but I think it's still interesting to observe the reaction of people commenting these facts. There are a few examples already in this thread, and the idea is "everything is a fair target because Ukraine has the moral high-ground". This allows to move the conversation from the very few attacks that Ukraine did on Russian soil to the more abstract discussion of "what do we think it's acceptable".
I agree with you (including the fact that Russia seems perfectly content of having its population die), and I would add that potential attacks on civilian targets could even backfire by making Ukraine lose some of the support from the West which in turns means less weapons.
Yeah, it would be unwise thing to do for sure. (on top of being immoral) I believe there's some serious effort by Ukrainian government to actually prevent this.
When you think about it, it's not like Ukraine is some uniform body, there is a lot of groups with lot of interests. Quite frankly also a lot of broken people that just saw one too many of their relatives dying under russian rocket barrage..
So it's almost a miracle that there isn't some sort of nasty bomb attack IRA style somewhere in russia on weekly basis. And if something like that eventually happens, it would hardly be surprising. For me that's one of the contexts for Zelensky's quote in the article. You just can't shell civilians on daily basis for a year and expect to not reap some revenge. It might not be government doing this, just a bunch of people that had enough. And as much as you'd like to stay on the moral high ground, I wouldn't blame these people one bit.
I really hope it does not happen for Ukraine's sake, but at the same time I would understand if it did.
And I would definitely not expect them to make balanced judgement calls with morale and humanity in mind, of course.
Yeah, I think those are two very distinct concepts in fact. I have this kind of conversations on a weekly basis, where I end up usually disagreeing at some point with my fiancee (who is Ukrainian) about certain topics. I do understand of course that the hatred is real and justified. These analysis are of course a privilege for people who can do them with a certain level of detachment.
We don't know what the targets were.
was it really though? Doesnt anybody else wonder who the actual target was?
Yeah, looking at comments seems that it might not have been the target (but others also say that it was because was the property of some ministry). Either way, I guess that we could have the discussion about what is or is not acceptable assuming that it was the target, just to have an hipotetical example.
The only people who know why the target was chosen are probably not hanging out on Lemmy.
But really there's no reason whatsoever to put restrictions on the smaller weaker country who is being invaded. War is hell. Russian civilians can rise up against Putin if they don't feel safe in their own country. 100% of this is on Putin.
I disagree. I think that respecting the Geneva convention is a reasonable restriction to impose, and it also does not hinder in any way the ability to win the war, as it specifically protects only people who do not participate in the war.
The Geneva convention is a set of rules created so that during a war actions aren't taken by either side. They only work if they are followed by both. One side has been targeting civilians since day 1. That rule has been broken so is no longer a concern.
If a nation is using chemical weapons, for example, just yelling about the rules doesn't change anything. You need to adapt to the new rules for that war, whatever they are. You don't have the option to be polite in war.
A war crime is a always a war crime. And the people committing war crimes will always be war criminals. Public opinion doesn't matter. The fact that certain countries don't prosecute war criminals doesn't matter. The fact that certain countries try to legitimize war crimes doesn't matter. A war crime is always a war crime. And a war criminal will always be a war criminal. It really is that sjmple.
Sometimes in war there is a choice between being a war criminal or being annihilated, though. Also, these choices are made by the elite who aren't playing by the same rules as everyone else. They can't be tried for war crimes if they win the war, and that's all that they care about.
Plus like other commentors said, Russia is the one who made the rules this way.
This is a new perspective I was not aware of. Why would they work only if followed by both sides, considering that affect people outside the conflict and do not grant any military advantages? I don't think it works like this that once a rule is broken automatically "is no longer a concern".
Your example doesn't fit, because you specifically picked one that -while constituting possibly a banned weapon- does grant you military advantages. I am talking about thinks like killing war prisoners, killing or attacking civilians etc., which are the subject of the Geneva convention, AFAIK.
Attacking some civilian targets does have a strategic advantage. First, attacking factories can deny resources. Second, making a population tired and stressed can lead to issues at home that need to be taken care of, which takes manpower and resources. I'm not condoning it, but it does create some strategic value. That's what the bombings of cities were for during WWII. It was largely about destroying war infrastructure (with hard to aim weapons and poor compared to modern intelligence).
War prisoners also take resources to care for. If they're dead, they don't. It's potentially advantageous to not have them. Again, not condoning it, just stating reality.
The Geneva convention covers many things. It's a set of guidelines to ensure war doesn't escalate. There's some things that are banned just so it's not confused as another form of attack and things spiral. It only works if both sides of a war agree on the rules though, otherwise why is one side not allowed to use tools their enemy is using?
It's a principle in warfare, and particularly warfare since WWI, that whatever you do in war, can be done TO you with no repercussions. It is why the US has a standing stated policy that they will nuke anyone using an ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) weapon. If you attack with a weapon of mass destruction the reserves the right to nuke you.
Same principle. If you attack civilians you just authorized attacks on YOUR civilians . If you attack non-military targets you just authorized attacks on your non-military targets.
All that said, any airport is a military target in time of war.
You've never heard of people responding to rule breaking with rule breaking of their own? Your assertion that it has no military advantage is flat out wrong, this attack has a military advantage. It brings the fight closer to Putin and requires them to divert forces. It also makes the Russian people more likely to revolt against the war.
Ukraine broke Geneva convention rules? How and when exactly?
Say you don't understand the Geneva convention without saying you don't understand the Geneva convention.
We don't know what the targets were.