Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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In the last few hours there has been a massive drone attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Apparently drone swarms were smuggled into Russia in cargo trucks and released a short distance from the airfields. Some of the bases attacks are more than 4,500 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian MOD claims that 34 percent of Russias’s strategic air force has been destroyed. This is an unconfirmed number, but there are multiple videos of groups of 4-7 TU-95 bombers burning on their airfields.
Seems like the numbers were exaggerated with 2 of the attacks randomly detonating en route and another getting blocked by random civilians. Maybe 10 destroyed / damaged. Still pretty crazy though, not an attack that will change the outcome of the war but it could lead to countries tearing up / rethinking a lot of current nuke agreeements.
More and more the deep bombings are just drone swarms. With a record of over 400 lancets launched in one day last week and newer jet propelled variations using up more AA. The glidebombs doing most of the work on the front line are carried by smaller aircraft. It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response. Force Russia into a lose-lose situation where it either makes a major escalation, which they could use to try and get western boots on the ground. Or if Russia doesn't respond show the western powers that it's safe to greenlight deep strikes that slowly chip away at Russia's nuclear deterrence. As that is obviously the main reason the west won't get involved, everyone loses a nuclear war between NATO and Russia, but NATO wins a conventional war (unless China steps in).
I guess they've recognized they have no chance without European troops so they're going for crazier shit.
Isn’t there a more parsimonious explanation for ukraine’s behaviour? Something like: ‘Let’s do as much damage to russian military equipment as possible, because, we’re in a war, and that’s what you do’.
The russian supporters ever-renewed surprise and outrage at being attacked back never fails to entertain. Why would the ukrainians do that? They must have ulterior motives. Yesterday on twitter the hallucinated reason was to ‘torpedo the peace talks’, the peace talks that, until then, putin had shown zero interest in, and they duly decried as absurd.
Not really, you want to do damage to conventional weapons, not nuclear fleet. You're in a conventional war, you won't win with random deep strikes on weapons that aren't being used in the war. You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position. The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays. So they are eternally confused by eachother. It reminds me of the battle of the sexes.
If you could, why would you not spend a few million to inflict hundreds of millions in damage to the enemy?
I suppose the smart, the russian-soviet way to spend money and lives, is to use AA missiles to shoot down cheap drones, or to kill one of their guys in exchange for one of Ukraine's, so that russia can brute-force its way to victory and its population to extinction. Much more sporting.
Well yeah, your plan is ugly and weakens ukraine's position, as you note. This plan was beautiful and gave russia a black eye. Apples and Oranges.
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