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To be fair, the Ukrainians are accepting donations from private sources as well. The awesome Saint Javelin initiative comes to mind; they're selling merch and generally raising funds in order to buy winter clothing and medical equipment for Ukrainian soldiers: https://www.saintjavelin.com/pages/winter-is-coming You're right that that's a far cry from individual soldiers having to buy their own equipment, though. Something tells me there's not a lot of that happening on the Ukrainian side.
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Oct 9, 2022 10:30
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Phlegmish posted:To be fair, the Ukrainians are accepting donations from private sources as well.
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Oct 9, 2022 11:03
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To be honest crowdfunding war, while a bit weird, isn't all that new. During WW1 comfort packages including food supplies and clothes for frontline troops were very common and heavily advertised, and back around the 1900s Turkey partially crowdfunded a set of battleships, even. It's a way for ordinary citizens to feel like they're connected to and contributing to the military and national welfare. Hell, for that matter, while they're not EXACTLY the same thing as crowdfunding a war bond is pretty much private citizens funding the purchase of military supplies at a low return on investment, and those have been heavily pushed since WW1. That being said it's usually more efficient to fund a government that already has systems and suppliers in place to handle logistics on a large scale as opposed to leaving a whole bunch of private citizens to figure out from scratch the logistics of supplying individual soldiers.
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Oct 9, 2022 11:16
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I think the "mystery" of the van that passed the firetruck in the video yesterday has been solved: https://twitter.com/seveerity/status/1579044937467047936 In the first couple of seconds of this video you can see a "дорожный мастер" van that looks very similar. So looks like they belonged to the local road authority.
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Oct 9, 2022 11:25
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Looks spot on. Also interesting to see that they have an engineering train with two cranes on there - I guess they’ll try to literally saw out the burned parts and then tow it apart?
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Oct 9, 2022 11:30
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Having your own sets of underwear especially in winter isn't crazy. If you really want to stay warm and comfortable, do you really want to leave it to chance that the underwear you get handed is the same that your father used when he was a conscript? And it's nice to be able to change to dry extra underwear after crawling in a muddy field for a day. Everything on top of that though... I might take a nice pair of compact binoculars if I was in that situation, but beyond that you start approaching medieval system where rich families provide the crown with a fully equipped mounted warrior while peasants go to war in their own rags.
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Oct 9, 2022 11:33
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spankmeister posted:I think the "mystery" of the van that passed the firetruck in the video yesterday has been solved: I was half expecting them to tie the railcars to a hovering helicopter and just yeet them off the edge.
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Oct 9, 2022 12:34
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GABA ghoul posted:German article on the state of the investigation of the rail sabotage yesterday: wait who have they killed in Germany lately? I mean like within the last 20 years I only know about the UK stuff and Spain (I guess France after the war started)
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Oct 9, 2022 12:41
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Phlegmish posted:To be fair, the Ukrainians are accepting donations from private sources as well. The awesome Saint Javelin initiative comes to mind; they're selling merch and generally raising funds in order to buy winter clothing and medical equipment for Ukrainian soldiers: So many Russian soldiers and conscripts in Ukraine are going to freeze to death this winter. Ukraine's allies have been providing a lot of winter gear lately, meanwhile Russian conscripts are having to spam F5 on online surplus shops hoping for the best. I expect a lot of horrific stories coming up in the weeks and months ahead.
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Oct 9, 2022 12:42
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Alan Smithee posted:wait who have they killed in Germany lately? I mean like within the last 20 years Assassinated this guy in Berlin in 2019
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Oct 9, 2022 12:44
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https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579048989840011265
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Oct 9, 2022 12:52
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Warbadger posted:Yep. Setting off a bomb on top of a hard surface usually just results in the stuff to the sides/above getting blasted - as those are in the path of least resistance. Bridges are designed to accommodate substantial force pushing downward on them to begin with, so you blow a bomb up on the surface and you might make a little crater in the concrete while the vast majority of the explosion's force is going to end up going everywhere except down. In this conflict this thread illustrated that point with those photos of HIMARS impacts on bridges. Little potholes on top of or through the structure, partially due to a supersonic rocket ramming into it before any explosives went off. If you need a somewhat recent American version of this, the Boston Marathon Bombers left their bombs on the ground and the road absorbed most of the impact, minimizing the casualties. Had they found a way to put them off the ground it could of been much worse.
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Oct 9, 2022 13:34
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My very limited abilities at reading Russian tell me this is Orsha. It appears Putin is routing the mobilization through Belarus. https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1579083196829822977
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Oct 9, 2022 13:51
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I'm afraid we'll never really know what happened at the Kerch bridge. I've been reading a lot of "analysis" on twitter from "experts" which all sounds pretty convincing, but the problem is that there are conflicting narratives and because I am not an expert in bridge engineering, demolitions or special forces operations, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. The sea route seems plausible, because the explosion looks to be coming from below, or at least beside the bridge. However, pictures from below the bridge don't show any blast damage to the still intact span of the bridge at all. The video showing the supposed wake from a ship isn't very compelling either imho, but that doesn't exclude it. Truck bomb seems consistent with the blast pattern seen on aerial photos, but the trucks that are visible on the video look intact when the explosion occurs. The explanation that rolling shutter would cause artifacts showing both the explosion and the truck being intact at the same time isn't really convincing to me, but I might be wrong. Tactical ballistic missile is possible, but that would mean that either the US is supplying Ukraine with ATACMS, or they've been able to field their own HRIM-2 missiles or something else. A slow cruise missile such as a Neptun seems unlikely, given Russian air defenses in the area, but who knows what air defense doing? And given that the only investigation being done is by Russia, we won't get a straight answer from them either. Does anyone have any compelling arguments towards a plausible explanation?
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Oct 9, 2022 13:55
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I would be very careful browsing Twitter today as people are posting a video of Russians murdering civilians and rolling their bodies into a ravine. It is mostly getting flagged to not auto play but not all the time.
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Oct 9, 2022 14:13
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spankmeister posted:I'm afraid we'll never really know what happened at the Kerch bridge. It's the truck. I don't think a ballistic missile would make an explosion large enough to ignite the train.
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Oct 9, 2022 14:23
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Looking at Twitter, it feels like the troll farms are really pushing the "but think of the poor Crimean civilians!" and "you'll make Putin do a nuclear war! He'll simply have no choice!" lines. They do realize that they can simply GTFO of Ukraine, and then all risk of nuclear war and civilian casualties goes away, right? Right? I just hope people don't start taking the Russian propaganda line too seriously.
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Oct 9, 2022 14:27
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PT6A posted:Looking at Twitter, it feels like the troll farms are really pushing the "but think of the poor Crimean civilians!" and "you'll make Putin do a nuclear war! He'll simply have no choice!" lines. Well there’s always been people taking the Russian propaganda lines seriously, but the notion that fending off a Russian invasion of Ukrainian Crimea is dangerous to Ukrainian citizens doesn’t seem like it’ll move the needle much. I hope the Russian government helps their tourists leave.
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Oct 9, 2022 14:31
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evilweasel posted:I would be very careful browsing Twitter today as people are posting a video of Russians murdering civilians and rolling their bodies into a ravine. It is mostly getting flagged to not auto play but not all the time. I watch them first before posting. PT6A posted:Looking at Twitter, it feels like the troll farms are really pushing the "but think of the poor Crimean civilians!" and "you'll make Putin do a nuclear war! He'll simply have no choice!" lines. There are many Turkish twitter accounts posting about Belarus being threatened by Ukrainian troops building forces on the border this morning also. Weird stuff on social media today.
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Oct 9, 2022 14:42
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Tomn posted:To be honest crowdfunding war, while a bit weird, isn't all that new. During WW1 comfort packages including food supplies and clothes for frontline troops were very common and heavily advertised, and back around the 1900s Turkey partially crowdfunded a set of battleships, even. It's a way for ordinary citizens to feel like they're connected to and contributing to the military and national welfare. Hell, for that matter, while they're not EXACTLY the same thing as crowdfunding a war bond is pretty much private citizens funding the purchase of military supplies at a low return on investment, and those have been heavily pushed since WW1. I seem to remember privately funded up-armors for humvees early in the GWOT era — and afaik if a troop wants better poo poo, they’re still forking out for it. I mean, basic standard issue stuff still exists unlike in Russia, but the weird part is Russia saying “Hey, you gotta buy your own poo poo” I genuinely feel for people getting conscripted who don’t have the resources/connections to get out. That’s a bad loving spot to be in.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:13
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spankmeister posted:Does anyone have any compelling arguments towards a plausible explanation? There's a very good video on Rob Lee's channel that has original, unwatermarked video showing the best publicly available angle of the video. That's the video where people are claiming the truck was "intact" before the explosion, but the video doesn't actually show this. If you aren't sure, check for yourself. There's a lot of people posting rubbish on Twitter (as usual). There's a single frame where the camera image goes white at the bottom, with a strong dividing line, followed by three completely white frames. The reason people are confused as to the location of the explosion is because the wind is blowing from right to left in that video. The actual explosion as shown in the video takes place over 8 frames, and by the time we see it relatively clearly the "explosive" phase is already over. There's a very fast initial expansion from the centre of the explosion, which we can't see, and then it all gets sucked back in towards the location of the truck. You can see the contraction on the camera from frames 4-8 ish on the video. The wind that kicks back in and blows everything right to left, above and under the bridge. There is an incredibly intense fire that melts and destroys everything around it. The oil/gas train catches fire at about 2s, from the heat and/or being showered with high temperature debris. All throughout the lamp posts on the road bridge are melting and disintegrating from the top down due to the flames. The wind carries the remains left. There's also a few scary things that happen to the nearby car on the south lane in that video, so don't watch if that could be disturbing. IMO, people think the explosion is coming from the side of the bridge because that is where the wind is blowing from and/or they're mistaking the explosion aftermath for the actual explosion. The actual force of the explosion doesn't seem to be that high. The engineering guy earlier in this thread got the construction of the bridge spot on, and also IMO nailed why the bridge collapsed at two nearby expansion joints, and was correct an explosive under the bridge would have had a far greater impact in terms of forces. However an explosion under or beside the bridge would look different to what is shown on the video, and the photographs taken after the event seem to show little evidence of this. There's also a large number of security cameras covering that bridge, and there was enough light to spot anything approaching on the water. There's another video on Rob Lee's channel that gives a glimpse into just how many angles were covered, with monitors showing cameras covering all sorts of angles, including underneath the road bridges. An explosion of that size could very easily be created by an explosive device loaded onto a truck, particularly if there were some helpful farming supplies loaded on as well. And, well, the NY Times is reporting this: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1579026254887809024?s=20&t=rSTKEmeUJlHWgQdIc0wwGg I mean, you could load a "stealth boat" with a gigantic amount of explosive and sail it remotely hundreds of miles, pass underneath your target bridge from the south so you can come back at it from the north and then blow it up the road bridge (rather than the rail bridge) just as a truck is passing and hope none of the hundred+ cameras see you. Or you could smuggle an explosive onto a truck. Aertuun fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 15:15
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Zaporizhzhia falls in one of the regions that Russia 'annexed', and ever since, Russia has bombed it mercilessly. If there was any doubt to this referendum being a complete sham, that's gone now. Russia should be removed from the UNSC. They've shown time and again that they disregard the charter and use their veto power to actively gently caress with other nations. They should have been kicked out after Assad gassed his own people, imo.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:24
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Yeah I don't get why people are refusing to believe this. Perhaps because Westerners are coded by propaganda to believe that suicide bombing is what the bad guys do, and not one of the most effective ways to project force when you don't have an airforce. FishBulbia fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 15:27
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Or SBU could've simply paid a civilian truck driver to deliver some "cargo" and detonated it remotely. Why risk your own guys when you can just blow up someone else instead.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:29
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J.A.B.C. posted:Russia should be removed from the UNSC. They've shown time and again that they disregard the charter and use their veto power to actively gently caress with other nations. They should have been kicked out after Assad gassed his own people, imo. I don't think there is any permanent UNSC member that has NOT "shown time and again that they disregard the charter and use their veto power to actively gently caress with other nations".
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Oct 9, 2022 15:31
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Aertuun posted:There's a very good video on Rob Lee's channel that has original, unwatermarked video showing the best publicly available angle of the video. That's the video where people are claiming the truck was "intact" before the explosion, but the video doesn't actually show this. If you aren't sure, check for yourself. There's a lot of people posting rubbish on Twitter (as usual). Thank you for you very comprehensive post, I'll review the footage again but it seems pretty conclusive when you put it like that.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:32
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I don't disagree really, but by design the answer is unclear and will remain unclear and people have made some pretty compelling cases for a number of theories, albeit each has significant reasons to be questioned (eg where scorch marks at? so you're saying Ukraine made a massive truck-sized bomb in Russia and then drove it from the Russia side onto the bridge past security inspections and Xray scanners?). A single statement from a single anonymous individual that is currently being massively reposted by everyone with a stake in the question of who did it, despite Ukrainians being under very explicit orders to not make a single statement whatsoever to journalists is barely worth the paper it's printed on. It's not worthless, but until there's any kind of tangible evidence, a single claim is just a single claim. There are a lot of claims swirling around right now. Truck bomb is probably the strongest theory, but an explanation requires Ukraine to have built a massive bomb in Russia and then smuggled it past a bunch of security is a stretch to give Occam's blessing to. Generally 1) Ukraine benefits from the confusion 2) Ukraine has a lot of interest in obfuscating how they did it (if it was Ukraine, even) because if they found a security vulnerability, getting a follow up attack off successfully requires Russia not fixing whatever security gap they exploited. 3) If there's still this much uncertainty 36 hours later, then honestly they did a good job covering their tracks and sowing enough doubt that now Russians have to worry about every possible delivery method. And if there's this much uncertainty then that was almost certainly by design and we're probably learning what happened around the same time we get the full story of the crimean airbase explosions. A single anonymous statement to a newspaper seems as likely to be a deliberate effort to shape the narrative as it does to be an genuine act of someone leaking extremely privileged operational details Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 15:34
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WaltherFeng posted:Or SBU could've simply paid a civilian truck driver to deliver some "cargo" and detonated it remotely. Why risk your own guys when you can just blow up someone else instead. Not much difference doing this vs hitting a bridge that has civilian traffic on it TBH. Intentionally causing one death when you’re going to be killing at least a handful of people with a missile strike, artillery or drone strike doesn’t strike me as any more egregious. Dead is dead whether it was an oopsie or intentional. Bear in mind that I’m brain poisoned by “the nuclear bombs killing 200,000 civilians saved millions of Americans and Japanese” American propaganda. Doesn’t make it -or this- less horrifying. War is poo poo and only makes life poo poo for anyone near it.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:36
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I don't disagree really, but by design the answer is unclear and will remain unclear and people have made some pretty compelling cases for a number of theories, albeit each has significant reasons to be questioned (eg where scorch marks at? so you're saying Ukraine made a massive truck-sized bomb in Russia and then drove it from the Russia side onto the bridge past security inspections and Xray scanners?). A single statement from a single anonymous individual that is currently being massively reposted by everyone with a stake in the question of who did it, despite Ukrainians being under very explicit orders to not make a single statement whatsoever to journalists is barely worth the paper it's printed on. It's not worthless, but until there's any kind of tangible evidence, a single claim is just a single claim. There are a lot of claims swirling around right now. Truck bomb is probably the strongest theory, but an explanation requires Ukraine to have built a massive bomb in Russia and then smuggled it past a bunch of security is a stretch to give Occam's blessing to. Has Russia come out with an official version? Assuming it was the truck, I’m wondering how they got past the inspection, as you point out.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:46
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Rinkles posted:Has Russia come out with an official version? They will find a way to blame their own incompetence rather than acknowledge Ukraine did it.
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Oct 9, 2022 15:52
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I don't disagree really, but by design the answer is unclear and will remain unclear and people have made some pretty compelling cases for a number of theories, albeit each has significant reasons to be questioned (eg where scorch marks at? so you're saying Ukraine made a massive truck-sized bomb in Russia and then drove it from the Russia side onto the bridge past security inspections and Xray scanners?). A single statement from a single anonymous individual that is currently being massively reposted by everyone with a stake in the question of who did it, despite Ukrainians being under very explicit orders to not make a single statement whatsoever to journalists is barely worth the paper it's printed on. It's not worthless, but until there's any kind of tangible evidence, a single claim is just a single claim. There are a lot of claims swirling around right now. Truck bomb is probably the strongest theory, but an explanation requires Ukraine to have built a massive bomb in Russia and then smuggled it past a bunch of security is a stretch to give Occam's blessing to. The scanners are only on the Ukrainian side, we have video of it getting by the checkpoint on the Russian side.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:04
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Generally 1) Ukraine benefits from the confusion 2) Ukraine has a lot of interest in obfuscating how they did it (if it was Ukraine, even) because if they found a security vulnerability, getting a follow up attack off successfully requires Russia not fixing whatever security gap they exploited. 3) If there's still this much uncertainty 36 hours later, then honestly they did a good job covering their tracks and sowing enough doubt that now Russians have to worry about every possible delivery method. And if there's this much uncertainty then that was almost certainly by design and we're probably learning what happened around the same time we get the full story of the crimean airbase explosions. A single anonymous statement to a newspaper seems as likely to be a deliberate effort to shape the narrative as it does to be an genuine act of someone leaking extremely privileged operational details This has been SOP for Ukraine this whole war. I don't think we've ever gotten a yes or no answer about whether that helicopter raid on Belogorad was ordered by command or was a spur of the moment thing by local pilots/commanders.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:07
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FishBulbia posted:The scanners are only on the Ukrainian side, we have video of it getting by the checkpoint on the Russian side. I don't think we can draw conclusions from just one video. Maybe they had a scanner but didn't bother with it because it was a familiar driver with a familiar bribe, maybe the operator was on a break, maybe it wasn't functional at the moment (in fact it would be quite convenient to sabotage the scanner beforehand)...
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Oct 9, 2022 16:11
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WaltherFeng posted:Or SBU could've simply paid a civilian truck driver to deliver some "cargo" and detonated it remotely. Why risk your own guys when you can just blow up someone else instead. Or Ukraine has no shortage of volunteers who, for whatever reason, would give their lives if it stopped Russia for even a moment.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:16
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Truck bomb is probably the strongest theory, but an explanation requires Ukraine to have built a massive bomb in Russia and then smuggled it past a bunch of security is a stretch You don't need to build a "bomb" and smuggle it anywhere. At the very simplest, you just need to get some sort of detonation device onto a truck full of (the right kind of) fertilizer. Look up the regulations in any country surrounding how agricultural chemicals are stored, and what happens when it goes Wrong. The Beirut explosion is the most recent, famous example of what ammonium nitrate can do. That was a far greater amount than what could be carried in a truck, but it also caused huge damage to the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion The reason the price of fertilizer is spiking in some countries at the moment (compared to previous years) is because Russia makes a lot of the stuff. The truck driver doesn't need to know, it could be a routine shipment. Your main challenge would be to set off the detonation device at the right moment.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:17
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J.A.B.C. posted:Russia should be removed from the UNSC. They've shown time and again that they disregard the charter and use their veto power to actively gently caress with other nations. They should have been kicked out after Assad gassed his own people, imo. The UNSC is for avoiding nuclear war. It's necessary to recognise that Russia has the ability to end the world, and there should be a place to resolve disputes without things going that far.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:18
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Nenonen posted:I don't think we can draw conclusions from just one video. Maybe they had a scanner but didn't bother with it because it was a familiar driver with a familiar bribe, maybe the operator was on a break, maybe it wasn't functional at the moment (in fact it would be quite convenient to sabotage the scanner beforehand)... Maybe they scanned it and said "yup, thats a lot of fertilizer"
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Oct 9, 2022 16:19
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tehinternet posted:Not much difference doing this vs hitting a bridge that has civilian traffic on it TBH. Intentionally causing one death when you’re going to be killing at least a handful of people with a missile strike, artillery or drone strike doesn’t strike me as any more egregious. Dead is dead whether it was an oopsie or intentional. You're right that dead is dead, but purposely setting up a specific individual to be an unwitting suicide bomber feels more specific than unlucky people getting caught in the blast. I don't know how people who would be horrified by a suicide bombing could possibly go oh well it was just some dupe.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:20
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:You're right that dead is dead, but purposely setting up a specific individual to be an unwitting suicide bomber feels more specific than unlucky people getting caught in the blast. I don't know how people who would be horrified by a suicide bombing could possibly go oh well it was just some dupe. It definitely qualifies as intentionally targeting civilians. Again, this is the SBU. They're a child of the KGB.
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Oct 9, 2022 16:27
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