this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
538 points (96.4% liked)

World News

38586 readers
1964 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned that it was "inevitable" that "war" would come to Russia after authorities there were forced to temporarily close a busy Moscow airport following an overnight drone attack on the capital.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (15 children)

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).

[–] bossito@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (35 children)

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.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mea_rah@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (33 replies)
[–] the_wise_wolf@feddit.de 32 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Russia's Defense Ministry called it an "attempted terrorist attack" and claimed that one drone had been shot down and two others jammed, leading them to crash into Moscow's prestigious Moskva-Citi business complex.

We don't know what the targets were.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] ghostBones@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Completely agree, and in fact I mentioned myself that attacks on infrastructures from my PoV would be justified, as they have military value.

[–] Chalky_Pockets@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] SAF77@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ukraine broke Geneva convention rules? How and when exactly?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] pancakes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Say you don't understand the Geneva convention without saying you don't understand the Geneva convention.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Willer@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

a small attack like this on a civilian target

was it really though? Doesnt anybody else wonder who the actual target was?

[–] sudneo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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_wise_wolf@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Russia's Defense Ministry called it an "attempted terrorist attack" and claimed that one drone had been shot down and two others jammed, leading them to crash into Moscow's prestigious Moskva-Citi business complex.

We don't know what the targets were.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

and let Russia be the only one committing war crimes by doing that

Anyone that has been following this war properly knows that's not really true. Donetsk city has been the subject of indiscriminate ukrainian shelling and missiles since the start. These drone attacks against civilians aren't changing some sort of unbroken streak of not attacking civilians.

load more comments (8 replies)