Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium. The Skripals were poisoned with novichok smeared on a door handle, and that incident also led to a British police officer being hospitalized.
Lounge of Russian-Ukrainian War
- Thread starter Roosh
- Start date
Hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainians are being meat-grindered into paste right now, so I can only assume that the "collateral damage is not Putin's style" posters are joking.
Cuchulainn2016
Kingfisher
They aren't collateral damage, they are combatants.
Respectfully, no it isn't. Prigozhin was a hired gun, Patton was in the regular military. I see the similarities in that both had ideas of how things should play out in contrast to those ideas of their respective leaders.
Mercenaries are not the same as regulars. There's reasons for that A) mercenaries are not guided by duty, rather financial reward or bloodlust (two common motivators in the US military today, to be fair) B) Mercenaries give more power to those with money, and just ask yourself who in the world has money. Nobody I want to have a private army. C) Mercenaries are not protected by the same international laws, and therefore are less likely to follow international laws, therefore increasing the likelihood of atrocities and escalations.
Regarding everything else you've written, yes, no, maybe, I don't know. A lot of people want to play armchair general and assume they know what's going on behind the scenes or what the best course of action for whichever side is. You don't know, it's in God's hands.
I have no idea what you're referring to.
Look, the way the Russian military works when they take a town like Mariupol is just to carpet bomb everything. They undoubtedly killed a bunch of Azov and Ukrainian soldiers, but they typically destroy 90%+ of all buildings in the process. You've got to be the most gullible person on the planet to imagine that not a single innocent dies given these tactics.
Also, Russian artillery is known for having massive quantities inherited from the Soviets. Not for its accuracy. Even the long-range stuff isn't remotely accurate. "Targeted strikes on military objects" and "the Ukrainians are doing it to themselves to make Russia look bad" were always complete fantasies fed to people too dumb to think for themselves.
There was plenty of time for civilians to leave, and Russia even provided evacuation corridors. Maybe there were a few stragglers, but staying behind in Mariupol or Bakhmut is a worse idea than staying in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina was approaching, precisely for the reasons you stated that Russia is not known as being the most precise with their artillery, though they have been improving dramatically out of necessity as stockpiles draw down and technology improves.
Much more likely that these people have been poisoned by the Brits to pin it on Putin, same with flight MH17.
Sure, but even if it was logistically practical to evacuate millions civilians living in the war zone in Ukraine in a couple of days after the war began, that's not what happened. In practice millions stayed behind. Mariupol was full of people when Russia started bombing it on day one of the war. When Ukraine retook Robotyne this week, there were still civilians. They must have been crazy/clueless for staying behind as the land changed hands twice, but they did.
TruckDriver9
Crow
To this day there was not a single one Russian carpet bombing - on the contrary, it's the unwillingness of Russian civilian leadership to green-light such strikes that forced the military to engage in bloody and gruelling urban combat.
Even according to western think tanks, the Russian reconnaissance strike complex was refined into a fine tuned killing machine:
"Fire is not only used to strike Ukrainian defensive positions but also, vitally, to blunt assaults. If the Russians learn that an assault is being prepared, the area is often saturated with fire to prevent its execution. Another common tactic is for the Russians to withdraw from a position that is being assaulted and then saturate it with fire once Ukrainian troops attempt to occupy it. Ukrainian forces report that while the weight of artillery fire remains high, MLRS launches are significantly less than in previous months, suggesting munitions shortages. It appears that Russia has a steady supply of Krasnopol laser-guided 152-mm rounds as there is an observed increase in the number of Orlan-30 flights and the use of designators by specialised infantry to deliver more accurate strikes on Ukrainian defensive positions.
Russian counterbattery fire has also shifted away from the saturation of detected Ukrainian positions to the firing of Lancet loitering munitions. Although these have a limited success rate, their speed and accuracy make it challenging to maintain sustained firing for Ukrainian guns to support manoeuvre. Lancets are also used for reconnaissance to actively hunt for Ukrainian artillery.
More consequential than adaptations in firing sequences has been the refinement of the Russian Reconnaissance Fires Circuit (Russian term for the kill chain) to make it more responsive and more flexible in delivering fire to support manoeuvring forces. Each commander of an axis will
generally retain an orbit of Orlan-10s above the fighting to provide both information to the CP and targets for responsive and accurate fire to the assigned batteries. The artillery brigade commander also often retains several Orlan-10s, coordinated in a complex above areas of interest. Thus, Ukrainian forces often find that they are being observed from two different Orlan-10 complexes – each able to call down different effects.
The time for artillery engagements from these systems remains rapid at around 3–5 minutes. (...)"
If that's what the west is already willing to acknowledge, than the real capabilities of Russian artillery are most likely even higher.
Over the course of this operation Russia proved time and time again that it can reliably and repeatedly deliver accurate blows at all kinds of targets in every corner of Ukraine. Sure some strikes are off target, but that's normal - even the best precission munitions have a margin of error. You thik that a Tomahawk has a pin point accuracy ?
Go through even the most recent Russian long range strikes and you'll find nothing but high accuracy: taking down port facilities in Reni and Izmail on the border with Romania just a stone's throw away from NATO soil or an ammo train in the middle of nowhere.
Haven't seen that "think for yourself" approach in Your post - rather the opposite: repeating the most common tropes found in the mass media.
Caduceus
Hummingbird
Except that the civilians that got evacuated from Mariupol complained that it was Azov that deliberately fired upon residential buildings and any person that dared to leave them. This was heavily covered here at the time, many videos got posted showing this.
I'm not that well-informed right now, but I'm aware that there are very many articles written by respected contributors at The Unz Review that dispute the mainstream Russian poisoning narratives.
A search on the Skripals for example:
John Helmer has written an entire book pointing out the falsehoods of the Skripal case.
Litvinenko:
N°6
Ostrich
I've wondered where this term came from.
Could it be that the collateral in question is tax payers who are no longer on the tax census due to unforeseen events?
Liberty Sea
Pelican
For one thing, Prigozhin was Jewish.
