During this war, Russia has launched 5628 Shahed-136 drones towards Ukraine.
That is 5628 times, civilians have heard a buzzing moped engine in the sky, and seen the Shahed-136 strike a civilian home, a power plant, or a school with its 50 kilogram warhead.
For comparison, Hitler struck London with 2857 V1 and V2 rockets — half as many.
I simply do not know what to tell future generations when they ask, why we did not stop the Russian terror.
@Npars01@randahl Gaza does exist. I think it's important people not use phrasing like that. People are fighting for their lives and the fight is not over.
@randahl and this is just a small subset of the total ordinance, from drones & missiles & bombs & shells that have all targeted Ukraine since the most recent invasion..
@randahl The reason is that Russia has a policy, predating Putin and regularly reauthorized, that if Russia is faced with defeat then they will escalate to first use of nuclear weapons. The definition of “defeat” gives them some wiggle room, but the threat is real. The military-political consensus seems to be that once tactical nukes are used then escalation to a broader nuclear exchange is inevitable. No country wants to get near that tripwire. Direct confrontation is avoided.
@meltedcheese that is what Russia wants us to think. But I call that madman theory: They want us to believe, that Putin is some evil super villain who is ready to destroy the world. The only problem is, the Russians have children too, and just like us, they would like to see those children again.
NATO has 4223 nuclear weapons, and while Russia needs to strike every power center accross the entire democratic world to win, just one nuke on Moscow would change Russia for good.
@randahl In the severe stress of military confrontation, Russia and NATO US depend on soldiers following orders. It is sentimental, wishful thinking to assume they will not.
“[Russian] doctrine allows nuclear weapons use ‘in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation.’”
@meltedcheese Do we agree, that Putin does not have a red button in his office, but even in Russia there is a formalized process for going nuclear? A process which involves several people in the power structure, and a chain of command in the military, which involves multiple levels of people who need to carry out nuclear attack orders — all the way down to the personnel in the missile silo?
Because if that is the case, do we also agree that 1 psychopath does not in itself lead to nuclear war?
We say we want Ukraine to win but it seems like we do not want them to win fast. We want them to win through attrition of the russian army? While russia levels what ever location of homes they can reach??
I do not understand why we are so afraid of russia?? Give Ukraine everything the ask for. Let them strike wherever the enemy is and not limit them to just Ukraine territory. This war could end within a year if we did that. Now it will last longer.
@randahl I think it might be because Putin is a fucking headcase who would cheerfully resort to nuclear warfare given any excuse at all. His pronouncements with Xi this week make this abundantly clear to me.
@randahl Ukraine has shot down maybe 80% of those, in large part with weapons supplied by the west. But your point remains fully valid, there is much more that could be done.
Full disclosure: The damage caused by Shahed drones do not compare to the damage from V1 and V2 rockets, because of the bigger warheads on V1 and V2. What I am comparing here is just the terror effect of these attacks, which is enormous. And while we stopped Hitler, Putin continues these attacks.