• Ukraine destroyed columns of waiting Russian soldiers with HIMARS, a Ukrainian commander said.
  • He said Ukraine targeted them as soon as it got permission to use allied weapons across the border.
  • Military experts say Ukraine’s ability to use Western-supplied weapons in Russia is aiding its fightback.
  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    4 months ago

    I wish they didn’t have to wait for things like this. It sucks that Ukraine is at the whims of other countries while it’s trying to fight to maintain its sovereignty.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It makes me so depressed thinking about how many thousands of Ukrainian lives could’ve been saved by just giving Ukraine full and enthusiastic support immediately instead of dragging it out this long.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        This was done on purpose so the crisis didn’t escalate. There’s no world police to prevent Russia from nuking everyone. It’s better for outside actors to focus on de-escalation anyway.

        Also, Putin is not doing this because of Ukraine. I mean that’s part of it, but he is doing it for domestic appeal. He wants to appear tough to Russian citizens. Two situations allow that: beating Ukraine easily, and losing to NATO forces. He knows NATO will not risk invading Russia, so he’s in no real danger from the second one.

        NATO is intentionally not intervening because it makes Putin look weak domestically. Russia has created their own problem and the war will not end until the people of Russia demand it.

        • aodhsishaj@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The only thing that modern diplomacy teaches nation states today is that they need to get nukes as quickly as possible

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            4 months ago

            Nukes are good, but in fact full arsenal, from home-produced small mortars to MRBMs, and a standing military. Actually, if possible, all the means of power projection the big guys have. Including even proxy militants. Because the big guys back up their words with the blood of the small guys anyway.

            • aodhsishaj@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              You’re speaking about the means of which to project military power on the ground with direct action, I’m talking about the nature of nuclear weapons as a deterrent and how that changes the way soft and hard power is applied.

              Nukes make it so that no direct combat need ever take place, look at NK or the inverse where we are applying sanctions against Iran for a current parallel.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                4 months ago

                It requires very rigid discipline to threaten your enemy with MAD. The more tasks you can solve without testing your own faction’s discipline, the better. If every parking place argument gets to threats of nuking the opponent, because you can’t threaten anything else, either eventually you’ll have to use MAD for such a small cause, or you’ll step back on that and then there’ll be something a bit more important over which you’ll threaten MAD.

                And so on, until MAD is in practice useless for you.

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            No it doesn’t. The US especially has spent a ton of money building up countries it has defeated in war.

            The prime minister decides that their only course of action is to declare war on the United States. Expecting a quick and total defeat (since their standing army is tiny and equipped with bows and arrows), the country confidently expects to rebuild itself through the largesse that the United States bestows on all its vanquished enemies

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That’s Putin’s doing. His bluff was strong and he had a big pile of material, so the West is using a Russia technique known as the salami slice method, by slowly escalating and gauging the reaction from Putin. It means no world war 3 scenario, no allies that have to come to his defense and also not letting Putin taking whatever he wants with just bluff and threatening speeches. It is costly in lives and material though.

      • bean@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Can’t make salami without grinding meat I guess. As dark as that sounds. I thank every soul who’s been fighting against that thugtatorship.

    • SuspiciousCatThing@pawb.social
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      4 months ago

      And we (the US) have so much support that we could be giving to them but we’re not. We’d rather enable genocide elsewhere.