At least nine people were killed and seven others wounded after a Russian drone attack on a bus carrying civilians in Ukraine's Sumy region
Posted by polymute@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 19 comments
Naurgul@reddit
Is it me or has Russia been escalating its attacks on civilians lately? It feels like Russia didn't (often) specifically target civilian lives in the beginning of the war but nowadays there's an incident like this one every few days.
imunfair@reddit
There's two parts to this answer - the first is that Ukraine's air defenses are more degraded so with Russia launching larger drone swarms using new tactics, more explosives are getting through and more anti-aircraft missiles are being shot in an attempt to take them down.
That ends up with more civilians hit both due to faulty drones, drones that were shot down into civilian targets, and anti-aircraft missiles that hit civilians which Ukraine routinely claims are Russian projectiles to avoid blame for the poor placement of their anti-aircraft units.
The second part of the answer, and why this first part wasn't immediately obvious, is that Ukraine bans their people from posting pictures and videos of strikes under the threat of prison. That means almost every time you see a picture of a strike it was posted by the Ukrainian government as propaganda, and they only post the misses, not the majority of the missiles and drones that get through and hit their target.
So you don't see that for every one civilian building hit there are a hundred military targets hit. Sometimes they even try to get away with posting dual-use buildings as a "civilian" target if they don't think people will be able to tell that a mall or warehouse was being used for military purposes, they've been caught doing that several times.
MechaAristotle@reddit
Doesn't justify Israel bombing civilian infrastructure in Gaza and it doesn't justify it here either.
One_Community6740@reddit
Bruh, bringing up Gaza is wrong on so many levels...
MechaAristotle@reddit
Why?
One_Community6740@reddit
How many tanks/armored vehicles/weaponry/financial aid Sweden sent to Gaza? Compare it now to all the aid y'all sent to Ukraine and ask yourself why Ukraine is relying on Hamas/militant group-like tactics...
But I bet you won't and will just repeat similar to another comment: "boo-hoo-hoo, Ukraine is a victim, so all means are justified, Putin/Russians are pure evil, so we will fight by all means until the last Ukrainian because it is akin to a battle between light and darkness". And will end it with obligatory "卍卍卍glory to Ukraine卍卍卍". Or nazi salute is finally getting out of fashion in EU subreddits on 4th year of war? Sorry, I am not keeping up with European fascism.
The amount of mental gymnastics in Europe to avoid legitimate sanctions/embargo against Israel to help Gaza is astonishing. So you bringing up Gaza is "funny", because lack of awareness. Why are Europeans so principled only in Reddit comments? And yet your actions do not match your principles.
MechaAristotle@reddit
>why Ukraine is relying on Hamas/militant group-like tactics...
I'm no military expert but I don't think that there is much comparison between how Ukraine and Hamas fight.
>But I bet you won't and will just repeat similar to another comment: "boo-hoo-hoo, Ukraine is a victim, so all means are justified, Putin/Russians are pure evil, so we will fight by all means until the last Ukrainian because it is akin to a battle between light and darkness"
Not really sure why you're so aggressive in your response, I don't think I was in my replies? It's up to Ukraine and it's people to decide how long they want to fight, I've heard both people that want to negotiate and those that don't, though official policy is to do so right now from everything we've seen.
>And will end it with obligatory "卍卍卍glory to Ukraine卍卍卍". Or nazi salute is finally getting out of fashion in EU subreddits on 4th year of war? Sorry, I am not keeping up with European fascism.
What even is this...whatever made you think I was in any way a nazi or fascist lol?
>The amount of mental gymnastics in Europe to avoid legitimate sanctions/embargo against Israel to help Gaza is astonishing. So you bringing up Gaza is "funny", because lack of awareness. Why are Europeans so principled only in Reddit comments? And yet your actions do not match your principles.
Again, assuming a lot and being aggressive. I think that we need to do way more to sanction Israel for what it's worth, our own government has been real disappointing here.
As for the report about Ukraine endangering civilians: needlessly endangering civilians should be avoided, though again I'm not an expert and so I'm not sure how much you can avoid such casualties given that fighting often takes place in or around cities or population centres. Armies no longer fight in the open field like the good ol' days.
And again...there would be not such casualties had Russia not invaded in the first place, the burden of guilt ultimately lies with them.
imunfair@reddit
They're at war, if you park your HIMARS in a mall and your enemy records you doing it from a surveillance drone, you can be sure they're going to blow that place to hell. And it's your own fault for putting your people at risk, just like when Zelensky was handing guns to civilians at the start of the war and encouraging them to make molotov cocktails rather than restricting the fight to military personnel.
As a leader it's your duty to fight in a way that keeps your people out of harms way, not photograph the results and cry about how mean the enemy is.
MechaAristotle@reddit
All of this seems like victim blaming honestly...do you have any words of criticism for Russia and Putin, who you know, started the war in the first place?
One_Community6740@reddit
Putin/Russia is so BAD!!!! RUSSKIES ARE BAD!!!! PUTIN IS BAD!!!! HAGUE TRIBUNAL FOR PUTIN! HAGUE! HAGUE! HAGUE!
Happy? Do you feel that Ukraine is getting stronger and Ukraine starts winning the war of attrition? No? Oh, looks like the real world does not change thanks to chanting/prayers/or whatever psychotic shit y'all Europeans were doing in different subreddits all 3 years of war.
imunfair@reddit
What I said is objectively true, you tried comparing collateral damage from a war to collateral damage from an occupying power trying to root out an insurgency. It was a bad comparison and now you feel bad and want me to equally criticize the other side to legitimize what I said, when it stands just fine on it's own.
It doesn't need to be justified or have a tone applied to color it, it's either true or it isn't. The idea that we're now interpreting the truth of statements about war by how we feel about the motives of who said them is really silly. If there's something false feel free to engage with me on it, but I'm not going to humor calling analysis "victim blaming".
LawsonTse@reddit
I wouldn't give Russian the credit of 99% hit rate of military targets. Sure Ukrainian government choose to publish civilian strike, Russian forces not being selective in their strike targeting is well documented. They were using S300 and cold war anti ship missiles to strike cities earlier during the war, missiles not built for ground strike and will home in on the 1st large concrete block that appears in front of them.
imunfair@reddit
It would be a lower hit rate early/mid war when Ukraine had more AA to waste and better EW at times. We don't know their exact block rate but I suspect they were doing 50% at best and Russia was just firing twice as many missiles to make sure every target was hit.
These days though Russia is using drone swarms, sometimes in conjunction with missiles, they've changed their hardware to mitigate EW, and Ukraine's AA assets are running thin, so I think it's easily possible that for every civilian hit Ukraine publicizes there are a hundred good hits, especially given how cheap the drones they use are compared to the earlier missile waves.
Depends on which strikes you're talking about - it may have happened, but some of the most notable examples of S300 hits, for example the missile that struck Poland, were Ukraine just failing to intercept and hitting itself and its allies. Ukraine blames 100% of S300 damage on Russia regardless of which side actually fired it, and there are quite a few cases where it was objectively Ukraine who did the damage and then claimed it was Russia targeting civilians.
SoulessHermit@reddit
Some reports indicate that Russia has been escalating attacks towards civilians around late 2024/starting 2025.
But I also want to highlight this attack was at Sumy, which is close to the frontlines, and Russian drones tend to attack indiscriminately. So, I'm not sure whether this attack is intentional towards civilians or just an indiscriminate attack.
MechaAristotle@reddit
Doesn't really make it any better does it?
Peter_Yuki@reddit
I've seen a lot of footage of FPVs checking vehicles to see if it's civilian and then going away if it is, If I had to guess the operator just saw the bus close to the front and just choose to attack it. As far as I can see the Russian army doesn't generally bomb civilians at a tactical level but doesn't care if they're collateral damage at a strategic level
Motor_Expression_281@reddit
There were pictures of unexplored bombs/shells in apartment buildings since like week 1 of the war. Russia is a fascist dictatorship, and they have no qualms targeting civilians to break the defenders will. It’s part of their playbook.
Naurgul@reddit
Is it me or has Russia been escalating its attacks on civilians lately?
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