The Russian authorities said on Saturday that a Ukrainian attack on the city of Belgorod had killed at least 18 people and injured more than 110 others, in the deadliest strike against a Russian city since the beginning of the war nearly two years ago.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that Ukraine had hit Belgorod — a regional center of around 330,000 residents about 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border — with two missiles and several rockets, adding that the strike was “indiscriminate” and would “not go unpunished.”
The ministry said that most of the rockets had been shot down, but that some debris had fallen on the city. The Ukrainian government has not officially commented on the Belgorod attack, and Russian claims could not be immediately verified.
An eye for an eye would see rockets hit Moscow and St Petersburg
At the same time, there is no need to commit war crimes and target civilians. I hope the Ukrainian army is keeping their nose clean here.
I’m really torn on this. Normally, I’d agree with you 100%, but there’s a couple special factors at play here.
The first being that Ukraine is punching up, and they don’t currently have the firepower to hit the capitol like their capitol has been hit. So that simply isn’t an option afaik.
The second is that as a result of 1, the only realistic way for Ukraine to win the war is to convince Russia to surrender. The quickest way to do that is to convince Russian citizens that they need to overthrow the government. I’m generally against violent/aggressive persuasion(like protests that block streets, preventing people from getting to their job/hospital) because they tend to dissuade people from joining the cause. That being said, force might be the only option Ukraine has for making the Russian civilians to do what needs to be done.
Lastly, Russian media has an iron grip on information control. It’s not out of the realm of possibility for them to intentionally keep their citizens in the dark about military installations so as to use them as living shields. “You can’t shoot our base because it’s under a school” type shit
I agree with you insofar as Ukraine needs to “bring the war home” for Russians. Break the image that Putin keeps the peace inside Russia. I think Ukraine has been doing a good job of that so far with their attacks on Russian soil, without civilian casualties.
Yeah, a large part of my comment is speculation, that’s pretty much the only concrete conclusion.
This is the exact same rationale that lead to wanton, willing, and repeated targeting of cities and civilians in WW1 & WW2 by both side’s air power. Nightly firebomb raids that burned whole cities and melted people alive. And it didn’t work either time, until the US deliberately nuked civilians, and promised to keep up the massacres. Victory, at what cost?
Dresden. Tokyo. Nagasaki. Hiroshima.
That’s the end game of that logic - “bro we just need to be more brutal and inhumane, and then the 5th column will rise up and win the war for us” How many murdered civilians are worth peace?