Friday’s massive bombing was Putin’s biggest attack since Kyiv’s daring drone assault took out dozens of strategic bombers at Russian airfields.
Russia launched a huge barrage of missiles and drones against a broad swath of Ukrainian territory early Friday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 40 others.
The massive bombing was Moscow’s biggest attack on Ukraine since Kyiv’s daring “Spider Web” drone assault took out dozens of strategic bombers at Russian airfields on June 1.
“In total, over 400 drones and more than 40 missiles — including ballistic missiles — were used in today’s attack,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a morning statement. “They targeted almost all of Ukraine — Volyn, Lviv, Ternopil, Kyiv, Sumy, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, and Chernihiv regions,” he said.
That’s all they got. Terror bombings.
Feels like june 1944 and the desperate launches of the V2s.
Serious question: what’s the card Russia would play to “escalate the retaliatory response” here?
- they already invaded a peaceful neighboring country - once unofficially in 2014, and then converted it to an official invasion in 2022
- they are clearly not able to exert any more conventional force on Ukraine, because they’ve been hollowing out their own military to do what they’ve accomplished so far
- they’re already (and, history note, have been for literal centuries) working to ethically cleanse and culturally genocide Ukraine
- they’ve already used chemical weapons in more than a few places
- they’re not going to use bioweapons, because that’s just gonna boomerang back into their face
- they’re not going to start using tactical nukes, because that would sure as fuck get the Bundeswehr and Wojsko Polskie and Forces armées françaises and friends to directly commit a bunch of tank divisions and air support to the conflict
- theyre not going to start using strategic nukes because that would end with (yes, a lot of other catastrophic damage, but) Russia effectively ceasing to exist
Russia’s response here is, in the realm of geopolitical calculus, essentially meaningless, and not a credible retaliatory response.
Or put another way: Russia isn’t playing any geopolitical cards as a response because it can’t.
Probably turn up the meat grinder dial. Russia’s history has shown it can always get worse and they have no problem with human wave attacks. They have a significantly larger population than Ukraine.
They’re already having catastrophic demographic issues. That would only speed their fall.
I don’t think it matters to Putin. I think this is catastrophic for Russia and will be the end of Putin’s Russia. No telling what replaces him, but it will probably be another strong man.
However, barring dark horses, the collapse will take years and many Russians and Ukrainians will die.
biggest attack since Kyiv’s daring drone assault
Didn’t that literally just happen?
This has »“We haven’t seen each other since last year” in the first week of January« vibes.…and stheir planes are still wrecked
