European politics

[Ardeshir]

Luka is basically the Jean Claude van Damme of slav politics. He can do a mean side split between East and West and still keep'em all in balance

Or just a modern day Tito

[Dolan]

@Ardeshir
Maybe, in the sense of trying to keep relations with both West and East. But Tito would not be anyone's fiddle, like Lukashenko. If Putin wanted his support, he'd put his demands on the table and say: take it or leave it.
Not this act that Lukashenko is doing: yes, boss, but maybe, Idk, we'll see, let me flex a bit with the army and then go afk for a few months, but we're still frens, right. Tito would play his own game. Maybe even sell weapons to Ukrainians then pretend he's helping the Russian army by flying a few drones on the border.

[Sargsyan]

[fei123456]

Is their an efficient way to deal with those Iran suicide drones? They're too cheap and can be easily massed, and it's a huge waste to knock them down with missiles; however they take 50kg TNTs each and can do mass damage and you cannot ignore them. Sanctions can hardly stop them because they don't need any "tech". Rumors said Russian bought 10,000+ those drones from Iran, and it won't be difficult for them to produce those trash themselves.

Ukraine even lost a Mig-29 after knocking down 5 drones: the 6th drone was destroyed too, but its explosion damaged the fighter, and the pilot had to escape. However, even if a Mig-29 trade with 500 drones, it's still Russian favored.

[Dolan]

@fei123456

_jamming systems

[duckzilla]

Say what you want, but the shipment mechanic of AoE3 is spot on here.

[fei123456]

@fei123456

_jamming systems

It's said that those drones are too "outdated" that they can hardly be jammed by GPS signals. They don't have any "guide"; they just fly at ~150 km/h to a certain place and then explode. Maybe they can use ww2 propeller fighters to deal with them?

[harcha]

How would an older airplane be helpful here? I don't see your point.
You need a navigation system if you're going to fly to any "certain place". They must have a system of some sorts, so jamming GPS might be valid (although I doubt any technology that does this at a scale of Ukraine's territory even exists).

[Sargsyan]

Say what you want, but the shipment mechanic of AoE3 is spot on here.

Yeah, you need to reach age 4 and color Revolt to unlock it though

[Dolan]

@fei123456

_jamming systems

It's said that those drones are too "outdated" that they can hardly be jammed by GPS signals. They don't have any "guide"; they just fly at ~150 km/h to a certain place and then explode. Maybe they can use ww2 propeller fighters to deal with them?

There's a list of Iranian drones that describes their capabilities and they all seem to have at least guided payloads. Meaning they need some kind of electronic system to lock on a target and do damage to it.

https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/the-ukrainian-military-shoots-down-iranian-drone-supplied-to-russia/

There's also a kamikaze drone, Toufan, that is just mechanically launched and then left to travel for a distance then explode. But such a drone is unlikely to cause any precise damage. It's probably used to create terror among the civilian population.
They can still be shot down if spotted by air defence systems early enough.

[duckzilla]

There's also a kamikaze drone, Toufan, that is just mechanically launched and then left to travel for a distance then explode. But such a drone is unlikely to cause any precise damage. It's probably used to create terror among the civilian population.

that just sounds like an exact copy of V2 rockets lol

[Dolan]

Bombing civilians will ony create more hostility towards Russia, it's surprising how tone-deaf Russia's strategy is.
They seem to think with this Soviet era mentality that the more you bomb a population the more they'll turn hostile against their own government and more sympathetic towards the country dropping bombs on them. The Soviet tactics of "if we abuse them badly enough, they'll see us more as a tough dad that could also be benevolent if they submit to us".

And it makes Putin's recent attempts at ingratiating himself with Ukrainians by saying stuff like



look even more dc'd from reality.
Bombing civilians to show how much you respect their identity, culture etc. You can't undestand that if you're not a Slav.

[fightinfrenchman]

Bombing civilians will ony create more hostility towards Russia, it's surprising how tone-deaf Russia's strategy is.

What kind of strategy were you expecting lol

[duckzilla]

Russia tries to recolonize Ukraine in the same manner as it has always colonized it's neighbors. With Ukraine, Russia tried to bit more off than it can chew nowadays. The approach only looks tone-deaf from a Western/Ukrainian perspective. For Russia, it is just a continuation of how they treat their neighbors and even their own non-slav citizens. Hostility of local population doesn't play a big role, because the Russian style of pacifying conquered territories consists of killing any local elites that could arise. If locals rise up and kill Russian soldiers, it's not a big loss and the Russian reaction will be again large-scale killings.

All this is difficult to see for Westerners, because they usually have the idea of making new citizens and territories "productive". You can't make people productive which you already killed. Hostility towards you will also lower productivity. Even converting people into slaves doesn't make too much sense, because they are far less productive than simple peons, whose wages are not much more expensive. For Russia, however, these things are not important. Russia is rich due to resources anyway. It doesn't need a rich and productive Dagestan. On the contrary, Russia's vastness makes it difficult to control if you had multiple rich or even non-slavic power centers.

[harcha]

Bombing civilians will ony create more hostility towards Russia, it's surprising how tone-deaf Russia's strategy is.

What kind of strategy were you expecting lol

yeah that's just every war ever. people in the west like to put labels like "terrorism" and "war-crime", to somehow deem it "super-illegal", but in the end that's just how wars go

[duckzilla]

yeah that's just every war ever. people in the west like to put labels like "terrorism" and "war-crime", to somehow deem it "super-illegal", but in the end that's just how wars go

It's new to me that US or NATO deliberately attacked civilian infrastructure like hospitals, power plants and the like in Afghanistan or Iraq. While you can actually find a list of bombed civilian facilities, it is obvious that these are singular events, usually with legal consequences for those responsible. In contrast, Russia destroyed hundreds of civilian facitilies in the early phase of the war.

[harcha]

don't know if they did, just saying that the russian tactics displayed matches to my preconceived notion of "war".

but i'd like to ask to you - what makes it "obvious" that the acts you linked are "singular events" and had "legal consequences for those responsible"? if anything, the article you linked gives me the opposite impression

[Dolan]

It's new to me that US or NATO deliberately attacked civilian infrastructure like hospitals, power plants and the like in Afghanistan or Iraq. While you can actually find a list of bombed civilian facilities, it is obvious that these are singular events, usually with legal consequences for those responsible. In contrast, Russia destroyed hundreds of civilian facitilies in the early phase of the war.

NATO wasn't involved in those wars, afaik, it was the USA and a 'coalition of the willing', which is usually a handful of NATO allies, but they didn't drag NATO into it because there was no legal basis to do that. Not all of them would have agreed anyway.

And they did bomb hospitals and other civilian places but that's because the insurgents were hiding in such locations on purpose. Using civilians as a shield against air raids is already a common tactic, that's also used by Ukrainian forces. There are like tens of vids with Ukrainian fighters bragging about sleeping in kindergartens and daring Russian forces to bomb them, so later they can show to the whole world how "Russians are bombing children in kindergartens, they are monsters".

before

after

[duckzilla]

NATO wasn't involved in those wars, afaik, it was the USA and a 'coalition of the willing', which is usually a handful of NATO allies, but they didn't drag NATO into it because there was no legal basis to do that. Not all of them would have agreed anyway.

NATO was in for Afghanistan, because 9/11 was considered an attack on the US.

[Dolan]

Oh yeah, that was the first time ever when art 5 was triggered. Tho only a few NATO allies sent missions in Afghanistan, not all of them. We sent one too, as we were eager to prove we're not just clients of security in NATO, but we're actually useful.

[fei123456]

The order of US/NATO may not be an ideal world, but it's at least 100 times better than the Putins.

[duckzilla]

The order of US/NATO may not be an ideal world, but it's at least 100 times better than the Putins.

This is the exact reasoning of pretty much anyone within the NATO/EU/the West (except the US). "The West" is far from perfect, but it's strictly superior to the terror countries and people outside, like Ukraine, the Chechens, or the Uyghurs, have to endure. Just sad that some countries rather fall in-between, like Turkey with its vastness of atrocities against its non-turkish citizens.

[harcha]

When you literally stand between "the west" and "the not-west" it's easy to fall into the fallacy of both being equally bad.
As far as I understand Turkey has legitimate interests in having both of these powers balanced and on good terms so that Turkey can continue to function as the trade route.

[duckzilla]

When you literally stand between "the west" and "the not-west" it's easy to fall into the fallacy of both being equally bad.
As far as I understand Turkey has legitimate interests in having both of these powers balanced and on good terms so that Turkey can continue to function as the trade route.

What do you mean? As far as I understood, Turkey isn't en route for trade since 1499.

[harcha]

it was a reference to Bosforus