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No wonder Putin is taking a pass on attending. It would make his time and location line up publicly.
Would killing him be bad or good?
Was killing the Ayatollah good or bad?
Decapitation creates a power vacuum and may cause inferiors to act erratically in ways that harm all participants. Such as preventive or random strikes on foreign but not hostile nations. A invasion of e.g. the Baltics may be immediate.
An attempt could happen anyway, but Ukraine's efforts have really made it less feasible.
our optimism may be detached from reality. A us war declaration is all but guaranteed and there are too few NATO troops to repel an invasion before the fall of tallin. The economics of war are currently unfavorable when matching Russian and NATO forces. And economic disparity is not sufficient to be able to succeed at those odds since interceptors are bloody expensive.
Realistically there are also not enough Russian troops available to start such an invasion. Not to talk about the fact that their logistics are too poor to not need months of very obvious troop concentration before even trying.
I don't want to leave you on read, but I am too sad to respond in any detail. Going to go dissociate for a minute.
Probably bad.
The reason why I doubt that Ukraine would attack Moscow on Victory Day is that the risk of killing innocents would be high, which could (would) make Russians rally around the flag.
I do like the threat though. Putin and Russia shouldn't be confident that Ukraine won't attack, which causes a dilemma for them.
And pulls air defenses away from the front lines.
A parade is still a parade, an attack would likely kill civilians attending and definitely be a warcrime.
But they could make a nice show with colored smoke.
Disrupting a parade with colored smoke is not a war crime. Blowing up a bunch of civilians at a parade is.
Honestly... i don't think that this would matter in this particular war anymore...
You still can't bomb parades.
Why? I mean... yeah, i see the strategic dangers of doing so (including making Putin something of a martyr), but otherwise? I think at this point in the war (or the world) nobody really cares any more about the rules and customs of war.
No you still can't bomb a fucking parade what the fuck is wrong with you?
Ok, let me ask you a little question about history: Was it a war crime to bomb... say... the Ruhr valley in Germany during WWII?
With regular bombs targeting military factories and logistical hubs at night? No, because those are military targets and there was minimal risk to civilians. Firebombing residential areas? Absolutely.
The worst part is, killing shittons of civilians isn't even useful. When Germany shifted bombing from airfields and military targets to terror-bombing london, they gave the airfields and factories breathing room to rebuild the RAF and eventually win the battle of Britain. Murdering 20% of the population of Korea north of the 38th didn't allow the US to push up, poisoning the center of vietnam to cause a famine and sending B-52s to carpet bomb the north did nothing to break the Vietnamese resistance. Bombing hospitals and weddings in Afghanistan didn't make the Afghan people decide to stop resisting.
I bet - if she was still around - my grandma would have a good laugh at the "minimal risk" part...
But besides that: Bombing a parade where high ranking military personal and valuable military hardware is present is then surely ok - especially if you consider how much more precisely targeted a drone strike is compared to bombing raids in WWII
Was your grandma german? My Grampa was in a B-17 lol.
As German as myself π And to make this encounter even more funny: My Grandfather was head of a AAA crew...
Just a bit?
I agree that the threat is a smart move. Either Russia command responds, showing the population that everything is not going as well as they pretend. Or they do nothing, in which case they have deal with the backlash of 'Oh, why did you do nothing, they told you they would do this' if Ukraine attacks.
A power struggle within Russian command would almost certainly mess things up for the Russians on the battlefield
Only one way to find out, I guess