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▲ somenameforme an hour ago

In this war hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of missiles and drones have been utilized. Defenses on both sides have done a generally good job of disabling them. But "disabling" them doesn't mean they disappear, it often just means that they fall and sometimes explode on impact with whatever they land on. That's going to result in tremendous damage to civilian facilities.

Both sides instead regularly frame it, for propaganda purposes, as being targeted without ever saying as such - 'A [enemy] [drone/missile] struck a beach full of civilians' for instance. That's completely accurate, but misleading because most people think that means the beach was targeted, as opposed to 'we shot down an incoming drone that was headed for a military base and it crashed into a beach'.

The reason things look so different now is because civilian facilities are being targeted. And this isn't just in Ukraine obviously, as per this topic. Ukraine has also had this capability to completely destroy civilian facilities for years. We're only getting these headlines, and likely many more to come as winter approaches, because this Pandora's Box has been opened.

▲Marha01 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Ukraine has also had this capability to completely destroy civilian facilities for years.

Nope, Ukraine only recently developed long-range strike capabilities.

▲somenameforme 21 minutes ago | parent [-]

A quick search shows them striking, or attempting to strike, targets hundreds of miles within Russia at least as far back as early 2023. And they were aiming for energy and military targets, which are going to have vastly more defenses than civilian infrastructure.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/28/russia-militar...

▲Marha01 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Both sides instead regularly frame it, for propaganda purposes, as being targeted without ever saying as such - 'A [enemy] [drone/missile] struck a beach full of civilians' for instance. That's completely accurate, but misleading because most people think that means the beach was targeted, as opposed to 'we shot down an incoming drone that was headed for a military base and it crashed into a beach'.

Search for "Kherson human safari". Russians are deliberately targeting civilians, this is proven beyond any doubt.

▲somenameforme 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

There's a pretty simple way to challenge your assumption here. Here is the Wiki for your example. [1] Apparently a ballpark of 200 civilians were killed there in the years between the war's start and late 2025. So let's assume you're right and Russia genuinely wanted to just go kill civilians in Kherson. It's a city that had a pre-war population of about 280,000.

How many do you think they would have managed to kill? 200 is quite easy to see happening from air defense mishaps, occasional mistargeting, and other such issues - but it's off by orders of magnitude if we assume a targeted campaign against civilians. A campaign against civilians would have multiples of that number per day in such a location.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_safari_(terror_campaign)

▲jacquesm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You should take a walk in downtown Zaporizhzhia if you feel that way, it may change your mind.