Judging by the sound delay, the explosion was likely up to 5 miles away. BBC interviewed locals, who claimed that the shock waves were so powerful they might have died if they were just outside. Zelenskyy’s delusional war is suicidal, this must end
Target was most likely a large ammunition depot. Judging by the sheer amount, that was their storage for their entire spring counteroffensive. Welp.
Shit looked frightening. From the video I thought it was white phosphorus or something.
Yet I have to wonder if it has actually achieved anything
Seems like OP is writing that it was really huge ammo stockpile, so yeah, now those ammo won’t be shot at anyone and NATO would have to replace it first.
The wording in the title (vengeance for Crimea) implies it was known prior, but not attacked for some reason. And that it was the drone strike at Sevastopol that neccesiated this demolition.
As for “would have to replace it first” - they will. I’ve been waiting for NATO to run out of shells about as long as UA flag twitterati been waiting for Russia to run out of missiles. Donetsk is still getting shelled, people still die. Russian aviation is now using KAB bombs, even losing one over Bryansk. The war still doesn’t appear to be any closer to conclusion, Nazis are still out there, dancing on the bones of the slain. And China is now offering peace! To zelensky personally!
In my opinion the whole “retribution for x action” thing is just PR spin. I doubt that the Russian military decides when, where and what to strike based on something as petty as revenge. It’s more likely that it was something they were going to do anyway and it was convenient for propaganda reasons to associate it with something Ukraine did to portray it as retaliatory action.
Whether or not Ukraine manages to hit a Russian target every now and then does not change the overall strategy that Russia is pursuing, which necessitates the destruction of the enemy’s material and manpower resources. This will take time. In the meantime, yes, unfortunately people die, that’s war. What Russia won’t do is allow Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilians to make them take emotionally motivated, rash actions that are not to their advantage. Russia has dealt with terrorism before during the Chechnya conflicts, and we have also seen in Syria that their strategic patience extends over many years.
As for China’s recent diplomatic overtures, we have to understand the kind of “good cop - bad cop” game that is being played. China’s interests are in large part aligned with Russia’s on this, they are not stupid, they understand Washington’s plans to subjugate Russia and afterwards use it to confront China. China needs to appear like the reasonable adults in the room compared to the warmongering West that keeps adding fuel to the fire. Of course China also has a material interest in re-establishing stability in that region since their BRI route goes through it. But they also understand that any negotiations will be on Russia’s terms - which include de-nazification and de-NATOization. If Ukraine accepts those terms, great, if not China can say look we tried to do all we could.
We may not like these games that are being played but it cannot be denied that they are effective. More and more countries in the global south are aligning with Russia and China, it seems everyone wants to join the BRICS nowadays, and the dollar financial hegemony is declining faster than most of us would have ever thought possible before this conflict began. A lot of that success depends also on Russia going at just the right pace in Ukraine to keep showing that the West are paper tigers and that all of the combined support of NATO cannot help Ukraine defeat Russia, while at the same time not spooking their allies in the global south with overly aggressive actions that could be seen as unprovoked or disproportionate.
Hello comrade, i would be grateful for your opinion on this.
First of all the “Moscow Times” is one of those liberal, NED funded propaganda rags. It’s owned by some Dutch guy and is banned in Russia. One should always be very skeptical of anything such outlets publish.
As to the article itself, despite the sensationalist title, it is little more than confirmation that there is an internal political struggle going on in South Africa too.
This was a comment made by some member of the legislature, not an official statement the government itself. The government is still very much aligned with the BRICS axis. Not too long ago their president was saying South Africa intended to withdraw from the ICC.
Overall i wouldn’t pay too much attention to stories like this. Their purpose is to distract and to shore up the morale among the opponents of Russia at a time when things are going quite badly for the Kiev regime.
Thank you
And the reason they were warning Putin not to come in the first place was because they did not want to arrest him
Yeah that clearly looked like that, them being the 5th BRICS member is starting to look like one of the best decisions ever made so it’s no brainer they wouldn’t endanger that.
Especially now that countries all across the global south are practically scrambling to get into BRICS. Last i heard there were over a dozen countries eager to apply for membership as soon as possible.
It is clear which way the wind is blowing and a country would have to have either very stupid or very bribed/blackmailed leadership to side with the loser West against the rising tide of China and co.
Most of the global south nevertheless need to perform quite a delicate balancing act, being careful not too take steps that are too provocative because the US can still cause significant harm to weaker nations for now.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-try-withdraw-icc-again-ramaphosa-2023-04-25/
Nice, ty.
Polish general Andrzejczak admitted that “we simply do not have ammunition. The industry is not only not ready to supply equipment to Ukraine, but also cannot replenish our own reserves, which are rapidly melting.” NATO is not having a very good time and these stockpiles will take more than a decade to replace. The US is resorting to cannibalizing South Korean and Israeli stockpiles, which apparently freaked out the Knesset because they believe that they will fight soon with Iran.
as a rule of thumb, when those figures complain about a lack of ammo it’s for one of two reasons:
Armies do not voluntarily expose their weak points, so assume that whenever army officials say shit like this, it’s not genuine.
They are begging for aid from the West the way Zelenskyy begs for aid from them. It is no secret that the West is low on weapons. America’s only gunpowder factory blew up some years ago and their most advanced ICBS were developed in the 1970s and rely on floppy discs (Minuteman III, what can I say) while the Russians are making bets on whether the Ukrainians will run out of men first or tanks.
So, no.
And are the Ukrainians not rationing shells?
You thought entire NATO would be off the ammo in a short time?
And he apparently answered he wants Crimea back, which i bet was what Xi expected to hear, but he made the honest effort and it counts, this is powerful ammo for China diplomacy.
And this is because NATO isn’t just giving off spare things anymore, they are cutting into flesh and bone. Polish general Andrzejczak admitted that “we simply do not have ammunition. The industry is not only not ready to supply equipment to Ukraine, but also cannot replenish our own reserves, which are rapidly melting.”
Haha, serves them right, dismatling pretty modern polish arms production sector and becoming the client state for failed french contracts, degraded murican scrap and german military charity (of which most Germans are now telling us to send to Ukraine).
Where do you get your news? 19FortyFive?
Rybar and TASS, with others mixed in
I meant “vengeance” karmaically, and it is known that the AFU is preparing some milquetoast “offensive”. When is the best time to strike at conglomerations with amassed force?
You should try reading this (the whole thing, not just the beginning, which does come off as doomeristic)
So I followed your advice and read this. Now I’m not simply anxious, but outright terrified of what’s to come.
Some excerpts:
Because apparently a gas monopoly has its own private military. And that doesn’t concern anybody important.
So the author alleges that the minister of defence has his own private army. What kind of warlord shit is this?
Not sure what evidence is there for this. Sounds like wishful thinking, honestly.
The rest of the article is decent, if perhaps a bit optimistic. I.e. it glosses over the possibility of terrorism performed by UA special forces (something their Western trainers are quite good at) and the reaction of the Russian citizens to that - heck, apparently there’s been an attemped drone strike on Moscow Kremlin just last night.
The article also cheers on the usage of glide bombs to devastate entire housing blocks, yet ignores how it will impact civilians, their desire to fight Russia and the cost of rebuilding afterwards. All the while UA politicians and oligarchs (who started the whole affair) are free to travel westward and could escape unimpeded at moment’s notice.
Finally, the closing statement is ridiculous. Even if we concede using Dugin as a source, the quote itself is just silly.
So now your problem with the war effort is no longer that Russia will lose and that would doom communism, but that Russia will win and this would also doom communism?
Ukraine has received weapons from the West amounting to 200 billion dollars of aid, , more than Russia’s entire annual military budget, Russia has sent 200,000 men plus SOBR, Wagner, and some Chechens to defeat Ukraine’s 800,000 strong standing army plus hundreds of thousands of conscripts, the BBC has admitted that only around 20,000 Russians have died, Ukraine’s GDP has fell by 30% (literally Great Depression levels with no end in sight), while Russia’s had only fallen by 3% and is now projected to grow faster than Germany and the US. Men are dragged off the streets in Odessa to be thrown into Bakhmut while 80% of Orekhov, the AFU’s planned springboard for the Crimea offensive, was just blown to shreds in retaliation for an attack by a drone most likely launched by some Russian saboteur that didn’t even light the flag on fire as Zelenskyy desperately tries to use vague psychological victories instead of a now impossible superoffensive to keep the Western aid flowing.
It was the chemical plant. Explosives and rocket fuel going up.
The “white phosphorus” you saw was from the secondary explosion. If it really was white phosphorus, that’s because the AFU was stockpiling it; there’s no way that much could fit into a single bomb anyway. They literally brought it on themselves. It therefore must have been an ammunition depot.