Every time I see headlines like these I remember that Ukraine denied the US told them to stop hitting oil plants in Russia, but people kept repeating the story.
Anyway…
Ukrainian forces launched a drone attack on Kardymovo, Smolensk Oblast tonight, successfully hitting a pair of Russian oil depots.
As an American, I support Ukraine droning inside Russia. Fuck up their power plants, oil production, and bases! I believe most Americans would agree that in war, this tactic is fair game.
There have been no such calls for Ukraine to stop attacking Russia. The article is behind a paywall, and there are no corroborating stories from any credible news sites. According to the same article on yahoo news, the White House claimed its due to oil prices. The US gets its oil from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Brazil. The headline has no merit.
Power plants are not valid military targets though. No one should be attacking those and it’s always wrong to do so.
Edit: I posted this comment and immediately went to bed. After waking up and looking at responses, I’m absolutely disgusted with people justifying and approving war crimes. Attacking civilian infrastructure like power plants is a WAR CRIME and that’s why it’s a huge deal that Russia has been attacking power plants. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Edit 2: alright, time for links since people seem unconvinced. Both the ICC and the UN consider the attacks by Russia on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure to be war crimes. If it’s wrong for Russia to do, it’s wrong for everyone to do.
I didn’t think I had to say this, but I’m arguing an ethical position that happens to coincide with international law. I think it’s always wrong to bomb infrastructure. In this war between Ukraine and Russia, it’s a definitive war crime and it would be a violation of international law for Ukraine to strike a power plant in Russia.
The ethical position is that civilian infrastructure like power plants, hospitals, dams, bridges, etc should never be attacked. This is because fake justifications can be made to attack that infrastructure, as we see in Israel’s genocide.
Nice observation. I’m arguing 2 compatible things simultaneously, one is legal that obviously has exceptions. The other is ethical to argue that the “exceptions” are just excuses for killing civilians.
The geneva conventions and other treaties that established what we call the international conventions on warfare were not written by he UN, amd the UN has no jurisdiction on them. The geneva convention was held in 1864, about 80 years before the UN was formed.
The ICRC is the jurisdiction in “charge” of defining warcrimes.
In any case, warcrimes are contextual. Bombing a power plant in one instance may be a legitimate target in war, while in another case, where Russias goal was to cause civilians to freeze and suffer, may very well be. However, I am not a lawyer of the international criminal courts.
Again, so fucking what if the UN isn’t directly involved with charging and sentencing war crimes. The UN, the ICJ, and the ICC are all international organizations. When one makes a claim, it’s highly likely that the others will follow suit.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. If Russia started using VX gas, would it be acceptable for Ukraine to start using Sarin? Absolutely fucking not. There is never a legitimate excuse for a war crime.
There is never a legitimate excuse for a war crime.
There’s one actually. Survival.
If the situation gets to a point where your existence on the planet becomes problematic, you take the gloves off, you fight back with everything you can, especially if you’re protecting those that you love.
Having said that, fuck war, and fuck war crimes. Wish the UN could resolve this crap before it gets to where we are now.
It’s morally wrong to do so. At the end of the day, like every single other war in the human history sadly , the right side is the winning one, be It bombing power plants, hospitals or houses.
Seems I’m getting downvoted. Just to be clear, I condemn war and armed conflicts, If i could make so, no guns would ever be fired.
My point is, it’s pointless to argue about the “should be” or “could be”, I’m just stating the actual, current state of matters.
There’s ALWAYS a winner, in fact, If a war started, someone is already winning, be It one of the involved parties, be It a guns supplier or a manufacturing plant making tanks.
It’s naive to think that, people with power to decide what to do in a war, will prioritize a “good and moral war”, over getting what they want from It.
Maybe you and I can’t see any advantage over an attack and label It stupid, but it is what it is, and maybe the actual intent is not clear to us.
If a country’s wartime decisions are made by people who benefit solely from death and destruction, then that country lost before the war even began. I don’t see that being the case with the defenders in this conflict, Ukraine.
I beg to differ: Adnan Khashoggi, a famous arms dealer, considered one the richest mans of the 1980s, active on the Iran-Contra affair. Viktor Bout, famous russian arms dealer active on the FARC. Sir Basil Zaharoff, greek arms dealer active on the Balkan Wars
And these are just a few most notorious ones.
As I said, when a war starts, someone is already winning, it’s a sad but true reality.
Power plants are not valid military targets though.
Yes apples are not oranges, so why are you trying to change the subject?
AFAIK there is not a single example of Ukraine attacking power plants in Russia.
An oil depot or refinery is NOT a powerplant. Russia has more than enough oil to serve their population, but maybe they can’t serve the military 100% too, if Russia chooses to prioritize their illegal military invasion over their own population, that’s a Russian problem. As long as Russia prioritize oil for their military, oil is a valid military target.
Look, I’m about as anti-war as they come. But in the capitalist neoliberal rules-based order, war happens constantly all over the world and the best we can do is enforce the provisions of the Geneva Convention. No good will come from equating war generally with war crimes right now. There will be a point where we can call war a crime against humanity, but the Overton window isn’t there yet.
Attacking civilian infrastructure like power plants is a WAR CRIME and that’s why it’s a huge deal that Russia has been attacking power plants. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. All moral obligations are equal. That means doing unethical and immoral actions in pursuit of an ethical and moral goal means you are no longer fighting a good fight.
Civilian infrastructure can in fact a valid target if it assist the military. Electricity generation is used to maintain many military systems, including telecommunications, logistics, lighting, radar systems, and all sorts of manufacturing capability that assists the military.
So fucking what? Attacking civilian power infrastructure isn’t the solution to fighting an enemy. Attack the military comms, logistics, lighting, radar, and manufacturing instead. Then everyone knows the attack is absolutely justified.
Buddy, I can smell the straw from here. Ukraine isn’t attacking Russia’s critical infrastructure out of some need for retribution. If a grizzly bear attacks you, you hit that thing in any sensitive spot you can reach until it backs off. Otherwise you’re dead. That’s the situation Ukraine has been in from the start. They’ve been persistently outgunned and outmanned. The only way to get Russia to stop is to hit them where it hurts.
I’m not making some kind of strawman argument. I’m correcting the OP, because attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. If Russia starts using chemical weapons, should Ukraine start too? If you have any sense of ethics, you’d say no.
Congratulations, you’ve successfully justified a war crime.
I like the Economist but maybe posting their articles here should be avoided since no one can obviously read them so everyone is just commenting about the headline.
How about this: we’re allowed to tell them how to run their war as long as we supply them an uninterrupted pipeline of the shit they need to win it the way they’re telling us to.
Oh wait: we already tried that, except we not only didn’t even do it well, but also didn’t hold up our end of the bargain because of fucking fascist far-right politicians. So we kinda fucked that one up, didn’t we?
Oh I know. All I’m saying is that any semblance of justification for exerting strategic oversight of their war is gone, considering the political fuckery we just pulled in the last 6 months that had very real and negative consequences for Ukraine.
alas, i am afraid that even if ukraine is able to restore its territorial integrity, most of russian citizens won’t understand that their government did something wrong. russia won’t ever be humiliated like nazi germany, to force people to think what they did wrong.
i am afraid of newer russian revanshionism and i am afraid of what their post imperial phantom pains will make them do in the future.
my impression is that majority of the russian citizens feel pain regarding the ‘lost lands’ as they often put it, as a result of ussr collapse.
Nazi Germany was “humiliated “ because they were occupied and force to learn of their crimes.
Russia cant must be allowed to get off Scot free for this shit. They need to be dismantled to nullify future harm, and forced to confront and acknowledge their crimes.
Israel doesn’t get more aid. Unless you consider total aid since 1946 adjusted for inflation, then yes, but that wouldn’t make sense. Israel gets 3.3 billion a year. Since February 2022, the United States has allocated $113.4 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine.
Just because they have been supported by the US for a longer time.
I am not a fan of sending them anything, but that doesnt mean that they get more than ukraine this year and for the past 5-10 years, which is what you should compare.
Israel probably hasn’t gotten more aid in the last 2 years but overall they might have. Also, assuming this is even true, why would Ukraine listen to the US since they have abandoned support of Ukraine?
Add comment