No. There has to be a specific, legitimate purpose. And timing matters. Putin being pissed because a bridge was bombed on his birthday doesn’t cut it.
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This is exactly it. The fact that Russia hasn’t bombed any of these targets for months indicates that there’s no military rationale for it. Attacking civilian targets for political ends is a war crime.
Someone above made the point that, early on, their military value was probably lower than their value as functioning infrastructure if Russia had been able to capture and hold that land. Now that it seems less likely that they’ll capture and hold the land, I guess the balance could shift and now it’s more valuable to them to destroy it. Might be a sign of desperation.
On day one, the military rationale would have been to disrupt communications and logistics during a surprise attack on Kyiv. Now it’s…
And, again, the fact that they’re also bombing playgrounds and pedestrian footbridges makes it clear that the actual motivation here is just terror bombing, not any actual military rationale.
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It’s astonishing a guy openly admits his whole deal is trolling and still gets good faith responses. Some of you guys would be perfect fits for covering the next Trump administration
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At this point, it’s clear people just enjoy playing along with the game, as distasteful as that may be when the topic du jour is making civilians freeze to death.
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“Donald Trump wasn’t trying to stay in power” lololol
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Have you decided yet whether you think that Putin might back his attempted genocide with nuclear Holocaust or it’s okay to call him maximally evil?
The only consistency I see in your position on those two statements is that they both allow you to troll people that are genuinely upset by his actions.
“Trivial nonsense” that resulted in multiple deaths, hundreds of felony convictions, and is now a shibboleth for the Republican party.
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Article 52 states, “In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”
Any attack must be justified by military necessity: an attack or action must be intended to help in the military defeat of the enemy, it must be an attack on a military objective,[1] and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.
I can’t believe I have to cite this.
What’s legit in one circumstance, at a given time or place, isn’t necessarily legit in other circumstances, or at other times and places. You don’t just roll up on a power plant and start blasting. If the cruelty is the point, it’s not legitimate.
On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.
“There’s no hot water; part of the city is without power,” one anchor announced, describing the scene in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
How should American soldiers that volunteered for and participated in these efforts be treated? Do they have any culpability?
Keep on fighting the good fight Keeed.
Nothing more noble than defending an aggressor country’s right to blow up city centre targets during rush hour.
I think Putin has definitely earned the benefit of the doubt.
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Do you not make any distinctions of degree? Or do they not matter?
You’re just wrong. Try a different tack.
Giving him the undeserved benefit of the doubt that he isn’t an outright troll, there is literally only one issue that exists in his mind: the hypocrisy of American liberals.
Literally anything and everything is solely an opportunity to talk about that.
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The UN is at least taking some notes. Maybe in some distant future a truly fair judgment can be rendered as to whether imperfect democracies are in fact morally inferior to viscious authoritarian wanna-be emperors.
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I said fair judgement. That list seems a bit one-sided. I don’t think you’ll get on the jury.
Regarding scale, do you not make distinctions of proportion? Or do they not matter?
It’s probably not a great geopolitical precedent to say that if some country committed a worse atrocity in the past nothing can be done about current atrocities. Like I’m pretty sure the Rwandan genocide was bad even if the Holocaust was magnitudes worse.