A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service leveled criminal charges against him. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack. Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the attack. Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.” The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the U.S. State Department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops. Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
The bomb used in Tuesday’s attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork. The SBU official provided video that they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame.
Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, described the attack as an attempt by Kyiv to distract public attention from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution.” Some Russian military bloggers and hawkish commentators made unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. could have been involved in Kirillov’s killing.
Asked about Kirillov’s death, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday: “The United States was not aware of it in advance and was not involved.” Speaking on the sidelines of a summit in Estonia, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he did not have details of the attack but told The Associated Press that it would be understandable for the Ukrainians “to do everything in their power to hit back.”
Since Russia invaded, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks believed to have been carried out by Ukraine.
Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
In December 2023, Illia Kyva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.
On Dec. 9, a bomb planted under a car in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed Sergei Yevsyukov, the former head of the Olenivka Prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022. One other person was injured in the blast. Russian authorities said they detained a suspect in the attack.
Comment: Not bad. A fairly high profile target whacked in the middle of Moscow and video to prove it. This is the type of thing that would happen even if the Russian Army defeated the Ukrainian Army. It’s guerilla warfare, pure and simple, just like it’s outlined in Major Von Dach Bern’s book “Total Resistance” and every UW book and curriculum since then. I still have my heavily annotated copy.
This morning Russia released information about the arrest of the alleged assassin. He’s a 29 year old Uzbek man who confessed to planting and detonating the bomb. He confessed to traveling to Moscow on Ukrainian Intelligence orders, renting a car, picking up the electric scooter and the bomb itself and filming the explosion from the car. This brings up the point that these operations involve a lot more than recruiting a bomber. It involves recruiting, training and running a whole series of support agents for reconnaissance and surveillance, constructing and/or transporting the bomb, perhaps setting up dead drops for transferring the bomb and maybe the scooter. Communications in Moscow could have been by technical means (transmitting the video) and/or by secret writing, couriers or accommodation addresses. Each one of these tasks requires the recruiting, training and running of an agent. I’ve run such intricate operations, but not for assassinations or bombings, just for intelligence and SMU support operations.
This was a high profile operation. Other less high profile operations are going on throughout Russia and in the occupied territories. Just recently a Russian fuel train was stopped in Zaporizhzhia by an underground sabotage operation on the rail line. Once stopped, the train was struck and destroyed by drones from a Ukrainian Army drone unit. It was a well coordinated operation. I’m not surprised. The SBU may be trained by several Western intelligence and special operations agencies, but that has built up a tradition of Soviet KGB and GRU training.
TTG
He had the US bio weapons labs destroyed, the ones Nuland admitted in Congress existed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRxi4QLQITY
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/12/russia-agree-to-be-provoked-or-fall-for-lucys-football.html#more
babelthuap,
The US established biolabs in Ukraine in 2005 or earlier to deal with old Soviet bioweapons. These labs did a wide range of research including veterinary research. Two labs came under Russian control in 2014. They were not destroyed.
In 2005 Ukraine had been a country for 13 years. They were Ukraine bioweapon labs.
babelthuap,
The documents used by the Kremlin trying to prove these biolabs were engaged in bioweapons research were examined by Russian scientists who pointed out the documents proved the labs were engaged in legitimate biological research. The labs were also routinely inspected by WHO and other international agencies.
The WHO is not an authority on truth if you haven’t realized this yet. Neither is the CDC. I know a former executive at the CDC. He told me all about the CDC. Believe what you want though.
End of the day ALL top tier countries are pursuing bio weapons. It’s called GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH. Ukraine was doing it under the guise of the US.
FYI there was a COVID outbreak in Ukraine before the war. Ukrainians were flipping out. They believe d garlic helped so there was a shortage of garlic.
Articles about it but again, believe what you choose. I believe what I know from people in the know. Ukraine was running bioweapon labs. They are going to lose the war for starting this nonsense. It’s not a real country and never will be.
babelthuap,
When Kirillov and the Russian MOD made their cock and bull claim that Ukraine had bioweapons labs, a group of bioscientists at the Moscow State University wrote a long rebuttal and exposed the lies using the very documents Kirillov presented as proof of his claim. Here’s a few excerpts from the article:
You can read or translate the entire article if you inquisitive… or you can continue to wallow in your ignorance.
https://www.sibreal.org/a/eto-soznatelnaya-lozh-ekspert-o-sozdanii-biooruzhiya-v-ukraine/31746506.html
you are right about Ukraine being a completely free & independent nation-state when Russia committed war upon it. almost three years ago. only a year & a half to break the record for WWI.
Ked – we gave the Russians no choice. It was intervene or risk the Aidar getting loose in the Donbass. They intervened, which I think was the only decision possible for them.
That’s why I call this the FAFO war. You don’t fool around like that on the borders of a major nuclear power and expect to get away with it.
We’ve now found out what that fooling around led to. Pity we had to sacrifice the proxies to do so.
EO,
The Aidar Battalion was gone in 2016, disbanded and reconstituted in order to get rid of the bad elements and bring the others under military control. In February 2022, the Ukrainian units along the LOC still had a lot of their artillery in OSCE concentration areas. There was no impending Ukrainian invasion of the Donbas.
English –
Putin’s war has destroyed the Donbas. And now Russia’s economy is level with Zimbabwe’s. Russians have been forced to leave Karabakh and Syria. The Russian Army’s reputation is now worse than that of their performance in the Russo-Japanese War 120 years ago, and they’ve had ten times the casualties of that war. NATO is larger because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian economy is being cheated and defrauded by China, India and others. Russia’s ruble de-valuates daily. Russian neo-Nazi groups like Atomwaffen and the National Socialist Party of Russia et al are growing stronger and new Ruso-Nazi groups are emerging.
There’s a reason they call it Russia Roulette.
war… “no choice ” “the only decision possible” ?
Russia as a great power is in retrograde. the more Putin thinks he is achieving his dream of a revisionist Imperial Age, the worse it gets. he was & is not up to the job – a lucky security bureaucrat trained in meanness turned Capo d’ Oligarchy. its going around.
TTG,
ROFL
How many years does it take for the US to deal with “bioweapons” in Ukraine?
1, 2, 3, 7, 9, how about a couple decades? Wait, wait – the USA was funding veterinary research in….. not the USA.
LOL – with our money, and from what agency?
Chas Freeman on the subject of assassinating Kirillov. An act of terrorism, he considers, as with Soleimani:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0HtmqcxI78&ab_channel=DialogueWorks
No big deal. Budanov confirmed that terrorist operations of this sort had been carried out since not long after the Ukrainian putsch. The astonishing revelations in NYT and WAPO confirm that we set up the unit in Kiev for this sort of work and had set up many bases on the then border from which such operations could be carried out.
UK press cheering this sort of operation on. But of course. Sometimes I think HMG is more into this sort of work than the Americans themselves. The assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko was one I recollect from that time with particular sadness but there were many others. The Kirillov killing is but one in a long line.
If Russia were complicit in this sort of operation against the States, and from the Mexican border, the US administration would soon take steps to stop it. Were the Russians sending over “look no hands” missiles into the US as well, the US administration would stop it very quickly indeed.
This is why one listens with incredulity to all the talk at the moment of “ceasefires” or frozen conflicts. One way or the other the Russians will neutralise Ukraine right up to the Polish border. They have no choice, just as the US would have no choice were they faced with a similar problem. Surely that’s obvious even to the most dedicated Beltway or Brussels Russophobe.
Been saying that for nearly three years now. Time for the Russians to get a move on, if they want to put a stop to these tactics on the part of the West.
………………….
There’s more to the Freeman interview than that. I must confess I can’t always go with his take, but Freeman was highly regarded by the Colonel and has unequalled
diplomatic experience in this region so maybe I should.
Relating to the discussion under your previous article on Syria, TTG, Freeman, like Wilkerson, regards the taking of the remainder of the Golan as land grabbing pure and simple. Probably permanent.
Taking territory or anything else one wants from the ever compliant Arab world is something anybody can do, seems – about the same level of difficulty as taking sweets from a child. So naturally we’re doing it. Poor child.
He was paid 100K for the hit. It had nothing to do with support for Ukraine. Strictly a hired assassin:
“I arrived in Moscow on the orders of Ukrainian special services. I arrived, and then I purchased the scooter. After several months I purchased the things needed to build the bomb. I got everything ready. I placed it next to the building where the General lived, and then when he came out of his house I pressed the button. Why did I do this? Because they offered me $100,000 dollars and [inaudible].”
https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/
babelthuap,
One always tries to move such a clandestine relationship with a source to such a business exchange. It makes for a far more controllable and predictable relationship.
My humble opinion is Russia should put a Kalibre right up Budanov’s behind.
morongobill,
I’m sure Budanov knows he’s just as legitimate a target as Kirillov was.
Morongo Bill –
Wrong target. The SBU took responsibility, not Budanov’s GUR. Lieutenant General Malyuk is head of the SBU.
Thanks for that info. Okay, one Kalibre for each.
It’s war and Kirillov is a legit target. Good op.
That said, use of assassins from the various ‘Stans could get out of control pretty fast and true atrocities involving Russian civilians are a real possibility.
it’s quite the competition for who kills the most Russian military, defense industry & intel agency leaders.
Zelensky or Putin?
It’s called neutralization of a valid military target. Of course the fact that Kirillov is a war criminal who used chemical weapons on thousands of Ukrainians and who would never have faced the ICC Court adds a bit of retributive justice to the hit.
Trump’s pick to be special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, General Kellogg, thinks it’s a bad idea: “I don’t think it’s really smart to do it. Not a good idea at all, in my opinion.” Maybe he never heard of Admiral Yamamoto or OBL? Or Qaseim Soleimani or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that his boss took out. But I don’t think he’s that dense. He probably just floated that comment publicly in order to put him in the good graces of Putin when he tries to negotiate a peace plan.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/12/18/7489733/
My inner response to this is not printable. … But I agree with this author:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/igor-kirillov-assassination/
Lea –
I have the greatest respect for both the Quincy Institute and for Wesleyan University where Professor Rutland teaches. But Rutland’s opinion is wrong as there in no way this act was unlawful. The Laws of War plainly state that “military persons or objects may be deliberately targeted.”
Lieutenant General Kirillov was on active duty within the Russian Federation’s Armed Forces as was his assistant that was killed along with him. No way they had protected civilian status. Rutland also thinks it was purely an act of revenge. He never considers that if left alive General Kirillov would surely use newer and deadlier chemical attacks on Ukraine. Or perhaps biological attacks as Russia is currently doing major expansion of its Bioweapons site at Sergiev Posad: https://www.nti.org/atomic-pulse/russian-biological-facility-build-up-underscores-need-for-enhanced-transparency/
And where was Professor Rutland’s opinion and advice when the Russians assassinated Alexander Litvinenko, Alexei Navalny and Alexander Perepilichny and many others who were clearly civilians?
Although Rutland is correct that Kirillov’s killing may encourage Putin to commit even more war crimes. But to all those Ukrainians who lost children, wives, mothers and grandmothers in Putin’s attacks on hospitals, schools and civilian residential areas it probably can’t get much worse than it is already.
Russia used chemical weapons! I hope this use of Chloropicrin gets spread planet wide.
For those who don’t know:
Chloropicrin, also known as PS (from Port Sunlight[3]) and nitrochloroform, is a chemical compound currently used as a broad-spectrum antimicrobial, fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, and nematicide.
Don’t think herbicide, insecticide or fungicide. None of those farmers in Ukraine, who needed US money to run a lab to do ‘veterinary research’, would ever use an insecticide, or, well, there goes the narrative. Sounds just like a White Helmet excuse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloropicrin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight
Fred,
That Russian use of Chloropicrin is as an incapacitating agent. It was used as a choking agent in WWI and was stockpiled in WWII. It is a banned chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Its use as an agricultural chemical is tightly controlled.
The US has been funding the removal of bioweapons in a number of former Soviet and WTO countries since the USSR collapsed. In addition, the US assisted in funding the upgrade of Ukrainian biological research labs. Those labs research a wide range of bio threats including Covid 19 and other communicable diseases. Yes, that included animal diseases.
BTW, Fort Dietrich is still in operation even though we got rid of our bioweapons in the early 1970s.
TTG,
Thanks for letting me know that ” Its use as an agricultural chemical is tightly controlled.” So glad Ukraine could see that got done. Do soil samples know the difference? Is there a death count from the ” incapacitating agent”. Oh, wait, is that like the stuff used in riot control? So they didn’t kill anyone and haven’t won the war either.
“The US has been funding the removal of bioweapons in a number of former Soviet and WTO countries since the USSR collapsed. ”
The USSR collapsed when? How many years does it take for the US to dismantle a program in Ukraine? 5, 10, 15, 20? It’s decades later and we just have to keep funding stuff in Ukraine?
” Those labs research a wide range of bio threats including Covid 19 ”
The United States can’t research threats in the USA? Give me a break. There’s zero reason that crap needs to be funded by US, especially not now.
Al,
Yes it happens frequently that when I point out something, like Chloropicrin having multiple non-military uses, I get a long winded non-sequitur full of excuses to cover up US government fraud, waste and abuse. Glad you enjoy the show.
Fred,
Chloropricin is the filling in the Soviet-era K-51 aerosol grenade. They are non-lethal, but are still prohibited by both the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Geneva Protocol.That’s what the Russians have been using and deploying with drones.
TTG,
It is has other uses too, which you avoid like a vax denier avoids a shot.
How long does it take to shut down a building and decommission the equipment? One decade or three? Why?
Fred,
I doubt the Russians are dropping those K-51 aerosol grenades onto Ukrainian positions as an insecticide. Do you think those grenades are for some other use of the gas?
The program covered more than dismantling legacy Soviet programs as mentioned in this March 2022 article.
TTG,
2005 is 19 years ago. That’s a whole career. Should have ended in 2007 at the latest.
Ukraine, is not at the forefront of medical research, it is just another head on the hydra of government waste.
Fred,
That was $200 million by 2006. Don’t know what was spent after that, but I can’t argue with the idea that continued spending like this smacks of government waste.
Fred, I could hardly wait for TTG’s counter to your “insecticide” post. And, there it is. Happens so frequently.
If this killing didn’t get the OK from the Western politicians it certainly gets their unqualified approval. It’s been like that pretty well since the ’22. Incapable of defeating the Russians the politicians resort to more and more “stunts” in order to show their increasingly sceptical electorates that at least they’re trying.
“There goes Odessa,”, one thinks as each of these “stunts” fails of success. Or indeed the independence of Ukraine as a whole. Were I Russian, I’d want Putin to put it entirely out of the power of NATO to use Ukraine as a base from which to pull these “stunts”. Let the freak show politicians of the West wreck their own damn countries, I’d be thinking. Just make certain sure they can’t wreck mine.
As regards the biolab discussion above, we did have on our embassy website that we had this program in Ukraine? I feel like I saw that in the past but I might be mistaken. I feel like this conversation is often on several axis, one of which is whether or not the labs existed at all, which my understanding is that (Confirmed by FU EU Nuland’s testimony) they did?
My other question is I believe we established as early as 2014 a program to train Ukrainians in cross border assassinations. Is it logical to think that this assassination was an offspring of that program? Does that change how it might be viewed from the Russian perspective.
My final thought/question is on retaliation. I understand this concept of a “legitimate military target” but to what extent do we take this, if Russia uses its sophisticated weaponry to eliminate the whole general staff and Zelinsky are these legitimate military targets? Likewise can Ukraine just kill Putin using the same logic? would we applaud such action? The article details a rash of political and cultural assassinations and this is all legitimate military activity? What are the limits here because I’m sure Russia will retaliate and what should be the limits to their retaliation?
I’m just trying to think about this is objectively and dispassionately as possible to understand the broader implications, I’m not trying to stake any moral or similar claims here.
I think broader implications are that Ukraine/Nato combo are loosing the war. It seems to me an act of desperation
Ukraine’s SBU just formally charged Russian General Alexei Kim with arranging missile attacks on journalists. The latest of which being the Iskander strike on a hotel full of journos in Kramatorsk in August.
https://bsky.app/profile/wartranslated.bsky.social/post/3ldqgbkqvj22n
General Kim needs to step up his security detail after what happened the last time the SBU charged a Russian general (Kirillov) with war crimes. But Kim will be hard to get to, so maybe the SBU is just trolling him. Trying to spread fear and paranoia in the upper ranks of Russia’s armed forces? Or make that “more paranoia” as suspicion and persecution complex is already widespread in the Kremlin.
When Russians finally repay the visit, think about Galatians 6:7-9: “A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up”.
https://x.com/currentreport1/status/1869984959404114150?s=46&t=O7QZNqUZIUDz5gYbLPPXrw
Leith – thought about your reply while I was away doing other things. Simplest way to put it is this. If the Russians were really targeting civilians, as the Western politicians and press insist, then given their missile superiority and going by the usual civilian/military casualty rates in war, there’d be a million and more dead civilians by now.
There aren’t. The Russians use their missile superiority exclusively to degrade Ukrainian military capability. We’re not looking at another Gaza here.
The claim they’re targeting civilians is used to divert attention from the fact that the Kiev forces, or the “ultra” component of those forces, do just that. Read the relevant section here and check back on the equivalent sections in previous updates.
https://robcampbell.substack.com/p/ukraine-weekly-update-731
I mentioned at the time the use of civilians as human shields in Mariupol. Did so on TTG’s site too, recently, when I was comparing the liberation of Mariupol with the relief of East Aleppo. The Azov shot civilians who were attempting to escape. They shot civilians who’d come out of the basements to light a fire to cook on. Sometimes they just shot them for fun. That was Jihadi practice in Aleppo too.
The Russians sort of coped with it, both occasions, by arranging what they called humanitarian corridors and trying to arrange ceasefires so they could get the civilians out.
If you didn’t pick that up at the time then you’re not following events as closely as I thought you were. These were not isolated atrocities. It was standard. That’s how they kept the civilians they were using as human shields in place. I see that also gets a mention in that update.
There’s a lot you don’t know about this war. I think it’s because you’re getting most of your information from Western sources. I’m afraid those sources are deliberately misleading. Said before, if there’s one thing out lot are good at it’s information war. And we’re the target.
EO,
“The Russians use their missile superiority exclusively to degrade Ukrainian military capability.”
I don’t understand how you can write that with a straight face. You must have blinders on to miss the years of photographic and video evidence of Russian missile strikes on apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and churches and the resulting dead, mostly women and children. Even given the damage and casualties resulting from downed Russian missiles and missed Ukrainian air defense missiles, the Russians overwhelmingly hit civilian targets.
EO,
“If the Russians were really targeting civilians, as the Western politicians and press insist, then given their missile superiority and going by the usual civilian/military casualty rates in war, there’d be a million and more dead civilians by now.
There aren’t. The Russians use their missile superiority exclusively to degrade Ukrainian military capability. We’re not looking at another Gaza here.”
Oh the irony. You could substitute “Israel” for “Russia” in your statement above and it would make sense. If Israel were targeting civilians, then there would be a million dead Palestinians, or more.
It’s on points like that where your IO breaks down. It’s inconsistent; lacks principles. Pro-Russian invasion of Ukraine and anti-Israel invasion really doesn’t make sense, but you could sneak it by the unwary. Then you totally flub it when you get down to the details, as in the copied and pasted quote of you above.
Fred – there’s a worrying tendency generally to label those who object to the various atrocities the Israelis are carrying out as “anti-semitic” or even, “pro-terrorist”.
Worrying becuase in England, also in Germany, those who document the atrocities are detained or arrested, or subjected to aggressive police action. And in your country students who object to the Israeli atrocities are penalised.
Attributing “IO’s” to fellow commenters who relate facts is also undesirable. You remember the Colonel’s rule – “to tell the truth as it is given to me to know.” The fact that you want to believe the nonsense the Western politicians and press feed you doesn’t make that nonsense true.
It’s ascertainable fact that the Russians are not targeting civilians and ascertainable fact that the Israelis are. Not wanting that to be true doesn’t make it so. You’d soon be out of a job with the statistical work you’re doing if you declared you weren’t going to believe facts because you didn’t like them!
EO,
Fred is going to remind you, again, that he and I are different people.
In your favor, the Ukies have now – as of this morning I bleive – flown kamikaze drones into high rise office and apartment buildings, deep in Russia. It looks reminiscent of 9/11. This is an act of terrorism. It was only a matter of time before the Ukies lost the moral high ground given the trend we’ve been witnessing.
Eric –
That kamikaze drone strike hit Timur Shagivaleev’s penthouse in Yelabuga. Timur is the guy building kamikaze drones for Putin. He’s using overseas shell companies to import electronics for use in those one-way attack drones. The GUR struck his drone factory back in April. But Shagivaleev has started using 15-year-old schoolkids in that factory, so it’s been hands off ever since.
Meanwhile, Russian VVS aircraft just dropped two JDAMskis (KAB guided bombs) on the Kherson Regional Oncology Center. Which by the way uses radiation therapy for cancer patients.
Eric. Hell. Sorry. My reply was to you but somehow …
Put it down to my mind being somewhere else. Big tree. Leaning just a little tiny bit wrong. Strong wind. Blowing the way I wanted. So thought I’d defy gravity. Tree thought different.
Shambles. Witnessed by friends who used to think I knew how to fall trees. Hope the body of the comment made more sense than the start.
On a more positive note, only another month to go for the ghouls in the White House to be kept away from the football. Trump himself won’t press the button. No way. Nothing says bigly fail like a nuclear winter just after inauguration.
As you know, I have a PhD in Trump studies and I know for a fact he doesn’t like bigly fails. So that’s a reassuring thought to see us through the danger period.
Leith,
Come on man, you’re really stretching it pretty thin.
Ukrainian drones hit a high rise, resulting in large fireballs and a burning high rise building in Kazan.
https://www.barrons.com/news/ukraine-drone-hits-russian-high-rise-1-000km-from-frontline-74a85dc7?refsec=topics_afp-news
If you think that is justified for this one guy who you allege has a penthouse there, then I don’t want to read any more moral posturing BS from you about the poor little Palestinians getting killed by the wicked Israelis as the IDF goes after Hamas hiding among the civilians who support them. You obviously don’t have a problem with civilians being killed if they are Russians. You are quite the blood thirsty little tick after all (Kipling reference) and your protests about Israel are, as I have always said, not based on principles, but mere antisemitism.
Eric –
You have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t recall weeping over Palestine.
I’ve seen the video of the strike on that highrise, it’s all over the web. The Barrons article you linked to claims there were no casualties – civilian or otherwise. And Shagivaleev is working for the Russian War Department as the Oligarch-in-Charge of Kamikaze-Drones. Smells like a valid target to me. Putin’s FSB tried to assassinate Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger and other Euro defense industry executives who supported Ukraine’s war effort.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-tried-assassinate-ceo-arms-firm-sending-weapons-ukraine-cnn-reports-2024-07-11/
Also, Leith, as much as EO is wearing Kremlin colored glasses to the point where his attempts to sell his denial of certain aspects of reality are teetering on the fence of humorous on one side to insulting to the intelligence of some people here (myself being one such), your ISW/neocon colored glasses are equally precariously perched from time to time.
Nice attempt to make the drone attack out to be some kind of awesome precision strike on a single deserving bad guy. The truth is, according to the AP, “eight drones attacked the city. Six hit residential buildings, one hit an industrial facility and one was shot down over a river….”
Residential buildings. Who lived in the other residential buildings? How many people lived in the same building as your alleged Shagivaleev guy? How many were put at risk of roasting in the subsequent fire? How many did roast?
Like I said, these assassinations are going to get out of hand, quickly, and Ukraine is going to lose the moral high ground in western eyes, despite your efforts to preserve a positive image.
Eric –
Mea culpa for my over-enthusiasm for spitting in the face of a land-grabbing, mass-murdering, liar like Putin. But I plead not guilty on your neocon charge.
You ask how many did roast. None per your link.
The numbers of buildings hit you claim are the truth from AP are numbers they got from Russian sources. Buyer beware.
Eric – there are atrocities on both sides. Here’s the BBC reporting on atrocities the other way.
“Russia is executing more and more Ukrainian prisoners of war”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7ve11lr247o
Snipers, and now drone operators, are hated on both sides. The violent hatred between the Right Sector forces – “Ultras”, “neo-Nazis” or whatever one cares to term them – and the Russians, particularly, the LDNR forces as were, has been apparent since 2014. There are more than enough videos, that I believe to be genuine, that testify to that.
Since 2022 I have been amazed at the number of people, sometimes professional soldiers among them, who don’t know that atrocity is a “normal” part of war.
All they know of war is the films or the thrillers, or the mock fighting peacetime soldiers get on exercises. Atrocities, when mentioned in that artificial context, are what the baddies do and never us.
But killing, which after all is what we employ soldiers for, is not always done by the rules, not in real war with real people involved. The glamourised and often sanitised version of war that the naïve consider to be reality is not always what happens on the ground.
“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” The proxy war fever that swept Europe in 2022 did so because, for most of us Europeans, the war was a thrilling sort of video game, remote from us and our families, not the terrible reality that, as Lee knew very well, is an unavoidable component of real military conflict.
……………………………………
It’s in that ugly but realistic context that we must examine the atrocities that have occurred in the Ukrainian war, and there are very many.
There is a test to be applied. Are the atrocities just part and parcel of real war, the sort of atrocities that always occur when bodies of men fight each other? Or are the atrocities integral to policy. That is, are we seeing deliberate use of atrocity as a means of warfare?
From what I’ve seen the regular Ukrainian army and the Russians pass that test, imperfectly of course but in general yes. The ultra-nationalist fighters, as a rule, don’t. And their leaders and ideologues openly declare they don’t intend to attempt the test.
Many armies fail that test. The British army failed it comprehensively in 1857 in India. The German in the Herero genocide. The Israelis are failing it right now. Examples a-plenty abound so the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists are not that unusual. What is unusual, or so it seemed to me after 2014, is that the West, that supposed haven of democracy and correct conduct, is failing it along with them.
Particularly disillusioning for me, an Englishman. In the ’40’s we were fighting, however imperfect our motives or imperfect our methods, against those who often regarded barbaric atrocity as an acceptable instrument of war. Now, we’re cheering them on and oftentimes fighting alongside.
EO,
The US hasn’t fought an enemy to whom a US combatant could surrender with a reasonable expectation of fair treatment, since 1945; and even in WW2 it was only in the European theater. No one thought surrendering to the Japanese was a safe option – and it wasn’t.
Yes, I’ve seen a few credible videos and pics that show that sometimes Russians execute captured Ukrainians – and I have seen the same wherein it is captured Russians executed by Ukrainians. However, mostly it seems they both can surrender when further fighting becomes futile.
The fair treatment of captured combatants is really only something that has held in the civilized western world.
The same cannot be said for treatment of civilians during war. Beginning with WW2, in which all sides killed a lot of civilians – on purpose at least some of the time – the west began to accept civilian deaths in the form of collateral damage as a necessary evil during war time.
Now, in these modern days of precision guided ordnance, most people understand that accidents happen, say a wedding party gets blasted every so often; or civilians living next to a legitimate military target get lit up along with the target during a shock and awe campaign. The acceptance has its limits; done too often, it begins to evaporate.
Still, I think that flying kamikaze drones into high rise apartment buildings steps way across a line demarking what is acceptable barbarity during time of war in the west – even if some naughty Russian is allegedly living in one of the units. There were other residential buildings hit during the same attack. Even Leith didn’t offer an excuse for that fact, apparently preferring to ignore it.
You don’t deliberately put hundreds of people at risk of dying in a 9/11 style event to get one Russian. Wait until he is out on the street. And you simply don’t attack apartment buildings for the heck of it and retain the moral high ground.
Eric –
You call a drone that is about one third the size of a piper cub hitting a building and causing zero casualties a 9/11 style attack? After a flight of over 1200 km (~750 miles) that must have damn near emptied its fuel tank? That doesn’t come anywhere near 9/11.
Meanwhile in the last 1033 days Putin has perpetrated a thousand 9/11 style attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population. Killing at least 9,715 per the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. That’s more than 3.2 times the number of deaths on 9/11. Plus those attacks injured or maimed ~24,000 more. 461 Ukrainian children died in those attacks and 923 were injured.
As for the other buildings, AFAIK there was only one other, and again it was a pinpoint attack with no reported casualties. If there were others damaged, it was undoubtedly from debris of Russian AAA/SAM or the UA drones they claimed to have shot down.
Leith,
The drones have an explosive payload. It goes boom on impact with the target. Things, like high rise apartment buildings, can catch on fire after the boom and become like 9/11. I didn’t say it was a 9/11 type attack. I was saying it could have easily turned into one. Ukraine was willing to take that risk – and that is very stupid. Images of Russian civilians burning or leaping to their deaths would be bad for Ukraine in several ways; just one is that Putin could be forced to nuke Ukraine – not that Ukraine being nuked would break my heart. As I’ve said, a bunch of corrupt dumb slavs can kill each other off all day long, every day to eternity, for all I care. However, a nuclear outbreak would draw the rest of the world – including the USA, which I do care very much about – into a very lethal crisis.
Merry Christmas, Leith.
I don’t care what Russia has done. Whatever it is Russia has done doesn’t justify Ukraine deliberately attacking civilian structures that are not involved in Russian military operations.
Merry Christmas to you Eric.
And Merry Christmas to the Ukrainians sheltering from air raids and those serving on the front. And the same greeting goes to Russians suffering under under the boots of Putin and his oligarchs; and to the Christians and Kurds in Syria getting attacked and shelled by Erdogan’s jihadi mercenaries.
English –
In your Rob Campbell link, he cites RT, a major Putin-controlled propaganda organ. Same old BS from the Kremlin of blaming the victim. The Nazis are in Moscow, not Kyiv.
As you yourself say, there’s a lot you don’t know about this war. I think it’s because you’re getting most of your information from Kremlin sources. I’m afraid those sources are deliberately misleading. Said before, if there’s one thing Putin is good at it’s information war. You and Campbell are the target and Russian дезинформация has scored a bullseye. Please stop trying to infect the rest of us.
Well, if most of the people here think as you do Leith, all credit to our host for allowing dissident opinions to be expressed on the site!
They are, by the way, my own opinions. Not those of Moscow or Washington nor – God forbid! – those of Berlin/Brussels.
But I’ve got a down on Berlin/Brussels in any case. Are you aware that the bastards stole our fish? Let them wreck Europe as best pleases them, I say, but at least refrain from that!
And I don’t see if getting much better over there. Barbarossa Scholz and Bellatrix Lebaerbock will soon be history, seems. Pity. Not often Europe puts on a comedy act like that. But UvdL will still be with us. Here she is in full flow (6 mins):-
https://youtu.be/tq1mbMBgjHI?t=354
“We will always love you and we will never be far.” Makes yer blood curdle, don’t it. She’s the one who’s going to sort out those pesky Russians for you, Leith, after Trump bails out. Hmmm.
Interjecting events in Syria:
Syria’s New Fundamentalist Government: Women “biologically” Unsuited to Politics, Universities to be Segregated, per spokesman for the Sunni fundamentalist Levant Liberation Council (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS)
https://www.juancole.com/2024/12/fundamentalist-biologically-universities.html
With such scholarly thoughts what can go wrong?
Muralidhar Rao,
Don’t believe your own intellect! You must learn to distrust it and defer to the superior knowledge and wisdom of the CIA and State Dept. They are always right and you are always wrong when you question what they say.
Jihadis can change. We must give them a chance. They say they changed. Doubting that change is racism or something and besides, Assad was a MONSTER because he didn’t like rebels, who happened to be jihadis, who can change and be freedom loving good guys, not like Assad, the dictator. Repeat the above ten thousand times a day. You’ll eventually see the light and be so humbled by the extreme error of your previous doubting – doubting that you mislabeled, in your foolish weakness as “thinking” – that you never again make the mistake of thinking for yourself and doing something as dangerous as adding 2+2.
The Deep State is always right. Just look at how serious and confident they are when they make their statements. Note the furrowed brows, the righteousness in their very demeanor. These are top notch, worldly, adults, selflessly serving the country. Large and in charge. You just can’t fake that stuff, you know.
No no no no no, Al.
HTS said they’re not fundamentalist jihadis [any longer] and TTG says we will have to wait to see if they revert to type; it’s still all hope and rainbows because Assad was a bad bad bad dictator! He arrested and tortured people [ jihadi rebels] and he used chemical weapons on his own people [jihadi rebels] according to jihadi aligned imperial western intelligence agencies’ cutouts.
Although this is not on topic – as the discussion has gotten to some of the ‘current state of war’ in Ukraine I tought this might be an ok place to drop this article. I would be interested to hear people’s thoughts on it.
Ukraine’s all robot drone team defends 5-mile stretch against 8,000 Russian soldiers
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-robot-drone-team-defends-113816834.html
kj
Rand Europe published an analysis:
“Russia’s War in Ukraine:
Emerging Insights for UK and NATO Joint Doctrine”
November 2024
https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/2024/russias-war-in-ukraine-insights-for-uk-and-nato.html
A summary of the report is here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nato-problem-ammunition-strategy-rand-report-2024-12
“Ukraine war shows NATO’s biggest problem isn’t its strategy, think tank argues”
From the report itself:
“the literature review also highlighted debates around the following topics:
Whether, how and why NATO failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the run up to February 2022.
How to explain Russia’s military underperformance, especially during the first year of its invasion.
How increased dispersal of forces will shape the future of warfare in a more transparent battlespace (positional versus attritional versus manoeuvre approaches).
Whether technological developments or activities in newer domains (e.g., space, cyber and electromagnetic) should be considered evolutionary or revolutionary in terms of their impacts on operational and strategic outcomes.
Whether legacy technologies such as tanks or helicopters will continue to play an impactful role in future conflicts given changes in the threat environment.
What the trajectory or outcomes of Ukrainian and Russian operations over the coming months and years will be.”