Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2024 6:26 pm Just jumped in to say my motto of life....FUCK TRUMP!!! HHAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hepcat wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2024 9:25 pm I’m betting that the plans Trump has concepts of also involve Putin walking away with chunks of Ukraine. He may as well just build a wall in the region and establish East and West Ukraine.

Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, commander of the nuclear, biological and chemical forces of the Russian army, died in a blast as he was heading out of a residential block in Moscow, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.

An explosive device was hidden in an electric scooter parked nearby. Kirillov’s aide also died in the attack, the investigative committee said, announcing a criminal investigation. Video footage obtained by POLITICO corroborates that version of events.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) claimed responsibility for Kirillov's murder, a Ukrainian law enforcement official told POLITICO after being granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

"Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target since he gave orders to use banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military. Such an inglorious end awaits all who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable," the official said.

A few hours before the attack, the SBU charged Kirillov in absentia for ordering the massive use of banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army on the eastern and southern fronts of the battlefield.

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 11:35 am Ukraine assassinates Russian chemical weapons chief in Moscow bombing

Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, commander of the nuclear, biological and chemical forces of the Russian army, died in a blast as he was heading out of a residential block in Moscow, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.

An explosive device was hidden in an electric scooter parked nearby. Kirillov’s aide also died in the attack, the investigative committee said, announcing a criminal investigation. Video footage obtained by POLITICO corroborates that version of events.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) claimed responsibility for Kirillov's murder, a Ukrainian law enforcement official told POLITICO after being granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

"Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target since he gave orders to use banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military. Such an inglorious end awaits all who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable," the official said.

A few hours before the attack, the SBU charged Kirillov in absentia for ordering the massive use of banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army on the eastern and southern fronts of the battlefield.

NATO has taken over coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the U.S. as planned, a source said on Tuesday, in a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against NATO sceptic U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

The step, coming after a delay of several months, gives NATO a more direct role in the war against Russia's invasion while stopping well short of committing its own forces.

Diplomats, however, acknowledge that the handover to NATO may have a limited effect given that the U.S. under Trump could still deal a major setback to Ukraine by slashing its support, as it is the alliance's dominant power and provides the majority of arms to Kyiv.

Blackhawk wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 11:46 am The difference, I think, was whether it was part of a military field operation ("in battle") and if it was personally targeted.

If your unit commander dies in artillery shelling, they're a war casualty. If they get their throat slit by the enemy in the middle of the night because they're the commander, it's assassination.

Holman wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 6:38 pm But there are plenty of examples of choosing individual targets in warfare. The 1943 killing of Yamamoto is the classic example: US intelligence decoded the route his transport would be flying and sent planes to intercept him and his escorts. Was this an assassination? Presumably it would not have been one if a random patrol had encountered the planes and shot them down without knowing who was onboard.

On a smaller scale, is it assassination or regular warfare when a soldier with a scope chooses to target an officer rather than a regular grunt?

Holman wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2024 6:38 pm On a smaller scale, is it assassination or regular warfare when a soldier with a scope chooses to target an officer rather than a regular grunt?

Holman wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2024 2:52 pm I think the main reason this distinction is interesting at all is that we typically think there's a moral difference between assassination (secret, personal, unfair) and regular warfare (open, impersonal, fair)--even when the latter can cause so much more suffering and horror.

There is no information made public that can tell what exploded inside the military boundaries south of the headquarters of Russia’s Northern Fleet.

A video recording was posted Wednesday evening on social media in Murmansk of what appears to be a massive explosion in the horizon. The Barents Observer has geolocated the filming position from Skalnaya street No. 9, which is on the top of the hill in Oktyabrskiy District. The explosion, which lasts only a few seconds, can be seen in a distance of several kilometers to the north.

Here are dozens of military objects, including the Severomorsk-1 naval airbase and weapons’ storages and bunkers.

Severomorsk-1 is 13 km from the location of the video-recording. The airbase is the second largest on the Kola Peninsula and accommodates both fighter jets, bombers and maritime surveillance aircraft. A squadron of Ka-27 helicopters is also located at the airfield.

At a distance of 11 km from the video recording is a outdoor weapons storage. This is some 2 km southwest from the end of the runway. To the northwest of Severomorsk-1 is several installations with mobile anti-aircraft missiles and antennas for electronic warfare.

Locals in Murmansk are debating on Vkontakte about what could have caused the massive explosions that shakes windows and walls in the district. One writes that the two explosions happened at 17.24 and 17.27 local time (15.24 and 15.27 CET).

“There were two explosions. I live in the Starostina Street, at the 8th floor.

The house was shaking. It was terrible,” a woman writes in a comment on a local social media channel.

The video on social media, however, show only one explosion.

There are no official reports about any plane crash or accidental explosions of weapons in the area.

Neither Ukraine, nor Russia, have posted any information about a possible drone attack, or downing of a drone in the area of Severomorsk. That said, Murmansk officials kept silent about several of Ukrainian drones that flew into the Kola Peninsula in July, August and September this year.

Severomorsk is nearly 1,900 km north of Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Finnish authorities said they boarded and took control of an oil tanker traveling from Russia on Thursday, on suspicion it had caused the outage of an undersea power cable and three internet lines connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier.

The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard crew which took command in the Baltic Sea and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official told a press conference.
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The Finnish customs service said it had seized the vessel’s cargo and that the Eagle S was believed to belong to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers that seek to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.
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Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for potential acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunction and accidents.

Repairing the 170 km (106 miles) Estlink 2 interconnector will take months, and the outage could cause a tense power supply situation during winter, operator Fingrid said in a statement.

A Russian cargo ship, Ursa Major, has sunk in the Mediterranean between Spain and Algeria after an explosion in the engine room, Russia's foreign ministry has confirmed.

It said 14 members of the crew had been rescued and taken to the Spanish port of Cartagena but that two others were missing.

Ursa Major left port in St Petersburg 12 days ago, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

The ship's owner said it was on its way to Vladivostok in Russia's Far East carrying two cranes for the port weighing 380 tonnes apiece, although the destination could not be confirmed independently.

Before Ursa Major sank, Spain's Salvamento Marítimo maritime rescue agency said 14 people were found on a lifeboat and taken safely to Spain and a Russian warship then arrived in the area to take charge of the rescue operation.

Ursa Major was in the same area of the Med as another sanctioned Russian ship, Sparta, when it ran into trouble and the two ships had been spotted heading through the English Channel last week, reportedly under escort.

On Monday, the HUR reported that the Sparta had broken down off Portugal, but the problem had been fixed. Ursa Major was originally known as Sparta III, so it was not clear which ship the Ukrainians were referring to.

However, the Sparta also got into difficulty a week ago, in rough seas off Brittany in the north-west of France. Radio France Inter reported that the Russian cargo ship initially did not respond to French communications on Tuesday 17 December, until acknowledging it had a problem.

"I'm in trouble. My engines are currently down, the tiller isn't responding. We're going to try to repair it in the coming minutes," RFI reported the ship's radio as saying.

After drifting for 61 minutes, the Sparta said it was back on course.

Azerbaijan Airlines says the preliminary results of an investigation into the crash of its plane in Kazakhstan on 25 December have blamed "physical and technical external interference".

Thirty-eight people died when the Embraer jet came down at high speed, bursting into flames 3km (1.9 miles) short of the runway at Aktau airport.

The plane had originally tried to land at Grozny airport in southern Russia, but witnesses have spoken of an explosion before it was diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan.

The head of Russia's civil aviation agency said on Friday that the situation in the Chechen capital was "very complicated" and that a closed-skies protocol had been put in place.

"Ukrainian combat drones were launching terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz," said Dmitry Yadrov, head of Rosaviatsia, in a video statement posted on Russia's Tass news agency.

"Because of this a 'Carpet plan' was introduced in the area of Grozny airport, providing for the immediate departure of all aircraft from the specified area," he said. "In addition, there was dense fog in the area of Grozny airport."

Azerbaijan Airlines did not detail the physical and technical interference, and the government in Baku has avoided directly accusing Russia, possibly to avoid antagonising President Vladimir Putin.

However, aviation experts and pro-government media in Azerbaijan believe the plane was damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile explosion.

"These are missile fragments that damaged the hydraulic system. The plane's controls operate based on hydraulics," veteran Azerbaijani pilot veteran pilot Tahir Agaguliev told Azerbaijani media.

Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov who was among 29 survivors on the crashed plane told local media that the plane was "hit by some kind of external strike".

"The impact of it caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured."

/1. Russian air defense most likely caused the crash of an Embraer 190 passenger plane during UAV attack on Chechnya:

An Embraer 190 passenger plane belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines crashed this morning. 67 passengers of which 5 crew members were on board. 32 people survived the crash.