Quote (kusotarre1 @ 10 Oct 2022 18:08)
Really amazing how you people are able to believe things that are completely contradictory. Russia used to have missiles, but then ran out, but now they got them again, so they're hitting the things that they could have hit before but for some reason they didn't hit before. What's the reason? Well, can't be that their targeting didn't include these things! Quick, scramble the old noggin and find some way out! Must not agree with Russia that the sky is blue!
Russia had a large stockpile of guided missiles at the beginning of this war. They used up a lot of them during the first months, then slowed down. Why is that? Is it because Russia suddenly developed restraint in the middle of an ongoing war? Or could it be that they decided to stop shelling parking lots and barns with high-value missiles as their stockpiles ran low?
They of course still had some missiles in stock and also have an arms industry that can produce new missiles over time (at a much lower pace than their initial usage rate though), so it's not a contradiction at all that they used some of their precious guided missiles today to answer the highly symbolic attack on the Crimean bridge.
Quote (Goomshill @ 10 Oct 2022 18:42)
With or without NATO provided anti-air systems, Russia clearly has the power to flatten major population centers as easily as flicking a switch. By conventional means, by nuclear means. If the bombers of WW2 with a nearly century old technology could lay waste to Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden, etc, Russia could do it today. And they absolutely did so, in Mariupol. They did not in Kiev. That's why we have footage from civilians on the ground going about their daily jobs, driving to work, posting to social media from cell phones, with all the functional services and utilities of a modern city. Its not hard to get the message Russia was sending by dropping cruise missiles into the heart of downtown.
Allied bombers could lay waste to German and Japanese cities because they enjoyed unchecked air supremacy. If Russia had air supremacy, they would definitely have used it to support the advances of their ground troops. The fact that they did not proves without a shadow of a doubt that they failed to establish air supremacy in Ukraine, which also implies that they can't just casually send bombers deep into Ukrainian territory, for example toward Kyiv.
In Mariupol, the battlefield was surrounded by Russia-controlled territory, and they still didn't use helicopters or bombers as far as I know. Also, they needed weeks to bomb Mariupol (and Sieverodonetsk/Lyssichantsk) into the ground, it took a lot more effort than just "flicking a switch". Kyiv is magnitudes larger, much farther away and more heavily defended. I genuinely doubt that Russia had enough long-range missiles to flatten it from afar if they wanted to. (Nukes are of course a different story.)
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 10 2022 12:32pm