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[martinuzz]

The idea of replacing Russia with aliens is risky but worth considering

[Starver]

There's a 'joke' to be made, here, about Little Green Men, perhaps. But I'll let everyone concoct it to their own safisfaction, rather than risk saying something not actually that funny.

[EuchreJack]

A Russian oil tanker broke into two pieces and sank. One crew member died. A LOT of fuel oil has leaked into the ocean, between the Russian mainland and Crimea.

Hm, considering most of Ukraine's aid has come from countries that are evenly split between: Libtards who would ban war to save the whales and thus demand all aid stop against a country that would allow their military to create such an ecological disaster AND Fat Cat Conservative Pigs that think all oil is precious and thus hat the idea of such valuable raw material for their factories being wasted and thus demand all aid stop against a country that allow their military to waste their precious profits...

Er, good job dolphins.  Or maybe it was one of the Killer Whale attacks that I've been hearing about.  At least Mother Earth is a loyal and steady ally of Ukraine, unlike other so-called "Lands of Freedom"_{clearly it's freedom from thinking but whatever}

[Pwnzerfaust]

The ships sank in a storm, apparently. Ukraine hasn't claimed responsibility for sinking them, and Russia hasn't blamed Ukraine for sinking them, as far as I can tell, so the storm thing seems to be accurate.

Although this article from today describes the ships as "badly damaged" rather than "sinking", so they might not have actually sunk?

[Eric Blank]

It's entirely possible for a ship to take on so much water during a storm, or ice during the winter, that it is at risk of sinking/capsizing and must therefore be abandoned. Even if the ship is still afloat it might not be safe to return to and have to be towed to port. Or wait for the ice to thaw and maybe run off the deck so it's no longer at risk of capsizing.

[King Zultan]

The ships sank in a storm, apparently.

I'm surprised Russia didn't blame Ukraine anyway.

[Starver]

From what I originally read, and saw, 9ne of the ships is certainly more than "badly damaged".


(Reading between the lines, I suspect that they couldn't maintain position in face of the storm. Possibly even the anchors dragged. Then either one hit the other, or both hit some shallows, breaking one of tbem catastrophically. But I've not heard of anything new about it, except for what's been on this thread.)

I'm surprised Russia didn't blame Ukraine anyway.

Might be considered less useful to 'admit' to Ukaine managing to mount an operation within its effectively Russia-bounded straits, than to just accept it as a natural disaster that 'just happened' (and down-playing its own crews' and equipment's failings in not being able to deal with the weather conditions, at least until the find it more politic and strategic to lay any actual blame).

[martinuzz]

Russia's general Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed in Moscow today by a bomb strapped to a scooter.
Kirillov was in charge of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical defense.a

Kirillov was being accused of using chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops.

warning: picture with blood. The remains of the scooter can be seen in the top left.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ukrainian intelligence service SBU claims responsibility for the bomb.

Let this be a message to Russia's military command and elite. You're not safe. Ukraine can even get you in your home in Moscow.

[Starver]

Ah, e-Scooter, not a Vespa type. Terminology can be confusing. And a cheapo 'brick' facia I see. (Originally, before zooming in, I thought that whatever had blown up had removed huge chunks of its 'carrier' and managed to dissasemble structural brick from the building.)

For those that decided not to view the picture (as an explanation from someone who thought he'd try a brief flash of it for context, then skip it if it was at the 'bad end' of the scale, in general I'd consider it a more sanitary scene than others I've tripped over. As it then didn't really threaten to trigger me, I had a proper look. (And found my introductory points the more interesting ones to pore over and zoom in on.)

Spoiler: Here's a bland description that still may trigger some (click to show/hide)

Basically blood-but-no-guts, as it were. Injuries obscured by the way the bodies are laid (no faces visible, only hands and copious winter clothing) and possibly a sheet over part of one body, suggesting a selective need for modesty-censoring without clearly highlighting what should be left to your imagination.

Whoever had attended the scene, by this point, had clearly not access to more coverings (and suggestive of worse beneath than it is), let alone forensic tents.

The building damage, though more superficial than at first glance, hints at it not being a huge explosion (and that e-Scooter looks like it could be refurbished, if desired, without even needing new tyres, depending upon what they maybe ripped out to obscure the basic bomb-package within), but clearly concussive enough to catch the target(s).

In far easier terms, for those who still don't want to know know: you can think of it as an easy scene to create for film with real actors (or stand-ins), a small amount of Kensington Gore on the ground and general assistance from the set-dressers/builders (including artificial snow, if the filming schedule wasn't at the right time/location for the natural stuff). No obvious prosthetics or other advanced make-up needed, expect the actors involved to be standing up after the cameras have finished, shrug off some effects, get a nice hot drink (or a really necessary cool one, if it's a summer-for-winter location schedule).


This'll be labeled by Russia as a terrorist attack (and, to some degree, it probably is a targeted attempt to terrorise certain Russians), but such an attack against the public would be less clean, more obvious schrapnel. (Which also means that there'll be suggestions flying around that it's false-flag/staged as a convenient additional casus beli, despite the SBU's claim. Perhaps 'allowed' to happen, if higher-ups/behind-the-scenesers saw it as to their benefit, if you're into the Holywood Intrigue levels of counter-plotting.)

[Strongpoint]

It is not fun when enemy spies are native speakers of your language, know you, your ideology and culture, look like you...

I believe that what Mossad does will look tame compared to what Russians got themselves into. We just need time to get into the game after our intelligence services were neglected for decades.

[Strongpoint]

Meanwhile, most likely, Russia shot down a passenger plane.

It is criminal negligence to send passenger aircraft in a war zone, even a low-intensity one but... money.
Good job pilots I guess, they saved some passengers

[King Zultan]

How many of those has Russia shot down now, if I remember right they've done it at leas two other times but it seems like they've done it more than twice.

[Jopax]

Meanwhile the number of Russian ships that developed sudden seafloor cravings is up to 5. Not necessarily a concerted sabotage effort but boy howdy is it starting to look like one.

[heydude6]

Could just be a recent bout of stormy weather. If the Black Sea is stormy enough to sink one ship, why not five? Hurricanes usually have collateral damage after all.

[Starver]

The latest(?) was one of two ships that I think were in the Med (from the Baltic, apparently taking equipment to Vladivostok, via the Suez, if I recall the story correctly; though there were also suspicions that it was headed to/stopping off at one of the Syrian ports to do something with/for the Russian base there). It was loaded atop with two huge cranes, which probably didn't help.

And another ship (not technically Russian, but seemingly operating on their behalf by a flag of convenience) seems to have dragged its anchor through a submarine power cable laid between Finland and Estonia! (No reported damage to it, if it turns out to be responsible at all, but creates an infrastructure issue.) There were telecom cables damaged, similarly, around that way in previous months, and pipelines I think within the last year...


I couldn't tell you if any of these things are deliberate or incompetance (or nobody's fault, even, just something that happened). You'd think that if they were trying to shoot the plane down, it wouldn't have (semi-)survivably crashed on the other side of the Caspian Sea, though it could have been a nearly averted "friendly fire" where the full extent of the limited damage became too much when almost feet-dry and on approach. The cinematic version of the ship in the Med is that it was sabotaged by 'our side', but blame might be on the ship not being docked for (reputable) maintenance/patch-up in any Western port, to avoid possible seizure. The dragging anchor could just be error, not helped by the nations involved being on all sides of their own high tensions. I'm fairly sure the broken oil tanker was probably just bad weather and poor capabilities to handle it, but the story could be more complicated.

Note that there are probably far more accidents/incidents totally away from such points of contact (fully internal to Russia or entirely unrelated national or international 'collisions' of craft, infrastructure and/or territory), and analysing whether there are actually more in Russia-vs-RoW circumstances, than you'd expect, probably takes very serious people whose jobs are to assess these things (and, if not try to determine each event's exact circumstance, at least present a wider picture). But it doesn't shine too rosy on the Russians (those who are in at the top of the responsibility tree, I mean, not the likes of Max[1]...) whatever the causes/effects actually are.

[1] "Last Active: 2024-11-25, 16:13:26"... Hope you're Ok! Had to check as someone I thought I hadn't seen very recently