Sounds like China realized that they don’t have any combat experience and now some people are volunteered to gain some experience for the invasion of an unspecified island…

PC30

This means RS30 and it might be a Russian designation for Multiple Rocket launchers, not 100% sure about this.

ВСУ is actually VSU (or WSU for Germans), but it does mean Armed Forces of Ukraine

Are there not valuable targets closer to Ukrainian territory?

This would allow the Russians to concentrate their air defense close to Ukraine. Striking targets far beyond the front forces the Russians not only to spread their air defense thin, but they also have to decide which sites they leave undefended. Pulling their air defense away from the front, it also means that Ukrainian F-16s and other planes will have more freedom to operate in the region.

And the strategic reason has already been mentioned: Striking targets like refineries makes the war more costly to the Russians, it deprives them of income, they possibly can’t repair them because of sanctions, a.s.o. And obviously you want to bring the war to your enemy’s territory because the enemy is already creating lots of destruction in your country.

I’m a lyrical Gungstah!

When I joined Lemmy it felt so nice. It felt like the early Internet; all the bullshit I got used to on Reddit, it wasn’t here. It was like feeling at home.

Nowadays, whenever I see toxic bullshit and sedition disguised as leftism, it’s someone from lemmy.ml; my Lemmy-experience got a lot better after blocking the lemmy.ml-instance. But I will start blocking more aggressively and I hope things get better after the US-elections.

How deep underground is safe to protect against a modern nuclear blast?

It depends if you live in St. Petersburg or in some bunker in the Urals. If you’re in St. Petersburg, then it doesn’t matter; but you should be pretty safe in the Urals.

Russia is so lame… This is like those Twitter users who post something and then reply to themselves agreeing but forgot to login as their alt-account.

To add one more aspect: When someone writes a reply asking for a source, did they actually do a short Google-search related to the claim? It basically takes the same time to just look at the summary of the search results as asking for a source. So I assume if someone asks for verification for an easily searchable fact, then they are acting in bad faith.

Also one more thing: If you notice someone acting in bad faith, don’t engage with them. Downvote them, move on. This is especially true for the next few months until the US elections are over. You will notice it a day after the elections that the quality of discussions will increase because the bad faith actors will take a vacation. What happened on Reddit in 2016 is happening here right now.

That’s not a dog, that’s a viper… which makes this a snake under a plane.

It’s one of Putin’s strategies: To make it look like it is a conflict between the US/NATO and Russia, not between Ukraine and Russia. He also tries to diminish Ukrainian sovereignity by making it appear as if the US is the overlord, as if Ukraine is an American puppet. It’s all about making Ukraine look like it isn’t its own country. That’s why we get those bullshit historic lessons by that pathetic man-child.

As much as I love this song, but because of recent events, it would be better to sing “some Russians love their children too”.

Can someone explain to me why this shootdown is even news instead of a statistic?

It’s a military airplane shot down in a shooting war. Does Russia now call the UN security council when Ukraine destroys a transport truck? Why is the media constantly falling for Russia’s bullshit behaviour?

I love these!

I guess I will have to upload my scifi NATO-symbols at some point, here’s an example (it’s a bipedal non-atmospheric reconnaissance mech):

That’s not a boar, that’s obviously a lion!