Ukraine destroys the air defense shield over Crimea
Today's destruction of the S-400 in Yevpatoriya, Crimea with kamikaze UAVs & Neptune cruise missiles was already the second such successful operation in recent days.
On August 23, Russian S-400 air defence system & 48Ya6-K1 Podlet-K1 low-altitude surveillance radar used with S-400 AD system were destroyed in Olenivka, Crimea.
Podlet-K1 radar provided control of the air situation over the western part of the Black Sea to Russian forces.
The destruction of the S-400 air defense system on August 23 made a kind of "hole" in the air defense of Crimea.
This allowed Ukraine to target Sevastopol with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles fired from Su-24s.
Russian Navy’s Ropucha-class landing ship Minsk & Kilo-class Rostov-on-Don (B-237) submarine are now beyond repair after these strikes.
This is a difficult, methodical, long, but successful operation conducted by Ukrainian forces.
And it'll surely continue with the Russian forces not knowing how to respond to these strikes.
No one has really fucked with Russia in a long while due to their rep for having a lot of nukes. But the Ukrainians are like, your plan is to kill us all anyway, so let's scrap. And now the Russian military is like "wait, what?"
You summarized it very well. Russia didn’t understand a threat is only powerful as long it remains a threat. As soon as you throw the first punch, you better be strong enough to backup your threat.
The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.
What concerns me is that the consideration of using nuclear weapons is being normalized in Russia.
https://youtu.be/DtqHuURHOsE?si=BF4YuhqEtcMDgUX7
I can't imagine a scenario where shooting a nuclear warhead at your neighbor wouldn't also make for a very bad time for yourself. If the radiation killing your own army wouldn't be enough, the second a nuke is launched everyone else is going to launch them. And I don't think with the trouble Ukraine is already giving Russia that WWIII would make for a better time.
Also it would be the ultimate "if I can't have it you can't either" as little will be left afterwards (assuming they launch several to try and cover as much of the country as possible).
Some citizens want theirs countries to be perceived as good, pure. Example: US has full ranges of issues that can make it consider to be a bad country. But its citizens wants to sell it as the best/ purest country in the world. Chant with me USA,USA USA USA. Russian citizens on the other hand has a bad country and they want it to be perceived as your worst nightmare, the country that keeps you awake at night. Hence the normalization of nuclear threats, those threats are for the western world people that are living comfortably and have more to lose. If you are barely surviving in your country do you really care about the end of the world while you can take with you some rich countries?
What about the consideration of having one's whole country reduced to ash and radioactive glass? Are they factoring that into their considerations?
Yeah. Russia's biggest mistake was to attack Ukraine. Now Ukraine has zero reasons not to properly fight back for as long as they can and want to, which they can thanks to the global support they're receiving. Russia really goofed on this one. Imagine they'd just continued their previous operations. Would've been slower, but much safer. But I guess Putin gets old and needs something to show for him. Now this failure will be his legacy.