Residents of the town of Valdai in Russia’s Novgorod region said they neither heard nor saw signs of a large-scale drone attack overnight on Monday despite official claims that nearly 100 Ukrainian drones targeted President Vladimir Putin’s residence there.
Fourteen residents told the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit that they received no text alerts warning of a drone threat and did not hear any buzzing sounds or explosions characteristic of a drone attack.
“There was no noise that night, no explosions, nothing,” one resident was quoted as saying. “If something like that had happened, the whole town would have been talking about it.”
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Residents told Mozhem Obyasnit that they usually know when the Russian president visits his residence due to the heavy helicopter traffic accompanying his arrival.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Ukraine’s armed forces had attempted a “massive” drone attack on Putin’s residence using 91 drones, all of which were allegedly destroyed by air defense systems.
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Genuine question to anyone with an answer: why the FUCK would ANYONE think drone-bombing the ABSOLUTE SHIT out of his residence would be a bad thing?
If anything, this just makes them look even weaker than usual. “we can’t keep this small country that we said would fold in 72 hours from making large-scale attacks against our country’s leadership” isn’t a great look unless you want to look pathetic.
I’m confused as to why they’re saying this like it’s some kind of “gotcha” moment that the world will somehow turn on them for.
I can only assume it’s because they believe Putler is somehow “above” the rest of us and the rest of the world should agree that you don’t harm the nobility.
Russia wants to target Ukraine leadership directly without political reporocussions, this is probably a false flag to enable this and improve their own position in negotiations.
They were already doing so, and this wouldn’t excuse anything Russians have been doing even if Ukraine had bombed the fuck out of the place.
It’s definitely a false flag (in my opinion, not actual confirmation by anyone as far as I’m aware), but not a very good one.
Some say Putin is saying this to derail the peace talks and he’s got only this ridiculous excuse left. Zelenskyy basically called the bluff on the other arguments Putin had and so this story was invented. It does make Russia look so weak.
Well, putin orchestrated apartment bombings decades ago, so this isn’t too much of a stretch.
I guess he didn’t actually want to damage it though, since locals say nothing happened. You’d think he’d at least set off a grenade in the front lawn to make it more convincing.
Doesn’t targeting individuals for political purposes during a war break a bunch of international agreements or at least come close? The aim seems to be to push on this to break the peace treaty. I don’t think it’s working
Not really, especially in the case of Putin. He’s clearly the Russian military head, and it’s very easy to argue his death would improve Ukraine’s negotiating position, considering all the reports of his blocking agreements. For an attack on political leaders to be Kosher you need
It seems pretty clear to me that hitting Putin’s residence would meet all those criteria. That said, I still think this story is a load of bullshit aimed at derailing negotiations and giving Trump a flimsy reason to back off American Ukraine support.
I’m not sure. That said, I don’t consider “ending a war” to be a political purpose, but if the “rules” of war say you aren’t allowed to take out the leadership, then the rules are “only the poor have to die” and fuck that classist bullshit…
And while your enemy being Warcrimes-R-Us doesn’t excuse your own war crimes, I think if your enemy is trying to genocide you, then you are within your rights to fight however you need to in order to not be genocided.