While you define a legal act of war, that can stil be terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic that works by insipiring fear and causing a response. The attack itself usually doesn't do enough damage to change the outcome of the war.
By creating fear among Russian officials and, possibly, the population, Ukraine causes Russia to divert resources to protecting more places in Russia. The loss of the planes, while a substantial economic blow, doesn't change the outcome of the war.
> Terrorism is a tactic that works by insipiring fear and causing a response. The attack itself usually doesn't do enough damage to change the outcome of the war.
But this wasn't that. This was taking out bombers. If anything, it reduces the amount of terror.
> By creating fear among Russian officials and, possibly, the population, Ukraine causes Russia to divert resources to protecting more places in Russia.
By that definition, every war is terrorism. And maybe it is, but this war was started by Russia. Russia is still the only terrorist state in this war, no matter how you spin this.
But that can be said for most actions in a war. Multiple actions taken together is what changes the course of a war
Giving one example, you could imagine that for internal reasons, the Russians must keep a facade of a war that is far away, changing that equation may produce enough pressure for them to eventually stop the war
> But that can be said for most actions in a war. Multiple actions taken together is what changes the course of a war
Yes, great point.
> you could imagine that for internal reasons, the Russians must keep a facade of a war that is far away, changing that equation may produce enough pressure for them to eventually stop the war
I wrote above,
By creating fear among Russian officials and, possibly, the population, Ukraine causes Russia to divert resources to protecting more places in Russia. The loss of the planes, while a substantial economic blow, doesn't change the outcome of the war.
And as you say, it brings the war home somewhat. Imagine the response of Americans if a military base on US territory was attacked successfully.
We can debate the definition of 'terrorism', but a fearful pscyhological effect was, I suspect, the primary aim of the attack.
And that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do (if you attack legimmate targets, which Ukraine did). I think people on this thread think 'terrorism' is an insult.
I think generally terrorism has some other connotations which is why this is raising antagonism among Ukraine supporters
I don't think this is causing fear as the citizens do not feel threatened, as these are military targets. I think the feeling is more of the sort of "humiliation", which can indeed have valid political implications that may affect the war.
Putting aside that, denying the enemy its strategic bombing methods has various advantages in a war, such as less damage to infrastructure and in this case increasing domestic morale due to military success, and reducing Russian ability to demoralize by bombing cities
> Terrorism is a tactic that works by insipiring fear and causing a response. The attack itself usually doesn't do enough damage to change the outcome of the war.
Yeah, like the Blitz Terror bombing in WW2. But this isn't that. They attacked strategic enemy assets, so it's not terror bombing.
We agree, other than a matter of definition. I don't think the definition of terrorism excludes legiimate military targets, though it certainly includes illegitimate civilian targets.
> The loss of the planes, while a substantial economic blow, doesn't change the outcome of the war.
Are. You. For. Real?
The planes terrorised Ukraine each and every night. Now obviously they’re gonna do it less. Since they mostly target civilians, it might not do much to the frontlines situations, and technically you can be correct here …
But my dude, are you aware you mostly push a Russian side in this thread? Eliminating so many war targets is a huge benefit for Ukraine. They eliminated one third of their strategic aviation, literally overnight.
I don't understand that. Nobody would debate that the countries are Russia and Ukraine, that they clearly are at war, and that the target was a military facility.
By all accounts the Ukrainian attack took a year to execute. It's the kind of planning that was behind the explosive pagers that Israel cooked up.
It's a new kind of automated terrorism - who knows what is planted around Russia now and when the Ukrainians will set it off.