i agree in general, that it is a militarily sound approach to do risk and cost assessment when considering shooting a drone down, i do not think there was a way to figure out whether the drone was armed or where was it heading. So if it was flying above nothing it was the best time to shoot it down

1) do you imply that they were not intercepted on purpose? It is quite difficult as those drones could change their course, those were not some pipe rockets
2) what do you mean “crashed by themselves”? Is not the purpose of sophisticated missiles to crash by themselves upon reaching the target?

I’d be happy to be proven wrong, that either this will not happen again, or that NATO will be bald and united, or that individual state capacities are better than it seems rn. But what happened this time just emboldens russia. No firm response, and no lessons learned…

Ok, but why this time not all 19 drones were intercepted?

Look, i am all for this bald approach. honestly would like this bald approach to be applied in 2022 when delivering weapons and allowing Ukraine to use ATACAMS inside russia, but that did not happen in big part because of a fear to escalate. I am afraid this will happen again

What would happen if drones hit only parts of Poland, say the transport infrastructure used for military aid to Ukraine. There are low or no casualties. Russia threatens to go full nuclear if all of its conventional stuff is hit. Would you trust NATO to go after it, or would you rather be ready?

No doubt, but when would NATO go online?

For generations Ukrainian language (and any other than russian) was sidelined and marginalised in Soviet Union, relegated to poorest and uneducated strata, engineered to be closer to russian. The only reason it was not banned outright, was the same as why elections with one candidate were hold.

Ukrainian language was briefly promoted in 20s until most prominent of Ukrainian artists were executed in 30. Since then you could only write Odes to Stalin/party in Ukrainian. Ukrainian language was narrowed to rural topics and it was impossible to get higher education in it

If i am not mistaken, one of his grandfathers was from Karelia and fought in talvisota

Вони, звісно, тупі і нахабні, але, на жаль, не такі тупі і нахабні…

They will blow up civilians, they always do. They do not care about civilians. They are either outright immoral or extremely utilitarian. They have nothing to lose, as no-one will investigate internally. They could even get some popular support for a war as in 2nd Chechen war. Why would they not?

Looks like the national/ethnic issues during soviet collapse as result of soviet style gerrymandering. Top left - russian enclaves in Kazakhstan, top right Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict, Uzbek/Tajik/Kirghiz puzzle on bottom left, and Romania/Moldova unification on the bottom right