Hacker News Reader

Comment by Drupon | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

There's plenty of screenshots and info online showing that wildberries was (and still is) stocking and selling single use munition FPV parts for use by russians building drones for their own offensive military operation against Ukraine. If you turn your warehouse into a storage depot for military equipment don't be surprised if the country you've invaded bombs it.

The ukrainian leadership has been quite clear that attacks such as this against valid munitions-warehousing facilities will cease once the russians withdraw from the territory they have temporarily occupied and back to their original borders.

I mean… https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fpv+pcb

There's plenty of screenshots and info online showing that the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe costs $250

> Wonder if we'd be as pumped about it here in the US if Iran managed to carry out similar attacks intended to ideologically attack and manipulate civilians by terror

You mean if Iran did what the US are doing? I am guessing the US would cry foul and say it was unfair. Maybe follow it up and say something like "if they don't stop we will erase their civilisation"

It is a civilian infrastructure target, which is being used by the military for storage, warehousing and distribution. Items such as drone parts, drone release mechanisms for payloads, fiber optic spools, body armor gear and the logistics network.

If US was using walmart to supply troops, even if its mostly used by civilians it could make it a legitimate target

Russia has been doing the same for years - especially trying to destroy all electrical and heating infrastructure during Winter. Ukraine has the right to retaliate, now that they're able to.

To add to this, Russia recently attacked Ukraine's post and parcel infrastructure (1).

Does this not very simply constitute yet another large scale attack by Russia on civilian infrastructure?

But mostly, this site in Russia is a legitimate target because it supplies the Russian military.

> intended to ideologically attack and manipulate civilians by terror

Do you mean ... rid Russian civilians of the notion that they can ignore the war that Russia started, because it's happening "over there, not here" ?

Well, yes, that too. No doubt the civilians are complaining now that it's not fair. It wasn't fair when the missiles went the other way, but they could ignore that. Public opinion matters, less so in Russia but it still matters.

But targeting military logistics matters more.

1) https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-strikes-nova-poshta-t...

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/78220

You obviously wouldn't, since it would be happening to you. It's war though. We don't like to talk about it but WW2 was won in parts by fire bombing major cities all over Germany. It didn't start that way, in the beginning the targets were mainly military, but as the war went on, things changed. I am not as familiar with the war in the pacific, but we all know that two nuclear bombs were used to avoid an invasion of Japan.

That being said the modern war logisitcs (and economy) are sort if wild. Imagine the USA and Canada were in a land war and you needed parts for a bunch of drones. Rather than turning to your goverment or official military industrial complex, you'd turn to Temu resellers on Amazon to get your fiberoptic spool. Which means it's a legitimate target, but I suspect that it's also a great way to impact a lot of Russian citizens without fire bombing them.

It's OK, there is no war anyways, it's just a short lived infrastructure restructuration operation on foreign territory, the US is doing the same right now so it seems to be allowed.

There comes a time. How many apartments have been bombed by Russia?

The laws of war apply at all times to all belligerents, and the enemy breaking them does not justify breaking them in turn.

If the current global crisis ever ends, how the world deals with human rights violations on both sides of this conflict will reveal whether any of this actually matters, or whether it’s all just a slugfest where the only objective is to determine who comes out on top.

There's no such thing as "both sides" here. It's a fundamentally flawed argument in this war. One country launched an unprovoked full scale war on a much smaller country with the goal of a colonial conquest (hopefully that's very clear by now). The amount of atrocities it has already done against Ukraine and its people will never be outweighted by pretty much anything Ukraine can do in the future as a part of its literal survival efforts.

Besides this, the laws only exist when there's something to enforce them. Has anything (apart from Ukraine's "kinetic sanctions") been enforcing much on the invader to make them obey those "laws"? At least treating POWs with dignity (like Ukraine generally does btw) and not putting them through the Gulag system that russia has revived with newfound cruelty?

I never understood 'laws of war'.

there is no law in war.

Please country a only fight with this type of attacks so that the people you kill are only people forced to fight against you to protect themselves but not the civilians.

War is war. You kill and destroy a country thats it.

Its not a conflict? Russia/Putin started to attack Ukraine. Thats it, russia is bad, ukraine is not.

Oh no don't use cluster bombs they are bad / different bad than normal bombs.

Btw. if countries like the USA wouldn't create cluster bombs, Saudi Arabia couldn't use them against civilians.

Pretty much yes. Russia Launched a massive invasion on a smaller country and they are fighting back. America did the same with Iran. Same as the United arab would did against Israel. Twice.

Insert “are we the bad guys” meme.

You're not the bad guys, there's a huge difference between the attack vs Iran and the attack vs Ukraine. Iran is an authoritarian regime which repeatedly said that Israel should cease to exist, has killed tens of thousands of their own people, aims to obtain nuclear weapons and supports 4+ terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

So abducting the leader of one country (against international law) and killing the leader of another country (against international law) is fine?

aims to obtain nuclear weapons

After a certain country shredded a nuclear deal and made it increasingly hard for international organizations to do inspections.

supports 4+ terrorist organizations in the Middle East

Because the US has never supported, funded, and trained terrorist organizations?

---

In this case, in contrast to Ukraine, it's also possible that both sides are the bad guys.

> So abducting the leader of one country (against international law) and killing the leader of another country (against international law) is fine?

Depends on the leader and the country. Abducting or killing Hitler would be fine. The problem in this case was that killing the leader isn't enough to change the regime. But the regime is objectively evil and much more so than the US.

> After a certain country shredded a nuclear deal and made it increasingly hard for international organizations to do inspections.

Fair point, but the issue with the previous deal was that it forced Iran just to pause the program. Now they're possibly invulnerable and it may be the case that there's no way to stop them from developing nukes. The regime should have been removed when Iran didn't have thousands of ballistic missiles.

I agree with the evilness of the regime. However, the problem is that when individual countries start to decide who is evil and who not, countries just declare someone evil when it is convenient to them ("there are nazis in Ukraine!") and you have a pretense to invade a country.

International law and organizations exist to avoid this issue. But the US and Russia (and maybe China) have been systematically undermining international institutions because they like to be able to attack someone at their convenience and not be held responsible for it.

lots of folks would probably cheer the odd data center getting lit up!

It does, but I don’t think the Ukrainians will get much flak for it. Bombing consumer goods distributors doesn’t worry people as much as bombing food distributors or chemical warfare on farms (eg Agent Orange), and besides that direct strategic bombing of civilian targets was heavily used in WW2 without much backlash. I think they’d get a lot of flak if they started doing that.

I think the thought experiment of if Iran did this to the US is more interesting.

It doesn't seem Ukraine's end goal is for Russians to be happy about it.

During the past winters Russia was deliberately bombing energy infra in Ukraine with civilians left freezing in their apartments. I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but why should we expect Ukraine to fight cleanly against an invading force 5 times its size and resources, which has been obliterating its cities, occupied 20% of its land and committed every war crime imaginable?

>Does this not very simply constitute a large scale attack on civilian infrastructure?

you mean like this "Russia Hits Nova Poshta Hub in Zaporizhzhia, Drone Attacks Kill 2 in Sumy" https://www.kyivpost.com/post/72051 March 17, 2026 ?

also https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/23/europe/russia-ukraine-con...

"A search for “military supplies” on the Wildberries website Thursday yielded over 78,000 items, including body armor, first aid kits and rations. The site also offers drone equipment, including FPV goggles and kit that can be used on the battlefield."

Are you also so concerned about Russia lobbing ballistic missiles at Ukrainian city centers?

> if Iran managed to carry out similar attacks

Iran did manage to attack Amazon facilities, just not in the US: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/iran-war-update-five-things-...

...and the US also attacked 'civilian infrastructure' in Iran:

https://www.dw.com/en/us-strikes-on-southern-iran-infrastruc...

Not sure why Ukraine should be singled out and berated for attacks on what are essentially dual use facilities. At least Ukraine doesn't do obious terror attacks against civilians like Russia does.

> Does this not very simply constitute a large scale attack on civilian infrastructure?

No.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com