Hacker News Reader

Comment by derriz | Hacker News Reader

> Russia is not doing some ephemeral "inflict pain", it's pursuing a clear objective of draining Ukraine's budget.

This is not true - they’ve regularly targeted and hit kindergartens, supermarkets, gas stations, town squares/markets, residential buildings, etc. None of these targets are “budget draining” but instead are intended to terrify and hurt civilians. Russia isn’t calculating or being strategic at the level you suggest - instead its actions are often simply cruel, inhumane and vindictive even at the cost of its own strategic interests.

View on HN

I agree that they hit civilian targets, the evidence is there. How do you know they targeted them? Missiles sometimes can miss or or be shot down by air defenses, then fall and explode.

It's been broken down many times with a lot of examples from history: harassing civilians only mobilizes them. So Russia must be not only cruels but also stupid if you want to argue that they're targeting civilians.

The death toll among civilians also does not look like they're being targeted, more like collateral damage. Typically when you see a headline like "another bloodthirsty attack of Russian orcs of Ukraine's civilians", you open the post to see that there's 4 dead + 15 injured. Like if they had a goal of killing civilians, they wouldn't do it by hundreds.

It's cheap to demonize and dismiss the side you don't like, picture them as cruel, stypid, evil. And from there, creatively explain everything they do with these qualities. It seldom helps you understand reality though.

So it could be that your case is special, you're not just being lazy and racist in building your worldview, but people you don't like are actually unreasonably cruel, evil and also stypid. Or maybe not, and your explanation is lazy and of poor quality. Guess which one is more likely.

> How do you know they targeted them?

I'm not sure how those killed in Bucha were _not_ targeted?

I'm also not sure how the execution of POWs could be accidental (with the evidence used in various reports provided by videos taken by Russians themselves) or the documented systematic torture (HRW report: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/12/11/russias-systematic-tortu...)

Or the kidnap of children (documented by UN) or the findings of the UN human rights commission:

> The Commission found that Russian authorities committed a wide range of war crimes, and the corresponding human rights violations, including willful killings, attacks on civilians, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as unlawful transfers and deportations of children.

Or the findings of HRW (Human Rights Watch) of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on populated areas, including homes, hospitals and schools.

Reading about this stuff - by credible sources like the UNHRC, Amnesty International, HRW, endless media and independent journalists' - and forming an opinion does not make me "lazy and racist".

Sometimes, one side are simply the bad guys and in this particular case, it's the Russian regime.

  > How do you know they targeted them?

Double-tap attacks are a tell-tale sign of this. If half an hour later another missile or a drone "accidentally" hits exactly the same spot to kill rescue workers, there's not much mystery left.

  > The death toll among civilians also does not look like they're being targeted, more like collateral damage. Typically when you see a headline like "another bloodthirsty attack of Russian orcs of Ukraine's civilians", you open the post to see that there's 4 dead + 15 injured. Like if they had a goal of killing civilians, they wouldn't do it by hundreds.

Modern drones and missiles are rather ineffective for killing lots of people. Most of them get shot down, and those that reach their targets have relatively small warheads. Nothing compared to old-school area bombing. A typical major air raid (500-800 planes) in WWII delivered 2000-4000 tons of bombs to a single city. A typical 200-drone strike in 2026 delivers potentially no more than 10 tons spread across the country, probably even less if we account for decoys. The largest strikes (drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles combined) had about 40 ton payload, of which 10 tons reached the intended target. In WWII terms, that's about 3 planes' worth of bombs.

Good points, didn't know that.

> instead its actions are often simply cruel, inhumane and vindictive

Every war is cruel and inhumane, so why single out Russia here?

Because I was responding directly (I even quoted the line) to the claim that Russian’s actions could be understood as being part of a “clear objective of draining Ukraine's budget”.

Your attempt to deflect is very odd. We’re discussing an aspect of Russia’s behavior and strategy with respect to the invasion of Ukraine. If you want me to comment on the behavior of a different belligerent in a different conflict then feel free to start such a discussion concerning that conflict - then I may (or may not) respond to claims about the behavior of some country that isn’t Russia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com