r/worldnews • u/Rocco89 • Jan 18 '23
Ukraine interior minister among 16 killed in chopper crash near Kyiv Russia/Ukraine
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/ukraine-interior-minister-among-16-killed-in-chopper-crash-near-kyiv4.1k
u/10millionX Jan 18 '23
Non-combat helicopters and transport planes are flying very low in Kyiv and other places that are far from the fighting because of the risk of being shot down by Russian S-400s anti-aircraft missile systems in Belarus.
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u/KazMux Jan 18 '23
Possibly. Still, maybe not the best idea to put all your eggs in one basket :(
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u/nickolove11xk Jan 18 '23
All your eggs in one basket.., in this economy? Absolutely not.
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u/waltwalt Jan 18 '23
Look mate, if I could afford a second basket in this economy you can be damned sure I wouldn't be taking both of them out on the town at the same time.
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u/asdfasdfasdfas11111 Jan 18 '23
To be fair, I see this kind of thing daily in DC as well. I can literally look down on blackhawks from my office with some regularity. And they also like to fly low enough over the highway that they kick up a minor debris field. Flying around military VIPs below the deck seems to just be a thing that military types like to do.
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u/jnads Jan 18 '23
Keep in mind there's an airport around DC. While the white house and capitol area is restricted, they might fly low so they don't have to contact Reagan control tower.
When military aircraft enter FAA controlled airspace they still comply with the rules.
Airport controlled airspace is like an inverted pyramid, the lower you fly the closer to the airport you can be.
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u/PsychedelicLizard Jan 18 '23
"It's not a pyramid scheme, It's a reverse funnel system."
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u/aemoosh Jan 18 '23
In DC it's an airspace issue. VIP transport sort of has it own schedule- they don't adhere to tradition ATC telling them where when and how to go somewhere. To not interfere with DCA traffic and avoiding having to work with ATC, they stay low.
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u/marcabru Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
because of the risk of being shot down by Russian S-400s anti-aircraft missile systems
Or Ukrainian AA. A missing link in a chain of information is enough that an AA operator misidentifies a friendly as an enemy aircraft (eg as a slow flying shahed drone). An example is the Ukrainian passenger plane shot down over Iran, which may have been a simple mistake made by a single operator.
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u/Traditional_Paper_49 Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
I think it happened because it's really foggy these days in Brovary, the city where the chopper crashed and they were flying on a low altitude. Anyway, it is a really weird situation. I have a lot of questions. Why would they fly during a bad weather? Why was there so many government officials in one helicopter? What was the purpose of the flight in the first place?
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u/slowslownotbad Jan 18 '23
Sometimes you gotta fly, and in war you gotta fly low.
It’s on the pilots to tell their bosses when things get too risky, but their risk tolerance is a bit fucked up right now. War does that 🤷♂️
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u/teh_fizz Jan 18 '23
I mean we can speculate all we like, but it might have been as simple as they wanted to do this now to boost morale. They thought the risk was worth it for the war.
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u/Applied_Mathematics Jan 18 '23
Yep. I'm sure they 100% worked out the risk and understood what was involved. Not dismissing anything, it's a tough thing. You can be 99% sure something won't happen, but that doesn't mean that 1% won't pop up.
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u/dyingchildren Jan 18 '23
Lot's of pilots push things in bad weather because it works most of the time. I work with pilots that fly in weather that I wouldn't. Inadvertent flight into low visibility is the #1 killer of helicopters, not something to fuck around with
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u/not_anonymouse Jan 18 '23
Kobe's helicopter crashed for the same reason too if I'm not mistaken.
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u/Essaiel Jan 18 '23
There are some eye witness reports it was on fire before crashing. Obviously a pinch of salt with eye witnesses, some of whom were children.
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u/Nyther53 Jan 18 '23
That doesn't necessarily mean anything nefarious happened. Helicopters need a spectacular amount of maintenance to fly, and wartime conditions often means that it's skipped. The US Military has at least a few helicopters go down with a total loss of the crew onboard every single year. It's entirely possible that the helicopter simply caught fire on its own fuel. No way to know until the investigation completes and more details are announced.
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u/mothtoalamp Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
Can't speak to the decisions regarding weather and lack of decapitation protection, but many helicopters in Ukraine, Russian and Ukranian, fly exceptionally low (10-20 feet above the ground) to avoid anti-aircraft radar.
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u/AdmiralGrogu Jan 18 '23
Why would you put so many important people in a single vehicle? That's way too risky, especially during the war.
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u/Rheactron Jan 18 '23
Happened many times in history, even recently. Polish government plane, for example. Another plane with Soviet military command. Shit happens.
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u/Big_Little_Drift Jan 18 '23
That soviet plane crash was nuts
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u/EndemicAlien Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
Chrashed because off greed. Filled the plane with tonns of furniture, disregarded the warnings of the crew and gave the order to lift off.
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u/KillingTime_ForNow Jan 18 '23
Isn't that a similar reason to why Aaliyah's plane went down? Overloaded & they ignored the warnings?
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u/PopPopPoppy Jan 18 '23
And the pilot had a suspended license and was coked up but yes, overloaded and no one gave a shit.
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u/RiledAstaldo Jan 18 '23
Wild how many incidents in aviation history seem like the pilot for what’s essentially a sky bus just saw Top Gun and applied the, “I have to push my plane to its limits to pull off this critical mission even if I might die!” mentality to getting folks to another destination on time or with more passengers and cargo.
Wonder how many professional chauffeurs are just showing up and clown-carting limos or throwing 5,000lbs over vehicle capacity to gun it down the road.
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u/willymo Jan 18 '23
A vast majority of pilots would never ever try to push their plane to the limits in any regard, but of course you're always going to hear about the ones that do it, because they crash and kill everybody on board.
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u/taylore383 Jan 18 '23
Yep we go over this when learning about the fundamental risks of flying. External pressure, or get-there-itis as some of us call it.
All of us say we’ll never do it, but when you have a millionaire who is telling you they need to be somewhere, the pressure you feel to fly even when it’s unsafe is immense.
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u/samplebitch Jan 18 '23
Same thing happened to a US military aircraft in Afghanistan a few years back. I think it was transporting tanks or other heavy machinery which shifted when the plane was taking off and changed the center of gravity beyond the point the pilot could adjust for.
Video here - man it's been a while since I've seen that, pretty wild. What a helpless feeling that must have been in the last few moments.
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u/tailuptaxi Jan 18 '23
Yep. No amount of skill in the cockpit was going to save that one. What a terrible feeling.
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u/sintemp Jan 18 '23
Imagine dying over some furniture, although I’d probably bring my PC with me if I have to scape
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u/Wrackandruin Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
The Tupolev (Tu-104 (not 108 as I had it) was a remodelled Russian bomber design, so it had some interesting flight characteristics. It had a tendency to climb suddenly and rapidly, and the various control systems were not adequate to bring it back under control as the modified design was a lot heavier than the bomber - and heavier in the wrong places. It crashed over and over and over again, and the Soviets kept it flying. Even after it was retired from civilian use, the military still used it and splat - lots of dead admirals.
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u/Angelworks42 Jan 18 '23
You're thinking of the tu-104 (108 was a Delta wing bomber) - even has a morbid theme song: https://youtu.be/3GowQQ-zSvc
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u/ThePenIslands Jan 18 '23
Go to r/catastrophicfailure and look for a post every Saturday by u/Admiral_Cloudberg - then look through his post history. He did one on the Polish government plane crash. His posts are one of those few things I look forward to every week. Been following for years.
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u/richh00 Jan 18 '23
Can you explain?
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u/KZedUK Jan 18 '23
I believe they’re talking about this one
Among the dead were 16 admirals and generals, including the commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Emil Spiridonov, and his wife.
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u/RiledAstaldo Jan 18 '23
It’s just wild unchecked arrogance.
Which is extra wild when you consider that should be a pretty big compliment.
“I’m part of a small group literally too important to one of the strongest nations ever on earth to all be in one vehicle together just in case? Cool! Im doing pretty good. Alright get another plane or two, we can do that.”
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u/PiotrekDG Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
And the Polish plane was only 2 years after another Polish plane catastrophe in which 16 high-ranking officers died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Polish_Air_Force_C-295_Miros%C5%82awiec_crash
Which was also the same year (2008) when the captain of a plane refused an order to fly over an active war zone in Georgia from Polish president Lech Kaczyński. The captain was then fired iirc.
The second pilot from that incident went on to become the captain of a flight in which said president died in the beforementioned catastrophe, likely facing similar pressures to fly in bad weather.
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u/Kersenn Jan 18 '23
So I was attending an international conference recently and the application for funding forbid groups of scientists mathematicians engineers etc from traveling in groups. I wasn't worried about the travel until I saw that line lol. I mean totally fair, it probably would be bad for the US group to all be on one plane haha
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u/All_Work_All_Play Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
That might have to do with the company that lost basically their entire engineering/product developed team in the missing Malaysia flight.
E: my dudes, it's not the aids researchers on the flight that Russia shot down, it was a semiconductor company in Texas that lost 20 of theor employees on the Malaysia flight that disappeared
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u/AdmiralGrogu Jan 18 '23
I know it happened... But why IT KEEPS HAPPENING. Like, if we know there comes a risk with it, why keep doing it? Especially in a warzone?
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u/Patriark Jan 18 '23
They were headed towards the frontline to pump up morale. Being bunched up in low-flying helicopters is perhaps the safest way to get to the frontline. Which says it all tbh.
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u/ThellraAK Jan 18 '23
Makes sense, but why bring your number two guy with you?
Do Frontline troops care about whether a senior aide is present?
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u/MacDegger Jan 18 '23
Because you need to talk and coordinate woth your number two guy.
In war you can't always heed the hit-by-a-bus-ratio.
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u/Gravity_flip Jan 18 '23
It's perception due to coverage When you say "it keeps happening" what you mean is "you keep hearing about it"
For instance in the U.S. it's a rule that the president and the vice president can't be on the same plane together. I'm certain there's a few other no fly combinations in place as well.
Many people learn the lesson from others. And then you get an outlier who declares extenuating circumstances and says "we're aware of the risks, but this trip is low risk / super duper important so we'll take the chance and expedite things".
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u/Professional-Break19 Jan 18 '23
Cause sometimes you don't have the resources to spread them out like you would want to 🤔
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u/vainbetrayal Jan 18 '23
That Polish one was messed up. I’ve seen 2 documentaries on it, and the pilot was basically put in an unwinnable situation by the government.
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u/machine4891 Jan 18 '23
by the government.
By the president who at a time was in opposition to the government. This situation, amidst the election campaign lead to president wanting to land at a WW2 memorial site "at all cost".
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u/PiotrekDG Jan 18 '23
And the charade continues, with the current Polish government spewing conspiracy theories, creating new reports that discard whichever facts don't fit their narration.
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u/Wiskos Jan 18 '23
Many private companies thought about that actually
In a survey of 101 firms around the globe, a large majority—84 percent—have a policy restricting the number of executives that may travel on the same corporate or commercial plane, ACTE found.
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-news/pages/limitnumbersameflight.aspx
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u/Zach_the_Lizard Jan 18 '23
My company wants us to avoid flying too many regular employees together, let alone executives.
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u/Cloaked42m Jan 18 '23
My company makes a point of flying high value folks on separate flights.
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u/Endorkend Jan 18 '23
Yeah, had the same happen and we were just the IT crew.
Company bought another company and the crew of senior IT tech staff had to go to each location of the acquired company to upgrade infrastructure and the like. (5 countries across Europe in a month)
12 people, never more than 2 on the same plane and we were always matched so that we wouldn't have 2 of the same specialties on the same flight.
Granted, in the modern age, other than physically swapping out the servers and network equipment, most of the work we did then can be easily done remotely now.
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u/veevoir Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
Why would you put so many important people in a single vehicle? That's way too risky, especially during the war.
Meanwhile Poland after 2010: O.O >.>
Seems to be a theme in post-Warsaw Pact countries, usually related to lax approach to regulations - especially safety and risk management ones.
Funnily enough in Poland verb for that showing off/disregard for safety/'hold my beer' attitude is "kozaczyć" - which literally means "behave like a Cossack". So one can imagine in Ukraine it is a behavior popular enough.
EDIT/PS: Spoiler alert about 2010 - very doubtful authorities in Poland learned anything, as current gov were the people too busy to shift blame for packing so many VIPS on one plane away from president's chief of staff (who organized the flight). And too busy peddling bullshit conspiracy theories, that Kaczyński I was assassinated. If this was an assassination - then procedures are ok, right?
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u/Hakairoku Jan 18 '23
Yep. And it's not just limited to planes either, there's also this shit
The explosion reduced his body to ashes: the only identifiable remains found were his partially melted gold star, his watch (stopped at the moment of the explosion), and one of his military shoulder boards.
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u/Allydarvel Jan 18 '23
Happens in the west too
"Flight ZD 576 crashed into the side of a mountain on the Scottish island in dense fog on the night of June 2, 1994, killing all 29 people on board, including the four crew.
The passengers included some of the UK's leading counter-terrorism experts who were flying from Belfast to attend a conference in Inverness."
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u/glium Jan 18 '23
"some of the UK's leading counter-terrorism experts " is not anywhere close to several members of the government
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u/TheDustOfMen Jan 18 '23
True. On the other hand, it does highlight that a plane crash isn't just a personal loss for families and other loved ones - they're also professional losses.
This also happened with MH17 which was shot down with the Russian BUK. That flight had at least 6 of the leading experts of HIV/AIDS on board on their way to the same conference in Australia.
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u/ISeenYa Jan 18 '23
I remember headlines saying it could put HIV/AIDs research back by a decade. They really must have been top experts.
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u/TheDustOfMen Jan 18 '23
One of them was Joep Lange, he was a pioneer in that field. His importance could not be overstated.
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u/Troglert Jan 18 '23
People need to get places, and important people are around other important people. Trips like these happen thousands of times a day, it’s bound to go wrong every now and then unfortunately.
Rules about splitting up travel usually only exists for the very top people, like president and VP, King and next in line for the throne etc.
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u/szpaceSZ Jan 18 '23
for the very top people,
Like the minister of interior?!
I mean, of you had to make the 10-15 most important people of a country that would be it's government specifically
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u/Fireproofspider Jan 18 '23
As far as I can tell, he was the only minister on this flight so maybe they do have that rule.
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u/l0stInwrds Jan 18 '23
Some sources says at least two kindergartners dead, several injured.
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u/mr_snuggels Jan 18 '23
4 now.... the helicopter could not have hit a more vulnerable building. Condolences to the families
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u/Siriacus Jan 18 '23
Damn it man, can't even imagine those parents' worst nightmare coming true so shockingly.
This just broke my heart.
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u/Pingo-tan Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
Four
Edit: the latest info from the official sources corrected that it was 14 people, among them 1 child
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u/xjmsx00 Jan 18 '23
Got to love all the arm chair military strategic planners on Reddit. I mean I've seen the Sec Def, Sec State and a couple 2-4 star general officers on the same plane in the middle east. Sometimes you have to eat the risk.
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u/yung-hoon Jan 18 '23
When it's hot out there you gotta wear the risk. Easy judgement from the sidelines for Reddit
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u/Canadia-Eh Jan 18 '23
I love watching these people try to Monday morning QB a country that's been at war for almost a year. Hot meme.
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u/Accidental-Genius Jan 18 '23
Yeah, I have to remind myself the average redditor is 15 and has no concept of combat
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u/RadicalLackey Jan 18 '23
has no concept of adult life, let alone combat or logistics in war.
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u/buzziebee Jan 18 '23
It was dark and foggy at the time of the crash and initial reports suggest the helicopter hit the kindergarten before crashing close to a residential building.
They must have been flying right at the deck for that to happen. Either that or it's a very tall kindergarten.
Every day more and more lives are snuffed out by this war. Russia need to gtfo of Ukraine.
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u/10millionX Jan 18 '23
Even huge transport planes are flying low near Kyiv to avoid being shot down by long-range Russian anti-aircraft missiles located in Belarus.
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u/buzziebee Jan 18 '23
Which makes you question why they were flying by helicopter. I'm sure we'll find out more as the day goes on, but it seems risky to send ministers by helicopter rather than by train or car.
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u/soffenaa Jan 18 '23
Not just ministers, but both the interior minister and the deputy interior minister.
That's just insane, even in peacetime.
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u/Troglert Jan 18 '23
It’s also very very common, very few cabinet members are split up during travel in most countries, usually just the prime minister/Presiden levels
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u/Mikhail512 Jan 18 '23
To be fair most countries don’t have to worry about having their choppers shot down over their own territory.
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u/adrenalinekilled Jan 18 '23
Exactly, all that most countries need to worry about is some freak accident during normal operation. Flying your helicopters so low to the ground to avoid being hit with anti-air from a neighbouring country that they crash into a two story building isn't normal peacetime operation.
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u/MSTRMN_ Jan 18 '23
ither that or it's a very tall kindergarten.
it's 2 floors high
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u/LionXDokkaebi Jan 18 '23
I would think that travelling by ground transport would be the default in wartime even if the frontline is thousands of km away… RIP to them.
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u/TheEruditeIdiot Jan 18 '23
Traveling by ground has its own risks. Restricted to roads for instance. Not a big deal if you don’t have to worry about little green men, spies, etc.
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u/StrawberryEiri Jan 18 '23
Ukraine has heavily mined the northern part of the country to prevent a second invasion of Kyiv. Depending on where they were coming to/from, ground transport may not have been doable at all.
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u/klb000 Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
Not to argue whether they should’ve done it or not, but just to address this particular point as a volunteer who’s been all over Ukraine. The roads up North are mostly all drivable. What they have done is load every bridge with explosives and dig trenches so long the russians would be completely mowed down if they tried to approach.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to travel around the country. Even in Izyum, Kupyansk, Kherson etc, the roads are mostly accessible. Even Vovchansk, which is right on the russian border, you can go. They don’t wanna cut off humanitarian aid/civilians from traveling, but walking off into forests or fields might be a death sentence however. I frequently see signs at the side of the road indicating it’s mined.
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u/pktrekgirl Jan 18 '23
Well this is a bummer. They have enough death there without accidents like this happening. How sad.
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u/besizzo Jan 18 '23
Yeah, that's not exactly the news I hoped for.
And there is a celebration in russian telegram channels already. Classic
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u/DarkNinjaPenguin Jan 18 '23
The most progress the Russian war effort has made in a year, and it was an accident.
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u/Silver_Page_1192 Jan 18 '23
I don't know if you are just kidding but the loss of soledar is a bit of Russian progress. Ukraine needs more gear and man, seemingly the momentum is swinging at least a little. Not a good thing.
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u/Sturgill_Jennings77 Jan 18 '23
Paulie reads headline and turns to Chris
"You're not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator."
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u/eth6113 Jan 18 '23
Why would they possibly have their Interior Minister and First Deputy on the same helicopter?
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u/TheDustOfMen Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23
That's a tough loss for a country at war with its neighbour:
Edit: included another quote