Is a meeting of uniformed military officers not a clear military objective who’s destruction nets a clear (and quantifiable) military advantage? This would fall under the principle of proportionality: will the number of expected active military casualties net an advantage proportional to the loss of civilian life? Russian precedent does seems to indicate that they gather intelligence in the area to confirm military objectives before performing a deep missile strike directly on top of civilians, so the strike on its own is not necessarily a violation of conduct in armed conflict.
That’s the risk of walking around in military uniform during an active conflict and the reason behind why there are usually so many restrictions to wearing uniform while off-duty. The only active military personnel not considered combatants IIRC are medical and religious personnel who are required to clearly display their role as such.
Edit: Generally, going out for a meeting at a cafe in Kharkiv with other uniformed military would suggest that these are higher-ranked officials. It’s far from the frontline and in a big city, so you’d expect typical soldiers to not be in uniform. We simply don’t have the evidence necessary for this attack and neither side wants to reveal it (Russia, because it might reveal the identify of their intelligence assets and Ukraine, because it might reveal a weakness caused by the strike and lose the PR advantage they currently have and can use to get more Western weapons).
Edit2: turns out I was wrong about this. I still stand behind uniformed military personnel being valid military targets in a war, but Russia seems to have completely disregarded the concept of proportionality in this strike and didn’t even attempt to minimize civilian casualties for a strike that achieves no real strategic advantage (and in fact is likely to boost anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians). What a massive blunder and what a waste of human life.
The gathering is reported to be friends and family mouring the loss of a Ukrainian soldier. The attack killed 1/6th the local town’s population. The U.N. is investigating the attack for war crimes. You know what? Maybe I agree with you, based on how the war is going I will assume the “intelligence gathering” was on par with the rest of the Russian war efforts. Piss poor.
Who the fuck uses an Iskander to target a group of friends and family in the middle of nowhere? Either there was some high-ranking Ukrainian officer at the funeral or Russia got shoddy reports that there would be and fucked up their target confirmation.
As far as terror attacks go, there are frankly much easier and much more impactful targets. As far as military targets go, there are far more strategic targets with lower risk of civilian casualties. A group of low-ranked military personnel and their families is hardly a high-value strategic target.
Something isn’t adding up, so I think you’re right and Russian intelligence fucked up badly. Corroborating this is that we’ve had no Russian confirmation of the death of whoever the target was supposed to be.
Edit: looking more closely at new reports, it really does seem like Russia fucked up bad. It’s a completely disproportionate response to (from what I can tell) seems like a meeting of low-value targets in a non-military context surrounded by civilians.
Is a meeting of uniformed military officers not a clear military objective who’s destruction nets a clear (and quantifiable) military advantage? This would fall under the principle of proportionality: will the number of expected active military casualties net an advantage proportional to the loss of civilian life? Russian precedent does seems to indicate that they gather intelligence in the area to confirm military objectives before performing a deep missile strike directly on top of civilians, so the strike on its own is not necessarily a violation of conduct in armed conflict.
That’s the risk of walking around in military uniform during an active conflict and the reason behind why there are usually so many restrictions to wearing uniform while off-duty. The only active military personnel not considered combatants IIRC are medical and religious personnel who are required to clearly display their role as such.
Edit: Generally, going out for a meeting at a cafe in Kharkiv with other uniformed military would suggest that these are higher-ranked officials. It’s far from the frontline and in a big city, so you’d expect typical soldiers to not be in uniform. We simply don’t have the evidence necessary for this attack and neither side wants to reveal it (Russia, because it might reveal the identify of their intelligence assets and Ukraine, because it might reveal a weakness caused by the strike and lose the PR advantage they currently have and can use to get more Western weapons).
Edit2: turns out I was wrong about this. I still stand behind uniformed military personnel being valid military targets in a war, but Russia seems to have completely disregarded the concept of proportionality in this strike and didn’t even attempt to minimize civilian casualties for a strike that achieves no real strategic advantage (and in fact is likely to boost anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians). What a massive blunder and what a waste of human life.
The gathering is reported to be friends and family mouring the loss of a Ukrainian soldier. The attack killed 1/6th the local town’s population. The U.N. is investigating the attack for war crimes. You know what? Maybe I agree with you, based on how the war is going I will assume the “intelligence gathering” was on par with the rest of the Russian war efforts. Piss poor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/06/hroza-kharkiv-missile-strike-ukraine/
Edit: Spelling
Who the fuck uses an Iskander to target a group of friends and family in the middle of nowhere? Either there was some high-ranking Ukrainian officer at the funeral or Russia got shoddy reports that there would be and fucked up their target confirmation.
As far as terror attacks go, there are frankly much easier and much more impactful targets. As far as military targets go, there are far more strategic targets with lower risk of civilian casualties. A group of low-ranked military personnel and their families is hardly a high-value strategic target.
Something isn’t adding up, so I think you’re right and Russian intelligence fucked up badly. Corroborating this is that we’ve had no Russian confirmation of the death of whoever the target was supposed to be.
Edit: looking more closely at new reports, it really does seem like Russia fucked up bad. It’s a completely disproportionate response to (from what I can tell) seems like a meeting of low-value targets in a non-military context surrounded by civilians.