Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has seen a major increase in strikes on civilian gas stations, damaging 150 sites in two months and wounding 13 people.

Ukraine -> dismantles the fossil fuel infrastructure powering the russian war machine.

russia -> aims heavy missile artillery at civilian gas stations and commits state terror.

There are many differences between these two strategies, but the biggest one outside of the human atrocity is that committing acts of state terror against individual gas stations does not create a logistical collapse of fossil fuel infrastructure, it only creates a bottleneck. To put it another way, the “tactical success” of this doesn’t contribute anything to a broader strategy, it is just another act of state terror added to the heap, more Ukrainian civilians murdered more Ukrainian’s lives upended… but nothing strategically has been accomplished.

On the other hand Ukraine isn’t really creating bottlenecks in the russia logistics infrastructure at this point so much as knocking it over like dominoes. Each tactical success of a Ukrainian logistical strike is contributing to a broader strategy focused on an outcome other than murder. Blow up the factory that makes parts for the tanks and missiles, blow up the factory that supplies those factories… blow up the train infrastructure connecting the factories… While human lives are certainly lost in this process, there is a clear objective here that is unrelated to killing for killing’s sake.

On July 5, a Russian Tornado-S multiple rocket launcher strike completely destroyed a Marshal gas station in Izium, located in the Kharkiv region. The bombardment killed a 19-year-old employee and injured four other female workers.

Imagine using this on a civilian gas station? What disgusting psychopaths…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_(multiple_rocket_launcher)

If you are unable to use a weapon like this for anything other than murdering people at gas stations just trying to live their lives you have fucked up on so many levels I cannot even begin to express it…

The level that is relevant to us however is that it expresses a fantastic incompetence at war.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
    19·
    2 days ago

    This is obviously just an attack for internal propaganda purposes. “You may not have much gas, and have to stand in line half a day for a few bottles, but look, Ukrainians don’t even have any gas stations at all. The war is going great, pay no attention to the pressgang behind the curtain”

    Either that, or they really are absolute morons.

    It’s about 50/50, honestly.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
      9·
      2 days ago

      We also have to consider the possibility that the russians may have believed there was a Ukrainian fuel shortage as well and thus that a gas station strike with a MLRS would become a mass civilian casualty event that would grab headlines all over the world and increase Ukrainians fear… that then being a major motivator for the strike in the first place…

      I don’t know, but you can’t just aim a weapon like that at a civilian gas station it is pure evil.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      Rocket artillery is the ultimate final word in land warfare, whether you are talking about HIMARS type very long range rockets for precision guided strikes or simply saturating an area with a devastating barrage of unguided ballistic airburst munitions… they are devastating weapons.

      If you think about what you can disable with these weapons in the apparatus of an enemy army opposing you, and you can only come up with “I don’t know, maybe blow up their civilian gas stations!” that is not only inhumane it is genuinely pathetic.

  • charade_you_are@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    The strategic brilliance of the Russian military on full display again. Almost as clever as sending all their young people(and old people) into a drone powered meat grinder day after day and expecting things to get better.