Early reports. Missiles hit Poland (just over border from Ukraine). Two confirmed killed. No confirmation yet on whether this was targeted or accidental. It could even have been a stray defence missile from Ukraine.

Poland is a NATO country.

NATO pledges that its members will protect each other's soil.

Serious event. It goes without saying.

Putin trying again to divide NATO. . .

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Putin trying again to divide NATO. . .

Duty bound though, aren't we?

That is the sacred agreement.

A strike on one is a strike on all.

Poland knows what Russia is doing (I agree with your intuition that Russia is responsible whether it was intentional or accidental) and won't jump to extreme conclusions.

Everyone recognizes that Putin wants to break NATO, and a marginal attack on a peripheral member state is an attempt to do that. For if Poland invokes its collective security rights, France, Germany, other NATO countries--especially Italy under its new right-wing government--might object. NATO would then need to find a mutually acceptable solution, meaning either risking World War III or refusing to fulfill its obligations and thereby calling the alliance's raison d'etre into question.

Warsaw is too smart to fall into that trap. It might request additional deliberations with its NATO allies but it won't let itself be baited into precipitous actions over a couple of dead farmers--like the UK wouldn't when Russian agents poisoned people in and around London.

Yeah, sadly, some people are seen to be expendable.

It's hard to relax in this world of ours.

It has always been that way and frankly must be that way. A helluva lot more innocent people would die if the war expanded into central Europe.

Putin knows the Polish government won't bite, but he hopes to inflame public opinion--the same as with his nuclear threats and to the reservoir and the attacks on the Baltic pipelines. He thinks democracies can't behave rationally in such circumstances.

So far he has been wrong.

Agreed, LW.

This is another mysterious "accident" like the North Sea pipelines "suddenly" exploding simultaneously in different locations over a wide area all at once,

The thing to remember when dealing with a tyrannical dictator like Putin is that this is *his* show, no one else's. He's calling the shots. Or, to paraphrase an old joke from the Stalin era, "mice don't s**t in the Kremlin unless the Boss says so."

In his quest to become the new "Tsar" of "all the Russias," Putin has caused that which he feared -- A fellow Slavic country on his doorstep that is part of the West and the international democratic world order soon to be part of the EU and in NATO...if not in name then all but in fact. For all his talk about Kievan Rus' and the origin of the Russian Orthodox Church, it's democracy on his doorstep he fears, not the EU.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2022 08:03PM by anybody.

On the news, someone reported it was because Russia was "provoked."
Yeah, poor Russia who attacked a sovereign nation and committed war crimes right and left was the one being provoked. Riiiggght.

The "russian Orthodox Church" began in Kiev. My St. Olha/Olga brought it in but her grandson Vladimir the Great made it a country wide thing.

I could go on about the current head of the church but I would have to report myself for saying very bad things and cussing a LOT.

There is a chance that p did this to take off some of the pressure he is feeling at home...

Still digging for info.

In an historical sense Russia is an extension of Ukraine, or at least Kiev, and not vice versa.

When the Swedish "Rus" tribes conquered the region between the Black and Baltic Seas, the center of the emerging state was Kiev. The separation of Russia from what was then known as "Kievan Rus" came later.

Thanks for that (and all your insight on this topic).

I guess it's all about what little piece of history someone wants to cherry pick to justify their views and actions. Religion doesn't own that tactic.

dagny Wrote:
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> Thanks for that (and all your insight on this
> topic).

I second this comment. Re those learned ones amongst us.

Pretty much all I know about it is what I hear on TV. But I do try to check more than one source.

It's a tricky discussion here due to the major no politics rule. But hopefully we can stay on the right side of the line.

If I were the least bit superstitious I would be wide-eyed today because within moments of mentioning Armageddon (re my former JW days) the newsflash came on about the missile over Poland and NATO's responsibilities in the face of possible threat to a NATO nation. But, I realize, Armageddon doesn't belong to the JWs. It's a useful concept as a wider application to the state of things at various points in human history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2022 07:53PM by Nightingale.

There's a great book on Ukraine, The Gates of Europe, by Serhii Plokhy, that traces the places origins as described by Herodotus up through the foundation of Kievan Rus in about 850 CE through the present. It also sets out the dynamics that would drive the current war.

I love books like this, whose publication was followed by a war whose underlying dynamics it predicted almost perfectly. It's that predictive ability that tells you when an author truly knows his subject.

...How does the book end???!!!

A lady never tells. . .

elderolddog Wrote:
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> ...How does the book end???!!!

It's one of those everlasting books that just goes on and on and on.

We can hope.

Looks like it's time for another trip to the library. I definitely need a big catch-up on European history of the more modern sort.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2022 08:01PM by Nightingale.

I heard that the study of history and watching a merry-go-round are pretty much the same thing: ya gotz ta know the names of the horses, but sometimes when a particular horse is out of sight, you can't see what happened to the rider and puzzlement begins to exist.

...but watch Gladys try to make it sound all... "Oh dear, it's so much more complicated than that!!  Lawzee me!!  Oh, my!!  Heavens!!"

War is always with us?

Seems like that is true, doesn't it. So too disease and cultic thinking. All those things cause suffering so regularly that we may conclude they are part of the human condition.

But that doesn't mean we should just let them happen. In the case of diseases, there is demonstrated value in prophylactic measures like diet, medicine, those colonoscopies you so enjoy, and even vaccinations. Some of those vaccines use attenuated viruses, so the medical specialists are literally making you a little sick in order to save you from a big sick.

Wars are similar. Big wars are worse, often much worse, than little wars and sometimes you can use a small war to forestall a bigger one. Much the same is true of cults. They too appear regularly in human religion and politics, and yet as you have said many times there is value in fighting against them.

So count me as one of those who are fascinated by the medicine of human conflict and an eager fan of those who are educated enough and skillful enough to lance the occasional boil before gangrene sets in.

This smacks of desperation on Vlad's part.

Putin should have take a page from Russ and just built a lot of temples in Ukraine and sent missionarskis to convert people to Russianism. Always works like a charm.

Eastern Ukraine is ethnic Russians. Half of the Ukraine would like to be part of Russia and the other half can’t stand Russia.

Searching for info on my Ukrainian and russian sites. If I find anything definitive and/or important I will share.

лайно.

Past time for the top guys to firm up their approach.

We are bound to assist if this was a deliberate move. According to the treaties as I have always understood them.

The two killed were reportedly farmers. Just minding their own business, tending to their labours. The poor guys and their families.

I'm going to have to quit using any expressions about getting hit by a nuke. Clang-y at this point.

Even if it was a U air defence missile that went astray, which is apparently possible, it's still R's fault. Because.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2022 04:58PM by Nightingale.

From what I saw on the news, an Article Five response is not the only option, and certainly not the first option.

And it needs to be determined who fired the missile (Ukraine has some Russian made missiles), was it aimed at Poland, or defective or mis-targeted, or damaged by defensive fire and knocked off course. Based on public information so far, it could be any of those possibilities.

...Putin is now claiming that anybody who says that the missile was from Russia is lying. The trouble is that he makes the exact same claim about any reports that put him in a bad light. His home population (which has little access to outside information) sucks it up, but many outside of Russia, particularly in Europe and North America, just don't believe it.

As far as to the accidental or purposefulness of this, there is a good argument to be made for the accidental. Apparently (again, according to NPR), Mr. Putin spent all day on a missile attack with the aim of completely destroying Ukraine's utility grids. So it is very possible that a Russian missile strayed off course and entered Poland. Arguing against accident is Mr. Putin's reaction to the missile in Poland. I think that this is going to be tough for diplomats to keep things under control.

blindguy Wrote:
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> I think that this is
> going to be tough for diplomats to keep things
> under control.

Some days they sure earn their pay. So many bouncing balls. Too many jerks wanting to be the biggest and bounciest.

Poland wasn't hit by one of those relatively cheap propeller Iranian drones -- this was a tactical ballistic missile strike.

Even with the accuracy of the 1970s era weapons the Russians are pulling out of storage, the most likely "error" would be an error in targeting by a junior officer.

Here's a really good in-depth article:

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/

Following a six-month-long investigation, Bellingcat and its investigative partners The Insider and Der Spiegel were able to discover a hitherto secretive group of dozens of military engineers with an educational and professional background in missile programming. Phone metadata shows contacts between these individuals and their superiors spiked shortly before many of the high-precision Russian cruise missile strikes that have killed hundreds and deprived millions in Ukraine of access to electricity and heating. The group, which works from two locations – one at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Moscow and another at the Admiralty headquarters in St. Petersburg – is buried deep within the Russian Armed Forces’ vast “Main Computation Centre of the General Staff”, often abbreviated as ГВЦ (GVC).

Most members identified by Bellingcat and partners are young men and women, including one husband-and-wife couple, many with IT and even computer-gaming backgrounds. Some also worked at Russia’s military command centre in Damascus in the period between 2016 and 2021, a timeframe during which Russia deployed cruise missiles in Syria. Others are recipients of various military awards, including from Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

Bellingcat approached each identified member of this clandestine GVC unit with an offer to confirm or deny our findings, and with a list of questions including who selects the targets and whether the civilian casualties are the result of computational error or intentional targeting of civilians. One senior officer, reached by phone by a reporter from our investigative partner The Insider, hung up as soon as he found out with whom he was speaking. All but two of the other military engineers either did not respond to calls and text messages or explicitly denied working for Russia’s armed forces or denied even knowing what GVC was, despite many being shown photographs in which they are seen posing in military uniform with GVC insignia. One of the engineers did not deny their affiliation to this unit but indicated they could not safely answer the questions we put to them, and thanked our team for alerting them to the upcoming publication. Another member shared with us, on condition of anonymity, certain contextual information about how the group was tasked with manually programming the sophisticated flight paths of Russia’s high-precision cruise missiles and several photographs of their commander Lt. Col. Igor Bagnyuk. This individual also provided group photos of the GVC computation group posing in front of a Ministry of Defence building in Moscow.

Is Utah part of NATO? Asking for a friend.

Only Russia is shooting at targets from east to west.

Here is the location of Przewodów on the map:


https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=2022_missile_explosion_in_Poland&params=50_28_28_N_23_55_39_E_


Cruise missiles would be air-launched and targeting information fed into the missile prior to launch while airborne, but given how the Russians like to centralize everything, it could have been done on the ground.


The BBC ("VVS" -- Russian Air Force) doesn't have air supremacy or even air dominance over Ukraine, so if it was a cruise missile, it would have been launched from Russian airspace -- but they wouldn't waste one of them on an agricultural target.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/15/stray-russian-missiles-feared-landed-poland-ukraine


Take a look at the crater in the Guardian article. It wasn't an airburst. Whatever it was had a large warhead, a lot of kinetic energy, and went into the ground before exploding. This indicates either a cruise or ballistic missile, most likely a ballistic missile, probably an Iskander (the Russians name their missiles after rivers, not Alexander the Great in this case) / SS-26 Stone. The Iskander has a range of around 300NM and a much larger 1.5 ton warhead, and accuracy within +/- 30m:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K720_Iskander

It would have the range to hit a target in Western Poland from Russian territory north of Ukraine.


Again, if it were an "error," it would have to be a targeting error by someone who put in the wrong targeting coordinates -- if the missile was functioning properly.

Given the location of the target and proximity to the Ukrainian border, I don't think this was a mistake. Putin ordered strikes just east of the border when Biden was in Poland to send a message, and I think this is the same sort of thing. It also fits his KGB spy mentality -- something flashy to get people's attention, but still ambiguous and deniable.

Polonium tea, anyone?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2022 10:56PM by anybody.

I heard your Prez say earlier tonight that it was likely NOT Russia. I'm not sure if he misspoke.

True.
And Poland's president states there is no concrete evidence of who fired the missile yet

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20221116-live-un-chief-warns-absolutely-essential-to-avoid-escalating-war-in-ukraine

Maybe it's a good idea to wait for more information.

...and on background, an anonymous U.S. official said that it looked like the missile may have been fired from inside Ukraine by Ukrainians trying to counteract the assault on the power grid by the Russians. Again, the investigation by Poland is still going on and no official statements have been released.

It's entirely possible that the missile was launched mistakenly.

Recall the Biblical story of David and Bathsheba. The king looked out and saw the Sheba in the Bath, lusted after her, and, well, boys will be boys.

With the clock inconveniently ticking, he sent Mr. Sheba out on a salient in war and left him there. Did David kill him? No. Did he order him killed? No. But he created a situation in which Shebacide became very, very likely.

Leaders do that all the time. Remember when Russian artillery shells hit that nuclear power plant months ago? It may be the case that Putin's generals ordered their minions to bombard nearby targets confident that a few shells would go astray and terrify the Europeans.

Putin's claim not to have ordered a strike on Poland may well be true. But that doesn't mean he did not want those missiles to go astray: to the contrary, he may have encouraged his generals to select lots of targets along the Polish border in the hope or expectation that one or two would end up in NATO territory.

It's perfectly possible that it could be a mistake.

It's also possible that they are downplaying it to avoid escalation.

If it *is* a mistake, it's an awfully convenient mistake.

We'll have to wait and see what happens.

If this is so and not a cover story, then it's just a case of war spilling over the border.

Still, this explanation leaves more questions than answers. What would make a crater that size? The first thing that comes to mind is an S-300 / SA-10 Grumble anti-aircraft missile.

More evidence of how the Information Age has lifted the fog of war:

https://mobile.twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1592629251161075712?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

So what crashed in the village of Przewodów, Poland today?

With the cooperation of @blueboy1969, we analyzed the available photos of fragments and came to a clear conclusion that they belong to the 48D6 motor of the 5V55-series missile of the S-300 AD system- a Ukrainian one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/16/world/russia-ukraine-war-news-g20

Poland’s president and the secretary general of NATO said Wednesday that a Ukrainian air defense missile most likely caused a deadly explosion on Polish territory a day earlier but emphasized that Kyiv was not to blame for trying to defend itself.

President Andrzej Duda noted that Russian forces had launched a barrage of missile strikes on Ukraine and its civilian infrastructure on Tuesday. He said that early indications suggested that Ukrainian efforts to counter the hail of some 100 missiles had caused an “unfortunate accident” in Poland — not a direct attack on his country.

“We have no evidence at the moment that it was a rocket launched by Russian forces,” Mr. Duda told reporters. “However, there are many indications that it was a missile that was used by Ukraine’s antimissile defense.”

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said after a meeting of the alliance’s envoys that a preliminary analysis suggests the incident “was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks.”

A fuller investigation is ongoing, he said, but he stressed that there was no indication of a deliberate attack by Russia or of any Russian plans to attack a NATO ally — meaning that NATO’s commitment to collective defense was not at issue.

ban missiles ~