Ukraine destroys prized US$1.2 billion Russian air-defence system with cruise missiles, reports say

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 660 points – Ukraine destroys prized US$1.2 billion Russian air-defence system
scmp.com

The advanced S-400 ‘Triumf’ air-defence system was destroyed in a joint operation by Kyiv’s security service and navy, Ukrainian intelligence sources said The attack off the coast of Yevpatoriya was orchestrated through the aerial drones and Neptune domestic missiles, Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko said

Ukraine used drones and missiles to take down an advanced Russian air-defence system worth US$1.2 billion early on Thursday, according to multiple reports.

The advanced S-400 “Triumf” air-defence system was destroyed in a joint operation by Kyiv’s security service (SBU) and navy, the BBC and Reuters reported, citing Ukrainian intelligence sources.

The attack off the coast of Yevpatoriya was orchestrated through the use of aerial drones and Neptune domestic missiles, per Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian official writing on Telegram.

Yevpatoriya is a coastal city in the west of occupied Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

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The air-defence system fired its rounds to shoot the drones down, thus revealing its location, Rybar reported. Ukraine waited until it had fired all its ammo, then targeted it with cruise missiles.

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Why does every news article nowadays repeat itself at least 2 times? There are almost the exact same sentences twice. You don't even have to read past the abstract because there is no other information at all in the actual text. And besides, you avoid having to scroll past 7 gigantic ads

I’m so happy. I thought it was just me noticing this. I really dislike when the headline is the headline, summary and first paragraph. By the time I get to the substance of the article I’ve read the first paragraph three times.

I think it's because the first paragraph is usually preview content for news aggregators and search engines, so it's used as an appetizer.

Probably stems at least in part from the essay format a lot of us were taught in school.

Intro: tell em what you're gonna tell em

Body: tell em

Conclusion: tell em what you told em

You probably got taught wrong. At least that’s not what I learnt (early 90s);

Intro: what’s the problem? Background stuff.

Body: here’s a solution and what else we looked at

Conclusion: tie back solution to problem and what further stuff we could talk about.

Less right vs wrong than just the way it was done. It's the product of word/page requirements that encourages us to fluff the everliving fuck out of our papers.

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Because they don’t care about quality in depth content. They’re just in it for the clicks. Probably had an algorithm fill in the remaining paragraphs

Did you ever have to write a paper in school with a minimum page or word count?

I like it. Most other articles on internet today made on purpose super long to show you 5090 ads even before you get to the first main point.

Ah, I think you just answered your own question. Articles gave a lot less substance in the age of information. "News" outlets still need ad revenue even if they don't employ journalists any more.

Also what's up with the the fact that I need to scroll more than one page down on (even on full-screen 1080p) to get to the actual article? I should be able to begin reading it immediately, and it should appear the top of the webpage. I really hate this horrible UX on "modern" websites.

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Just as a heads up, SCMP is a bit of an iffy source, being owned by alibaba and run as a near state owned paper. At one point, it was also owned by Murdoch as well.

Since the change of ownership in 2016, concerns have been raised about the paper's editorial independence and self-censorship. Critics including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Atlantic have alleged that the paper is on a mission to promote China's soft power abroad.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post

I noticed that the fediverse really isn’t great at noticing unscrupulous people and sources, so it’s heartening to see this.

SCMP is an odd one, as they commonly publish articles critical of the CCP.

They seem to operate along the lines of 'we can't stop anti-CCP news, but at least we can soften the blow for select audiences.' Or something like that. They're definitely an interesting case, though.

I've noticed! I try to help raise awareness of potentially unreliable sources when I recognize them. :)

Potentially better sources. Somehow in the last couple of days the value of the air defense system went up 700M:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ukraine-destroys-russian-air-defence-083306512.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66805897

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-destroyed-russian-air-defense-system-with-cruise-missiles-report-2023-9

The South China Morning Post article is a carbon copy of the BI article. That is typical of disinformation outlets. 4/5 of the news is copy pastad from reliable sources, and the other 1/5 is total bullshit. Russia Today operated like that for years, and probably still does.

It's hardly like China is favouring Ukraine, so I don't see how the article being from the SCMP matters

Whoooaaa... The South China Morning Post is reporting this in this kind of tone? Now that is a shifting of the tides, they didn't have to talk up how "prized" it was. No wonder Putin is cozying up to Kim.

Never thought I'd see the day where Russia comes crawling to North Korea, but if Xi's support is starting to wilt this much, they're going to need anyone they can get.

They even threw this in for shits and giggles:

This would not be the first time Russia accidentally revealed its location by attempting to shoot down Ukrainian targets.

Last week, Ukraine said it was able to attack Russian soldiers after they attempted to shoot down a Ukrainian flag that was attached to helium balloons and flew into occupied territory.

It’s like Looney Tunes, but with blood

I want to upvote you twice: once for the apt comparison, and again for spelling "Tunes" right.

I never thought I would see the day when Russia and China, previously fighting Nazi Germany and Japan would become so like the countries themselves back then, but here we are.

Russia is the modern day Nazi Germany and China is the modern day WW2 Japan. Japan and Germany? Well they're the good guys now, literally swapped places.

One thing that worries me regarding that... If you consider the past couple thousand years, a very large number of different peoples have tried to conquer the world, from Alexander the Great leading the Macedonians to Napoleon and his European conquests. They all failed, and their works were often ruined after their deaths. If not ruined then, then within a few centuries.

Much like how an individual can make mistakes and learn from experience, so can a culture, society or organization. The peoples that tried to conquer the world learned lessons from that experience, that altered their behavior moving into the future.

China, specifically, is a proud, rich and prosperous land. They were extremely insular for most of history, they actually never once tried to conquer the world to demonstrate any objective superiority they may believe in. So they never learned this cultural lesson in the same way that others did.

The idea of this lesson needing to be learned the hard way, in the modern world, with modern technology, worries me significantly.

I don't think there was any support from China in the first place it's just that China didn't want to cross Russia publicly. They probably did remind Russia of the nuclear guarantees they gave to Ukraine in private, which is why we hear Russia threatening the west but not Ukraine, and then sat back while Russia dug its own grave. Publicly opposing Russia might have stopped Russia from doing that. Generally speaking, you can expect the Chinese to be shifty just as you can expect Yanks to whip their dick around and the Swiss to profit by harbouring money.

And while some Chinese munition was found in Russian stockpiles it's overall quite little, probably arriving there via third parties. If China actually backed Russia up with hardware things would look quite different.

You only hear Russia threaten the west, but not Ukraine? You don't remember when they pushed through the vote to annex the Donbas area, because making it officially Russian territory gives them the excuse to nuke to defend it?

Here's a more recent reminder: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/europe/medvedev-russia-nuclear-weapons-intl-hnk/index.html

I'd also be interested in seeing any evidence of Chinese guarantees of Ukraine, if you got any handy. Only fools trust rumors.

Your last paragraph was actually accurate, surprisingly. I suppose a little bit of truth seasons a bunch of random-ass claims like salt, doesn't it?

Nuclear threats in particular. "Attack with nuclear weapons or threats thereof". They stopped just short of calling it a nuclear umbrella, considering it simply an expression of their non-proliferation doctrine, "make sure nuclear blackmail isn't a thing so states don't feel the need to acquire nukes".

The text of the unilateral declaration is apparently here but I don't read Chinese and google translate doesn't like pictures.

Fair. Maybe someone can come by and read it. I'll point out though, that Ukraine had similar "guarantees" with the US, the UK and Russia.

Statements without explicitly requiring a delineated mechanism of response can be empty words, even when signed as a treaty. As Ukraine's experiences should clearly demonstrate, though it shouldn't be hard to think of other times when treaties proved to be mere empty words.

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Here's how it went:

  1. Few waves of drones were sent
  2. AD spent their ammo on cheap drones
  3. Missile strike before AD was reloaded

Article is misleading. These systems are never a single unit. There's parts spread around where radar is separate from launchers, and other components etc. It's not clear in the article what exactly was destroyed.

They should have had two so that they could protect each other.

Also s300 and s400 did protect each other. Didn't help.