If anyone is interested in stamps, the Ukraine postal service has a new stamp commenorating this event on pre-order (they work fast! Or maybe they knew something was up?).
I can confirm this order syustem works; I managed to get sets of both “Russian Warship Go F%^K Yourself” and the “Good evening, we are from Ukraine!” from them.
Whoop! Just got confirmation of my pre-order:
Listen, buddy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to train a dolphin to inspect a truck for explosives?
According to the link provided in this post vehicles are subjected to the delightfully named “ST-6035 inspection radio-technical complex” for that purpose. Now, given that the vendor’s product page still has a flash plugin, perhaps there is some degree of fallibility in the system. Or there’s always the possibility that Russia’s TSA-equivalent is also…of somewhat inglorious competence…and the machine worked as designed while the system failed open.
In this video you can see a fire truck and a Ministry of Emergency Situations van. The men in the car seem to be officials, and they complain that the firefighters are afraid to approach the fire.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578658526066462720
To give credit, it looks like they got them to jump a lot higher than I would have imagined, though.
Beau of the Fifth Column opines that it may have been a gender reveal gone wrong.
one fire truck, one ambulance. no police or troops at all? no firefighting ships, no helicopters, or planes evident?
no wonder they’re getting steamrolled by the ukrainian forces
I see what his t-shirt did there.
The bridge is 19 km long. They would have gone past police at the end of the bridge long before the clip starts.
“They’re afraid, shall we come closer?” “Yes, definitely.” is splendidly Russian.
I don’t know about you, Ivan, but when I see firefighters acting scared, that’s when I start making plans to be somewhere very far away very soon.
The “Don’t worry, the bridge won’t collapse,” followed by “Fucking mother of God, the bridge has slumped” has a certain piquancy about it too.
I’m still shaking my head at the Russian Duma’s response, that this was a ‘declaration of war.’ I mean, what’s been already going on, then? Has this not been a war? Or were the Ukrainians not supposed to wage war in response?
Waiting for the Ukrainian response to be: [Ukrainian accent] “Attack? No, no, no. Bridge simply fell out of high window, accidentally.”
They probably got called up by the military to fight in Ukraine - and are now either receiving their week of training or have fled…
It would be interesting if this isn’t true - if they just said that so the Russians will now chase their tails being paranoid about trucks, adding stops and searches until it cripples transportation…
I’m seeing a lot of Russian trolls on twitter claiming that this was a terrorist attack, and that Putin will now be justified in nuking Ukraine.
Did they specify whether the truck and/or driver was Ukrainian or Russian? It would be quite an impressive accomplishment if Ukrainian agents were able to somehow place a remote explosive device on a Russian truck.
Maybe another oligarch (who happened to be strapped to an exploding bomb) accidentally fell out from his private jet which happened to be flying over the bridge. Oligarchs are raining down all over the place. A bridge had to be hit some time.
There has been no trade between Ukraine and Russia since the beginning of the war. The truck would have to be Russian-owned and driven by someone living in Russia.
I suppose it also could’ve been Ukrainian suicide bomber posing as a Russian driver.
It would undoubtedly have been delicate; but could well have been helped by the fact that the vast majority of the world’s cargo you shouldn’t inspect too closely is just business: risky to be caught with, since it’s stolen or tax evading or technically banned or the like; but not especially intrinsically hazardous or ideologically weighted.
Certainly possible that the driver was both informed and motivated; but (especially though not exclusively in a country with historically high corruption and tepid rule of law currently under the effect of disruptive sanctions) likely many more potential candidates who definitely wouldn’t want to die on the job, or even necessarily want to do something contrary to Russian interests, but who are familiar with getting paid a premium for deliveries where you need to avoid getting inspected too closely and not ask questions about what’s in the box, normally for really boring reasons involving unpaid taxes or stolen property.
No they were not
That sense of entitlement is one of the sure markers of imperialism
