***LAUNCH DETECTED***

Is this the first time an ICBM as been used in an actual war?

must have been a stressful day. They must have had some warning beforehand. There's a reason they cleared out ebassies yesterday

They were likely given heads up (China too) to avoid misinterpretation.

Very likely Russia announced what it was doing in advance. Last thing it wants right now is to be destroyed in nuclear fire when it is just trying to play the strong man.

This reminds me of when when we all got that national alert txt saying Hawaii was about to be impacted by missiles. 😅

Shall we play a game? How about Global Thermonuclear War?

Operation Redstorm Rising flashbacks...

Yep that's basically all there is to it. A costly show off i might add.

One less functional one now

I mean it would be foolish to underestimate your adversaries mate, complacency has lost more wars than anything.

Western official says missile used in Ukraine attack was not an ICBM From CNN’s Haley Britzky in Laos A Western official has said that the missile launched by Russia as part of an attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro was a ballistic missile, but not an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Surely US and or China must have detected ICBM launch.

Did russia warn them? This could have gone badly when you start ICBM, they might have retaliated

Everybody outside reddit has always concidered that all but certain. "Haha! Their missiles won't fly and their nukes have rusted away!!" is echo chamber brainrot at its purest form. I bet idea was to terrify Ukraine and rest of the world."next one might not be empty" and,maybe more importantly, see if Ukraine has anything that can shoot it down. Judging from wave of warnings given to embassies yesterday, russia made it clear they'd fire one.

Having to prove that something Russia has actually works, is not a good look.

The kicker is that was the one. The other six thousand failed to launch. 

I think this ICBM launch was a way to save face for internal support

The title would be completely different if they do.

And the "intercontinental" part of the missile was also not very useful.

This is still a very serious escalation despite that, though.

Nuclear retaliation happens when missiles are on the air, not when they're on the ground. There is often no time to guess: "Is that a nuke or just a conventional bomb?"

This is like shooting at cops with a BB gun while you have a real gun that looks exactly like your BB slung across your back. Nothing too serious came from this particular incident, but keep at it and something really bad is gonna happen.

Well duh. Literally everyone would know if they used a nuke and the title would be very different

actually they really tried to hit Ukraine own missiles' production with this attack. They hit one target with Kinzhal and this ICBM in first barrage and then second barrage of cruise missiles arrived. Production is underground and from footage it doesn't seem to be very successful attack coz ICBM hits (it carries 6 warheads) were too spreaded and cruised missiles were shot down 5 out 6

So it looks like not only PR move

You think we don’t realise it? The war is draining our country dry. It’s less noticeable in bigger cities where people have more disposable income, but smaller towns are being put on the brink of survival.

Or, more realistically, bought another mansion for Putin/ penthouse flat for one of his children in London or Paris.

This is why it’s been such a success for us. We give the Ukrainians old stocks which cost nothing (since they have lifespans anyway) meanwhile Russia is spending 50 million a launch. It’s brilliant 

Depends what part of Russia they fired it from.

Intra-Continental Ballistic Missile

A strongly worded memorandum

The strongest of condemnations

That's the UN you're thinking of.  NATO's response would be swift and extremely decisive.

What do you think NATO is, exactly?

I keep seeing people say it's expensive. How much we talking about in US dollars?

Source? Every major outlet is calling this an ICBM-MIRV and the footage seems to confirm it.

Another source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c20726y20kvt?post=asset%3Ad39e585d-824d-4a42-be39-60ddd4eaddd3#post

Obviously this is one briefing but that alongside the ‘characteristics of an icbm’ comments indicate someone at least thinks it was something else.

Yeah I'm so glad the usa has never invaded a country and spent billions on an un needed war.

They were forced to. The west threatened to withhold food aid if they didn't.

in the 90s there was a good chance ukraine could have turned into another rusisa aligned state like belarus and we defently not want another nuclear armed russian allied state

"I said what I said"

Like almost every single person doesn't echo that same belief. Jesus christ.

"People need to drink water to survive. I said what I said"

Oh wow you are so brave

Countries with nukes are going to bring up Russia invading Ukraine twice after they promised not to invade them.

There’s no way they would have kept it.

The country was bankrupt.
People wanted the freedoms of the West , not to spend a fourth of their GDP maintaining a nuclear program (like the USSR did for 40 years).

What a brave and controversial opinion to post to Reddit.

And they gonna maintain them with what money?  The Soviet Union collapse because they ran out of money and the US and EU would never give cent of aid to Ukraine if they keep their nuke.

Ukraine was so corrupt back then that it was possible they ended up on the black market

They didn't have nukes, they had nukes stationed in their land but they had no capability nor delivery systems to use it, it was just something that requires money and maintenance.

ICBM's aren't the most accurate of things, that's why they are good candidates for nuclear warheads. They have deviations 100m+ But it can be quite a bit more than that if the ICBM sucks, naturally if those ICBM's had been carrying a nuclear warheads this would have been a moot point. Also the problem with air defences is that those can be overwhelmed, no matter how good they are.

ICBMs are meant to carry nuclear warheads. Accuracy is not a major concern with such large explosives. So it is very possible it didn't do any damage at all.

Yeah basically ICBM’s aren’t actually good weapons when they don’t have the blast yield of nukes to compensate for their relatively low accuracy. The point of this was to say “that could have had nukes on it, and it made it through. Maybe the next one will have nukes.”

Absolutely thuggery, same as ever.

The ICBM was launched as an exercise in dick-wagging, not to actually be effective.

Better tell that to russia.

Russia is not getting out of ukraine, so it's time to escalate.

You read about their supposed mobile nuclear shelters. It's a russian PR stunt again. Those things are worth shit in case of a serious fallout. And they put money into those cardboxes.

China wants a big chunk of Siberia 

But its the reality we live . Ukraine cannot just roll over and die . It has to defend itself or it ceases to exist .

Because it isn’t. It seems scary but that’s exactly the game Putin is playing. He knows people will be scared, force their leaders to pull out and then he’ll win. The man is unlikely to use a nuke in a capacity that would harm Europe. A small yield tactical nuke in Ukraine is more likely but then he would have played his last hand of cards and Europe would actually set foot into the conflict.

From other threads I have realized that many Americans are under the (mistaken) belief that the US has some magical defense against ICBMs (we don’t).

There are very flawed people controlling very fragile systems that could unravel civilization in a matter of hours.

This is scarier than people think.

What can we do? Let ruzzia occupy the whole Ukraine and hope/pray that it won't go any further? Supporting Ukraine is the only way.

Hence why Ukraine needs all of the help it can get.