r/worldnews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 21h ago

Russia/Ukraine ‘We Were Mistaken’: Putin Admits Russia Was Unprepared for Ukrainian Strikes on Oil Refineries

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83674
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u/wolfonweed 16h ago

This is a quote from Sir Arther Travers Harris, Commander of the RAF Bomber Command.

Here's a bit more, for those with historic curiosity:

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

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u/fiction8 15h ago

And that whirlwind was manifested in Operation Gomorrah, the bombing of Hamburg:

the attack during the last week of July 1943 created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, killing an estimated 34,000 people in Hamburg, wounding 180,000 more, and destroying 60% of the city's houses.

Later Dresden in 1945 too.

Harris willingly gave this quote about his goals:

The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

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u/AverellCZ 14h ago

My father was 6, he almost died that night. Other family members were not so lucky. But the only people I blame are those who elected Hitler.

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u/Obi-wan_Rebel 14h ago

I blame those who elected all Republicans (not just Trump) for all the crap the US is doing now. Some of those imbeciles are waking up. I hope enough of them are. Our November 2026 midterms are everything.

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u/ruth862 12h ago

After all of Trump’s open incompetence, arrogance, corruption…everything over the last decade now, his approval rating is still—STILL!—33%. There is no hope.

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u/SuluSpeaks 13h ago

I was just told by another redditor that they didn't understand why I said "nobody hats like christians hate." The right needs to open their eyes.

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u/AverellCZ 14h ago edited 13h ago

Agreed. Let's hope they don't manage to rig the elections, I have a bad feeling about it. And they will for sure try.

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u/Omateido 14h ago

The question is not whether they will, because they will. The question is what will Americans do about it?

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u/stormagnet 12h ago

WA governor already low-key announced that he would mobilize the National Guard, as did most other blue states. The question is really: what will happen in red states that have the votes to flip but are blocked or otherwise tampered with?

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u/elmwoodblues 13h ago

Schumer is even now leaving K Street with a strongly worded note drafted by Amazon!

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u/ReputationNo8889 3h ago

I mean no one has to know in which favor they got rigged ;)

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u/CarlRJ 14h ago

Other news showing up in the last hour has Trump trying again to get the Supreme Court to allow him to mess with mail-in voting (literally having the USPS not deliver ballots if/where he doesn't want them to). 🤬

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u/elmwoodblues 14h ago

They're hoping to sow doubt into vote by mail now, both in the casting and the counting. High turnouts work against them

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u/mrpersson 13h ago

I'm not sure they're trying to sow doubt as much as literally stop mail in voting from happening. The bought and paid for Supreme Court will probably allow him to stop it, too

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u/Zal3x 14h ago

Yeah I mean their approval is abysmal but somehow they’ll win in November

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u/Emotional_Remove_755 12h ago

I blame those who elected any congress members accepting money from the Israeli lobby. Every modern war we’ve been in, in the Middle East-has been a war on their behalf. If you’re voting for people who support the apartheid state, you’re voting for people who support and want these wars just as much as the Republican Party does-they’re just wearing hats that say “nice guy” on them and hiding it better.

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u/braigha 13h ago

And if the GrossOrangePedofile's party gets in again Nothing will change.

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u/Rude_Measurement_42 13h ago

Oh wow. And American thinking everything relates to the U.S. This is not about you.

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u/mrpersson 13h ago

I mean, it kinda is when America's president is Putin's puppet

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u/Exotic-Cucumber4780 12h ago

Go play star wars somewhere. Leave the US if youre not happy. I blame the democrats for everything wrong inside the US.

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u/Obi-wan_Rebel 12h ago

Star Wars is about people like the Dems fighting fascists like the Republicans / Nazi Germany / British Empire.

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u/Exotic-Cucumber4780 12h ago

Id sure like to smoke whatever youre on.

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u/Significant-Trash632 12h ago

Give me a check and I'll leave the US in a heartbeat.

Until then, keep banging your head against a wall.

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u/mike_speaks 14h ago

I'm going to go high minded here and say: War is a failure of humanity

Governments and their actions are not always supported by their citizens.

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u/AverellCZ 13h ago

No. But without any support of at least a significant part of their citizens, no government would survive against the collective will of the people.

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u/productzilch 13h ago

Pretty loose definition of ‘support’ needed there when you account for fascism and autocracy.

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u/AverellCZ 10h ago

Once a majority decides they don't want to live under these kind of regimes anymore, revolutions happen. If not, then you have to assume that the pressure is not high enough and a majority can still arrange themselves with their government. See russia right now.

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u/Angelworks42 10h ago

My granddad fought for the British during ww2 and listening to all the close calls he had it's a miracle I'm here right now typing this out.

I too blame hitler and those who enabled him, supported him and elected him.

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u/AverellCZ 10h ago

I wish Reform voters would understand that.

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u/FullMetalCOS 14h ago

And the worst part of the whole thing is that it has been well known through the (admittedly short at the time) history of air warfare that bombing and killing civilians galvanises the morale of citizens, it doesn’t break them. Shit, the UK weathered the blitz and fought back harder because of it.

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u/fiction8 13h ago

Yep, and the Americans called the British out on that exact point when Bomber Harris proposed these mass bombings. But they were xenophobic and claimed that the reason the Blitz didn't hurt British moral was only because the British public was "built different."

Literal Arrested Development reasoning. "Area bombing didn't work for anyone else... but it might work for us."

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u/productzilch 13h ago

I did think it was different though? My people being targeted would hit differently if my leader started doing that to others first, as opposed to a psychopath hitting us out of nowhere.

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u/HuntressDriver 13h ago

Apparently it didn’t galvanize the German people.

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u/FullMetalCOS 13h ago

It certainly didn’t break their spirits like he hoped.

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u/jl2352 13h ago

Which wasn’t his aim. You can re-read the quote above.

The bombing campaign was a massive success in crippling Nazi Germany. Major cities are transport hubs, and they were gutted. It caused a huge refugee problem for Nazi Germany. It also crippled industry.

To be clear I’m not debating the morality. However as a bombing campaign, it worked to hurt Nazi Germany.

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u/FullMetalCOS 13h ago

> the breakdown of morale both at home and on the battlefronts

Literally in his quote. It wasn’t the ONLY aim, but it was one of his aims

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u/OkAdvisor6680 13h ago

But why are you only focusing on this one aim? The bombing may not have broken their morale but it was fairly successful in its other aims: destroying government buildings crippled administration and hurt the war effort. The refugee crisis took up resources that could otherwise be focused on the war effort. Killing factory workers reduced factory output. Destroying transport hubs disrupted troop movements, hurting the war effort.

We knew bombing worked because the Germans did it to us in London, Coventry, Hull, and it was effective.

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u/FullMetalCOS 13h ago

Because I find it interesting how people like to use his quotes whilst conveniently ignoring the war crimes he was doing.

And because it was my original point that people have been trying to disprove?

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u/gabrielconroy 12h ago

In the UK it's generally accepted that Harris committed war crimes, with the detail that the Geneva Convention came about shortly after WWII. It's not ignored at all.

However, it should be said that the Nazis really were cunts.

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u/Dangerous-Sport-2347 8h ago

It should be stated for the record almost all historians now agree that the carpet bombing of civilian populations was both wasteful and ineffective, resources would have been much better spent hitting military targets and industrial targets.

That is entirely separate from the morality of it, which is obviously lacking.

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u/asj3004 14h ago

Go Bomber Harris!

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u/Structureel 14h ago

If America had had a nuclear bomb at the time, they would have used that instead.

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u/TheAsphyxiated 14h ago

Thanks for the info!

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u/SillyMattFace 13h ago

Horrible stuff, but the Nazis wanted a total war situation, so that’s how it goes.

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u/productzilch 13h ago

I hate targeting of civilians so much but it’s harder to argue against with an existential threat of an evil genocidal nation.

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u/onarainyafternoon 12m ago

The problem (which they didn’t understand back then and we only understand now thanks to WWII) is that bombing civilians in order to win a war has never once worked. It only serves to either strengthen resolve, or strengthen apathy. Most modern, western militaries understand by now that terrorizing civilians with bombs doesn’t actually win wars or really help in any way. It’s why Ukraine is causing such insane turmoil for Russia by sticking to military/industry targets, instead of children’s hospitals like Russia.

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u/PhysicsFew7423 13h ago

I got chills from that it’s so fucking sinister. Necessary, apparently, but sinister.

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u/MazdaConTours 14h ago

Very ironic that the American populace generally supports this sentiment, until 9-11 happened, then it was unfair that civilians are involved.

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u/Ganks4Jesus 14h ago

The "illegality" of purposefully targeting civilians in war came about as part of the Geneva convention, which directly followed WW2. It has nothing to do with 9/11, and everything to do with WW2. America hasn't supported this sentiment in a looong time.

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u/productzilch 12h ago

They did say ‘the American populace’, which did often support American warring on the Middle East to some extent.

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u/Ganks4Jesus 11h ago

I'm not saying Americans don't support war, just that Americans don't support indiscriminately killing civilians during wars, which is what Dresden was. Even during the middle east conflicts, collateral damage has been a huge criticism from either party towards how our military handled the conflict.

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u/vj_c 13h ago

They do? There's been argument over if the bombing of Germany, particularly Dresden was a war crime since long before 9/11. At the time it wasn't legally classed as such, the conventions on such things came about because of WW2, but the bombing of Dresden was a genuinely horrific event that killed 25,000 civilians. By February 1945 it was arguably unnecessary. Much like Nagasaki is often a similar subject for debate.

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u/Obi-wan_Rebel 14h ago

Not true. Many people have been either ignorant and unknowledgeable or have protested, spoken out, or educated others about the crap the US was doing. Many of us knew the 9/11 response was all about oil and corruption and grift. The vast majority is against what the US is doing with Iran now. We have a problem with fascists in our government. We are trying to vote them out now. I never voted for these fascists.

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u/Idreamofcream99 14h ago

Yeah but we still bomb civilians often so effectively that means diddly squat

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u/Obi-wan_Rebel 14h ago

Well, especially now.

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u/MazdaConTours 14h ago

I’m discussing sentiments regarding ww2. I do not care about whatever you’re bringing up. It is not relevant to my comment.

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u/modzRtarderz 14h ago

Any evidence whatsoever for this? The vast majority of Americans opposed bombing of civilians in Vietnam. That was well before 9/11 happened, if you weren't aware.

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u/CoffeeCraps 13h ago

The difference is that the bombing of Dresden came after Germany had killed tens of millions of soldiers and civilians in order to expand their empire and exterminate swathes of people they deemed undesirable. The German civilians that didn't support the war were subjugated by the Nazi party, so the effect on civilian morale was likely minor. The images of the destruction could be selectively used to show the barbarism of the allies. It did damage their industrial works and supply lines though, which lowered allied deaths on the Eastern Front. Most Germans view the torching of Dresden and the destruction of other German cities as a consequence of a war that their nation started.

Religious zealots backed by Saudi wealth and sheltered by the Taliban and the ISI flying planes into the Pentagon and WTC to create a global media spectacle are not the same. The US wasn't at war with the aggressors and their patrons.

Not many people alive today agree with killing civilians during or outside of war. And most didn't then.

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u/BrokenHefaistos 14h ago

Sc0rched earth, same as Putler even more cruel than the nazis. Not much later they wiped 2 cities with two bombs. We are all mosters because we cheer if it's the other and weep when it are our own.

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u/Idreamofcream99 14h ago

It was cruel but saying worse than Hitler is crazy. Hitler had concentration camps

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u/productzilch 12h ago

Speak for yourself. I weep for both ‘sides’, especially knowing that billionaires are usually the ones to profit no matter what.

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u/Abject-Permission416 14h ago

The British bombed Berlin as early as August 1940, in retaliation for German bombing of London.

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u/mountain_mongo 6h ago

An act that inadvertently led to them winning the Battle of Britain.

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u/Ok_Highway6034 14h ago

Reap the whirlwind is one of the most badass lines I’ve heard in years…… it’s right up there with “then we will fight in the shade”

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u/Decuriarch 13h ago

He was just quoting the bible, unfortunately, no laconic wit here.

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u/productzilch 12h ago

It’s an interesting source. Badass statements about whirlwinds, adorable apocalyptic threats about the rise of the hedgehogs.

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u/DreaminDemon177 14h ago

I mean, Dresden got obliterated just as an F you to Germany essentially.

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u/MaryBerrysDanglyBean 14h ago

To be fair if you could see how Coventry is now compared to before the war it's entirely justified

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u/DynamicFactotum 14h ago

“Bomber” Harris was the architect of the Dresden bombing. His government and country distanced themselves from him after that.

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u/dr_warp 13h ago

Today I learned.... But that quote SOUNDS like something from a Mel Brooks movie.

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u/DuceSayori 12h ago

Butcher Harris

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u/alexanderfsu 10h ago

English shit talking is powerful, but also very poignant.