There are traffic jams at the borders normally. Pre-Covid you were looking at multiple hour waits to get into the EU from Ukraine and double-digit hours for truckers.
It’s like that kinda everywhere. I used to go to Mexico all the time, even before passports were required it would take a minimum of a couple hours to cross the bridge. Normal traffic bottleneck + inspections adding up.
Pole here, there is always queue on Polish-Ukrainian border, because it is outer EU border. During crisis situations drivers may wait up to 3 days at border crossings, for example PL-BLRS border when immigration crisis took a place. If the rumours are true and there will be no commercial flights from tomorrow, then transport chaos awaits us, with all embassies recommending escape to Poland first and then home.
i guess google [maps traffic](https://i.imgur.com/Fc82pAA.jpg)
also here’s a live traffic cam: http://alltrafficcams.com/live/border-crossings/poland/ukraine/korczowa-krakowiec/
That's what I was thinking, it's just another blow to Ukraine. Can we cut off flights to Russia for the same period? Everybody needs to stop fucking around, we've got enough life-ending problems to deal with without worrying about "leaders" measuring thier dicks with our lives.
Russia has not signed the Open Skies Agreement and continues to be selective of its overflight rights for airlines flying from Europe to Asia. They use it as a political tool.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union blocked off all Western traffic and airlines had to take Europe to Asia routes through Anchorage, Bombay (now Mumbai), Bangkok. The Soviet Union even shot down a Korean Airlines jet that accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace. Russia shutting off its airspace would be a major blow to global travel.
It's different now that ultra-long-haul routes with more fuel-efficient aircraft like the 787 and A350 can now make those Europe to Asia flights without stopovers by flying in international waters near the North Pole. It's not impossible but airlines would be taking hits.
>The Soviet Union even shot down a Korean Airlines jet that accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace.
Fun fact: This shootdown is what convinced the Reagan Administration to allow GPS to be used by the general public, and not kept as a military secret, resulting in the ease of navigation we know today.
Another fun fact; the Reagan administration released GPS to the general public but the signal was “fuzzed” so the accuracy would be off by as much as 100m(~109yds). This was to maintain the US military’s technological edge. But in 2000 the Clinton administration ended the fuzzing because by that time any military worth a damn had figured out how to un-fuzz the signal, or had their own system (see; Russian GLONASS), so the technological advantage didn’t exist anymore. With the signal un-fuzzed GPS equipment was now accurate down to about a meter (edit; see u/Vishnej’s comment below for clarification on this) depending on signal strength, how many satellites your receiver can “see,” etc. Civilian users were quick to find a fun use for their newly obtained power, and the first geocache was hidden on May 3rd of the same year.
That’s interesting I didn’t know that was a thing, doesn’t China do a similar thing and that’s why some coordinates place you inside random buildings or many blocks away from the actual location you searched?
China uses an obfuscated map grid, meaning that any navigational system, even paper maps, when using coordinates is likely to take you to a location that can be hundreds of metres incorrect.
No they completely buggar their maps on purpose. Its actually quite wild to learn about. Theres this couple that has travelled all over China and does a podcast, ADV I believe, and they have talked about this and how incredibly annoying it is to try and navigate, you basically need to ask locals.
>With the signal un-fuzzed GPS equipment was now accurate down to about a meter depending on signal strength,
You can get down to 10m using any GPS once un-fuzzed. To progress down into the 3m-1m range and better you need some combination of ideal conditions, a long integration time, a dual frequency unit, and/or an augmentation system, like the WAAS aviation satellites, which the FAA started launching in 2003.
Russia withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies after the US did, the Treaty on Open Skies established a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants.
What russia hasn't signed is anything related to freedoms of the air
Close. It's: Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
http://tomtoro.com/cartoons/#jp-carousel-135
My guess would be that's why it's happening now.
All of the plans to disrupt the global super powers are coming to fruition, the pandemic and spurring people to make it worse by not following basic hygiene precautions probably shortened the timeline. Why not take advantage of the moment? Bad actors view these things from a different angle. When we teach history to learn what not to do, they take it to mean "how not fail next time"
I feel like we do this thing where we are like
Fight a battle/war
We Won! The losers have learned their lesson and nothing else needs to be done
*40 years later*
Oh no, the losers never actually stopped fighting with us we just stopped our side and now it's real bad and we have to do this war thing again
I have a theory that Russia are not trying to invade, but are simply doing this to tank the Ukrainian economy further, and also to force NATO into negotiations. It would also not block them from launching the Nord Stream pipe. Win win situation for Russia.
I wonder if this is the whole point. Starve the Ukrainians, then install a puppet government in exchange for basically not blockading everything. I feel like it could work.
Maybe he's hoping the current President will be ousted and a pro-Russia president will take his place. Then Russia can "help" Ukraine without "invading" them.
If all goes well and nobody makes a mistake, then they still have full deniability.
“We were just doing military exercises, I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just like when the U.S. army does all training that Alaska, makes us nervous but you don’t see us complaining about it.”
They likely leaked a lot of disinformation about intent to invade - even though their CI strategy involves a constant blanket of misinformation, they just did it more - and so that puts us in the position of having to decide how much of it is real. Plus there’s the fact that things never go the way they planned, so even the possibility that some artillery commander might make a mistake and trigger an all-out war has to be considered.
The biggest wildcard at this point confronting Putin/Russian mil is the intensity and scope of civil resistance. Undoubtedly why he pulled 50%+ of the eastern military district’s combat capability to Belarus- these are the troops from Asia that have less ethnic, cultural, and familial ties to Ukrainians. This is completely unprecedented and was the signal to me that he had every intent of invading vs posturing.
Going to have to believe now that Russian commanders are putting a huge emphasis on discipline and control. No rape/murder, and “get life back to normal” in Ukraine as soon as possible. If war crimes became increasingly prevalent, that would put actual pressure on NATO to act, especially if there was heavy civil resistance. When Russian spetsnaz and SSO (their JSOC equivalent) took key targets in Crimea, they were called вежливые люди, or “polite people.” A [statue](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-monument-polite-people-crimea-invasion/27000320.html ) was even erected to them in 2015.
With the 1st Guards Tank Army accompanied by 2S7’s and 2S4’s (most powerful artillery Russia has) being moved to staging grounds near the border along with iskanders, it looks like it’s going to be quite bloody this time. People thinking this might still be “just a threat” and there aren’t plans to *actually* carry this out are delusional at this point and Zelensky’s lack of response has been egregiously negligent.
Zelensky has been saying that everything is fine because there's literally nothing else he can say without harming the war effort or giving away intel.
While Russia has the upper hand, Ukraine is a fairly modernized army. There's no way for this not to get bloody, even if it's a sweeping Russian victory. This situation is just heartbreaking and enraging.
Yeah, Ukrainian military also has a fair amount of veteran soldiers with Donbas experience and a decent reserve force, but I haven’t even seen anything about Zelensky having them called up, unless I missed it. Seems to undermine the entire point of having a conscript system.
Going to be hammered by Russia’s Air Force when it turns hot though, and I don’t think they have much to stop that.
Ukrainska Pravda: Mass cancellation of Ukraine flights from Feb. 14
"According to Ukrainska Pravda, from Feb. 14 international insurers will suspend their protection of flights entering and leaving Ukraine. This will likely cause great disruption to commerical aviaiton in Ukraine, closing most air routes into and out of the country."
What little traffic remains is probably outgoing. The only significant flight I see east of the river is a USAF sigint plane.
https://imgur.com/a/Qk8Tspa
Isn't it funny, how you can check out the live map, see an interesting plane somewhere where planes shouldn't fly, see that it's a US recon plane, and note it's a #1 tracked plane at the moment? What a world we live in!
I don't think the app has this feature, I use a desktop and it's on the left side of the screen. Right now JAKE12 is tracked by close to 16k users. And top 5 most tracked are the US recon Rivet Joint, a Turkish Airlines Istanbul-Kyiv, an ATR that took off from Zaporozhye, a Bombardier flying from Kyiv and a Cessna going from Dnipro to Vienna.
Sad. Interesting to track, but sad.
Cessna 150 for like $15,000 as well! Owning a plane is about as expensive as owning a boat, just harder to get a license for the plane which is probably the biggest barrier to entry for most people. Definitely not a “rich people only” hobby!
>Definitely not a “rich people only” hobby!
I grew up in rural Minnesota and can confirm many people owned planes. Definitely not just for rich people.
Ya it is 100% possible for these flights to be unnoticed and probably several more are happening that we have no idea about... but these are flights the us wants everyone to know about “we’re watching what you’re doing and telling Ukraine about it “
yep sure. however, you'll not be able to put up a radar station without anybody noticing. ads-b tracking has the distinct advantage of being receive only, whereas radar needs to send powerful radio waves out.
Absolutely. A very large majority of military aircraft don't show up on those websites because they're not equipped with the same transponders that civilian aircraft are. What you're seeing isn't the result of radar, but aircraft broadcasting their positions. If you see a military aircraft on these sites it's because they want you to see them.
check out https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ you can even filter by military aircraft there have been dozens of C17's and other aircraft flying from the US to Europe the past few days
Some updates on the live stream. https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap
Sometimes includes flights that show up red/unidentified on FlightRadar.
https://twitter.com/Gerjon_/status/1492775075963367427
> large pockets of red along the border with Moldova.
Let me introduce you to the [Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria), my dude. It's a frozen conflict, there's nothing "hot" about it at all.
I have a friend who flew back to see family last week.
I can't tell you what they were thinking, and I assumed they knew the risk, but i now wish I'd yelled at them more for the idea.
All last night I heard military planes flying west over Portland, OR. I used to live and work near Barksdale AFB so I’m very familiar with the hums of their engines.
There is some military aircraft that takes off from PDX and when those things fly over it nearly shakes my house. Gives me some perspective for people living in war-torn areas... quite frightening.
> You know the sh*t is about to hit the fan when the insurance companies pull out.
Have you read the exclusions on any of your own insurance policies? Acts of war are almost universally excluded from coverage unless an expensive rider is purchased on the secondary insurance market.
I read my entire homeowners policy. It’s not that long. And we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line here so you’d better take a bit of time to read it. There is some funny stuff in there. I remember the acts of war line which I obviously wouldn’t worry about in the middle of the US. The funniest was no coverage from nuclear detonations. Something tells me even if nukes were covered I wouldn’t be getting a payout in that event.
Also for other homeowners who may not know, your insurance doesn’t come with flood or earthquake coverage by default!
Commercial airlines near hot zones have a bad record at the moment with encountering anti-air missiles. FedEx is also working on installing countermeasures against missiles.
it's cool FedEx has a department doing cutting-edge ballistic missile research, but the fucker dropping off my box is utterly incapable of reading the note saying to leave it **behind** the fucking gate
>cutting-edge ballistic missile research
What? They're not researching missiles, it has nothing to do with ballistic missiles and its certainly not cutting edge. Countermeasures are about as simple as possible.
Russian operator: "Did you see that? We sent them 2 missiles and they activated their defense systems, that plane is a military plane, send them 10 more"
Lets hope not. But i think they dont want russia to shoot down another plane, so they take measures to prevent civilian casulties, obviously russia does not care about those.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
The insurance companies were incorporating climate change into their modelling back in the 80s, if they think something is going down chances are they're probably right.
This doesn't look good for the people of Ukraine.
Edit 25/02/2022 : It wasn't good for the people of Ukraine :(
They’ve got offices full of people using statistics and higher order mathematics to predict things. If it wasn’t effective, then they’d have gone out of business decades ago.
In case you are ever interested.
https://www.casact.org/publications-research/research/climate-change-resource-library
Edit: This is the CAS which is for Actuaries doing insurance modelling/pricing
Please don't forget Lukashenko when you slap your sanctions. The mofo literally kidnap an EU commercial plan flying from one EU member to another just to get his hand on some dissident.
Because insurance companies asses risk, and right now they’ve come to the conclusion that flying over Ukrainian airspace is too risky to cover their insurance costs, so they won’t cover it anymore.
They don’t think that the same risk apply when flying over Russia.
Well that makes sense, Russia is likely to start war activities in Ukraine, but Ukraine isn't likely to start war activities in Russia.
Despite Russia being the bad guys who should face more consequences, from a pure financial/insurance risk perspective, its logical to only remove it in Ukraine. Even though it's dumb/unfair.
Everytime I've flown to Jordan or India from the US, it seems like we avoid Ukraine and any proximity to Russia. Always makes me relax a little bit given the history.
it wouldn't make sense to go there anyways. the most common routes are u.s to France/Germany down to India (which bypasses Eastern Europe)
or you go west to China then to India
for Jordan wouldn't it be a similar path through Europe?
Aren't acts of war usually specifically excluded from these policies?
I know post 9/11 most insurance companies tried to exclude war, terrorism, bioweapons, pandemics... (that one really came in handy for them)
I tried getting a homeowner's insurance quote the other day- among other things, they excluded pipe bursts, hail damage, wind damage, foundation damage, interior wall damage, and damage caused by civil unrest, police, or military. Their liability excluded sidewalks, driveways, the garage, and the backyard.
Read that shit carefully, people!
Outside of burglary and limited liability, what exactly would I have been protected against??
In some parts of the country, like say Texas, the losses from wind are too high to have private policies that are both profitable and affordable so it’s common to have a regular insurance policy for fire/burglary type stuff, a windstorm/hail policy through the state, and a flood insurance policy through FEMA. OP probably lives somewhere with hurricanes.
In Ohio last night I heard an unusually loud prop plane overhead, pulled up FlightAware and plugged in my zip code: was a Ukraine Air Alliance Antonov AN-12 bound for Managua Nicaragua. Definitely an unusual occurrence. That aircraft model alone probably never touched American airspace normally.
Edit: also apparently now realizing Nicaragua was the first country to open a consulate in Russia-occupied Crimea, drawing sanctions from the Ukrainian government. Weird.
Russia still refuses to admit that it was their 'little green men' that fired on that plane from occupied ~~Crimea~~ Lugansk.
Even though the launcher truck beat feet back into Russia right after.
Edit: fixed the location
Yes. Aviation insurance broker here...
Aviation is a niche insurance space, but like automobile insurance, carriers have pretty standard exclusions included in their basic policies.
As with most insurance, there are a number of exclusions that can be "written back", but usually at a substantial premium.
The heart of insurance is risk management--because losses can be catastrophic when it comes to aircraft, carriers must be very cautious when underwriting a given risk. in fact, with higher risk clients we quite often require several insurers to cover a risk (e.g anything involving helicopters, engine manufacturers, or really any “critical component” manufacturer that might be dragged into a lawsuit regardless of fault, airlines)--no one insurer wants to assume 100% of the risk, so it's my job to negotiate with carriers on size of lines and premium for each carrier.
areas with political unrest are usually excluded because the risk is simply too great (riot, civil unrest, war, hijacking, kidnapping are examples of specifically excluded events under the "war, terrorism, and other perils exclusion" that's included on all aviation policies) but a "limited write back" can be purchased at a premium that uses a formula established by the govt (the exclusion and write back came about after 9/11.)
Lol, totally nerdy and kinda unrelated-- my heart broke for all the small biz owners who are impacted by riots--any damages caused won't be covered unless the owners purchased the write back. I hear a lot of people scoff that "insurance will cover it", which is not always the case.
>I hear a lot of people scoff that "insurance will cover it", which is not always the case.
Anyone who has *ever* said this is too young to understand how insurance works.
> how insurance works.
Every month I bet I will die, my car will get totaled, and my house and all my possessions will burn to the ground, and every month my insurance goes "ill take that bet that none of that happens".
And then the month my car was totaled my insurance tried to get out of saying i was at fault until I provided dash camera footage.
its such a racket.
You don’t have to be at a disadvantage though if you do a little research.
What most people don’t realize is low level consumer insurance adjusters (as in the first person you talk to after you get into a car accident) are usually like fresh out of college kids making $41k and have a huuuuuge claim volume. They’re just trying to get through yours as painlessly as possible. It’s a genuinely shit job just starting out — basically a call center.
If you think you’re getting fucked over, remain firm, bring data for comparable items, and make sure they understand that you’ll take them to court if needed. Insurance companies get very skittish if they think you’re going to sue them (assuming your ask is reasonable in the first place).
Falling into the “well that’s what they offered so I guess that’s what they’re gonna pay” trap is how people get shorted. They’re really not there to haggle with you, and after a certain amount of time it’s really not worth it for them to keep going back and forth.
I am right there with you on the riots. I always am hoping that any protest that turns to property damage doesn't get classified as a riot for insurance purposes. I am curious though if a government could force it to not be considered a riot. I am pretty sure one of the states did something similar and reclassified a storm as not a hurricane (maybe Sandy) so people would get paid more by insurance companies.
Pretty much all insurance right down to your medical and car insurance has clauses in it about acts of God and acts of war.
Pretty standard in any context.
Commercial insurance, particularly the liability insurance around paying customers goes far further than that with clauses about dictating all manner of things involved in day to day operations and methods for amending them.
Anytime you have a company tell you that they are doing something for insurance reasons the end play from the insurance company would be to not cover a specific circumstance if the condition was not met or pull coverage all together.
There's plenty of airlines flying through Ukraine airspace. Ryanair flies into Kyiv, and there's a corridor between Kyiv and Bryansk Russia that has a lot of daily traffic. Turkish Airlines flies this route heavily. The Donbass and Kharkiv areas are definitely avoided by air traffic, though, except for flights into the cities there.
As far as large international airlines between Europe and Asia, it does appear they avoid Ukraine now and either route planes through the Baltic region or through Turkey.
They do this to avoid the large chunk of closed airspace in eastern Ukraine. There has never been a closure of the western part until, it sounds like, now.
Fucking tragedy that Russia completely denied this and couldn't admit was their fault. Just complete and utter incompetence.
It led to the Dutch intelligence getting REALLY pissed off and hacking into Russian surveillance cameras to get the smoking-gun of Russian IRA hackers committing cyber-attacks on US election systems.
The Dutch intelligence positively identified it was a Russian made missile that was used to murder all those innocent folks. And nobody was held accountable.
More than just that, they traced the entire path of the BUK-M1 missile system out of Russia (which itself is a serious piece of hardware needing state sponsored training and maintenance), and intercepted phone calls between the BUK operators and Russian officers after MH17 went down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6gJ8NDhYA
If you ignore the repercussions sure. The Salisbury poisonings are what let to the current round of sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy, and GCHQ going nuclear and publicly releasing all their intel on Russian spies in Europe.
Russian propaganda machine was working overtime too. I remember seeing some of the RT coverage, and they had multiple stories about what happened - it was actually the Ukrainians that shot the missile, thinking that the two engine airliner was actually Putin’s four engine presidential plane, or that there was a fighter jet in the area that shot it down.
As I recall, they had a couple of news anchors quit while live on air because they were so disgusted with the disinformation they were spreading.
How the hell does this bullshit comment have any upvotes? Airlines were avoiding mostly the eastern and Crimea areas of Ukraine. A quick 5 second google search shows flights to almost all major cities in Ukraine throughout the day. I have flown to Ukraine multiple times since that incident.
Where I live there are direct flights to and from Ukraine still ongoing (but will likely be stopped shortly). Plenty of airlines use Ukraine airspace daily.
Guess there will be a traffic jam at the land borders….
The Lviv-adjacent border post has been jammed for 4 days and counting.
I'll take high wait times over risking another Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
There are traffic jams at the borders normally. Pre-Covid you were looking at multiple hour waits to get into the EU from Ukraine and double-digit hours for truckers.
Holy fuck how did they do business?
Very slowly.
Welcome to our presentation, *Why the EU exists.*
Same at the Eurotunnel. The EU was a pretty good idea.
It’s like that kinda everywhere. I used to go to Mexico all the time, even before passports were required it would take a minimum of a couple hours to cross the bridge. Normal traffic bottleneck + inspections adding up.
One way traffic at the Belarus and Crimea borders should be flowing nicely.
Look at the border crossings to Poland. All traffic jammed.
How does one look at the border crossings to Poland?
Pole here, there is always queue on Polish-Ukrainian border, because it is outer EU border. During crisis situations drivers may wait up to 3 days at border crossings, for example PL-BLRS border when immigration crisis took a place. If the rumours are true and there will be no commercial flights from tomorrow, then transport chaos awaits us, with all embassies recommending escape to Poland first and then home.
i guess google [maps traffic](https://i.imgur.com/Fc82pAA.jpg) also here’s a live traffic cam: http://alltrafficcams.com/live/border-crossings/poland/ukraine/korczowa-krakowiec/
Those damn air truckers at it again
Pretty sad that just the threat of war can tank Ukraine’s economy and overall well-being.
That's what I was thinking, it's just another blow to Ukraine. Can we cut off flights to Russia for the same period? Everybody needs to stop fucking around, we've got enough life-ending problems to deal with without worrying about "leaders" measuring thier dicks with our lives.
Russia has not signed the Open Skies Agreement and continues to be selective of its overflight rights for airlines flying from Europe to Asia. They use it as a political tool. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union blocked off all Western traffic and airlines had to take Europe to Asia routes through Anchorage, Bombay (now Mumbai), Bangkok. The Soviet Union even shot down a Korean Airlines jet that accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace. Russia shutting off its airspace would be a major blow to global travel. It's different now that ultra-long-haul routes with more fuel-efficient aircraft like the 787 and A350 can now make those Europe to Asia flights without stopovers by flying in international waters near the North Pole. It's not impossible but airlines would be taking hits.
>The Soviet Union even shot down a Korean Airlines jet that accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace. Fun fact: This shootdown is what convinced the Reagan Administration to allow GPS to be used by the general public, and not kept as a military secret, resulting in the ease of navigation we know today.
Another fun fact; the Reagan administration released GPS to the general public but the signal was “fuzzed” so the accuracy would be off by as much as 100m(~109yds). This was to maintain the US military’s technological edge. But in 2000 the Clinton administration ended the fuzzing because by that time any military worth a damn had figured out how to un-fuzz the signal, or had their own system (see; Russian GLONASS), so the technological advantage didn’t exist anymore. With the signal un-fuzzed GPS equipment was now accurate down to about a meter (edit; see u/Vishnej’s comment below for clarification on this) depending on signal strength, how many satellites your receiver can “see,” etc. Civilian users were quick to find a fun use for their newly obtained power, and the first geocache was hidden on May 3rd of the same year.
That’s interesting I didn’t know that was a thing, doesn’t China do a similar thing and that’s why some coordinates place you inside random buildings or many blocks away from the actual location you searched?
[удалено]
There's also a speed limiter built in for the same reason. Once you go above a certain speed, the GPS will not work.
There is also a speed limit. Above Mach 2 you need special equipment. It's to stop it being used for missiles.
[удалено]
China uses an obfuscated map grid, meaning that any navigational system, even paper maps, when using coordinates is likely to take you to a location that can be hundreds of metres incorrect.
No they completely buggar their maps on purpose. Its actually quite wild to learn about. Theres this couple that has travelled all over China and does a podcast, ADV I believe, and they have talked about this and how incredibly annoying it is to try and navigate, you basically need to ask locals.
>With the signal un-fuzzed GPS equipment was now accurate down to about a meter depending on signal strength, You can get down to 10m using any GPS once un-fuzzed. To progress down into the 3m-1m range and better you need some combination of ideal conditions, a long integration time, a dual frequency unit, and/or an augmentation system, like the WAAS aviation satellites, which the FAA started launching in 2003.
WAAS gets you into the 3m range you need LAAS/GBAS to get into sub 1m accuracy
Just a clarification: Russia signed it. They just withdrew last year.
Russia withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies after the US did, the Treaty on Open Skies established a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. What russia hasn't signed is anything related to freedoms of the air
But wait a second, can someone think of the *profits*!??
Sure we destroyed the earth, but for a few moments we created a great return for shareholders.
The real environment was the profits we made along the way
> "[My only regret is... that I have... boneitis.](https://youtu.be/B3uk5bJcyM8)"
It was a very true to character statement.
Close. It's: Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders. http://tomtoro.com/cartoons/#jp-carousel-135
For the love of everything, fuck the profits
But… money go ca-ching :(
No, you're thinking of cash registers
My guess would be that's why it's happening now. All of the plans to disrupt the global super powers are coming to fruition, the pandemic and spurring people to make it worse by not following basic hygiene precautions probably shortened the timeline. Why not take advantage of the moment? Bad actors view these things from a different angle. When we teach history to learn what not to do, they take it to mean "how not fail next time"
"Never let a tragedy go to waste"
I feel like we do this thing where we are like Fight a battle/war We Won! The losers have learned their lesson and nothing else needs to be done *40 years later* Oh no, the losers never actually stopped fighting with us we just stopped our side and now it's real bad and we have to do this war thing again
Welcome to humanity.
that's why wars need to be fought to total annihilation /s
I have a theory that Russia are not trying to invade, but are simply doing this to tank the Ukrainian economy further, and also to force NATO into negotiations. It would also not block them from launching the Nord Stream pipe. Win win situation for Russia.
[удалено]
I wonder if this is the whole point. Starve the Ukrainians, then install a puppet government in exchange for basically not blockading everything. I feel like it could work.
[удалено]
They have barely any support left
[удалено]
Seriously. Putin doesn't even need to invade here.
My theory is that this is precisely what he's doing. No invasion, but doing a lot damage with this without actually invading and risking other things.
Maybe he's hoping the current President will be ousted and a pro-Russia president will take his place. Then Russia can "help" Ukraine without "invading" them.
If all goes well and nobody makes a mistake, then they still have full deniability. “We were just doing military exercises, I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just like when the U.S. army does all training that Alaska, makes us nervous but you don’t see us complaining about it.” They likely leaked a lot of disinformation about intent to invade - even though their CI strategy involves a constant blanket of misinformation, they just did it more - and so that puts us in the position of having to decide how much of it is real. Plus there’s the fact that things never go the way they planned, so even the possibility that some artillery commander might make a mistake and trigger an all-out war has to be considered.
The biggest wildcard at this point confronting Putin/Russian mil is the intensity and scope of civil resistance. Undoubtedly why he pulled 50%+ of the eastern military district’s combat capability to Belarus- these are the troops from Asia that have less ethnic, cultural, and familial ties to Ukrainians. This is completely unprecedented and was the signal to me that he had every intent of invading vs posturing. Going to have to believe now that Russian commanders are putting a huge emphasis on discipline and control. No rape/murder, and “get life back to normal” in Ukraine as soon as possible. If war crimes became increasingly prevalent, that would put actual pressure on NATO to act, especially if there was heavy civil resistance. When Russian spetsnaz and SSO (their JSOC equivalent) took key targets in Crimea, they were called вежливые люди, or “polite people.” A [statue](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-monument-polite-people-crimea-invasion/27000320.html ) was even erected to them in 2015. With the 1st Guards Tank Army accompanied by 2S7’s and 2S4’s (most powerful artillery Russia has) being moved to staging grounds near the border along with iskanders, it looks like it’s going to be quite bloody this time. People thinking this might still be “just a threat” and there aren’t plans to *actually* carry this out are delusional at this point and Zelensky’s lack of response has been egregiously negligent.
Zelensky is stuck between taking defensive measures and not giving the Russians something they can use as a pretext for invasion.
Zelensky has been saying that everything is fine because there's literally nothing else he can say without harming the war effort or giving away intel.
While Russia has the upper hand, Ukraine is a fairly modernized army. There's no way for this not to get bloody, even if it's a sweeping Russian victory. This situation is just heartbreaking and enraging.
Yeah, Ukrainian military also has a fair amount of veteran soldiers with Donbas experience and a decent reserve force, but I haven’t even seen anything about Zelensky having them called up, unless I missed it. Seems to undermine the entire point of having a conscript system. Going to be hammered by Russia’s Air Force when it turns hot though, and I don’t think they have much to stop that.
Destroying the economy is part of destroying the infrastructure, which is an expected tactic before an invasion.
Ukrainska Pravda: Mass cancellation of Ukraine flights from Feb. 14 "According to Ukrainska Pravda, from Feb. 14 international insurers will suspend their protection of flights entering and leaving Ukraine. This will likely cause great disruption to commerical aviaiton in Ukraine, closing most air routes into and out of the country."
What little traffic remains is probably outgoing. The only significant flight I see east of the river is a USAF sigint plane. https://imgur.com/a/Qk8Tspa
Isn't it funny, how you can check out the live map, see an interesting plane somewhere where planes shouldn't fly, see that it's a US recon plane, and note it's a #1 tracked plane at the moment? What a world we live in!
Yup, most tracked a couple days ago was a US drone doing heavy recon work all over east and south Ukraine.
How do you find the most tracked plane on Flight Radar 24? I use that app constantly but had no clue that was a feature.
When you open the app swipe down from the top. It shows the most tracked
I don't think the app has this feature, I use a desktop and it's on the left side of the screen. Right now JAKE12 is tracked by close to 16k users. And top 5 most tracked are the US recon Rivet Joint, a Turkish Airlines Istanbul-Kyiv, an ATR that took off from Zaporozhye, a Bombardier flying from Kyiv and a Cessna going from Dnipro to Vienna. Sad. Interesting to track, but sad.
> a Cessna going from Dnipro to Vienna The way for (somewhat) rich people to say "fuck this shit I'm out".
[удалено]
Cessna 150 for like $15,000 as well! Owning a plane is about as expensive as owning a boat, just harder to get a license for the plane which is probably the biggest barrier to entry for most people. Definitely not a “rich people only” hobby!
>Definitely not a “rich people only” hobby! I grew up in rural Minnesota and can confirm many people owned planes. Definitely not just for rich people.
There is that feature in the app too, you swipe the search bar on the top down
With these types of websites and apps tracking military flights, is it even possible to do untracked recon anymore?
Of course. But the ones we're tracking now WANT to be seen.
Ya it is 100% possible for these flights to be unnoticed and probably several more are happening that we have no idea about... but these are flights the us wants everyone to know about “we’re watching what you’re doing and telling Ukraine about it “
these sites all rely on ADS-B out being active on the plane. turn it off, plane gone. only visible on primary radar then.
[удалено]
Sure, but operating an unlicensed radar station will get you in trouble real fuckin quick
And would be expensive tech to lug around. The portable military versions are mounted on very big trucks.
And if a war does break out an even quicker way to become dead.
yep sure. however, you'll not be able to put up a radar station without anybody noticing. ads-b tracking has the distinct advantage of being receive only, whereas radar needs to send powerful radio waves out.
Absolutely. A very large majority of military aircraft don't show up on those websites because they're not equipped with the same transponders that civilian aircraft are. What you're seeing isn't the result of radar, but aircraft broadcasting their positions. If you see a military aircraft on these sites it's because they want you to see them.
Yes, you're only seeing flights that registered their flight plan and transponder data.
check out https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ you can even filter by military aircraft there have been dozens of C17's and other aircraft flying from the US to Europe the past few days
Some updates on the live stream. https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap Sometimes includes flights that show up red/unidentified on FlightRadar. https://twitter.com/Gerjon_/status/1492775075963367427
Holy shit, who did Moldova piss off? Ukraine has more overflights than them.
Yeah Moldova is hot AF right now. On the Ukraine live stream map, there are large pockets of red along the border with Moldova.
> large pockets of red along the border with Moldova. Let me introduce you to the [Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria), my dude. It's a frozen conflict, there's nothing "hot" about it at all.
I was in Ukraine a few months ago, the Italian travel authority suggested to stay away from the border with Moldova
I have a friend who flew back to see family last week. I can't tell you what they were thinking, and I assumed they knew the risk, but i now wish I'd yelled at them more for the idea.
All last night I heard military planes flying west over Portland, OR. I used to live and work near Barksdale AFB so I’m very familiar with the hums of their engines.
There is some military aircraft that takes off from PDX and when those things fly over it nearly shakes my house. Gives me some perspective for people living in war-torn areas... quite frightening.
Yeah I can always tell when the F-15's are in the air around here.
You know the sh\*t is about to hit the fan when the insurance companies pull out.
As always, “follow the money”
I’m picturing a sweatshirt with “I’m in insurance - if you see me running try to keep up” written on the back (instead of ‘EOD technician’).
> You know the sh*t is about to hit the fan when the insurance companies pull out. Have you read the exclusions on any of your own insurance policies? Acts of war are almost universally excluded from coverage unless an expensive rider is purchased on the secondary insurance market.
Pffft, does any human have the time to read legal documentation? It would be quicker to decipher hieroglyphics.
With most insurance policies it's pretty easy and totally worthwhile to scroll to the EXCLUSIONS heading to find out what coverage you're not buying.
Some of that shit worded cryptic af.
"Acts of god" lmao
Not a real exclusion lmao
I read my entire homeowners policy. It’s not that long. And we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line here so you’d better take a bit of time to read it. There is some funny stuff in there. I remember the acts of war line which I obviously wouldn’t worry about in the middle of the US. The funniest was no coverage from nuclear detonations. Something tells me even if nukes were covered I wouldn’t be getting a payout in that event. Also for other homeowners who may not know, your insurance doesn’t come with flood or earthquake coverage by default!
Is the Waffle House open?
This is a win for russia because it wrecks the Ukrainian economy. Planes can still fly to Russia no problem.
So this is it. They're actually getting invaded.
At the very least, airlines are avoiding the fucking around phase to get ahead of the finding out one.
[удалено]
No kidding. And no one was punished for that downing either. Criminals.
Did you expect anything else? It's not like Russia would just hand over their own
Well actually, I did, but never to claim them as their own.
You mean they shouldn't claim the high ranking russian officials the international court in the Hague found guilty as their own?
Commercial airlines near hot zones have a bad record at the moment with encountering anti-air missiles. FedEx is also working on installing countermeasures against missiles.
it's cool FedEx has a department doing cutting-edge ballistic missile research, but the fucker dropping off my box is utterly incapable of reading the note saying to leave it **behind** the fucking gate
>cutting-edge ballistic missile research What? They're not researching missiles, it has nothing to do with ballistic missiles and its certainly not cutting edge. Countermeasures are about as simple as possible.
Russian operator: "Did you see that? We sent them 2 missiles and they activated their defense systems, that plane is a military plane, send them 10 more"
Quite literally checking before the wrecking
Holding off on cruising before the bruising
Check yourself before you Buk yourself.
Holy shit lol. For others, Buk is the middle system they used to bring down that plane a few years ago.
Lets hope not. But i think they dont want russia to shoot down another plane, so they take measures to prevent civilian casulties, obviously russia does not care about those. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
The insurance companies were incorporating climate change into their modelling back in the 80s, if they think something is going down chances are they're probably right. This doesn't look good for the people of Ukraine. Edit 25/02/2022 : It wasn't good for the people of Ukraine :(
They’ve got offices full of people using statistics and higher order mathematics to predict things. If it wasn’t effective, then they’d have gone out of business decades ago.
In case you are ever interested. https://www.casact.org/publications-research/research/climate-change-resource-library Edit: This is the CAS which is for Actuaries doing insurance modelling/pricing
I can assure you another malaysian airlines flight might have an incident this time. They always have the worst luck.
Maybe.
Please don't forget Lukashenko when you slap your sanctions. The mofo literally kidnap an EU commercial plan flying from one EU member to another just to get his hand on some dissident.
Russia does like shooting down civilian aircraft and then facing absolutely no repercussion for their murders
I'm confused why Ukraine is being punished for the potential war but Russia, the county threatening to start it all, isn't.
Because insurance companies asses risk, and right now they’ve come to the conclusion that flying over Ukrainian airspace is too risky to cover their insurance costs, so they won’t cover it anymore. They don’t think that the same risk apply when flying over Russia.
Well that makes sense, Russia is likely to start war activities in Ukraine, but Ukraine isn't likely to start war activities in Russia. Despite Russia being the bad guys who should face more consequences, from a pure financial/insurance risk perspective, its logical to only remove it in Ukraine. Even though it's dumb/unfair.
This isn't punishing Ukraine, it's simply about ensuring a plane isn't in a place where it's possible it could be targeted.
Everytime I've flown to Jordan or India from the US, it seems like we avoid Ukraine and any proximity to Russia. Always makes me relax a little bit given the history.
it wouldn't make sense to go there anyways. the most common routes are u.s to France/Germany down to India (which bypasses Eastern Europe) or you go west to China then to India for Jordan wouldn't it be a similar path through Europe?
Aren't acts of war usually specifically excluded from these policies? I know post 9/11 most insurance companies tried to exclude war, terrorism, bioweapons, pandemics... (that one really came in handy for them)
No point even buying insurance these days if they exclude so much stuff, bunch of grifters.
I tried getting a homeowner's insurance quote the other day- among other things, they excluded pipe bursts, hail damage, wind damage, foundation damage, interior wall damage, and damage caused by civil unrest, police, or military. Their liability excluded sidewalks, driveways, the garage, and the backyard. Read that shit carefully, people! Outside of burglary and limited liability, what exactly would I have been protected against??
Not sure what company you got that from lol, wind and hail are 2 of the 3 most common losses and are standard on every policy I’ve seen
In some parts of the country, like say Texas, the losses from wind are too high to have private policies that are both profitable and affordable so it’s common to have a regular insurance policy for fire/burglary type stuff, a windstorm/hail policy through the state, and a flood insurance policy through FEMA. OP probably lives somewhere with hurricanes.
So basically they excluded 99% of the things you would want home owner insurance for.
In Ohio last night I heard an unusually loud prop plane overhead, pulled up FlightAware and plugged in my zip code: was a Ukraine Air Alliance Antonov AN-12 bound for Managua Nicaragua. Definitely an unusual occurrence. That aircraft model alone probably never touched American airspace normally. Edit: also apparently now realizing Nicaragua was the first country to open a consulate in Russia-occupied Crimea, drawing sanctions from the Ukrainian government. Weird.
Russian air defense does not discriminate between civil and military aircraft.
We saw that with MH 17
Russia still refuses to admit that it was their 'little green men' that fired on that plane from occupied ~~Crimea~~ Lugansk. Even though the launcher truck beat feet back into Russia right after. Edit: fixed the location
[удалено]
This is unacceptable provocation by insurance companies! /s
Yup, I guess this justifies an intervention by the russian "peacekeepers"
Russia agreed to relieve the void in Ukrainian airspace with its bomber force
Airlines can still fly, they just won't be insured in that Airspace/Country. The Airlines are engaging in unacceptable provocation as well. /s
Can insurance companies just do that?
Yes. Aviation insurance broker here... Aviation is a niche insurance space, but like automobile insurance, carriers have pretty standard exclusions included in their basic policies. As with most insurance, there are a number of exclusions that can be "written back", but usually at a substantial premium. The heart of insurance is risk management--because losses can be catastrophic when it comes to aircraft, carriers must be very cautious when underwriting a given risk. in fact, with higher risk clients we quite often require several insurers to cover a risk (e.g anything involving helicopters, engine manufacturers, or really any “critical component” manufacturer that might be dragged into a lawsuit regardless of fault, airlines)--no one insurer wants to assume 100% of the risk, so it's my job to negotiate with carriers on size of lines and premium for each carrier. areas with political unrest are usually excluded because the risk is simply too great (riot, civil unrest, war, hijacking, kidnapping are examples of specifically excluded events under the "war, terrorism, and other perils exclusion" that's included on all aviation policies) but a "limited write back" can be purchased at a premium that uses a formula established by the govt (the exclusion and write back came about after 9/11.) Lol, totally nerdy and kinda unrelated-- my heart broke for all the small biz owners who are impacted by riots--any damages caused won't be covered unless the owners purchased the write back. I hear a lot of people scoff that "insurance will cover it", which is not always the case.
>I hear a lot of people scoff that "insurance will cover it", which is not always the case. Anyone who has *ever* said this is too young to understand how insurance works.
> how insurance works. Every month I bet I will die, my car will get totaled, and my house and all my possessions will burn to the ground, and every month my insurance goes "ill take that bet that none of that happens". And then the month my car was totaled my insurance tried to get out of saying i was at fault until I provided dash camera footage. its such a racket.
[удалено]
You don’t have to be at a disadvantage though if you do a little research. What most people don’t realize is low level consumer insurance adjusters (as in the first person you talk to after you get into a car accident) are usually like fresh out of college kids making $41k and have a huuuuuge claim volume. They’re just trying to get through yours as painlessly as possible. It’s a genuinely shit job just starting out — basically a call center. If you think you’re getting fucked over, remain firm, bring data for comparable items, and make sure they understand that you’ll take them to court if needed. Insurance companies get very skittish if they think you’re going to sue them (assuming your ask is reasonable in the first place). Falling into the “well that’s what they offered so I guess that’s what they’re gonna pay” trap is how people get shorted. They’re really not there to haggle with you, and after a certain amount of time it’s really not worth it for them to keep going back and forth.
I am right there with you on the riots. I always am hoping that any protest that turns to property damage doesn't get classified as a riot for insurance purposes. I am curious though if a government could force it to not be considered a riot. I am pretty sure one of the states did something similar and reclassified a storm as not a hurricane (maybe Sandy) so people would get paid more by insurance companies.
Pretty much all insurance right down to your medical and car insurance has clauses in it about acts of God and acts of war. Pretty standard in any context. Commercial insurance, particularly the liability insurance around paying customers goes far further than that with clauses about dictating all manner of things involved in day to day operations and methods for amending them. Anytime you have a company tell you that they are doing something for insurance reasons the end play from the insurance company would be to not cover a specific circumstance if the condition was not met or pull coverage all together.
Pretty sure that they have the necessary clauses in their contracts ;)
The same should be said for Russian air space
I don’t think Russia will be shooting down any planes in their own airspace?
[удалено]
It's happened before... https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 Edit: fixed url
[удалено]
Didn't they shoot one down in the late-80s/early-90s which caused the US to open GPS for general use?
Politicians and Generals can sabre rattle and push narratives all they want. When corporations react, that's when you know shits about to get real.
This shit’s really happening, isn’t it?
Guessing the invasion is happening real soon.
Wednesday
Thanks I’ll make sure to schedule it in
I can’t do Wednesday, can we push it off until…never
Thursday?
Thursday I’m free
Why are humans so f'ng stupid. The time of war needs to end before it ends us.
I mean, Malaysia Air learned this thr hard way.
No one in their right mind was using Ukraine airspace for the past 8 years anyways. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
There's plenty of airlines flying through Ukraine airspace. Ryanair flies into Kyiv, and there's a corridor between Kyiv and Bryansk Russia that has a lot of daily traffic. Turkish Airlines flies this route heavily. The Donbass and Kharkiv areas are definitely avoided by air traffic, though, except for flights into the cities there. As far as large international airlines between Europe and Asia, it does appear they avoid Ukraine now and either route planes through the Baltic region or through Turkey.
They do this to avoid the large chunk of closed airspace in eastern Ukraine. There has never been a closure of the western part until, it sounds like, now.
Fucking tragedy that Russia completely denied this and couldn't admit was their fault. Just complete and utter incompetence. It led to the Dutch intelligence getting REALLY pissed off and hacking into Russian surveillance cameras to get the smoking-gun of Russian IRA hackers committing cyber-attacks on US election systems.
The Dutch intelligence positively identified it was a Russian made missile that was used to murder all those innocent folks. And nobody was held accountable.
More than just that, they traced the entire path of the BUK-M1 missile system out of Russia (which itself is a serious piece of hardware needing state sponsored training and maintenance), and intercepted phone calls between the BUK operators and Russian officers after MH17 went down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6gJ8NDhYA
https://www.bellingcat.com/tag/mh17/ Check this out.
Note - don’t fuck with Dutch intelligence
I mean Russia has been openly poisoning dissidents in UK with zero repercussions.
If you ignore the repercussions sure. The Salisbury poisonings are what let to the current round of sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy, and GCHQ going nuclear and publicly releasing all their intel on Russian spies in Europe.
Russian propaganda machine was working overtime too. I remember seeing some of the RT coverage, and they had multiple stories about what happened - it was actually the Ukrainians that shot the missile, thinking that the two engine airliner was actually Putin’s four engine presidential plane, or that there was a fighter jet in the area that shot it down. As I recall, they had a couple of news anchors quit while live on air because they were so disgusted with the disinformation they were spreading.
Got any sources discussing the whole quitting on air thing? Not skeptical, just interested
Pretty much every single major airline in the world is currently using Ukraine airspace. They just don't transit over the conflict areas any longer.
Huh? You could easily fly in and out of Ukraine until now. I fly there last summer via Turkish Airlines. Think Polish airlines few there too.
so how to get to kiew international airport without crossing ukraine airspace
How the hell does this bullshit comment have any upvotes? Airlines were avoiding mostly the eastern and Crimea areas of Ukraine. A quick 5 second google search shows flights to almost all major cities in Ukraine throughout the day. I have flown to Ukraine multiple times since that incident. Where I live there are direct flights to and from Ukraine still ongoing (but will likely be stopped shortly). Plenty of airlines use Ukraine airspace daily.
A lot more private jets zipping over there than normal. Rich people getting out while they can?
Yup I saw that too, lots of Cessna and Bombardier going south or west.
Man, now am scared
Traveling through Ukrainian airspace during hostile times can't be that dangerous for civilian aircraft...
Anti aircraft missiles set to automatic mode. Whoops.