[namuol]

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

This is a clear war crime. We don’t need to update any international laws, do we? This is by definition indiscriminate, like landmines or chemical weapons.

[maxdo]

Check the reality https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/YW1ldcsYwF

That area is a wasteland . No one lives walk there among civilians with a rare exception more over drive. You probably do not understand what Russia turned these areas to. It was the most populated area in Ukraine . Now it’s an empty land .

[namuol]

Oh I understand and am sympathetic/stand in solidarity with Ukrainian fighters, but war crimes against war criminals are still war crimes.

[maxdo]

It's only your assumptions. If drone is trained on military trucks etc. why is this a crime, it is much better compared to landmines.

[nozzlegear]

Ukraine launches drones into populated Russian cities too though, right? We can justify its use in a wasteland battlefield today, but the fear is that it's used in a Russian or Ukrainian city tomorrow.

(FWIW, and not that it should matter, I support Ukraine in the war. Just not the development of autonomous kill decision drones.)

[maxdo]

as any weapon it can go good or bad. Drones change the ratio needed to attack someone. RN it's x4 of resources from here on it's probably will be x10 x20.

This factor on it's own could scale down amount of wars.

[ak217]

It's nice to have the luxury of deciding which of the horrible choices Ukrainians face are war crimes. But by that measure, a Grad MLRS is just as much of a war crime. Everything in the grid square it obliterates will also be dead.

(For those who don't know, the Grad is the most produced MLRS ever, and the Russian army's weapon of choice for indiscriminately bombarding enemy territory)

[namuol]

Yeah this is a fair point. I’m not making the judgement in this specific case as much as I am making the judgement in the general case of deploying autonomous killing machines like this.

[alkonaut]

An aerial bomb is equally indiscriminate. You make a judgement about the target value and the estimate collateral damage/civilian casualties and you fire if the equation is reasonable. Same here. If it's a muddy square kilometer of trenches do you KNOW there are no civilians? No. But it's not indiscriminate. The target area selection is the key. You can't release an indiscriminate autonomus killer drone into a city of course. But I doubt it'll be long before these drones make target distinction of humans (Vehicle recognition is old at this point).

Just like with land mines it's the military value vs risk of civilian casualties that determine if it's a war crime or not. Some countries have signed the Ottawa treaty, but notably not the US or Russia. And the trend isn't going towards states signing the treaty but rather towards leaving it.

[cornstalks]

> like landmines

Boy do I have news for you about the use of landmines in the Ukraine war…

[victorbjorklund]

There is nothing but valid targets in those zones. Not different from sending a cruise missile on a military base killing everything there.

[nozzlegear]

If we accept that the use of chemical weapons versus kinetic weapons is clearly different even though both were used on military targets, we should also consider whether a cruise missile and an autonomous drone are clearly different. Just because the target has a Russian uniform on doesn't mean it's okay to kill them in whatever way we can dream up.

[michael1999]

Landmines are not illegal, except for signatories of the Ottawa Treaty.

[rayiner]

What do you think is the definition of “war crime?”

[fhdkweig]

It would be my hope that unlike landmines, these might have a remote off switch/signal that can disable them after the war ends. At the very least, the battery will die and it won't fly around anymore.

[joe_mamba]

>This is a clear war crime.

Sure, but does the battlefield have any war crime police on site to enforce those laws? Because without enforcement and punishment, all laws written by man are just fake and meaningless pieces of paper. The only laws that are actually real and non-optional are the law of gravity and such.

The war crime laws were invented as a legal theater for victorious powers to persecute the losers after WW2 with a veneer of legality, for imperialist superpowers to bully the small third countries who refuse to play ball, not for something superpowers to actually abide by themselves.

Because otherwise you could prosecute thousands of western/US personnel and their leaders under the same laws they prosecuted nazi soldiers at Nuremberg for what they did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc but you're not gonna see that because the US didn't get conquered to have its soldiers and leaders dragged to court. US even has a law that allows it to invade the Hague if its soldiers are ever to be taken to trial there for war crimes. That tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy and double standards of "war crime" laws. And same thing will happen to Israel, Netanyahu and other war criminals there.

The reality in the real worlds, is that 'might makes right' trumps the geneva convention and war crime laws. Whoever ends up holding the guns on top of the rubble pile is the one making the rules that everyone else is forced to abide by. That's why the US is forced to constantly outspends all other militaries on the planet combined, to ensure they're the ones writing and enforcing international laws, and never ending up in the position to be held accountable by others, because they know that if they ever do, there's a laundry list of receipts waiting for them.

[willis936]

The war crime police are busy blowing up civilian infrastructure.

[sterlind]

> The war crime laws were invented as a legal theater for victorious powers to persecute the losers after WW2 with a veneer of legality, for imperialist superpowers to bully the small third countries who refuse to play ball, not for something superpowers to actually abide by themselves

I recommend you watch Judgment at Nuremberg - the 1961 film, not the 2025 one (I've seen both.) the Nuremberg Trials were very much to punish the architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust for their atrocities. you can choose to be cynical, but consider: which "losers" were "persecuted?"

- the Doctors' Trial sentenced the doctors who murdered thousands of disabled Germany's own citizens in the Aktion T4 program.

- the Judges' Trial sentenced the Judges who enforced the Aryan racial purity laws, ordered the castration of "mental defectives" and sent falsely-accused Jews to their deaths.

- the Pohl Trial which sentenced the SS officers who ran the concentration camps and death camps.

sure, the US doesn't have perfectly clean hands, and the victor usually won't prosecute its own the way they prosecute the enemy, but I strongly disagree that the Hague was just an attempt to "persecute the losers." they were prosecuted, not persecuted, and they weren't prosecuted for "losing," they were prosecuted for their atrocities.

just because the Hague is unfair (some men never faced justice, since they were on "our" side) doesn't mean it was unjust (those who were convicted deserved it.)

[joe_mamba]

>I recommend you watch Judgment at Nuremberg - the 1961 film

Wait, you're actually judging historical events of Nazi Germany based on Hollywood movies written, directed and produced by jews[1], and taking them as unbiased ground truth? That would be like trusting the judge to your trial when he's the same family as the plaintiff. How about maybe listening to unbiased sources that didn't have skin in the game? Because otherwise I can recommend you plenty of Iranian movies explaining why they're innocent and Israel is to blame for their troubles, or plenty of speeches of Netanyahu saying how his military murdering Palestinian children is legitimate justice by the books.

The Nuremberg trials prosecutors actively denied, hid, and even manipulated and destroyed evidence that was going to work in favor for the plaintiffs, just to ensure they get the rope.[2]

Just use your brain for 3 seconds, there's no way a trial run, controlled and funded by the victors was going to be allowed to work against the victors and make them look bad on the international stage, same how no Hollywood movies made on this topic by jews were gonna be unbiased. It was a sham trail through and through, with 100% of the effort going on adding a layer of legitimacy to it while aiming for the same outcome.

It's the same as when you hear corrupt police departments or government institutions today say "we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong". And their corruption only gets unveiled when a higher power like a federal or international court gets involved. Except in the Nuremberg case there was no higher power other than the victors who had skin in the game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_at_Nuremberg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaeGkvy_P5c

[nozzlegear]

Who on earth would you expect to have been unbiased about World War II and the holocaust in 1961?

> written, directed and produced by jews

Really weird thing to look for and point out.