partial_accumen , 6 months ago

Can someone explain to me why this shootdown is even news instead of a statistic?

Sure can!

• Russia is highly dependent on its Il-76 jets, and has few of them left from the Soviet era without any ability to create more of them. So one more gone is news.
• This shoot down was over Russian airspace, not in Ukraine, which shows Ukraine’s military reach and undermines Russia’s claim about its ability to defend its own airspace
• We don’t know what missile shot it down. If it was an S300 missile with S300 radar spotting, not news. If it was an American made Patriot PAC-2, then that shows US support is having yet more material impacts on Russia. If it was an S300 missile spotted by Patriot radars (which we saw something similar recently), its showing Ukraine’s ability to enhance existing Soviet era weapons against Russia augmented by Western systems.

Lots of good news in this!