UnspecificGravity

Or, you know, the ability to fuel aircraft that are already airborne so that you can maintain a constantly ariel surveillance and can stage your high value aircraft further from the field of operations.

The fact that Russia has never been able to actually operationalize this basic necessity is a good example of why they have never actually been a peer military to NATO.

Riiiiight, except that the ENTIRE point of this is that it looks like SOMEONE ELSE attacked the ship. If they can effectively fake Ukraine attacking a Russian ship they can effectively fake Ukraine attacking a Turkish ship.

A false flag only makes sense if provides a justification to actually DO something you couldn’t do without the attack. Ukraine attacks Russia every day and visa versa. That is a pointless scenario for a false flag.

Wouldn’t it be like a thousand times more effective for Russia to just attack a Turkish ship with a “ukranian drone” and skip the three steps of logic it would take for anyone to care about a Russian ship getting hit by Ukraine?

OK, But how does Russia benefit from falsely claiming to have been attacked by the one country on earth that literally everyone agrees has the right to attack Russia already?