So, I was thinking more about the fact that the air defenses should be destroying an incoming weapon before it's over the target, but yeah, on penetrative power, for this particular attack, it's even harder for Russia to make the case.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-targets-western-russian-regions-with-drones-russian-officials-says-2024-09-18/

Dmitry Bulgakov, then a deputy defence minister, told RIA in 2018 that the facility could defend weapons from missiles and even a small nuclear attack. Bulgakov was arrested earlier this year on corruption charges, which he denies.

"It (the concrete facilities) ensures their reliable and safe storage, protects them from air and missile strikes and even from the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion," RIA quoted Bulgakov as saying at the time.

Like, if the Ministry of Defense is moving from "it can stand up to a nuke" to "falling Ukrainian drone debris blew the thing up", that's one heck of a shift.

considers

I found absolutely bizarre the claims from the Kremlin back when that Russia wasn't shelling Ukraine across the border back when. Like, you're lying. But it's not just that you know that you're lying, but that I know you're lying and that you know that I know that you're lying. If it's not fooling anyone, and you know that you aren't, then why are you persisting in doing it? Like, when I point out that this is nonsense, why continue to expend credibility on this?

It was absolutely mystifying to me. It's not something that one does.

Then read something from someone talking about how this is a Russian cultural thing. Like, the idea, if I understand correctly, is that in a scenario like this, Russia wants other countries to ignore the fact that they're shelling Ukraine. But...it would be awkward for other countries to say "that's okay with me". So the idea here is that they are trying to make it as convenient as possible for others to ignore the fact as well. Like, the idea is that one is sort of trying to lubricate the social interaction with bullshit; there's no deception as such intended, but that the idea is that socially-awkward truths can be more-readily ignored if everyone collectively agrees to disregard them.

It sounds completely bonkers to me, but apparently it is, indeed, a thing.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vranyo

vranyo (uncountable)

1. White lies or half-lies in Russian culture, told without the intention of (maliciously) deceiving, but as a fantasy, suppressing unpleasant parts of the truth.

2007, David Shulman, From Hire to Liar: The Role of Deception in the Workplace, →ISBN, page 79:

The term vranyo in Russian describes the subtle collective participation people can have in deception. Vranyo occurs when one person lies to another, the second person recognizes that the first person is lying, and neither of them acknowledges that any lie was spoken. For example, someone states (knowing otherwise) that he will meet monthly production goals. An audience hears this claim and knows it to be false. No one acknowledges the lie publicly. [...] When a co-worker claims to work incredibly hard but is lying and an observer knows that colleague is lying but does not expose the lie—that is vranyo. In subsequent chapters, workers demonstrate a strong inclination to vranyo. Vranyo occurs routinely in meetings [...]

So, I dunno. Maybe this is Russia doing this vranyo business; the government and the public both know perfectly well that the air defense didn't intercept the Ukrainian strike, but it's easier to pretend that it did than to say that it didn't? It doesn't seem to me that dicking up air defense here would be something difficult-enough to grapple with to where it'd make sense, but then I don't think that this whole vranyo thing makes a lot of sense in the first place, so...shrugs

https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/01/why-the-kremlin-lies-understanding-its-loose-relationship-with-the-truth?lang=en

I still have a hard time seeing why the Russian foreign ministry would try to use it in an international relations context where the other party clearly has no intention of playing along, but I guess that the claims about this depot were probably aimed at a Russian domestic audience; RIA is state-run domestic news, rather than outward-facing. So maybe the idea is that the target audience gets that this is bullshit, but accepts that it is bullshit and is okay with it, and that there's an unspoken social convention to mutually maintain a collective illusion, because it's easier to live with than the truth. I guess? I mean, it sounds nuts to me, but it's clearly a thing in at least some cases, so maybe that's what's driving this.

The full phrase is usually "the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed". I don't know who coined it, but it's been around for some years.

EDIT: Using Google search by date, one of the earlier hits that Google indexed is this one, from 2017:

https://daily-devops.tumblr.com/post/161621189597/best-quote-about-the-elections-ever-the-dildo

That was June 9, 2017, and apparently talking about the British general election of 2017, so it goes back at least as far as that.

It looks like Google may try to infer date of post in some cases from websites, so date search finds some earlier ones, but nothing that appears to be reliably prior to that. They're apparently quoting someone, so I doubt that that's the first time it was used.

Lets hope they choke on the dildo of consequences.

Ah tbh I stole it from elsewhere so steal away :D It's a good one!