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Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

reuters.com

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Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#61

Post by Johnny555 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #44
Johnny555 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU and USA can't attack Russian troops directly without escalating the war far more than anyone wants. No one wants to provoke a nuclear nation, not even another nuclear nation. As long as Putin doesn't try to advance out of Ukraine, I doubt that NATO will offer any direct support beyond supplying arms and training.

There was a missed opportunity to seriously prevent war. NATO should have been requested to by Ukraine and declared a no fly zone for military aviation west of the Dnieper, before Russia invaded. An inability to use aviation would have severely slowed Russian plans.

I really doubt that NATO would be willing to enforce this no-fly zone in a non-NATO nation, that would mean being willing to shoot down Russian military aircraft, which would surely escalate the war.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#62

Post by kfarr »

cure wrote: post #56
inglor_cz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even every financial weapon. EU isn't united on kicking Russia out of SWIFT.

That was yesterday. Today, the situation is evolving quickly.

That was swift :P https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/t0epur/boris_joh...

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#63

Post by dathinab »

stickfigure wrote: post #32
madaxe_again wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two strategic points off the top of my head: One, the railhead. Afaik it’s operational and modern, as they used it for moving material for constructing the sarcophagus. Goes straight to Kiev. Makes for easy onwards transport of materiel from Belarus. Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possi…

> Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possible. Does the wind only blow west? This seems pretty far fetched.

Does Putin care, he will just say the West or Ukraine did so to hinder Russia and then use the damage to Russia as an excuse to act even more ruthless.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#65

Post by Freestyler_3 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #48
BitwiseFool wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually deviously brilliant. No one wants to shell the area because it would release all the dust and radionuclides that were buried during the cleanup. It is a perfect staging area because the downside to attacking it is so high. No allied forces in Europe want to deal with the fallout - literally. This is so genius I'm genuinely in awe. This is right out of Sun Tzu: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on…

Unless they're literally housed inside the containment building, this is useless against precision guided missiles and bombs. Are you talking about deterrence to nuclear bombing of Chernobyl? Then it is a moot point because the fallout from the weapon itself would dwarf the dormant fissile material in the containment facility. Sorry, but this makes no sense. If Russia wants to deter EU with fallout, they already have…

I think a nuclear bomb and a nuclear power plant are very different and have different halftimes.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#66

Post by gpm »

dekhn wrote: post #55
hwers wrote: post #21

I can't really tell what's going on here. Is the EU and America supposed to be helping out but it's all promises without real counter attacks? Is this just the calm before the storm as russia places their troops in the right spots while everyone looks on? Anyone who's smarter than me who could enlighten me?

NATO/US is preparing to handle the refugee flood into countries invading Ukraine. They are not keeping russia from taking ukraine or holding it, by using military force. It looks like the takeover of Ukraine will be done by tomorrow.

You're overestimating the speed of the attack. Even if the Ukrainians put up no resistance (and they have been putting up resistance) - tanks just don't move that fast/ukraine is a big place.

See the dotted lines in this map - that's a rough estimate of how far the Russians have made it in a day. Even if they continue at the same pace overnight (unlikely), and the next day, and the next night, there's still a lot of the country they won't have physically reached yet.

https://twitter.com/OSINTNS/status/1496880680143568901/photo...

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#67

Post by dathinab »

asdff wrote: post #17
madaxe_again wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two strategic points off the top of my head: One, the railhead. Afaik it’s operational and modern, as they used it for moving material for constructing the sarcophagus. Goes straight to Kiev. Makes for easy onwards transport of materiel from Belarus. Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possi…

Why blow up a dirty bomb when they have 1000 real bombs?

Additionally to what was already said in other threads about this:

Why wast money?

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#68

Post by ajuc »

ethbr0 wrote: post #44
Johnny555 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU and USA can't attack Russian troops directly without escalating the war far more than anyone wants. No one wants to provoke a nuclear nation, not even another nuclear nation. As long as Putin doesn't try to advance out of Ukraine, I doubt that NATO will offer any direct support beyond supplying arms and training.

There was a missed opportunity to seriously prevent war. NATO should have been requested to by Ukraine and declared a no fly zone for military aviation west of the Dnieper, before Russia invaded. An inability to use aviation would have severely slowed Russian plans.

Ukraine did (or some similar arrangement, I'm not sure about details). NATO declined.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#69

Post by outside1234 »

netsharc wrote: post #54
TameAntelope wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine isn't part of NATO, I think it's a big reason why troop deployment hasn't happened.

Even if they were, what's easier, to honour such an agreement with an expensive (materially and in terms of human lives) and dangerous (would cause the conflict so spread) deployment or to say "Sorry, you're going to have to tough it out yourself.". The USA and UK already abandoned the Afghani people, feels like the once mighty US military really doesn't want to be in a shooting war against Russia. As someone living…

The US will defend NATO. They will nuke Russia's forces if they try to enter Poland. There is no doubt in my mind that is a red line.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#70

Post by rmk »

hwers wrote: post #21

I can't really tell what's going on here. Is the EU and America supposed to be helping out but it's all promises without real counter attacks? Is this just the calm before the storm as russia places their troops in the right spots while everyone looks on? Anyone who's smarter than me who could enlighten me?

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so options are somewhat limited. Russia intends to use Chernobyl as a deterrent to NATO, according to the report (how, I do not know). It is also not straightforward to put a NATO ally right on Russia's vulnerable flank (it's endless plains and flat ground from Ukraine to Moscow, which has always been a source of strategic vulnerability for Moscow), so admitting Ukraine to NATO was never a concrete possibility. In fact, the US has had to tread very carefully simply to place missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Poland, which is a neighbor of Ukraine.

Russia had a buffer state that was content to do its bidding in Yanukovich et. al. but after the Ukrainians overthrew their corrupt government and made moves to establish a genuine western-style democracy with rule of law, Russia were forced to shore up their vulnerable flank. This is part of that process. But they now face bad consequences, including neutral Finland and Sweden deciding to join NATO, perhaps Georgia also, and Germany (and Europe in general) starting to look for alternate energy sources in earnest (Russia supplies a huge percentage of Europe's energy needs, and is also a huge supplier of many rare earths and raw materials that are critical to the Semiconductor Industry).

EDIT: Belarus is also a client state of Russia's, and there has been unrest there, so perhaps Russia is sensing that they might slip as well. Putin is desperate to do whatever it takes to stay in power in Russia, and these things play into that as well.

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