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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

#321

Post by csee »

celticninja wrote: post #271
hutzlibu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's a great position to hold if you can." It is a great position to hold and fight in, because the area is pretty empty of civilians. And russia must avoid ukranian (russian in their eyes) civilian casualties, to not loose the little popular support they have for this war. And neither side will be so stupid to directly bomb the remains of the reactor, but I think it would need a serious direct bombing, for radiatio…

I don't think Putin is worried about loss of life of Ukrainian citizens. He is worried about losing soldiers, or more importantly dead soldiers being repatriated on the news. They will cover up civilian casualties or blame them on Ukrainian troops. The only support for this will come from Russia domestically and it is that which he seeks to maintain with this war. Which I'm guessing he hoped would be quick and decisi…

He should be worried about catastrophic losses like that, it'd be a propaganda coup against him. Small scale killings can be swept under the rug though.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#322

Post by dekhn »

gpm wrote: post #66
dekhn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"By sunset, Russian special forces and airborne troops had seized the Chernobyl site and were pushing into the outskirts of Kyiv." (that's an update from NY Times. We can imagine that special forces will proceed to the government house and presidential office building through tonight and have ownership by tomorrow)

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#323

Post by selfhoster11 »

newuser94303 wrote: post #309
ethbr0 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China invading Taiwan at some point in the future And that's the perspective this should be viewed from. The US may not have a firm interest in Ukraine. The US has a fairly firm interest in Taiwan. The US has a serious interest in Korea, Japan, and the countries bordering the South China Sea. You have to strongly and unconditionally support international order re: Ukraine, so that Xi takes away the right message.

I think the stronger message is that the US is trying to move chip manufacturing to the US so it will not care about Taiwan.

Alternative interpretation: they are trying to undo the total idiocy that was putting all your microchip eggs in one basket. It doesn't matter how cost-effective it is to centralise production, if the result is that the production capability for the single thing we need the most to continue our lifestyle (high-performance integrated circuits), is in peril from a natural/man-made disaster occuring in a small geographical area.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#324

Post by sbmthakur »

jandrese wrote: post #72
whatshisface wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear whether every financial weapon will be used. For example, > The foreign ministers of the Baltic states called for Russia to be cut off from SWIFT, the global intermediary for banks' financial transactions. However, other EU member states were reluctant, both because European lenders held most of the nearly $30 billion in foreign bank's exposure to Russia and because China has developed an alternative t…

This is where diplomacy should shine. It's clear that Russia has been hardening against western sanctions for years now, and CIPS is a big piece of that. If NATO can convince China to also shut them out of CIPS at the same time we turn off SWIFT the Russian Oligarchs will start applying pressure to Putin.

You need to convince Europeans before China.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/kyiv-furious-a...

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#325

Post by sbmthakur »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #240
outside1234 wrote: post #75

Hey, good news people, Switzerland is going to remain neutral and keep taking Russian money. And Germany doesn't want to stop Swift because they need sweet sweet natural gas from Russia

is there a citation for what you wrote? I thought I read the exact opposite of both your sentences some hours ago. perhaps things changed again?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/kyiv-furious-a...

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#326

Post by Arrath »

smsm42 wrote: post #243
odiroot wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The station has been shut down since 2000. There's no power supply there.

Could it still be an important part of the distribution network? Lines, substations, etc.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#327

Post by gutitout »

godmode2019 wrote: post #288
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a great news bullet point in the information war. "Russian forces taking Chernobyl" sounds much more familiar and much more terrifying than "Russian forces taking Chernihiv region" to all of us unfamiliar with the country. Even if strategically realistically it's the latter that is more important than the former.

It also has the following affect: """Don't the Russians already own Chernobyl? I guess it must not be in Russia. I saw a movie and I think they were speaking Russian. Wow they must be crazy actually entering a radiation zone, won't half of the troops die from exposure. I wouldn't want my son fighting those lunatics."""

A lot of people there do speak Russian there. And yes it’s still radioactive, albeit less than a few decades ago. If you’re sending your son to fight, radiation probably the last thing to kill him.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#328

Post by JohnBooty »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #137
jaywalk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should always be plenty of doubt in your mind if you're saying that the US will use nukes in any situation short of someone else using them first.

The US is the only country that used nukes.

This isn't even a remotely similar situation. The biggest difference is that last time around, we were the only people with nukes and (agree with the decision, or not) it was a war ending use of nukes, with zero chance of starting a world war, nuclear or otherwise.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#329

Post by gutitout »

rmk wrote: post #70
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 ne…

Can’t wait to see how “obligated” the USA will feel about Taiwan. I don’t believe NATO is the reason they’re not stopping Putin.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#330

Post by hamburga »

crisdux wrote: post #168
lend000 wrote: post #91

It's hard to view the events unfolding with an objective gaze. Virtually all of western journalism condemns Russia's attacks unilaterally, which seems reasonable, considering people are dying to grow a dictator's empire. But then I read about the history of the conflict and see that Ukraine has had separatist states and civil war for years. It isn't like Ukraine is a stable, peaceful, and unwitting nation, like, say,…

This isn't a Ukrainian or Russian perspective, but an alternative perspective. John Mearsheimer gives a popular alternative perspective. He has a realist foreign policy perspective suggesting that the US and the west provoked Russia by trying to push Ukraine to join NATO and by intervening in the protests/coup in 2013/2014. Russia has a legitimate security interest in ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO and become mi…

Video lecture from Mearsheimer, for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
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