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Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

reuters.com

571–580 of 894 posts

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#571
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Causing a nuclear incident in a place you want to occupy is profoundly stupid.

You're making a pretty serious assumption that they're doing something haphazard rather than something calculated and planned. What's your reason for first assuming incompetence?

IMO we want to believe that the second best military on the planet is not competent because it is more comforting than the idea that the second best military actually planned out this assault on a sovereign country.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#572
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Purposely causing nuclear disasters is one way to ensure a country can never join NATO or the EU Why? Nuclear disaster is bad, but how would it ensure that a country can _never_ join NATO or the EU? Ukraine already had the Chernobyl disaster on their soil, and I don't see that one as keeping them out of either organisation _forever_.

Even though it was on Ukrainian soil, still: USSR had Chernobyl disaster, not Ukraine. It’s one of the reasons Ukraine separated from USSR.

I suspect that legally speaking Ukraine is one of the successor states of the USSR?

Doesn't matter too much for the point I made in any case:

If a nuclear disaster were to happen in Ukraine now, NATO and EU would also not blame it on Ukraine.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#573
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I miss something today? Did NATO deploy troops into Russia or Ukraine?

If you want to achieve victory, you must understand your enemy as well as yourself. The Russian attitude towards NATO expansion into Ukraine can be roughly viewed from an American perspective as well equivalent as the old Warsaw Pact attempting to bring Mexico into their treaty. Or, at least, this is part of the explanation used to frame it as an ‘existential threat’ for Russia. This, combined with a somewhat precari…

I dont think this take advances understanding of Russia. This is how Americans sees the world. Americans are not trying to make America larger, therefore they will project same lack of wish to get larger on Russia.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#574
post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at a dangerous level, say more than eating a banana. The dam breaks killed and hurt magnitudes more people.

A single dam break did not killed and hurt magnitudes more people then singly Chernobyl.

> In 1975 the failure of the Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China caused more casualties than any other dam failure in history. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#575
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Purposely causing nuclear disasters is one way to ensure a country can never join NATO or the EU Why? Nuclear disaster is bad, but how would it ensure that a country can _never_ join NATO or the EU? Ukraine already had the Chernobyl disaster on their soil, and I don't see that one as keeping them out of either organisation _forever_.

gp was saying that if you blow up the country enough, there's no country left to join NATO.

That's a fair point in general. Exploding all nuclear reactors in Ukraine isn't going to do that though.

And, of course, Russia could do much blowing up with conventional weapons, too.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#576
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that you are likely seeing the Russian propaganda through a filter of western propaganda and interpretation.

With the internet and Google translate, you can easily go read for yourself. And it’s still pretty nutty with no western filter applied. The accidentally published victory unification speech is particularly crazy: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...

Thanks for the link!

Yes, I agree that it's pretty nutty. It's just that to actually verify that we have to do a bit more work, like you suggested; otherwise we might just be bullshitting ourselves.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#577
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is fighting to survive an attack by the other. This statement, while true, changes denotation depending on the scale at which you view this conflict. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the existential threat is to Ukraine. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and NATO, the existential threat is to Russia.

I don't quite understand Russia's paranoia around NATO. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia already border Russia (+ Poland if you count Kaliningrad). Why is it such a big deal for Ukraine to enter a defense pact, unless Russia wants to retain the right to invade when they see fit? Not trying to be rhetorical, this existential threat to Russia is news to me.

Don't forget Norway.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#578
post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-Unless the Russian forces have way better connections than we give them credit for, they can not control which way the wind blows. At the moment, the winds come from the southeast, so a lot of the fallout would end up in Russia.

As far as I can tell, this power station is in the south-east. A wind from the south-east would dump fallout in central Ukraine, not Russia.

-Most definitely, but there'd be plenty to spare for Russia, too.

Blown up nuclear power plants are equal opportunity weapons.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#579
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If NATO got involved my guess is that the chance of an all out nuclear war would increase to near 100% because Russia can not win a conventional war with NATO which means nukes would need to be deployed to level the playing field. Once one Nuke is fired it's likely they'll all be because the only real defence against a nation using nuclear weapons against you is to try to wipe them out before they wipe you out. In th…

Given the accepted MAD doctrine, which kept the "peace" throughout the cold war, you would think nuclear escalation would be unthinkable as a means to stave off a conventional defeat on foreign soil.

For a mad man who's going to lose anyway, what does he care if he takes the whole world with him?

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#580
post #205

I am absolutely livid and terrified for the state of the world right now.

Consider that there have been terrible things happening to people throughout the world, every day, for years. This is bad, of course, but I'd caution you that you're letting the media dictate your emotions. Did you feel this mad during the (still ongoing) Syrian conflict? How about when Russia invaded Georgia? Or the first Ukraine invasion in Crimea? In all three cases the threat of nuclear war was probably as high a…

The more I think about this kind of take, the less it makes sense. People on this site talk about American president and American race relations more then about China too. Because there are many Americans here. There are many Europeans here too and thus they talk about about war right next to EU. Indians here run to every discussion involving india. Asia biased forums do talk about events in Asia a lot too.

People in countries around Syria talked about war in Syria a lot. And in that conflict, America seems to be blamed for both intervening and not intervening enough. It is guilty of Russia bombing cities and Assad actions ... and also for helping rebels in actual fight. Because, in relation with Ukraine war, it is important to make America guilty of literally every bad thing everyone does in every conflict.

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