> If the Ukrainians are doing it the Russians don’t know they’re doing it
wouldn’t that explain it rather cleanly? aren’t there plenty of asinine actions taken in war?
speculation, yes. the cost will likely be downvotes for me. that’s ok. taking your sentence, let’s run with that and show a possibility.
ukraine fights asymmetrically. you have seen this with drone boats, drones dropping bombs, drones taking prisoners, soldiers on e-bikes, etc. scrappy. (many americans dig this subconsciously - echoes of the revolutionary war ringing in their ears from centuries ago.)
russia seems to fight… dumb. brute force. big stick. not the country, not the people, but the military operation - dumb. crude.
if you were a smart, ukranian allied (but maybe not even affiliated) hacker and you wanted to make the russian military look worse, you amp up the damage signals from their march into cez. who cares how plausible, it just needs to be upsetting. russians + radiation. done and done.
if you were a dumb russian, upon learning that “you caused this massive radiation spike,” you might want to hide the evidence - the sensor data. because you don’t want to deal with the fallout, no pun intended.
if you were a smart ukranian hacker, you might get real quiet now, because oops those modified values aren’t exactly going to blend in. but it doesn’t matter. the dumb russian believed your ruse, and hid your manipulation, thinking it their failure. which might be better than you hoped.
the motive can be quite simple. hurt the other side. it doesn’t need to be rational, and the execution can be anything but. which, once all sides are involved, can look more like chaos.
or maybe it was nothing of the sort.