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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

#571

Post by ClumsyPilot »

chewz wrote: post #460
danso wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, your hypothetical is just too far detached from reality to debate — you really think Russia in 2022 is remotely strong enough to sweep across Europe, and the only thing stopping that ambition is fear of MAD? Huh? > I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose. Again…what? Based on NATO’s military inaction re: Ukraine, you’ve concluded that NATO will also do nothing if Russia were to actua…

Every Russian general is born with the ambition of driving his tanks to the Atlantic Ocean. And that won't be much different from what Tsar Alexander did in 1812/1813 with similiar meager resources. So yes, Putin probably is considering this scenario at least in his wet dreams... And it seems like largest country in Europe (by area), with 200 thousand strong army, tons od most sophisticated NATO weapons and 8 years o…

> And it seems like largest country in Europe (by area), with 200 thousand strong army, tons od most sophisticated NATO weapons

Where did you get this idea?

Ukrain has only a tiny airforce, no modern air defences, and most heavy military hardware, from artillery to tanks, is cold war vintage.

NATO never supplied it with modern fighter jets and missile systems, if it had, Russian helicopters would not be circling Kiev right now.

"Every Russian general is born with the ambition of driving his tanks to the Atlantic Ocean"

This is not helpfull, Russia has the idea that it should be able to do as it pleasesnl in its sphere of influence, but I never met anyone thinking it stretched to include anything past former eastern block borders.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#572

Post by vkou »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #405
sofixa wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His plan isn't to take entire control of Ukraine militarily but to swap the legit government with a puppet one he would control at will. Once he succeed, which is a matter of a few days,he'll gradually withdraw most of the forces, things will slowly return to normal and in a few years Ukraine will essentially (if not effectively) annex itself to Russia I wouldn't be so certain. I don't think Ukrainians would just c…

Genuine question: how much does Russian public opinion matter? It's not like Russia has free elections. Iran's Islamic Republic seems pretty secure despite low public approval. I'm sure public opinion is important, but I don't understand its role in a dictatorship.

> Genuine question: how much does Russian public opinion matter

If it didn't matter, internal Russian propaganda organs wouldn't be firing on all cylinders. The press is not just a 'jobs' program.

Every government requires the consent of the governed. Democracies, semi-democracies, dictatorships, autocracies, theocracies, all of them only work because people believe in them.

For this reason, all forms of government put a lot of effort into manufacturing consent among the people they govern.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#573

Post by kidme5 »

trashtester wrote: post #511
lordnacho wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this concept in game theory that it's sometimes worth it to hurt yourself in order to hurt an uncooperative player. If you are always thinking "how do I minimize harm to myself" you get salamied to death. Same as in a poker game, you can't fold every time someone raises big, just because you don't know which times he actually has good cards. If you do he ends up with all your chips. Other thing is about MAD.…

Russia has a bit more than a couple of nukes, as does the US. I believe I've seen the numbers indicate that the present arsenals that are currently in service are too small to erase humanity, but they are definitely big enough to cause hundreds of millions to a few billions of deaths. If we consider the situation of just 1-2 warheads are used in a conflict, I think it really hard to gauge the effect on public percept…

One "solution" is to intercept the nuclear missiles from space. (Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative).

It was restarted a couple years ago with commercial involvement. Possibly a Starlink derivative. Putin must be aware.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#574

Post by XorNot »

dudeinhawaii wrote: post #428

I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…

The missing side of this is that at some point, Russia is taking the bet that NATO blowing those tanks up is not worth escalating to the apocalypse over.

There's a very reasonable argument that NATO could tomorrow announce they're intervening in Ukraine to protect it's sovereignty, operations will be limited to Ukranian territory, and that any attempt to strike out will be met "unescapable retaliation"...and maybe NATO and Russia then have a shooting conventional war in the Ukraine and it stays there.

The reason everyone's trying to avoid that is because the tick-tock of escalation depends on the other side correctly reading the situation and the fog of war. NATO countries are activating units on their borders right now near Ukraine because there's a very real risk of a Russian platoon will get lost, invade a town which is actually in a NATO country, and then you've got to deal with that - and it's probably better the question not get asked because once the shooting starts it's very hard to get it to stop (i.e. suppose our out of position Russian unit calls in artillery, so NATO drops air strikes on the position inside Ukraine, so now the news going up the chain on both sides is "the other side is coming across the border!")

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#575

Post by thelittleone »

dudeinhawaii wrote: post #428

I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…

This reminds me of the "fear" scene from Apocalypto [1]. Living in fear is not really living in my opinion, I'd rather die fighting for what I believe in than live in fear.

Speaking of bloody nose reminds me of boxing. You get hit and you hit back or your opponent won't respect you. You will fear opponent, they will sense it and capitalize.

1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3H_xsdr-Vs

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#576

Post by trashtester »

baybal2 wrote: post #568
trashtester wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has a bit more than a couple of nukes, as does the US. I believe I've seen the numbers indicate that the present arsenals that are currently in service are too small to erase humanity, but they are definitely big enough to cause hundreds of millions to a few billions of deaths. If we consider the situation of just 1-2 warheads are used in a conflict, I think it really hard to gauge the effect on public percept…

The cold war high side estimate was 50M if the West lets USSR to expend the whole of its arsenal on USA standing, doing nothing. Recent figures I read were 20M-40M for worst case scenarios. Realistically, a coordinated all in launch is ~1000 warheads, with 400 of them megaton scale in R36 MIRVs from West Siberia. First strike is only possible with computerised launch infrastructure operational. Beheading the command…

My numbers included the arsenals of all countries, and casualties for all reasons, including the direct blast, fallout, breakdown of infrastructure, the possibility of a nuclear winter, reduced food production, etc.

Even people in areas with no nukes, little fallout and not affected by nuclear winter could face mass starvation due to lack of fertilizers, diesel, spare parts for machines, etc.

Even in North America, Europe and North Asia, having the electric grids knocked out, central administrations crippled, much industry and agricultural infrastructure knocked out, followed by nuclear winter might see more people die from cold and starvation than from the nukes themselves.

Anyway, I don't think we really want to test this, even if the total numbers do not fully add up to complete destruction.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#577

Post by kidme5 »

dudeinhawaii wrote: post #428

I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…

Strategic Defense Initiative 2.0

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#578

Post by rmk »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #311
rmk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Russia were forced to shore up their vulnerable flank Russia wasn't forced to do anything. They could've merely quietly dropped two of their delusions: a) NATO was never going to attack them, unless it literally went crazy, or someone framed Russia so badly that a nuclear response was preferable to any other option. The West doesn't want to trigger a MAD scenario, and are keen to keep the post-WW2 peace and (in the…

Being comfortable in your neighborhood is not a delusion, it's a core priority most nation states will be willing to go to war over. If you are American, then you will likely not understand this because America is blessed with wonderful location: it does not have to contend with dozens of possibly unfriendly neighbors bordering it, which is a luxury that Russia, China, and India do not have. They are huge landmasses having long borders with many, many different neighbors who are not all friendly. America has thousands of miles of ocean from its bigger rivals, which all but rules out massive land wars and even air wars. Only a blue-water navy can challenge America, and even then the Americans can take the fight to the littoral states of countries like China if they have beefs with them. Can you imagine that with America?

It's the same thing with Russia: Putin has struck a deal with Xi that allows him to move his military assets from the east to this theater, because he feels that it's a strategic imperative to 'clear the neighborhood'.

Russia has given up land and trapped foreign invaders, including Napoleon and Hitler, but it has done so at a huge cost in blood and treasure. From Russia's perspective, it's far more cost-effective to have weak client states that do their bidding on their hard-to-defend flanks, than to have strong, democratic, independent states that can ally themselves with their archenemies.

Re: Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

#579

Post by stefan_ »

sgjohnson wrote: post #466
rl3 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose. In 2018 during the course of a defensive action, the U.S. military massacred quite a few Russians.[0][1] Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Yeah, there's much more care and hesitation involved when the consequences are full-scale war, but nonetheless you'd better believe NATO would respond strong, including taking MAD right up to the line. It wa…

> In 2018 during the course of a defensive action, the U.S. military massacred quite a few Russians. Mercenaries don’t really count.

That's part of the thinking here, right? Mercenaries don't count, a jet that maybe violated airspace doesn't count, ...

What's the line, then? It's clearly not "no military action at all" as we're told right now. Maybe drive a few SAM setups over the border from Poland and take shots?

Like, this very moment, there are tons of NATO ISR assets in the air monitoring Russian movements and very likely relaying that information straight to Ukraine.

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