Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

TopCat said:
... it's telling as we invested resources in Kosovo, ....
Click to expand...
That's an interesting euphemism for "NATO intervention to prevent a wholesale slaughter by Serbian ethnic cleansing that would have made Bosnia look like a kindergarten outing...." but each to his own I guess. Very 'telling'!
 
Leighsw2 said:
That's an interesting euphemism for "NATO intervention to prevent a wholesale slaughter by Serbian ethnic cleansing that would have made Bosnia look like a kindergarten outing...." but each to his own I guess. Very 'telling'!
Click to expand...
I would agree with your summary here. My point is after giving wholesale support, we let a country go without aid to the extent of them rationing electricity. It hardly implies that Ukraine will get long term support themselves.
 
2hats said:
Potentially interesting. Though we look like being in an upper level westerly flow for the near-future.
Click to expand...


As a result of that stuff yesterday I forced myself to go and find out exactly what the Russian propaganda about this said yesterday. Its available in text in English on the Russian militaries website and also somewhere on youtube with English subtitles. I dont much fancy linking to it or quoting it at length. So for now, unless something nasty happens there today, I'll just say that it included some insufficiently labelled plume modelling images, but at the end they also said that if the situation deteriorated further then they will consider taking the remaining couple of active reactors there offline.

I dont think that shutdown angle has received much attention in the English speaking press. But the implications of it do seem to tie in to the final sentence of something the BBC are reporting today, even though the general reporting is still looking more at the old 'Russia wants to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid' prospects that Ukraine has repeatedly mentioned, rather than Russia actually shutting down the reactors:

Russian forces around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant aim to disconnect energy produced there from the Ukrainian power system, Ukrainian officials say.

It is the largest nuclear power station in Europe and has been under the control of Russian forces since March, but has continued to function.

Energoatom, the state power company that operates the plant, says the Russian occupiers are preparing to stage a "large-scale provocation" there.

It also says the Russian military is looking for suppliers of fuel for diesel generators, which would need to be turned on if power units are shut down.
Click to expand...

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...ff59124929d817e9777b66&pinned_post_type=share
 
Last edited:
The BBC finally felt the need to do a slightly more substantial piece that puts the nuclear risks in context. They may have been in a quandry about stating this stuff so explicitly because it inevitably ends up shitting on a load of the propaganda, including a lot of the rhetoric from Ukraine, a bunch of the stuff Russia has started spouting for its own purposes, and the various fears that international agencies have raised out of desperation more recently in an attempt to bring some sort of resolution to the situation.

www.bbc.co.uk

Ukraine nuclear plant: How risky is stand-off over Zaporizhzhia?

International leaders warn of potential disaster at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant.
www.bbc.co.uk

Its not perfect, since even the rather reasonable opinions of various experts can easily wander over the line by becoming a bit too reassuring about the risks from loss of coolant incidents and suchlike. That subject gets a bit complex and wasnt even on most peoples radars before Fukushima. In the pre-Fukushima days most nuclear plant fears focussed more on run away chain reactions and big meltdowns and fires that could happen while the reactor was in full operation. The public were not made very aware of the extent to which decay heat needs to be dealt with for a prolonged period even after safe reactor shutdown, or the extent to which fuel moved to pools still needs to be cooled for ages. And reactions between melting fuel cladding and concrete that lead to hydrogen generation with explosive potential were certainly not drawn attention to until multiple explosions of that sort happened at Fukushima, causing much embarrassment to experts who had been promoting a low risk picture even as the fuel started to melt at Fukushima. An awkward adjustment to public communications were required once tv footage of the explosions was beamed around the world, but over a decade later it seems that such theoretical risks have been allowed to gradually fade from view again and stuff like hydrogen explosions do not feature explicitly in this article. But at least general attention to post-shutdown cooling of fuel is still well present in this article. Its much easier to dismiss fears of a Chernobyl-type event more neatly because of the design of that plant and the nature of what went wrong there and lack of containment at Chernobyl compared to most reactors. I suppose its normal enough that fears tend to focus on the detail of what went wrong in the last big nuclear accident the world experienced, even if any future one may end up involving a different angle that receives little attention until it happens. And the need to go for the maximum possible reassurances available involves both entirely reasonable, well balanced stuff, with a dollop of overly reassuring propaganda on top. That norm is why the propaganda that went in the opposite, maximum scare factor direction with nuclear issues has been a bit surreal to see in this war, its at odds with the normal establishment approach to downplaying nuclear fears in populations, and its hard to have it both ways. The UK has clear reasons not to want to shit on Ukrainian propaganda, but there are limits to how far they can let the spectre of nuclear doom be parroted without question.
 
Last edited:
Dogsauce said:
It was reported yesterday that Russia had moved most of it‘s aircraft out of Crimea. Possible that this attack was a day or two late unfortunately. We’ll have to wait for decent satellite imagery.
Click to expand...
A day or two late in terms of the number of aircraft it could destroy, but the big prize is the denial of safe airfields in Crimea to the Russian Air Force.
 
Winter is coming. It's interesting it's always been Russia's defense and yet and I wonder if this is what will end up hammering them with supply lines being hit so hard. Of course as they cut of gas it's going to hit us pretty hard as well.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
Winter is coming. It's interesting it's always been Russia's defense and yet and I wonder if this is what will end up hammering them with supply lines being hit so hard. Of course as they cut of gas it's going to hit us pretty hard as well.
Click to expand...
Doesn't october see the return of the mud as well? The war is looking more and more like an attritional grind now. At what point does russia cut its losses? When a bullet enters the back of putins head or before then?
 
Kaka Tim said:
Doesn't october see the return of the mud as well? The war is looking more and more like an attritional grind now. At what point does russia cut its losses? When a bullet enters the back of putins head or before then?
Click to expand...

Sadly I suspect after. He has to much invested and if he shows weakness he knows he won't last.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

platinumsage
Ukraine and the Russian invasion, Feb 2022 - tangentially related crap
28 29 30 31 32
Replies
959
Views
49K
steeplejack
steeplejack
tim
The 2023 Russian Coup.
51 52 53 54 55
Replies
2K
Views
65K
_Russ_
_Russ_
Dogsauce
The Russian defenestration thread
2
Replies
43
Views
4K
Dystopiary
Dystopiary
platinumsage
Ukraine invasion memes and viral content
70 71 72 73 74
Replies
2K
Views
120K
The39thStep
The39thStep
Pickman's model
Ukraine after the war
2 3
Replies
62
Views
6K
phildwyer
phildwyer
Back
Top Bottom