It’s good news in the sense that HOPEFULLY the fire doesn’t damage the actual reactor and lead to a horrific casualty event. But it’s still extremely fucked up that these guys were sent in to attack a nuclear power plant with this kind of firepower - knowing that there was even a chance of the fire spreading and the damage escalating. It’s disturbing that whoever is commanding these troops is willing to have them all possibly be vaporized by a radioactive explosion, even leaving aside any concern for Ukrainian casualties.
I don’t think this is a strategic move; I think it’s just another example of how screwed up the Russian army is.
A Moscow reporter on PBS this evening reported that the rumors are flying through Moscow that Putin will declare martial law tomorrow, and start drafting young men, and he said that young men were telling him that they were trying to figure out how to get out of the country.
It might give justification for imposing martial law. After all, otherwise they’re on target and doing well in the job of killing all the Nazis, elsewhere in the world. But if those Nazis have decided to start going after nuclear reactors, you need to button down and get people off the street.
Not the reactor: that site has 6 of them. Fuck up just one and you have real problems. Granted, it is the largest facility in Europe and thus of strategic importance, but eastern Ukraine is the part of the country where Russian sympathies run highest, so why put the people most likely to support you in peril?
That also works in favor of pilots from the Ukraine.
Is it a war crime to shell a nuclear power plant?
Because someone in Russia is completely fucking crazy.
I hope that this is the sign that China and India need for them to get off the fence and tell Russia that the sanctions are world-wide and they had better get out of Ukraine NOW.
China is looking for support from Russia for their future attack on Taiwan. Right now they’re sitting back and taking notes.
The other perfectly logical explanation is that they don’t feel they need to risk their air assets at this point against a country that still has a substantial array of effective SAM platforms. The SA-10 is a scary beast. The Russian army is still consuming land, which denies Ukraine a place to have AA. Bring the air force in when you absolutely need it.
I hope you’re wrong, but fear you are not.
And they are not operating as we would in the west, because they see things differently. We tend to want air superiority quickly, and then send in troops under air cover for their maximum protection. We don’t like seeing ground troops shot, blown up and mangled.
It would appear that Russia is perfectly happy to send troops into dangerous territory with no air support and face many thousands of casualties. They value one airplane much more than 100 dead soldiers.
Indeed. Conscripts are easily replaced. MiG-29s aren’t.
The operations towards Kyiv is going according to standard Russian doctrine. A bit slower than they might have liked but not by that much.
Or they don’t want pilots defecting. It’s not a popular war and pilots can make good money flying civilian aircraft in other countries.
Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?
The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.
You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.
Just watched Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit on BBC. Now it’s The Hunt For Red October. Is it ‘Russia Is The Bad Guy Night’?
The Senator needs to put some money on it.
Well, that answers the question “What would make me kinda agree with Lindsey Graham about something?”
The “kinda” is because I think they could also just shuffle him off in a straight jacket, he could just croak, maybe he’d wake up and realized there’s not really any scenario he can “win” the whole country and do some sort of negotiated end, or some horrible scenario where he’s successful and NATO is now waiting to see who gets invaded next. There are probably other scenarios I haven’t thought of, but that’s probably from a lack of imagination.
That’s nice and all, but that’s it? The dude’s worth $300M. I mean better than nothing, but, come on, offer at least $10M for that kind of job.
Whatever. If Putin walked into the room Graham would drop to the floor and do a full-on Wayne and Garth “We’re not worthy!”