Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces | Hacker News Reader

Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces

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597 pointstosh1,061 comments

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 and outcome, MAD, is not an acceptable trade for a tank crossing your border.

Repeat until arrival at French coastline. The terrorist steps forward waving a trigger to a bomb and either you show him your bomb and threaten to blow yourselves both up, or you step back.

At some point, the only option is to call the bluff and give him a good punch and hope that he values life as much as you and won't actually detonate. It has to be a solid one but not so hard as to make him think you might kill him, as that would make the detonation a certainty.

I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose.

Ukraine is not a NATO member, but Poland is. If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily. Russia can attack non-NATO countries and intimidate NATO into doing nothing, but to attack a NATO member would automatically bring the whole alliance into the war. The whole point of alliances like NATO is to prevent countries from being picked off by a bully the way Ukraine now is. Belarus, Finland, or any of Russia's other non-NATO neighbours are probably pretty nervous right now, but Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, etc. are much less likely to be attacked by Russia.

Talk of Ukraine joining NATO may well have been what triggered this war. Russia probably had plans to absorb Ukraine eventually, but if Ukraine had joined NATO it would have required a war with NATO to absorb even a small part of Ukraine, such as Dunbas. So, when talk of joining NATO heated up, Putin had to invade quickly or lose the opportunity to take Ukraine without a much larger war.

It now appears that any of Russia's neighbours who are not currently members of a military alliance with a nuclear power have three options:

1. Join NATO, ally with China, or find somebody else with nuclear weapons to ally with.

2. Develop nuclear weapons.

3. Do nothing in order to avoid an immediate invasion, but start brushing up on your Russian because you'll need it eventually.

It is now abundantly clear that remaining on good terms with NATO countries is not sufficient in itself to ensure security from invasion by Russia. Economic sanctions and harsh language will not stop Putin.

It's worth noting that Taiwan is in a similar situation with respect to China. They are being threatened with invasion, but have no formal military alliances with nuclear powers. Judging from the U.S.'s reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. would do little more than apply sanctions if China invaded Taiwan. Not unless the U.S. has special feelings for Taiwan that it does not have for Ukraine at any rate.

> Talk of Ukraine joining NATO may well have been what triggered this war.

There was zero chance Ukraine would have ever been admitted to NATO. Everybody understood that, including Putin and his generals. And while NATO and the U.S. maintained the official position (perhaps better characterized as a non-position) that any country, including Ukraine, remained free to apply to NATO, member states like Germany would have vetoed and almost certainly privately gave such assurances to Putin. Moreover, the last decade of shenanigans from Turkey and then Hungary have soured even the U.S.'s appetite for future NATO admissions of any country outside Western and Central Europe.

Ukraine missed its window for NATO membership by about 20 years. Today the U.S. wouldn't even seriously imply Ukraine had a chance at membership. Russian apologists would point out that Ukraine already entered quasi-formal "dialogue", but fail to mention that such such dialogue has been frozen for nearly 20 years. The status quo (which has no actual substance, anyhow) is for all intents and purposes permanently frozen. One might reasonably criticize NATO and the U.S. for leaving things as they are--to fester. The counter argument is that by making a formal concession it would only embolden Russia, which would never change their tune even if NATO formally renounced the possibility of Ukraine joining. Perhaps more importantly, it would be a huge loss for Ukrainian reformists. (There was a similar motivation behind the EU's long refusal to state the obvious regarding Turkey's membership in the EU.)

Beyond Putin's general revanchist sentiments, what he and other Russian leaders really worry about is de facto Ukrainian-EU economic integration, not NATO. There's little chance (but perhaps non-zero, and greater than Turkey's) Ukraine could ever join the EU anytime soon. But there's an infinite number of intermediate relationships, all of which disfavor Russia--at least from the Russian perspective.

Former journalist from Estonia here. Our media republished a 1994 speech given by late president of Estonia Lennart Meri at a banquet in Hamburg, Germany. Vladimir Putin, a then internationally unknown politician from St Petersburg, was also among the listeners -- and demonstratively walked out of the room during Meri's speech, as reported by Deutsche Welle [1]. Quoting DW:

"On February 25, 1994, Putin was also in attendance. One distinguished guest, then-President of Estonia Lennart Meri, gave a speech. Putin did something that has never happened at this ceremony: he got up and left. "With his legs straight [ed.: in a marching stance], throwing a contemptuous glance at the host, he left the hall, every step accompanied by the creaking of the parquet," according to a correspondent for the German magazine Zeit. "His exit was followed by whispers. Who is he? What's his problem?"

What exactly did Meri say that so annoyed Putin? The speech reads like a prophecy of what happened 20 years later in Crimea. And Putin's reaction shows that he sent a clear signal to the West.

The Estonian president referred to a paper from the foreign ministry in Moscow: "It notes that the problem of ethnic Russian groups in countries neighboring Russia cannot be solved by diplomatic means alone." Other means were conceivable for Moscow, Meri concluded. He warned against Russia's "neo-imperialist policy" and appealed to integrate Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, into the "democratic world."

Lennart Meri was a former filmmaker, literary translator, writer and IMO a world class intellectual with excellent speeches. For anyone interested, I google-translated this Hamburg 1994 speech to English [2]. The original source in Estonian is also present on the homepage of President's Office [3].

1: https://www.dw.com/en/vladimir-putins-infamous-history-in-ha...

2: https://zerobin.net/?5938a7875752194a#kVyn/9uj46bUH+M1z7rk+w...

3: https://vp1992-2001.president.ee/est/k6ned/K6ne.asp?ID=4236

> 2. Develop nuclear weapons.

Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine had nuclear weapons but gave them up because Russia agreed not to invade them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...

The US and Russia did promise to defend Ukraine against nuclear powers in exchange for Ukraine giving their nuclear weapons to Russia in 1994. Now Russia, a nuclear power and one of the signatories to that treaty, broke it by attacking Ukraine, and the US broke it by not defending Ukraine from that aggression, because Russia is waving its nukes around as a threat.

The big lesson that the US and Russia are teaching Ukraine here is that they should have never given up their nuclear weapon. This whole event is terrible for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

> It's worth noting that Taiwan is in a similar situation with respect to China. They are being threatened with invasion, but have no formal military alliances with nuclear powers. Judging from the U.S.'s reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. would do little more than apply sanctions if China invaded Taiwan. Not unless the U.S. has special feelings for Taiwan that it does not have for Ukraine at any rate.

This is wildly incorrect. The US actually had a defense agreement with Taiwan at one point, but dropped the defense provision in the 70's for rapprochement with China. However, Taiwan has been a US ally since WW2, and has at times stationed many troops there. This is not even close to true about Ukraine.

Not to mention a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be almost trivially easy for the US to stop. It's an island, and the US has naval and air supremacy.

> If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily.

That's what is commonly believed, but that belief is actually wrong - other NATO members are obligated to - and I quote directly from Article 5 here - "(...) assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, (...)"

The keywords here are "as it deems necessary" and "including the use of armed forces". There is no automatic need to send troops - if you as the attacked party think a strongly worded letter is all that is necessary, you just ask for that letter. Of course you can demand military support, but doing so takes time, and it is easy to consider a situation in which you do not have that time anymore.

For an application of that principle, see 9/11, when the US invoked Article 5, but which did not result in military action from all NATO members (several of which refused to take part in "pointless military adventures"). The US obstracized those countries, but ultimately (had to?) accept.

4. Continue life as normal. Some Georgians are following this strategy under the assumption that the occupying Ukraine is going to require a lot of money and soldiers. Russia will run out of either (or both) of these finite resources before it has a chance to invade Georgia.

Note that Russia not only have to contend with sanctions: They also need to remain domestically on high alert for sabotage and terrorism.

On paper yes. They are obligated to join or whatever. In practice, the whole west has become so risk averse in last few decades, they would just fold and offer 'asylum' to the fleeing poles and making statements like doing everything in their power to avoid 'escalations'.

Unfortunate reality is that the west collectively lost their balls post 9/11 due to the needless wars sapping the spirit. They would wait till its too late and by then its too late. The politician with actual brains and balls and who has kept europe whole and safe so far has recently retired and the rest are just good for press releases.

>Ukraine is not a NATO member, but Poland is. If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily.

We lived once thru this in 1939. NO one will join in to defend Poland. Germany might even make another deal with Russia to "save EU".

> It's worth noting that Taiwan is in a similar situation with respect to China.

More than that, I think reading between the lines it's quite likely Putin and Xi Jinping have already agreed to back each other in the security council so that Russia can take Ukraine and China can take Taiwan without issue. This may have been planned for years, even, though it is right to point out that hinting at adding Ukraine to NATO without any real intentions to do so has had disastrous consequences.

There was no talk of Ukraine joining NATO heating up. Russia started deploying troops to the Ukraine border in March 2021. The excuse back then wasn't about Ukraine joining NATO; the excuse was that it was mobilizing troops to protect itself from a NATO attack during the DEFENDER-21 annual exercise.

> Belarus, Finland, or any of Russia's other non-NATO neighbours are probably pretty nervous right now

The Russian forces in Chernobyl came from Belarus...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State

Since joining NATO is a process rather than will happen immediately, this is not really an option. This caused the mess the Ukraine is in in the first place. Putin is really clear that he won't tolerate NATO to expand to any more direct neighbors.

You seem to have missed the point.

> If Russia attacks a member of NATO then all members of NATO are obligated to join in defence militarily

And? They can't actually respond militarily because MAD.

NATO is useless if the enemy knows you won't initiate MAD, but they can (democracy vs dictatorship).

Don't forget, this was also a similar case during WW2 and then Munich agreement happened... It never is as easy - this is stated on paper so we all go to war. Including now broken Minsk agreement...

Just all sad to see that the interests of a few shed blood of many.

Ukraine and US is a different story then Tawain and US. For Taiwan the US promised to protect it from any China intervention, so they will help. Nobody gave these promises to Ukraine

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. At some point this hypothesis needs to be tested. Yes, as a child of the cold war I am well aware of the stories about there being a warhead with my city's name in Cyrillic painted on it, and the same with every city in Russia, in English. We're conditioned to think that as soon as the missiles are launched, countermissiles will also launch, and then we're all doomed, planet is handed over to cockroaches.

I'm not sure it's true. For one, it's actually happened that missiles looked like they were in the air, and a Soviet guy decided it was best not to send missiles back, and we're all still here. I also get the feeling, from introspecting, that a lot of people would not actually press the button if they saw that radar picture. Would you make the world unlivable for little Russian kids? I'm not sure I would, and though I don't know how many people are making these decisions, my guess is it would be really freaking hard.

Which bring me to my next point, and this will cause some consternation. How bad is it if a nuke or two goes off? We care that the whole world isn't turned to dust, but if we get another Hiroshima somewhere, apart from the enormous shock it would cause, it might stand a reasonable chance of ending whatever conflict it happened in, just like the actual two nuclear attacks in Japan. Is that totally crazy, or is MAD literally coded into the machines now? Maybe someone can enlighten me.

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 perception, and I suppose it also depends on the circumstances. If for instance, they were used in an unprovoked terrorist attack, killing 2-4million in a city, the response could be like after 9/11, but x100.

If they were used to stop a military aggressor, killing "only" 10k soldiers in the field, their may lose their mythical status, and this could be the opening of Pandora's box, increasing the probability that they are used in later conflicts.

There is absolutely no precedent in human history for two fairly equal powers engaging in a conflict and one side refusing in totality to use almost any weapon at its disposal and certainly not one that an enemy has already used. Japan did not nuke America back in 1945 because it did not have a nuke and had lost all air superiority.

Aren't there also second-strike weapons, like nuclear submarines? As hesitant as soldiers might be to press the launch button just in response to a radar signal, they might find the conviction when they learn their hometown is gone.

> ...a Soviet guy decided it was best not to send missiles back

In that case the judgment was whether the telemetry was reliable enough to justify launching a retaliatory strike, with all the grave consequences that produces.

An unambiguous order to launch a first strike might not elicit the same kind of hesitation.

“ it's actually happened that missiles looked like they were in the air, and a Soviet guy decided it was best not to send missiles back”

Vlad Posner fairly recently made the point that because of strong anti-America sentiment in Russia, he is worried that this time the guy isn’t going to be as skeptical of the flashing light and is just going to hit the button.

The issue has always been escalation, if your enemy takes out your forward warning systems, you have to assume a full scale attack is coming, and thus you have to respond with a full scale attack yourself, damn the rest.

This was discussed at length during the 70s and 80s, and a big reason why the superpowers started to reduce their arsenals, because there is no winner after the first nuke is launched, not even a small scale exchange can be trusted to remain small.

This is a terrifying time indeed

There is a Kurzgesagt video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyECrGp-Sw8

If you detonate all nukes you could destroy every city with population of over 100'000, worldwide. About 4'500 cities in total. You would still have around 1'500 nukes left. You would kill at least 3 billion people.

> For one, it's actually happened that missiles looked like they were in the air, and a Soviet guy decided it was best not to send missiles back, and we're all still here.

Keep in mind that this false alarm didn't look like an all out attack, but like only one missile (or a handful, I don't remember the details).

The problem is, it'll be the crazy one that uses those one or two nukes first. What then?

> Same as in a poker game, you can't fold every time someone raises big

As Samy Farha put it excellently "in order to live you must be willing to die". Because poker is war and life :)

> sometimes worth it to hurt yourself in order to hurt an uncooperative player.

Why has the Ukraine not blown the gas lines?

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 actually attack NATO itself? The whole point of being in NATO is having the collective backing of its allied members.

The (exaggerated) scenario is less of an attack but thought exercise on where the line for taking action lies. I went with belligerent actions over attack or small land grabs without casualties. Escalation from NATO let's say is "NATO declares war on Russia for violating sovereignty of Poland". Next? Will NATO liquidate Russian tank columns? As long as I've been alive, neither US nor NATO have ever actively engaged a nuclear state. I think stating "NATO reacts collectively" is kind of hand-waving the reality of engaging a nuclear super-power in any kind of military engagement. It's always been a handle-with-care situation.

And no, I don't think Putin is going to try to conquer Europe (at least I hope he's not that mad). I just wonder where the line for action is and whether it's "touching NATO soil" as you imply or something much more vague and flexible once the prospect of actual war is real.

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 of combat experience have collpased like a house of cards within 24 hours. Do you think Polish or German army will do any better? Or does Russia have better opinion of these armies? So, yes this is possible now... Thereotically...

And history knows larger miscalculations...

I think MAD is only half the equation. Even if Putin didn't possess a single nuke, (EDIT:) Nato might very well have stood by watching today, as the conventional force deployed by Putin is pretty significant in itself.

Similarly, had NATO deployed 500k soldiers fully armed with modern weaponry in Poland, Lithuania and Rumania as Putin was building up his forces, and added a warning that Ukraine would be granted instant membership to NATO if he didn't pull back from the border, he probably would have pulled back from the border.

But NATO doesn't have those forces, primarily because most European countries have neglected their armed forces over the past 30 years. In reality, a conventional confrontation with Putin would be very difficult. Eventually NATO might win, but it would take years.

Given the fact that the EU alone has around 10x the GDP of Russia, the EU could relatively easily have had an army that is 2x to 5x more powerful than Russia's, even without assistance from the Anglosphere (which would have left the Anglosphere able to focus on China).

One may hope that the EU learns from this. Otherwise, I fear the result of today's events will be a massive level of nuclear proliferation. If NATO cannot even keep their neighbours safe, what confidence can more remote countries have that they will be protected if attacked by a nuclear power, such as Russia or China?

And once virtually every country has nukes, they WILL see use.

European countries have not neglected anything. The current state of things is by design.

Europe used to be full of empires waging destructive wars all over the world. After two world wars, people had had enough. The predecessors of the EU were created to tame the former empires. To make them mutually dependent and act like ordinary countries. It worked, and Western Europe has enjoyed a lifetime of peace, which is unprecedented.

We Europeans are shitty people. If you tell us that it's ok to start acting like empires again and to send troops to fight wars far away from home, the world will have more than one Putin to worry about.

I think the combined might of Europe is actually quite significant. The problem is getting them to actually DO something.

> Similarly, had NATO deployed 500k soldiers fully armed with modern weaponry in Poland, Lithuania and Rumania as Putin was building up his forces, and added a warning that Ukraine would be granted instant membership to NATO if he didn't pull back from the border, he probably would have pulled back from the border.

Had NATO forces been deployed in Ukraine four months ago, nobody would be making any nuclear threats today, veiled or otherwise.

In fact, there wouldn't have been an invasion to begin with. I am about 100% positive that Russian intelligence knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were picking a fight they could easily win. I am almost 100% positive that western intelligence knew that too, which is why its response was a bunch of bullshit about sanctions.

> Otherwise, I fear the result of today's events will be a massive level of nuclear proliferation.

That's a given after 2014 (let's remember Ukraine gave up its nukes in 1994 in exchange for security and territorial integrity guarantees of USA, UK and Russia).

I'm genuinely curious do people really want to get (presumably other people's sons) into war over this?

I hope this doesn't sound flippant or taking light of Russia's actions because it's not intended to be. But what is the decision process behind supporting a choice to start sending other people to kill and die for your desired outcome here?

And do you also believe wars should be initiated against China to liberate Uyghur and Tibet, against North Korea to stop the human rights abuses there, against Afghanistan again to put the previous regime back in power, etc.?

I mean what point do you say okay we need to go in shooting, and would you still believe that if you were to be the first on the beach with a rifle?

I live in Poland and struggle with this question myself.

I don't want to die or kill so the suits on the top can then negotiate new post war order, which would almost certainly perpetuate this BS in the future.

On the other hand: appeasement leads to more bullying, and might cause even bigger conflict on the future (we've seen this happen in WW2)

> I hope this doesn't sound flippant or taking light of Russia's actions because it's not intended to be. But what is the decision process behind supporting a choice to start sending other people to kill and die for your desired outcome here?

You've got to draw the line somewhere. If an offensive war like this passes, no-one is safe.

> And do you also believe wars should be initiated against China to liberate Uyghur and Tibet, against North Korea to stop the human rights abuses there, against Afghanistan again to put the previous regime back in power, etc.?

Launching an invasion no, at least not without a very clear UN-like process that gives them multiple opportunities to back down.

> I mean what point do you say okay we need to go in shooting, and would you still believe that if you were to be the first on the beach with a rifle?

Whether I'd have the balls is another question entirely, but I absolutely do believe it. This is not subtle, this is not limited, this is war. If we were talking about unmarked "volunteers" in the "independent states" that Russia recognised a few days ago, you might reasonably argue for a more limited response. But when we have Russian regulars shooting in Kyiv, that is absolutely on the wrong side of anywhere the line can possibly be drawn, unless you're ready to start speaking Russian.

You can use World War II as a study case for that. Nazis could have been stopped sooner, instead some tried to appease them until it was too late.

"This", meaning peace near your border?

I'm surprised that everyone considers sanctions a sophisticated hard soft power tool (clearly useless) but don't consider mobilization of troops as hardware (short of firing rounds) as an effective and peaceful tool.

What Putin did (mobilize troops within their borders) was also an option for NATO/EU in bordering countries. Matching mobilization would definitely increase the costs of firing the first bullet.

But the truth is, despite the talk of solidarity and all this public indignation, Ukraine never really had a partner in NATO/EU/West.

And the world saw how uninterested in peace is NATO/EU/West

I am from Poland and now I need to seriously consider possibility that Poland within 10 years or 20 may be under Russian occupation. Again.

That is not a high risk, but becomes a real possibility. Rather than insane rambling and pure fiction. Or something appearing to be a dark pessimism.

This is not situation that I like.

So, in the end

- (1) I may not have option to choose

- (2) I would prefer to fight Russians in Estonia (Baltic countries are likely the next target) than in my own country

> would you still believe that if you were to be the first on the beach with a rifle?

I am not going to pretend that I know how I will behave in situation that is extremely beyond what ever happened to me.

The last time a mad dictator wasn't nipped in the bud, the world lost millions in war.

If you think Putin's next stop after Ukraine might be another country, then another, until he's planning his victory celebration in Paris, you may want to stop him early.

Or maybe instead of sweeping up through NATO he decides owning the worlds oil would be nice and starts cutting down to the Middle East.

I think that's a good point but I also think it's important to remember that war suuucks. A citizen in Ukraine right now is not having a good day, there have been arbitrary arrests and some fighting in the streets... but if other military powers got involved they'd be having an even worse day with mass destruction of property and loss of life.

Escalating a conflict to using deadly force can be a necessary step to prevent tyrannical dictators, but it often has very steep short term costs to everyone innocent stuck in the middle. I personally am in favor of intervention at this point, but it isn't something to be considered lightly.

That happened in the Spanish civil war. Guernica famous painting depicts the bombing by Italian and German aviation of the city of Guernica.

The United Kingdom didn't wanted to be part of it, thou.

Ironically, I think that more countries intervention would have make the Spanish war bloodier but it could have stopped World War II.

> it often has very steep short term costs to everyone innocent stuck in the middle

Are there any examples where waiting and intervening at a later point in time turned out better?

>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 was Nixon and Kissinger after all, that invented Madman theory.

You bring up a good point, though: what if Putin suffers a conventional military defeat and has a break from reality, ordering launches? What then? I'm afraid the best we can hope for there is hesitation from their strategic rocket forces to carry out the order.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham#Unofficial_R...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

> In 2018 during the course of a defensive action, the U.S. military massacred quite a few Russians.

Mercenaries don’t really count.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4

Yes Prime Minister: Salami Tactics.

That was brilliant and very nearly what I was saying. The threshold for actual nuclear war is so high that a belligerent actor could theoretically push quite far by exploiting the natural tendency of the adversary to not desire mutual destruction.

I'm not sure our leaders know what the actual "line" is because there isn't one. Will America MAD to save Europe? I do think it's possible that full-on WW3 engagement with non-nuclear forces could be possible with MAD serving to deter mutual usage and perhaps deter invasion of Russian/American mainland. That's wild speculation though. I base it primarily on the assumption that neither side wants MAD and will act to avoid it. The line for nuclear engagement (as opposed to chest-beating) reduces all the way back to a line drawn around the vital cities/industry/nuclear force deployments of a given country. Everything else might possibly be given up to avoid MAD which is an end-state. Maybe a game theorist can chime in.

The problem with this is that the Ukrainian border with Russia is rather far from NATO logistically, and very near Russia.

Russland parking panzers in the border with Polen is a very different story.

When you understand how the Russian air defense is structured (via overlapping dense ground to air missile batteries, and rapidly scrambled fighters that can operate from rough airfields), the difference is even more stark.

When you get to the endgame it's even more problematic. The reason we weren't hopping to get Ukraine into the Eurozone, let along NATO, is because it's a terribly poor and corrupt country that we (i.e. the West) weren't ready to take on yet. The idea was always to let these countries grow and evolve into a more lawful-and-liberal model. Russia is trying to arrest that, for reasons that are understandable, messed-up, and simply outright terrible. It's an understatement that this is a human tragedy.

Official NATO stance, as President Biden has repeatedly said, its to defend EVERY INCH of NATO territory - so if Russia parked one tank inside of the Polish border, all of NATO is at war with Russia.

If NATO does not respond with force, or escalate and withdraws because of MAD, then it loses all credibility.

The question is: Can belligerent nuclear armed nations really hold the rest of the world hostage? At some point, it's unacceptable, and we would all pay the consequences.

Poland had same security warranties in 1939. France was supposed to attack Germany the moment Poland was invaded. You might want to read up on what actually happened.

This is what I call acting on emotion rather than by logic. War has its costs and Russia isn't that fool to go after NATO. And, it was pretty clear from the beginning, right? Invading Ukraine is already hard for them due to resistance and sanctions, do you think Russia would go beyond the line? If they cross the line ww3 is bound to happen, so the probability Russia would be destroying itself is very very low.

Tanks are weak on top so you fire a couple javelins at them. They're man portable, they lock on and then fly up and dive down to hit the vulnerable part. Pretty expensive but much less than a tank. There's plenty of other clever ways to take out a tank too. No one's launching nukes over a few tanks.

Or, as Sting once sang, "I hope the Russians love their children too" - in this case, one particular Russian...

If that particular Russian is in fact an all-out psychopath, this concept may not apply.

Also this particular russians child lives anonymously somewhere in western europe...

Russians, like all people in all countries, do love their children and hope for a peaceful and safe life. The people at the top are the problem, again in every single country. Granted, some of those people at the top today are much bigger problem than others.

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!")

It's a good question when that happens. And if we knew for sure that that was what was happening here the moral calculus would be clear. But we don't know for sure. I think because we live in the shadow of WWII and because states so disproportionately educate their children about WWII that we often overestimate how often that kind of moral imperative rears its head. For every time in history that a country invaded another with the intent of total domination there are a hundered times when countries invaded other countries in a limited way, to shore up their frontiers, to affect a balance of power, to acquire a spcific resource, or to satisfy some portion of their population.

Limiting Russia's ambitions doesn't make this kind of thing less of a crime. Our commitment to self-determination and anti-colonialism that we inherited from those who fought WWII shouldn't waiver. However, we should be cautious to discuss everything in the existentialist terms of WWII. America's last 70 years of war making should teach us that if anything. There is no shortcut to moral clarity in foreign affairs. Unfortunately you can't achieve justification of violence without letting the belligerents show themselves prove its necessity.

MAD would prevent escalation but there would still be a fight. The United States has troops in Poland, if Russia invades, I would envision some kind of tit for tat escalation but would guess it would stop way short of nukes. But I would highly doubt that Russia would pick a fight with nato directly. In this case with Ukraine, it was clear to all parties involved that Russia could invade without other countries committing troops to the fight. I don't think Putin believes he could successfully win a fight with the west and I doubt he would want his legacy to be the man that caused the downfall of Russia.

MAD works both ways. And some European countries (like the above mentioned France) have nuclear weapons. So I don't think Putin would make it to the French coastline easily.

Ukraine should have made use of the material from the Chernobyl power plant while it had the chance. A threat of dirty bomb being delivered to Moscow would have stopped Putin. I guess their politicians are too naive and didn't consider this an option. Facing an overwhelming military power you need to improvise. Certainly Putin thought of this option hence he took the control ot the Chernobyl.

MAD was only really feasible when just three countries had nukes. It was abandoned a while back. Russia chose to pursue nuclear supremacy over conventional defense. They have the biggest arsenal, as well as super-nuclear and super-sonic ICBMs to deliver them. Russia is the only country I know that thinks it might actually be able to win a nuclear war.

This is likely the exact reason Putin took Chernobyl as one of the first targets. He knew that it would give Ukraine an improvised WMD and drastically change the balance of power. They could have rigged the entire thing with high explosives and wired it to a dead man’s switch.

Chernobyl is the ultimate dead-man's switch.

It needs 24/7 maintenance.

Do nothing and it melts down and destroyers the globe.

Yes, I think we are seeing the breakdown of nuclear deterrence. Because it does nothing to stop Putin from attacking allied (non-NATO) states, but it deterrs the west from intervening.

I think at some point people will realize that MAD is a huge bluff. Because when you see the nuclear bombs flying, there is nothing you can do anymore to win the war. The only thing that you can do is to prevent the loss of more lives by standing down and calling off the counter attack. The only logical move is to renege on your "credible" second strike promise, stand down, and start printing the enemy's flags. In practice, modern warfare is not about conquering the enemy country, it is about destroying the enemy military and state, which would be achived by airstrikes and/or a nuclear strike. For these reasons, I predict the boundary between conventional war and nuclear war to become more blurry (US and Russia have been trying this for decades with the development of smaller nukes, and missile defense systems), and conventional war to return to Europe.

The way to stop this is not in strengthening the NATO and going black to block confrontation. The only way forward is to question block confrontation, the post-WWII-order, and souvereign nation states. Because the nation states are the entities that are fighting for influence and raising armies, and in some sense they have to, if they don't want to be left behind in geopolitics and the global economy. I know it's a tall order, but we need no less than a "revolution" of the world order (however that may look like) to secure peace.

Mate, if some other country kills me and all my family and friends, then absolutely fuck them, I'll smash that launch button. Logic, and us all, be damned.

It strangely incentivises nuclear proliferation. If Ukraine were nuclear, they would have been safe

Because Putin is not insane and does not want to destroy Russia.

He wants to take it, and he can threaten and get away with it because the West won't react.

If the US 'gave' the Ukranians some drones and guided missiles and then 'fired' said missiles for the Ukrainians at Russian forces in Ukraine, at the bhest of Ukraine, what's he going to do?

Start lobbing nukes?

In fact, the Nuke/MAD part is what makes it maybe safer to react. As long as the US isn't invading anything it's hard to see what he could justify doing.

If he did a nuclear test, as a 'scary demonstration' - he would then lose the world's support. Even China would balk. He would be firmly nuts.

Russians out in the open, not in their own country with defences are easy targets. The US could do 'generational' damage to Russian forces in literally just a few days.

The US/West should probably be doing everything the can do short of invading.

NATO doesn't have the guts, it would have to be an American President.

Trump has the 'gall' but he's not a military person and a loose cannon. Biden is far to effete. I think possibly GW Bush II surrounded by neocons, would have done something, and so would his father who ejected Saddam from Kuwait and then sat back.

> Start lobbing nukes?

That's exactly what he just threatened to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_...

I found this thread on twitter helpful for explaining this issue with MAD

https://twitter.com/ProfTalmadge/status/1496837475901362180

Even if Russia nuke a Ukraine city tomorrow I don’t think the West would get involved directly. Do you really want to fight a mad man who already used a nuke once?

They absolutely would get involved. You can't just light off nukes in Europe, because it poisons the whole continent. Strategic or tactical nuclear weapons usage (or even threatened usage) to annex border states requires a response or else you're going to be skipping straight to "full scale launch" when the aggressor asks for something you're not willing to give up.

Fortunately the bet in that regards is that Putin's own military and associates would depose him almost immediately - intentional nuclear weapons usage changes the calculus on a lot of things, since you're now into "you, your family and your country will definitely die if he stays in charge". The Russian people aren't behind this war.

> 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?

If they area actually threatening you with assured destruction (mutual or unilateral), and they aren't bluffing, they cannot while you value the existence of your own civilization.

That's what assured destruction means.

> I don't know that NATO has the guts to give Putin that bloody nose.

Your analysis seems rational in this moment. But: the policy and personality of a democracy is liable change rapidly and radically in a way no single actor ever would or could. Autocrats often do not understand this, and make the same assumptions you have.

The scenario you describe would raise such apocalyptic outrage in America and Europe that war without thought of consequence would likely ensue.

You simply cannot extrapolate future behavior of complex democracies from current behavior as you would an individual. The concern you laid out in your post is relevant: once enough citizens arrive at a similar opinion, policy can rapidly shift.

To start with the people being attacked have to fight back if they don't want to submit.

This is not a guarantee of independence, but nothing ever is that's not a property of MAD. Every civilization including Ukraine is there because they conquered previous people or regimes. You have to at least fight though before you expect anybody else to fight for you.

Afghanistan did it. Against Russia and against USA. With help of course from other interested parties like Pakistan and USA etc but for the most part it wasn't them doing the fighting and dying. If Poland, Germany, and France allowed Russian tanks to drive to the Atlantic without firing a shot then maybe they would.

It sounds bad to say it out loud, but MAD was the policy that kept the longest peace among great powers (ie nation states that can project power beyond their borders) in recorded history. The global rate of interstate conflict has been historically low since 1945. I don't like it, but there it is.

It's also worth keeping this in some historical perspective. This war could break a long streak of zero great power wars (depending on definitions and reactions in the west), it's true. But the rate is still historically extremely low. The systems we have for peace, however imperfect, are definitely working.

Yes, you’re describing political science/ international relations theory of realism. In nature, there is chaos and organization of that chaos happens through real force. A country can’t trust others and must protect its interests. A hegemon imposes its desires on the world because it has hard power. Until relatively recently, the US was considered unipolar after the demise of the USSR. (I suspect Putin welcomes the challenge, along with China who both want to assert their world views.) Anyway, fast forward through the millennia, and the two principle hard powers within Waltzian realism is that military force can only be minimized through economic weaponry. By now, it feels like the US has sanctioned Russia so much and for so long that it should be destitute. Somehow Russia’s central bank amassed $600 billion USD in the run up to their foray into Ukraine.[1] I don’t see how further sanctions will change this, but detonating plans on Nord Stream 2 and cutting Russia out from other markets where it sends its oil would be effective, though probably not in the short term. The kicker there is which politician wants to explain why energy prices are increasing even more to a beleaguered country that just wants to put Covid behind it. France has elections in months, and Macron is not eager to see the Yellow Vests reinvigorated with real support to undo his bid to oversee the European Union during his second term.

I agree that it feels unlikely for NATO to draw a red line and start mobilizing troops, matériel, and missiles to reflect a posture. Everything at this point in to the invasion is meant as deterrence. This simply isn’t enough to combat the playground bully. I’ll stop here and just say that in international relations, game theory can be employed to understand this dynamic of brinksmanship. In the worst case of asymmetrical information, lack of communication, and paranoia about the madman leading the opposing side, all out war can be conceived of — even if it’s ultimately called off. Think Cuban Missile Crisis.

1-https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/24/russian-cen...

Or - Putin is contained, grows old and dies. The Russian people may have an opportunity to dismantle his legacy and become a new country. Perhaps, he simply needs to die without escalation the circumstances to near-MAD.

If NATO has a purpose besides mutual defence against existential threats to member states, then I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s purpose is to encircle Russia. This is what Putin believes. If that’s true then surely the price of realising that purpose is to make good on the promise the mutual defence. Quid pro quo. If there is no purpose - which in the absence of action seems likely - then the only logical step is to disband NATO, giving Putin what he wants.

In my view NATO has to absolutely step up and send forces en masse to Poland at the very least. Appeasing bullies never ends well.

There is a big chance that the generals will mutiny and murder the ones that want to trigger mutually assured destruction.

Perhaps then there was some logic behind the idea that the United States President should always be someone who is slightly unhinged, or at least appears to be. If enemies believe you are too straight laced to actually strike back then the MAD theory falls apart.

You respond proportionately and appropriately. You'd ask them to move their tank, then failing that maybe fire on it with conventional arms etc.

There isn't much response presently from NATO because Ukraine isn't part of it.

> What then? Strongly worded essays?

When he did this 7 years ago, that is _precisely_ what we did. The UN got everyone together and issued a non-binding resolution on the matter then essentially did nothing else significant.

Strategic Defense Initiative 2.0

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

Classic 'salami tactics':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4&t=73s

MAD?

Mutually Assured Destruction

Oh yes, we should definitely be trying to escalate this situation between two nuclear superpowers /s

Before that happens I’m guessing the sword missiles would be aimed at the relevant leadership.

the US military has been preparing for this eventuality since 2014. We have bases all over soviet block countries. We have bases in poland and recently sold them 30 M1 abrams.

Wanna know when the escalation starts? When russia runs into proxy US bases in the eeastern blocks.

If you value the existence of your own civilization then the only winning strategy to answer to a nuclear threat is counter threat with MAD. You have to be willing to go to the end with this. You really have to be willing to destroy yourself to destroy the one that is threatening you. There is no way around this or you loose everything.

The right move is to leave such complexity to ppl who want to die and move elsewhere. I'd pick Israel or China.

The west is a dysfunctional mess. The handling of Wall St/inequality/mindless consumption, FAANG, MIL complex debacles, a news media that drains much more energy than it generates, low quality obama/trump/musk celeb type leaders all show the solutions wont come from such a space.

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

Then please, leave for Ukraine and help the people there. Even as a non-combatant, you can do a lot of good.

Don't ask others to go to war, go yourself.

I said this below but Putin may not be so MAD. That is, he may feel destruction is not so mutually assured now. MAD was only really feasible when just three countries had nukes. It was abandoned a while back. Russia chose to pursue nuclear supremacy, over conventional defense. They have the biggest arsenal, as well as super-nuclear and super-sonic ICBMs to deliver them. Russia is the only country I know that thinks it might actually be able to win a nuclear war.

"existence of your own civilization" is a strong statement. At face value they just want to conquer back half of Europe. Not to send millions across our souther border. Not to kill any Americans. Not to rape their women. Not to turn their sons into homosexuals. Not even compete for jobs with Americans or abuse their welfare system.

So from our point of view it's a European problem. A quick reminder - they have 500M people and a GDP comparable to ours. With so many resources and 20+ peaceful years they should be able to field dozens of panzer divisions. Do you see any? The Ukrainians are fighting like their life depends on it. You can see it. The Snake Island martyrs alone is a tale for the ages. And Ukraine is a small and poor country. Do you see other Europeans even trying? And if not, is it really existential? And if not for them why should we care?

The Russian despot increasingly looks like a statesman in touch with reality. It's a real puzzle how he managed to pull if off lacking diversity and not having enough girls in his spetsnaz units. America spent 20 years in the sandbox wasting precious resources for no particular reason. Having run from Afghanistan the way Americans did we'll be lucky the Chinese don't grab Taiwan next month.

As a side note, the loss of DJT is a gift that just keeps giving. Elections have consequences. Going back to at least 2008.

> Not to..

At face value? like how they promised to not invade Ukraine in exchange for their nukes?

> Not to turn their sons into homosexuals

What?!?

> Do you see other Europeans even trying?

Putin has threatened retaliation against any intervention, including the threat of nukes - "even trying" isn't an option, once you're in you may be all in.

Russia never ceases to amaze me even after spending half of my life living there. Its massive territory extends over 8 times zones stretching over 2 continents and it has historically been incapable of governing most of it. Everything outside of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (and a few other bigger cities) is often neglected and in constant state of poverty. Geopolitical stuff aside, this incessant need to have more land and more control when you can't even deal with the shit you already have is just baffling.

Poverty has declined by more than 50% in the last 20 years in Russia. How does this jive with a "constant state of poverty"?

When people use anecdotes like this despite the data, it often just looks to me like bashing of developing economies.

Compared to the rest of Europe though? No way, most of Russia is still poor by that standard.

Sure. Where are you stats coming from. ?

Their whole concept of centralized governance is based on snitching and secret police since the Tsar days.

The US is also a massive chunk of land with heavily armed populace, how does it deal with state wide enforcement?

They both utilize a three letter agency that stands ready to infiltrate, assassinate, demoralize, discredit and reward snitches.

It appears that violence seems to be the root of all power, and power has positive correlation with access to secrecy. The more secret and violent you are, the more you are feared. Fear of violence and the unknown amplify the need for careful self-regulating behaviors amongst the sentient group competing for scarce goods.

This war makes me sick and very sad. It reminds me of the pale blue dot quote by Sagan : "Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

I feel like humanity has gotten nowhere in my lifetime. I grew up watching Star Trek and was very optimistic about the future, but that has been dashed.

Humanity has lived through one of its most peaceful period in your lifetime, even when including the current war in Ukraine (which is much smaller than other active conflicts).

We have yet to discover intelligent life as we know it, or something like warp drive (which probably doesn't exist). A lot of the futurist premise of Star Trek will not apply until humanity faces something like that.

The news tends to focus on the bad stuff and ignore the progress that is made. Like back in the 60s third world poverty was a big thing and they've become way richer now and also have smartphones not that dissimilar to Star Trek communicators. In fact better in some ways - you couldn't watch Tik Tok or catch Pokemon on a communicator.

The Russian forces seem to be trying to encircle or assault Kyiv.

I think they've taken the nuclear plant because it is a defensible point along their shortest line of advance. They wouldn't want to move past it without controlling the site.

Also a great news bullet point in the information war. "Russian forces taking Chernobyl" sounds much more familiar and much more terrifying than "Russian forces taking Chernihiv region" to all of us unfamiliar with the country. Even if strategically realistically it's the latter that is more important than the former.

It also has the following affect: """Don't the Russians already own Chernobyl? I guess it must not be in Russia. I saw a movie and I think they were speaking Russian. Wow they must be crazy actually entering a radiation zone, won't half of the troops die from exposure. I wouldn't want my son fighting those lunatics."""

Not sure if it is more relevant when you immediately hear about increased radiation from the power plant.

I think they seized it because they need the general area to move their troops. In that case they can't tolerate Ukrainian troops there, but somebody has to be in control and responsible for this site to ensure, among other things, no terrorists make off with radioactive material.

I'm totally condemning the Russian actions, but in this particular case they may be acting somewhat responsibly. Unlike with the bombing of civilians or the whole damn war in the first place!

> Unlike with the bombing of civilians or the whole damn war in the first place!

Has this happened? Ukrainian civilians bombed?

>no terrorists make off with radioactive material.

The reactors that aren't infamous have already had all fuel removed. The one that was scattered all over the countryside has plenty of highly radioactive debris but you can't realistically pull out material for a dirty bomb. Terrorists would have better luck stealing cobalt 60 sources and spreading that through a city than trying to break into the new safe confinement, break into the sarcophagus, find a suitably large amount of highly radioactive material, somehow break it into pieces and truck it out of the area, etc.

Terrorists aren't going to try to use the war as cover to sneak into Chernobyl regardless of Russian troop presence.

> but somebody has to be in control and responsible for this site to ensure, among other things, no terrorists make off with radioactive material

Please… Russians will just use it for their propaganda as a support to the claim that Ukraine was working on nuclear weapons.

Also, either side would be pretty reluctant to bomb it, or otherwise battle too hard close to it. It's a great position to hold if you can.

"It's a great position to hold if you can."

It is a great position to hold and fight in, because the area is pretty empty of civilians. And russia must avoid ukranian (russian in their eyes) civilian casualties, to not loose the little popular support they have for this war.

And neither side will be so stupid to directly bomb the remains of the reactor, but I think it would need a serious direct bombing, for radiation to leak out. I don't think there can be still a major uncontrolled chain reaction. The worst that can happen under normal circumstances, is radiation leaking out.

(but all this is from the back of my head knowledge, about documentaries about chernobyl, I might be wrong)

They probably don't want to damage the structure itself, but the exclusion zone around it is quite large with little risk of collateral damage (possibly easier to engage).

> The Russian forces seem to be trying to encircle or assault Kyiv.

Yes, but although Putin is a bloody bastard, he's not stupid. 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, with both the EU and US doing nothing but economic sanctions Putin and the oligarchs were long prepared against. Most of Europe depends on Russian gas, which means the moment those sanctions become too harsh is the moment he'll either cut our supply or further raise the prices (my last heating bill already doubled). That's his guarantee against any real action. I'm sorry, but Ukrainian people are screwed.

You missed the step where he needs to brutalize population into submission. This will take time and mountains of corpses. He can’t just put a puppet there and call it a day. Puppet will be dead by week after. No he has to occupy the country and crush the opposition.

Holy crap, Europe needs to get off natural gas yesterday.

Gas is important, but what is more important is the nuclear arsenal.

The US, China, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, are effectively untouchable by conventional military means, because they are able and willing to unleash nuclear holocaust in return - no matter what they do.

Though he is not stupid, he can't think clearly. Can't even control his rage as seen from last interviews.

> 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 comply, many of them would fight against such a thing and would know the new regime is fake. Furthermore, Kyiv is a big city with peculiar geography. Urban fighting is hell, and if Ukraine decides to make a principled stand there it could take weeks of bloody fighting before it falls; and if Ukraine's government evacuates to Lviv in time, and continues the fight from there, it might result in a long struggle, regardless of who gets installed in Kyiv by Putin.

Oh and we don't know how the Russian public will react if the war gets to an urban bloodbath going for weeks or months.

That's such a straightforward narrative, but then why has no major power ever been able to annex and occupy an unwilling nation before?

Everywhere Russia has taken to date was already a separatist region, but I'm really racking my brain to think of times when a country 'just simply annexed' another area by force since the fall of the Raj.

Also because it's very dangerous to attack a place where there's a lot of radioactive waste being stored. And if things go really bad, you can always pull off a "insane Ukrainians just shelled the power plant and broke nuclear containment" - if Russians can't have Kiev, nobody will have it.

> An official familiar with current assessments said Russian shelling hit a radioactive waste repository at Chernobyl, and an increase in radiation levels was reported. The increase could not be immediately corroborated.

You mean like this?

https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-chernobyl-russia-invasion...

It appears there are two bridges across the pripyat river in the vicinity, next crossing is nearly 100km south inside Kiev city.

There appears to be satellite imagery of Russian columns passing through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which would support this thesis.

https://twitter.com/CSBiggers/status/1497000126719606790

The exclusion zone is on the most direct zone from Belarus to Kiev. So they may be securing it as a prelude to sending ground troops to Kiev.

I can't really tell what's going on here. Is the EU and America supposed to be helping out but it's all promises without real counter attacks? Is this just the calm before the storm as russia places their troops in the right spots while everyone looks on? Anyone who's smarter than me who could enlighten me?

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 never a concrete possibility. In fact, the US has had to tread very carefully simply to place missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Poland, which is a neighbor of Ukraine.

Russia had a buffer state that was content to do its bidding in Yanukovich et. al. but after the Ukrainians overthrew their corrupt government and made moves to establish a genuine western-style democracy with rule of law, Russia were forced to shore up their vulnerable flank. This is part of that process. But they now face bad consequences, including neutral Finland and Sweden deciding to join NATO, perhaps Georgia also, and Germany (and Europe in general) starting to look for alternate energy sources in earnest (Russia supplies a huge percentage of Europe's energy needs, and is also a huge supplier of many rare earths and raw materials that are critical to the Semiconductor Industry).

EDIT: Belarus is also a client state of Russia's, and there has been unrest there, so perhaps Russia is sensing that they might slip as well. Putin is desperate to do whatever it takes to stay in power in Russia, and these things play into that as well.

Ukraine signed a Budapest memorandum [1] where US, France, UK and Russia guaranteed its territory integrity in exhange for the 3rd in the world arsenal of nuclear weapons.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secur...

> 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 case of the US) bomb less defended countries for their natural resources. Any claims or beliefs to the contrary are a projected reflection of their own priorities.

b) buffer zones outside of the neighborhood is getting more crowded. Big deal, if you are really so keen on a buffer zone, then maybe sacrifice a few square km out of the ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE part of the continent that they already control. Does that mean risking important areas? Oh noes. Security has a cost, so if you're not willing to pay for it, quit whining.

> Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so options are somewhat limited

Ukraine not being in NATO means we aren’t obligated to intervene. We regularly intervene in various things without a treaty requiring it.

> Russia were forced to shore up their vulnerable flank

Your explanation isn't bad but this choice of words is strange. No one "forced" Russia to do anything. NATO has never overtly threatened Russia. Neither NATO or any European country was going to roll tanks through Ukraine and attack Russia. Even if every Eastern European country decided to get back at Russia for a half century of abuse from the USSR, the existence of Russia's nuclear arsenal secured their borders.

The Putin propaganda about tanks rolling through Ukraine is simply absurd. It's just some recycled Stalinist propaganda trying to equate NATO/Europe with Hitler and the Nazis.

I don't think any description of Putin's actions using the word "forced" or anything like it make actual sense.

The fact that Germany was going to increase their dependence on Russian gas with NS2 instead of lowering it is despicable and incredibly short sighted. Same country which is going nuclear free. Complete morons.

> ... including neutral Finland and Sweden deciding to join NATO, perhaps Georgia also.

Did you hear evidence of that anywhere or is that just wild speculation?

"In fact, the US has had to tread very carefully simply to place missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Poland, which is a neighbor of Ukraine."

This is Russian disinformation. Aegis Ashore (which is the system being installed in Poland) is designed to launched SM3 missiles that are designed to intercept ballistic missiles. They aren't nuclear armed at all. The Russians have been claiming that the silos could also launch Tomahawk missiles, some variants of which are nuclear armed. There have been no plans for this to happen, and the US has even offered to allow inspections.

>In fact, the US has had to tread very carefully simply to place missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Poland, which is a neighbor of Ukraine.

according to Putin that treading is a major motivation for his current actions.

This explains what you mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

This guy nailed it 7 years ago!

>Ukrainians overthrew their corrupt government and made moves to establish a genuine western-style democracy with rule of law

It's believed by many that the US ran a coup that installed a US puppet. That alleged puppet ended the long-standing arrangement that granted Russia access to its only warm water port. Losing access to this port made it almost a certainty that Russia would annex Crimea, which it did.

Can’t wait to see how “obligated” the USA will feel about Taiwan. I don’t believe NATO is the reason they’re not stopping Putin.

It is also not straightforward to put a NATO ally right on Russia's vulnerable flank

In taking Ukraine, Putin just put Nato on Russia’s border.

EU and US will use every diplomatic and financial weapon against Russia, but they've long since decided Ukraine and the Ukrainian people aren't worth actual war over. That call was made in 2014 and stopping Russia then would've been easier than it would be now.

It's not clear whether every financial weapon will be used. For example,

> The foreign ministers of the Baltic states called for Russia to be cut off from SWIFT, the global intermediary for banks' financial transactions. However, other EU member states were reluctant, both because European lenders held most of the nearly $30 billion in foreign bank's exposure to Russia and because China has developed an alternative to SWIFT called CIPS; a weaponisation of SWIFT would provide greater impetus to the development of CIPS which in turn would weaken SWIFT as well as the West's control over international finance.[262][263] Other leaders calling for Russia to be stopped from accessing SWIFT include Czech President Miloš Zeman[264] and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.[265]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...

Not even every financial weapon. EU isn't united on kicking Russia out of SWIFT.

Until the US puts sanctions on Russia's oil/gas and doesn't buy it, then no not every financial or diplomatic weapon is being used. Right now it seems the US is reluctant to do this: https://twitter.com/business/status/1496861082907906048

It's good that Iraq and Afghanistan was worth a war, just Ukraine not so much

> EU and US will use every diplomatic and financial weapon against Russia

[Citation needed]

The softening of sanctions has arrived already.

The EU and US have made serious mistakes in the process but it's hard to disagree with that conclusion. Either you have a fairly short(By necessity, since Ukraine is going to remain crossable with armor for maybe a couple more weeks before the entire country turns into a giant bog in spring) proxy war in Ukraine that kills a few thousand and transfers the territory from one bickering cabal of oligarchs to another or you risk global nuclear war with boots-on-the-ground intervention. Putin has been pretty clear that he'll use nukes in the event of a full NATO intervention.

The whole thing is very puzzling. Russia will take Ukraine but Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe. There is no way that Russia can conquer all of Europe. The West will not attack because Russia has nukes. The sanctions will eventually wear Russia down. What is the end game? Is he that confident that the West will just forgive and forget?

It reads to me as different goals. You know those slightly asymmetric board games where different players have different objectives? I think Putin has already amassed effectively infinite money and power, so his new goal is immortality, which I think means establishing a greater legacy by restoring as much of the the Soviet Union's old borders as it can. This is probably not actually in Russia's interests, but the goal isn't "Russia succeeds," it's "Putin remembered as great."

Yes. And we probably will.

He wants a warm water port.

The end game is to receive another puppet-state close to Russia. It's the only target.

Ukraine isn't part of NATO, I think it's a big reason why troop deployment hasn't happened.

Not the reason though. Kosovo was not a part of NATO either. It's just that Russia is not Serbia.

Even if they were, what's easier, to honour such an agreement with an expensive (materially and in terms of human lives) and dangerous (would cause the conflict so spread) deployment or to say "Sorry, you're going to have to tough it out yourself.".

The USA and UK already abandoned the Afghani people, feels like the once mighty US military really doesn't want to be in a shooting war against Russia. As someone living in Europe, I would also be wary of how it would escalate if NATO got involved.

The EU finds itself in a very tough bind. It can't really do anything at the risk of Russia cutting off energy supplies to Western Europe. That's why it's all talk and sanctions.

The US isn't going to put boots on the ground and start an all out war, over Ukraine, and NATO doesn't have to do anything, as Ukraine isn't in NATO.

So what are the options? Well, Europe can start to unwind being dependent on Russia or energy, but that's a slow process that is already on its way.

There isn't much that can be done. It's very sad and messed up innocent people have to pay with their lives because of geopolitics and a dictator hell bent on shoring up his negative image.

Some analysis (not by an expert though):

1. There will be no EU or US troops coming to aid Ukraine, and Ukraine knows that. It was clear from the start that direct NATO involvement could lead to WW3 and there is currently no will to risk that for a non-NATO member.

2. In numbers, the Russian military is about 6 to 12 times stronger than the Ukrainian military (in terms of tanks, fighter planes, heavy weaponry). They have already gained air superiority, so they can move around airborne troops quickly, albeit with a certain risk from portable ground-to-air missiles. They are also trying to install an air bridge near the capital, although it's unclear at the moment whether they have succeeded.

4. The main target of the Russian military are currently all major cities in the East of Ukraine. Russian forces can be expected to occupy the capital Kyiv within hours or days from now. If the Ukrainian forces fight exceptionally well, they might delay this for weeks but that's unlikely.

5. Once Kyiv is occupied, Russia will quickly install a puppet regime, send around death squads, and basically instill terror to break active and passive resistance. Pro-Putin Ukrainians will emerge and take over. It's going to be similar to what happened in Chechnya in the past and the Donbas region. Armed men without insignia will snatch people from the street and torture them, citizens will disappear, etc. There will be fake elections.

I hope I'm wrong but that's about my prognosis. The civilized world can currently not do much about it except imposing sanctions and delivering arms to Ukraine. A good response now would be to break diplomatic ties with Russia and to exclude Russia from the Swift system. It would also make sense to sharpen media control and party financing laws in various countries since the Russian government has been using loopholes to finance willfully ignorant evil and divisive parties all over the world to weaken the EU and divide US and Europe.

The EU and America have been clear throughout that they will not be putting troops on the ground or directly fighting Russia in response to an invasion of Ukraine. No one is willing to risk a nuclear war.

The calm before the storm as Russia places their troops was the last few months. This is the storm, as Russia takes Ukraine by force. Assuming they succeed in taking it (which seems very likely) it's unclear what they plan to do - either installing a puppet government or incorporating Ukraine into Russia (or a mix of the two) seems most likely.

The EU and America (and other friends) have promised severe sanctions on Russia in response to this - which they are currently announcing, and they will probably continue to extend over the coming days. They have also promised to support Ukraine with intelligence, military supplies, and economic aid. They have been providing that over the past months, and every indication is that they will continue to do so as long as it's possible.

NATO is also greatly increasing it's readiness, in case Russia chooses to go beyond Ukraine/Moldova (Moldova is the only neighbor to Ukraine uninvolved in NATO and the conflict, and Russia already occupies a piece of it) into any NATO country. In that eventuality the various NATO countries have all committed to going to war - there's a reasonably high chance it would be a nuclear one - which also means it's very unlikely that Putin will try this.

A counter attack by the US/EU was never on the table, as Ukraine isn’t a NATO member. Some of those nations have provided weapons and supplies for the Ukrainian defense in recent weeks, but from an actual conflict perspective, the Ukrainians are on their own.

The EU/US are attempting to retaliate in non-military ways, primarily through the form of economic sanctions. However, it seems like some of the most impactful actions available, like cutting Russia out of Swift, are being held up by Germany and Italy.

The US and NATO are sending military reinforcements to Eastern NATO nations such as Poland, but they will not actually engage or enter Ukraine so long as Russia doesn’t push through Ukraine into NATO nations, which I don’t think anyone expects.

The EU and USA can't attack Russian troops directly without escalating the war far more than anyone wants. No one wants to provoke a nuclear nation, not even another nuclear nation.

As long as Putin doesn't try to advance out of Ukraine, I doubt that NATO will offer any direct support beyond supplying arms and training.

There was a missed opportunity to seriously prevent war.

NATO should have been requested to by Ukraine and declared a no fly zone for military aviation west of the Dnieper, before Russia invaded.

An inability to use aviation would have severely slowed Russian plans.

I just had two chinooks fly overhead from the direction of Wright Patt. I see them maybe once a year.

As others have said, Ukraine isn't in NATO so there is no obligation for the US or EU to militarily come to its aid.

That said, Putin is increasing his risk appetite. Ukraine will most likely fall and have a puppet government installed, probably within weeks at most.

But then next year, what if he decides to up his ante and target one of the NATO member ex-USSR Baltic states for "reasons"?

Will NATO come to their defense militarily? Will the UK, France, Germany, as well as the US decide it is worth going to war with Russia to defend Estonia, Latvia, etc.?

What about China and Taiwan? If China decides to invade Taiwan, will anyone decide it is worth going to war with China to defend Taiwan militarily?

My prediction to those questions is - no. The authoritarian regimes have the upper hand in the current global state of affairs because the Western democracies are afraid of the consequences of going toe to toe militarily against them. I don't not sympathize - to be honest I have no clue what the solution is.

I don't think the opposite is necessarily true. If the US were to attack a country that Russia or China would truly lose face over (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. frankly are not), I feel Putin or Xi would, in fact, choose to wage war.

NATO/US is preparing to handle the refugee flood into countries invading Ukraine. They are not keeping russia from taking ukraine or holding it, by using military force. It looks like the takeover of Ukraine will be done by tomorrow.

You're overestimating the speed of the attack. Even if the Ukrainians put up no resistance (and they have been putting up resistance) - tanks just don't move that fast/ukraine is a big place.

See the dotted lines in this map - that's a rough estimate of how far the Russians have made it in a day. Even if they continue at the same pace overnight (unlikely), and the next day, and the next night, there's still a lot of the country they won't have physically reached yet.

https://twitter.com/OSINTNS/status/1496880680143568901/photo...

Basically if EU/US forces engage Russians directly it's ww3. I think that's going to happen anyway, but mismatches in tempo are common and rational in the early stages of a conflict.

Nobody promised helping out for real. It's all posturing to get a proxy pawn to sacrifice for the suzerain's benefit. Ukrainians got sold down the (Dnieper) river and I'm surprised they still have not realized somehow, when they should have realized in 2014 at the latest. I'll eat my words if there is some other grand strategy behind it but from today it would seem that even sanctions haven't been agreed upon and readied to go unlike what we were told.

Sanctions responding to the invasion were announced today, within half a day

Russia has nuclear power. That’s the main reason.

The EU and America have promised to help with economic sanctions on Russia and by providing military aid and lethal aid.

The EU and America have explicitly not promised to help out with direct military action against Russia. The United States and Biden have said multiple times that the US will not have forces engage Russia directly in Ukraine.

What specific promises are you referring to?

>. What specific promises are you referring to?

The Budapest Memorandum. 1994 wasn't that long ago...

The US makes empty promises. Read the Budapest memorandum in which we made security guarantees so Ukraine would give up its nuclear arsenal[0]. Russian aggression would certainly be much more calculated if Ukraine still had that capability.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

What do you want them to do exactly, send nukes?

There are plenty of sanctions the US and EU can impose on Russian oil and gas, but they aren't doing it.

All NATO members categorically ruled out military involvement in this conflict.

Is Ukraine even issuing counter attacks?

I'm not sure what the west is expecting, some sort of massive retreat like when Iraq pulled out of Kuwait? It looks pre-ordained that Ukraine will fall and should we want to stop it, we probably need to strike Moscow or something like that. I don't know how much appetite there is for something like that in the US, Trump and his supporters seem to support Russia here.

Yes. For example: russia took airport in Hostomel earlier today. Ukrainian army started counter attack and prevented russian planes from landing. Airport isn't retaken yet, there are heavy fights out there, but the main objective of preventing massive russian troops landing is achieved.

Putin warned the West that he wouldn't hesitate to conduct a nuclear strike if they try to meddle.

Mutually assured destruction means that his entire ass is destroyed - there's a lot more of NATO than there is of him.

Source? He never said that.

It's interesting that people think that when an enemy country (as most people in the west think of Russia) attacks a neutral country (after endless warnings and the ocupation of a sizable part of its territory several years prior, so it's not like this came out of the blue), that they should intervene as if they were the world police who decides who can attack who. Or some kind of righteous peace force who is above it all, that can attack anyone who attacks anyone else, not seeing the irony in their position of attacking others who do something they don't like.

This thinking really needs to go away. No, it's not ok of Russia to attack another country. But if your country then counter-attacks on behalf of Ukraine, you should expect Russia to then declare war on you immediately. This sounds far-fetched, but that could actually happen. And something like it did happen numerous times in history and we all remember very well how that ended (well some of us do, others seem to have never even heard of that).

We like to think Germany was defeated in WWII and the West and the Soviet Union (for those few who remember the USSR actually arrived in Berlin first, in fact - but lost more lives than everyone else combined) won... but that's not true; no one ever wins a full-scale war like that. Everyone loses, some just lose a bit less than the others... Germany was nearly flattened, but not before most of the rest of Europe was as well - priceless property, artistic treasures, not to mention lives, were lost well beyond anything that someone who claims to be a "victor" may admit. This is what happens when a country "helps" others just to stop a bully they don't like (and then the other side's allies help them, and so on).

I really, really hope Europe will never get flattened again, but seeing what is happening in Ukraine, and how people react online (some of whom may one day be in a position where they can actually act) makes me very doubtful of that even in my lifetime (I still have quite a few decades ahead, I hope...).

I don't think we should sit and do nothing! But please stop asking our leaders to lower themselves to the same level as the aggressor and just drop bombs on other human beings!

Let's show Russia that while they may, on the very short term, win a battle, that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable anymore in the 21st century, and that for a long time ahead, Russia should find itself isolated form the greates economies of the world, politically, financially and in any way possible to make sure they understand that they must never do this again, and anyone watching should take note that no one is above the law (that includes the USA!)... if you use violence, we will not use violence against you (well, not until we're the direct target of the aggression, even I would concede), but we'll see you with utmost distrust from then one and make you regret deeply to have behaved like that.

If NATO had from the beginning worked this way, we wouldn't have found ourselves in this situation... most things went on as normal after Russia took over Krimea. And Putin was not completely wrong in saying NATO has expanded a lot in the last 30 years, which entailed planting bombs right at the Russian's doorsteps from all directions, flagrantly provoking the bear knowing very well that this was not making them happy, in a behaviour quite similar to the bully of the story.

>> Or some kind of righteous peace force who is above it all, that can attack anyone who attacks anyone else, not seeing the irony in their position of attacking others who do something they don't like.

It's not about attacking someone who "do something we don't like" it's about Russia clearly breaking international laws, and behaving like an asshole. No irony here. If we can police individual citizens within a country, why not police the countries themselves?

>> no one ever wins a full-scale war like that. Everyone loses, some just lose a bit less than the others...

You have to decide which do you value more: your freedom or your life. And if you answer "my life" then be prepared to be a slave for the rest of it.

People also totally ignore that there is an ongoing war for 8 years now in Ukraine and NATO intervention so far only kept the situation alive by Providing weapons to a side that actively disabled some basic human rights 7 years ago with many national Human right issues the whole time. 14000 deaths.

It is by far not as one sided and simple as many make it to be

I wish that your comment were taken better here (other than the "poking the bear" analogy; I don't agree Russia should have worried about the NATO alliance or taken it as a threat). No one should be rushing in to fight a war, we need to figure out how to make such things as this invasion impossible in the future, and figure out how to fight at a higher level than using violence and weaponry. Until humanity realizes that, even in the face of violence, violence is not the answer, we won't get anywhere, we'll just keep fighting. I feel for the Ukrainians, but I also feel for dozens of other groups of peoples all over the world who are oppressed or who have lost their independence (even some in the "enlightened" Western Democratic sphere), and I don't advocate war in those situations any more than here.

EU is incapable and the US doesn't have near enough assets nearby

in any case, Putin would likely respond with a nuke (he already basically hinted this), this is an endgame for everyone, Ukraine, Russia, Putin...there will be no de-escalation or peace process. Putin already said Ukraine "does not need to exist"...either the Ukrainians can fight him off or not. Probably not. Sanctions won't matter. Scolding Putin at the UN won't matter. China will golf-clap the whole thing. By the end of 2022, the only issue will be when the West just recognizes the new borders or not.

Putin responding with a nuke would be suicide. Maybe literal suicide. He's surely not that stupid?

I doubt that Russia can hold Ukraine for long. Once Putin is gone, everything he accomplished will fade away quickly.

Probably not a bad idea to put all your troops and equipment stockpiles near an area that just about everyone is going to be reluctant to bomb indiscriminately - nobody wants to accidentally destroy that shell protecting that nuclear power plant I would imagine.

Shelling it is a cheap way to spread radiation around the center of the country, like a dirty bomb.

is this the same plant as the one from 1986? this plant is still active today? im very surprised.

When a nuclear power plant has a failure as catastrophic as that in Chernobyl it is active (radioactive) for a _very_ long time, with no way of shutting it down. The immediate site of the power plant will be uninhabitable for about 20,000 years, however, the wider area might become safe to live in in just a couple of hundred years. While radiation levels decrease in general, there have also been measurements of increasing radiation in 2021.

The other three reactors there were operational until 2000.

No, the current structure is from 2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement

Not active, but actively contained.

I think this is mainly a psychological move. It has people talking about nuclear fallout, radiation etc. That's the point.

The most interesting part of Chernobyl to me isn't even the power plant, but what it was powering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar

Ah, no, I believe it's primarily a purely tactical advance. Chernobyl is directly in the Russian army's shortest path of advance on Kyiv.

If it turns out they don't try to take Kyiv, I stand corrected.

But practical necessity has certainly not stopped the Russians from also trying an infowar attack based on Chernobyl's totemic power, as you say.

Yeah the site is a massive liability for whoever controls it. There's a ton of work left to do to fully decommission it and make it safe.

What if, and bear with me, Russia doesn't care about safety?

It does pose the question what would actually happen should someone bomb the sarcophagus.

Unless the prevailing winds are really blowing towards the west, this would harm Russia and their newly conquered territory much more than it would harm the EU.

It makes more sense as a bargaining chip with Ukraine than as a chip with the EU.

I'm very skeptical of the following question, but I found from a reputable reporter on Twitter, and seems like at least not an obvious fake website. But I don't see how this can be true... Anyone smarter than me care to alleviate the following concerns:

Increased radiation. On this map some of the levels go from ~750 nsv/h to 10,200. one at the center went from 2,000 to 65,000 in the last day.

seems crazy and inconceivable?

https://www.saveecobot.com/en/radiation-maps#10/51.3619/30.1...

No, that actually seems extremely plausible. Thanks for posting actual numbers and units!

Look at the units. That's NANOsieverts. So the old radiation level was ~2x of what https://xkcd.com/radiation/ lists as the normal background level. Which m akes sense, because most of Chernobyl really isn't that bad nowadays.

The new level is 65 microsieverts per hour. That's notable, but not some huge release of radiation, and it would still take days for you to hit the (annual) occupational hazard limit.

The most plausible explanation, in my opinion, is that all the traffic kicked up a lot of contaminated dust. (Which is one of the reasons why you don't want to live there despite the "safe" radiation levels. The radiation level is only safe-ish as long as you don't breathe the dust.)

I just read that exact reason; Lots of tanks and movement kicking up top soil.

Scary situation all around even if radiation is like 999 on a list of 1000 top concerns.

Is there any strategic significance to this? I thought it was closed?

It is actually deviously brilliant. No one wants to shell the area because it would release all the dust and radionuclides that were buried during the cleanup.

It is a perfect staging area because the downside to attacking it is so high. No allied forces in Europe want to deal with the fallout - literally.

This is so genius I'm genuinely in awe. This is right out of Sun Tzu: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. ”

Well he invented fighting, and he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honour.

Then he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on Earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one...

Unless they're literally housed inside the containment building, this is useless against precision guided missiles and bombs. Are you talking about deterrence to nuclear bombing of Chernobyl? Then it is a moot point because the fallout from the weapon itself would dwarf the dormant fissile material in the containment facility.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If Russia wants to deter EU with fallout, they already have such a mechanism - their massive stockpile of nuclear weapons to deter aggression by EU.

If that is true, then every explosion contaminates the vehicles and personnel staged in the immediate vicinity. Doesn't sound so brilliant to me.

Chernobyl sarcophagus is a massive pile of concrete - basically indestructible. Buildings made of concrete are ridiculously resilient to explosions - remember the Beirut explosion? That grain silo right next to the epicenter was still standing

Berlin has some flak towers from WW2, quoting Wikipedia:

The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers. After the war, the demolition of the towers was often considered not feasible and many remain to this day

The exclusion zone occupies the shortest route from Belarus to Kyiv.

Yes - Chernobyl is inside the massive "Chernobyl Exclusion Zone," a zone which is conveniently only ~80 miles from the capital of Ukraine, and is just a wide swatch of empty land and abandoned buildings, perfect for parking military equipment. The radiation levels, though high compared to the rest of Ukraine, is low enough to not be a risk for their short-term stay.

Having news reports about Russian control over Chernobyl is enough to scare a good chunk of European population.

You don't want to bomb the Chernobyl exclusion area.

So it's a perfect place to station troops and military arsenal

Chernobyl was built near where power is consumed.

It's only 81km up-river from Kyiv.

Theoretically the whole area could be turned into a dirty bomb with a few strategic strikes and it would be carried down a river destroying vast areas of Ukraine for millennia.

It's a side you can't really bomb/air attack.

It's a side both EU and Russia are worried about I think.

Putin is afraid that Ukraine will somehow put together a form a nuclear bomb and use it "in desperation", and remainders in it could be used to build a dirty pseudo atom-bomb (or maybe we should call it radiation bomb).

It's also is a nice path into the Ukrain with no civilians/camera etc. around to get in their way.

To mine unobtanium, by now it should be enough of it there.

Two strategic points off the top of my head:

One, the railhead. Afaik it’s operational and modern, as they used it for moving material for constructing the sarcophagus. Goes straight to Kiev. Makes for easy onwards transport of materiel from Belarus.

Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possible.

Yeah the Russians now control the entire supply of Ukranian Airbnb Experiences

We in the The West have some serious soul searching to do.

A nuclear power has attacked a sovereign state and told us to stay away or something very bad will happen.

They've been sabre rattling for weeks and weeks and we have frozen unable (or unwilling) to act. No good deed goes unpunished, every sanction has a cost etc etc but we're not ready to pay even a smallest price in order to save lives protect world peace. Or to save "western values" our leaders are wording at each opportunity.

If we really wanted to stop the invasion we'd send half a million soldiers to "hang around" in Ukraine weeks ago. Or at least we'd send them thousands of anti helicopter and antitank missiles. We cannot prevent Russia's bombing and destruction of Ukraine but the missiles would easily stop an invasion.

Russia is a country with extremely concentrated wealth and therefore power - the oligarchs are one of the few leverage points we have. If we temporarily froze (right now confisction would be more appropriate) assets owned by oligarchs in the west, deplatform them from payment systems, credit cards, universities, golden visas. Capture their yahts, jets they'd take care of Putin rather quickly. We know who they are, they're on the Forbes list posing for pictures.

Somehow we in the west eagerly go after the weak (Ottawa protesters) but cannot seam to do the same towards rich (with power and means to corrupt).

The rules based Western world has gone out of the window and we're quickly heading towards a world with two sets of rules (or rather two standards of rule enforcement).

I'm from the balkans, and generally (and also due to being from the balkans), i'm against any kind of war...

but!

> We in the The West have some serious soul searching to do. > A nuclear power has attacked a sovereign state and told us to stay away or something very bad will happen.

"The west" really does need some soul searching... and a mirror... because the west has done this same thing many, many, many times, and are now bothered when Putin does it. From korea and vietnam, to more modern wars, iraq twice, afghanistan, syria, libya, serbia/kosovo, etc. And the reasons were even worse... A few saudis bomb a couple of US buildings... attack afghanistan! Remember the weapons of mass destructions in iraq? Neither does iraq. And not forget the "not-real-war" actions, such as random drone bombings in random countries where there is no "official" war (eg. pakistan).

Yes, most of the world in many countries can point a finger at putin and cry out angry cries and demand many things (sanctions, help for ukraine,...), but america and most of "the west" is not on that list, considering all those countries still have soldiers occupying quite a few sovereign countries around the world.

I agree our nations have done less than everything that could be done. I do think we've done quite better than could have been hoped around 2016.

I believe your moral certainty is quite flawed:

1. It rests entirely on hindsight.

These events only started seeming inevitable about 24 hours ago.

Now we've found them to be true, we trust and are even impressed by the Americans' warnings. But these last weeks I little doubt the Bundestag's halls, and European couches everywhere, heard many recollections of Iraq's supposed WMD program.

2. You advocate a purely moral policy.

There's a quiet part in every happy Westerner's mind that believes, without examination, in the ultimate and inevitable triumph of good over evil. To be fair, the past few generations experienced reassuring evidence for this assumption - and Hollywood keeps the reassurance alive.

Unfortunately, the good guys do not always win; moral will cannot overcome geopolitical reality. Neither Realpolitik nor MAD were made defunct by 20 years of Pax Americana. History may have had a near-death experience, but she's apparently now quite recovered.

Ukraine is Russia's neighbor. Ukraine is very much Russia's family: brothers who long cohabited. Ukraine's attitude towards Russia is legitimately a vital interest of Russia. Russia has, by right of force (Realpolitik!), complete dominance to act in Ukraine. Deterrence was always the only realistic option.

500,000 Western soldiers <500m from Moscow would be both target for, and, perhaps, sufficient justification in Russians citizens' eyes for the use of, tactical nukes.

3. It is unrealistic about how democracies work. Only the aggression your proposed policy is meant to prevent would be sufficient to convince democracies to implement it: an unfortunate catch-22.

Democracies are extremely reluctant to go to war, which is good. The price paid is inevitably foolishness in global power politics. Roosevelt could not have started a pre-emptive war with Japan, though perhaps this would have been the optimal move.

Similarly, there is no chance that, in the context of 20 years of unbroken peace, any Nato member would be interested in such a massive deployment directly next to Moscow. No scenario would have allowed this risk.

If it did somehow happen, Russia's aggressive response could easily divide the alliance in recrimination for implementing such a reckless policy.

> Or at least we'd send them thousands of anti helicopter and antitank missiles

That happened - the UK sent 2000 NLAW anti-tank missiles and the US sent Javelins.

Go send your own children to die first.

Hey, good news people, Switzerland is going to remain neutral and keep taking Russian money.

And Germany doesn't want to stop Swift because they need sweet sweet natural gas from Russia

is there a citation for what you wrote?

I thought I read the exact opposite of both your sentences some hours ago. perhaps things changed again?

I think the commenters here relying on a more robust response if Putin invades a NATO country are being overly optimistic. Let's be honest with ourselves and recognize that without the US NATO is no match for Russia. Fragmented, with small and outdated armed forces, the Russian army would quickly roll over any resistance. Can you imagine a Republican president committing US troops to the defence of Lithuania in the current climate? Just look at what Trump is saying right now. If I were a European leader I'd be investing very heavily in an my armed forces right about now. Putin has succeeded in undermining the international order. First, by getting someone like Trump elected and undercutting faith in NATO. Second, by invading neighboring countries and having everyone realize this has no real consequences. It's likely that, unfortunately, the new world order is the old world order. Either a country has the power to defend itself or it doesn't. Other countries can't be relied upon to help.

France and Turkey has quite the army just by themselves and they are both NATO members. I wouldn’t be as pessimistic.

The US has thousands of troops in Europe (NATO states). What do you think is going to happen if russia open fire at them. Biden made it very clear already, WW3 is the answer, but you suggest a republican president would just sit there tolerate deaths of US soldiers and talk about financial sanctions?

> Putin has succeeded in undermining the international order. First, by getting someone like Trump elected

do you think can he hand pick the next US president or just sway the election towards one party?

If you're looking for some background on the big picture and strategic goals of Russia and NATO/US, I just watched this (from U Chicago political scientist John Meirsheimer) and found it to be extremely helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

It is worth remembering that the Chernobyl sarcophagus was paid for by the EU. Not sure if that makes it EU property though

EU also paid to build a city in what used to be Palestine, and before anyone moved in Israel demolished it all. No one even talked about it for more than a day

> 319 Palestinian owned structures were demolished or seized, and 447 people (including 222 children) were displaced. Of the structures targeted in the six-month reporting period, 62 structures were funded by the EU or EU Member States with a value of nearly EUR 391,406.

https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/20200528_final_si...

Not an expert but I would doubt it. Most every part of the EU has signs at testing to the fact that X (a road, a bridge, a building) was paid for by EU funds.

Let by G7 but many other countries contributed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Shelter_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement

Well, Russia will appreciate the gift. "Thanks for cleaning up the mess for us before we invaded."

Yes! Well worth remembering. Get your best pen out and write a complaint letter to President Putin. For sure it will stop the invasion dead in its tracks. Genius!

If it protects EU, then the EU has a stake in it:

>> Russia wants to control the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to signal NATO not to interfere militarily, the same source said.

I guess this indicates that Russia intends to completely subdue Ukraine and back it into a corner. In such a scenario, a desperate Ukraine government could wield the plant as leverage by threatening some catastrophe. By removing it from their hands, Ukraine is denied this weapon of last resort.

And Russia gains another weapon of last resort, should anyone think of putting them in the same position.

I fail to imagine how the reactor could practically be used as a weapon.

Scorched Earth. Ukraine decides the only tactic left is to deny its enemy use of the area++.

It's hard to view the events unfolding with an objective gaze. Virtually all of western journalism condemns Russia's attacks unilaterally, which seems reasonable, considering people are dying to grow a dictator's empire. But then I read about the history of the conflict and see that Ukraine has had separatist states and civil war for years. It isn't like Ukraine is a stable, peaceful, and unwitting nation, like, say, Denmark. It's more similar to NATO "protecting" their national interests in Syria or Iraq. Not that I supported those interventions as ethical, either -- I just acknowledge the potential long term geopolitical motivations for doing so.

Any Ukrainians or Russians have an alternative perspective to offer?

The idea that the (in)stability of a nation can legitimize military incursion by another nation is plain absurd. At what point exactly does a war become legitimate? Is it okay to attack a country when they are entwined in civil war? What percentage of the country needs to be involved in the conflict? What if it is an unarmed but still major internal political conflict?

No war is legitimate.

Comparing this incursion to NATO "protecting" their national interests in Syria or Iraq is perhaps defensible, but the only logical conclusion is that these interventions were/are equally condemnable.

> But then I read about the history of the conflict and see that Ukraine has had separatist states and civil war for years.

Ukraine voted 90+% in favor of independence from Russia back in the 1991, with 82% of the electorate participating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Independence_of...

Since Putin came to power, he's worked hard to expand Russia's influence outside of it's current borders and back towards it's former USSR or Russian Empire borders. This includes propaganda, instigating rebellions, etc.

The "civil war" in Ukraine, started after a pro-Russian President was ousted, and without direct influence over Ukraine, Russia has been fighting a proxy war in the separatist regions.

> It isn't like Ukraine is a stable, peaceful, and unwitting nation, like, say, Denmark.

Russia is claiming that the people of Ukraine are Russian speaking and historically belong integrated with Russia.

It's like Mexico saying they want the Southwest US back. Historically it was part of Mexico, has many Spanish speakers, etc.

But where does this stop? What if Italy wants to recreate the Roman Empire or the UK wants to re-establish the British Empire? It's really bizarre to look backwards in time, as there are 30 year olds in Ukraine with kids of their own now who were never alive during the USSR and know nothing but Ukrainian independence.

Ideally as a world, we allow people the right to self-determination. But every superpower I can think of throughout history is guilty of influencing (or attacking) foreign countries for political and military advantage and manufacturing any reason imaginable to justify it.

Dont project “separatist” feudal states of 100s year ago on to modern Ukraine. Modern Ukraine is nothing like that.

This isn't a Ukrainian or Russian perspective, but an alternative perspective.

John Mearsheimer gives a popular alternative perspective. He has a realist foreign policy perspective suggesting that the US and the west provoked Russia by trying to push Ukraine to join NATO and by intervening in the protests/coup in 2013/2014. Russia has a legitimate security interest in ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO and become militarized.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

One thing to remember in all of these assessments is that Russia has the GDP of Canada, with almost 5x the population. Okay, they have lots of nukes, but maintaining and securing those are very expensive. Russia in 2022 is not the USSR of the '80s. It is not the Germany of the late '30s. They cannot take and hold Ukraine with the forces they've deployed, against an ongoing insurgency. Putin cannot cross the border into a NATO member and hope to survive. He knows this.

Now, if we could get China to join in on the sanctions the Russian economy is fucked.

It will of course never happen, since China is the one enabling this.

For those of you who can't wrap your heads around why Putin is invading Ukraine, I invite you to recall the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 by the US and its allies.

While artfully justified to Western audiences at the time, they have both been subjected to intense criticism and questions of legitimacy since.

In the case of Iraq, if I am not mistaken, the war was an operation to disarm a country of WMDs that it apparently didn't possess.

In the case of Afghanistan, the invasion occurred because, again if I am not mistaken, the US was not extended an invitation to come into their country and retaliate against al-Quaeda, a military organisation responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US. So the US was forced to invite themselves.

While I'm not going to get into the criticisms of the US and its allies for these occurrences right now, I would just like to point out that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not all that different — in fact, it's actually more fruitful for Putin than the West's military ventures.

Putin stands to lose very little in this act. Anyone currently dealing with Russia already is unlikely to be deterred by this episode for long, regardless of the cost to human lives. How many stopped dealing with the US when citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq were being killed?

Sanctions are also likely to do very little. As I understand it, Russia was already under some sanctions, what will a few more do? SWIFT access revocation has to be agreed by all members, and even if that happened, things like that are why cryptocurrencies didn't evaporate 12 years ago, but have instead (with a degree of volatility) flourished.

In terms of credibility in his own country, I suspect Putin's entire career as his country's president has been characterised by his outspoken belief that the USSR lives on and that he wants Russia to assert itself and its strength.

It is likely this narrative, combined with his tight state control, relationships with oligarchs, and exports of oil and gas to countries who don't really fancy digging it up for themselves, that has kept him in power and popular with sizeable proportion of the Russian people. Many of whom probably do yearn for a return to the halcyon days.

So invading a post-Soviet state with a good deal of embedded Russian culture probably only strengthens him in the view of his supporters, and his critics he can just arrest as debauched youths and traitors, I suppose.

My point is that he will likely face little effective opposition to a literal land-grab on the home front.

So what about aid coming to Ukraine from the West? Well, I've read a lot of people saying Putin is insane and irrational and could just hit the nuke button any time and his Western peers wouldn't have the stomach to do the same — for someone who wanted to face as little opposition as possible, that's pretty much the perfect impression to give off.

And all it takes is a psychotic-sounding speech or two that Western media outlets — who were in dire need of a new attention-gripping story to maximise ad revenue now that the pandemic's not interesting — can whip into a firestorm with nuclear weapon mentions, Hitler comparisons, military strength assessments...

Provided that you don't mind blowing up Ukrainian civilians — and I'm guessing Putin probably doesn't lose much sleep over it, much like Bush and Blair probably didn't think too much about Basra's residents — then this move gets you:

+ Ukraine, its infrastructure, its commodities, etc.

+ media exposure to flex your muscles to domestic and foreign audiences, consolidating your home political position, expanding your influence abroad, and cementing your legacy for years to come

+ a war with the odds firmly in your favour to train your military and test your weapons

+ a chance to antagonise already weak relations between the West and China

+ a chance to improve your own relations with China who'd love to have a relatively-ignored precedent upon which to rationalise a brief holiday to Taiwan

+ confirmation that no one in the West will fight you when you decide you look at the next non-NATO land-grab

- Boris Johnson will use the opportunity to pretend he's Winston Churchill... call for SWIFT revocation that he knows will never happen... in order to pull himself out of his own hot mess

- Joe Biden will babble on TV about something that is supposed to disguise the fact that he will never engage Russia in open war

- the EU will have a meeting

- NATO will have a meeting

- a few bored professionals will insult you on the internet

So, I suspect Putin probably did think the situation over, figured that if Ukraine joined NATO it would become impractical to attack, kind of a "now or never" moment for a leader who doesn't want to lose face entering what may be his last decade of his premiership before he decides to retire somewhere and write a best-selling guide to dealing with an alliance of 30 countries.

Don't get me wrong, what Putin is doing is of course horrific and my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people. I honestly didn't think he would do it, but I see why he has invaded — because he has dared to do it, people will believe he'd do anything now, and he can do whatever he wants. Maybe he'll try a small ex-Soviet NATO country next. I wonder if anyone will pipe up then.

I just felt the need to express how I am seeing these events unfold, because I believe that there is very little understanding of this situation in the West (as a British person, perhaps I am also guilty of this, but if so, I hope to be corrected so I may learn) and I think that's probably half the reason why no one is actually doing anything other than stopping trade with a nation that is probably quite capable of weathering a bit of economic turbulence.

> For those of you who can't wrap your heads around why Putin is invading Ukraine, I invite you to recall the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 by the US and its allies.

As someone from the balkans i totally agree with you, and it is sad, that the world leaders that are "outraged" today are politically commanding armies that are still occupying many sovereign countries around the world.

But with the media and propaganda, the wars started by the west were "good", and every other war is "bad". The americans even convinced people that their soldiers killing people in middle east (and other places) is somehow "fighting for US freedom".

I am pretty sure this will more or less completely sever Russia from the western economy for a long time to come. The European dependence on Russian gas is going to go away quickly (or at least as quickly as these things go).

As long as China goes along with Putin's madness they will manage to shuffle along, but if these things continue I am not so sure. China loves stability and trade with Europe more than it likes the European economy becoming more self-sustained due to some ex-soviet mobster with power hunger.

I look at it this way: the Soviet Union was relevant in many ways. Not just as a military power. It was important to excel at every area. Like science, culture, sports, space travel and so on.

Today Russia has three things that makes it important: natural resources, sports (and apparently a good doping programme), and military power. They are slowly becoming irrelevant on the international scene in all other areas.

This is far more chilling to me

https://imgur.com/6BeH4md

"Estimate of areas of Ukraine captured by Russia since fighting began this morning"

If this "works" that well for him, why stop at Ukraine?

Western sanctions will do absolutely nothing but push Putin further into considering invading other neighboring nations. He's going to reform the Soviet Union. The president in Nicaragua has reportedly told able-bodied 18-45 year old men to prepare to support the Russian Federation in freeing people in Ukraine.

This is going to spiral out of control, and talking will do nothing.

Do Russian military knows how to safely operate the remaining functional reactors in the power plant? If Chernobyl episode 2 is just a wrong button away, the entire EU is in danger.

This development is a tactical prerequisite for besieging or attacking Kyiv. The exclusion zone covers the shortest route to the city from Belarus - the shortest route available to Russian forces.

It’s also perhaps a strategic coup for Russia in two ways - but it could also be a boon to Ukraine. The coming days will elucidate which party most profits - probably Russia.

Russia’s first strategic gain is simply one of properly executed rapid maneuver armored warfare. They now hold a redoubt that is difficult to safely attack, threatens Kyiv and the entire Dnipro plain, and preemptively protects their politically weakest supply line, Belarus.

Russia’s second potential strategic boon here is more modern - they have seized an infowar high ground.

The Financial Times this morning quotes an anonymous Russian security official claiming Chernobyl’s occupation creates a potent psychological deterrent against both strategic escalation and subtle tactical interference from the West.

The disaster of 86 looms large in the minds of European polities, especially the Nordics. Placing the radioactive zone in the battle space may chill European feet.

And in American minds, Chernobyl is unavoidably associated with the USSR and memories of a more dangerous iteration of Russia. (I expect many on this side of the Atlantic think the plant is in Russia.) Occupying it elevates the danger and the power associated with Russia nearer to Cold War levels of respect, which is a fundamental goal of Putin’s revanchism.

However, in the Slavic societies of post-Soviet eastern Europe - including Russians themselves - Chernobyl connotes the corruption and failure of the USSR. Gorbachev himself blamed the Union’s destruction entirely on the loss of scientific and nuclear prestige, and national confidence, engendered by the disaster.

So Russia risks reminding all their former satellite peoples of the last empire’s outcome. Ukraine’s morale and propaganda may turn the loss into a victory - especially if the Nordics polities, and German citizenry, favor outrage over trepidation. In this pursuit, Zelensky spoke several hours ago with Sweden’s PM about specifically the Chernobyl battle - and Ukraine’s FM called it an “attack on Europe.”

I hope desperately that Ukraine gains greater European unity, and Russia gets further opprobrium among those Europeans who yet still take an understanding view of Putin’s new imperialism.

But I suspect the affair will on the whole benefit Russia. All else aside, it’s clear they are fighting a conventional ground war. They need the hard tactical advantage of occupying this particular 1,000 square miles to win; even if they lose the information battle they have advanced their cause.

> This development is a tactical prerequisite for besieging or attacking Kyiv. The exclusion zone covers the shortest route to the city from Belarus - the shortest route available to Russian forces.

Most probably this + the area being relatively empty makes it easier to pass through.

As a slav (balkans), chernobyl to me personally just represents the corruption and totaly failure of communism, where everything has to look great, but what's underneath the facade, doesn't matter. If things fail, you can usually just lie about that... like they did with chernobyl too.

> I hope desperately that Ukraine gains greater European unity, and Russia gets further opprobrium among those Europeans who yet still take an understanding view of Putin’s new imperialism.

Again, as someone from the balkans (even though this part is a small separate country now and a member of NATO and EU), who's seen the 1999 nato bombings in yugoslavia firsthand, and who remembers a couple of saudis flying some planes, and usa attacking afghanistan, and the "weapons of mass destruction" iraq "had", and syria and lybia, etc., I really cannot comprehend all the outrage at putin, when all the outraged countries literally have soldiers occupying some other foreign countries right this moment.

Again, as a balkaner, war is bad (even if we were the lucky ones, because the last one lasted only 10 days here, and the most notable action was shooting down a helicopter carrying bread), but if your country is currently doing the same as putin is, your leaders should really shut the fuck up.

I don't understand your infowar reasoning at all. Pripyat and its immediate vicinity is just an unpopulated area with a decomissioned nuclear power station in it.

Is the subtext that Putin plans to blow it up, or what? I'm pretty sure that attacking central Europe with a dirty bomb would make it very difficult for NATO to avoid invoking Article 5.

Isn't it the shortest path from Belarus to Kiev though Chernobyl? Is that really any other message than: they will approach Kiev or even try to capture it?

Russia has too few soldiers to occupy Ukraine and maintain the peace. They're taking the population hostage by controlling what it needs to survive.

Most documentaries I saw said that the Chernobyl plant is totally destroyed. So why capture it?

The other reactors in the plant were operational until 2000. It's not about the plant though, it's about the city and the path to Kiev that it frees up.

Gee, as a Brit, I'm sure glad we didn't elect any of those anti-nuclear nutbags into office as we've been watching this situation unfold with grim concern for the last 30 years as every opportunity we've had to deal with these issues has been not just ignored but dismissed by our leaders with utter contempt /s

What’s the point and significance of capturing Chernobyl?

The next iteration of S.T.A.L.K.E R. is going to be nuts.

this is important to the war, everybody knows that those who control the mutant faction, will win the war

Unclear to me why Reuters articles seem officially blessed on HN in the face of superior reporting from NYT or WaPo, etc.

I guess the original reason for preferring Reuters or AP was, avoiding a paywall, but now of course, Reuters has a paywall.

So I would opine that the traditional flagging/downvoting of NYT links for this kind of story, in favor of Reuters, should cease.

Reuters at the very least is not American, it's international, I do believe that makes it more neutral than NYT and Washington Post.

Also, there are local news sites such as kyivindependent.com, no paywalls of course.

Fuck pUTIN

First, it's the West and its media that are clamoring for war, while Russia has no intention of invading.

Now that Russia has invaded, the problem is that the media has a simplistic narrative of good guys and bad guys.

Striking how much Russian propaganda has made its way onto HN.

Can we skip to the good part? Ahhh, ahh ah ah.

Maybe tiktok or Instagram would be a better place for this comment.

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