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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The War for Ukraine Update 9: Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Attack

The War for Ukraine Update 9: Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Attack

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(From Pantone!)

As I write this, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is under attack!

We’ll start with the good news before the bad news and then back to the good news:

Here’s the live feed:

Before anyone asks, this is already prohibited by a Geneva Convention. Specifically Protocol 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions:

Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions restricts attack against dams, dikes, and nuclear power stations, if “severe” civilian losses might result from flooding or radioactivity.

Russia is a party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions including Protocol 1. Perhaps someone will write Putin a ticket.

Here’s Zelenskyy’s response:

Maybe one of our Ukrainian or Russian speakers can translate for us in the comments.

Tell me you don’t understand war without telling me you don’t understand war!

Example 1:

I’m sure the Russians will get right on that.

Example 2:

I can’t even…

Okay, I can. Smart, knowledgeable, well meaning, professional people of good character are going to tweet their way through a genocide that may or may not include a nuclear component to it.

Yes, I’m out of fucks, why do you ask?

I’m going to be very clear here, the entire non-proliferation regime, system, concept, whatever you want to call it is dead. There is not a single state with nuclear weapons that will ever give them up because they are now watching Ukraine, a state that did give them up for what we claim are non-binding assurances of protection of territorial integrity being brutally reinvaded by the state they gave them up to and which is one of the parties that gave the assurances that are now being claimed as non-binding. There is not a single state that can either get to break out stage quickly or actually acquire nuclear weapons that will now not pursue them as they watch a nuclear weapon state attack a non-nuclear weapon state and the world’s sole superpower and its foremost military alliance are completely unable to actually stop the reinvasion and the brutality because the state reinvading and being brutal has nuclear weapons and actually doing anything that would stop the brutality is too risky. Finally, there are a whole lot of autocrats like MBS and wannabes like Bolsanaro who are going to do everything they can to at least get to the quick break out stage, if not actually try to acquire nuclear weapons, so that they can do what Russia is doing right now.

Here’s an actually useful thread explaining the dangers of the attack on Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.

We’re now definitely into the Putin is just going to raze Ukraine to the ground stage because if he can’t have it, then no one can.

The Russian’s hit the cathedral in Energodar!

The following one is especially graphic. Russian troops opened up on a civilian vehicle trying to flee the combat zone. So don’t watch it if this sort of thing bothers you:

The Russians have been shelling Odesa:

And they’re continuing to hammer Mariupol:

The attacks on Mariupol and Odesa are an attempt to create a land bridge from Crimea to Russia and to remove Ukrainian access to the Black Sea. This is what Russia is staging to take them:

Kherson fell to the Russians yesterday. The mayor negotiated an agreement to end the fighting to protect his citizenry which also places the city under Russian control. Here’s a thread with the details:

And as I teased last night when I referenced the Russian positioning of armored prisoner transport vehicles, we now know what Putin is planning to do with the Ukrainians he arrests:

Some good news after the jump:

Ukrainian Special Operations Forces took out a Russian VDV (paratrooper element) in Gostomel:

Here’s the translation of the text of the two tweets:

Special forces of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine destroyed 10 more enemy BMDs in Gostomel The battle for control of the city of Gostomel continues. As of 6.30 pm, 10 enemy combat vehicles have already been destroyed in the area of ​​the local glass factory.

The battle is being waged by a combined group of special forces led by the GUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and local resistance groups prepared by them. ?In total, during the day, special forces destroyed 20 enemy combat vehicles in Gostomel. Glory to Ukraine! ?? Death to the occupiers!

The Ukrainians have attacked that large, spread out, and stalled out column of Russian vehicles:

From Military Times:

kraine armed forces have been striking that long line of Russian troops heading to Kyiv while the Russians have used thermobaric weapons against Ukrainian cities, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency tells Military Times.

“We are striking the enemy’s columns,” Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times in an exclusive interview Wednesday morning. “We burn many columns of the enemy.”

The strikes, he said, are being conducted by Ukraine Su-24 and Su-25 fighter jets, artillery and missile barrages.

“My intelligence officers and agents are directing and calling the strikes,” he said.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon on the condition of anonymity, a senior defense official said the Pentagon has indications Ukraine forces are targeting the convoy in an attempt to stymie what officials believe is Russia’s ultimate goal: to occupy Kyiv and install a puppet government. The official spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

More at the link.

What they’re finding are more war crimes. Such as using vehicles designated and marked for medical support to transport lethal weaponry and munitions:

Someone’s Deity should bless French President Macron because he refuses, regardless of the evidence, to give up on trying to find a diplomatic solution to Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine:

Julia Ioffe reports that Putin’s reinvasion took a lot of people in Russia by surprise. Including people working for Putin.

And in the it could be good news, but it could also be bad news space:

Here’s a detailed article by Buzzfeed explaining why it is going to be exceedingly difficult to actually implement the economic measures and seize Putin’s, the oligarchs’, and the siloviki’s ill gotten gains.

But secret documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show how unsuccessful the US has previously been at tracking their wealth, and how great a challenge Biden’s task force faces as it commits to enforcing the rules. These documents, known as suspicious activity reports, or SARs, offer abundant evidence that Russian oligarchs hide their ownership of companies, aircraft, homes, and yachts, moving their money into and out of prestigious financial institutions in New York, London, and Paris with few questions asked.

It is difficult to identify the oligarchs’ holdings “precisely because of the anonymous companies, or the ways in which investments can be made in advanced economies without any kind of true disclosure, transparency,” said Gary Kalman, director of the US office of Transparency International, which tracks global corruption.

In the hunt for Russian billions, the wealth of Putin himself may be the ultimate quarry. The documents show that FinCEN has been trying to track Putin’s assets for years. One of the groups inside the agency’s intelligence unit is tasked with doing research about how people close to the Russian president are moving funds around the globe. They publish some of their conclusions in a bulletin called Kleptocracy Weekly, which is disseminated to law enforcement agencies.

Experts told BuzzFeed News that pulling back the veil on the true ownership of shell companies, yachts, real estate, and other assets of the Russian financial elite is enormously complicated. Banks, which are meant to be the first line of defense, may be constrained by local secrecy laws. The US government has more options, but to find out who truly owns an anonymous shell company, it often has to go to the source — Russia — for more information.

“Even if law enforcement authorities in the US, the UK want to go seek that information,” said Jack Margolin, a program director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC, “that is going to slow down the process tremendously because it’s possible that they’re going to have to either engage with the jurisdiction in question through mutual legal assistance, or they’re going to have to basically go to court.”

Much more at the link.

Finally, here are two is on interesting thread for you.

The first is once again from Kamil Galeev and deals with the Russian VDV, their paratrooper corps, and why they’ve been so ineffective in Ukraine:

The second is being tweeted out be a professor in British Columbia, but in the first tweet she indicates it is an update from a professor in Ukraine.

Edited to add at 11:25 PM EST:

Gin&Tonic has alerted me, in a comment, to the source in the above now deleted tweet thread being somewhat dodgy, so I’ve removed it.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

261Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m going to walk the dogs. I’m in a bad mood, as I’m sure you all could tell. I may or may not check in later.

  2. 2.

    RaflW

    Adam, did you by chance hear U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove [Ret.], former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO on NPR this evening?

    He talked about a possible humanitarian no-fly zone. But also sounded resigned to the US not doing it.

  3. 3.

    SpaceUnit

    The only way out of this is for someone with the access and means and courage puts a couple 9mm slugs into the back of this madman’s skull.  Otherwise he’s never gonna stop.

    On the upside, a wealthy ex-Russian businessman has put a million dollar bounty on Putin’s life.

  4. 4.

    Gin & Tonic

    I know Adam asked for a translation of that first Zelensky video – it’s 2:35 long, he’s talking very fast, and I’m tired. So just a bit: he’s saying the obvious, that Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is under attack, they have night vision equipment so they know exactly what they’re firing at, so he gives a history of the Chornobyl disaster, then calls on Europeans and their governments to do something – if it explodes that is the end of Europe. He lists which leaders he’s spoken to – Duda, Biden, Johnson [there may have been others.] Says never in history has a military attack on a nuclear plant taken place

    ETA: He’s speaking Ukrainian throughout.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    That tweet about the FSB’s plans is chilling. Too much to hope for a Heydrich Maneuver from the inside?

  8. 8.

    Mousebumples

    Thanks for these updates, Adam. I think we all wish the news was better, but I appreciate your insight, even if it’s not all good news. Your expertise is appreciated.

  10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    The professor supposedly being quoted in that last Tweet is actually an ex-Canadian – born and raised in Canada, moved to Ukraine some time back and fairly recently took Ukrainian citizenship. But regardless, he is not somebody I’d be quoting.

  11. 11.

    Calouste

    We should just freeze and confiscate all anonymous shell companies. Whoever owns them can provide documentation and get them back if they’re in the clear. And not that many will.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    Also, may or may not be relevant, but that paratrooper general? Sukhovetsky is an ethnically Ukrainian name. I wonder where he was born?

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    I saw the thread on the Russian paratroopers earlier today. Made sense to me, explained why this war started off relatively low-key, for a war — Putin thought all he needed was to send in some scary strongmen and Ukraine would fold. A complete miscalculation.

    I was a preschooler during the Cuban Missile Crisis and my parents kept it from me and my siblings. I did not hear about it or understand it until many years later.

    I never worried that any of the wars we’ve been involved in would affect my everyday life. 9/11 was scary but it was over before it became clear what had happened.

    But a nuclear World War III? Gulp.

  14. 14.

    Patricia Kayden

    @zhena gogolia: Send troops to fight back. It appears that we’re going to see mass slaughters of Ukrainians who refuse to heel to Putin if Russia is allowed to win. Huge sigh.

  17. 17.

    burnspbesq

    I’ve admittedly read way too many Tom Clancy books, but is there really no possibility of a decapitation mission by special operations forces?

  18. 18.

    Lyrebird

    @zhena gogolia: May I ask an unimportant language question?  If yes, do you think the name Zelenskiy is related to the word for green?

    Asking about trivia because the non-trivial stuff is hard to bear even without close ties to the combat zone, and there are so many others with more relevant things to say.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Umm, isn’t it true what Cheryl Rofer said in her tweet?:

    None of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia is likely to explode in the way Chernobyl did.

  20. 20.

    Martin

    I wonder how the takedown of the Russian economy factors into the cultural calculations here. People rationalize things in weird ways. Americans will spend infinite dollars buying guns and ammo to protect the country, and then complain bitterly about gas going up $0.25 a gallon when it goes to serve the same goal.

    I can see Russians willingly taking up arms against a NATO army, but standing in hours in a bread line tends to cause you to have a different opinion of your leadership.

    At the same time, I’m far from convinced that destroying the Russian economy won’t trigger Putin’s red line. That line seems quite arbitrary.

  21. 21.

    burnspbesq

    @Calouste:

    We should just freeze and confiscate all anonymous shell companies.

    That’s every Delaware corporation and LLC. Delaware will be one of the last places on earth to implement a beneficial ownership registry.

  23. 23.

    Martin

    @burnspbesq: I can’t imagine there would be. Putin must be very well protected. Maybe an internal plot. Maybe catch him in a blast radius. Probably about it.

  24. 24.

    Lyrebird

    @Martin:

    At the same time, I’m far from convinced that destroying the Russian economy won’t trigger Putin’s red line. That line seems quite arbitrary.

    I think it’s whether sanctions inconvenience enough of the high rollers that they get motivated enough to depose P.  I don’t think the attacks will stop unless or until he’s replaced in one way or another.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @SpaceUnit:

    On the upside, a wealthy ex-Russian businessman has put a million dollar bounty on Putin’s life. 

    I cannot imagine anyone going for this bounty. Even if you succeed, you’re marked for the rest of your (probably really short) life. And your family, friends, etc.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    @(aka Amerikan Baka): Your calculation seems to be: if US/NATO do X, then Putin may use nukes. But that’s based on the premise that if US/NATO do not do X, then Putin will not use nukes. Why do you believe in that premise?

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That last tweet from Tamara says it all. The culture renders vova unable to back down and he for sure is of the culture. The only way out as I see it is to stop vova and really who in his camp is going to, even if they could get close enough? That might make them a hero to the rest of the world but not for the powerful in Russia. It’s almost that the entire power structure of Russia has to be stopped, because their culture says trying to stop something like this is wrong and the person running the show is never going to and so it’s a circle jerk of death. At least many of the conscripts don’t seem to really want to die for the idiots in power. I’d bet many of the higher ups in the Russian military would include themselves in the power structure. Which might be one reason there is no reason in any of this deadly clusterfuck.

  32. 32.

    Tazj

    @burnspbesq: I spent too much time on my way home thinking about the possibilities. Would they be sending some people in? Would there be people already there that just need an order?Unfortunately, this isn’t a book or a movie. Wishing and hoping there could be some relatively easy end to this horrible madness.

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    Unfortunately there are only two possible outcomes here: either Putin is destroyed or Ukraine is destroyed. They cannot both exist.

  34. 34.

    piratedan

    just makes me wonder when the West/EU/NATO gets enough of the continued atrocities and starts making plans for some decapitation strikes of their own.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @burnspbesq:

    The answer no to this question is built into the leadership culture. For this to be an inside job, someone way up the ladder would have to take it upon themselves to do the job. And that would very likely shorten their life rather quickly. The entire system is built around the word no never goes upwards.

  37. 37.

    sdhays

    @Martin: I just read this interesting article (h/t YY_Sima Qian) on what the Chinese did or did not know about the invasion of Ukraine, and one thing that struck me was how surprised they were that the invasion actually happened. Essentially, they looked at the situation and concluded that you’d have to be both crazy AND stupid to actually invade Ukraine, so there’s no way Putin will do it.

    Oops.

    Does Putin himself actually have any “red lines” anymore? He seems to be just making it up as he goes now. Invading Ukraine was the stupidest thing he could have done to achieve his goals. He was having quite a good run at rotting the West through their political parties, and he could have had a lot more success in Ukraine with the same strategy – sowing discord in society, particularly if he had been able to stop himself from invading in 2014.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, technically.

    I mean, what Cheryl is saying is that these reactors are much safer, and they are. Chernobyls reactor proved to be extremely brittle – it didn’t take a lot to break it. These are much better – they fail much more gracefully. There are backup systems, and backups to those.

    But reactors are designed around a range of failure conditions, and artillery and combat isn’t really one of them, mainly because they can’t be easily predicted. You protect against the stuff you can simulate. Engineers protect against earthquakes, not war. Politicians protect against war, not earthquakes. In the end these are fueled reactors, which means they need some manner of cooling. An army can easily breach those safeguards if they aren’t careful. Mind you, it’s in their own best self-interest to do so. If anything goes sideways on a reactor, its the folks closest to it that are the one who get permanently fucked in minutes. Everyone else at least has a chance to be okay.

    We should be encouraged that they aren’t using airstrikes and artillery here. It sounds like it’s a face to face fight, so *someone* was thoughtful enough to avoid the catastrophically stupid activities, and merely went with the wildly stupid ones. Are the Russian troops sufficiently informed as to what buildings to avoid fighting in, not using grenades and other explosives, and so on. Not optimistic on that one.

    That said, it’s worth noting that the last Chernobyl reactor didn’t shut down until 1999 despite the catastrophic damage to the larger facility.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    @sdhays:

    All the more reason for Xi to publicly denounce Putin’s actions.

    I don’t think the world will ever be the same after this. Trying to preserve past alliances seems pointless.

  40. 40.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I suppose I mean in the sense of a global nuclear exchange between Russia and the US and allied nuclear powers, where hundreds of millions of people at the very least would be killed; civilization as we know it would be severely disrupted/destroyed.

    In my mind, directly engaging with Russian military forces would for sure be seen as an escalation by Putin. It would mean war between Russia and NATO. He would likely, at some point, depending on how badly the war was going for him (and vice versa for us) probably use tactical nuclear weapons. My understanding is if that happened, it would not take long for global thermonuclear war to break out if tensions are high enough

    My heart goes out to Ukraine. Putin is a fucking monster. With that said, I’m worried about the absolute death and the destruction that could be unleashed across the world if we go directly to war with Russia

  41. 41.

    hrprogressive

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     

    Can’t speak for anyone else but I think the thinking here is that Putin won’t do a first strike because the retaliatory strike(s) would wipe him and whatever Russian Empire he’s hoping to rebuild with him.

    I don’t know how sound that logic really is, but it’s one thing I’ve thought of.

  43. 43.

    Kent

    @RaflW:

    Adam, did you by chance hear U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove [Ret.], former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO on NPR this evening?

    He talked about a possible humanitarian no-fly zone. But also sounded resigned to the US not doing it.

    A no-fly zone means: (1) shooting down Russian planes, and (2) attacking Russian anti-aircraft batteries.

    That means we are now in a shooting war with Russia.  So it isn’t going to happen.  Period.

    And I suspect only the US has sufficient air power to enforce a no-fly zone against Russia.  It’s not something that say the Swedes or Swiss could every contemplate.

  44. 44.

    sdhays

    @sdhays: Adding – I wonder if a part of what the Chinese miscalculated is the lack of nationalism in Putin’s thinking. Putin talks a big game about being Russian and extending Russia to its rightful historical greatness, but in reality he’s really more like Tramp – a man who can’t comprehend about something greater than himself.

    He can’t put forth a multi-decade strategy for Russia, just like he can’t actually invest in a strong Russian economy by tamping down corruption, because the “Russia” he cares about won’t exist when he’s gone. He can’t plan on handing off a solid strategy and tactics to his successor – he has to realize the restoration of the empire personally, to die knowing that for future generations, “Russia” will be synonymous with “Putin’s Russia”.

  45. 45.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Why do you believe in that premise?

    I’m not an expert, just relating what I’ve read elsewhere.  What I’ve read is, the theory on which Putin is working, is that his nuclear threats are deterring NATO from getting involved.  We need for him to think that those threats are working, b/c if he decides they’re not, then he’ll move from threats to lobbing nukes.  As long as he thinks his threats are worth something, he might not escalate.

    But if he’s going to start shelling nuclear power plants anyway, it’s not clear that that deterrence is worth much.

  46. 46.

    topclimber

    @Gin & Tonic: Or, they can both be destroyed if the war drags on and Putin is not eliminated before maximal carnage.

    Or–and I know you hate to hear this–there might be a diplomatic solution that keeps Putin alive a little longer and Ukraine from being demolished.

  47. 47.

    Kent

    @debbie:

    All the more reason for Xi to publicly denounce Putin’s actions.

    I don’t think the world will ever be the same after this. Trying to preserve past alliances seems pointless.

    I expect China is perfectly happy to see Russia self-destruct militarily and economically.  They are probably waiting to bring  all those Central Asian -stan republics into their economic and political sphere and snap up half of Siberia at fire sale prices.

    China doesn’t need Russia for anything except cheap grain and oil.  And it doesn’t matter who runs the place for that.

  48. 48.

    sdhays

    @debbie: Xi won’t do that. Maybe, if Putin uses nuclear weapons without new NATO engagement, that would get more attention. According to the article, China’s reaction to Putin post-invasion has been cold, and that’s about the best we can hope for, I expect.

  51. 51.

    Martin

    @Gin & Tonic: No, there are more outcomes, one of which is much of Europe is destroyed, or much of the US is destroyed.

    Think of it in terms of possibility envelopes. An army can only move so fast, a navy so fast, you can only build planes so quickly and so on. But nukes make the envelope effectively infinitely large. So all outcomes become possible. Maybe not likely, but non-zero.

    The problem here is nobody knows Putin’s red line. For all we know we’ve already crossed it. And if you aren’t clearly communicating that line then there kind of isn’t one. At some point you have to put the issue aside and just do what you feel you need to do, because paralysis is not an acceptable state to be stuck in.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Very unfortunately this. And either way a lot of rather innocent people become past tense.

    I wish that the world would grow the fuck up, but after all these centuries of this type of behavior I hold extremely little hope in my lifetime. I just hope that it lasts longer than the next couple of weeks. And no I’m not kidding. We live in a world that has the ability to destroy life as we know it in very short order and very little in the way of becoming at least just mature enough to not to. At least I live close enough to a ground zero target to go fast.

    If you think I’m being morbid, you may be right. I remember doing the drills in early elementary school and then they stopped. Because the then PTB figured out that there would be no time to even panic, let alone get under a desk that would do absolutely nothing to protect anyone. I saw the pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombs in Japan. Tiny ineffective things, they mostly leveled the cities and the people they didn’t kill immediately died not long after, suffering mightily. Vladimir Putin has jumped on the insane horse and is ridding into the sunset, determined and damned to win or die trying. Unfortunately, unless someone on his side takes him out or stops him soon, I fear we will find out just how bad nuclear war really is.

  53. 53.

    sanjeevs

    The NYT doing its best to calm things down. “Fire breaks out at nuclear complex, Ukraine says”.

    It just happened I guess.

    And its not even their main story.

  54. 54.

    sdhays

    @Kent: China wants Russia to friendly and stable – it’s a major part of their Belt and Road initiative, but they won’t care about Putin if he’s no longer the leader.

  55. 55.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent: China wants this to be its century.  For that to happen, they need to gain stature, respect, *soft power*.  I would like to think that Xi understands that, and that he would forcefully push Putin to back off, and be seen by the world to have done so, b/c that would gain China enormous soft power for zero investment.

    At the least, starting with “don’t attack nuke plants, or we’ll cut you off without a kopeck, Vladi”.  I don’t understand why this isn’t a no-brainer for China.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’ve just added the following as an update above:

    Gin&Tonic has alerted me, in a comment, to the source in the above now deleted tweet thread being somewhat dodgy, so I’ve removed it.

  57. 57.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    That’s a fair assessment. But Adam made it sound more dire that it actually was imo. Like, it was a 100% likely, fait accompli that the reactors would meltdown and be worse than Chernobyl. At least that’s how I took it

  58. 58.

    Calouste

    @Ruckus: There were quite a few plots to assassinate Hitler, and a few of them would have been suicide bombings. There were generals involved in those, and apparently even Himmler was aware that something was going on, but didn’t do anything about it because he would take over.

    But there’s a reason Putin is 50 feet away from everyone else, and I don’t think it’s because he scared of catching COVID.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It was the suggestion that the Russian Soldiers should move away from the plant that I’m responding too. Not her technical expertise, which, as always is something that everyone should rely on.

  62. 62.

    Martin

    @sdhays: China knew about the invasion. They’re not stupid. They aren’t reliant on western intel – they have their own satellites. They could see Russian armor in Belarus, far from the east. That said, I suspect that Putin told them it would be an invasion of just the two oblasts that Putin recognized as independent, and Xi either stupidly believed that over his own intel, or took that as adequate plausible deniability.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SpaceUnit: That guy has been living in exile in the US for 20 years or so. And the only reason he’s been able to is a Federal judge short circuited Putin’s attempt to have him deported by having him charged back in Russia with a bunch of bogus crimes. He’s got no influence and I doubt anyone in Russia is even going to know about his bounty.

  66. 66.

    brendancalling

    @SpaceUnit: good. I hope his generals and the oligarchs are trying to figure out a way for him to fall out of a window. The dude is off his fucking rocker, it’s not even a bluff anymore, and the motherfucker needs to be dispatched like Ol’ Yeller and quickly, not the least so Russia can scapegoat him as they return to the community of nations.

    ”it was HIM, not us,” only holds for so long.

  67. 67.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, I think it’s fair to say that military exchanges *inside a nuclear reactor* are a terrible, terrible idea. And what’s the point? You want to cut off power – cut the lines. Surround the reactor and starve them out. What’s the rush?

  68. 68.

    prostratedragon

    @Lyrebird:  Know what you mean about the retreat to trivia in the wake of this monstrosity. In which connection I note that the flag colors of Ukraine resemble the earlier colors of University of Michigan, before the school settled on the darker blue. So they have Wolverine colors.

  71. 71.

    Ruckus

    @hrprogressive:

    If vova is in the condition I think he is, stark raving, fucking insane, mad then the only thing stopping him is someone else. And that has to happen before he reacts worse than he already has. Because there are no safeties in his society, and let’s make no mistake, the important things at this point in time are in his hands. Hell there aren’t a lot of safeties in our society but there are some. A seemingly large portion of his country didn’t think he’d go as far as he’s gone, how do you think they game out the next bit and the bit after that?

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hrprogressive: Russian doctrine includes escalate to deescalate. What this means is that the Russians would preemptively use a tactical nuke in the theater of operations to signal they’re serious about escalating further and this signalling is intended to then bring their opponents to either the negotiating table or to surrender lest they risk an actual nuclear war.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @RaflW: No, but I saw the print interview he gave the other day where he made the same points, explained why he thinks it is worth assuming the risk, and then further explained that he does not think it will happen.

  75. 75.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m persuaded by Tom Nichols, who says (in another tweet) that Western intervention would be rescuing Putin from his own mistake

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom

    If NATO did intervene, and Russia widens its war to go after NATO nations, they will lose. But first, there will be a rally among Russians who would MUCH rather fight NATO than their brothers and sisters in UKR. /2

    And when Russia is faced with losing, and this is no longer over Putin’s war in Ukraine but the General Staff’s losing war in Europe, people in Moscow who might *never* agree to go to the wall for Putin might well be willing to go down in flames rather than lose to NATO. /3

  76. 76.

    Mike in DC

    IF there’s going to be a post-Putin Russian state that emerges at the other end of this, and IF the West is going to rebuild Russia and integrate them into modernity, then said Russian state needs to be a non-nuclear one.  We should never be put through this kind of blackmail again.

  77. 77.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Adam L Silverman: I think the NPT regime has been slowly collapsing for decades:

    1. Israel acquired nukes to defend itself from hostile Arab neighbors (understandably), & the world turned a blind eye
    2. India acquired nukes ostensibly to maintain balance of power against China (perhaps understandably), & the world hemmed & hawed & moved on
    3. Pakistan acquired nukes to maintain balance of power against India (understandably), & the world hemmed & hawed & moved on
    4. Saddam Hussein did not have nukes & was offed in invasion of a sovereign country under false pretenses, the world moved on (not that anyone in the world is sorry Saddam is gone, but for a long time what came after was not obviously better)
    5. Qaddafi gave up his nuke program & was offed in an civil war w/ direct NATO intervention, & the world moved on (not that anyone in the world is sorry Qaddafi is gone, safe for some African regimes he sponsored, but what came after is definitely not better, arguably worse)
    6. North Korea acquired nukes, & now the US is approaching the country rather gingerly, no one speaks of regime change any more

    W/ that history, why would any country under threat of a nuclear power not attempt at least break out capability, unless they are under the nuclear umbrella of another nuclear power? Putin’s recklessness only add more incentive. > 50% of South Koreans now support obtaining nukes. There were loose talks in Japanese government of “sharing” operation control of US nukes based on the country, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion, though that was quickly slapped down. I am surprised that Iran would still want to sign up to a JPCOA 2.0, though perhaps lifting sanctions & restore economic growth is more important to the regime there than nukes. I’m sure Taiwan would want to acquire nukes, but they know Mainland China considers efforts in that direction causes belli, & the US understands that, too.

  79. 79.

    hrprogressive

    @Adam L Silverman: ​
     

    I know you said you didn’t have any answers before but it really does seem like humanity is incredibly fucked.

    There doesn’t seem to be a rational, non-catastrophic way out of this.

  81. 81.

    sdhays

    @Martin: I think the article convincingly argues that Xi and his advisers didn’t think it plausible that Putin would engage in a full-scale invasion. The two oblasts, yes. Not all of Ukraine. And that points to Chinese intelligence not being as good as they thought it was and also being trapped by their own biases and assumptions – that Putin is rational and operating for the reasons he claims – such as concerns about “security” rather than his own imperial delusions.

  84. 84.

    Mallard Filmore

    @sdhays: I just read this interesting article (h/t YY_Sima Qian) on what the Chinese did or did not know about the invasion of Ukraine, and one thing that struck me was how surprised they were that the invasion actually happened.

    I think the CCP knew what was about to happen.  First they did not evacuate any of their citizens before or right after the start.

    The next step was to deny an invasion was going on, then have internet influences show support.

    Finally when it was clear an invasion was under way, the CCP told Chinese to whip up some flags and put them in windows and cars, as if that was protection as the Russians rolled through.

    A short time after that the CCP gave out the word to take the flags down … it makes them a target amongst the locals.

    This is the best video from the following 3 channels.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxprOQuVamE&t=2s

    https://www.youtube.com/c/serpentza

    https://www.youtube.com/c/laowhy86

    https://www.youtube.com/c/ADVPodcasts

  85. 85.

    hrprogressive

    @Ruckus: ​
     

    At this point, the idea that “others” will essentially tell Putin “enough enough” and then mean it…is possibly the only hope one can have.

    And it’s pretty faint.

  86. 86.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    You would think so. But then Xi is a racist, authoritarian, imperialist dickhead like Putin is. He can’t stand that the Republic of China still exists. If it wasn’t for the the US’ protection, the ROC would’ve been invaded by now.

    Plus, I agree with others that Xi might’ve been taken by surprise at the sheer scale of the invasion, believing that Putin would only invade the two oblasts

  87. 87.

    Winston

    @Martin: Everything would stop. Putin would be dead and the Russian bluff would be called. Then they could visualize their land be a molten radioactive plain. We hit them with everything we got and so does Nato. Wipe them out.

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: In this case the purpose is to terrorize the Ukrainians and anyone supporting them into capitulating to what Putin wants.

  89. 89.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nichols is a smart individual and his analysis is valid. And it should be paid attention too. I still think that we’re quickly headed to a crisis point where realism and realpolitik will fail us.

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and speaking of tossing Putin a line…. not the first time Lindz has been a useful idiot for the Kremlin

    Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC

    Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?

    The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.

    You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service.

    an excuse for Putin to arrest, or at least turn an unwanted spotlight on, the guy who stops applauding first, the one who’s rumored to be grousing to his peers

  94. 94.

    Ruckus

    @Calouste:

    People who have massive power cravings and get into power have done the unthinkable of their day time after time through out history.  And the world suffers and repeats and repeats the absolute ignorance time and time again. The only thing was that the weapons they used weren’t nearly as destructive as current day nuclear weapons. Even weapons of our lifetimes, as destructive as many of them are. If, and I hope that it is a huge and incorrect if, vova decides to go all in, someone with a bit more – meaning just some common sense stops him. It appears likely that few actually knew the depth and width of his plans to steal Ukraine, IOW many on his side seem to be as mystified as we are about his sanity.

  96. 96.

    Lyrebird

    @prostratedragon:

    Thanks.

    Everybody needs respite sometimes.

    I wish that in addition to some jet fighters we could hand Zelenskiy some actual rest.

    I followed up on finding the pet charity for the donations page and now I should shut down my browser.

    Go Ukrainian Wolverines!

  98. 98.

    danielx

    I always knew Putin was a cold person. He was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB back in the day, and if ever there was a crowd of chilly people, it was that organization. But until recently I thought he was a rational human being: he’s been running his program for decades and most of his plans, like destabilizing US politics, have been working pretty well. And, not coincidentally, making him one of the richest, if not the richest, people on the face of the planet. But that is a long term program which will/would take decades to come to full fruition.
    He acts/looks like a man who has decided he wants what he wants now, suddenly, whether because of illness or madness or a combination of both. Consequences be damned, and it appears rationality is no longer a Putin trait. Losing his marbles, missing a few bricks, crazy as a shithouse mouse, take your pick.
    I never thought there would be a real threat of nuclear war again in my lifetime, though the possibility was always there. Just like war in Europe was always a possibility, although the risk went lower in my lifetime. But I would wager a hundred dollars against a cup of McDonald’s coffee that right this very minute there are governments in Europe that considering whether a deliberate Russian attempt to breach multiple reactor containment vessels is a casus belli.
    This is, as the kids would say, scary as fuck. This is 9/11 to an exponential level with potentially much greater and graver consequences.​

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Alison Rose ???: I have found if I don’t post, then the people that complain about my posts start complaining I’m not posting or wondering where I am.

    The only way to win is not to play…

    Though in this case, I’m pretty sure the message being transmitted is I should have just walked the dogs and not done the post at all.

  100. 100.

    Dan B

    @Gin & Tonic: It feels that NATO has been branded as toothless if a hopeful democracy is ruthlessly attacked.  And if Putin deploys tactical nukes without sending NATO troops to reinforce Ukraine’s troops then it will be hard for Europeans to support cooperation.

  103. 103.

    Winston

    Why do we have nukes unless we are able to use them in a situation like this? Putin is daring us. We have anti missile missiles and tons of subs. Let’s just find Putin and eliminate him and see if the rest of Russia retaliates, then wipe them all out

    We know where their missile sites are located.

  104. 104.

    Carlo Graziani

    For the scenario where the end game is in Russia, rather than in Ukraine:

    Keep in mind that many Russian uniformed soldiers of all ranks are ashamed of what they are doing, or what their comrades are doing. There’s a (paywalled) NYT opinion piece by Alexey Kovalev today at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/russia-ukraine-war.html that explains the shame that all Russians feel in consequence of their cultural ties to Ukraine.

    Think about the significance of that for Putin’s position. This kind of national cultural feeling doesn’t stop when you put on a uniform. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Putin has enough loyal ex-KGB goons in his immediate coterie to insulate him from the Navalnys of this world. He still faces the very real risk of an enraged group of marshals who are sickened by their mission may use a Guards Tank Division to blow down the doors of the Kremlin and brush those goons aside so that they can “retire” him. That’s almost an orderly constitutional procedure in Russia.

    Putin looks strong, but there’s a reason he sits at the opposite end of 40-foot tables from his interlocutors. The West has to keep the pressure up, for however long it takes, and wait for post-Putin Russia. That’s the end game in Ukraine, in my opinion.

  105. 105.

    Ksmiami

    @Mike in DC: yep. Russia will need to be permanently defanged and restructured. I really hate getting this close to Fermi’s great filter but here we are

  106. 106.

    Sebastian

    I don’t know folks but this has some really big loser stink attached to it. I’ll admit I was scared when I heard about the NPP but it appears it was a provocation gone a little too far and very much par for the course for Putin’s MO. You have to think of him as a slightly more functional Trump, but only slightly.

    So where are we on Day 11 of Glorious War of Russian Glory?

    The bad news is the Russians are making advances in the South, the real target of this war. On the other hand, their troops are out of fuel and food, that’s kind of bad. Ukrainians are destroying Russian hardware and personnel in ridiculous numbers, capturing even more gear.

    The Territorial Defense Force has stupendous numbers and equipment and has started to refine its tactics. Did you see the guys rolling up with a small van, firing an RPG at a convoy, and bailing out? Soon thereafter the same group was posing with a bunch of destroyed tanks and MTB.

    LOL the same crew of four guys did two attacks on the same day. This is an unmitigated disaster for the Russians. I don’t anyone has really completely processed how much punch Ukrainian infantry is packing.

    Now we learn that UA has stealth drones …

    The airborne attack and the news of draconic hold-the-line orders within the Kremlin are related.  I bet Putin ordered the general to personally oversee the operation and airdrop himself, or else. I also believe the whole operation is now subordinated to Putin because “the generals are incompetent”. Avid students of history will remember Adolf doing the same with disastrous results.

    This will get worse before it gets better but this is not going to go on much longer, one way or the other.

  108. 108.

    CaseyL

    I just don’t see how this ends other than Ukraine being razed to the ground and most of its citizens exiled or killed.  Because, yes, I know: can’t risk nuclear war.  I get that,  I really do.

    But.

    Afterwards?

    Like @YY_Sima Qian: said, this will have blown to shit any idea of non-proliferation.  If the only way to avoid one of the Big Powers invading your country and killing everyone is to have nukes, then everyone and their dog is going to get nukes.

    Maybe there will be a lot of countries jostling to get into NATO, as that seems to be the only way that the Big Powers will be willing to risk nuclear holocaust: to protect their own, and only their own.

    But for sure there’s going to be a growth market for acquiring nuclear weapons.

  109. 109.

    Torrey

    @Adam L Silverman:

    To echo Alison Rose and others, I want to add that I really appreciate your posts. I don’t always enjoy reading them, but I am grateful for the information and your sharing your expertise.

  110. 110.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @sdhays: That article is still speculating, but I think it is reasonable speculation. The CCP regime is extremely risk averse in domestic & foreign policy. Somewhat less so under Xi, but I think China remains the most risk averse of the great powers.

    I think it might be plausible that Putin told Xi he was going to conduct a military operation to shore up separatist position in Donetsk & Luhansk. There has been continuous skirmishes there since 2014, & Ukraine had been building up the strength to potentially recover the separatist held regions. It might even be plausible that Putin told Xi his military operation would aim to capture all of the Donetsk & Luhansk Oblasts. China would not endorse such endeavors, just as China has not recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Abkhazia & South Ossetia. However, I cannot imagine Beijing being informed of an attempt to conquer & dismember the rest of Ukraine & not see it as recklessly destabilizing, not matter how much of a cake walk Putin claimed it to be.

    It is not well known, but China have been maintaining cordial relations w/ Ukraine since its independence. It is Ukraines #1 trading partner (though Ukraine matters a lot less to China). There were ~ 7K Chinese nationals in Ukraine at the onset of the invasion, including a number of students studying aviation propulsion engineering at Ukrainian universities. ~ 3K have now been evacuated as of yesterday, including their Ukrainian dependents. They have been sharing their anxieties & confusion on Chinese social media, & none of them have been supportive of the Russian invasions (at least none that get play in China). There are also a number of Ukrainian students in China, some of whom speak fluent Mandarin & have become popular influencers/internet personalities. Their postings have helped garner sympathy for the Ukrainian people (though not necessarily for the Ukrainian government) in China. Ukrainian jet engines power the Chinese air force’s latest advanced trainer, & Ukrainian experts that China recruited after the Cold War have been valuable in advancing China’s capabilities in military aviation over the past 2 decades.

  111. 111.

    Kattails

    @Ruckus: Just scrolling around and someone commented to the effect that Russia is not a government with an organized crime problem.  It is an organized crime cartel with a government problem. Can’t remember where/who to credit.

  112. 112.

    rachel

    @Mallard Filmore: I think the CCP knew what was about to happen. First they did not evacuate any of their citizens before or right after the start.

    I don’t get this. If the CCP knew of an impending attack wouldn’t they tell their citizens to leave the area for their own safety?

  113. 113.

    Winston

    When  someone threatens to kill your wife , kill them first. When someone threatens to nuke you, nuke them first. It’s the only strategy.

  114. 114.

    debbie

    Since Putin intends to take over Ukraine, what kind of glory will he find in owning a nuclear wasteland?

  115. 115.

    Ksmiami

    @YY_Sima Qian: Hoping Biden just offers the eastern half of Russia to Xi and China helps shut this idiocy down. Yes, they want Taiwan… but the game is long term and doesn’t involve rubble. Complete madness.

  117. 117.

    CaseyL

    @debbie: I’m not sure if Putin is still thinking in terms of glory, or is just looking to avenge himself on everyone.  He doesn’t seem to care what happens to Russia – now pariah nation, broke, and hated by everyone – as long as he’s still The Man.

    He’s turned out to be a kind of apotheosized Trump.  What Trump wanted to be, Putin is.

  119. 119.

    Almost Retired

    I’ve said this before, but I am blown away by the contributions of the commenters with an Eastern European background and subject matter military expertise.  I’m mostly staying quiet, because anything I would post on the subject would only reveal my boundless ignorance on this subject, especially when there are experts in the mix.

    But…notwithstanding…..my question is this.  Zelenskyy was publicly downplaying the intelligence on the threat of a full-throttle Russian invasion two weeks ago.  Was that tactical?  I assume he took the warnings seriously, but wanted to avoid panic while assiduously preparing the country’s defense?  That seems to be the case, given the effectiveness of the resistance.  Do you think that’s true?

  120. 120.

    One of the Many Jens

    @Dan B:  I really don’t understand this framing.  NATO isn’t a free-for-all European defense force.  NATO exists to protect NATO members.  If a NATO member were attacked and NATO did nothing, that would indeed be toothless, but that isn’t what we have here.

    This deeply, deeply, deeply sucks.  I am deeply, abidingly angry at this attack on Ukraine, and I am angry at having to return to a Cold War mindset.  There’s a whole lot more agonizing no-win scenarios in our future.

    I am very glad that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office, and not Trump. Or Lindsey Graham. Or me, for that matter.

  121. 121.

    frosty

    @Winston: Oh fer crissakes. We don’t have anti-ICBM missiles. No one does. That whole Reagan-era Star Wars missile shield was always bullshit. And still is. We launch, they launch, and it’s fucking over.

  122. 122.

    Winston

    This is like you see a bully beating the shit out of a young lady. You got a gun and he’s got a gun. What are you  going to do? Let him continue?

  123. 123.

    Mallard Filmore

    @rachel: 

    I don’t get this. If the CCP knew of an impending attack wouldn’t they tell their citizens to leave the area for their own safety?

    My assumption, backed up only by that video video on serpentza’s channel, is that the CCP believed Putin’s schedule of conquest. Nothing that goes against CCP’s interests survives for long in China’s internet, yet the public posts praising Putin and his actions were up longer than the Chinese history professors’ plea for Russia to back off.

  124. 124.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman:  I really appreciate your posts. Look forward to seeing your take on things at the end of the day. As difficult as it is for me to read and see some of the things you’ve posted, I can imagine it’s even harder for you to watch all this and put together a post. Take care of yourself and if you need to take a break, do it.

  125. 125.

    Repatriated

    @One of the Many Jens:

    I am very glad that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office, and not Trump. Or Lindsey Graham. Or me, for that matter.

    What kind of mess could Russia have made of Afghanistan if Biden hadn’t pulled us out of there?

  127. 127.

    Felanius Kootea

    @CaseyL:

    He’s turned out to be a kind of apotheosized Trump. What Trump wanted to be, Putin is.

     

    I think Trump recognized a kindred spirit all along, which is why he adores Putin. I wish we had all realized that’s what he really was – I thought of him as coldly rational, playing the long game by allowing the US and other western powers to destroy themselves from within, using a massive disinformation strategy and just patiently waiting to gloat. Hmm.

  128. 128.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: this is nothing like that scenario.  Instead, imagine that each of you has a fertilizer bomb in a truck (like McVeigh) parked nearby, and you each hold a switch to blow up the truck.  Or even better, imagine that you each hold a deadman’s switch for your bomb.

    You can’t stop him from launching the missiles, dude.  Think it thru.

    It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act.  But it does mean that the stakes are the death of all modern industrial society, the deaths of every American and every Westerner in every city.  All of us.  Do you live in a decent-sized city?  Then there’s a warhead with your name on it.  I live in SF, so me too.

  131. 131.

    frosty

    @Winston: Your scenario fails because even after you shoot him dead he can still shoot you dead. If you can’t see this I’m done.

  133. 133.

    ian

    @Winston:

    Sounds like the start of WW3.  If the Russians dropped a nuke on our president, our surviving command would certainly retaliate.  Hard to imagine the Russian nuclear command being that much different.

  135. 135.

    Martin

    @Winston: We have nukes for the same reason. Line drawing. You notice Putin is very carefully avoiding NATO countries. Nukes are why. Our line is very clear.

  140. 140.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mallard Filmore: And lots of those missiles.  We also need to get more drones into their hands.  Lots more.  I’m not sure what else, but every kind of weapon they can use, esp. those that they can use from a distance.

    I sure hope that this NNP incident has every European government really concentrated to the utmost, thinking of ways to make the UA as lethal as possible to Russian elements of whatever sort, whether land, air, or sea.

  141. 141.

    marcopolo

    Hang in there Adam (and thanks for the posts) and everyone.  One of the traits of our lovely species is the ability to imagine things that have not yet happened (boy howdy is that a double edged sword).  In this case that leads to a lot of grim prognostication (which may be right, but it may also be wrong).  In the meantime, our lives go on and we need to prioritize the here and now around ourselves which means: enjoying each other, enjoying our pets, enjoying nature, enjoying (and making time for) the things in our lives that bring us delight.  After all, I am pretty sure almost everyone here at this not quite top 10,000 blog is in the position of spectator, not actor for all of this.  To that end, I give you this from the Atlantic, which I think I learned about from Tom Nichols twitter feed:

    The Ugly, Embarrassing Spectacle of ‘Milling’ Around Online

    No surprise, casual social-media chatter about the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been unhinged. I mean that almost literally: It’s as if an important door has been ripped off its hinges, allowing all the worst thoughts ever thought in the history of thinking in sentences to come spilling out. These include jokes—attempts at dark humor for dark times—that end up being like, “I don’t know about you, but this is not the ‘vibe shift’ I was hoping for.” Then there’s the deeper horror of stupid sincerity. The actor AnnaLynne McCord recorded herself (wearing a turtle-tank!) doing spoken word about how if she had been Vladimir Putin’s mom, he would not have become evil. “I know how I could easily have moved in the direction of becoming a dictator myself,” she later told BuzzFeed. A woman who went to the same college as I did (Lord, help us!) let her fellow “empaths” know that it is okay to take a break from the news and find your inner peace, while an impressive number of Americans expressed the opinion that they should not have to do their “silly little email jobs” during a war, and that they were tired of “living through historic events.”

    Have a good night y’all, I’m now time rationing how much of my life I’m devoting to this war and I’m done for the day.  Pretty sure it will be waiting for me tomorrow.

  142. 142.

    marcopolo

    lol, I’m in comment moderation purgatory…wonder what I did?  heading for bed, night all /wave

  145. 145.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: No, it means that we have to find a way to stop him that doesn’t risk blowing up the world.  B/c not stopping him means yeah, eventually we’ll end up blowing up the world.  There are nuclear warheads on German soil; I cannot imagine the Germans would allow us to not use them, if Putin invaded, and I cannot imagine that we would not use them.  France has nukes, same story.  And there’s no way France wouldn’t meet a Russian invasion  of a NATO ally with ferocity.  So even if we turned tail, they wouldn’t.  And I know we wouldn’t turn tail, either.

    We have to find a way to stop him, is all.

    Let me put it this way: there’s that old jibe:

    “We must do something”

    “This is something”

    “OK, let’s do this!”

     

    We can’t fall for that.  we need to do something that won’t risk the destruction of the world.  Or at least, that will incur the smallest such risk.

  148. 148.

    Sebastian

    @Almost Retired:

    Yes, to some extent. Don’t forget, in Eastern Europe, everyone plays chess since kindergarten.

    You can gameplay the situation in reverse and observe the potential dynamics:

    What if he had not downplayed it? What if Zelenskyy had acted as if Putin is certain to invade?

    At that time, Putin’s actions weren’t certain, they were suspended and hovering in the time-space-continuum as potentials. Classic abuser dynamic of pouring gas around the baby and blaming you for burning down the house and killing the child. If Zelenskyy had acted as if the invasion is certain, it would in return have made the invasion certain, and allowed Putin to say “Zelenskyy made me do it!”

  149. 149.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The official line from Beijing has been studiously vague & seemingly neutral (not explicitly supporting any side), for the 1st few days of the conflict there was a noticeable lean toward Russia (as in focusing  the blame on NATO expansion). However, the last couple of days there has been a subtle shift in the “lean”, the line is now that no country’s sovereignty & territorial integrity should be sacrificed so that others seek absolute security. That could be interpreted as berating the US for seeking to maintain global hegemony in every corner of the world, but it could also be interpreted as a subtler rebuke of Russia seeking to reattain absolutely hegemony in its near abroad. I am sure some enterprising propagandist down the line will throw Beijing’s words back at it for seeking to dominate its neck of the woods. As the violence of the invasion escalates, as does the humanitarian crisis, that studious & vague neutrality w/ a lean toward Russia may no longer be tenable.

    If there is any warning issued by Xi to Putin, it would be in private. In both the Chinese & Russian read outs from the Xi-Putin call a few days ago, the Chinese side pointedly failed to mention NATO expansion as a key cause of the crisis.

    Ultimately, what matters is what China does, not what it says. So far, Chinese institutions have been complying w/ the sanctions, & that says more than any pronouncement out of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If China substantially follows the sanctions in practice, then the Russian economy is truly toast. Of course, since Russian energy & foodstuff exports have been exempt from sanctions (to protect European & global economy), China has not had to make any really tough choices, yet. Chinese commercial banks have been hesitant to support even energy transactions, however.

  151. 151.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Or because an emotional post followed by a first reply of “I’m going to walk the dogs” implies you know what you’re doing.

    Throwing other commentators under the bus because they’ve decided to focus on details in their expertise and not the outcome doesn’t serve your cause.

    Walk the dogs, cool your heart, edit (if needed) and bring your light then.  It’s obviously useful and well-read.

  153. 153.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: why do you think we’re moving US troops into Eastern European countries (with their loud entreaties to do it faster, faster) ?  B/c then if the Russians invade, they run right into OUR troops.  As other commenters have described, their tours in Europe and Korea were to serve as human tripwires, to remind our adversaries that if they invaded, they’d have to do so over the bodies of American troops, instantly declaring war on the US.

    This is (I think — don’t want to put words in Adam’s mouth) why Adam had argued that if we wanted the highest probability of avoiding this war, the way to do it was to move large combat teams into Ukraine posthaste, so they could serve as that sort of human tripwire against Russia.

  154. 154.

    Martin

    @rachel: Probably not. CCP isn’t a democracy, their relationship to the public is as an asset. There’s no electoral fallout from something like that.

  156. 156.

    Bill Arnold

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Umm, isn’t it true what Cheryl Rofer said in her tweet?:

    Correct.
    And Ukraine had essentially zero nuclear weapons expertise in the early 1990s, and would not have had the codes for whatever protects Soviet nuclear weapons from unauthorized launch, which I have been led to believe was sophisticated (including tamper-responding) at that point in time.
    They would have had to build up the human expertise,  disassemble the warheads and rebuild them. Uranium is easy (crude gun bomb, doesn’t even need testing), plutonium requires sophisticated shaped charges. (Don’t know what those weapons had.) Plus some way to deliver them reliably and uninterceptably. This would have been fully visible to the Russians (they were their fucking weapons), who would have at least disrupted the project the way the Israelis do with Iran, and maybe sent in special military forces or bombed the sites.
    Instead, the Ukrainians joined the NPT. The Russians are currently lying about a Ukrainian nuclear threat, since after turning over the Russian weapons in return for Russian security guarantees (broken by the Russians; who are liars and cheats; e.g. they signed the biological weapons convention (1972) and proceeded to violate it for over a decade.) the Ukrainians would have had to exit the NPT the, go through substantial effort to acquire weapons grade fissionables, rather than “just” disassemble existing weapons. Either rejigger their nuclear reactors to produce clean plutonium, or build underground centrifuge lines, or both, and hope the Russians don’t invade or otherwise destroy them for a couple of years. (Cultivating ambiguity of weapons grade fissionable stockpiles might buy a little safety during breakout if believable.)
    Cheryl is very familiar with this stuff, and knows some of the state secrets involved. I probably got some details wrong.

  158. 158.

    JimBob

    @Winston:

    This is more like he’s got 5000 hydrogen bombs and you’ve got 5000 hydrogen bombs, so instead of being righteous and heroic

    you’ll be dead just like everybody else including your damsel in distress. Yeah, it sucks.

  159. 159.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: Ukraine gets their country back. I’m saying we have to find a way to defang Russia without the world exploding and if that means working with China for a pacified solution so be it- Siberias population is 7 million rn

  160. 160.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom 4m
    Putin, as Mike noted, will rely on an old, rural base for his support. (Sound familiar?) He will try to crush everyone who has a smartphone or computer who can get on the internet. He will introduce draconian measures to this end because *he doesn’t know what else to do* /3

    This will fail, and here’s what really worries me: He will try to overcome this information asymmetry by changing the news to something he can use to smother all over info: he will try to make this about NATO. This is one reason why NATO has to resist provocation. /4 (thread)

  161. 161.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Mallard Filmore: You know, there are lot of people w/ real China expertise (to one extent or another) on English social media, most of them quite critical of the CCP regime, both wrt the Ukraine crisis specifically & on everything else, but you insist on referencing a couple of low life formers sexpats w/ no knowledge or expertise whatsoever,  who are happy to engage on anti-Chinese racist dogwhistles to garner & monetize views. They are down there w/ the garbage from Falun Gong media, probably because they often borrow the same memes.

    Whatever floats your boat.

  163. 163.

    Omnes Omnibus

    The number of people who want to rush into a hot war with another nuclear power is rather amazing.

  164. 164.

    Sebastian

    @Bill Arnold:

    This is true about the ICBM but I am not sure how many of those were actually stationed in Ukraine. What they did have in spades was tactical nukes, though. Short-range missiles and artillery.

  165. 165.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: Look: Ukraine is not a NATO ally.  We are not committed to their protection by treaty.  If we had been, we’d have had our military, other NATO countries’ military already in Ukraine before this war.  You ask “Where do you stop?” and the answer is: “at the territory of a NATO ally”.  That’s what Biden said, remember: he said we’d defend “every inch of NATO territory”.

    It sucks.  And it’s heartbreaking.  And maybe we have to intervene militarily anyway (for instance, if he attacks nuke plants again).  I’m glad I’m not the one making these decisions.

    Just remember: the Russians call kill us all.  All.  All.  There’s no do-overs, no chance to roll back and choose differently.

  166. 166.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Ksmiami: Russia still has nukes. Why risk civilization destruction when China can purchase those same resources just w/ fiat money? If EU stops importing Russian gas, that just means China can drive a much harder bargain w/ Russia. As it is, Russia sells gas to Europe at a higher price point than to China.

  167. 167.

    Martin

    @Winston: The smallest risk is the destruction of Ukraine, but that’s a given regardless of what happens next. If we get in a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine, that doesn’t go away, it’s just that Russia is punished militarily for doing it. Where now, that’s not really happening. Instead we’re punishing Russia economically.

    Yes a no-fly zone helps, but Russia is a military based around heavy armor. Unless that no-fly zone turns into flying A-10s and going brrrrrrr on T-90s, the military advance would continue. No matter what Ukraine is now a battlefield and will be largely destroyed. That’s all on Putin. That was unavoidable by the west. It’s unavoidable by Ukraine. It just is what it is.

    The only real question is what comes next – both for who has control of Ukraine, how Russia is contained, how Ukraine is rebuilt, how NATO and the EU change, and so on. I’m expecting every country on Russias border to ask the US for a permanent military base in their country, for example.

    But there’s no sparing the destruction in Ukraine. Putin has committed to that path, and you can’t fight wars without destruction, even to your own country.

  169. 169.

    Ksmiami

    @YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for your contribution. In my limited experience living and working in pre- handover Hong Kong, chaos like Putin has started is completely anathema to the current Chinese government and the overall culture. Maybe we can work with the Chinese to lower the temperature or give Putin an off-ramp- something. It’s not ideal but realpolitik never is.

  170. 170.

    Winston

    @Chetan Murthy: move large combat teams into Ukraine posthaste, so they could serve as that sort of human tripwire against Russia.

    That would probably test who would fire their nukes first. And it would be the Russians. I’m saying if there it a nuke war we should fire first is all if everything is inevitable.

  172. 172.

    trollhattan

    “@Winston:  tastes good, like a cigarette should.”

    See kiddies, this is why we don’t allow teevee and radio (or other) ads for tobacco products, all these decades later the jingles reside in our heads.

  173. 173.

    rachel

    @Winston: ​
    “All warfare is based on deception” is the only part of Sun Tzu’s Art of War that Putin seems to have remembered, and that not particularly well.​

  174. 174.

    trollhattan

    Fire at nuclear complex is out.

    Ukranian emergency services have confirmed they’ve managed to put out the fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant – a huge relief to everyone in the area and beyond.
    To recap, Ukraine said in the early hours of Friday that a Russian attack on the nuclear plant caused one of the buildings at the plant – a five-storey training facility – to catch on fire. The plant itself wasn’t affected but it was feared that the fire could spread if it wasn’t quickly contained.
    Ukrainian emergency services said initially they were blocked from getting to the scene.
    But at 05:20 local time, firefighters were finally able to start tackling the fire.
    It was extinguished about an hour later, Ukraine’s Emergency Services wrote.
    –BBC

  175. 175.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: 1. Adam’s suggestion was for *before* the war started, not for after.

    2. your last para: really? really?  REALLY?

    Are there no children in your life whom you love and care about?

  177. 177.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That attack on  Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant fits Putin’s previous use of radiation as a weapon.  Radioactive underpants or something was the little goblin’s previous stunt? A nuclear accident would also terrorize the Russians too, so I suppose that would be a plus in Putin’s eyes.

  180. 180.

    One of the Many Jens

    @Omnes Omnibus:  Yeah, and more than a little disturbing.  The prospect of nuclear annihilation is not a hand-wavy situation to blunder around, even with good hearts and the best of intentions.

    Again, very glad it’s Joe in the Oval Office, showing what being a responsible nuclear power looks like. Even when it’s desperately hard.

  181. 181.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: They certainly can on ordinary Russian internet backbones.  But probably not people using VPNs and such.

    Blessing in disguise as it will probably reduce the trolling and misinformation on both by about 75%.

  183. 183.

    Bill Arnold

    I cannot believe the innumerate nuclear warmongers in this thread. A thermonuclear war would kill upwards of a billion humans, and probably a few billions, perhaps more. Mostly through starvation; a year or two of worldwide crop failures, plus partly or mostly broken mechanized agriculture and shipping/distribution, plus those who die because civilization in their area is broken. Though many through nuclear blast and fallout.
    A billion humans (the low end of the range) is, roughly, numerically similar to 100 holocausts. Due to the nature of such a war, many ethnicities would be almost completely wiped out, though some of this would be random (some … not). (FWIW, whichever country started it would probably be the target of an ethnic extermination campaign against their survivors, by other survivors, over the next 60 years.)

    (We’re headed there anyways, BTW, with global heating, but much more slowly and with a possibility of turnaround. Agriculture breaks due to rapid changes in rainfall patterns. Mechanized agriculture sucks down petroleum. Fisheries break, especially artisinal fisheries. War (perhaps nuclear) might break out. etc.)

  184. 184.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston: I’ve never been in the military. But Omnes has (former artillery officer) and there are a bunch of others here who have written about their time as human tripwires in various front-line zones.

  185. 185.

    Peale

    @YY_Sima Qian: yeah. I get the sense that Putin told Xi what Xi wanted to hear. Just like he told Ergogan what he wanted to hear. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he told both India and Pakistan that he’d support them in Kashmir.

    I am wondering how much longer the connections between Belorussia and Poland will be maintained. If you read Putin’s speech correctly, he wants a Russia Eurasian cut off from the West.  That’s not only going to cause a problem for belt and road that’s already built, but it’s also telling China that He doesn’t care about its foreign policy goals in Europe. He’ll set those Eurasian goals for China. I don’t think China is going to be amused by that.

  186. 186.

    Bill Arnold

    @SamIAm:

    Hear, hear. If Putin is willing to use nukes then he will use them regardless of what the rest of the world does or does not do.

    Russian’s military would have to obey Putin’s order to possibly (or definitely) start a global thermonuclear war, or not obey.
    So, no. Putin is not the only actor.

  188. 188.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Martin:

    @rachel: Probably not. CCP isn’t a democracy, their relationship to the public is as an asset. There’s no electoral fallout from something like that.

    The CCP regime has been reaping propaganda benefits for its evacuation efforts (admittedly impressive ones) from past international crises – civil wars in Libya & Yemen, Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, etc. It is now part of the population’s expectation that the Chinese government will move heaven & earth to get them out of danger, much as western citizens once expected of their governments.

    When the Russian invasion started, the 1st questions to appear on Chinese social media were how the Chinese citizens were to be evacuated, as well as questions why China did not order an evacuation earlier. Pleas from Chinese nationals in Ukraine showed up shortly after. None of these posts have been censored.  When rumors started to fly that the Chinese ambassador had left Ukraine, he had to go on Chinese social media (live video showing himself in the embassy) to clarify that he was still in Kyiv, trying to ensure the safety of the Chinese nationals in the country & was working on evacuation options. Failures here will damage the CCP regime’s credibility & domestic perception of competence.

    I have been following reports of evacuation of the thousands of Chinese nationals & their dependents toward Ukraine’s western borders. They are organized in bus convoys clearly marked by Chinese flags. After crossing into Poland/Hungary/Romania, they are staying in accommodations arranged by Chinese merchant associations in those countries. It is important for Chinese national to identified themselves as Chinese, especially in cities under siege such as Kyiv & Kharkiv, or the nervous citizen militias might mistake them for conscripts from the Russian Far East. A Chinese national was reported shot by citizen militia in Kharkiv, but is now apparently in stable condition. There have been no reports of Chinese nationals being harassed or assaulted. The Chines embassy has sent PSA notices to Chinese citizens to maintain low profiles, & avoid any actions or speech that might provoke either side.

    The Indian & African students in Ukraine are having it worse. Most are trying to make it to the western border by themselves, & there have been reports of them being mistreated by Ukrainian/Hungarian/Slovak/Polish border guards.

  189. 189.

    Winston

    @Chetan Murthy: Oh yes, I have lots of those, but I have been sensitized about all this happening since I was in high school and  now at 75 years old, I look back and see we should have taken them out then. Now we see the problem of not doing that. But it isn’t too early for first strike. If not sooner it will worse later. And USSR no longer exists, so they are weaker now than when I was a kid.

  190. 190.

    Kent

    @YY_Sima Qian:@Ksmiami: Russia still has nukes. Why risk civilization destruction when China can purchase those same resources just w/ fiat money? If EU stops importing Russian gas, that just means China can drive a much harder bargain w/ Russia. As it is, Russia sells gas to Europe at a higher price point than to China.

    Exactly.

    The notion that China doesn’t know what it is doing is absurd.  China has zero need for a military alliance with Russia.  Zero.  China faces zero conventional military threats on any of its borders.  Or at least none that Russia would be of use for.

    In contrast to the US, China’s geopolitical strategy is largely economic not military.  The US is busy maintaining bases all across the planet while China is building highways, dams and bullet trains across Asia and Africa.  The only thing Russia is useful for is raw materials.  And they don’t need Putin or a powerful military for that.  To the contrary, a collapsing Russian economy and estrangement in the west makes Russian resources a bigger bargain.  And presents a perfect opportunity to bring those central Asian republics further inside the Chinese sphere.

  191. 191.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Chetan Murthy: Putin poisoned one of his critics with radiation previously. From Adam’s thread yesterday

    Hill: The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t? He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects. Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited. He died a horrible death as a result

    That reactor attack sounds like the same idea.

  192. 192.

    bjacques

    @Winston: please stop. Nuclear first strike is mass murder.

    What we can do we are doing; it’s a question of whether we can do it fast enough to help Ukraine stall Russia’s advance and then push it back—maybe even cut their southern land bridge—until the invaders and hopefully all Russians stop taking Putin’s orders, before many more Ukrainians die.

    So, better if you go find someone to help get through this.

    What Adam and someone else said about “escalate to de-escalate” fits Trump and all bullies. When in a personal or business relationship with someone, create low-level crisis punctuated with screaming threats, then dial it back, but to a higher level of crisis than before. Trump would stiff his partners or contractors, threaten to sue, then settle for 30 cents on the dollar, and drag that payment out too, having proved the partner won’t put up any fight.

    As with any bully, you don’t know their red line, but you damn well don’t [EDIT: rush] to find it when you and I and everyone on the planet are his hostages. We’re supposed to be smarter than that. We have to be or we’re dead.

  193. 193.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Winston:

    we should have taken them out then. Now we see the problem of not doing that. But it isn’t too early for first strike.

    My God.  I am at a loss for words.  My God.

  194. 194.

    Mallard Filmore

    @YY_Sima Qian: I have noticed that their recent postings contain a lot of intense anti-CCP chatter, and that gets boring after a while.  They never claim to have direct knowledge into the policy development of the CCP, but the on-the-road videos where they travel around China on motorcycles are a window on how all this turns out.  They lived in China for a decade or more and are commenting from their experience.

    Such as stopping by an inland fish farm and picking up a dozen bottles of growth hormone scattered along a ditch.  I recommend their story of the “tofu mafia”.  The videos of ghost cities, absolutely shoddy construction, and other corruption has convinced me to stop saying “China’s gonna win.”  From what they post, if i ever go in or through China again …

    • don’t eat the food
    • don’t drink the water
    • don’t breath the air

    “sexpat” came out of the blue.  What made you bring that up?

  196. 196.

    Kent

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I rather doubt it.

    I suspect simpler explanations are probably more correct.

    Part of controlling a territory and population is controlling their source of electricity.  I expect Russia had plans to capture critical infrastructure across Ukraine and this powerplant was part of it and the planning assumption was that they could do it quickly and easily by sending in a few units.  All the Russian planning seems to be based on the notion that Ukraine would just roll over.  There was probably some plan somewhere to capture this powerplant and when they finally got around to following it they met more resistance than expected and appear to have withdrawn.

    I sincerely doubt there was ever any military objective to create a nuclear disaster.

  197. 197.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @bjacques: and I will add attacking nuclear reactors fits all that because it’s a total passive aggressive dick move. “well if they didn’t fight back this accidents wouldn’t have happen”

  198. 198.

    cain

    @sdhays: Does Putin himself actually have any “red lines” anymore? He seems to be just making it up as he goes now. Invading Ukraine was the stupidest thing he could have done to achieve his goals. He was having quite a good run at rotting the West through their political parties, and he could have had a lot more success in Ukraine with the same strategy – sowing discord in society, particularly if he had been able to stop himself from invading in 2014.

    I think he’s dying and that he’s lost patience. He wants to see something before he kicks off.

  201. 201.

    One of the Many Jens

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:  The reactor attack appears to have been aimed at shutting down power to Ukraine, not to cause a radioactive catastrophe that would also irradiate Russia, downwind.

    If they had really wanted to create a radioactive catastrophe, there would be much more effective ways to have done it, and they wouldn’t have eventually let in Ukrainian firefighters to put it out.  It’s far more likely that they’re trying to get the power station shut down to cut off power to Ukraine, and in the process showed off their less-than-stellar targeting.

    Edited to remove some superfluous quote marks.

  202. 202.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kent: yes, that’s quite possible too.

    I would also note having worked at companies were the CEO totally fucked up and wrecked the companies there is a lot push for numbers to show the CEO that everyone is working 25/7 to fix the un-fixable problem. Shelling anything of military value and then some fits that.  Think McNamara in the Vietnam War.

    But whole knows what the FSN is up too. The FSB has to make it own reports to Putin showing it’s working hard.

  203. 203.

    bjacques

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: sure, but if they wanted to destroy nuke plants, they’d just pound them with artillery like everything else. What Kent said: it looks like they wanted to capture this one like they did Chernobyl but were just as sloppy at it as with nearly everything else so far.

    A few years ago I read a memoir of a journalist from the early 20th century, Negley Farson, who was in Vladivostok in 1917 when the WW1 allies sent troops and materiel to support the Whites. He reported that the effort was a shitshow because everything had to go through one of Nicholas II’s brothers.

  204. 204.

    rachel

    @Winston: ​
    You have perhaps misunderstood what Sun Tzu meant by that.​

    “All warfare is based on deception. If all you ever do is lie, you can’t deceive the right people because they will know you can’t be trusted.

  205. 205.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @One of the Many Jens: That is a good point, and the other argument against it being deliberate is it sound like Kremlin is still in a state of shock it all went so bad

    Just my thought is a deliberate reactor accident fits Putin and his thugs thinking more than dropping a nuclear weapon.

  206. 206.

    patrick II

    If Putin gave his generals orders to launch nukes today they would not do it.  If NATO attacks they might.  Putin may be trying to commit suicide by NATO and take us all with him.

  207. 207.

    Sebastian

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    From a racial point of view, that specific region, East Germany, Poland, Western Ukraine, is as white as it gets.

    I am not surprised.

  208. 208.

    GoBlueInOak

    Reactor fire is out. Russians have seized control of the reactor. Bad bad news.

  209. 209.

    One of the Many Jens

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:  Yeah, at this point, his obvious unhingedness has removed some of the brakes on his behavior, and he’s letting his evil freak flag fly.  So I don’t dismiss the possibility that as he grows more desperate, he could actually attack a reactor in the future – even one that could adversely affect Russia/Russians.  But based on what I’ve seen, that point isn’t here and now.

  210. 210.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Mallard Filmore: I mention sexpats because they are lowlifes, & yet you were referencing their speculation on Beijing’s motivation around the Ukraine crisis. Their videos of motorcycle journeys from late oughts & early teens were fairly neutral, & they were still telling the nuances (the goods, the bads & the uglies) of living in China at that time. That is why I followed their YT channels back then. Now they dig up the bads & the uglies from those old videos again to say how everything in China sucks, & it’s all the CCP’s fault! Charlatans!

    In actuality, the air quality in China is noticeably improving, though still not great. Water quality in China is getting better still needs to be boiled to be potable. Food safety in China is improving, though still has a ways to go to reach developed country standards. Construction quality has improved, as well, but still uneven w/ huge variation.

  211. 211.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I still think that we’re quickly headed to a crisis point where realism and realpolitik will fail us.

    Already has; there is an irrational actor (also huffing his own propaganda for decades), center stage in control of a belligerent major nuclear power. This is as much a psych problem as a military problem. At least Lavrov has been complaining that the West has been threatening nuclear war. That sort of counts as a partial stand-down.

  212. 212.

    Winston

    I’m anything but a warmonger. Putin is a warmonger. He is threatening my family and friends and my way of life. Just like the GOP. I’m going to fight back and I think the best way is to hit them first and hard. period.

  214. 214.

    Calouste

    @patrick II: Agreed. The strategy at the moment is to keep things in a state where nukes are not going to be launched, either because Putin thinks he is still winning in Ukraine or his generals refuse to do it, while waiting for an assassination, coup, or massive internal unrest to take care of Putin.

  215. 215.

    Calouste

    @patrick II: Agreed. The strategy at the moment is to keep things in a state where nukes are not going to be launched, either because Putin thinks he is still winning in Ukraine or his generals refuse to do it, while waiting for an assassination, coup, or massive internal unrest to take care of Putin.

  217. 217.

    Mallard Filmore

    @YY_Sima Qian: 

    Now they dig up the bads & the uglies from those old videos again to say how everything in China sucks

    Yeah, their recent videos … anything interesting has to happen in the first 5 minutes or I give up.

    “sexpat”, maybe I’ve gone off the deep end, but I’ve not seen that in them. Ever.

  218. 218.

    Bill Arnold

    @Winston:

    I’m going to fight back and I think the best way is to hit them first and hard. period.

    So you are advocating for the killing of (probably) billions of humans to preserve your way of life.

  219. 219.

    ian

    @Winston: I don’t really think any logical argument can reach you right now- I will try an emotional one.

    Billions of people would die.  Hundreds of millions would die instantly- most of them completely innocent and totally out of control of the situation.  Both their military and our military have hardened capacity- if anything survives the first strike you think is so necessary- it will retaliate.  This is the course of action you are arguing.

    Even if we did successfully pull of a first strike annihilation- we would be left with a planet without a functioning ecosphere and we would be left with no soul, we would be the initiators of the greatest holocaust of all time.  Our remaining cold, hungry days would be spent with those glum thoughts filling our brains.

    This is why we do not just first strike nuke people.

  221. 221.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The China led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has just announced that it is suspending all projects in Russia & Belarus. It was launched in 2014 because China was dissatisfied w/ the lack of representation in the US led World Bank (WB), Europe led IMF & Japan led Asia Development Bank (ADB). The Obama administration tried but failed to prevent nations around the world from joining. Since its founding, the AIIB has generally cooperated w/ & complemented the WB & the ADB.

    Russia is the 3rd largest shareholder in AIIB, but it is perhaps not surprising that the AIIB is following the sanctions. It operates through the international financial system.

  222. 222.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Mallard Filmore: Completely OT, but when I was following their channel years ago I did not get that vibe either. However, when I moved to Shenzhen for a couple of years, it apparently is an open secret in the expat community (& the Chinese community that interact w/ the exact community) there. I saw hints of misogyny even in their old videos that are cringe-worthy, though.

  223. 223.

    Captain C

    @CaseyL:

    He’s turned out to be a kind of apotheosized Trump.  What Trump wanted to be, Putin is.

    It turns out Putin was not immune to the axiom that everything TFG touches turns to shit.

  224. 224.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Back in those fabulous 70s, a company called SPI put out a war game called “World War III”.  The designers intentionally limited it to conventional warfare, because if nukes became involved, to accurately simulate that would involve liberally applying lighter fluid to the map then throwing an ignited match at it.  Even the use of one nuke opens the door to the lighter fluid scenario.  Winston should remember the controversy over the “neutron bomb” concept in which it kills the populace with radiation and minimizes the blast, so that the infrastructure mostly survives.  Anything nuclear likely triggers an escalation to doom.

  225. 225.

    Jimmm

    In all my years of lurking, I’ve never had occasion to try the pie filter…  congratulations Winston.  You’ve done it.  I hope you eventually calm down and stop advocating for the violent destruction of most human life on the planet.

  231. 231.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @burnspbesq:

    Perhaps now is the time to examine whether the public is well-served by allowing this sort of ownership.

  233. 233.

    lowtechcyclist

    I’m going to be very clear here, the entire non-proliferation regime, system, concept, whatever you want to call it is dead. There is not a single state with nuclear weapons that will ever give them up because they are now watching Ukraine

    Other than substituting Ukraine for Iraq, how has anything changed about this since March 2003?

  234. 234.

    lowtechcyclist

    @zhena gogolia: ​
     

    I still don’t understand what you propose the West does about it.

    Yeah, that’s the rub, isn’t it?

    Besides getting more weaponry to Ukraine faster, I can’t see what either.

    Those Mig-29s that Poland and other former Warsaw Pact nations have would be nice; what I wonder, not knowing jack shit about military aircraft, is whether there are planes we could give to Poland, Bulgaria, etc. that they’d find acceptable substitutes for the Migs, so that the Migs could go to Ukraine.

  235. 235.

    raven

    Well, I for one, appreciate getting up and reading these since I hit the rack before they are posted.

  236. 236.

    Sloane Ranger

    BBC reports that Russian forces are now in control of the reactor. They don’t seem to be trying to set off a radiation leak or anything apocalyptic. The best guess is that they are waiting for experts to close it down safely, denying power and energy to those areas of Ukraine it serves.

  238. 238.

    Chris Johnson

    @Winston:

    I think you can go fuck yourself with wanting to nuke Russia into glass. I think what little remains of Putin’s sanity would be desperate to see Russia nuked as the only possible way to cling onto his previous, failed, imperial ambitions.

    He desperately needs a ‘hit me!’ act, preferably a nuclear strike, to legitimize his choices here. Right now Putin is the ONLY madman and completely exposed, smashing around and escalating and I think it’s a multi-leveled thing: on the one hand try to compel surrender, but if he can’t have that and has stuck his neck out this far he MUST have NATO, the US etc. behave in the way he’s painted them.

    He MUST have us nuclear strike him in order to justify how he’s been acting. Preferably a first strike but even a nuclear exchange will do: anything to not have it just be all about him, anything to not face just the sanctions and collapse of legitimacy and near-peer power status.

    Without us crushing Russia in war (nuclear or otherwise) he’s nothing but a terrorist who’s failed to demonstrate his country could effortlessly conquer the much smaller Ukraine. His efforts have been blundering and very ham-handed and his attacks have turned to sheer terrorism due to lack of an effective and functioning army and lack of logistics.

  239. 239.

    debbie

    Today’s the day Putin’s supposed to declare martial law in Russia. For whatever that’s worth.

  240. 240.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    “Russia’s new law limiting the Russian people’s rights to free speech and free press, a law which I do not support, is necessary to protect the Russian people from CIA and neoliberal lies. The 15 year prison terms in the draft law are a sufficient deterrent to such information getting out.”

    -Glenn Greenwald, probably

  241. 241.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    By the way, those of you who are thinking that Putin is insane are wrong. He’s a perfectly rational actor, but operating as a ruthless sociopath.

    There is no off ramp for the man who wants what he wants and knows that everyone keeps blinking because of the retaliation he proffers.

    Negotiation will yield nothing. Is he gonna go for Moldovia or a corridor to Kaliningrad next? Poland can tremble, too because he can afford to keep moving red lines and dare anyone to do anything. Is Poland worth London? Worth New York?

    This doesn’t end until the sociopath is dead.

  243. 243.

    Chris Johnson

    @patrick II:

    Exactly. And bear in mind it’s not just ‘suicide by NATO’, ‘suicide by provoking a first nuclear strike against Russia’ and so on.

    Right now ALL that Putin has is the tattered remnants of the EXCUSES he made to justify his imperial ambitions. He absolutely intended to stomp all over Ukraine and then claim they were willing, happy parts of his new empire, and go on with more of the same. And the whole justification has been paranoia and insistence that NATO were monstrous invaders just waiting to wipe out Russia.

    Putin’s insane but this is a predictable part of his psychology. He absolutely has to have support for his contention that the US, that NATO, are the monsters he says they are, and so he will commit any crime up to and perhaps including nuclear war because he has to force the rest of the world off the civilized, the economic, the great-powers response.

    Only then are his actions ‘justified’, only then can he die knowing that he was always right about the world around him and that it was all worthwhile. If he’s going to die anyhow (pro tip: we are all mortal, he absolutely is going to die at some point) he’s trying to protect his legacy, his narrative.

    That narrative demands that we and/or NATO smash Russia pre-emptively, and I believe what remains of Putin’s propaganda operation, those who can stomach it, are going to be actively working to goad on the rest of the world to ‘hit me!’ At this point the single off-ramp that most protects Putin’s intended narrative (the one he wants to die with) is getting the world to nuke Russia and prove he was right about them.

    That’s just as good a reason to not do what he needs and wants.

    And yes Putin gives no shits about all the Russians who would be horribly killed in such an attack. To him they simply don’t matter. It’s the glory of his paranoid narrative that matters. And we are currently doing exactly the thing he least wants: he’s being the terrorist and showing his military failings and we are sanctioning him as the primitive criminal he is. He HAS to get attacked somehow, he has to get nuked to justify what he’s done.

  245. 245.

    debbie

    Apparently, Lindsey Graham has called for Putin’s assassination. Apparently, there are people who find that appalling:

    Honestly gobsmacked at how reckless that Lindsey Graham tweet is.
    — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 4, 2022

  246. 246.

    Geminid

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yeah, sociopaths can be rational. Up until his last few years, Stalin was rational, but totally ruthless.

    Reports in Reuters and the Jerusalem Post say the Belorus PresiLukashenko says that his countries troops will not fight  in Ukraine. As a practical matter, they probably lack the logistical base to do much, and anyeay he needs them at home to bolster his internal security forces. But I think Putin wanted Belorusan troops in Ukraine if only for symbolic effect, so Lukashenko’s announcement is intriguing. It may make an invasion of Moldova more difficult.

  247. 247.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Geminid:

    Lukashenko knows that he’s not popular, and perhaps perceives that a Ceaucescu ending would be the result of such a move, given the current sanction level.

    Anyway, here’s a sobering take that would indicate that there’s only a binary set of choices – give Putin everything he wants or be prepared to go the Winston route.

    https://aliensideboob.substack.com/p/quantity-has-a-quality-all-of-its?r=2exjx&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwAR2KQqPXsK7-FufjiBqAq-fSG07O4c_VeNsK9ClSNeqCCyvNnZYrdyLCUuw

  248. 248.

    Geminid

     

     

    @debbie: I find Graham’s statement disturbing because I just do not like talk of assasination in general. If a Russian wants to try to assasinate Putin he doesn’t need some  American political windbag to tell him to. But back here, there are plenty of nuts who shouldn’t be encouraged to act out fantasies, and a lot of public figures much more vulnerable than Putin is. Graham should just shut his pecan pie-hole.

  250. 250.

    George

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: ​
      I agree completely, with one clarification based on recent experience in my personal life. Sociopaths can be reasoned with to a degree, and they might have at least a basic acceptance of right and wrong that exists outside their own self-interests.

    A stone-cold psychopath cannot be reasoned with, and has no concept at all of any external right and wrong. A psychopath who also is a vindictive narcissist, which I believe describes Putin, will destroy things for the simple pleasure of doing so.

    Which leads me to my own conclusion about Putin’s motivation. I don’t think he had any geopolitical strategy or end in mind at all. I think he simply wants to destroy things. That mindset might not be recognizable to someone who has never dealt with a psychopath. But to those of us who have, well, it is as obvious in Putin as it is frightening for what he will do.

  251. 251.

    gvg

    @Winston: ​
      No you are now a warmonger. Look at yourself in the mirror. You sound like the Soviets from way back, afraid, so they have to hit the west first. You sound like the West’s warmongers too. Fear kills the mind. We do have reason to fear, but we have to control it anyway.
    You also do not understand what nuclear war is. You are completely missing how serious and unwinnable it is. Also striking first doesn’t end the threat, it makes the bad certain. This problem of it being unwinnable doesn’t get solved. There is no clever solution. Lots and lots of people tried during the cold war, but really, they never found a solution……except staying calm helped evidently. They often SAID they found a solution, but really that was just for morale. So evidently we are repeating the past, setting up a new iron curtain smaller this time, fighting proxy wars…….we are going to have new spy wars too with assasinations, not of leaders, but of other people….and confiscation of Russian money which is going to be hard because of how complicated they made it. The cold war lasted decades, even though there was lots of fighting. This isn’t going to be quick.
    Supposing Putin does nuke strike first? We will still be able to strike back terribly. If we strike first, he will still be able to strike us. therefore waiting is better. Whoever strikes first is NOT going to be forgiven and the argument it was for protection won’t be accepted given the results will not be protection, they will be death everywhere. You are indulging in wishful thinking and your “solution” will not work.

  252. 252.

    Geminid

    @debbie: I’ll say this about Chris Hayes, though: until he gives an honest accounting of his attempts to mainstream Tara Reade’s slander of Joe Biden during the 2020 primaries, Hayes is flying in my do-not-respect zone. People’s love of Bernie Sanders drew them into a lot of destructive behavior that year, but that one was the worst. Talk about “appalling”!

  253. 253.

    zhena gogolia

    @Lyrebird: Sorry I missed this last night. I don’t know if someone else answered it. I really don’t know the answer. I doubt it, even though in Russian zelenyi means “green.” But I don’t know Ukrainian, and my guess would be it’s probably from a place name, as last names often are.

  255. 255.

    Rand Careaga

    @Winston:

    I’m going to fight back and I think the best way is to hit them first and hard. period.

    He’s not saying that we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. All he’s saying is no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

  256. 256.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m going to walk the dogs. I’m in a bad mood, as I’m sure you all could tell. I may or may not check in later.

    When good people know too much about a very bad situation, and yet have to sit by and watch helplessly as things get even worse, it’s a miracle they can actually get up th energy to walk the dog once a day.

    Take care, and thank you Adam.

  258. 258.

    dnfree

    @Winston: wow.  Have you heard of this thing called “wind”?  You think Russia would be the only place affected, even if no one retaliated?  Might want to check your plan with Europe.

  259. 259.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman: ​

    We saw some deer. One armadillo. Heard some stuff in the scrub. Heard the owls. No foxes in the park tonight…

    What kind of owls do you hear in the park? We have multiple sorts, but the biggest group is the barred owls, who roost north of the house in the big twisty trees up on the high ridge-top.
    I can hoot back and forth with the barred owl community, sometimes 3 or 4 owls will hoot together with me. Can be quite eerie and strange sounding late at night.
    And with all the travel, hiking in various mountain ranges, walking in Navajo nation, NM, west Texas, etc. I have never seen an armadillo in the wild. Not once. Never… Wonder what that means?

    Thanks for the updates! ​​​

    ETA many edits to get it to look like a post… grr.

  260. 260.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @One of the Many Jens: ​The reactor attack appears to have been aimed at shutting down power to Ukraine, not to cause a radioactive catastrophe that would also irradiate Russia, downwind.

    This. Among other things, a light-water reactor normally incorporates a pretty hefty containment vessel which would require a lot of ordnance to breach. Much easier to disrupt power transmission to regions still held by Ukrainian forces.

    @lowtechcyclist: ​…whether there are planes we could give to Poland, Bulgaria, etc. that they’d find acceptable substitutes for the Migs, so that the Migs could go to Ukraine.

    Long term yes, short term no. For the same reason we don’t just ship F-16s and A-10s to the Ukrainians. US/NATO could send equivalent or better replacement hardware, but they’d be ineffective for national defense until their pilots were trained to fly them, a process of months at a minimum. The only workable option would be to send planes and pilots, but then they’d have to trust that the contributing members would be willing to subordinate those forces to national control (i.e., not attack Russians and their allies on their own, & [maybe more significantly] go after Russian etc. assets when & if they violate national airspace). That’d be a big ask. Which is why, after a kneejerk reaction of those damn Poles! and a pause for reflection, I myself am much more sympathetic to their (and the Bulgarians’, and whoever else’s) dilemma.

  261. 261.

    Uncle Cosmo

    From my slightly but likely inadequately informed opinion, I had a couple of other thoughts that might be worth tossing out:

    As long as the Ukrainians are offering ca$h to Russian soldiers’ surrender, why not up the ante? Toss in a bonus to any officer who brings in his underlings (e.g., extra 5M RUB per, rising to 10M for numbers >10). And publish a price list for hardware – so much for a tank, so much per AMP, so much per artillery piece (though the mechanics of the handoff might get a bit tricky to avoid ambushes). Make these sums available as well to any intrepid Ukrainian who takes his tractor out & drags back a derelict, Heck, offer the commanders of Russian Navy vessels some outrageous sum to put into a neutral port and be interned for the duration…

    A couple of generations back I read about a pre-teen kid who wrote an advice-to-parents column in a smalltown newspaper. One set of parents complained that they’d threatened and threatened their kid but couldn’t get him to behave, what should they do? The columnist’s response: Try carrying out a threat.

    No I am NOT NOT NOT talking about lobbing nukes!! Instead I reference the recent Ukrainian threat to Russian artillerymen: No quarter to those killing civilians at a safe distance – they would be tracked down and their throats slit.

    No doubt any Russian soldiers who might have heard this laughed from their infantry-protected positions 10, 15, 20 km away. But suppose the defenders could carry out an equivalent threat?

    Counter-battery fire, immediate and powerful, before those units can skedaddle.

    What the Ukrainians don’t want to do is reveal the positions of their artillery to provide targets for counter-counter battery fire, or risk their air forces to being jumped by superior Russian numbers. (NB one might conjecture that the “sitting-duck” 40-km-long stalled column, among other slow-movers, is bait to draw out the defenders’ assets for just such an ambush.)

    What would be needed is armed drones – stealthed if possible – in significant numbers, combined with real-time intel on the location of those tubes and MLRS launchers** and real-time remote control to direct them.

    Catch, just once, a concentration of Russian artillery before they can scoot and fuck them up royally, and word will get out – especially if Ukrainian forces can get into the area later and visually document the carnage. Do it again and maybe a third time, and artillery units will start to think very, very hard about whether they care to fight a war where their own tender tukhises are at risk.

    All NATO would need to do is persuade the Turks (or whoever else builds ’em) to part with more of their drones, and provide Ukraine with the targeting information on the q/t. (Heck, NATO might, emphasis on might, be able to get away with flying the drones themselves – how’s Ptui!n and his bozos gonna prove it if they’re painted blue & yellow?)

    It strikes me that this would be a means to make the Russian forces pay dearly that wouldn’t trigger a massive escalation, or require brave Ukrainian SF to undertake costly missions into enemy territory. Blasted by an unseen drone or throat slit by an infiltrator, dead is dead.

    (NB I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, but the key word is persuaded; if you can’t provide at least a semblance of a cogent counter-argument, save your typing fingers. OK? Still fiends friends? :^D)

    ** Dast we call them “Ptui!n’s Organs” or is that too obscene an image?

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