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[Laterigrade]

Apparently they realized that they are humans too and radiation is bad for us, so a cease of fire was done in the plant and some Russians officials came around inside a white car blinking ligths. Perhaps they'll talk it out. As they should have done every fucking dispute instead of invading .

I think that would be ascribing more wisdom to the Russian leadership than they have.
That is, this isn’t a war over a dispute, per se, it’s a war because they thought they could win it.

(‘If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I’d say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because…’)

[Strongpoint]

Do you know what is the most horrible in all of this? Almost every Russian supports this insanity.

There are no meaningful protests (please don't call several thousands in a huge city a protest).
There are no meaningful protests of Russian diasporas abroad
There are little to no Russian celebrities who oppose this beyond generic phrases "I want peace and I wish that all of this will be over as soon as possible.)
There are zero Russian diplomats who would resign from their position
There is no single Russian pilot who would land his jet in a neutral country instead of following criminal orders.

And the list go on.

[Max™]

I wouldn't call crowds of people large enough that the cops arresting a small number and ending up with thousands of people a "small protest" nor would I call the soldiers I've seen surrendering in Ukraine eager and excited to do this and you're also somehow ignoring literally every other protest I've seen outside of Russia.

Are you inside Russia and subjected to the wildly inaccurate version of events which state controlled media there is propagating by any chance?

fire at a potential nuclear bomb)

ARGH

Every sharpshooter on the planet lined up optimally with enough weaponry with sufficient throw weight all waiting to fire at the exact same time could NEVER produce a prompt critical event by firing at a nuclear power plant.

Every artillery and rocket unit possessed by Russia firing at the same part of a nuclear power plant at the same time could NEVER produce a prompt critical event by firing at a nuclear power plant.

You have to either get a sufficiently enriched slug fired into a sufficiently enriched target, or implode a sufficiently enriched sphere of plutonium accurately enough that the fission chain proceeds faster than the whole thing blows itself apart, and IF you do that you've still only got a low to high kiloton range fission bomb. You've gotta figure out how to use THAT to implode a bunch of fusion fuel with shit like x-ray baths for a hydrogen soup or formed shock fronts or any number of other methods involved in a thermonuclear weapon to get the big megaton numbers.

If you hit a nuclear bomb WITH a bomb it is going to blow it apart and scatter the enriched material around rather than set it off, these are nothing like a sensitive high explosive (though some do use those, they have to be triggered accurately in the right sequence) where blowing it up with a small bomb makes a bigger bomb, it makes a radioactive mess for sure, but no earth shattering kaboom.

If you dropped a MOAB on a freaking nuke power plant you're going to make a radioactive mess at best, but you will NEVER get any sort of nuclear explosion from even the worst designed plant, the stuff that makes big booms isn't good at making power, and vice versa. You can get a steam explosion, you'll scatter radioactive material all over the place like an asshole, but there is absolutely zero chance anybody could ever "set off" a nuclear power plant like even the smallest nuclear weapon.


Steam explosions full of radioisotopes DO have the nasty effect of carrying nasty shit high into the atmosphere and letting wind drop it all over the place, which is why Chernoby/Fukushima were bad.

Basically any time you see "nuclear power plant" you should mentally insert "steamy box of hot rocks" instead of "basically a nuclear explosion waiting to happen" and I wish more people had done this all along so we would have moved to a nuclear heavy grid, choking the remaining petrostates in their cribs, instead of people listening to fearmongering anti-nuclear morons.

________________________________

As for the issues in the northern parts of Ukraine, something they call "mud season" basically started, all the convoy vehicles you see with tires instead of treads can generally be assumed to use self-inflating systems so they can control the tire profile on the fly, stiff and high riding for roads, squishy for muddin' around, right?

Well, those vehicles need to be rotated so you don't get months and months of sunlight hitting the same parts of the tires, you need to check the air lines periodically, and said tires need to be replaced if they've sat too long or else they'll work fine in road mode and rip across their sidewalls the first time you drop the pressure and try to slog through a muddy field.

Trying to zerg rush a city while being constrained to roads (and thus known routes) is not a smart move.

Trying to do said rush with a single echelon of forces means defensive forces can let you pass and come around to your sides and behind you, which is also not a smart move.

Trying to "denazify" a country with an ethnically jewish president and in the process BOMBING A HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL is an amazingly stupid fucking move.

Putin did a good job projecting this idea that he knew what the fuck he was doing for years, because he is a stupid old racist piece of shit grandpa now. Here's hoping his oligarchs get sick of him and accidentally give him the wrong tea.

[Strongpoint]

These are really modest gains for a week of the offensive

[da_nang]

Spoiler: A more representative map of gains (click to show/hide)

At least the fire is out, though Russians seems to have taken over the power plant.

That ain't good.

[Laterigrade]

Putin did a good job projecting this idea that he knew what the fuck he was doing for years, because he is a stupid old racist piece of shit grandpa now. Here's hoping his oligarchs get sick of him and accidentally give him the wrong tea.

It’s a nice idea, but his oligarchs don’t have any power at all. They’re absolutely leashed to him, and at even a perceived insult he can, and has, exiled them from the country and stripped them of their assets. They have money, but it’s all under his control. I don’t think that’s really enough to kill him, outside of ridiculous luck and risk to their families and others’.

[EuchreJack]

All leaders rely upon other, lesser, leaders to remain in power.  Nobody can do everything.  The more pressure you put on lower leaders, the less powerful the Top Leader becomes.  So the attacks on the assets of lesser leaders, such as the oligarchs, has real benefit.

The US position of not letting oligarchs and their families into the country is sorta stupid, however, as it binds them to Putin by denying them the chance of abandoning him.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile, the IAEA is increasingly worried that the war will get to a point where the Russians have taken out so many power plants that nuclear plants can no longer cool themselves.
That's 15 Tsernobyls waiting to happen.

Perhaps it is time to declare Russia to no longer be a country, but a terrorist organistation. Then we can kick them from the UN and get rid of their veto right.

[Starver]

There are no meaningful protests of Russian diasporas abroad

Don't know about in general, or much of the rest, but this was locally reported.


Mostly it's been "this Russian opera singer in New York hasn't been inclined to be anti-Putin, so her company has terminated her contract", but that's all far more newsworthy on a global level than "this group of local Ukraineans/supporters protested in a public space, including this small group of admitted-Russians". On the whole, the relative density of ordinary Russians (who aren't more inclined to keep their heads down or slide into publically fronting any hint of their non-Russian parts of their eastern-European heritage just to make things easier) just isn't big enough in most places.

There was definite news-whiplash when, early on (not a day into the invasion), the Good News news was about the Russian National Opera not being shunned in the UK, culture being tolerated in a "love the sinner, hate the sin" sort of way, despite the Russian Army crossing into Ukraine. Then, as the increased hostilities hit home, public opinion and rampant sanctioning/boycotting sparked venue cancellations for them (and another "Russian National somethingorother", though apparently that was a brand-name, not a state-sponsored thing) and that became the news. Because it's 'better' news.

[Duuvian]

No point having more soldiers if they don't want to follow orders - the recent reports of Russian marines refusing to assault Odessa is showing that even Russia's elite armed forces don't want to shoot at Ukrainians.

If the Russian armed forces seriously believed in invading Ukraine, they could probably still pull it off. But they haven't even mobilised half of their land forces and seem incredibly hesitant to use their air force so a considerable sum of Russian power just isn't being deployed. Couple that with the Ukrainian forces already being a tough bunch, and all the foreign equipment and training they've received since 2015 like through Operation Orbital, the Ukrainians are stronger than Putin may have presumed whilst his own forces aren't communicating with each other (elite units have been shot down in areas that were known to be dangerous to other branches of the Russian military), aren't following orders, are willingly leaking information and abandoning equipment to Ukraine e.t.c.

This is legitimately just a complete failure. There is no trap here

2. The conscripts were just there to hold territory after the elite troops gained ground. You need a lot of troops to garrison a city and the conscripts could fill the boots. Of course this never materialised because the elite troops got repelled

*EDIT
Relevant quote:

“The Russians are discovering that coordinating multi-domain operations is not easy,” Deptula told Reuters. “And that they are not as good as they presumed they were.”

This is why transport planes are getting sent into areas not covered by Russian SAMs and getting shot down; this is why Russian vehicles are being sent ahead of Russian air cover and blown up. The air force, army and navy are not at the level of interservice coordination and control comparable to say, the US armed forces

I think my inexpert guess is that the large aircraft reserve is mildly for force preservation in addition to other reasons. If things go south for Putin he can still do the tyrant waltz out of Ukraine but he may feel strategically threatened by the potential of a crippled air fleet from being surprised in the air, so he keeps most of them in reserve I think partially to avoid being bounced whether from G2A or Big Blue Airplanes. EDIT: By which I meant Ukrainian piloted, should have said Blue and Yellow. I have no idea how many pilots there are in Ukraine or what the status is of them obtaining aircraft from the West or if that is still on the table and if so how it is being done.

I've heard there is an age divide in opinion in Russia. I wonder if a general strike is coming if such a large portion of workers disagree.

[LordBaal]

You know what exageration is right Max? While it would not blow up like a nuclear bomb, other explosions are not out of the question.

[martinuzz]

Egypt, Libanon and Jemen express concern that the war in the Ukraine will cause famine in their countries.
75% of their grain comes from the Ukraine and Russia. Their own reserves aren't enough to sustain them for long.

[Starver]

Oh dear, Egypt, it seems like you've forgotten to follow your dreams!

[martinuzz]

Putin has accomplished what decades of US presidents failed to achieve: Most, or all NATO countries are now willing to up their defense budget to reach at least the 2% NATO norm.

[Starver]

It just occured to me that he's caused himself an additional problem. Spreading "fake news" about the war is now a specific crime in Russia. Imagine that someone found themselves in a position of having made many public statements about what is happening, which turn out to be untrue!

(Not his biggest problem. It'd be the Elliot Ness solution, assuming there's any recourse to take at all.)