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[brewer bob]

The Insider got their hands on an archive of complaints sent to the Russian military prosecutor's office.

Conscripts have been deceived or coerced into the war zone, soldiers have not been provided with normal food or medical care, contract servicemen have been deliberately violating every military regulation in order to be dismissed from service, and parents cannot obtain any information on whether their children have been taken prisoner or killed in action. From the Russian citizens' complaints one can also learn about the looting and atrocities perpetrated by Russian soldiers.

There's quite a few of the complaints in the article.

A few snippets:

"When on April 8 GRADs started shelling their positions, my parents got down on the floor, and after waiting the shelling out, went to a hamlet nearby to wait out the alarming situation. The next day, when my mother returned home in the morning, she saw atrocities in our garage ... a large tank knocked out our gate, demolished a huge slab that served as our fence, demolished a huge hangar gate in the garage, which later fell on the cars that were in the garage, <...> they stole spare parts and tools worth 200,000 rubles, they even stole small change from our car, and a condom from my brother's car, tell me, are they even human?"

"We are really facing the “lawlessness” on the part of military unit commanders - my friend's grandson came back wounded and told how they were beaten by commanders, who forced them to sign contracts (I will not provide any details at the request of my friend, her daughter and son). Please speed up investigation of the already known facts, to expose those who have been fraudulently sending conscripts to certain death, and make all of them stand trial, regardless of their rank and position, according to the laws of war."

“My son served in the Belgorod region; he hasn't been in touch since February 20. I have learned that the commander won’t let the conscripts go, threatening to charge them with desertion. Everyone in the military unit knows about it, they forced our children to sign the contracts, the signatures of those who refused were forged”.

"My husband is serving under contract in military unit 62295 and is currently involved in the special operation. He was wounded and ended up in hospital; They not only haven’t offered him proper assistance, they‘ve been performing MRI scans at the expense of soldiers themselves; they keep the results of those scans to themselves and make wrong diagnoses. Even those with obvious health problems are going to be sent back to the front."

"He was first wounded (a contusion, shrapnel wound of soft tissues of the head, 2nd degree frostbite) on March 7, 2022. He spent 2 days in a field hospital. No treatment or medical examination was offered, the fact that he had a contusion and a shrapnel head wound was not registered at the hospital due to the large number of wounded patients. Two days later he was sent to his unit for further participation in the special military operation, despite incessant headaches, partial loss of hearing and vision."

[EuchreJack]

Interesting article!

Edit: Just saw Star Trek Enterprise episode "The Catwalk".
Without spoiling anything, I was reminded of the Russian Army in this war

[EuchreJack]

Latest update on Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

CNN's theory crafting

[Great Order]

Oh joy. Hope we're all stocked up on iodine pills and bananas.

Didn't the EU or America or something say something about getting involved if a nuclear plant went up like Chernobyl? It'd be interesting to see if they'll stand by that if it does.

You know, ignoring the horrors of another Ukrainian nuclear plant going up in radioactive smoke.

[EuchreJack]

Didn't the EU or America or something say something about getting involved if a nuclear plant went up like Chernobyl? It'd be interesting to see if they'll stand by that if it does.

Better find the exact words and source.

I do believe there is a level at which the Non-Russian countries will decide Russia doesn't get to keep its nukes anymore.  I suspect an intentional meltdown may be that point.

Currently, Russia seems more interested in conveying the message that they COULD meltdown the plant, and cutting off Ukraine from the power from the plant.

EDIT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/world/europe/putin-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant.html

[Great Order]

Ah, Russia's usual tactic: Victim blaming.

"It's your fault your phone got smashed when you tried taking it off me when I stole it!"

[EuchreJack]

Ah, Russia's usual tactic: Victim blaming.

"It's your fault your phone got smashed when you tried taking it off me when I stole it!"

That seems tame by Russia's standards.

It's more like:
"You stole money from me and beat me up"
As Russia assaults you and takes your money.

[EuchreJack]

Russia's Deputy Foreign Min says Russian military control of Zaporizhzhia plant guarantees no 'Chernobyl scenario'

So, it appears the point is the Russia does NOT want to give up Zaporizhzhia.
I'm confident enough in reading this double-talk to say this means Russia won't trigger a meltdown unless they are asked to give up the plant.

[Random_Dragon]

My rough guess is they'll probably scuttle something if it looks like they'll lose control of the plant.

[EuchreJack]

My rough guess is they'll probably scuttle something if it looks like they'll lose control of the plant.

More or less my analysis.  Zaporizhzhia plant won't be leaving Russian hands in one piece, if the Russians can do anything about it.
Most of the tension seems to be around whether the plant is going to change hands.

[Lord Shonus]

US sources have confirmed that the AGM-88 HARM is now being mounted to and fired from Ukrainian MIGs. That's a pretty big step forward - not only are advanced anti-radiation missiles (which pick up a radar signal and follow it all the way to the emitter) an incredibly useful tool for the Wild Weasel suppression of air defenses mission, integrating a US weapon onto a Soviet fighter is a Big Deal in terms of potentially integrating more such weapons. And munitions don't have all the technical obstacles that providing Western aircraft would have.

[Starver]

I think I mentioned long before the possibility of the "inverse Red Storm Rising" scenario. And it now certainly looks like Russia is producing more raw gas than they can process.

(Possibly a managed-economy issue, the processing/exporting should be being done, so the production end is required to maintain a supply them in order not to be seen as also failing to fulfil their set quotas?)

If it's not that, it's some deliberate geo-engineering effort, which we'd expect to see replicated many more times, perhaps as part of their contentious claims and usage of large swathes of the Arctic Oceon (ironically, at least in part as a hydrocarbon resources). But its probably 'just' the industrial inertia.

[EuchreJack]

While I'd love to say this is Eco-Terrorism by the Russians, it's more likely Russia showing the world what happens to these resources if they keep embargoing them, or a lack of storage capacity.  Probably some combination of the last two, since Russia's industry has been geared towards selling off the natural gas, and probably can't handle not being able to sell it almost immediately.

[Starver]

If it was "see what we can do", then they'd have made it more public internal (or external) mass-media broadcasting with a suitable spun message about how they are 'forced' to do this because of <mumble-mumble-mumble>. Or, if it was something only to be revealed at top-level intelligence/diplomacy, they surely won't have made it happen within sight of the public, just surveillance resources/via diplomatic backchannels, so that they could try to force the hands of any wavering regimes.

But from what I read in that article, and elsewhere, someone in mid-management (and/or mid-government, maybe) is probably personally sweating out the 'unavoidable' loss of gas to the flares, just because someone of equal level but in a more secure position is protecting their own back by just doing their previously assigned task to keep their own part of the flow going regardless. I expect that there's a whole ant-hill of effort going into finding a more useful outlet (or more permanent intermediate storage solution). - And hopefully the rush to do so isn't going to create even more problems down the line. (Any containment failure of resequestered gas would be a disaster, greater even than a slightly less useless "burn for the sake of burning" effort...)

Perhaps they'll instead really confidently and competently pursue large scale blue-hydrogen production (or, maybe better, turquoise-) but I can't see them being so forward-looking and becoming the predominent eco-pioneer amongst all the world's nations. And even if they do, I can see that going wrong (if not "bang") if they rush it under the pressure (NPI) of suddenly having to ramp up whatever ideas they might not have felt the need to look at so much before now. ((This paragraph is totally hypothetical, I have no reason to believe the "perhaps" is even remotely likely, so should itself perhaps be more in the emotional thread, or elsewhere, rather than the reporting one...))

[Great Order]

There's also the issue with stuff like oil that due to the nature of its extraction you can't (easily) just turn off a well unless you want to put the whole thing at risk of collapsing or exploding. So when you have nowhere to store it and nowhere to ship it, what do you do? Dumping it's horrific for the environment, so you do the next worst thing and burn it instead.