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

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

A lot of people there do speak Russian there. And yes it’s still radioactive, albeit less than a few decades ago. If you’re sending your son to fight, radiation probably the last thing to kill him.

And to add to this - burn pits, and other common actions in the waging of war, can cause more severe chemical damage than radiation. When the order of the day is "We're killing other people" there tends to be a lot less emphasis on doing things as safely as possible.

For all the downvoters, he does bring up a valid point. It is a 'click-bait' title that is comparatively neutered to what is actually occurring.

"Russia bombs Ukraine' "hundreds dead in russian invasion ofUkraine" "Russia implements no fly zone over Ukraine" "Russia incircles Ukraines Capital"

And we get - A long deserted powerplant captured?

I think it would be crazy for another reason - there is very little in that area that could be collateral damage, and there's not really anyone who is supposed to be in there. This should make it very easy to target forces in the exclusion zone.

Not sure why people are down voting maybe they didn't understand the comment. It was to represent the thoughts of the general western public.

99% of normal people don't know anything about the world. Text inside quotes is how normal people think when they hear Russian forces have captured Chernobyl.

Invasion aside, capturing Chernobyl is good PR. When most people think Chernobyl is already in Russia and most people think going there is instant death.

> 99% of normal people don't know anything about the world.

Are you talking about Americans? Because I can assure you that 99% of the people in Europe knows exactly where Chernobyl is.

It almost wiped out our entire continent, and it’s still an active threat that is going to be a security issue for the next thousands of years.

We’re taught about it in school.

Russia didn’t take it because they wanted to generate headlines, they took it to secure it. I personally believe in the experts who think the Russian army vastly overestimated their first day effort, but whatever you believe, it would be foolish to think that Chernobyl isn’t a very serious thing for everyone involved.

If it was accidentally destroyed in this war, and Russia didn’t immediately fix it, EU forces would be forced to trigger WW3 to recapture it, or 650 million or us, would need to find a different part of the world to live in. That wouldn’t happen or course, because 80% of the Russian population also lives in zones that would become uninhabitable.

My world of reference is Oceania. However I still do find it hard to believe the average person in Europe knows were Chernobyl is.

But I'm sure you are right, and I hope you are doing well in Europe given the situation.

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

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

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

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

Has this happened? Ukrainian civilians bombed?

Never believe anybody who says attacks are "surgical" or "limited to strategic objectives" - bombs and shrapnels don't look at documents. War is war, civilian casualties are always inevitable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep their numbers down, of course - in fact, it means war should never be waged, because innocents will always be caught in it.

Yes. A cyclist can be seen going about their life before a bomb lands in front of them. The proximity would have sent shrapnel directly into them. They did not survive. It is extremely sad and awful to watch unfold. Warning: the second video contains gore. https://twitter.com/realistqx1/status/1496757503195029508 and https://twitter.com/zyundex/status/1496735074720563203

Yes, certainly, in many locations

https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1496857321909239818

https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1496912902326005769?cx...

https://twitter.com/N_Waters89/status/1496846533085564929?cx...

https://twitter.com/AlexanderLouri4/status/14967627663166873...

Yep, multiple cities, including Kyiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Lviv were bombed, and there's videos out there of civilian buildings destroyed.

Some Ukrainian Hospitals have been struck by artillery. No one knows if it was on purpose or not, but either way that's pretty bad since the world is still suffering from the COVID19 pandemic.

The Russian Hospital seeking missiles are famous since Syria.

Whether deliberately or not, yes.

>no terrorists make off with radioactive material.

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

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

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

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

That would be an awkward claim considering Ukraine _had_ nuclear weapons and gave them up to Russia in the 90s for guarantees about Ukraine's territorial integrity. Obviously that didn't work so well for Ukraine now

Awkward? That’s what Putin said before invasion. WMD and nuclear weapons.

I believe they were destroyed, not given over to Russia?

Hmm, various websites disagree. I would guess some were given to Russia and some were destroyed with the uranium being kept for other purposes.

Gave to Russia:

> Ukraine handed all its nuclear weapons to Russia

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraines-nuclear-lesson-with...

> Ukraine have acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear states and are now transferring Soviet missiles and warheads to Russia for dismantlement on a strict schedule.

https://www.stimson.org/1995/politics-nuclear-renunciation-c...

>The former Soviet Republics where nuclear weapons had been based, namely Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, transferred those weapons to Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

> effectively abandoning their nuclear arsenal to Russia

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

> In May 1996, Ukraine saw the last of its nuclear arms transported back to Russia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-w...

> Ukraine transferred its last 40 nuclear warheads to Russia

> Most tactical nuclear weapons were transferred from Ukraine to Russia.

https://www.rferl.org/a/the-destruction-of-ukraines-nuclear-...

> All nuclear weapons were removed to Russia

https://www.nti.org/countries/ukraine/

Destroyed:

> Ukraine gave up a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons left over by the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and used the fuel from its blended-down warheads to drive its nuclear power plants.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine...

> In 1994 Ukraine agreed to destroy the weapons

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

> Ukrainian workers cut an air-to-ground X-22 cruise missile into pieces

https://www.rferl.org/a/the-destruction-of-ukraines-nuclear-...

> they had to destroy all of their nuclear weapons.

https://historyofyesterday.com/did-ukraine-actually-get-rid-...

They weren't activated nukes fyi

Is any part of Chernobyl still in operation? It seems like everything was shut down by 2000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant).

I stand corrected then!

Chernobyl power plant isn't operational since 2000.

Which still means that it operated for 14 years after the accident. Must have been a very "special" workplace for the engineers involved...

The station has been shut down since 2000. There's no power supply there.

Could it still be an important part of the distribution network? Lines, substations, etc.

It's simply the shortest and simplest path from Belarus to Kiev. It has strategic military value.

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

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

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

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

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

The issue is not about bombing or not bombing it, also the area is worthless from a strategic point of view.

It's just that somebody has to be in control of it, and the Russians can't or don't want to depend on Ukrainian forces to do that right now.

Then their bombing of hospitals was a bit silly

I don't think Putin is worried about loss of life of Ukrainian citizens. He is worried about losing soldiers, or more importantly dead soldiers being repatriated on the news. They will cover up civilian casualties or blame them on Ukrainian troops. The only support for this will come from Russia domestically and it is that which he seeks to maintain with this war. Which I'm guessing he hoped would be quick and decisive, avoiding the bloodshed of Russian soldiers that will be his undoing at home.

He should be worried about catastrophic losses like that, it'd be a propaganda coup against him. Small scale killings can be swept under the rug though.

This isn't the US in Iraq, we're talking about Russia and Ukraine here

Russia still has social media. A catastrophic loss of Ukranian civilians in one event won't get buried easily.

However, as an autocratic state, I wouldn't be surprised if Russian social media was shut down if it was used to spread messages contrary to state propaganda.

"I don't think Putin is worried about loss of life of Ukrainian citizens."

Then he would just shell and flatten all the ukrainian cities. Russia has air superiority as far as I know.

Every city he doesn't shell, is a city he doesn't have to rebuild. Roads and other pieces of infrastructure are valuable, no matter how old.

And every ukrainian with family ties to russias heartland that not dies, is one family less to worry about politically.

Putin just wants to create another puppet-state, same as Belarus. He absolutely doesn't care about the lives of civilians, but ruining the infrastructure is not in his plans (only strategical infrastructure)

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

There is a lot of contamination that was simply buried underneath the topsoil during the cleanup efforts. Bombing or artillery strikes would likely cause some of that to be kicked back up into the atmosphere.

Good point.

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

Yes, but although Putin is a bloody bastard, he's not stupid. His plan isn't to take entire control of Ukraine militarily but to swap the legit government with a puppet one he would control at will. Once he succeed, which is a matter of a few days, he'll gradually withdraw most of the forces, things will slowly return to normal and in a few years Ukraine will essentially (if not effectively) annex itself to Russia, with both the EU and US doing nothing but economic sanctions Putin and the oligarchs were long prepared against. Most of Europe depends on Russian gas, which means the moment those sanctions become too harsh is the moment he'll either cut our supply or further raise the prices (my last heating bill already doubled). That's his guarantee against any real action. I'm sorry, but Ukrainian people are screwed.

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

> No he has to occupy the country and crush the opposition.

In a country the size of Ukraine, controlling cities isn't easy, the risk of transforming the conflict into a guerrilla is too dangerous. Tanks would have to level down entire cities block by block to get full control, and that would likely result in a bloodshed with lots of casualties also among Russians. As much as Putin acts like a dictator, he still need some kind of support from his own people and pro-Russia Ukrainians.

Willing to put money on that?

Risky bet, since this scenario has already happened before.

So you're willing to put money on it?

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

As a disgruntled climate scientist, I think Europe needs to get off natural gas by 1990. It’s not as if the security benefits weren’t obvious when we all were buying from the Arab world, or the wider global security destabilization caused by climate change.

The cancellation of the NS2 pipeline has been a silver lining, even if it's hard to compare the long-term quanta of brutality a given amount of CO2 leads to vs the short term brutality of war.

It's not enough: they need to actively get rid of the parts of it that are built. The problem with sanctions at the moment is Russia is betting that once they win, give it a few years and business sycophants will be arguing that Ukraine is "ancient history we can't let hold back THE ECONOMY".

Shutting down atomic power in Germany was such a brilliant move.

> Shutting down atomic power in Germany was such a brilliant move.

What's done is done. Europe has enough wind potential to power the world [1]. Add solar [2], batteries, transmission, pumped hydro, remaining operational nuclear, and electrify everything (EVs, heat pumps, etc). Fill the remainder with LNG shipments from the US in the short term [3]. It's a national defense/security/sovereignty issue now to get off of Russian gas, and it should be treated as such with regards to allocation of resources to speed the effort.

[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/europes-onshore-and-o...

[2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/solar-seen-clai...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europe-remains-top-d...

Europe does not have enough wind power potential to power the world, by a very large margin. To power France with wind, not just electricity but all energy needs including oil, natgas, etc... you would need one large windmill for every single square kilometer of the country...

Research paper with data to provide a citation for my assertion: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.06.064

I confirmed it’s in SciHub if you want to grab a copy.

> The continuous development of onshore wind farms is an important feature of the European transition towards an energy system powered by distributed renewables and low-carbon resources. This study assesses and simulates potential for future onshore wind turbine installations throughout Europe. The study depicts, via maps, all the national and regional socio-technical restrictions and regulations for wind project development using spatial analysis conducted through GIS. The inputs for the analyses were based on an original dataset compiled from satellites and public databases relating to electricity, planning, and other dimensions. Taking into consideration socio-technical constraints, which restricts 54% of the combined land area in Europe, the study reveals a nameplate capacity of 52.5 TW of untapped onshore wind power potential in Europe - equivalent to 1 MW per 16 European citizens – a supply that would be sufficient to cover the global all-sector energy demand from now through to 2050. The study offers a more rigorous, multi-dimensional, and granular atlas of onshore wind energy development that can assist with future energy policy, research, and planning.

"Global" in this context means all of Europe, not all of earth. 1 MW per 16 European citizens is not remotely close to enough power for the entire earth.

One windmill per km^2 is not very dense. Of course, just relying on wind would never work.

I was/am pro-energy transition.

But it's obvious that it was too fast too soon. Capability should have been built up before decommissioning.

Not destroying the German solar industry for shits and giggles would've been a good idea.

Wind power is useful but not directly comparable to gas or nuclear, for obvious reasons. You can't store the wind or the electricity generated from it.

Everyone who had eyes and was watching the natural gas situation in Germany and other countries to the east of it, would see that even a few years ago.

Yeah, this has been my frustration for a while. Honestly, at this point just buy natural gas from a country that isn't helmed by a warlord. Similarly, Germany decommissioning its nuclear reactors isn't helping matters. I genuinely wonder what short term solutions are feasible with respect to decreasing dependence on Russian gas--can Europe ramp up production of heat pumps or similar? Is "Norway expanding its natural gas capacity" a reasonable short term option? Would love to hear from people who know anything about this.

Not only the EU. The USA are sanctioning a lot of things, but they still importing russian oil.

And everything not send to EU and USA is bought by China.

Yeah. Maybe this will be the thing that finally pushes people away from fossil fuels.

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

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

It's not clear that the West is willing.

Here's the list of countries which have used nuclear weapons against another country:

- United States

+ France and the UK

Those two don't have the resources to project significantly (like superpowers), nor the pressure of border conflict (like the others I mentioned). So their nuclear capabilities are somewhat irrelevant.

Not sure why you think North Korea and Pakistan can project and not France and UK which both have nuclear attack submarines. The heart of nuclear detterrence lies in those submarines that can cause second strike MAD.

Unless you think NK is a superpower, you've failed to actually read a one-paragraph post, congratulations.

As for projection capabilities of FR-UK, they are small and old and creaky and everybody knows it.

Sorry but being insulting is not going to make your argument more convincing. Pretending that somehow NK and Pakistan have more nuclear capabilities that FR or UK is a joke.

I think Pak is buying theirs from France

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

> His plan isn't to take entire control of Ukraine militarily but to swap the legit government with a puppet one he would control at will. Once he succeed, which is a matter of a few days,he'll gradually withdraw most of the forces, things will slowly return to normal and in a few years Ukraine will essentially (if not effectively) annex itself to Russia

I wouldn't be so certain. I don't think Ukrainians would just comply, many of them would fight against such a thing and would know the new regime is fake. Furthermore, Kyiv is a big city with peculiar geography. Urban fighting is hell, and if Ukraine decides to make a principled stand there it could take weeks of bloody fighting before it falls; and if Ukraine's government evacuates to Lviv in time, and continues the fight from there, it might result in a long struggle, regardless of who gets installed in Kyiv by Putin.

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

Genuine question: how much does Russian public opinion matter? It's not like Russia has free elections. Iran's Islamic Republic seems pretty secure despite low public approval. I'm sure public opinion is important, but I don't understand its role in a dictatorship.

> Genuine question: how much does Russian public opinion matter

If it didn't matter, internal Russian propaganda organs wouldn't be firing on all cylinders. The press is not just a 'jobs' program.

Every government requires the consent of the governed. Democracies, semi-democracies, dictatorships, autocracies, theocracies, all of them only work because people believe in them.

For this reason, all forms of government put a lot of effort into manufacturing consent among the people they govern.

Popular opinion in a dictatorship matters very little. Much more important is the opinion of other people in power. Those might see how unpopular the dictator is with the masses as an opportunity and 'forget' to deploy some security measures...

There's a reason sanctions are being applied to rich families.

If Putin would be seen as a brutal murderer by many russians, then chance are that there are some who could try to assassinate him, like there were many assassination attempts to Hitler.

It matters of course, because if the people get pissed enough they'll topple the dictatorship, especially if the security services get disenchanted as well.

what if Russia used chemical weapons? doesn't hurt physical infrastructure, provokes shock and fear, kills or incapacitates a lot of people, denies tons of area to the Ukrainians.

I'm not sure Russia has much left to lose politically by stooping to that.

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

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

There are a few. Off the top of my head Tibet and Western Sahara come to mind. Perhaps some parts of now-Israel.

Western Sahara has a population similar to Huntsville Alabama's metro region, so I guess you are right, but I hope you also see why that situation is very different from this one.

As for Tibet, repeating an earlier comment:

Tibet was under control of the Qing Dynasty (i.e. China) until its end in 1912. From 1912-1950, Tibet (due to its remoteness) acted as an de facto independent region, despite Western legal precedent stating it was still under the control of Beijing.

When attempting to get de jure independence from China in 1951, China asserted control over the region.

So sort of, but not really.

Annexation of Goa [0]

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

edit: my bad, I missed the "unwilling nation" part of the parent content

Yeah, having trouble thinking of one since '57. Examples abound from the first half of the 20th century (and certainly before then), but less so in the latter half.

Smaller states, though, yes. But not major powers. This may have more to do with shifting priorities for major powers, than with anything else.

Turkey conquered part of Cyprus in 1974

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

Similar to an earlier comment I made, if Norther Cyprus had more than 350k people in it, the world would probably care more.

So I agree you’re right, but I also hope you agree that Ukraine is very different.

Population size doesn’t matter. What only matters is strong army willing to repeal aggressor. What could help Ukraine is that Russian soldiers don’t want to fight for Putin and oligarchs.

You think it's similarly difficult to annex a land of 300k and a land of 44m? Ok.

Hong Kong?

that was a 99 year lease expiring.

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

...the Sino-British Joint Declaration is still in effect, until 2047.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration

Doesn't change the fact that HK was not "annexed," nor was/is it majority "unwilling."

It is majority unwilling. People there want real elections and independence

(Although now too late)

You are talking about their government structure not whether or not they were willing to return to China.

Again the original point is that it was never an annexation, but even if it were, there was minimal protest and discontent in 1997.

Tibet?

Tibet was under control of the Qing Dynasty (i.e. China) until its end in 1912.

From 1912-1950, Tibet (due to its remoteness) acted as an de facto independent region, despite Western legal precedent stating it was still under the control of Beijing.

When attempting to get de jure independence from China in 1951, China asserted control over the region.

So sort of, but not really.

So if you occupy country for long enough it’s ok to invade it when it tries to get independent?

Nobody likes to admit it, but yeah. It all boils down to might makes right; if you revolt or otherwise cause a ruckus and win then it becomes the right path of history - see: USA, etc.

You’re literally describing the US civil war.

Kuwait?

Who's in charge of Kuwait?

Well yes, but it took a while.

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

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

You mean like this?

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

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

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

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

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