ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

This thread is a bit reassuring

We at @TheBTI have been in touch with colleagues at other organizations who have U.S. Dept of Energy and @ANS_org contacts.

Word is that the fire is indeed outside the containment zone at a training facility. Reactors have been safely shut down. Radiation lvls normal.

— Seaver Wang (@wang_seaver) March 4, 2022

Does not appear like Russia is trying to blow this up, but they are incredibly reckless and stupid

CNN updates add detail:
The Zaporizhzhia plant is Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant, containing six of the country's 15 nuclear energy reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
...n an interview with CNN on Thursday, Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA said the agency was in "constant contact" with Ukrainian counterparts to ensure the safety of facilities in Ukraine.
"What makes it unprecedented is this is the first time in post-second world war history we have a full-fledged military operation amidst...a big number of nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactors," said Grossi.
"There is always the danger of military activity that could affect the sites or that there might be some interruption or some disruption in the normal operation of any of these facilities that may result in a problem or an accident," he said.
Zaporizhzhia is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of the city of Donetsk within one of the two pro-Moscow territories recognized as an independent state last month by Russia.
...On Thursday, IAEA member states passed a resolution calling on Russia to cease actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine, diplomats said.
The resolution, which was led by Canada and Poland, and supported by 26 other countries, deplored Russia's "aggressive activity and attacks against nuclear sites in Ukraine, and seizing and taking control of nuclear facilities," the ambassador at the UK mission in Vienna Corinne Kitsell said.
Only Russia and China voted against the resolution, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, Russia notified the IAEA that its forces had taken control of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to a letter posted the IAEA website.
The Russian letter to the IAEA said personnel at the plant continued their "work on providing nuclear safety and monitoring radiation in normal mode of operation. The radiation levels remain normal."
On the first day of the invasion, Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is about 325 miles (520 kilometers) southeast of Chernobyl, where a nuclear power plant reactor exploded when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in 1986 -- sparking a disaster that affected, directly or indirectly, 9 million people, due to radioactive materials released into the atmosphere.

Definitely one of those times I wish I'd been tuned out or seeing The Batman or something instead of seeing it unfold moment by moment.

Meanwhile we got ol' Lindsey here asking if someone in the Russian military can be just like a German WWII officer which, well, really now.

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.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

By Cracky, Lindsay, you the Greatest. Now that you mention it, thank I'll go do that thang.

a sitting senator openly calling for the assassination of the leader of the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world doesn't seem ideal

I honestly read that as ‘shitting senator’ and welp…

It's not ideal but a different prospective strongman putting one in the back of Putin's head would probably be the easiest way out of this.

Zelenskyy:

Calls the attack "blackmail" by Russia. Says Ukraine has a total of 15 nuclear reactors, says if they are all targeted they could cause "the evacuation of Europe". 5/5

— Zoya Sheftalovich (@zoyashef) March 4, 2022

Russian military is just super sloppy and this is collateral damage? Which is almost worse

― frogbs, Friday, 4 March 2022 01:47 (one hour ago) link

i mean, this is par for the course for them, to be honest. i'm honestly surprised at people's shock at russia's screw up

i am never reading this thread again ffs

fire's been put out

i know this is prosaic & cliched but i would give anything to go back to reading daily updates in a newspaper from a war correspondent

this minute to minute stuff where everything is catastrophic til it’s not is a goddamn nightmare

Yeah, gotta pace ourselves. Professor of Nuclear Engineering just now pointed out on BBC World that if they wanted just to shut down Ukraine power supply, or any power supply, there are plenty easier ways to do it. Maybe it's mainly mindfuck, psywar terror and yeah xp blackmail, but if they really let it/made it rip, the radiation could easily go to nearby areas they make like they care about, the liberated pro-Russian areas etc, also all the other real estate they may want for reasons other than a barren bulwark/no man's land vs. the West, also could go to Russia, if they care about that/if Vlad does.

have family that works in the IAEA - y'all need to calm down.

i know this is prosaic & cliched but i would give anything to go back to reading daily updates in a newspaper from a war correspondent

local options might suck or have tainted ownership but newspapers do still exist

tbf this board should not be your go-to for this conflict

aaand thank you both for making me regret that post

totally not my intention - I have also spent the last two days trying to devise a way to get a one-dose update every day without giving money to the local newspaper that publishes multiple op-eds against democracy in the middle of elections.

tweet style updates of wartime will kill ye, folks

here, there or anywhere else

Not that I don't read the up to the minute stuff, but Heather Cox Richardson's nightly recap has been a gift.

This fuckin guy

Putin on Friday called for “normalization” of relations with other states, saying that Moscow had “absolutely no ill intentions with regard to our neighbors.”

“I think that everyone should think about normalizing relations and cooperating normally,” he said in comments via video link from a ceremony raising the Russian flag on a Kaliningrad ferry.

Agreed on HCR.

The other extraordinary transformation taking place in Polish social life is connected to the extraordinary numbers of people being taken into private homes. Spoke to someone today who told me she “barely knew a family who hasn’t taken someone in.”

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) March 3, 2022

Management at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar is now working at gunpoint, the company that runs the station said.
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-04-22/h_1f73598a8edc48dcd10cea81c3c37be5

xpost

I live in Poland and know multiple people who've taken in individuals or families.

An ok report as well

Sex workers are consistently the most organized people in a crisis because the criminalization of their existence means they're always in crisis https://t.co/qy37u2Q9Mk

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) March 3, 2022

i know this is prosaic & cliched but i would give anything to go back to reading daily updates in a newspaper from a war correspondent

this minute to minute stuff where everything is catastrophic til it’s not is a goddamn nightmare

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, March 3, 2022 10:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

My therapist agrees with you, says humans are built to receive the minute by minute deluge of bad news, I'm trying to stay off Twitter as much as possible and I don't watch the news at all, seems to be helping

Don't know if this interview has been posted but it's still very much relevant. It's with a Pol prof who very much conceives international relations as a site of struggle between the big powers (he can't conceive of imperialism as part of his framework). It's calculating, strategic matter with all the emotions taken out. If you work out the implications it's something that is happening already in someway, i.e. some form of sanctions though the elites aren't touched, with no military intervention. Given yesterday's events we could be on the path of selling out Ukraine to de-escalation. And if Russia can help out against the main enemy (China) then all the better.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine/amp

I take it this is Dan’s recommendation: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

New Yorker interviewer pushes back, asks right questions, interviewee stands ground while admitting he doesn't know wtf happening pretty much, concedes in order to continue, realpolitik of the expert

good god @ that Chotiner interview

not sure what the point of "calculating, strategic" is when your views are already proven wrong in real time.

One interesting thing about how the sanctions are unfolding is that the de facto sanctions are becoming even worse than the official sanctions, because so many foreign companies are voluntarily suspending business with Russia even if not required to do so. The reasons for this are not clear, but possibly could be uncertainty about future sanctions as well as some herding effect. Once a critical mass of companies has pulled out, it becomes harder to maintain any business in Russia that has complex supplier relationships.

Given yesterday's events we could be on the path of selling out Ukraine to de-escalation. And if Russia can help out against the main enemy (China) then all the better

Wondering what you're referring to with "yesterday's events" here. Everything throughout and well prior to the invasion has pointed to exactly the opposite of the US reaching some kind of rapprochement with Russia.

BBC’s wording is odd - “…meet after Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine”

An attack on a nuclear plant is an event, to me.

I don't see anything but an increase in tensions. Arms are being sent by countries to Ukraine, the sanctions are tough and have hit much of the population hard. Russians are trying to leave.

No, I mean describing it as a nuclear attack.

de facto sanctions

One interesting thread I read was about the intricacies of the airline industries and the indirect repercussions of sanctions on Russian air travel:

We need to stop for moment and take stock of the abject evisceration of the Russian commercial aircraft fleet and airline market that is currently taking place.

— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) March 2, 2022

(Don't think I posted that already, but if I did, sorry!)

An attack on a nuclear plant is an event, to me.

I don't see anything but an increase in tensions. Arms are being sent by countries to Ukraine, the sanctions are tough and have hit much of the population hard. Russians are trying to leave.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, March 4, 2022 12:19 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm not following you at all. Russia has invaded Ukraine and is trying to conquer the country, obviously "tensions" are "increased." But you said " we could be on the path of selling out Ukraine to de-escalation. And if Russia can help out against the main enemy (China) then all the better." How are we "selling out Ukraine to de-escalation"? How is any kind of de-escalation happening at all? And what evidence is there that we are looking to Russia to help us out against China? Or am I misunderstanding?

Another pessimistic thread on where this is going for Russia, which also notes specifically the aviation issue:

One thing we can be sure of.

Putin has succeeded in bringing back USSR that he so longed for.

Do Russians themselves realize what to expect now?

Few, maybe.

But most can't even comprehend the scale of economic destruction that's about to unfold in the motherland.

👇🧵 pic.twitter.com/laY4jswz6L

— Sergei Perfiliev 🇺🇦 (@perfiliev) March 4, 2022

who is "we"

You can’t conduct business if you can’t guarantee you are going to get paid. It’s hard enough to get payments from Russian companies at the best of times due to the immense amount of paperwork - with additional bureaucracy on both sides, it’s going to be virtually impossible. I’m not sure it’s specifically a moral choice.

In local (to me) news, this was interesting:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-60619112

Maybe it's pedantic, but I find it grating when people say "bring back the USSR" because that's clearly not what he's trying to do -- bring back an imperial greater Russia yes, but not one that looks like the USSR.

I think maybe people mean the USSR in principle? That is, central power in Moscow and bordering satellite states, an empire in essence if not an exact recreation of the USSR. In that above thread specifically, I assume he means "bring back the USSR" as a pejorative. Food lines, empty shelves, worse standard of living, that sort of thing.

How is any kind of de-escalation happening at all? And what evidence is there that we are looking to Russia to help us out against China? Or am I misunderstanding?

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 4 March 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Sorry that was clumsy. I meant that one way out of this is effectively to sell out Ukraine to de-escalate, which yes it's not happening at all rn.

The China bit is plucked out from that interview.

Man Alive: Accurate. He has specifically blamed Lenin for the situation, as I understand it. I don't think your complaint is pedantic.

Mearsheimer just seems flat out, demonstrably wrong here, don't really know what else to say. Events are just not bearing out his theories.