ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Putin orders Russia to take control of Zaporizhzhia NPP
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia to take control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – but Kyiv has urged Ukrainian workers there not to sign any documents handed to them by Russian occupiers.

The Russian president ordered the Kremlin to take control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, located in one of the four regions in southern Ukraine that he recently annexed.

Russia’s nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom said it would transfer all the existing Ukrainian employees to a new Russian-owned organisation.

But Petro Kotin, the boss of Ukraine’s state energy agency, announced he was taking over the plant – which is feared to possibly cause a nuclear disaster as a result of shelling in the area that Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for.

Ukrainian staff have continued to operate the plant after Russian forces captured it in March, following the launch of the invasion on 24 February.

Видео-отчет pic.twitter.com/5iGrv0DWPe

— IgorGirkin (@GirkinGirkin) October 8, 2022

that bridge is looking rather fucked!

Crimean bridge.

"Tolya, I'll be late. The bridge is on fire".

Casual conversations are so amazing sometimes pic.twitter.com/9sU7cY4Omn

— Andro (@ThisIsAndro) October 8, 2022

they took down that bridge thing hardcore damn

some ppl are saying it was a truck bomb but others are saying the explosion was too big to be in a truck but idk seems like you could fit a pretty big explosion inside a truck especially if you had some good stuff for example a missile warhead is smaller than a truck

apparently all trucks entering the bridge have to go through an x-ray and it might be quite difficult to get one rammed with explosives past the security.

ah ok does kind of seem like from the video that the explosion is not coming from the truck but im not sure how reliable that is

Aw shit:

29 min ago
Car traffic resumes on part of Crimean bridge, Russian official says
From CNN's Katharina Krebs and Tim Lister
Car traffic on the undamaged part of the Crimean bridge has resumed, said the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, in a statement on his Telegram channel on Saturday.

“At the moment, traffic is open to cars and buses with a full inspection procedure. We ask truck drivers to plan their route using the Kerch ferry crossing. The Kerch-2 ferry will begin to sail across the strait in two hours,” he said.

Social media video reviewed by CNN indicates that the westbound lanes on the road bridge were severed, but eastbound lanes appear intact.

According to Aksenov, railway communication on the bridge is set to be renewed by the end of the day.

Russian state media RIA Novosti reported Saturday that the Minister of Transport of the Crimean Republic Nikolai Lukashenko said ships with a capacity of 100 people will be launched to take passengers between Crimea and Russia’s Krasnodar Territory as an alternate method of transport.

Ukraine to issue stamps commemorating Crimean bridge explosion
From CNN’s Xiaofei Xu and Olga Voitovych
The Ukrainian Postal Service will issue new stamps that feature the damaged Kerch Strait bridge, which connected Crimea to Russia, its CEO announced on Saturday.

“I will not wish you a good day, because it is already wonderful. The Kerch bridge is done,” Ukrposhta head Igor Smelyansky said.

The stamp will feature two figures who resemble Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in their iconic pose from the 1997 film “Titanic.”

...There is also an envelope with an image of Crimea breaking handcuffs with Russia in the images shared by Smelyansky.

The price of the stamp will be 18 Ukrainian hryvnia ($0.48) each, and Kyiv plans to print 7 million copies for circulation, according to Smelyansky.

Some context: Beyond being the only bridge connecting annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland, the structure had major symbolic significance for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s objective to take over Ukraine and bind it to Russia forever.

A cargo train in Ilovaisk in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region was hit by a “powerful explosion” Saturday morning local time, according to the adviser to the Mariupol Mayor Petro Andrushenko.

“Not only Crimea. Not only fuel tanks. There is also a cargo train in Ilovaisk. Locals report a rather powerful explosion and subsequent detonation at night. The occupiers now have big problems with supplies from both sides,” Andrushenko said, referring to the explosion involving a tanker on the Kerch bridge that links Russia’s Krasnodar region with the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.

Pro-Russian authorities in the self-declared republic of Donetsk confirmed the incident, releasing video Saturday showing the fire’s aftermath at a local railway station. It is unclear yet if there were casualties in the blast.

1 hr 18 min ago
Ukrainian Energy Minister warns of possible nuclear accident at Zaporizhzhia as Russian shelling continues

"The good news, Mr President, is we can repair the Crimea Bridge."
"And the bad news?"
"We'll need your table." pic.twitter.com/XTEVrrJgjd

— Tripe Marketing Board (@TripeUK) October 8, 2022

good one Tripe Marketing Board

I feel like it could be a Matt cartoon

https://t.co/J2SHJ6m3qB pic.twitter.com/fivvgh633X

— 🌇vole, mighty digger🌆 (@anti_minotaur) October 8, 2022

lool!

Main thing now seems to be that the road to bridge is so messed up as well, with words like "trickle" and "bottleneck" and "problem for wartime anytime logistics" being bandied about.

Interesting how many high quality photos and videos there are of the bridge just before, during and after the explosion.

— Francis Fukuyama (@FukuyamaFrancis) October 8, 2022

"Be there or be square."

The implication there, which some in the Ukranian government are also pushing, is that this was an inside job by anti-Putin forces in the Russian military and/or secret service.

... unless he's implying it's an inside job being used as a pretext to ramp up the war even further.

Either way...

I took it as Ukraine readiness for major publicity, same with having that stamp ready. But if they could *also* spread rumour of inside job---!

Beginning to wonder if Lukashenko isn't preparing the ground for Belarussian forces invading Ukraine.

Here is a thread from a defense analyst on this question.

Since March,we've been tracking Belarusian military activity. There are some important points to be made. Apart from @MotolkoHelp and @Rochan_CONS, no one else does this as the Belarusian Armed Forces are relatively weak, and apart from Luka's rhetoric, there's nothing there. 1/ https://t.co/uJKJlNfIx1 pic.twitter.com/zQeuETiZek

— Konrad Muzyka - Rochan Consulting (@konrad_muzyka) October 10, 2022

belarus would be foolish to join the war as they from what ive read have a pretty poorly prepared military but who knows they might be foolish or just being bullied by russia

Pro tip: If one poorly prepared military doesn't work, try using two poorly prepared militaries

The frustration of Russian hardliners burst into the open.

Their criticism has been carefully focused on the military, not President Putin. But this is his war: he launched it and he is Russia's supreme commander-in-chief.

That's why Grigory Yudin, from the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, described Monday's mass shelling as "an act of desperation", aimed mostly at solving Mr Putin's internal problems.

Russia's president had embraced the hawks' idea that you have to "scare the opponent to death" so it will surrender, Mr Yudin wrote on Twitter.

The destruction of the Crimea bridge probably pushed him over the edge, and I'm sure the critics were saying something like 'you gonna let them walk all over you? what kind of cossack are you anyway?' So he launches cruise missiles on playgrounds, easy-peasy

I don't see this working at all

yeah hard liners are his base he needs to placate them

Air defenses will form the “crux of the conversation tomorrow,” the first of two days of meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

...The challenge: The West has few air defense systems available for immediate donation, said Tom Karako, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. For example, Ukraine has asked for the U.S. Patriot missile defense system, but Washington has repeatedly said no due to the relative scarcity of the system, among other reasons.

Other immediate possibilities include the German InfraRed Imaging System Tail, a short to medium-range infrared homing air-to-air missile, or the U.S. Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar system. Israel’s Iron Dome would also fit the bill, but Tel Aviv is expected to nix that proposal.
“There’s nowhere near enough to go around,” Karako said.
...The West could “MacGyver” together an air defense solution for Ukraine by combining different capabilities, Karako said. But the question is what the different countries will be willing to give up from their own supply.

yeah hard liners are his base he needs to placate them

Hasn't he long positioned himself in-between groups rather than having one particular group as his base? Like all the sides are his base to an extent, but also not fully, and he balances

I don't see this working at all

In terms of Ukraine, it won't - especially if Ukraine shot down 50% of the missiles even before getting the improved air defences, and the death count low for such expensive missiles (and more to the point...mabye few in number?)

But in terms of satiating Z-patriots? Maybe? Something of a change in Rus media towards more explicitly celebrating the strikes rather than previous sort of ambiguity. Makes the population more complicit in a sense. IF the purpose was for domestic consumption not sure if too early to say whether its worked or not

Hasn't he long positioned himself in-between groups rather than having one particular group as his base?

yeah but at the end of the day i think its still the hardliners that he can least afford to lose, i mean he is a dictator, hes attacking his neighbors and so forth

not any sort of russia expert but it does look like a pretty hardline situation

having said that it does look like hes put himself in a tough spot! couldve just been chilling selling oil and what not, but dreams of empire simply will not leave him alone

kind of funny hes renewed the ancient russian obsession with securing the european plain, bro no one is going to invade you calm down

As far as the de-nazification canard, who were released in the prisoner swap? The Azov Brigadiers that were captured from the steelworks, the very 'nazis' that supposedly prompted the invasion. Several young men fleeing mobilization at the Kazakh border cited this as the last straw, when the official narrative officially fell apart

We are pretty complacent about this

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh/

For starters, that URL entirely misrepresents the contents of the article. The article basically restates the known and obvious factors brought into play by Russia's battlefield losses and Putin's nuclear threats. But the author is just shadowboxing with unnamed "numerous Western commentators {who} assert that Russia is a paper tiger and dismiss Russian nuclear threats as 'bluster'”, which the author rightfully dismisses as a superficial conclusion.

But he brings no new insights to the table. He reviews the current state of the war and some strands of Russian military thinking that encourage the idea of using nukes as strategic coercion, then concludes that Putin may conceivably decide to try threading the needle by using nuclear weapons in Ukraine in the hope of achieving his war goals while not destroying his economy or provoking an even more catastrophic situation. And that we should try to influence his decision in the direction of not using them. Uh, yes, of course.

There are links to both the “paper tiger” and “bluster” claimed by named authors.

Two now constitutes 'numerous'? And that "paper tiger" article doesn't reference nuclear weapons or their potential use. But yes, there are names attached, so those commentators can be identified. Now that you've cherry-picked a single word from my post, would you like to respond to my main point?

Don’t think I will, you’re usually never capable of it yourself.

I didn't think you would.

Yeah, that piece was a bunch of bullshit. I'm just surprised the author didn't pull the "Russia was provoked!" line out; at least he was willing to admit that all these problems are entirely of Putin's own making, and as the Finnish PM said recently, there's a very simple solution. If Russia withdraws, the war is over.

And that we should try to influence his decision in the direction of not using them. Uh, yes, of course.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink

You say that like it's something that is happening, rather than the path we are on.

I haven't seen anywhere that has looked at the contours of escalation like in this piece.

xp = a lot of posters have been complacent about this going nuclear.

"If Russia withdraws, the war is over."

Laughable really.

I think it’s a mistake to think people are complacent about it, but like, what can we do? There is literally zero point in me thinking about it, not least because it will stress me out over this potentially horrifying outcome that I have no control over. We can’t make our governments do the things we do like most of the time. What’s the answer?

There is no answer but in a way this is no different than talking most things that governments do.

I have seen very aggressive talk in the liberal media ecosystem (somewhat reflected here too) about taking Russia down, when the route should be de-escalation. Because they have nuclear weapons.

Yeah, that dickswinging is weird for the reasons you say.

there's a very simple solution. If Russia withdraws, the war is over.

Very true and probably irrelevant, because while Putin remains at the pinnacle of the Russian Federation he will not simply decide to withdraw his forces and cede back Crimea. He wants to start armistice negotiations while he still has a defensible position within Ukraine. His problem right now is Ukraine has no incentive to bargain away any part of their territory, including Crimea, and his army cannot create that kind of incentive. If his military position continues to crumble that's what the nukes would be used for - forcing talks to end the war so that a formula can be found that lets him claim a territorial victory of some sort. He's determined not to walk away empty-handed and Ukraine is determined to force him out of every part of Ukraine.

As far as the de-nazification canard, who were released in the prisoner swap? The Azov Brigadiers that were captured from the steelworks, the very 'nazis' that supposedly prompted the invasion. Several young men fleeing mobilization at the Kazakh border cited this as the last straw, when the official narrative officially fell apart

I don't think the narrative fell apart. The official narrative was always highly flexible and multipronged, and this aspect had largely been dropped, or at least relegated, even before the first large prisoner exchange. But yes some were upset about the exchange still.

As far as I can tell the narrative is becoming less flexible and more focused now though

should Putin decide to use a tactical nuke, what steps could/should the US take to avoid an all-out nuclear war?

I think the idea is to pressure Ukraine to cede some territory so Putin can declare victory and leave. The fact that Ukraine doesn't want to do that - despite being the country at risk of getting nuked first - gives me pause.

fwiw I do find it pretty amusing that so many people are terrified of what Putin may do, when history suggests that it's really the US you should be afraid of.