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Is there any strategic significance to this? I thought it was closed?
by stickfigure 5y ago
Is there any strategic significance to this? I thought it was closed?
- madaxe_again 5y agoTwo strategic points off the top of my head: One, the railhead. Afaik it’s operational and modern, as they used it for moving material for constructing the sarcophagus. Goes straight to Kiev. Makes for easy onwards transport of materiel from Belarus. Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possible.
- asdff 5y agoWhy blow up a dirty bomb when they have 1000 real bombs?
- AitchEmArsey 5y agoNuking someone is a definitive, MAD-triggering event. Causing a radiological disaster "accidentally" would be entirely consistent with the "stop hitting yourself" diplomacy Russia has undertaken since moving against Ukraine in 2014.
- dathinab 5y agoAdditionally to what was already said in other threads about this: Why wast money?
- asdff 5y agoWhy do you care about saving money when you are planning on ending the world in the next hour?
- newuser94303 5y agoThey won't blow up Chernobyl. Ukraine is a top grain exporting nation. Without wheat, Ukraine's economy would be even worse and there would be no way to feed the people.
- AmericanBlarney 5y agoI don't think the second is realistic, as that might be considered an attack on NATO countries, which is likely not a scale of war Russia is looking for.
- Calavar 5y ago> Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possible. If they wanted to go that extreme, they always had the option of just launching nukes. Capturing the reactor and blowing the sarcophagus just seems like a lot of needless extra steps.
- codezero 5y agoPlausible deniability is a good reason not to use nukes. They could have a military accident, or blame a saboteur for some sort of weapons cache exploding in-situ and claim it was not intentional.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoMaybe I read too much scifi, but can't nukes be intercepted in key locations? They might be able to land them in more remote places, but wouldn't hitting cities be difficult? I was under the impression developed nations have missile interception technologies. But yeah, I've read books not based in reality and watched some netflix in my days, so I could be in fantasy land. Kind of sobering to write this out and realize how clueless I am.
- unionpivo 5y agointercepting few (up to few dozen) missiles sure. Intercepting hundreds potentially thousands ? Not really.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoI didn’t realize thousands was a possible measurement of missiles to intercept.
- jcrawfordor 5y agoThe US and Russia long had a treaty which prohibited the development of anti-ballistic missile systems with narrow exceptions. While the treaty agreement effectively ended in 2002, it did effectively stop most ABM work in both countries for an extended period of time. Further, the problem has proven to be exceptionally difficult. The Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as "Star Wars," was an effort towards a comprehensive defense against nuclear ICBMs that was famously declared to be beyond the realm of the possible by some technical groups. While US ABM work as resumed in earnest over the last couple of decades or so, it remains an extremely hard problem and progress has been slow. The prominent GMD system, for example, has the ability to counter only "tens" of warheads (and at tremendous expense, having to fire many interceptors per inbound missile in order to raise the probability of success). Other systems like Aegis are generally even more limited. So while various countries do possess ABM systems with varying levels of efficacy, in general we could expect only a very small portion of inbound ICBMs to be successfully intercepted... if any. These types of systems have consistently under-performed expectations as field conditions prove to be more challenging than expected, and that's with limited knowledge of the countermeasures an adversary like Russia might employ.
- stickfigure 5y ago> Two, a gun to the head of Europe. They could threaten to destroy the containment, and/or to bomb the reactor building to aerosolise as much radioactive material as possible. Does the wind only blow west? This seems pretty far fetched.
- dathinab 5y agoDoes Putin care, he will just say the West or Ukraine did so to hinder Russia and then use the damage to Russia as an excuse to act even more ruthless.
- w0de0 5y agoThe exclusion zone occupies the shortest route from Belarus to Kyiv.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoYes - Chernobyl is inside the massive "Chernobyl Exclusion Zone," a zone which is conveniently only ~80 miles from the capital of Ukraine, and is just a wide swatch of empty land and abandoned buildings, perfect for parking military equipment. The radiation levels, though high compared to the rest of Ukraine, is low enough to not be a risk for their short-term stay.
- maybelsyrup 5y agoYeah the Russians now control the entire supply of Ukranian Airbnb Experiences
- shadowgovt 5y agoChernobyl was built near where power is consumed. It's only 81km up-river from Kyiv.
- shiado 5y agoTheoretically the whole area could be turned into a dirty bomb with a few strategic strikes and it would be carried down a river destroying vast areas of Ukraine for millennia.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoTrue - but Russia has nuclear weapons which are more precise and would send the strongest possible message. This is also important because destroying a country might land you a victory, but if it's destroyed, that is a shallow victory. A well-placed nuke is scary and controlled.
- bcrosby95 5y agoRussia would never nuke Ukraine because of the reaction from the West. Using existing radioactive materials wouldn't provoke the same reaction. I'm not saying Russia will do anything here, but the two are very different from a geopolitical standpoint.
- Sebb767 5y agoIf Russia really wanted to create nuclear fallout problems, they have weapons that do so far more targeted and effectively.
- Hamuko 5y agoIt'd be easier to cover up by claiming it was an accident or they were fired on by the Ukranians. You don't really have the same leeway when you drop a nuke.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dathinab 5y agoBut they can't "easily" blame such Weapon usage on the EU (saying they accidentally caused it) or "Ukraine" terrorists.
- 5y ago
- BitwiseFool 5y agoIt is actually deviously brilliant. No one wants to shell the area because it would release all the dust and radionuclides that were buried during the cleanup. It is a perfect staging area because the downside to attacking it is so high. No allied forces in Europe want to deal with the fallout - literally. This is so genius I'm genuinely in awe. This is right out of Sun Tzu: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. ”
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- systemvoltage 5y agoUnless they're literally housed inside the containment building, this is useless against precision guided missiles and bombs. Are you talking about deterrence to nuclear bombing of Chernobyl? Then it is a moot point because the fallout from the weapon itself would dwarf the dormant fissile material in the containment facility. Sorry, but this makes no sense. If Russia wants to deter EU with fallout, they already have such a mechanism - their massive stockpile of nuclear weapons to deter aggression by EU.
- Freestyler_3 5y agoI think a nuclear bomb and a nuclear power plant are very different and have different halftimes.
- jaywalk 5y agoHalflife is the word you're looking for, but they're not so different in terms of halflife. Although a nuclear bomb would be way worse.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoNo this doesn't have anything to do with Nuclear Weapon deterrence. Much of the liquidation effort was literally burying contaminated topsoil in the area. The explosions from conventional bombs would kick radioactive particles back up into the atmosphere. Europe probably does not want to deal with that, so I imagine they will refrain from attacking directly.
- uuav 5y agoHaving news reports about Russian control over Chernobyl is enough to scare a good chunk of European population.
- agumonkey 5y agothis whole event smells like a hooligan drive-by and not a planned military operation, too many dirty tricks
- ojbyrne 5y agoReally? To me it seems very well planned, but with tons of disinformation to make potential opponents hesitate to act as much as possible.
- dathinab 5y agoThat's what war is about. (acting strategic) That's how Hitler was initially so military successful. Act hard, ruthless and be done before the (main) enemy realizes what hit their ally. EDIT: Not saying it's ethical to do so.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoDo what the enemy thinks you are too smart to do.
- agumonkey 5y agoI get it, I'm not naive.. I'm saying it looks dirty as in dumb/reckless, not efficient. But I may be wrong.
- dokem 5y agoDirty tricks? In war? Unheard of.
- dathinab 5y agoIt's a side you can't really bomb/air attack. It's a side both EU and Russia are worried about I think. Putin is afraid that Ukraine will somehow put together a form a nuclear bomb and use it "in desperation", and remainders in it could be used to build a dirty pseudo atom-bomb (or maybe we should call it radiation bomb). It's also is a nice path into the Ukrain with no civilians/camera etc. around to get in their way.
- janus 5y agoYou don't want to bomb the Chernobyl exclusion area. So it's a perfect place to station troops and military arsenal
- gmuslera 5y agoTo mine unobtanium, by now it should be enough of it there.