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I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them

by vegai_ 5y ago

I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them as huge dirty bombs in a desperate last strike.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Nah. They just want control of the power. It's a lot of leverage, and they want to take over the country, so they will need it. The Ukrainians are fighting for their own land. I don't think that there's a single one of them that would deliberately cause another Chernobyl (remember that they have some experience with what happens when reactors go kablooey). But they seem to be quite persistent, in not just just rolling over and letting the Russians have their way. I suspect that they've got plenty of other nasty little surprises in store. One of the things that the last 50 years' worth of guerrilla wars has been, is an object lesson on how to do asymmetric warfare against technologically-advanced, and overwhelming armies. I suspect that every military in the world has been taking notes.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > They just want control of the power. It's a lot of leverage, and they want to take over the country, so they will need it. If they are going to “find” evidence to support Putin’s claim of an offensive Ukrainian nuclear weapons program supported by the US, presumably it will be at one of Ukraine’s actual nuclear reactors. While it's not a hard limit on propaganda, actually having physical control makes a story about such a find more plausible.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    That’s a good point. It seems awful transparent, when they do this “false flag” stuff, but I think they are playing to a domestic audience.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It seems awful transparent, when they do this “false flag” stuff, but I think they are playing to a domestic audience. I think the US managed to get and share enough intelligence to forestall most effect of the false flag stuff they wanted to use for international justification, leaving them with basically “But NATO...” on that front. At the same time, the solid international opposition and the sanctions impact make the domestic propaganda front more critical, and there's a lot more that they can do on that front given the degree of control they have over domestic information channels. The real-time visibility of the domestic propaganda probably further aggravates the international situation, but I think they probably have written that off except direct intervention, which they think, probably correctly, is deterred by their nuclear arsenal.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
This is pure propaganda. Ukrainian forces would never do that, which I cannot say about those who oppose them.
- mrcheesebreeze 5y ago
  its not out of the question, especially since resistance in its very nature becomes more decentralized and dirty the second the government is weakened or falls. Take a place like syria, it went from a centralized government to a heap of insurgencies and many sides killing people en-masse.
  - lukeschlather 5y ago
    If anything though, that's Russia's goal. You invade a country you create insurgencies and those insurgencies will be much more evil in character than the government Russia is intentionally destroying.
jimworm 5y ago
Why would they dirty bomb their own land? If anything it's a reason to have already taken some materials offsite to dirty bomb Moscow later. Or for the invaders to threaten dirty bombing if they're about to be driven away (like they're already doing with their nuclear arsenal).
- vegai_ 5y ago
  In this scenario, I imagined that they would have totally lost the country and just wanted to do as much damage as possible. But yeah, it was a stupid theory, too bad I cannot delete it anymore. At least it triggered better theories in this thread, though.
drran 5y ago
Ukraine has 4 working nuclear power plants plus Chornobyl. Also, Ukraine has some nuclear facilities left from USSR times or freshly built. Ukraine has more than enough nuclear material to build dirty bombs or nuclear warheads. For example, China Nuclear Corporation tries to buy Russian part of nuclear fuel facility almost built in Smolino[0], central Ukraine.

by vegai_ 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Nah. They just want control of the power. It's a lot of leverage, and they want to take over the country, so they will need it. The Ukrainians are fighting for their own land. I don't think that there's a single one of them that would deliberately cause another Chernobyl (remember that they have some experience with what happens when reactors go kablooey). But they seem to be quite persistent, in not just just rolling over and letting the Russians have their way. I suspect that they've got plenty of other nasty little surprises in store. One of the things that the last 50 years' worth of guerrilla wars has been, is an object lesson on how to do asymmetric warfare against technologically-advanced, and overwhelming armies. I suspect that every military in the world has been taking notes.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> They just want control of the power. It's a lot of leverage, and they want to take over the country, so they will need it. If they are going to “find” evidence to support Putin’s claim of an offensive Ukrainian nuclear weapons program supported by the US, presumably it will be at one of Ukraine’s actual nuclear reactors. While it's not a hard limit on propaganda, actually having physical control makes a story about such a find more plausible.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  That’s a good point. It seems awful transparent, when they do this “false flag” stuff, but I think they are playing to a domestic audience.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It seems awful transparent, when they do this “false flag” stuff, but I think they are playing to a domestic audience. I think the US managed to get and share enough intelligence to forestall most effect of the false flag stuff they wanted to use for international justification, leaving them with basically “But NATO...” on that front. At the same time, the solid international opposition and the sanctions impact make the domestic propaganda front more critical, and there's a lot more that they can do on that front given the degree of control they have over domestic information channels. The real-time visibility of the domestic propaganda probably further aggravates the international situation, but I think they probably have written that off except direct intervention, which they think, probably correctly, is deterred by their nuclear arsenal.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago

This is pure propaganda. Ukrainian forces would never do that, which I cannot say about those who oppose them.

mrcheesebreeze 5y ago
its not out of the question, especially since resistance in its very nature becomes more decentralized and dirty the second the government is weakened or falls. Take a place like syria, it went from a centralized government to a heap of insurgencies and many sides killing people en-masse.
- lukeschlather 5y ago
  If anything though, that's Russia's goal. You invade a country you create insurgencies and those insurgencies will be much more evil in character than the government Russia is intentionally destroying.

jimworm 5y ago

Why would they dirty bomb their own land? If anything it's a reason to have already taken some materials offsite to dirty bomb Moscow later. Or for the invaders to threaten dirty bombing if they're about to be driven away (like they're already doing with their nuclear arsenal).

vegai_ 5y ago
In this scenario, I imagined that they would have totally lost the country and just wanted to do as much damage as possible. But yeah, it was a stupid theory, too bad I cannot delete it anymore. At least it triggered better theories in this thread, though.

drran 5y ago

Ukraine has 4 working nuclear power plants plus Chornobyl. Also, Ukraine has some nuclear facilities left from USSR times or freshly built. Ukraine has more than enough nuclear material to build dirty bombs or nuclear warheads. For example, China Nuclear Corporation tries to buy Russian part of nuclear fuel facility almost built in Smolino[0], central Ukraine.