They are tripping over their own feet
Where’s a tractor when you need one…???
Nuclear energy reactors do not make fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
What's the game here... Even if Russia were successful they were gonna take the land?
Rumours twirling around Reddit and Twitter of another Russian warship on fire.
Edit: a few hours later and no confirmation what caught fire at see. May take a day or two to find out.
Saw something on Twitter there was a fire at sea but no info yet
Forget about your Nuclear Bombs, it feels like the world is missing out on a trick with chip fires
I remember it being said at the time of the Moskva sinking (by someone high up in the Ukraine military I think) that they were by no means finished and had a goal of taking out another Russian ship or two in coming weeks).
Way off topic, sorry.
Erm... Technically possible but depends on the exact type of reactor and you still have to refine/purify it afterwards. Too shagged to bother pulling up the details.
The Ukrainians may not be able to get a nuclear warhead, but they could always stuff a missile with beef dripping.
Those Orc nutjobs on Hoarde state TV are now suggesting that people who don't support the war should be sterilised. Making NK almost seem sane.
Oil and Gas prices globally are set in US $. Pricing in Roubles is just a side-show. No logic to the argument that somehow pricing in Roubles makes energy more expensive for Western importers, apart from second-order things like greater hedging costs, etc.
WTF. Linky please cnoc.
Mobilisation by Putin would be an admission of failure. However he could still do it. It would also be a high risk strategy. If he pushes untrained soldiers into the battle front there will be serious losses. Can he put the logistics in place to train, arm and move these untrained troops to the front. I am not buying that he can leave these troops at the rear. The existing army is largely made up of one year conscripts not released after duty.
If he sends untrained and unequipped troops into the battle front his losses will be steep. We already know that the regular army struggles for NCO's to drive the army forward. Where will he gets these in a mass mobilisation
This is turning into a technology war. If the Ukraine gets air defences and the mobile guided howitzer platforms in place losses in Russian troops would be horrific.
If the figures are true for tank losses unless the RU army send a mixed bag of older and newer tanks it has lost 50% of its more modern tanks. It has lost a couple thousand APC's. I just cannot see what mobilisation will achieve.
I would not discount a coup. It was mass mobilisation by the Tsar and sending poorly trained and equipped soldiers with no leadership that caused the Bolshevik Revolution. Actually the Bolsheviks just piggybacked onto it.
The next week will tell a story one way or the other for better or worse. If the Russian advanced start to crumble and there are setbacks then any possible mobilisation would be doomed to failure IMO
When countries fail you get to see the true side of Human nature. When Rump czechoslovakia fell in 1939 all the surrounding countries took a chunk including Poland and Hungary. Likewise when Poland fell later that year Russia took their chunk and I think Slovakia and Hungary got minor chunks too. No doubt Putin would offer Hungary a chunk of Ukraine if he could and get concessions in return like move his army through Hungarian territory link up with the Serbs etc.
Yes they do. Especially if they are an older "breeder" type reactor.
please stop the bold font ,we all skip
genuine question, has any side ever been as well militarily & financially supported as ukraine in this war? as bad as the russian army has been compared to what was expected, surely a lot must have to do with the huge backing from other countries
They make material that can be ultimately refined into fissile material. They are absolutely nowhere near making what is necessary for a nuclear weapon on their own. And if they were putting together labs with centrifuges etc necessary for that refinement it would be a) well known by Western governments and b) not remotely supported to the point of probably cutting off aid.
Ukraine have not bodged together a couple of nuclear weapons, it is fantasy to think that.
Foreign backing has been vital, but it's just one factor. Other factors include the extraordinary resolve/moral in the country to fight, the survival of the Ukrainian leadership, and their experience and preparation stemming from 8 years of war with Russia and it's proxies.
On a technical point. It depends.
The VVER reactors, which are the only type now used in Ukraine are pressurised water, light water moderated reactors, very similar to American or French PWR reactors and those used in most places, and they do not produce plutonium.
The RMBK reactors, which are graphite moderated - the type used at Chernobyl had dual purpose and can produce weapons grade plutonium. This was one of the reasons for the extremely comprised design. So can British gas cooled, graphite moderated reactors. North Korea actually got its weapons grade plutonium by building an old British design that was rather idiotically made public knowledge online as it was an obsolete design, but for a country with limited technical resources, a 1950s design was ideal and was used.
All that being said, it’s extremely unlikely that Ukraine would have any kind of nuclear weapons.
They had soviet weapons located there until they agreed to hand them back to Russia, in exchange for a guarantee the Budapest Memorandum (1994), sponsored by the USA and UK.
France and China also offered formal assurances, China’s are a bit weaker but something that it needs to be very heavily reminded of.
It’s also worth noting that while Ukraine physically hosted those weapons, it never had control of them as they were electronically controlled from Moscow.
If Orban did anything of the sort, Hungary would be booted out of the EU, and although Orban likes to talk tough with the EU and it's a platform he runs on, Hungarians are majority in favour of being in the EU and would be p*ssed to lose the privileges EU membership affords. Becoming the land bridge between Slavic lands and having an economic alliance with Russia would be a poor, poor consolation.
It's far from clear that the Russians even know what a "Nazi" is. It seems to be a catch all insult they hurl at anyone who they feel dislikes Putin and his regime.
They could bribe someone in the Russian army to sell one.
It would actually make a lot of sense to put a couple of billion euro or dollars down as a massive bribe to get Russian soldiers to defect.
A lump sum and a visa, if they pass some security checks.
Could be extremely cost effective too.
Ukraine was doing some of that but perhaps propping it up with a lot more funds might work …
I think a vague definition is the aim. Makes it easier to label one's enemies. If the Wagner group is anything to go by, Russia doesn't actually have a problem with Nazis, as long as they're Russian Nazis and are willing to kill Ukrainians.
Interesting speech after his re-election. Specifically took a dig at Ukraine and Zelensky. It is somewhere in this report but the whole report is interesting anyway. You man Klepper does a good job at what he does.
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