Ukraine 22: Anyone else holding their breath?

[Ser Reptitious]

10 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Woops

 

That person might have to avoid stairs and windows for a while...

[Which Tyler]

https://www.ukrdailyupdate.com/updates/update-for-october-20th

[quote]Here is an update for the military situation on October 20th. I will not write about any possible future attacks from the territory of Belarus and will focus on Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

If you would like to view the map: map.ukrdailyupdate.com
...[/quote]

[kiko]

17 hours ago, Maithanet said:

This doesn't sound good. 

This has been discussed in the past, but dismissed as unlikely because:

1.  Russia controls the south side of the Dnipro, which will experience the majority of the flooding. 

2.  It makes the water supply to Crimea much worse.  This is one of Russia's strategic goals for the entire war, so not to be dismissed lightly.

 

But if Russia has entered the phase where even bad options should be embraced so long as they also hurt the Ukrainians, then I guess blowing up the dam makes some sense.  It's also a war crime, of course. 

I guess they still remember operation chastise, that killed mainly Russians?

[Werthead]

Apparently some flood plain analysis (from when the Red Army did this in 1941) has shown that destroying the dam would cause a massive water outflow onto the eastern side of the Dnipro's river mouth, or in other words, straight into the areas where retreating Russian forces have reestablished themselves. Big brain tactics.

[Which Tyler]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Apparently some flood plain analysis (from when the Red Army did this in 1941) has shown that destroying the dam would cause a massive water outflow onto the eastern side of the Dnipro's river mouth, or in other words, straight into the areas where retreating Russian forces have reestablished themselves. Big brain tactics.

Not to mention drying out the inlet for the canal that's the only source of fresh water for Crimea

Edited October 21, 2022 by Which Tyler

[kiko]

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

Not to mention drying out the inlet for the canal that's the only source of fresh water for Crimea

But then again, if the power plant explodes, those parts will be radiated anyway, so nobody can live there anymore.

[broken one]

32 minutes ago, kiko said:

But then again, if the power plant explodes, those parts will be radiated anyway, so nobody can live there anymore.

Isn't it a conventional hydro plant?

[Werthead]

15 minutes ago, broken one said:

Isn't it a conventional hydro plant?

The Nova Kakhovka dam is hydro, but the Zaporizhzhia* Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on the Dnipro for cooling, is obviously nuclear.

Some reports that the nuclear plant has actually been offline altogether for several days though.

 

*First time I spelled this right without looking it up!

[Luzifer's right hand]

15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Nova Kakhovka dam is hydro, but the Zaporizhzhia* Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on the Dnipro for cooling, is obviously nuclear.

Some reports that the nuclear plant has actually been offline altogether for several days though.

 

*First time I spelled this right without looking it up!

Offline does not mean that it does not require cooling though. Even spent fuel needs cooling for a rather long time.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

What the fuck is this shit?  Are we in the middle ages in Russia now where prisoners are “gifted” to warlords?

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Zorral]

Bret Devereaux's Unmitigated Pedantry blog today, addresses

Collections: Strategic Airpower 101

concluding the topic with a Russia - Ukraine air power and bombing discussion:

https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/

Quote

 

... Edit: Some of the comments have argued that the recent Russian strikes are instead focused on electrical infrastructure and thus either valid logistical military targets or that their primary effect would be to cause Ukrainian civilians to freeze to death in winter (somewhat contradictory points). First, this is an excessively charitable reading of the pattern of Russian strikes; the power grid has been targeted, but hardly exclusively. The October 10 flurry of strikes included a residential apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, heavy civilian traffic in Taras Shevchenko Park, and some 35 private residential buildings. Which of course is consistent with a pattern of strikes that included, as noted here, a children’s hospital in Mariupol, a civilian shelter in a theater, the use of cluster munitions fired into apartment blocks in Kharkiv and so on. Which, of course, is consistent with Russian air operations earlier in Syria, which infamously used used U.N. lists of hospitals and other humanitarian facilities – designed to keep them out of the fighting – as a target list in order to force civilians to flee, in violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict. Which, of course, is consistent with Russian operations against the city of Grozny in 1999-2000, where failure to take the city by assault led to it being “the most destroyed city on Earth” as Russian forces resorted to bombing and artillery to demolish it. The pattern here, where Russian forces resort to whatever available means to destroy civilian infrastructure and kills civilians when facing battlefield failure is well established and at least two decades old; I see no reason to play pretend that this pattern isn’t clear. To the contrary, such consistency suggests doctrine – formal or informal – is at work here. If the Russian strikes here are anemic now, it seems only to be because Ukraine still has a functioning air defense system; Russia has not hesitated to engage in terror-bombing against parts of Ukraine (and Syria and Chechnya) that didn’t. Consequently, at best, Russia might claim to be waging an incompetent and woefully insufficient ‘industrial web’ style bombing campaign; if so this seems doomed to fail too for the same reason such efforts in Vietnam failed: the industrial capacity which sustains Ukraine is not located in Ukraine. But the pattern of Russian strikes and the history of Russian strategy in this regard leaves me disinclined to read these attacks very charitably and to instead read them as ‘punishment’ bombings, which of course is exactly what Putin said they were.

How likely is this Russian effort to succeed? Well, what we’ve seen so far is that air campaigns dropping millions of tons of high explosives have generally failed to compel a civilian population to seek peace. By contrast, a Shahed 136 drone carries a 40kg explosive payload. For comparison that means it would take ninety Shahed 136 drones to equal the payload of a single B-17 Flying Fortress and eight-eight thousand to equal the explosive power of the February, 1945 raids against Dresden. Those are efforts which, I feel the need to stress, didn’t work to collapse German civilian morale. Meanwhile the Shahed 136, while very cheap as a drone is very expensive as a bomb; at c. $20,000 a pop, matching the Dresden raids would require almost $2bn assuming the production capacity for that many drones existed (and it doesn’t). As Russia’s distance from Ukraine’s key civilian centers grows, the cost of delivering explosives to them increases,12 reducing Russia to demonstration attacks that, while horrible, have little chance of inflicting harm on Ukraine at a level that is remotely meaningful in this sort of war.

Consequently these ‘punishment’ strikes seem likely to merely harden Ukrainian will to resist and sustain international support for Ukraine; they are expensive and almost entirely counter-productive for Russia’s actual war aims. Such attacks won’t degrade Ukrainian will to continue a fight that most Ukrainians believe they are winning, but it will generate headlines and images which will reinforce public opinion among Ukraine’s supporters that Putin’s war effort has to be defeated. Crucially it strengthens arguments that NATO’s European members should tough it out through a difficult winter in response to manifest Russian inhumanity, the exact opposite of the outcome Putin needs. At the same time, Russian resources are finite; every rocket, missile or drone lobbed into Kyiv (or other Ukrainian cities) is a valuable munition no longer ready for use on the front lines. In many cases the munitions Putin is firing in these ‘revenge’ strikes are fairly expensive, fairly scarce precision munitions. The Shahed 136 is a lot cheaper than other long-range precision munitions, but one has to imagine that Russian troops would prefer Russian loitering munitions to try to target Ukrainian ground forces; longer-range precision platforms are very expensive. As with much ’emotive strategy,’ the things that make Putin ‘feel better’ push victory further away – or in this case, hasten defeat. .... 

 

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Another Russian jet crashes into Russian housing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63365241

[Werthead]

Very lucky pilot. Low-level ejections require you to trigger the ejection almost instantly so you can blast vertically up in time for the parachute to deploy, and even then you're going to be hitting the ground at quite a whack.

I've seen some claims this is the first-ever for-real POV video of an ejection during combat, which surely can't be right.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Werthead

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Very lucky pilot. Low-level ejections require you to trigger the ejection almost instantly so you can blast vertically up in time for the parachute to deploy, and even then you're going to be hitting the ground at quite a whack.

I've seen some claims this is the first-ever for-real POV video of an ejection during combat, which surely can't be right.

Captured by Ukrainian forces?

[Werthead]

42 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Captured by Ukrainian forces?

Unknown.

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Captured by Ukrainian forces?

One of the comments claims it originates from a Russian telegram channel. So... it's still a possibility that he actually escaped.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Toth

[IFR]

The latest information about the Zaporizhzhya Power Plant can be found here.

I noticed that the media is once again drumming up hysteria about dirty bombs. This recent apnews article is entitled "Russia’s defense chief warns of ‘dirty bomb’ provocation".

It's worth pointing out that the true nature of dirty bombs is one of psychological warfare. The health consequences of a dirty bomb would be minimal, especially relative to any other chemical weapon or dispersion device. People have a poor grasp of the effects of radiation, particularly low dose ionizing radiation, and the panic is disproportional to the threat.

I was reading an interesting conference on this very topic where congress queried a panel of experts on the possible threat of dirty bombs and other controlled nuclear materials. It was around 20 years ago and regarding al-Qaeda, but it remains relevant. The link is here, but I quoted a pertinent snippet:

Quote

    Dr. Koonin. Mr. Chairman, my name is Steven E. Koonin, and 
today I want to discuss with you the threat of radiological 
terrorism. Before I do so, however, I would like to place my 
remarks in a broader context. The events of last fall have 
induced all of us to pay greater attention to the safety and 
defense of the civilian population in this country. 
Unfortunately, this is a very difficult problem, because the 
number of targets that a terrorist might go after is virtually 
unlimited, and the resources that we have available to defend 
them are finite. We are going to have to be making hard choices 
about what, and what not, to protect, and about what to protect 
against.

    Of course, not all threats are equal. The variables include 
the direct and indirect consequences of an attack, the 
likelihood of an attack, the vulnerability of the target, 
intelligence and warnings that we may have about the 
capabilities and intentions of an attacker, and the 
availability of plausible countermeasures.
    I applaud the initiative of you and this committee in 
defining and addressing these very important issues. In that 
context, I want to call your attention to one type of terrorist 
attack that I believe is a very serious threat, the deliberate 
dispersal of radioactive materials. These materials might be 
the weapons-grade materials that Dr. Meserve and Dr. Cobb have 
talked about--the uranium and plutonium that make up a nuclear 
weapon--or they might be ordinary radioactive sources, cobalt, 
cesium, iridium, and so on, that find many uses in society.
    The methods of dispersal could be explosive. We could be 
talking about the fallout from a successful or fizzled nuclear 
device, or they could be conventional, the so-called dirty 
bomb, in which conventional explosives are laced with 
radioactive material, or the dispersal could be covert, in 
which the radioactive material is contained in particles, 
aerosols, or perhaps in contaminated materials such as food.
    The intent of the terrorists may be severalfold. They might 
be intent on inducing casualties, perhaps immediately as the 
result of radiation sickness, or longer term, as the result of 
cancers that might be induced by radiation exposure. But more 
likely they are going to be after the psychosocial reactions 
that are associated with radiation. These are certainly likely 
to be far more widespread and significant than immediate or 
long-term casualties.

In any case, a large-scale release of radioactive material 
could well entail significant costs, both directly in terms of 
cleanup expenses, and indirectly in terms of the economic 
disruption it induces.
    What I am going to describe for you in the next few minutes 
are the potential threat, as I see it, and some of the possible 
steps that could be taken to reduce it. You have already 
discussed my credentials. I think I will just skip over that, 
other than to say that I have been involved in national 
security matters for more than 15 years. My expertise is in 
nuclear physics, and more recently I have been involved in 
counterterrorism studies, both biological and chemical, as well 
as thinking about nuclear-related matters.
    It is true that radioactive materials find many uses in 
society, and so are quite common. They are indispensable for 
certain medical diagnostics and therapies. Perhaps less well-
known is that intense radioactive sources are used to sterilize 
food and medical instruments. Sources are also used in 
industrial radiography: to image equipment, and also, as Dr. 
Meserve mentioned, in the logging of oil wells. In addition, 
far less potent amounts of radioactivity are present in smoke 
detectors, antistatic devices, and exit signs. Many of these 
sources are harmless, and have no potential for terrorist 
misuse. There is also, of course, a significant amount of 
radioactivity contained in the spent fuel of the cooling ponds 
of the nuclear reactors that are about in our country.
    I have some images here that illustrate, for example, a 
radiography, a bone scan that was taken using a technetium 
source, and one can see in the pictures the infected area in 
this particular patient. Also shown in the upper right is an 
antistatic brush with a polonium source that is used in 
darkrooms, and in the lower right is one of the cooling ponds 
around a reactor.
    Even small amounts of radioactive material can be very 
disruptive. The sources of concern of long-lived isotopes range 
from 1 curie up to thousands of curies. If one were to take 
just 3 curies of an appropriate isotope, which is an amount 
that is a fraction of a gram, and disperse that over a square 
mile----

Chairman. Would you give me an idea what that is? Is 
that as big as the head of a needle, or this pen?
    Dr. Koonin. A gram is about a thirtieth of an ounce, so it 
is perhaps the size of a ball on a ballpoint pen or something 
like that.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Dr. Koonin. That amount of material would have to be 
diluted, of course. If it were spread over a square mile, that 
would make the area uninhabitable, according to the maximum 
dose currently recommended for the general population.
    It is important to note, however, that the health effects 
of such contamination would be minimal. For every 100,000 
people exposed to that level of radiation, four lifetime 
cancers would be induced, which would take place on top of the 
20,000 cancers already expected to arise from other causes.
    The Chairman. It is important that that gets straightened 
out. Without exposure to this 1 curie you just referenced, 
20,000 people out of 100,000 today, without any additional 
exposure, are likely to get cancer. This would increase that by 
four?
    Dr. Koonin. That is correct, four out of 20,000.
    The Chairman. So that is what you mean by the health 
effects would not be--it would be consequential for those four 
people, but it is not consequential in broad terms.
    Dr. Koonin. Of course. Of course, higher levels of 
contamination would----
    The Chairman. The higher level of contamination, I 
understand your point. I just wanted to make sure everybody 
gets this.
    Dr. Koonin. However, the psychosocial effects of such 
contamination would be maximal, as we know from Three Mile 
Island, Chernobyl, and other incidents. Radiation taps into a 
very deep fear and concern that people have. There are tens of 
thousands of significant sources of this size in the United 
States, and many more abroad. Here is a picture of one, to just 
give you a sense of the size. This is a 150-curie source that 
is used in industrial applications, and it weighs 53 pounds. 
All of that weight is shielding. It is a compact 6 inches by 6 
inches by 15 inches.
    The Chairman. And that is a device legally used?
    Dr. Koonin. That is correct.
    The Chairman. By shielding, you mean the lead that keeps 
this radioactive material from emanating from anywhere, other 
than when it is aimed and used for its purpose?
    Dr. Koonin. When the source is exposed, there is a 
mechanism in the box for exposing the source and, of course 
covering it up again.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Dr. Koonin. In my view, radiological terrorism is a very 
plausible threat. Here are some facts that summarize the 
situation for me. Gram-for-gram, radioactive material can be as 
disruptive as weaponized anthrax, not necessarily as dangerous, 
but as disruptive. Furthermore, this material circulates broadly through society. We produce it. It can be purchased 
with appropriate licenses, at low levels without a license. We 
ship it, we store it, we have mechanisms for disposing of it, 
and so on. So it is out there.
    Moreover, the expertise for handling it is widely known and 
readily acquired. In fact, you can take radiation safety 
courses from any number of commercial or nonprofit providers 
that teach you how to handle radioactive material safely.
    As Dr. Meserve emphasized, the safety and security of 
radioactive material depends upon the good faith and good sense 
of licensed end users. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does 
the licensing. Inspections of the sources onsite are sporadic, 
in my understanding. This system was developed at a time when 
we were facing a cooperative or nonhostile environment. The 
situation post 9/11 has changed significantly. This array of 
facts does not leave me with a great deal of comfort.
    To make the threat a little more tangible, it is 
interesting to outline what a radiological attack might look 
like. You can imagine that a several-curie source was stolen, 
and that the source is dispersed covertly one night throughout 
the business district of a major city. There is then an 
anonymous tip the next morning, and officials detect widespread 
contamination at roughly three times the natural background 
level, which is well above the legal limit protecting the 
general population. They find this contamination over some 100 
blocks of the business district. The area would be evacuated 
immediately and sealed off, and we could expect that hundreds 
of thousands of people would be showing up at hospitals 
demanding to be screened for contamination.
    There would be, at this level of exposure, no fatalities 
from the radiation at all. However, the decontamination would 
take months. It is possible that buildings could not be 
economically decontaminated, and so dozens of them would have 
to be razed. In any event, there would be billions of dollars 
of economic damage.
    In thinking through this sort of scenario, it is 
interesting that dose limits play a major role. Currently, 
there is a very low legal dose limit that properly protects the 
general public in ordinary circumstances, but in some ways this 
dose limit works against us in this situation. It makes it 
possible to do great damage, both psychosocial and economic, 
with very small amounts of contamination.
    Further, the question of ``how clean, at what cost, and 
when?'' will inevitably have to be answered after any release. 
Given the discomfort that is evident in many public discussions 
of radiation, this is going to be a very difficult discussion.

In summary, health wise this sort of attack would pose very little threat. But due to highly rigorous legislation related to low dose ionizing radiation (the degree to which is very controversial), the economic impact could be substantial. And of course the psychological effect among a public that has a poor understanding of radiation could also be substantial. The threat of releasing a dirty bomb is nearly as effective as any dirty bomb.

Edited October 23, 2022 by IFR

[mnedel]

17 hours ago, Toth said:

One of the comments claims it originates from a Russian telegram channel. So... it's still a possibility that he actually escaped.

I am reading in Serbian media that this actually happened during training deep in Russia and that is why the pilot is so calm, not running for cover or anything. Apparently, the video was posted by Russian Telegram channels and is months old. I don’t follow Telegram or social media in general so no idea how true is the information

[Gorn]

At the Bakhmut front, the last place where Russians were still on the offensive, Ukrainians have started to push back and counterattack. Just watched a video of an overrun Wagner position piled full of their corpses, and it couldn't have happened to nicer people. While I have plenty of empathy for mobilized Russian soldiers, and a little for contract ones, for Wagner mercs I have zero.

Wagner seems to be mostly a spent force after those who actually knew how to fight got themselves killed in the summer or during the last couple of months of fruitless banging against the defenses at Bakhmut. Unsurprisingly, random scum from Russian prisons who were handed a rifle and a Wagner uniform turned out to be not very effective replacements.

[Werthead]

Slightly odd scenes as Shoigu does a round-the-horn call of various international leaders, claiming (without evidence) of a Ukrainian ploy to use a dirty bomb on its own soil. However, he couldn't explain why Ukraine would do that on its own soil it wanted to capture and what practical military utility it would achieve.

Some speculation that this could be a false flag for Russia to escalate things further, maybe by blowing the Nova Kakhovka dam.

4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

At the Bakhmut front, the last place where Russians were still on the offensive, Ukrainians have started to push back and counterattack. Just watched a video of an overrun Wagner position piled full of their corpses, and it couldn't have happened to nicer people. While I have plenty of empathy for mobilized Russian soldiers, and a little for contract ones, for Wagner mercs I have zero.

Wagner seems to be mostly a spent force after those who actually knew how to fight got themselves killed in the summer or during the last couple of months of fruitless banging against the defenses at Bakhmut. Unsurprisingly, random scum from Russian prisons who were handed a rifle and a Wagner uniform turned out to be not very effective replacements.

I'm seeing some speculation that a lot of actual experienced Wagner troops have been rotated off the lines and, in some cases, sent home to Russia, whilst the prison-recruited conscripts were used on the front instead. It might be a ploy for Wagner to keep its strength up for use at home if things start blowing up on the home front.