Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country

[Norgarth]

[Dartz]

Just sharing one article today, because of the appalling stupidity: Russian Troops Suffer ‘Acute Radiation Sickness’ After Digging Chernobyl Trenches.  Ah yes, digging trenches to defend the fucking Red Forest, as if anyone would ever want to attack positions there.

To add insult to literal injury, the Russians have now withdrawn from the Chernobyl area, and transferred the reactor to Ukraine's control today.

"Private Ivanov?"

"Yessir!"

"Have you heard of Chernobyl?"

"The foreign propeganda series?"

"Yes Private. Have you heard of the ginger forest?"

"Is it in Scotland sir?"

"It might well be Private. Now, go dig a trench in those trees."

"Yessir!"

----

[Black Aeronaut]

..... Wow.

Just... Fucking WOW.

The Russian army really are their own worse enemy, aren't they?

[Bob Schroeck]

I can't imagine the Soviet army was this comically inept, so the only thing I can see is that Putin not only drinks his own Kool-Aid, he actually believed that the money that was supposedly keeping the Russian army trained and well-equipped was really going to them and not into some oligarch's pocket.

[hazard]

So, from what I've heard the Ukrainians hit a major aviation fuel depot in Belgorod with an airstrike.

Russian civilians are already filling their tanks in fear of running out of fuel. And the Russian Air Force may have to scale back its operations a little, because it was no doubt supplying a ton of the needed fuel for their 200 or so sorties a day.

[Dartz]

..... Wow.

Just...  Fucking WOW.

The Russian army really are their own worse enemy, aren't they?

It's worse than that.

At least one of them has actually died of radiation poisoning.


Just, fucking HOW? It shouldn't be possible. It's nearly 40 years since the reactor puked its guts - almost everything has decayed to near harmless levels

Did they have a dirt-eating contest? Cample overnight beside the elephant's foot?

[LynnInDenver]

At least one of them has actually died of radiation poisoning.

Just, fucking HOW? It shouldn't be possible. It's nearly 40 years since the reactor puked its guts - almost everything has decayed to near harmless levels

Did they have a dirt-eating contest?  Cample overnight beside the elephant's foot?

I'd say that some form of ingestion of cesium isotopes from disturbed falllout is probably quite likely. Not necessarily by eating it, one can effectively ingest it by breathing it in, too.

[hazard]

Almost everything is not everything.

There's a bunch of nasty radioactive materials buried in Chornobyl and covered in a layer of dirt to keep it from irradiating people, and those will remain active for quite a while to come.

[RMH999]

Red Forest: 0.01-1 REM per hour depending on where you're at (found a 2005 paper with these measurements). However that's above ground. 90% of the Red Forest radioactivity is in ground, so digging trenches boosts that to 0.09-9 REMs per hour. Advanced Radiation Sickness (ARS) - takes about 100 Rem. 46 days to reach 100 REM at the low end, 11 hours at the high end. Whatever they dug into or stirred up wasn't at the low end of the scale.

[Labster]

Other than Zelensky firing two of his generals for treason, there hasn't been too much surprising going on.  He said, "We don't need random generals", and that doesn't have time to deal with them now but they'll probably be punished later. Oh, and Ukraine (probably) attacked oil tanks inside Russia, and boy did they whine about how it had "nothing to do with the military". Russia attacked a Ukranian oil refinery today, as a show of "backsies".

Putin is making the same mistakes that doomed Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union from CNN.  A lot of what we already talked about: he thought his Slavic enemies are so weak he forgot to deal with logistics.  Some interesting points, like tanks don't inspire fear when half of them are abandoned without fuel.  And, killing civilians in an obvious manner may inspire terror, but it also makes people fucking hate you.  Finally, The Big Lie.

Historical note: The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey on Wikipedia.  Some of the ancestral inhabitants of Ukraine had a few choice words in response to the Ottoman vassalization request.  To get an idea of the tone of the letter, at the bottom of the page there is "See Also: Russian warship, go fuck yourself".

Russia may yet win some land from Ukraine.  But the longer this war goes on, the more likely a Russian warship grounds itself trying to sink a Ukrainian lighthouse.

[Dartz]

Okay. Let me get this straight.

So, it turns out that the Russian army have left their dead in the street where they fell. Potentially for weeks. While they occupied places.

Oh.

And they've been denying compensation to the families of those KIA because they were officially still listed as on an exercise, rather than being on a military operation.

Oh

And they've been abandoning front-line units to get ground to meat paste by retreating from behind them without even having the grace to warn them they'll be the rearguard.... they were just too slow so were left to be slaughtered.

Oh

And they've been bulking some units up with as much as 50% conscripts, without telling the higher-ups that they've been doing that. So, it's untrained or barely trained conscripts now being put to the sword.

Oh

And the whole, Go Dig a Trench through the puked up guts of Chernobyl. So now, you have soldiers dead and sick through radiation poisoning.

Oh

And the tank that got flipped off the bridge a few weeks back was finally pulled out of the water by Ukraine. The crew were still inside. Nobody bothered to try rescue them - they just drove off an left them in there. For two weeks. (One kind hopes they drowned quickly)

Oh

And it was all for nothing. Everything waiting at home is worse than when you left for a two week exercise 8 weeks ago.



So, yeah, life in the Russian army.

-----

The difference between life in the Russian army, and death in hell is that, at least Hell will be warm and they'll treat you like a human being..... and your friends will be there.

[Jinx999]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/a...ss-reports

"Ukrainian children used as ‘human shields’ near Kyiv, say witness reports

Horrifying accounts tell of Russian soldiers placing children on tanks to protect their vehicles when moving"

Datrz's last post would make people feel sympathy for the Russian conscripts.

If this is true, they don't deserve any.

[robkelk]

I've been lead to believe that Russians have used people as ablative tank armour since World War II. However, that was soldiers, not children.

[Dartz]

This isn't even the worst of what they've been doing.

They've been massacring every man between the age of 18 and 60 in any occupied town - just in case.

[Black Aeronaut]

......

...There's gonna be no end to the hell to pay for this.

[Dartz]

......

...There's gonna be no end to the hell to pay for this.

The worst part is, there probably won't be.


The worst they'll suffer is that they'll never, ever be able to leave Russia again without being sort of arrested and been taken to The Hague and shit. I suppose, being stuck in that crab-bucket for life is some punishment.

[classicdrogn]

I think what BA means is that Russia is setting themselves up for a new iteration of Ireland and The Troubles or Israel and the Gaza Strip

[hazard]

Spacebattles is expecting a movement similar to Mossad in the post WW2 environment hunting nazis. Helped to no small extent by many Ukrainians having completely valid Russian passports, speaking fluent Russian and sharing a lot of Russia's cultural cues.

And that's before you consider the possibility of Ukraine enthusiastically supporting civil unrest and terrorist activity in Russia as much as possible, with cut outs used only for legal reasons, if that.

It's not going to be Ireland and the Troubles, where the assholes doing the killing were generally not supplied by the government as a matter of government policy. It's not going to be the Gaza strip, with hostile nations facilitating a foreign people's grudge for the sake of a proxy war. It's likely to be a lot worse than that, because Ukraine is not likely to be as lacking in resources. I wouldn't be too surprised by the war never stopping beyond a poorly followed ceasefire and extensive support for insurgent activity in the opposing party until either Ukraine or Russia breaks.

[Labster]

I just gotta say, that for every Russian soldier who does target practice with civilians, there's another who can't hit the broad side of a barn. For every soldier who shells a civilian building, there's another who abandons his tank on the side of the road to walk back home.  For every soldier who rapes a local ten year old (yes, there are reports of this), there's another too shy to talk to women.  And for every soldier who steals food from the locals, there are a lot more who also steal food from the locals because Russian logistics is terrible.  But they aren't all evil, and we really should feel sorry for the conscripts who just want to go home.

People are kind of shocked now, but this is largely what war looked like in the 19th century and earlier in Europe.  Armies were basically murder gangs roaming across the countryside.  They stole food from the peasants because they could, and because most nations never bothered to supply armies where they could simply "live off the land".  They got bored and started raping the local womenfolk, because they had the weapons.  When the losing army retreated, their bodies of their slain just lay in the field.  And while killing peasants wasn't normally a goal, sometimes it was -- especially in sieges.

Except for all of the high tech stuff, this is a very normal war in historical terms.  Poorly disciplined soldiers discovered that they can get away with murder, and start to wonder what else they can get away with.  The Ten Commandments describe things that normally happen in war, yet which should not be done.  Not everyone does atrocities.  But there are always sociopaths who love to get away with what they can get away with in war, and there are always people who just do what they are told.

Today's essay: War Got Weird.  A review of some of the changes that technology have brought to warfare recently: OSINT is pretty amazing; the Ukranian internet survives, with heroic sysops and Starlink.  Ukraine winning the meme war.  Javelin missiles cost $180k but are still cheaper than $4.5M tanks, and at 90% accuracy you can do the math.  I did not know the US Marines were in the process of getting rid of all of their tanks, but looking at Ukraine now maybe it looks like a good idea.

Finally: Victory Day is scheduled for May 9 in Moscow.  According to intelligence, there will be a parade!  Meanwhile, 2000 Ukrainian refugees seeking entry to United States are forced to Remain in Mexico.

[classicdrogn]

Reading that essay, and from the evidence on the ground in Ukraine, it looks like the only cost-effective ground vehicles in contested areas might be light trucks/"technicals" - if it costs more than five digits, the manpad to blow it up is going to be as or less expensive and the infantryman humping that along on his shoulder is harder to find to strike back. Even more so if they can use a little quadcopter to spot for even lighter and cheaper mortar shells from behind cover.

[hazard]

The war in Ukraine is a bit of a poor example though. The reason Ukraine is managing to destroy so much Russian materiel is because of Russia's terrible implementation of combined arms.

A properly organized and performed combined arms action shooting down drones and with infantry looking for ATMs and their operators while the tanks blow up everything trying to mow down the infantry is still likely to work quite well.

[Norgarth]

Beau of the Fifth Column - Let's talk about pirates and Emperors on the roadsides of Ukraine...

[classicdrogn]

Beau also did one on the topic of what the aftermath may be (TL;DW: "It's bad.") I'm not sure if it's his usual pace or what, but he seems to have been rolling out three or so a day lately.


link

[robkelk]

... and with infantry looking for ATMs and their operators ...

I knew the Russians were hurting for non-Russian money, but calling out the army to... No, wait - "anti-tank missiles", not "automated teller machines".

[hazard]

Beau also did one on the topic of what the aftermath may be (TL;DW: "It's bad.") I'm not sure if it's his usual pace or what, but he seems to have been rolling out three or so a day lately.


link

I fear Beau is wrong.

Russia will deport many Ukrainians, this I do not doubt. But if the liberation of Bucha has made one thing clear, they will also murder them in droves.
I wouldn't be so sure about the deported Ukrainians being allowed to return to Ukraine after the war's over, either. Alive or dead.