"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

One consistent with, as I understand it, digging trenches in and burning material from the red forest. There is telemetry in place that allows the outside world (read: the IAEA, mostly) to know the status of certain important things at Chernobyl, so onsite monitoring can be smaller in scope (it's not like the workers there were the ones putting out the press releases about the loss of power to the cooling pools, for instance). None of that indicates that Ukrainians removed any highly radioactive material. Could they have done so without alerting the offsite monitors? Probably. Is it worth it when there are better, easier ways to make the Russians' lives worse? Probably not.

Totally believable. But once they found out, they would know that if a Ukrainian approaches you in full radiation suit (there's more than one type here; they don't all work in the most protective all day), he's could have something radioactive on him. Boom, they'll shoot them.

In this case, the propaganda should be coincident from both sides. Ukraine doesn't want the Russians to come back when they realize there's no acute risk of radiation sickness. They want Russian troops to object and mutiny or at least be terrified and demoralized when told they have to go back to Chernobyl. They're not going to do that if Ukraine starts saying "haha, made you shit your pants, there was never any real danger." That's a great PR coup. Once.

On the other side, vague intimations about "significant doses" -- this is not a quantitative measure *at all* --, a lack of denials about allegations of poisoning -- but no confirmations, either; they don't want to Russian commanders to think they can solve this by just shooting the staff and bringing in their own --, and the narrative that it was the very land itself that wanted the occupiers gone are together a formidable boogeyman, significantly more so than "engineers spiked my stolen borscht with E. coli". That's all they said, that Russian soldiers had received significant doses of radiation. Nothing else. And for sure we can tell they almost certainly got enough to raise their lifetime risk of cancer. That could be "significant" on its own. But "significant doses" isn't enough to base a hypothesis on that the Ukrainian workers engaged in a difficult plan to defeat the external telemetry, hide from satellite surveillance, steal some highly-radioactive material, not get themselves shot or irradiated, and irradiate some Russian soldiers in the process.

On the other side, they could have put some poop or an emetic from the first aid station in a jar of borscht they knew the Russian soldiers would steal, and then acted very concerned about radiation when the next shift started talking about how the first shift were now vomiting and having diarrhea.

As a matter of principle, I cannot rule out the former entirely. As a matter of practicality, the latter ought to happen a lot more often. So I'm gonna believe that.

The IAEA has said that they lost access to the onsite detectors and that they've had to rely on data from offsite monitors located in places outside of Ukraine. How sensitive are those? I don't know. Way back in the late 90s, I knew a guy who claimed that his father made quarter-sized devices for use on satellites that could easily track the movement of radioactive material. He had all kinds of tales about how the US told the Russians they needed to do something about a cab that was driving around with stolen reactor rods. According to him, it didn't take terribly long for the Russians to find the guys with the rods, but not before they got a lethal dose of radiation poisoning.

Sure, it's likely bullshit, but as good as the radiation detection stuff we have might be, it wasn't enough to stop Russian operatives from poisoning Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in the UK. What makes you think that we'd be able to detect something similar from happening in Chernobyl during a war?

That assumes that the Russian troops recognize someone in a radiation suit is a threat to them, or that the material being delivered is so lethal that external exposure is the concern. Inhaling radioactive material is a larger risk than being exposed to it, because once it's inside your lungs, it's harder to dislodge, so you can't walk away from it. That's what the official accounts say that the Russian troops were exposed to: Radioactive dust from the trenches they were digging in the Red Forest. Sure, those exposure levels might not have been lethal, but Litvinenko injected the lethal dose of polonium via tea that he drank. The guy who gave him that dose wasn't wearing massive amounts of protective gear, and AFAIK, nobody else at that restaurant has died from radiation exposure. So it certainly seems possible that one could slip a lethal dose of radioactive material to someone in such a manner that it doesn't kill a large number of other people. Did the guy who poisoned Litivinenko survive? I don't know, but certainly nobody else who was there has died. Do the folks who work at Chernobyl have access to similar materials that could cause a serious threat to the health of someone who injested it without raising alarms on any detectors in the area? I don't know, but I can't rule it out.

In this case, the propaganda should be coincident from both sides. Ukraine doesn't want the Russians to come back when they realize there's no acute risk of radiation sickness. They want Russian troops to object and mutiny or at least be terrified and demoralized when told they have to go back to Chernobyl. They're not going to do that if Ukraine starts saying "haha, made you shit your pants, there was never any real danger." That's a great PR coup. Once. [/quote]Again, not what @steve2^4 was claiming. His argument was that the Russians were trying to say the Ukrainians were incapable of handling the nuclear material at Chernobyl safely, so this means the Russians should be allowed to maintain control of the site for the protection of the rest of the world.

But here's the thing: Who can we trust? The Russians who tried to come up with the same kind of excuses that the Nazis used as justification for invading Poland in 1939? Or the Ukrainians who are fighting for their very lives against a genocidal opponent? If both of them say, as appears to be the case, that Russian forces are suffering from radiation poisoning, why should we claim both are lying?

And both of us live in a society where no matter how pissed off we might be at our boss, we can find another job. Yet even in our society we have folks who think that the only "proper" solution to the issues at work are to get a gun and go "postal" on folks. Now, imagine what it must be like to live in a country that's just been invaded by a hostile power you've been worried about for decades. You work in a facility that has lots of lethal material available to you. Are you not going to seriously contemplate using that on the enemy? Especially when you have reason to believe that said enemy might murder you without warning.

AFAIK, those exist, yes. They can track gamma emitters easily.

Because most everything going on at Chernobyl is dealing with bulk quantities. Low level waste, high-level waste, spent fuel rods, water, concrete. True, polonium is not much of a gamma emitter, particularly compared to everything else on site. There's no reason for Chernobyl to have small quantities of concentrated polonium.

Both of his assassins did survive, but one was hospitalized with polonium poisoning. That was also an FSB operation dealing in nanograms of polonium. Could the plant workers access radioactive materiel? Sure. As radioactive as that? Not readily, or not without irradiating themselves. "Hey, take a look at this negative pressure lead-lined vacuum-sealed glove box! Oops, I've dumped its contents into your tea. Silly me." Yeah, that'll raise no alarms whatsoever. Poop in the borscht jar is just so much easier. This is not an episode of 24.

Maybe they were. They can't keep claiming that now that they've left, and no one believed them anyway. Except you, apparently.

The Ukrainians are saying they were exposed to significant doses of radiation. That's all they're saying. Nothing more. None of your previous links have said anything beyond that. Ukraine is not saying anyone got acute radiation syndrome, unlike the Russians.

First, I dispute the implication that the materiel was readily available, even if it was on site, and that they are FSB-agent levels of assassins. Second, if you want to go down the mental state rabbit hole, these are people who have spent years doing nothing but trying to mitigate and clean up the biggest radiation disaster in decades. When was the last time a gun control activist went postal?

Good. That'll make it easier to send every last Russian soldier in Ukraine home in a bag.

Y'know, it occurs to me.
When the stats keep pointing out the disparities of capitalism, conservatives keep saying it's "excuses to be lazy" and "jealousy towards the rich".

But if the system can't be rigged, and money can't kill, then....why are we waging the biggest assault on Russia with fucking sanctions?
And why are all the levers right there to pull to make this shit happen?

Orban, Putin's ass-kisser just won re-election in Hungary. He immediately launched a rhetorical attack on the Ukrainian President.

Hungary should be expelled from the EU.

Fuck. Why do I smell something other than paprika coming from Hungary right now?

Assassination is always an option, and needs to be considered when faced with these kind of choices.

did I mention I'm sick of tweets. This is getting out of hand. Why do you bother?

How bout you create a tangent thread for every original and keep the original tweetless? The content is inane, the download times are pathetic (twitter, not my end).

Or turn off the BB setting to auto-download tweets.

I have this done on all my PC browsers, so it's tolerable, but on the phone it's really bad.

Assholes.

I would never support assassinating a world leader.

But if Vlad happened to drink some of his own poisoned tea or take a radioactive umbrella to the leg, that's not anyone else's fault.

Come to think of it, he's probably depressed about how the war is going. I wouldn't be surprised if he committed suicide by slashing his own throat and shooting himself in the back 15 times.

Not to 14th doc specifically, but I've never understood this kind of thinking. Why is it ok to kill off military people, but not the assholes who started the war in the first place.

I bet if that was the case, there would be a lot fewer wars.

The tank deal with Poland has been in the works for quite some time.

Probably because it's the assholes starting the wars that also make up the rules of war. Of course they're looking out for themselves first.

But just from memory I know there were numerous attempts to kill both Hitler and Castro and at least one attempt on Bush Sr, so I wouldn't say it's necessarily a hard and fast rule.

I say we initiate The Thunderdome as a way of dealing with warring countries. But then ... rather than electing diplomats, we'd be electing professional boxers or, worse, wrestlers.

Damn!

The rationale appears to be that it's not okay to kill anyone not engaged in military activity, including political leaders. And also that targetting any specific individuals - as opposed to military more generally - is problematic.

The Ka-52 is Russia’s most advanced helicopter.