Being flippant for a moment but if they are burning documents, that does suggest some order.
When the US decided overnight to pull out of Afghanistan, then there were multiple instances of documents being left behind that the Taliban went through and found the contact details of many locals working for the 'West.'
(Spending time deleting computers and smashing up hard drives was completely pointless when the printed docs were lying all over the floor).

At least the Russians have presence of mind to destroy their incriminating paper evidence...I doubt their use of computers...

Why do you say that? The French and Germans have had spines of cooked spgahetti noodles since February. Why would they change their apathetic response now?
Compare that to the UK, who is flying missions over the Black Sea, and apparently the Russians were close to engaging with missiles a few weeks back.
Compare to the Poles.
Compare to the Dutch.
NATO is not unified on this topic, so expecting a 'severe' NATO response is a fool's errand.

A Ukrainian Su-27 downs a Russian Shahed-136 with an R-73 AAM over Odesa Oblast.

Ah, but you misquote me. I said "a severe response from NATO countries" and not a severe NATO response. And the very reason I stated it that way is probably because at the back of my mind I always tend to dismiss the French and the Italians! ;) However, I remain hopeful that the majority would band together with a suitable military response.

Tell me again about that massive boost in German defence spending…

BREAKING:

Germany will significantly cut down the expansion of the army due to “high inflation and the expensive dollar”

Several projects will be cancelled or downsized, including:

Puma IFVs
Self-propelled howitzers
Corvettes
Frigates
Eurofighters
potentially F-35s (downsized)

https://t.co/c0TK7zPu6M

NATO certainly has used flexibility in their interpretations, i.e., 20 July – 18 August 1974; Turkey - Greece, (invasion of Cypress by Turkey).

NATO membership has a number of requirements to ensure that their states have a defensive posture, but that has been a rocky road for sure. 'Arf of the NATO countries had colonies in exotic locations, and had tiffs in them, which did not invoke NATO actions. If those uppity colonials (USA excluded) had responded back in Paris, or Marseilles, or Bournemouth, er, actually they did... and nothing much happened. Those were related to the dismantlement of colonial holdings. The colonies didn't invade, they undertook terrorist attacks at that time, but it was still a line call. In the current situation, Poland would not be acting in respect of a colonial holding, they are assisting under the UN Charter, as all UN countries are obliged to do, irrespective of the UNSC failing to do their damned job, as they at least did in 1990 and 1991.
Any NATO country taking unilateral action against Belarus would not be appreciated by the rest of NATO, what would happen would be interesting. Poland supporting Ukraine within Ukraine is a UN state obligation. That doesn't alter the wording of the NATO Treaty as it stands today, and while Polish losses in Ukraine would certainly not be trigger conditions for Art. 5, attacking a NATO state that is acting in compliance with the UN Charter within the borders of Ukraine would be a difficult breach to disregard. This is consistent with the US and other UN states comments on a response to the use of WMD/TNWs in Ukraine; that response is tending towards a conventional overwhelming strike on any and all Russian (Iranian? Syrian? Chechen?) forces in Ukraine.

That may be the single largest misstep by Ukraine to date. They have followed Napoleon's adage "never interrupt your enemy when they are making mistakes..." to date, but giving a casus belli to the other side when your resupply is dependent on the support of the rest of the world is not a great leap forward.

Russia was probably about to go that way with the connivance of Lukashenko acting in self-preservation to sell out Belarus to Putin.

Alternative view, Ukraine gets a popular uprising of Belarus citizens that have had enough of Lukashekos's hemorrhoid hunt around the nether regions of Putin. :}


A direct result of living under the umbrella.

1917
 

This mob is asking pertinent questions of their dear leader, and it is very reminiscent of 1917. There is no answer from Putin except for violence, and that won't make many friends on the family front. Putin may need an employment termination checklist for himself. In 1917, the Russian army used the same guns they do now, their body armor was no worse, and their airforce (Imperial Russian Air Service), a lineball call.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....aedcc04b4.jpeg

A direct result of their inflation that is caused by Russia's energy war going on and increased energy prices. 100 billion Euros won't buy as much as hoped for a year ago. I agree they should increase military spending again but that won't help inflation either. They try to keep their economy going by desperately subsidising energy costs.
The stupid thing they did was turning to Russia for energy supplies. Now they pay the price.

:rolleyes:

In Belgorod, the mobilized will only be given logs for the trenches upon application to the Ministry of Defense.

Local authorities fear that firewood will fall to the enemy.

Deputy Governor of the Belgorod Region Yulia Shchedrina

Tank is still powerful weapon on the battlefield providing it is used properly:

If you go and read the NATO articles you will definitely find that it specifically excludes the vast majority of the colonial posessions of all NATO countries, precisely so as to not make NATO Art 5 hostage to foreign adventures during the retreat from empire phase. I'm not 100% certain where the vestigial pieces stand wrt NATO articles - I'm thinking for example of Gibraltar (UK); Guantanamo (USA); or the various French DoMs and ToMs, but there are many more - and I think they mostly remain technically excluded from Art 5 matters.

Turning to the example you repeat of (say) Poland committing military forces into Ukraine thereby becoming a co-belligerent, and then being on the receiving end of Russian responses in Poland itself, I think that too is excluded from Art 5. If NATO collectively were to intervene - for whatever reason - then that would be a different matter. However any individual NATO-state voluntarily becoming a co-belligerent I believe puts itself outside Art 5 for this purpose. This is precisely why NATO as a whole is taking a qualitatively cohesive stance on this conflict. How is it that you read the NATO articles dfferently ?

(I think the various Iraq and Afghanistan episodes you cite are qualitatively different in nature due to the invocation of UN resolutions, so I think they are a red-herring in the current situation. Regrettably the UN structures suffer from the same drawbacks as the League Of Nations in the limit.)

If the clowns have dumped the water supply to the intakes, then getting outta dodge is a good idea. The fuel rods in place will still need cooling, as they would if withdrawn and put into cooling ponds. No new water supply, probably don't want to be near by. Would think that the IAEA would be rather interested in the current status of what the Russian Terrorists Army have done in ZNPP. The only good news is, Russia is downwind.

I thought the IAEA were maintaining a presence at the site. Did they leave?

Sad that killing people in war has become a social media sport. I didn't see 12 dead there. More like two.

Indeed! The 100 billion will remain. They will sadly just get way less bang for the buck due to inflation. But that will not only apply to Germany. Wonder what will happen to Poland's ambitious procurement plans?!
The Euro took a hit. And the Zloty even a bit worse. And they are massively shopping outside Euro currency area. I have the feeling that more than a few ambitious procurment plans will face a revision in the next few years.

What level interests you?
Very light drift W to E at surface and 1000mb

The update IAEA #115 of 9 Oct 22, was on restoring external power to ZNPP. Thereafter, power was reportedly lost again, and the system had been reported as running on diesel generators once again, which indicated they had 10 days fuel supply at ZNPP. Update #1120 was issued on 18 Oct 22, indicating that Ukrainian engineers had reestablished power for the 3rd time in 10 days. The 2 ISAMZ inspectors seem to still be on site, however, IAEA has made no comment in relation to the Kakohva dam water release and whether that is a risk to the ZNPP.

Apparently not dull around Enerhodar. Or down wind.
,

Depends on the bucket.

As commented on before, tactical detonations tend to be airburst, and have relatively low fall out, compared at least to Tzar Bomba I guess. (trust us, we are after all talking about TNW's up to 4 times the Hiroshima size... anyone who assumes TNW's are minor issues should go visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki).... There will be fallout, but if the detonation is at an altitude it should be minimal, not zero. In that case, low and mid level winds would be of interest.

For a meltdown, which results in loss of containment, then the mess can be extensive, still less than a ground burst of a TNW, but not pretty. In that case, the fallout we have seen before, in Apr 86. That followed mid and high-level wind patterns and left contamination all over Europe, from Scandinavia to Western Europe. The boys at Sandia will have fair ideas of where the stuff will go, but go, it will.

The system has been in shutdown for a number of weeks, and the thermal flux drops off promptly but doesn't go to zero for a number of years. For Fukushima, a week after the shutdown, a loss of water flow would boil off all the water above the fuel rods in 11 hrs, at which point the fuel rods would start to heat up without control.... When the fuel rod gets hot enough, it can mess up the cladding and that sets it off towards a bad day with H2 buildup, just one of the fun bits. At 7 days, it takes 11 hrs to boil off all the water... at 30 days, it takes about 16.5 hrs to get to the same point... the water within the cooling system may be more or less, but that is the rough order change in time to start having a rise of the fuel rod temps. Want a bucket brigade of Putin types if the water supply fails and the fuel rods are not in a large water body. The tertiary cooling is from external sources, like the lake... if they can sort out the feed. There are only 66 tons of Uranium in each reactor apparently, x 6, trivial for Vlad.

The problem with ZNPP isn't going critical, it is overheating causing H2 buildup and the potential for an explosion within the containment structure leading to the sort of problem that Chornobyl experienced, although the design of the fuel rods there was itself a major badness. ZNPP's risk is H2 explosion, and a subsequent corium event once more.

P.S.: the ~ 400 tons of fuel in the reactors is the current fuel load, onsite there would be the prior 5-25 years worth of spent fuel rods which still need cooling. the rods are good for.., what? 5 years? That's a fair amount of fuel in the residual heat state needing cooling and water protection.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....893a05006d.png