Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

At the current rate I'm thinking of starting a betting pool. The pool is in relationship to the future of Putin.

From my persepective, Russia is actually in the grip of some Ultra-Nationalists (extremists) that even Putin doesn't have control over. (For instance assassinations/poisonings that occur, did he order them or do they seem to happen thanks to invisible hands?) Ultra-Nationalists will want to manipulate the less extreme citizens in their country through lieing, through fear etc. (They are the ones that bully those that protest by calling them traitors and threatening them)

A true way for an Ultra-Nationalist to achieve a goal in regards to rallying support for their country and maintaining their "manifesto" would likely require Putin to be assassinated. Ideally they'd want a Western fall guy to do the job, or at the very least the story that the West was responsible, however the actual reason for such a high profile assassination would be to aid in removing Putin's "Pariah" status by turning him into a Martyr. The countries public could likely be rallied then to increase the morale of their fighting force.

So one potential outcome: Putin is assassinated (The sub-bet strata would be as to whom would be actually responsible? The West?, The Ukraine? A concern citizen?, or a Ultra-nationalist Kremlin aid on the grassy knoll?)

Alternatively there is some other options. Technically the West would more than likely prefer to use the same method used on Emperor Napoleon, Putin should be exiled on a small (likely previously used for nuclear research or anthrax studies) island somewhere to live out his days never being allowed to be a premiere again.

There is also the possibility that Putin could "defect" if he considered his Extremist Ultra-Nationalists too radical, but that would be more of a "Protective custody" considering the war crimes lingering over him.

There are still some serious outsiders that someone might make some money on, such as "being forgiven"... That's likely not going to happen though thanks to the amount of needless bloodshed.

There is the option that other dictators prior to Putin have taken, thats when they round up their family, say their goodbyes and sign off permenantly with a self inflicted gunshot, poisoning, stabbing.

Day 44 summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...4-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...nt-april-8

Once again, there has been little change on the ground.

The Ukrainians are still advising civilians to leave the threatened areas in far eastern Ukraine. And today the railroad station in Kramatorsk was filled with these civilians when a Russian ballistic missile struck it. Early reports say that 52 are dead and more than a hundred more are wounded.

Meanwhile in Mariupol, the situation has been murky. A couple of days ago there were claims that Russia had captured the city. Turns out that what they captured was the local administration building, not the whole city. And for days it was thought that the Russians had taken the huge Azovstal Metallurgical Works in southeast Mariupol. But now "pro-Russian sources" (the Donetsk separatists?) say that there are 3,000 Ukrainians still holding the plant. (That number sounds too high to be true.) Ukrainian forces have been geolocated to the area though, so it's clear that there are still Ukrainians in the Azovstal plant.

And there may or may not be some kind of Ukrainian counteroffensive trying to reach Kherson. That isn't clear either.

Day 46 Summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...6-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...t-april-10

In Kharkiv the Russians remain just outside the city but haven't advanced. There's some evidence that soldiers from this area are being moved east to the Izium buildup. Satellite imagery shows military convoys moving south from out of Russia advancing through Kupiansk toward Izium. There are reports that a major bridge that the Ukrainians blew before they were forced out of Izium has been repaired, replacing a temporary pontoon bridge that the Russians had been using. But although the Russians are conducting a big buildup of forces around Izium, they still haven't advanced from there.

It's expected that a big battle will commence in this area in coming days.

Meanwhile the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians from Luhansk oblast (almost all Russian controlled now) and Donetsk oblast continues, despite the Russian missile attack on the Kramatorsk railroad station that killed 52 civilians.

Russian convoy moving south toward Izium. (Maxar satellite photo.)



Ground video of a similar convoy in the same area

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...0702444552

And in Rubizhne (small industrial city in Luhansk oblast), the Russian artillery shelling hit (I'm guessing accidently) large nitric acid tanks at a plant that either produces nitric acid or uses large quantities of it in some industrial process. (Large quantities of nitric acid are used in making nitrate fertilizer... it's also used in making explosives) The damage released a huge plume of acid vapor that would be deadly if it contacts skin or lungs.

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...0157540355

In Mariupol there's confirmation that most of the remaining Ukrainian defenders are in two pockets, one in the west at the city's port, the other in the east in the Azovstal metallurgical plant. (There may be a third small pocket in a residential area.) The Russians control the center of downtown. The Ukrainian general staff is claiming that the Russians are cremating the many dead civilians and burying them in mass graves.

There isn't much to report from the south. There's talk of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kherson area, but it hasn't materialized yet. The Ukrainians are as tired, depleted and worn-out as the Russians after six weeks of war so far. So they might not have the resources to do anything big.

Photo of the massive crowd at an orchestrated pro-Russian demonstration near Kherson. Reportedly occupation military police were stopping anyone who tried to enter carrying a Ukrainian flag. From the photo, the demonstrators all look like young men and few if any women or older people are visible. So I'm guessing these are Russian soldiers in civilian clothes.



Interesting video of Ukrainians using a British-made Starstreak man-portable surface to air missile to shoot something down, presumably a helicopter. The target isn't visible but the cheering suggests it was successfully hit. There's talk on the internet that it was an Mi-28n attack helicopter.

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...7170966528

Day 47 Summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...7-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...t-april-11

There weren't any dramatic movements on the map anywhere. Probably the biggest is continued pullouts of Russian troops from the vicinity of Kharkiv. Russians remain in close proximity of the northern outskirts of the city though. The remaining troops seem to be largely intended to fix Ukrainian troops in place in Kharkiv in order to defend it from the possibility of attack. But many troops are being withdrawn and seem to be going east, where the Russians continue to build up their forces. The Ukrainians report repelling several Russian probing movements near Izium, but these clearly aren't the anticipated big offensive which is yet to begin.

Mariupol continues to hold out. There are reports that the Russians have used chemical weapons against the Ukrainian defenders of the Azovstal Metallurgical Works. Those reports are uncorroborated at this time. But adding substance to it were calls earlier on Monday April 11 by troops from the Donetsk People's Republic (one of the two separatist "republics") for Russia to use chemical weapons to "smoke moles out of their burrows" in the steel plant, since the DPR forces were not having much success storming the desperate Ukrainians holed up there. The DPR also claimed to have captured the Mariupol port (the other pocket) but this appears to not be true.

And the southern front seems to be largely quiet. The Russians aren't advancing and their movements seem intended to improve their defensive positions.

In other news, the Russian Commander of the Southern Military District, General Aleksandr Vladimirovich Dvornikov, has been put in charge of the whole Ukraine campaign. The ISW cautions not to read too much into this, since Dvornikov was the most senior of the three generals previously in charge and if Moscow is streamlining their command structure, Dvornikov is the one who would be expected to get the combined command.

Heard that Russians were planting dirty bombs in Ukraine as they pull back and saw some stories claiming Ukrainians are using nuclear material taken from Chernobyl to make a dirty bomb or two themselves. Any truth to either of these reports?

(Apr 12, 2022 09:41 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Heard that Russians were planting dirty bombs in Ukraine as they pull back and saw some stories claiming Ukrainians are using nuclear material taken from Chernobyl to make a dirty bomb or two themselves. Any truth to either of these reports?

Unless you have direct and somehow guaranteed honest-to-goodness-this-is-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth access to an omniscient Diety, it will always be 'disputed'.
What influences me are things like Blinken repeatedly 'warning' of 'expected upcoming Russian false flags' ahead of what the actual evidence shows were Ukrainian & 'Western partners' FFs.
This so reminds of the game plan played out in Syria a few years earlier. All those claims that wicked Assad was about to use or already had used chemical weapons against his own people! Red line was crossed! None of it was true.

(Apr 12, 2022 09:41 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Heard that Russians were planting dirty bombs in Ukraine as they pull back and saw some stories claiming Ukrainians are using nuclear material taken from Chernobyl to make a dirty bomb or two themselves. Any truth to either of these reports?

With respect to these incidents, it's simplistic to conceive this as a binary situation of either Russian government or Ukrainian government. These could be criminal agents and rogue terrorist affiliates involved, as well as individual soliders cutting private deals with such on the side. Who knows where the material is being sold on the extremist market and how/where it would finally be used. 

Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chornobyl monitoring lab
https://www.science.org/content/article/...toring-lab

EXCERPTS: . . . Although power was restored to Chornobyl on 14 March, Nosovskyi’s worries have multiplied. In the chaos of the Russian advance, he told Science, looters raided a radiation monitoring lab in Chornobyl village—apparently making off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and pieces of radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a “dirty bomb” that would spread contamination over a wide area.

ISPNPP has a separate lab in Chornobyl with even more dangerous materials: “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi says, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the Unit Four meltdown. Nosovskyi has lost contact with the lab, he says, so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”

[...] Thousands of other sites in Ukraine have radiological materials. Most are under the watchful eye of Ukraine’s nuclear regulator. “There’s a lot of ongoing effort to secure material,” says Peter Martin, a nuclear physicist at the University of Bristol who collaborates with scientists at Chornobyl. That means, where possible, moving sources into vaults and repositories.

But Vitaly Fedchenko, a nuclear security expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, notes that Ukraine, like other parts of the former Soviet Union, has not kept track of all the Soviet nuclear legacy. “There are a lot of radioactive sources that are not on anyone’s radar,” he says. “Even Ukraine’s radar.” (MORE - details)

It's extraordinary how prominent OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) conducted by amateurs is in the war in Ukraine. Everyone in Ukraine has a cell-phone and many of them are reporting and photographing what they see and putting it on the internet. And many amateurs are collecting it both in Europe and the United States and trying to corroborate it. The amateurs often have information quicker than the vaunted CIA. And the amateur OSINT community is starting to attract increasing attention from the professionals.

Day 48 Summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...48-summary

Basically the same as yesterday.

Biggest event is a counterattack inside besieged Mariupol by the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade that was reported to have surrendered to the Russians last week. Well here it is still fighting and today sucessfully linked two of the separated pockets of defenders. But apart from that bit of cheery news, the situation in the city grows more desperate (if that's possible).

There's video evidence from the Russian side that the Russians have indeed captured the port area of the city, but the video appears to show continued fighting in a hillside residential area overlooking the port. It's possible that the movement of the 36th Marines was less of a victory than it's being presented as if these were the forces driven out of the port as their western pocket collapses.

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...4385228804

Another interesting bit of news is reports that a railroad bridge was damaged by saboteurs inside Russia south of Belgorod where Russian troops and equipment are being sent into Ukraine, temporarily cutting the line.

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(Apr 12, 2022 09:41 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Heard that Russians were planting dirty bombs in Ukraine as they pull back and saw some stories claiming Ukrainians are using nuclear material taken from Chernobyl to make a dirty bomb or two themselves. Any truth to either of these reports?

I haven't heard anything about either side doing that, Z-man.

But like CC writes, there's definitely concern about the security of radioactive materials. They weren't that secure before the war, and most of those security procedures probably broke down when the shooting started.

So I don't want to totally dismiss it, but consider it unlikely until i see better evidence.

Reports that the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, the cruiser Moskva, caught fire southeast of the Ukrainian port of Odessa, ammunition started exploding, its crew abandoned ship and it later sank. Reason for the initial fire remains unconfirmed, but Ukraine is claiming that it hit the ship with two of their locally-manufactured Neptune anti-ship missiles. The fact that other Russian ships accompanying the Moskva all moved further away from shore supports the missile strike claim.

https://news.usni.org/2022/04/13/russian...doned-ship

Announcement by Russian TASS news agency that the Moskva has sunk.

https://t.me/tass_agency/127473

The Moskva



The Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile used by the Ukrainian Navy.

Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine has begun
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrain...91a5535ea3

INTRO: Russia launched its long-feared, full-scale offensive to take control of Ukraine’s east on Monday, attacking along a broad front over 300 miles (480 kilometers) long, Ukrainian officials said in what marked the opening of a new and potentially climactic phase of the war.

“The Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a video address. He said a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.”

The Donbas is Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia.

In recent weeks, the Kremlin declared the capture of the Donbas its main goal of the war after its attempt to storm Kyiv failed. After withdrawing from the capital, Russia began regrouping and reinforcing its ground troops in the east for an all-out offensive.

“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves. We will do it every day.”
Russia-Ukraine war
LThe Ukraine military’s general staff said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces were increasing assaults in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions — both of which are part of the Donbas — as well as in the area of Zaporizhzhia.

“This morning, almost along the whole front line of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, the occupiers attempted to break through our defenses,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, was quoted as telling Ukrainian media. “Fortunately, our military is holding out. They passed through only two cities. This is Kreminna and another small town.”

He added: “We are not giving up any of our territories.”

A Ukrainian military official said street battles had begun in Kreminna and that evacuation was impossible.

Luhansk regional military administrator Serhiy Haidai said heavy artillery fire set seven residential buildings on fire and targeted the sports complex where the nation’s Olympic team trains... (MORE - details)

https://youtu.be/3mGUm08Yst4