By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan.
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That should be âdiplomatsâ, surely.
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Indeed it was.
Speaking of diplomatsâŚ
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One of the civ games (call to power, maybe) allowed you to spawn spies from embassies.
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TASS news agency reports that the move comes after the US expelled 12 Russian diplomats from the UN mission in New York.
I could understand the US expelling diplomats from the Russian Embassy - i.e. accredited Russian diplomatic representatives to the USA - but arenât there some rules about countriesâ freedom to send their UN reps, and who gets to expel them?
What reserved powers does the US actually have over the worldâs representatives at the UN, merely by dint of being the host?
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Seems the action has pathways inside the âUN HQ Agreementâ.
The United States has informed the United Nations and the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations that we are beginning the process of expelling twelve intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission who have abused their privileges of residency in the United States by engaging in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security. We are taking this action in accordance with the UN Headquarters Agreement. This action has been in development for several months.
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Thanks.
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âIn a matter of three weeks, the Russian aviation industry slid back three decadesâ
Interesting videoâŚlong story short, the Russian aviation industry is fucked. The video also discusses how the international aviation system functions, which is interesting in itself.
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Never let a good crisis go to waste.
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It looks as if Russia wants to cause some kind of radiation incident that can be blamed on Ukraine, or at least sabotage monitoring and record-keeping and leave radioactive materials unaccounted-for to give the impression that Ukraine has something to hide.
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That, or the troops occupying Chernobyl are untrained, ignorant, bored, and are smashing shit because theyâve got nothing better to do and the one order that did get through was to not kill the Ukrainians working there.
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Raising the possibility of dirty bomb attacks. Anywhere.
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The Russian soldiers occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant told staff that it now belonged to Rosatom. The message seems to be that Ukraine canât be trusted and the (Russian) adults have to be put in charge.
Theyâve already claimed that Ukraine is trying to build a dirty bomb, taking advantage of Zelenskiy saying that if Ukraine had retained nuclear weapons Russia would not have invaded.
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As Boeing is the USâs largest exporter (and influencial importer), the route changes as a result of the Russian âwallâ will surely affect manufacturing costs. Perhaps to the delight of China and other state supported airplane manufacturers. The ripple effects of what Russia is doing is going to be enormous to the airline industry.
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- Ukrainians canât be trusted if Ukraine, officially, doesnât exist. By Putinâs logic, Chernobyl has always belonged to Rosatom, itâs just not been able to exert its rightful control because the UN and NATO are meany-heads.
- The Russian âadultsâ may be âin chargeâ, but those adults arenât able to get there to be in charge. So in the meantime there are the Ukrainians, and scared conscripts who are glad that at least theyâre not getting shot in the cold dark forest. Of which there is a lot surrounding Chernobyl and Pripyat, and for all those children know, theyâre full of Ukrainians and rusalki and huts on chicken legs.
Which means that Putin is planning for setting off a dirty bomb. And he doesnât care if the winds blow from the west.
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The list is long, and much depends on what kind of radioactive material they looted.
Dirty bomb? Maybe a frame-up alluded to here:
Poison a municipal water supply?
An entire aquifer?
A pot of tea?
Itâs not like the material is likely to behave itself without expert handling. HuffPo writes that it is âhighly activeâ which sounds to me unstable, and nonideal for a layman to just schlep around casually.
Russian military plans may pivot more and more to crude, desperate measures. If their current tactic (I wonât call it a strategy) has their forces digging in for a protracted, static war, what kind of scenarios and potential outcomes can we infer re: the radionuclides they now possess, assuming these were taken by officials within a chain, not an AWOL looter who just wants leverage for projecting threats or blackmail?
NB: I am no expert in things nuclear or radioactive. I defer to those who have a more applicable science background than the one I have.
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The Oil Fund also has considerable investment in Russia, which unless I missed something they are not freezing.
The new PM, Jonas Støre, is a millionaire buddy of Lavrov. I donât understand how he is Labour, he is more conservative than Solberg on both foreign and domestic issues, including oil policy.
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