heywood on 15/8/2024 at 14:54

---

I think one of the challenges that delayed getting F-16s to Ukraine is the need to engineer a Ukraine-specific avionics package that could interoperate with Ukrainian forces, not NATO forces, and be free from any NATO or US stuff that we didn't want falling into Russian hands. Another challenge is that they need to be self-sufficient. I don't think we want these F-16s flying back and forth to NATO bases for routine inspections and repair because then it's a NATO operation. That would mean Ukraine needs hangars with all the right maintenance and test equipment, tools, consumables, depots with spares, engine and avionics repair facilities, and a small army of trained people. Not to mention ordnance. And these need cleaner runways than the old MiGs. I hope they are worth it.

Starker on 16/8/2024 at 21:57

---

Russia is very proud of the immense amount of suffering that its people are willing to endure, but there is one country on Earth whose people have suffered more and that is Ukraine. I would never bet against Ukraine when it comes to who can take more pain.

Starker on 18/8/2024 at 06:22

---

I think the best part of the Kursk invasion is seeing Russians complain about Ukraine violating international law by trying to "annex" territory and how they could never have imagined that a country would just go and attack their neighbour in the 21st century.

I'm not making this up, btw. It's an actual complaint I heard a Russian blogger make.

lowenz on 18/8/2024 at 16:02

---

Nobody is interested in another Che(o)rnobyl, ukrainians first.

baeuchlein on 18/8/2024 at 18:35

---

Other sources here say that this was not the case. Instead, the Russians hauled some rubber tires on top of a cooling tower and set the rubber on fire in order to scare Ukrainian supporters in the West. This also sounds more convincing because there seems to be no good reason to store lots of flammable materials high up in a cooling tower of a nuclear plant. The thick black smoke that has been seen on photographs would also fit this theory.

The tower also was rather distant from the main plant, thus the danger of setting something with nuclear material inside on fire is rather small. And since Zaporizhzhia has been shut down quite a while ago due to the war, there's also no need to fire anything at this plant if the Ukrainians really wanted to destroy something (and also risk contaminating a lot of land they consider theirs in the process).

Concerning the planes, a german podcast just stated that the most significant problem with the F-16's is that the Ukrainians so far have very different restrictions placed by various countries of "the West" on the weapons this plane could use. If you have to do a shitload of bureaucracy until you can fire a single shot or missile, then using any kind of weapons with restrictions on use is so difficult that the Ukrainians most likely won't consider it worth their time. For contrary to what some people say or write on the internet, the Ukraine seems to use their weapons just the way the West allows them - after all, they know things would be much harder for them if the West would withdraw support.

And of course, deliberately shooting at a nuclear plant would also severely endanger Western support. Another reason not to believe everything one reads on the net.

Besides, it is questionable whether destroying a nuclear plant to have "nuclear shit all over the place" would have any effect on the movements of the Russian troops. When they advanced through Ukraine, they drove their vehicles directly through the lands that are still contaminated by the Chernobyl incident. Sure, it's not as dangerous anymore as it was in 1986, but still... they don't care much about their troops, as many other reports also confirm.