Xakura posted:

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1666312366991224833?s=46&t=3aZma4c23vXhza4YKosP_w

HonorableTB posted:

Doesn't matter that the UN's purpose is discussion and talk because the outcomes of those talks is toothless almost every time unless the countries in question are weak minor regional powers in which intervention wouldn't cause a big kerfuffle. When it comes to the real problems like nuclear states attacking weaker neighbors it is useless by design because the purpose of the UN design was to have nuclear states pointlessly talk to other nuclear states instead of take action and therefore the UN is fundamentally useless when it comes to issues of global importance if one of the parties is sufficiently strong enough and in the process the UN upholds the ideals of the sphere of influence in geopolitics. This is true of Russia invading Ukraine just as it was true of the US invading Grenada et al.

It's a pointless institution that hasn't actually prevented any conflict between nuclear powers (notably India and Pakistan went to war in 1999, and the Indo-Chinese conflicts, and Israel's many, many interventions in surrounding middle eastern states but most important the time they threatened Richard Nixon with invoking the Samson Option during the Yom Kippur War which would have fired nukes at every belligerent nation invading Israel). Every time there's been a REAL issue (the US missiles in Turkey during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer 87, etc) it's been solved through direct superpower to superpower back channels and not through the UN. The closest you can even get to that is the Cuban missile crisis where the US called the Soviets out on the floor of the UN when Adlai Stevenson accused the Soviets accurately of constructing MRBM sites in Cuba.

It's fundamentally useless for everything involving a nuclear state and that makes the whole thing kayfabe window dressing that is indistinguishable from normal back channels from country to country in terms of effect. I posit that if the US directly killing Soviet pilots in the Vietnam War didn't start a nuclear conflict the whole loving thing is pointless because that by itself was enough to trigger a nuclear conflict by the published doctrines of both superpowers and they wisely decided to ignore it and not trigger nuclear conflict because that would be incredibly stupid, yet they maintain the facade of UN and international dialogues for some reason despite none of it mattering at all because what really matters is what happens behind the scenes on the red phone hotline between Washington and Moscow.

The same thing holds true in 2023 as did in 1962. Nobody's going to nuke anyone, the UN Security Council is only good for bullying non-major, non-nuclear powers, and any good done by UN interventions was purely incidental in circumstances where they could act without substantial pushback. And even then, UN actions sometimes made poo poo worse, like in Rwanda.

TLDR: The UN doesn't matter because it doesn't have a universally effective enforcement mechanism due to the fundamental flaw of "the most important members of the UN which provide the tooth to enforcement will not enforce judgements against themselves" and that makes a toothless, ineffective international organization unless you're one of the poor nations that is subject to the whims of the security council since they can enforce measures upon you without you being able to do anything in return

Edit 2: I am fully aware of the purpose of the UN and of the mechanisms by which it operates. Those mechanisms working as they do does not make it a GOOD or EFFECTIVE system, and it doesn't make people who disagree with this system ignorant of how it works or guilty of misinterpreting why and how the UN operates. Rather, its because those things ARE understood that disagreement comes up, because those methods are loving poo poo.

PurpleXVI posted:

You know, I'm not even going to say it any longer. It's obviously all real. At this point the Russians are beyond parody.

Alan Smithee posted:

https://twitter.com/DevanaUkraine/status/1666730670633230336?s=20

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Sushko isn't reliable and his thing previously has been presenting material supposedly from russian sources with no verification beyond 'trust me bro' so I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions from that. and I say that as someone who thinks that the russians blowing the dam is by far the most likely scenario.

PurpleXVI posted:

orange juche posted:

So they what, mined the dam and then let the water level get extra high and then popped it in the middle of the night?

That's some snidley whiplash poo poo.

BIG HEADLINE posted:

"Capture Poland and France and reach Germany."

Someone doesn't know basic geography.

Godholio posted:

That's a lot of words to say "I want a global military to keep all those pesky sub-countries in line."

Hannibal Rex posted:

https://twitter.com/SmartUACat/status/1666397214560731137?s=20

Disclaimer: No idea is this account is legit, but I assume demolition/structural engineer twitter will catch any BS fairly soon.

A.o.D. posted:

Plausible. The amount of energy stored by high water in a dam is incredible, measurable in tons of TNT, and dams are designed to contain that kind of power. Granted, high explosive energy isn't the same as an enormous mass of water, but well made dams are overbuilt, and that's significant in resisting explosives.

A.o.D. posted:

Plausible. The amount of energy stored by high water in a dam is incredible, measurable in tons of TNT, and dams are designed to contain that kind of power. Granted, high explosive energy isn't the same as an enormous mass of water, but well made dams are overbuilt, and that's significant in resisting explosives.

Wasabi the J posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5wW7pZDXxA

Found these assessments interesting.

Madurai posted:

They went to all that effort, and then used MiG-29 silhouettes on the thumbnail.

Arrath posted:

Yeah definitely plausible. By virtue of being a big monolithic hunk of concrete, dams are awfully fuckin sturdy*. 1000kg is a far cry from being enough to destroy a 50m long structure as the tweet describes. If you lay that 1000kg out along the length of the dam you get 20kg/meter which would do much but surficial cracking right in the vicinity of the charge. Piled behind a lock yeah it'll have a fair chance of dislodging the gate(s), but large scale structural failure? Naw.

*Earthen embankment dams perhaps somewhat less so, make a channel for water and let nature take its course, eventually.

orange juche posted:

Also re: "counteroffensives" you won't know it's happened until it actually pops off and there's a breach of the Russian defensive lines. The Ukrainians aren't going to commit their forces until they find the crack in the Russian lines where they can widen it into a massive breach.

Wasabi the J posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5wW7pZDXxA

Found these assessments interesting.

Arrath posted:

Yeah definitely plausible. By virtue of being a big monolithic hunk of concrete, dams are awfully fuckin sturdy*. 1000kg is a far cry from being enough to destroy a 50m long structure as the tweet describes. If you lay that 1000kg out along the length of the dam you get 20kg/meter which would do much but surficial cracking right in the vicinity of the charge. Piled behind a lock yeah it'll have a fair chance of dislodging the gate(s), but large scale structural failure? Naw.

*Earthen embankment dams perhaps somewhat less so, make a channel for water and let nature take its course, eventually.

psydude posted:

It's weird that we're still debating this, when there's been ample seismic, geospatial, and expert analysis that have been released or at least confirmed in the past day pointing to it being a deliberate act of sabotage with explosives.

orange juche posted:

how much damage would explosives do from inside the dam, through boreholes or inside internal structures of the dam? The dam may have been designed to take a direct hit from a bomb externally, even multiple armor piercing hits, but if you put it deep enough in the right place with enough boom, I think you could seriously dislodge enough of the dam for water to do its thing.

VictualSquid posted:

I assume you wouldn't lay out along the length. You would put all explosives in one place to make a small hole and let the water do the rest.
Exactly the same how a dam self destructs after you got a small hole for other reasons, like shoddy maintenance or being underbuilt.

psydude posted:

It's weird that we're still debating this, when there's been ample seismic, geospatial, and expert analysis that have been released or at least confirmed in the past day pointing to it being a deliberate act of sabotage with explosives.

PurpleXVI posted:

Once the water level normalizes, though, however long that takes, won't it ultimately mean that the area above the dam is now more easily crossed, so it really just expands how large a riverbank the Russians need to defend in earnest?

PurpleXVI posted:

Once the water level normalizes, though, however long that takes, won't it ultimately mean that the area above the dam is now more easily crossed, so it really just expands how large a riverbank the Russians need to defend in earnest?

Caconym posted:

I'd guess everything that used to be lake bed will be covered by several feet of fine silt that would make spring mud seem like concrete in comparison.

Caconym posted:

I'd guess everything that used to be lake bed will be covered by several feet of fine silt that would make spring mud seem like concrete in comparison.