New details have come out with regard to the second assassination attempt. The would-be assassin left a note at his friend's house saying that this was in fact an assassination attempt, and that he had tried and failed despite giving it his all. He also offered what amounted to a bounty to anyone who followed up and succeeded. That said, here's the weird part: he left this note at his friend's house months in advance, apparently presaging his failure.

The motive seems to have been the war in Ukraine. The would-be assassin repeatedly professed his willingness to die to defend Ukraine, and he apparently fixated on the former president's opposition to continue U.S. support for Ukraine as a key impediment.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 10:58 am: Edit

Meanwhile, on the topic of Ukraine, they managed to take out the second Toropets munitions depot over the weekend, which is some ten miles from the primary Toropets depot that Ukraine destroyed last week.

In addition, they hit the Krasnodar depot...which happens to be the one where nearly all munitions purchased from North Korea were being sent. Images of the initial explosions are nothing short of spectacular.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 11:24 am: Edit

Guys, this is getting serious.

It is no longer “inconvenient”, or a “unfortunate turn of events” in Russian war effort.

The single biggest advantage that Putin has had, that had not failed, was the Russian superiority in artillery, not just tubes, but also the sheer magnitude in the ammunition reserves that Russia started the war with compared to what Ukraine possessed.

There is now video of Russian units leaving the Donbas region and Crimea, heading North to fight any of the three advances of Ukrainian forces moving INTO Russia.

It is almost time to start considering the unthinkable.

Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons ON RUSSIAN soil.

(Capital letters used for emphasis.)

To be honest, I know using nukes on a NATO member in NATO territory would be cause to activate the treaty terms.

What I do not know, is, would NATO got to war with Russia in the case where Russia nukes itself?

Strange times indeed.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 12:49 pm: Edit

IMAO, no, we would not even seriously consider going to war because Russia nuked itself. Use of tactical nukes is a bad thing, but war is a bad thing.

We responded to unprovoked aggressive war with sanctions and weapons' shipments, we'll respond to tactical nukes on Russian soil to defend Russia from counter-attack with nothing worse than sanctions and weapon's shipments.

The real problem for Russia with nuking itself is the admission that they HAD to nuke themselves! The Russian people will not be happy with this. And North Korea and Iran are supporting Russia out of hope it will act as a counterweight to a hostile west. How good a counterweight and military ally will Russia be seen as if they have to nuke their own territory to protect it from Ukraine? How strong does Putin look if he needs to use nukes to stop Ukraine?

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 01:32 pm: Edit

As a note: Russia's allies in the "Global South" (i.e. South Africa, etc.) have made clear to Putin that they are entirely unamused by the Kremlin's nuclear saber-rattling, and that continued such efforts -- to say nothing of actual use of nuclear weapons -- may impact whether and to what degree they continue their participation in the BRICS organization.

It doesn't help Russia one bit that satellite imagery of damage at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk Oblast captured on September 21 suggests that the Russian military recently conducted an unsuccessful RS-28 "Sarmat" nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test; it created quite a crater, though it's uncertain whether an explosion occurred close to or at launch or before launch during fueling.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:30 pm: Edit

Nuking one's own country to stop an invading force is the ultimate Scorched Earth tactic.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 05:59 pm: Edit

I could see Putin using one or more nukes on Russian soil and then trying to blame it on NATO in an attempt to drum up / shore up popular support at home.

Interesting times, and definitely not in a good way.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 06:15 pm: Edit

Politics. Deleted.

Jean
WebMom

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, September 23, 2024 - 09:40 pm: Edit

Jeff... CRUNCH

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 12:02 am: Edit

If Putin wants to test the loyalty of his military he should definitely order a nuke in Kursk.
Instead of "suicide by cop", he may get "suicide by Russian Army High Command".
Less hardcore test is to order a nuke in Ukraine.
Could have the same result though.

A dictatorship like his are built on fear. Even the loyalty is built on fear. It takes just a sign of weakness to dispel that. Or pushing the loyalty a bit too far.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 01:49 am: Edit

There are rumors that Hamas leader Sinwar was killed in an Israeli air strike. Noting confirmed I can find.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 05:33 am: Edit

The rifle used in the second attempt was an SKS not an AK47. It had an after-market stock, a jerry-rigged 30 round magazine, and a homemade mount for the scope, all leading to the conclusion that he could not hit the broad side of a barn at anything over 150 meter.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 08:48 am: Edit

If russia does nuke its own territory, the fallout has to go somewhere, and Western European citizens will be very unhappy indeed if it landed on them. I consider *any* use of nukes by russia unlikely.

On an semi-related note, russia attempted to test one of its new "Satan II" MIRV delivery systems, and the fuel exploded, destroying the silo the missile was in and creating a large crater. IDK what shape the russian fleet of nuclear delivery systems is in, but I suspect it isn't good

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 10:50 am: Edit

Terry: prevailing winds would push the fallout northeast. I.e., Moscow would stand a considerable chance of being in the fallout cone.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 11:27 am: Edit

Another element brought up here before is the "Freshness" of the Russian warheads. The whole thing could fizzle into nothing more than a dirt bomb that would just irradiate a larger stretch of land than did Chernobyl.

Then again, Putin might just be psychotic enough to try to use it in the populated areas of Ukraine as HIS way of saying, "If I can't have it, then NOBODY can have it!!"

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 02:51 pm: Edit

An A-Bomb or H-Bomb without tritium is still an atomic blast, just a much smaller atomic blast. (I'm assuming that you're referring to the tritium not having been adequately replaced as why the bombs might fizzle, its the most probable failure mode due to age.)

Variable yield warheads used varying the amount of tritium as their method of changing the blast, those go down to roughly 300 tonnes of TNT equivalent (not kilotonnes, just tonnes) for no tritium at all, but a 300 ton blast is still a lot more than a reasonable conventional bomb.

The radiation from a single dirty bomb would be nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl, bombs are small, reactors are big. You need to do something like put cobolt in the bombs to deliberately increase the radiation danger to make a really dangerous dirty bomb, and the Russians have no reason to do so when they are the ones down-wind of the blasts.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 - 05:25 pm: Edit

Jessica said: Terry: prevailing winds would push the fallout northeast. I.e., Moscow would stand a considerable chance of being in the fallout cone.

Retired weather guy here: If a High pressure center builds in over German / Poland (as is currently forecast), the prevailing winds will be west-southwest into the Balkan States, Greece and Italy.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, September 25, 2024 - 12:12 am: Edit

Israel has declared a state of emergency, signalling plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon. We do know that two divisions were moved from Gaza to the Lebanese border.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, September 25, 2024 - 12:22 am: Edit

For the first time, Japanese fighters dropped flares in front of a Russian plane probing Japanese air space. The Russian plane withdrew.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, September 25, 2024 - 06:22 am: Edit

It looks like the russians had ammunition stored next to a railway line in the open air at one of the recently destroyed ammo facilities (Toropets, I think). There are photographs of it before the explosions and also of trains derailed by explosions. Given that the russians don't palletize anything and they're having manpower shortages, I wonder if they stored the stuff in the open because they didn't have enough people to move it into bunkers in a timely manner.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, September 26, 2024 - 07:46 pm: Edit

Sky news, Australia, posted a report 5 minutes ago, that a second Chinese Nuclear Submarine has sunk in the same shipyard and dock that they lost another nuclear submarine 4 months ago.

Sunk while fitting out.

What happened the last time, was the submarine was refloated, and moved to a shallow part of the harbor nearby, and after emergency repairs moved back to a drydock.

No word on any fatalities or injuries.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, September 26, 2024 - 10:40 pm: Edit

New York Post posted a video clip of an overhead shot of the emergency crews working to save the sinking sub in Wuhan shio yard.

Still no report of casualties, but the submarine was reported to be a new class, not yet in service.

The narration stated that China has not yet made a statement about the sinking.
the video is clear but not attributable to a source. (By which, I mean no news service logo, no channel affiliate data.)

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, September 27, 2024 - 02:45 am: Edit

It's an Wall Street Journal exclusive story.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Friday, September 27, 2024 - 12:50 pm: Edit

Re: the Chinese sub sinking in a way that subs are not supposed to sink: russia has reportedly formed an infantry unit out of part of the crew of its only aircraft carrier, which is out of commission. Authoritarianism seems to be resurgent as an ideology but authoritarian regimes in russia and China are severely in decline. They're still able to conduct influence operations and pump out propaganda, but find it difficult to back it up with actual military force.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, September 28, 2024 - 04:31 am: Edit

The IDF claim, on their official Twitter account, that they got Nasrallah. I surmise the leadership was forced to use less secure comms and that the IDF found him that way.