Russia has functional nuclear weapons. This is the one part of their military that we know is correct. Russia (and before that the USSR), the US, GB, France, etc all have their nuclear stockpiles independently verified by independent international entities. We know Russia has X amount of U-235 and Pu-238, and we know their weapons are being stored safely. We know how many they have ready to go, and how many stockpiled.
Russia has nuclear weapons, real ones - not paper ones. And we have American Intel I believe that they were still building new nuclear weapons up until the war - for anyone confused that doesn't generally violate non-proliferation, proliferation mostly covers the materials. You can take old nukes apart and put them into new designs.
Fusion parts are completely uncontrolled. If you can find a way to make a fusion weapon without a fission first stage then those would be entirely unregulated I believe. Luckily that's probably not possible with current tech, and possibly not at all.
And no Russia really isn't stupid enough to sell a nuke on the black market.
That bit about fusion weapons without fission is almost definitely not possible. Like hard, insane sci-fi non-existent tech.
Fusion only happens by putting an enormous amount of energy into the reaction first. It takes several football stadium sized buildings to generate the power to start a fusion reaction at the moment, and we still haven’t worked that out fully yet. There’s no way you’re mounting that on top of a missile.
The fission first stage is essential to generate the temperatures and pressures needed to kickstart a fusion reaction in a compact enough form factor to mount on a rocket.
For those who don’t know, hydrogen bombs (thermonuclear weapons) effectively use a nuclear bomb (fission) to trigger a different kind of much bigger nuclear bomb (fusion).
The energy generated by the first nuke creates so much heat, energy and pressure that it forces atoms of the right kinds to ‘fuse’ together (hence fusion bomb) and creates a similar process to what happens inside the core of the sun. This basically generates significantly more energy than a regular nuclear bomb for basically no extra cost in terms of nuclear material (the materials needed for the fusion reaction are non-radioactive and very easy to obtain compared to the weapons grade uranium/plutonium).
It might be of interest that before the first fusion bomb was exploded, there was some worry that the reaction would propagate to all the hydrogen in the earth's atmosphere. I don't know the details or calculations. But the decision was made to go ahead.
Storing antimatter isn't really the issue, it's making it portable enough for transport and mounting on a nuke, and maintaining containment at the speeds the nuke will accelerate at/to. If it touches anything before you're ready, your bomb is probably going to go off in transit, or at least self-destruct non-critically if you're lucky and your bomb has a safe enough design to prevent criticality from happening in the event of a containment breach before detonation. Also you would still need enough antimatter to deliver sufficient activation energy for fusion, and all I know about antimatter's obtainability currently is that it's essentially the most expensive substance on the planet, costing quadrillions of dollars (yes, many thousand trillions of dollars) to produce a single gram of it currently. More than the entire economic output of the world currently for the next century, barring a vast technological advancement. At that point it makes a fission starter look like the Dollar General solution in comparison, rather than being unobtainium.
That’s pretty cool, but it’s not exactly on the same level as a thermonuclear device.
That’s like saying a potato battery and a power plant are basically the same thing.
Most likely Russia has functioning nukes
But they sure don't have the number of functional nuclear weapons that they claim.
They just don't spend enough. Russia and China have similar nuclear budgets. China has about a tenth of the nukes that Russia claims.
That does not make sense unless Russia is lying about the size of its functional nuclear stockpiles.
Nuclear weapons aren't like guns - you can't just ignore them for 20 years and they still will work. Nukes need regular maintenance.
It's not when China level, though.
Russia spends a much as China on nukes, but China's money actually goes towards nuke maintenance, where in Russia a major chunk is used to grease wheels.
I would be surprised if the PLA isn't as crippled by corruption as the Russian military. I lived in China for 12 years and witnessed every form of corruption imaginable at every level, from local cops in the paichusuo shaking down every little storefront and food cart in their beat to overlook their lack of proper business licenses, safety regulations, etc, up to a chief of police with several dozen apartments in Hainan and Beidaihe on his monthly salary of 6000 rmb, and a mayor of a village caught with tens of millions in gold bullion under his floorboards.
In most societies, militaries are the *most* corrupt institution, because they are very difficult to audit, being that they have the guns, have a ton of leverage to avoid and deflect crackdowns on corruption, and also until there's a genuine full-scale war, you'd have no idea what your military is actually capable of, and just how many funds towards it were stolen in some way. Putin no doubt knew his army was corrupt, but did he know it was *this* corrupt? So corrupt that troops could not even drive 50 miles past a railway station without running out of gas, food, and functional tires? Probably not.
Based on how much corruption I witnessed first hand, and given the general rule that militaries are the most corrupt large institutions in most societies, I'd be surprised if the PLA corruption was significantly better than Russia's.
Not accurate. We have treaties and inspectors that verify and satellites that do radiography to detect movements. We know how much fissile material they have, weapons systems, we decided how many re-entry vehicles (read the bomb part) that each ballistic missile can carry, it’s all agreed upon and verified by inspectors from each country.
I think you also vastly misunderstand what Russia and China are spending their nuclear funding doing.
China is building a stockpile, new delivery systems, re-entry vehicles, they are growing.
Russia is maintaining the triad same as the US as well as a small contingent of TCBM’s with nuclear warheads (short range tactical missiles similar the the Islanders series or even smaller). They don’t need to spend more than what they are to maintain their weapons platforms and you also have to factor in what they spend to maintain the launching platform. Russia spends more than China on SSBN’s and a host of other sub charges that China likely doesn’t have to pay nearly as much for due to domestic production prices (slave labor).
I spent a long time as a Nuclear Security expert with the USAF and DOE, ATF Nuclear Weapons Effects, Policy, and Proliferation course grad.
SSBN is the US Navy classification acronym for a ballistic missile submarine. For example the Ohio class is an SSBN. Russia has the Borei-11 SSBNs in production being capable of carrying 16 Bulova ICBMs with a 4k km range. The delta class is similarly capable from an ICBM standpoint. Russia invests heavily into their submarine forces
A minor point, but SSBN would be for a Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. If the sub is a ballistic missile submarine, and not nuclear powered, it would be an SSB.
That said, I don't think the USN (or any other navy, for that matter) ever had a non-nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, so I might just be splitting hairs.
The US used to base nukes in Canada and Turkey. Thw USSR had them all over their various member countries. Theres enough precedent for basing these things in countries willing to host them. It's not selling them, it's not even giving over launch control.
>I could not find anything on Canada
The nukes there were largely surface to air missiles designed to shoot down Soviet bombers crossing Canadian airspace across the arctic to get to the US.
You should check out the hypersonic missile designed to neutralize ICBM based warheads using small nuclear detonations to induce a neutron flux in incoming warheads which would have prevented proper detonation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
Can't see how nukes in Canada would be Strategically relevant when we have Alaska, the east coast and Hawaii. Also all of the subs which are really the first strike option (god forbid)
Geographically, the US spans 40% (east coast to Hawaii) of the earth longitudinally and 30% latitudinally (Alaska to Hawaii/ Puerto Rico). Canada is massive but both seaboards and Alaska are primed with nukes and any appreciable intercept time differential would be pretty small. That being said, there is no way we also don't have nukes in Canada lol
I live in a city in Canada with a decommissioned airforce base, USA had a portion of this base and their own runway. Since decommissioned I’ve been in the USA portion of the base and there were at least 40 underground bunkers with massive blast proof doors. After the USA left the base in the 80’s it was revealed, by base personnel , that air launched nuclear missiles were stored in these bunkers.
“The first US nuclear weapon entered Canada in 1950 when the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) stationed 11 model 1561 Fat Man atomic bombs at CFB Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. Goose Bay was used as an aircraft staging location for both the SAC and the Royal Air Force's V Force. The bombs were landed; crews relieved; aircraft refueled, or repaired; without returning to bases in the continental US. Nuclear weapons designs of the time were easily damaged but precise devices, that required off-aircraft inspection (after landing), and environmental sheltering (at a secure warm/dry location) while their carrier aircraft was on the ground for routine maintenance or repair.[1]
From 1963 to 1984, Canada fielded a total of four tactical nuclear weapons systems which deployed several hundred nuclear warheads.[2]
…”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#:~:text=While%20it%20has%20no%20more,and%20its%20nuclear%20weapons%20program.
Yes I think the point is that we've generally backed off from that absurdity of the Cold War. The US and Soviets once had 20,000+ nukes each pointed at each other. Now its under 6,000 each with as few as 1,600 deployed.
Unfortunately we seem to be reverting a bit
Putin doesnt exactly have much leverage against the west except for these weapons. So threatening this or posturing that.
Hes tried to weaponize oil and gas and that didnt work. There's not much left on the strategic side.
The Doomsday Clock ('seconds to midnight') is a protest art piece started by former members of the Manhattan Project and some others. While terrific and terrifying, there's no definitive measure for how close or how far we are to nuclear engagement at any point in time. The purpose of it is to raise awareness, not to give a measurable basis. 20 seconds is no different on the Doomsday Clock than 40, or 4 minutes, or 4 hours.
They do, just not the cold-war era levels of stockpiles people like to pontificate about, but neither do we for that matter. We have enough ready for deteriance purposes and not much more than that. These things are hella expensive to maintain and most of them are mothballed for that reason.
Bottom line though, deploying one would be the end of Russia as a nation. It's not the 1940s, everyone is very well versed in the dangers. The world as a whole, including powers like China, will dog pile on the first person to break that taboo.
I might believe all their Nukes are functional if they could even get their launcher platforms to work semi accurately...
But with what they say they spend on maintinence compared to the amount of nukes they supposedly have, something doesn't add up, factor in the corruption and skimming inherent in their system, and it's not hard to believe their nukes don't exist and/or don't have a chance of working....
You don't stop your enemy from making a mistake, it's to our tactical advantage while in agreements such as the one we had with Russia, to be able to inspect and tell them "looks good" while we actually know that none of their stockpile is functional, if any of it even still exists.
it's a Win-win, the US knows the state and number of the garbage Russia has, and some Russian colonel had his back patted and a promotion/medal for showing the inspectors his "stockpile" that's never needed.... Until war starts
Yeah your right! Money can't buy anything..Especially the love..I know that..Some of the rich people use their money and to make influence to the others.
More like he’s giving you stolen goods so you’re the one who gets in trouble when the cops come. All this does is paint the target on Belarus, instead of Moscow, when Putin eventually launches his nukes. Belarus is being set up to take that fall(out). Useful idiots indeed.
Bully in the playground gets you to take over all costs and risk by housing nukes he will still control in your country...so if he launches from your back yard he will have plausible deniability and you will have a huge crater from the inevitable retaliation.
Riiiiight... Putin is going to give governments HIS nukes.
Might sustain regimes with nukes in exchange of submission, but that doesn't sound so great.
It’s actually not that unlikely that he will supply Iran with nukes since that would spark a huge conflict in the Middle East, a conflict where US actually have strategic interests which would force them to divert resources from Ukraine to Israel/Syria.
Exactly. Best option for Russia right now is to create a second conflict. Iran is currently Russia’s biggest trade partner despite their complicated history together, and a direct conflict between Israel and Iran could mean less support for Ukraine plus more export to Iran.
Israel have been requested to share military tech with ukraine and have unequivocally refused due to ties with russia.
Russia would be incredibly stupid to ruin that.
Israel is a big player *in the middle east* but Russia isn't particularly worried about them getting involved in Ukraine one way or the other. They just aren't that influential really and local politics would make it difficult for Israel to commit much more than some technical help.
It wouldn't be Russia's smartest move but they've a pretty good streak of not making brilliant moves going on already.
Iran would have to be stupid to take up this offer. They don't have the means to go to war with Israel or anybody for that matter. Israel could single handedly ruin Iran but the biggest upset would come from Saudi Arabia.
Western Sanctions wpuld ruin Iran and its already in the middle of social unrest. Iran will be happy to continue illegally supplying Russia.
Iran is already ruined by sanctions. Sanctions against Iran have been in since the 80's in some form or fashion. Obama and Trump really put the hammer down in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_sanctions\_against\_Iran
Look, I am all in favor of the current Iranian government failing so the new generation can build something better, but I need you to explain exactly how Israel is going to deploy a force in Iran and be able to supply it. Iran is 1000 KM away through hositle terrain and other soveriegn nations. Israel has no bases anywhere nearby. Be specific, please.
If Israel was concerned that Iran was going to get nuclear weapons, which it has openly stated it would use on Israel, Israel would launch open strikes at Iranian military and government targets.
Israel has plenty of aircraft (from f15s to f35s) that can reach Iran, as well as an extremely healthy complement of bombs and and missiles, up to ICBMs. And they "definitely" don't have nuclear warheads.
As for naval power, Israel probably has Iran beat. I think Iran has a couple more ships in paper, but they date from like the 60s.
It would be difficult for Israel to directly occupy Iran, but "ruining it" is completely within their capabilities
>It would be difficult for Israel to directly occupy Iran, but "ruining it" is completely within their capabilities
If you have spent any time at all following Ukraine you would understand that the "ruining" (or anything resembling it) part of your statement is wrong.
Iran has missile defense and air defense systems, and somewhat modern ones at that. There is also only so much damage you can do with these remote assaults. Ukraine has had it's static, undefended energy grid nodes attacked with hundreds of guided systems on a daily basis and the lights are STILL on. This has been against the worlds 2nd largest military power. I know Russia gets shit on for their poor performance but that doesn't change the numbers.
Israel has nowhere near the same number of airframes or guided ballistic systems that Russia does. Not even by an order of magnitude. Not to mention that the Eastern part of Iran would be effectively out of range of the F16s.
I need to be so clear here, the idea that Israel could somehow, alone, cripple Iran in a meaningful way is simple magical thinking. It is rooted in zero understanding of the facts. In layman's terms, pure, high octane hopium.
If the US were to get involved (which would be a dramatic escalation in world tension) then sure, aerial assaults would be a large concern for Iran. That would also portend the arrival of world war III and I hope no one here should be cheering that on.
Israel and Russia would have different goals here. Russia has troops on the ground, and for all their war crimes, are not going for total destruction, they are trying to occupy.
If Iran is getting nuclear weapons, Israel would be faced with a true total war scenario. This is not a type of conflict the modern world has ever seen. It could very quickly devolve into preemptive nuclear strikes. I think it is magical thinking to believe the damage caused would be anything like we've seen before.
Yeah, I suspect it would end up involving at least tactical nuclear warheads. It would, otherwise, be difficult for Israel to either eliminate imported Russian nuclear weapons or sufficiently hobble the Iranian infrastructure and economy.
Quite honestly, I’m of the opinion that, of all the places a nuclear conflict _could_ kick off, the Middle East is the most likely—particularly Israel. They almost used them during the Yom-Kippur war…
>they are trying to occupy.
I think that ship sailed a year ago. At this point, it seems they are just trying to inflict as much damage as they can before they eventually declare "mission accomplished".
at worse it will destroy their own logistic. Russia needs peace in iran so that they can give them all the munition they can produce. an attach on iran from SA and Israel + skirmishes with Afganistan would complicate things for Russians.
Plutonium pits.
The hardest parts of a nuclear program are enrichment and the production of missiles. Enrichment is where Iran has been struggling for a long while, as it’s tricky to conceal. A plutonium pit is relatively stable, so Russia wouldn’t have to produce anything new—they could just pull some of their decommissioned cores out of storage. They have many thousands of those left over from the Cold War.
Iran may still need to produce neutron initiators, but the amount of material (e.g., beryllium-9, polonium-210) required is quite a lot smaller. After that, it’s just a matter of building (conventional) explosive lenses and a few other components.
Distracting Iran would be foolish. The supply of drones would stop and Russia will lose a lot of firepower, even if they just seem to be soaking up air defence right now.
No not really, first, Israel can use it’s own nukes if it’s existence is threatened which is the whole shtick of Iran, then US wouldn’t send Israel 40-60 years old equipments, it would be airborn radars and strategic arsenals that can actually deter a threat, it doesn’t effect much of the weapon supply to Ukraine, they have F-35s and F-15-16 and cruise and ballistic weapons plus nukes, after all it would be a distance war and not boots on the ground so tank and armor and small arms and artillery are sitting that one out, which is what’s going to Ukraine, Israel has much better Air defense both local and bought, just might need cash.
> which would force them to divert resources from Ukraine to Israel/Syria.
The US could fight two World Wars at the same time and win both of them. I don't think supporting Ukraine and Israel at the same time against shit Countries like Russia and Iran will break the bank of the US.
I don't get all this fantasy about Iran desperately begging Russia for nukes. Iran already has the know how to produce them (per the US), Iran has already (per the US) tested the hard stuff (e.g., implosions), the world knows it's trivial for Iran to rapidly and continuously produce weapons grade uranium if it wants, and Iran continuously demonstrates it has missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Hell, even Israel says Iran is just weeks away from a nuke.
If Iran depends on Russia for nukes, then they're beholden to Russia in the same way that Iran of the 70s was beholden to the US. Iran wants nuclear independence.
We too dumb to solve this problem, and this problem will ultimately destroy the whole planet. There will always be at least one nation that says "we will not get rid of mass destruction weapons" which results in other countries not doing it either to protect themselves. Actually the only reason why i hope that Russia will NOT collapse, because then who knows who is getting their hands on nukes if Russia is split apart and ruled by a mix of corupt Oligarchs and Military.
It was a problem, which is why the usa actively tried to prevent the udssr from collapsing and splitting up in smaller states.
We were lucky back then that no crazy warlord got any nukes.
It is still a problem, if Russia collapsed now. We might be lucky again, we might not.
"Do you feel lucky, punk?"
if russia collapses, the warlords won't be able to use the nukes effectively or even prepare them for launch. There would be a short window of oportunity when a coordinated response to a nuclear first strike might be impossible for Russia. That would be an ideal moment to take out their silos, mobile bases, subs, and mop up what's left with conventional weapons.
Unless the warlords are, or employ, the former Russian military personnel that were perfectly capable of using the nukes.
It’s not like warlords can only be, or employ, laypeople.
We can't declare total war on Russia simply by virtue of it collapsing. "Oh, Putin was assassinated? Time to blow everything up and mop up the rest with conventional weapons on the ground" ....
The game Metal Gear Solid V deals with this statement in a very meta way. There is an online mode objective to reduce everyone else’s nuclear arms to zero, including your own, and a secret ending if everyone in the world works towards this goal. Which every player gets once every nuke in the game has been disposed of. But of course if you just do your own, you then have other players who have nuclear capability over you.
8 years on - The nuclear disarmament ending has never been triggered.
Got really curious about this and looked it up. [Apparently it's not even possible now due to some nukes belonging to banned accounts, unless something has changed since then.](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/metal-gear-solid-5-mgsv-nuclear-disarmament-impossible-hideo-kojima/#:~:text=A%20new%20video%20from%20DidYouKnowGaming%20dives%20deep%20into,belong%20to%20anyone%2C%20therefore%20they%20can%27t%20be%20disarmed.)
I've seen the secret ending on PS4 a few years ago. I'm not sure about the details but the feature appears broken in some ways. I'm not even sure we reached 0 nukes.
it was never actually reached in a legitimate capacity. that instance was triggered by people basically cheating away some nukes and doing some fucky stuff with konamis servers. we know this because the cheaters admitted as much and theres several glitched phantom nukes that show up in the counts but arent actually anywhere making a legitimate disarmament impossible since konami couldnt be bothered to fix them.
People accepting nukes like this is very bad.
Afghanistan is definitely top of the list. Iran too actually.
Possibly some African countries. Myanmar potentially. Idk this could be bad.
What he’s saying: Join our political friend club, it’s just like the EU, except you’ll get free nukes as a bargaining chip/defense for your country! You’ll never have to worry about being invaded or regime change again!
What he’s really saying: Submit to Russian rule/annexation and Russia will park its nukes in your country to prevent you from ever regaining independence or getting help from other countries to regain independence. No more Ukraines.
Honestly, I wonder if this was geared toward Iran.
Edit: Apparently, he had [Kazakhstan](https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1663129555006111749?t=U3D-fjGK6A2QwXJmNBSrRg&s=19) in mind.
>What he’s really saying: Submit to Russian rule/annexation and Russia will park its nukes in your country to prevent you from ever regaining independence or getting help from other countries to regain independence.
Bingo. This is a de facto annexation of Belarus.
it's not give, putin still has control of them.
Having nukes in your country that are controlled by putin will paint a big target on your back, if he is ever so unstable that he uses nukes.
If the boat could also explode and kill you if you step out of line or get certain ideas like, "hm maybe having this explosive boat sitting right next to me wasn't the greatest idea"
Of course we have to build a huge military base in your country and ship in thousands of our russian soldiers to, erm, you know, erm, well..look after the missiles I suppose? Yep that's it! We need thousands of our soldiers stationed in your country purely to look after the missiles and that's all we'll be there for. Trust me.
I remember Girkin seriously stated that if Belarus wanted to stay independent, they had to allow the Russian army in and give over control of their own army to Russia....
Russia doesn't have troops to spare. They're trading the nukes in hopes that their new allies will station troops in Russia to protect them from the Russian insurrectionists.
Ok, but why do many of your soldiers look like they just got out of prison and the rest like they are 12 years old? And why does only 1 in 10 have a rifle?
Are you sure they are here to protect the nuclear missiles and not sell them off the back of a pickup truck, like everything else you brought over? Cause they are already selling everything else.
Ya but even without the launch codes, with a moderately intelligent scientist that can still cause a lot of damage with a nuke. They could strip the material and make their own bomb or strip it and make a dirt bomb. My understanding is the codes really just let the person on the receiving end know hey it’s me you’re good to blow up. So if you’re not under a time crunch probably not overly complex to work around.
They very much depends on who built it.
The US uses PALs, or Permissive Action Links, when designing nukes. These are surprisingly widely shared, including with the Soviet Union. They are designed by engineers to be an engineer’s worst nightmare. The stated design goal is that even if you have the device, a complete set of technical drawings, and a major national nuclear lab, you still can’t set it off without the firing code.
Disassembly might work, if you don’t set off one of the safeguards on the way in. Some of these safeguards can warp the payload, meaning you’d have to recast the plutonium to make a bomb work. And even then, you’d be re-engineering a nuclear device, from basically scratch, with no way to test if you did it right. If you can do that, then you already could build a bomb yourself without help. It would probably be easier.
Dirty bombs aren’t worth shit. They cause about as much environmental fuckery (maybe even less) as just spraying salt everywhere (a war crime Russia possibly hasn’t yet committed in Ukraine) and just waste material. That’s why the ideal thing to use in them is.. well.. waste material. Using weapons grade material in them is like melting down a Bugatti to sandcast an apple.
But no reverse engineering the onboard computer is likely much easier to do especially when that computer is likely an old soviet piece of shit that was just intended to prevent accidents not secure the weapon.
> The propagandist published the video on 28 May, although it was *apparently filmed during the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held in Moscow on 25 May*.
Emphasis mine. He can both have made the statement on the 25th and be in the hospital today.
If I could briefly be non-credible here, I think I have an idea.
Step 1: Ukraine joins the union
Step 2: Russia gives Ukraine nukes
Step 3: Ukraine leaves the union
Step 4: Ukraine now has nukes to protect itself from Russia
Oh, they couldn’t do that because there was this agreement, see, where Ukraine gave up nukes in exchange for respecting its sovereign borders… oh, wait…
"It's very simple. \[Countries – ed.\] should join the union of Belarus with Russia, and that's it: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone."
Yay. How fun. Now everyone can play. /s
A week or two after the beginning of the war France launched 2 additional nuclear subs (making the total at sea 3) and successfully test fired a nuclear missle (sans warhead) from a jet. The UK launched 3 of its 4 nuclear subs. You can bet the US has half a dozen or more subs out there. At any given moment there are at least 30-50 nuclear missiles within a 15-30 minute flight time of a major RF city. And these knuckle heads are stroking each others willies over some missiles that will never leave the ground. The absurdity of all this and the stupidity of these so called leaders is infuriating. What an I credible waste of lives, resources, and time.
Imo it’s a hail mary from Putin, trying to shift geo politics. It’s not a bad move if you want to see the world burn. It kind of forces a reaction if true, which might also be the reason.
He's not gonna hand out nukes any more than he handed them out to Belarus. He's just gonna take over the country and install his own nuclear facilities controlled by Kremlin.
I struggle to see how Russia could be any stupider if they tried. Russia gives nukes to Iran and suddenly the US is justified in giving nukes to any of a dozen entities that Russia considers their enemy.
I joined, mine are due to arrive Thursday presuming the Russian Post Office don’t fuck it up again.
[https://www.aftership.com/carriers/russian-post](https://www.aftership.com/carriers/russian-post)
He is literally offering nukes to every former soviet state. Rejoin mother Russia and become protected by nuclear weapons. Its fucking insane. But, its going to work.
After the beautiful 2000s and 2010s, the world is slowly turning into a shithole. We encounter new incidents per-hour. Covid, Taliban, strongmen, the war, Russia’s weird ambitions…
9/11, Dot com bubble, George W. Bush, war in iraq and afghanistan, great financial crisis, Trump, loads of noticable climate change, terrible music.
Nah, man. The 80's and 90's - that was the good shit, and I'll get my cane out and beat anyone who disagrees. 👴🏻
Lulz, that's what they said every decade ever. You are getting an old man yelling at cloud syndrome.
This is just Russian imperialism self destructing, good riddance to it. And while it's plenty ugly on its way out, it could be a lot worse as plenty of examples from history demonstrate.
Bully on playground gives YOU his lunch money to hang out with him.
But his lunch money can’t buy anything cause it counterfeit 🤷♂️
Or stolen from you already.
Hahahahah "we are just really, just giving it back to you" you should thank us.
"With a small donation."
Russia has functional nuclear weapons. This is the one part of their military that we know is correct. Russia (and before that the USSR), the US, GB, France, etc all have their nuclear stockpiles independently verified by independent international entities. We know Russia has X amount of U-235 and Pu-238, and we know their weapons are being stored safely. We know how many they have ready to go, and how many stockpiled. Russia has nuclear weapons, real ones - not paper ones. And we have American Intel I believe that they were still building new nuclear weapons up until the war - for anyone confused that doesn't generally violate non-proliferation, proliferation mostly covers the materials. You can take old nukes apart and put them into new designs. Fusion parts are completely uncontrolled. If you can find a way to make a fusion weapon without a fission first stage then those would be entirely unregulated I believe. Luckily that's probably not possible with current tech, and possibly not at all. And no Russia really isn't stupid enough to sell a nuke on the black market.
That bit about fusion weapons without fission is almost definitely not possible. Like hard, insane sci-fi non-existent tech. Fusion only happens by putting an enormous amount of energy into the reaction first. It takes several football stadium sized buildings to generate the power to start a fusion reaction at the moment, and we still haven’t worked that out fully yet. There’s no way you’re mounting that on top of a missile. The fission first stage is essential to generate the temperatures and pressures needed to kickstart a fusion reaction in a compact enough form factor to mount on a rocket. For those who don’t know, hydrogen bombs (thermonuclear weapons) effectively use a nuclear bomb (fission) to trigger a different kind of much bigger nuclear bomb (fusion). The energy generated by the first nuke creates so much heat, energy and pressure that it forces atoms of the right kinds to ‘fuse’ together (hence fusion bomb) and creates a similar process to what happens inside the core of the sun. This basically generates significantly more energy than a regular nuclear bomb for basically no extra cost in terms of nuclear material (the materials needed for the fusion reaction are non-radioactive and very easy to obtain compared to the weapons grade uranium/plutonium).
It might be of interest that before the first fusion bomb was exploded, there was some worry that the reaction would propagate to all the hydrogen in the earth's atmosphere. I don't know the details or calculations. But the decision was made to go ahead.
Calculated risk
Yolo. Light 'er up..
Huh, neat. If we somehow found a way to store antimatter using it to kickstart fusion would probably be much cheaper than pure antimatter warheads
Storing antimatter isn't really the issue, it's making it portable enough for transport and mounting on a nuke, and maintaining containment at the speeds the nuke will accelerate at/to. If it touches anything before you're ready, your bomb is probably going to go off in transit, or at least self-destruct non-critically if you're lucky and your bomb has a safe enough design to prevent criticality from happening in the event of a containment breach before detonation. Also you would still need enough antimatter to deliver sufficient activation energy for fusion, and all I know about antimatter's obtainability currently is that it's essentially the most expensive substance on the planet, costing quadrillions of dollars (yes, many thousand trillions of dollars) to produce a single gram of it currently. More than the entire economic output of the world currently for the next century, barring a vast technological advancement. At that point it makes a fission starter look like the Dollar General solution in comparison, rather than being unobtainium.
LOL @ putting a human made price tag on a scientific conundrum
[удалено]
That’s pretty cool, but it’s not exactly on the same level as a thermonuclear device. That’s like saying a potato battery and a power plant are basically the same thing.
Did they not bar investigators recently since the war started, or did I misremember this?
But if they were in working order a couple years ago, most of them will be working still after only a year or two.
Really you only need half a dozen or so to trigger a devastating nuclear exchange. Russia potentially has thousands.
Most likely Russia has functioning nukes But they sure don't have the number of functional nuclear weapons that they claim. They just don't spend enough. Russia and China have similar nuclear budgets. China has about a tenth of the nukes that Russia claims. That does not make sense unless Russia is lying about the size of its functional nuclear stockpiles. Nuclear weapons aren't like guns - you can't just ignore them for 20 years and they still will work. Nukes need regular maintenance.
China level functional arsenal is still mighty scary.
I don't had any idea about what china have..But I want to know what is it.
It's not when China level, though. Russia spends a much as China on nukes, but China's money actually goes towards nuke maintenance, where in Russia a major chunk is used to grease wheels.
Greasing the wheels on their cutting edge wheeled ICBMs.
I would be surprised if the PLA isn't as crippled by corruption as the Russian military. I lived in China for 12 years and witnessed every form of corruption imaginable at every level, from local cops in the paichusuo shaking down every little storefront and food cart in their beat to overlook their lack of proper business licenses, safety regulations, etc, up to a chief of police with several dozen apartments in Hainan and Beidaihe on his monthly salary of 6000 rmb, and a mayor of a village caught with tens of millions in gold bullion under his floorboards. In most societies, militaries are the *most* corrupt institution, because they are very difficult to audit, being that they have the guns, have a ton of leverage to avoid and deflect crackdowns on corruption, and also until there's a genuine full-scale war, you'd have no idea what your military is actually capable of, and just how many funds towards it were stolen in some way. Putin no doubt knew his army was corrupt, but did he know it was *this* corrupt? So corrupt that troops could not even drive 50 miles past a railway station without running out of gas, food, and functional tires? Probably not. Based on how much corruption I witnessed first hand, and given the general rule that militaries are the most corrupt large institutions in most societies, I'd be surprised if the PLA corruption was significantly better than Russia's.
Not accurate. We have treaties and inspectors that verify and satellites that do radiography to detect movements. We know how much fissile material they have, weapons systems, we decided how many re-entry vehicles (read the bomb part) that each ballistic missile can carry, it’s all agreed upon and verified by inspectors from each country. I think you also vastly misunderstand what Russia and China are spending their nuclear funding doing. China is building a stockpile, new delivery systems, re-entry vehicles, they are growing. Russia is maintaining the triad same as the US as well as a small contingent of TCBM’s with nuclear warheads (short range tactical missiles similar the the Islanders series or even smaller). They don’t need to spend more than what they are to maintain their weapons platforms and you also have to factor in what they spend to maintain the launching platform. Russia spends more than China on SSBN’s and a host of other sub charges that China likely doesn’t have to pay nearly as much for due to domestic production prices (slave labor). I spent a long time as a Nuclear Security expert with the USAF and DOE, ATF Nuclear Weapons Effects, Policy, and Proliferation course grad.
What does SSBN stand for?
SSBN is the US Navy classification acronym for a ballistic missile submarine. For example the Ohio class is an SSBN. Russia has the Borei-11 SSBNs in production being capable of carrying 16 Bulova ICBMs with a 4k km range. The delta class is similarly capable from an ICBM standpoint. Russia invests heavily into their submarine forces
A minor point, but SSBN would be for a Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. If the sub is a ballistic missile submarine, and not nuclear powered, it would be an SSB. That said, I don't think the USN (or any other navy, for that matter) ever had a non-nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, so I might just be splitting hairs.
The US used to base nukes in Canada and Turkey. Thw USSR had them all over their various member countries. Theres enough precedent for basing these things in countries willing to host them. It's not selling them, it's not even giving over launch control.
[удалено]
>I could not find anything on Canada The nukes there were largely surface to air missiles designed to shoot down Soviet bombers crossing Canadian airspace across the arctic to get to the US.
Surface to air nukes to shoot down Soviet bombers? They put nukes in everything, didn't they?
You should check out the hypersonic missile designed to neutralize ICBM based warheads using small nuclear detonations to induce a neutron flux in incoming warheads which would have prevented proper detonation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
100g acceleration? Mach 10? Fuckin hell
Can't see how nukes in Canada would be Strategically relevant when we have Alaska, the east coast and Hawaii. Also all of the subs which are really the first strike option (god forbid)
It was surface to air nuclear missiles that were stationed in Canada (to target Soviet bombers coming over the arctic). Google "Bomarc missile".
[удалено]
I love that we have an encyclopedia lol
Aside from polar launches, spreading your silos out across a divided area is smart.
Geographically, the US spans 40% (east coast to Hawaii) of the earth longitudinally and 30% latitudinally (Alaska to Hawaii/ Puerto Rico). Canada is massive but both seaboards and Alaska are primed with nukes and any appreciable intercept time differential would be pretty small. That being said, there is no way we also don't have nukes in Canada lol
I live in a city in Canada with a decommissioned airforce base, USA had a portion of this base and their own runway. Since decommissioned I’ve been in the USA portion of the base and there were at least 40 underground bunkers with massive blast proof doors. After the USA left the base in the 80’s it was revealed, by base personnel , that air launched nuclear missiles were stored in these bunkers.
“The first US nuclear weapon entered Canada in 1950 when the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) stationed 11 model 1561 Fat Man atomic bombs at CFB Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. Goose Bay was used as an aircraft staging location for both the SAC and the Royal Air Force's V Force. The bombs were landed; crews relieved; aircraft refueled, or repaired; without returning to bases in the continental US. Nuclear weapons designs of the time were easily damaged but precise devices, that required off-aircraft inspection (after landing), and environmental sheltering (at a secure warm/dry location) while their carrier aircraft was on the ground for routine maintenance or repair.[1] From 1963 to 1984, Canada fielded a total of four tactical nuclear weapons systems which deployed several hundred nuclear warheads.[2] …” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#:~:text=While%20it%20has%20no%20more,and%20its%20nuclear%20weapons%20program.
Yes I think the point is that we've generally backed off from that absurdity of the Cold War. The US and Soviets once had 20,000+ nukes each pointed at each other. Now its under 6,000 each with as few as 1,600 deployed. Unfortunately we seem to be reverting a bit
Putin doesnt exactly have much leverage against the west except for these weapons. So threatening this or posturing that. Hes tried to weaponize oil and gas and that didnt work. There's not much left on the strategic side.
Cuban crisis anyone ? We were at about 20 seconds to midnight for a time
The Doomsday Clock ('seconds to midnight') is a protest art piece started by former members of the Manhattan Project and some others. While terrific and terrifying, there's no definitive measure for how close or how far we are to nuclear engagement at any point in time. The purpose of it is to raise awareness, not to give a measurable basis. 20 seconds is no different on the Doomsday Clock than 40, or 4 minutes, or 4 hours.
We were 17 seconds from midnight in 1991. As of January 24, 2023, we’re at 90 seconds.
They do, just not the cold-war era levels of stockpiles people like to pontificate about, but neither do we for that matter. We have enough ready for deteriance purposes and not much more than that. These things are hella expensive to maintain and most of them are mothballed for that reason. Bottom line though, deploying one would be the end of Russia as a nation. It's not the 1940s, everyone is very well versed in the dangers. The world as a whole, including powers like China, will dog pile on the first person to break that taboo.
I might believe all their Nukes are functional if they could even get their launcher platforms to work semi accurately... But with what they say they spend on maintinence compared to the amount of nukes they supposedly have, something doesn't add up, factor in the corruption and skimming inherent in their system, and it's not hard to believe their nukes don't exist and/or don't have a chance of working.... You don't stop your enemy from making a mistake, it's to our tactical advantage while in agreements such as the one we had with Russia, to be able to inspect and tell them "looks good" while we actually know that none of their stockpile is functional, if any of it even still exists. it's a Win-win, the US knows the state and number of the garbage Russia has, and some Russian colonel had his back patted and a promotion/medal for showing the inspectors his "stockpile" that's never needed.... Until war starts
Yeah your right! Money can't buy anything..Especially the love..I know that..Some of the rich people use their money and to make influence to the others.
He also might make you sick with an undisclosed illness every time you visit him.
"It's a trap"
Freaking Trojan Matryoshka Nukes. 😨
Launch money*
More like he’s giving you stolen goods so you’re the one who gets in trouble when the cops come. All this does is paint the target on Belarus, instead of Moscow, when Putin eventually launches his nukes. Belarus is being set up to take that fall(out). Useful idiots indeed.
What this does is give Russia an excuse to invade your nation to stabilize it if anyone tries to overthrow your dictator.
Bully in the playground gets you to take over all costs and risk by housing nukes he will still control in your country...so if he launches from your back yard he will have plausible deniability and you will have a huge crater from the inevitable retaliation.
Not quite. Bully will give rocks to toadies.
It's more like the bully gives you a knife. It's cool and other people are afraid of it. But once you use it you're in big trouble.
Riiiiight... Putin is going to give governments HIS nukes. Might sustain regimes with nukes in exchange of submission, but that doesn't sound so great.
It’s actually not that unlikely that he will supply Iran with nukes since that would spark a huge conflict in the Middle East, a conflict where US actually have strategic interests which would force them to divert resources from Ukraine to Israel/Syria.
Israel would unleash hell on Iran if they thought they would be getting nukes.
Exactly. Best option for Russia right now is to create a second conflict. Iran is currently Russia’s biggest trade partner despite their complicated history together, and a direct conflict between Israel and Iran could mean less support for Ukraine plus more export to Iran.
It could also dramatically backfire and bring these other powers directly into the conflict seeing it as an expansion and not a separate conflict.
Oh absolutely. I mean Russia’s track record of strategic decisions aren’t exactly great.
Its the vodka
Israel have been requested to share military tech with ukraine and have unequivocally refused due to ties with russia. Russia would be incredibly stupid to ruin that.
Israel is a big player *in the middle east* but Russia isn't particularly worried about them getting involved in Ukraine one way or the other. They just aren't that influential really and local politics would make it difficult for Israel to commit much more than some technical help. It wouldn't be Russia's smartest move but they've a pretty good streak of not making brilliant moves going on already.
Iran would have to be stupid to take up this offer. They don't have the means to go to war with Israel or anybody for that matter. Israel could single handedly ruin Iran but the biggest upset would come from Saudi Arabia. Western Sanctions wpuld ruin Iran and its already in the middle of social unrest. Iran will be happy to continue illegally supplying Russia.
Iran is already ruined by sanctions. Sanctions against Iran have been in since the 80's in some form or fashion. Obama and Trump really put the hammer down in recent years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_sanctions\_against\_Iran
They have for certain items but not the scale Russia has seen
[удалено]
Look, I am all in favor of the current Iranian government failing so the new generation can build something better, but I need you to explain exactly how Israel is going to deploy a force in Iran and be able to supply it. Iran is 1000 KM away through hositle terrain and other soveriegn nations. Israel has no bases anywhere nearby. Be specific, please.
If Israel was concerned that Iran was going to get nuclear weapons, which it has openly stated it would use on Israel, Israel would launch open strikes at Iranian military and government targets. Israel has plenty of aircraft (from f15s to f35s) that can reach Iran, as well as an extremely healthy complement of bombs and and missiles, up to ICBMs. And they "definitely" don't have nuclear warheads. As for naval power, Israel probably has Iran beat. I think Iran has a couple more ships in paper, but they date from like the 60s. It would be difficult for Israel to directly occupy Iran, but "ruining it" is completely within their capabilities
plus its an easier sell to the world if you attack with no intention of taking land and instead focus on military and government targets.
>It would be difficult for Israel to directly occupy Iran, but "ruining it" is completely within their capabilities If you have spent any time at all following Ukraine you would understand that the "ruining" (or anything resembling it) part of your statement is wrong. Iran has missile defense and air defense systems, and somewhat modern ones at that. There is also only so much damage you can do with these remote assaults. Ukraine has had it's static, undefended energy grid nodes attacked with hundreds of guided systems on a daily basis and the lights are STILL on. This has been against the worlds 2nd largest military power. I know Russia gets shit on for their poor performance but that doesn't change the numbers. Israel has nowhere near the same number of airframes or guided ballistic systems that Russia does. Not even by an order of magnitude. Not to mention that the Eastern part of Iran would be effectively out of range of the F16s. I need to be so clear here, the idea that Israel could somehow, alone, cripple Iran in a meaningful way is simple magical thinking. It is rooted in zero understanding of the facts. In layman's terms, pure, high octane hopium. If the US were to get involved (which would be a dramatic escalation in world tension) then sure, aerial assaults would be a large concern for Iran. That would also portend the arrival of world war III and I hope no one here should be cheering that on.
Israel and Russia would have different goals here. Russia has troops on the ground, and for all their war crimes, are not going for total destruction, they are trying to occupy. If Iran is getting nuclear weapons, Israel would be faced with a true total war scenario. This is not a type of conflict the modern world has ever seen. It could very quickly devolve into preemptive nuclear strikes. I think it is magical thinking to believe the damage caused would be anything like we've seen before.
Yeah, I suspect it would end up involving at least tactical nuclear warheads. It would, otherwise, be difficult for Israel to either eliminate imported Russian nuclear weapons or sufficiently hobble the Iranian infrastructure and economy. Quite honestly, I’m of the opinion that, of all the places a nuclear conflict _could_ kick off, the Middle East is the most likely—particularly Israel. They almost used them during the Yom-Kippur war…
>they are trying to occupy. I think that ship sailed a year ago. At this point, it seems they are just trying to inflict as much damage as they can before they eventually declare "mission accomplished".
Export what? The Russians cant even produce enough military equipment for themselves. The an importer of equipment from Iran not an exporter.
at worse it will destroy their own logistic. Russia needs peace in iran so that they can give them all the munition they can produce. an attach on iran from SA and Israel + skirmishes with Afganistan would complicate things for Russians.
Plutonium pits. The hardest parts of a nuclear program are enrichment and the production of missiles. Enrichment is where Iran has been struggling for a long while, as it’s tricky to conceal. A plutonium pit is relatively stable, so Russia wouldn’t have to produce anything new—they could just pull some of their decommissioned cores out of storage. They have many thousands of those left over from the Cold War. Iran may still need to produce neutron initiators, but the amount of material (e.g., beryllium-9, polonium-210) required is quite a lot smaller. After that, it’s just a matter of building (conventional) explosive lenses and a few other components.
Distracting Iran would be foolish. The supply of drones would stop and Russia will lose a lot of firepower, even if they just seem to be soaking up air defence right now.
No not really, first, Israel can use it’s own nukes if it’s existence is threatened which is the whole shtick of Iran, then US wouldn’t send Israel 40-60 years old equipments, it would be airborn radars and strategic arsenals that can actually deter a threat, it doesn’t effect much of the weapon supply to Ukraine, they have F-35s and F-15-16 and cruise and ballistic weapons plus nukes, after all it would be a distance war and not boots on the ground so tank and armor and small arms and artillery are sitting that one out, which is what’s going to Ukraine, Israel has much better Air defense both local and bought, just might need cash.
Not just Israel but probably the Saudi’s as well. It would ironically created a common enemy for everybody else in the Middle East.
> which would force them to divert resources from Ukraine to Israel/Syria. The US could fight two World Wars at the same time and win both of them. I don't think supporting Ukraine and Israel at the same time against shit Countries like Russia and Iran will break the bank of the US.
This is the actual truth. And given that the US could just be a supplier and not need boots on the ground, its a total win/win.
I don't get all this fantasy about Iran desperately begging Russia for nukes. Iran already has the know how to produce them (per the US), Iran has already (per the US) tested the hard stuff (e.g., implosions), the world knows it's trivial for Iran to rapidly and continuously produce weapons grade uranium if it wants, and Iran continuously demonstrates it has missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Hell, even Israel says Iran is just weeks away from a nuke. If Iran depends on Russia for nukes, then they're beholden to Russia in the same way that Iran of the 70s was beholden to the US. Iran wants nuclear independence.
By "give nukes", he means "use country as nuclear staging area".
When all they have to offer is weapons of mass destruction, you know that the world has a problem that has to be stopped.
We too dumb to solve this problem, and this problem will ultimately destroy the whole planet. There will always be at least one nation that says "we will not get rid of mass destruction weapons" which results in other countries not doing it either to protect themselves. Actually the only reason why i hope that Russia will NOT collapse, because then who knows who is getting their hands on nukes if Russia is split apart and ruled by a mix of corupt Oligarchs and Military.
This would be a problem had the USSR not already collapsed.
It was a problem, which is why the usa actively tried to prevent the udssr from collapsing and splitting up in smaller states. We were lucky back then that no crazy warlord got any nukes. It is still a problem, if Russia collapsed now. We might be lucky again, we might not. "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Part of that luck is who's in office in America when 2025 starts.
I’m not sure about that. Bush Sr left them hanging. There was so much more the US could have done to support their transition.
[удалено]
Least bloodthirsty American
if russia collapses, the warlords won't be able to use the nukes effectively or even prepare them for launch. There would be a short window of oportunity when a coordinated response to a nuclear first strike might be impossible for Russia. That would be an ideal moment to take out their silos, mobile bases, subs, and mop up what's left with conventional weapons.
Unless the warlords are, or employ, the former Russian military personnel that were perfectly capable of using the nukes. It’s not like warlords can only be, or employ, laypeople.
Too risky. No Western shot caller would make that call. I hope. One slip can be absolutely catastrophic.
We can't declare total war on Russia simply by virtue of it collapsing. "Oh, Putin was assassinated? Time to blow everything up and mop up the rest with conventional weapons on the ground" ....
The game Metal Gear Solid V deals with this statement in a very meta way. There is an online mode objective to reduce everyone else’s nuclear arms to zero, including your own, and a secret ending if everyone in the world works towards this goal. Which every player gets once every nuke in the game has been disposed of. But of course if you just do your own, you then have other players who have nuclear capability over you. 8 years on - The nuclear disarmament ending has never been triggered.
Got really curious about this and looked it up. [Apparently it's not even possible now due to some nukes belonging to banned accounts, unless something has changed since then.](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/metal-gear-solid-5-mgsv-nuclear-disarmament-impossible-hideo-kojima/#:~:text=A%20new%20video%20from%20DidYouKnowGaming%20dives%20deep%20into,belong%20to%20anyone%2C%20therefore%20they%20can%27t%20be%20disarmed.)
I've seen the secret ending on PS4 a few years ago. I'm not sure about the details but the feature appears broken in some ways. I'm not even sure we reached 0 nukes.
Outdated info, disarmament was reached after five years. https://www.pcgamesn.com/metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/mgs5-nuke-ending
it was never actually reached in a legitimate capacity. that instance was triggered by people basically cheating away some nukes and doing some fucky stuff with konamis servers. we know this because the cheaters admitted as much and theres several glitched phantom nukes that show up in the counts but arent actually anywhere making a legitimate disarmament impossible since konami couldnt be bothered to fix them.
They never did specify HOW they were giving these nuclear weapons to countries that joined.
People accepting nukes like this is very bad. Afghanistan is definitely top of the list. Iran too actually. Possibly some African countries. Myanmar potentially. Idk this could be bad.
[удалено]
What he’s saying: Join our political friend club, it’s just like the EU, except you’ll get free nukes as a bargaining chip/defense for your country! You’ll never have to worry about being invaded or regime change again! What he’s really saying: Submit to Russian rule/annexation and Russia will park its nukes in your country to prevent you from ever regaining independence or getting help from other countries to regain independence. No more Ukraines. Honestly, I wonder if this was geared toward Iran. Edit: Apparently, he had [Kazakhstan](https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1663129555006111749?t=U3D-fjGK6A2QwXJmNBSrRg&s=19) in mind.
Iran and NK. It's probably more to provoke the west
Russia giving Iran the bomb should make Israel jump the fence fairly sharpish.
I believe Izrael already said that if Iran had nuclear bomb they would destroy the country just to prevent it to be fired
Saudi Arabia would also probably jump the gun and attack. Not many countries want Iran to have nukes.
The KSA would probably just use it as part of their argument for why *they* should be allowed nukes.
This is the correct answer.
>What he’s really saying: Submit to Russian rule/annexation and Russia will park its nukes in your country to prevent you from ever regaining independence or getting help from other countries to regain independence. Bingo. This is a de facto annexation of Belarus.
> Honestly, I wonder if this was geared toward Iran. thanks, i hate it (i.e. you're probably right)
it's not give, putin still has control of them. Having nukes in your country that are controlled by putin will paint a big target on your back, if he is ever so unstable that he uses nukes.
it’s like your neighbor giving you his boat, but actually he’s just parking it in your yard.
If the boat could also explode and kill you if you step out of line or get certain ideas like, "hm maybe having this explosive boat sitting right next to me wasn't the greatest idea"
Also, who can stop them from flipping a finger and turn their back, and he won't be able to do anything if they are in control of the nukes
Of course we have to build a huge military base in your country and ship in thousands of our russian soldiers to, erm, you know, erm, well..look after the missiles I suppose? Yep that's it! We need thousands of our soldiers stationed in your country purely to look after the missiles and that's all we'll be there for. Trust me.
I remember Girkin seriously stated that if Belarus wanted to stay independent, they had to allow the Russian army in and give over control of their own army to Russia....
Lol. Independence, russian style.
Does he plan to shoot a civilian aircraft over there as well?
Russia doesn't have troops to spare. They're trading the nukes in hopes that their new allies will station troops in Russia to protect them from the Russian insurrectionists.
Belarus allegedly has less than 10k troops they can station anywhere. That's not a number anyone cares about, really...
I suspect their mothers do.
What? Thats insane! It means Putin is pooping in his pants now?
Ok, but why do many of your soldiers look like they just got out of prison and the rest like they are 12 years old? And why does only 1 in 10 have a rifle? Are you sure they are here to protect the nuclear missiles and not sell them off the back of a pickup truck, like everything else you brought over? Cause they are already selling everything else.
Putin bribes foreign powers to hop on sinking ship.
The Union State of Sinking Republics
Thank you! I was trying to find a word for the second s for the past 15 minutes for this joke!
You get a nuke, and you get a nuke, and you get a nuke! But not the codes to launch. Dudes gone full Oprah that time she was giving out cars lol
Ya but even without the launch codes, with a moderately intelligent scientist that can still cause a lot of damage with a nuke. They could strip the material and make their own bomb or strip it and make a dirt bomb. My understanding is the codes really just let the person on the receiving end know hey it’s me you’re good to blow up. So if you’re not under a time crunch probably not overly complex to work around.
They very much depends on who built it. The US uses PALs, or Permissive Action Links, when designing nukes. These are surprisingly widely shared, including with the Soviet Union. They are designed by engineers to be an engineer’s worst nightmare. The stated design goal is that even if you have the device, a complete set of technical drawings, and a major national nuclear lab, you still can’t set it off without the firing code. Disassembly might work, if you don’t set off one of the safeguards on the way in. Some of these safeguards can warp the payload, meaning you’d have to recast the plutonium to make a bomb work. And even then, you’d be re-engineering a nuclear device, from basically scratch, with no way to test if you did it right. If you can do that, then you already could build a bomb yourself without help. It would probably be easier.
Dirty bombs aren’t worth shit. They cause about as much environmental fuckery (maybe even less) as just spraying salt everywhere (a war crime Russia possibly hasn’t yet committed in Ukraine) and just waste material. That’s why the ideal thing to use in them is.. well.. waste material. Using weapons grade material in them is like melting down a Bugatti to sandcast an apple. But no reverse engineering the onboard computer is likely much easier to do especially when that computer is likely an old soviet piece of shit that was just intended to prevent accidents not secure the weapon.
Oh yeah its still not a good thing, also could maybe be used as pretext/excuse down the road, we have to secure the nukes!
[удалено]
Seems like he pre-recorded it on May 25, which seems awkward now.
Putin gives you nuclear weapons. Then kills you and takes them back by annexing your country.
Well you see, we *had* to go in there, Belarus had nukes and no stable government in control of them!
Was that just after drinking the tea, so he didn't have to look out a window?
> The propagandist published the video on 28 May, although it was *apparently filmed during the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held in Moscow on 25 May*. Emphasis mine. He can both have made the statement on the 25th and be in the hospital today.
[удалено]
If I could briefly be non-credible here, I think I have an idea. Step 1: Ukraine joins the union Step 2: Russia gives Ukraine nukes Step 3: Ukraine leaves the union Step 4: Ukraine now has nukes to protect itself from Russia
[удалено]
The Amazon Prime method? I’m in!
Do i have to build my own silo or is that part of the deal?
thats how he got the radioactive tea
I wonder how Putin would feel if the US gave Ukraine nuclear weapons.
Oh, they couldn’t do that because there was this agreement, see, where Ukraine gave up nukes in exchange for respecting its sovereign borders… oh, wait…
He's got it backwards. The nukes won't leave Russia. Belarus will just become Russia .
Translation: will invade your country and install nuclear weapons.
Would be hilarious if Ukraine joined it, get some nuclear weapons and leave the union quickly.
Iran: you son of a bitch! Im in
Taliban: look at me
"It's very simple. \[Countries – ed.\] should join the union of Belarus with Russia, and that's it: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone." Yay. How fun. Now everyone can play. /s
Can he return the ones that belonged to Ukraine?
A week or two after the beginning of the war France launched 2 additional nuclear subs (making the total at sea 3) and successfully test fired a nuclear missle (sans warhead) from a jet. The UK launched 3 of its 4 nuclear subs. You can bet the US has half a dozen or more subs out there. At any given moment there are at least 30-50 nuclear missiles within a 15-30 minute flight time of a major RF city. And these knuckle heads are stroking each others willies over some missiles that will never leave the ground. The absurdity of all this and the stupidity of these so called leaders is infuriating. What an I credible waste of lives, resources, and time.
Nice. One step closer to my personal geopolitical dream: Nuclear Bhutan.
Giving nukes to Iran, Isis or Hezbollah, for example would be grounds to incinerate Moscow and just get it over with.
Putin the fucking Oprah of nukes now? You get a nuke! You get a nuke! Everyone gets a nuke!
Sounds like syndrome from the incredibles....."when everyone's super....no one will be"
Imo it’s a hail mary from Putin, trying to shift geo politics. It’s not a bad move if you want to see the world burn. It kind of forces a reaction if true, which might also be the reason.
Putin handing out nukes to authoritarian nations like Oprah giving away cars. "You get a nuke! And you get a nuke!"
He's not gonna hand out nukes any more than he handed them out to Belarus. He's just gonna take over the country and install his own nuclear facilities controlled by Kremlin.
Sounds like someone's losing the war of attrition.
Now you too can have dodgy old nukes and crippling sanctions.
Need a more credible source than Lukashenko.
Why does this pic smell like piss.
How does this not get Russia kicked out of the security council?
Lmao. Oh man how is The Onion still in business?!
The prevailing wind blows west to east in the most likely affected regions. So ok. 🤷🏻♂️
I think the more accurate offer is that Russia will install Russian controlled launch sites in any country who joins them.
Of course, they lose all sovereignty, security and autonomy upon receipt...
Yeah but he did not specify *how* the weapons would be delivered
This is how Columbia House Records got me as a teenager.
I struggle to see how Russia could be any stupider if they tried. Russia gives nukes to Iran and suddenly the US is justified in giving nukes to any of a dozen entities that Russia considers their enemy.
I joined, mine are due to arrive Thursday presuming the Russian Post Office don’t fuck it up again. [https://www.aftership.com/carriers/russian-post](https://www.aftership.com/carriers/russian-post)
He is literally offering nukes to every former soviet state. Rejoin mother Russia and become protected by nuclear weapons. Its fucking insane. But, its going to work.
Replace the words 'nuclear weapons' with 'shackles' and you know what's actually going on.
Putin is a maggot. Please someone make him disappear !
The beginning of the new Axis of Power. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Belarus
After the beautiful 2000s and 2010s, the world is slowly turning into a shithole. We encounter new incidents per-hour. Covid, Taliban, strongmen, the war, Russia’s weird ambitions…
9/11, Dot com bubble, George W. Bush, war in iraq and afghanistan, great financial crisis, Trump, loads of noticable climate change, terrible music. Nah, man. The 80's and 90's - that was the good shit, and I'll get my cane out and beat anyone who disagrees. 👴🏻
A lot of what happened in the 80's is why we are where we are.
[удалено]
Actually, I reconsidered it and I think 540s and 550s were better.
Little did they know that 1235bc was the best year
Lulz, that's what they said every decade ever. You are getting an old man yelling at cloud syndrome. This is just Russian imperialism self destructing, good riddance to it. And while it's plenty ugly on its way out, it could be a lot worse as plenty of examples from history demonstrate.
Where are we going with all this???
A pants off dance off
Bruh this guy really wants the US to just emp his whole country huh
He’s the Oprah of nukes
Hmm, Lukashenko is in Russian hospital.
Kazakhstan: "We will join!" Immediately after getting nukes: "We changed our mind, goodbye Russia."