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Meanwhile, what’s Peron up to?

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Well - this is a bit of a different one. I spent most of last week with a team of NATO officers (OF3-5) and civilian experts gaming out a fictional invasion scenario as they tested new command concepts and approaches. Today, I give you a bit of a look at how that played out, asking why militaries wargame, what happened with this one, and what I took from it. Next episode we'll pivot to the other aspect of this event which was focused on tech, innovation and lessons learned from Ukraine - but for now, let's talk about the latest Donovian invasion of OTSO.

 

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Posted

 Russia bombs kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraine says

“These strikes are Russia’s spit in the face of anyone who insists on a peaceful solution,” rages Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

 

October 22, 2025 11:49 am CET

KYIV — Russian forces struck a kindergarten in Kharkiv with killer drones on Wednesday morning, according to top Ukrainian officials.

“There was a direct hit on a private kindergarten in the Kholodnoyarkiy district of Kharkiv. A fire started,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in a statement.

Officials added later that one person, an adult male, had died in the kindergarten strike, and all 48 children were distressed — though none were wounded — and had been evacuated from the site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said seven people were injured in the nursery strike, which triggered a fresh wave of fury at Moscow.

“They are receiving medical care. All children have been evacuated and are in shelters. According to preliminary information, many have an acute stress reaction,” Zelenskyy said on social media.

“There is and cannot be any justification for a drone strike on a kindergarten. Russia is becoming more impudent. These strikes are Russia’s spit in the face of anyone who insists on a peaceful solution. Bandits and terrorists can only be put in their place by force,” Zelenskyy said.

The Russian defense ministry has not yet issued a statements about strikes on Kharkiv.

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Posted

Ukraine war briefing: Storm Shadow missiles ‘hit gunpowder plant in Russia’

Russians confirm attack on Bryansk region home to explosives factory; Trump-Putin talks shelved, US diplomacy ‘going in circles’. What we know on day 1,337

 

  • Storm Shadow missiles struck a Russian chemical plant making gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel in the Bryansk region, Ukraine’s military said late on Tuesday. The French-British missiles are also known as Scalp. “A massive combined missile and airstrike was carried out, including with air-launched Storm Shadow missiles that penetrated Russia’s air defence system,” said Ukraine’s armed forces general staff. Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk region, said on Tuesday afternoon that Ukraine attacked the region with drones and missiles. The Russian defence ministry also confirmed an attack.

  • Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least two people, the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Wednesday. The attacks sparked fires and shattered windows in several districts, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Other city officials reported a large drone attack followed the strikes. Other areas being hit included Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, and the city of Izmail, a port on the Danube river.

  • Plans for a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been shelved, Dan Sabbagh reports, after an apparently unproductive phone call between Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov. Their call also led to the cancellation of a meeting planned in Hungary’s capital for this Thursday between Rubio, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and Lavrov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister. A senior European diplomat told Reuters the Russians “haven’t at all changed” their maximalist position of Ukraine giving up the entire Donbas region. “And I assume Lavrov gave the same spiel, and Rubio was like: ‘See you later’.” Another European diplomat thought that “it became evident for the Americans that there will be no deal for Trump in Budapest”.

  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia “almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy” once US Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine were no longer an immediate prospect. The Ukrainian president continued: “The greater the Ukrainian long-range capability, the greater the Russian willingness to end the war … As soon as the issue of long-range [capability] became a little further away for us – for Ukraine – Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy.”

  • The diplomatic efforts centred around Trump were “going in circles” and felt as if they were being dragged out, a senior Ukrainian official told Agence France-Presse. While varying from day to day, Trump’s most recent stance is that the war should be halted along the current frontline without Ukraine making territorial concessions.

  • European diplomats meanwhile said countries were working with Ukraine on a new proposal for a ceasefire along current battle lines. One told Reuters the proposal included a reference to a peace board that would be chaired by Trump, while another said it would be modelled on the US 20-point plan on Gaza. Some 35 allies of Ukraine will meet on Friday in London for a summit among countries willing to provide long-term support to Kyiv.

  • The European work on a peace proposal seems at least partly calculated to simply keep Washington engaged with helping Ukraine by giving Trump and the US an important role, rather than produce a deal both sides would actually accept. For example, a proposal to siphon off some of Russia’s frozen assets to fund a portion of reparations payments to Ukraine “would be a non-starter for Russia”, one diplomat said.

  • Russian attacks killed four people and left hundreds of thousands without power and many without water in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region on Tuesday. The energy ministry said the regional capital, Chernihiv city, and the northern part of the province lost all electricity supply after strikes on power facilities. By the afternoon, Reuters reporters in Chernihiv saw that power supply was back in some places. A daytime attack by about 20 Russian kamikaze drones killed four civilians and wounded at least seven more including a 10-year-old child in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi, local officials said.

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Orange&White said:

Daylight drone strikes and now purchasing more helicopters is a pretty good sign that Russia now has zero air defense outside of Moscow.

Hitting that tower 1,200 km deep is the kind of accuracy the Pentagon would be proud of and would be bragging about.

Pretty wild to see it in broad daylight, and you know that stuff is circulating on Russian social media.

 

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Posted (edited)
9 hours ago, PTINS said:

 

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  The Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant is the biggest power generating station in the north-western region of the united energy system of Russia. Smolensk NPP has an outer appearance similar to that of Chernobyl NPP units 3-4, as both are later generation RBMKs. (Hint: Smolensk does not have a Sarcophagus over one of the reactors.)

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The three RBMK-1000 reactors of Smolensk NPP were commissioned in 1982-1990 (First Criticality for each unit Unit 1: September 10, 1982; Unit 2: April 9, 1985; Unit 3: December 29, 1989, with grid connection shortly thereafter).[4]

The reactors of Smolensk NPP are the improved versions of RBMK with a number of innovative safety systems

As you would expect, there is a very large substation near the plant, less than 1/2 mile from the reactor buildings, separated by a water canal. 

Ukraine looks like they are dialed in to the point they can hit specific towers.  But Ukraine needs to stay the fuck away from the nukes!!!  I know I joked about "Aim small. miss small" and "This man can hit us any time he wants", but damn.

Zelensky showing off his big brass balls to "the Donald."

Hmmm? Is that why Trump doesn't like Zelensky? Trump can't take Zelensky balls deep like he can Putin.

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FYI, most refineries generate their own power for a couple of reasons; they need the low pressure steam and waste heat in the process areas to heat the bottom of the towers, and more important, generated power is more reliable than purchased power. 

The refinery I'm at uses power generated offsite. We have boilers to produce our own steam.

Edited by Schulz2.0
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Posted
22 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The refinery I'm at uses power generated offsite. We have boilers to produce our own steam.


 

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Bevo said:


 

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As a former nuclear operator, I do laugh at a nuclear plant being critical being portrayed as a disaster situation.

Edited by Schulz2.0
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Posted
2 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

As a former nuclear operator, I do laugh at a nuclear plant being critical being portrayed as a disaster situation.

Also, containment vessels are woke.

Posted
On 10/21/2025 at 10:26 AM, Brisketexan said:

A smart man doesn't limits his options.

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5 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

@PTINS holy shit video of them hitting a tower of some sort at a refinery in broad daylight 

 

 

The Makhachkala Refinery is located on the Caspian Sea, which is landlocked, and looks to be primarily for making fuel and loading  the Caspian waterborne traffic, like a big gas station. The capacity is ~ 20,000 BPD, well below the top 25 refineries over 100,000 BPD, averaging ~ 220,000 BPD. (I didn't know it even existed.)

However, it is unique in being situated on the Caspian; there does not appear to be any similar facility on the Caspian anywhere else, including Russia and Iran. If Makhachkata is offline, the gas station is closed, and you'll have to find your products elsewhere.

Iran was probably getting refined oil products from Russia, but those may have been been curtailed in recent months. Not sure what else Russia can give to Iran that has any value (food?), or that Russia doesn't need (weapons). They damn sure don't need crude oil. 

It is noteworthy that Ukraine is getting towards the bottom of the list for refinery targets. It has to be comforting to shoot at targets with a heat signature that can be seen from space. 

2 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The refinery I'm at uses power generated offsite. We have boilers to produce our own steam.

Most of the refineries and almost all of the gas plants I've been to were in remote locations, as stand alone facilities. 

Most US gas processing plants migrated to purchase power to facilitate environmental permitting and compliance with regulations,  and limiting their emissions as much as practical.

If you don't mind, where is your facility? No company name, please.

 

 

 

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Posted
11 minutes ago, PTINS said:

image.png.3edbead16a003abb92d9dddc4d9d69e0.png

 

The Makhachkala Refinery is located on the Caspian Sea, which is landlocked, and looks to be primarily for making fuel and loading  the Caspian waterborne traffic, like a big gas station. The capacity is ~ 20,000 BPD, well below the top 25 refineries over 100,000 BPD, averaging ~ 220,000 BPD. (I didn't know it even existed.)

However, it is unique in being situated on the Caspian; there does not appear to be any similar facility on the Caspian anywhere else, including Russia and Iran. If Makhachkata is offline, the gas station is closed, and you'll have to find your products elsewhere.

Iran was probably getting refined oil products from Russia, but those may have been been curtailed in recent months. Not sure what else Russia can give to Iran that has any value (food?), or that Russia doesn't need (weapons). They damn sure don't need crude oil. 

It is noteworthy that Ukraine is getting towards the bottom of the list for refinery targets. It has to be comforting to shoot at targets with a heat signature that can be seen from space. 

Most of the refineries and almost all of the gas plants I've been to were in remote locations, as stand alone facilities. 

Most US gas processing plants migrated to purchase power to facilitate environmental permitting and compliance with regulations,  and limiting their emissions as much as practical.

If you don't mind, where is your facility? No company name, please.

 

 

 

Denver

Posted
14 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

Also, containment vessels are woke.

Critical merely means you're creating self-sustaining fission. Prompt critical or super critical are the bad ones.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Critical merely means you're creating self-sustaining fission. Prompt critical or super critical are the bad ones.

Yup.  I worked at the Hanford #2 plant in Washington State - and then the Waterford #3 startup in Taft, Louisiana from 1980-1986 pre-law school.  BWR and PWR, respectively.   

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Gata in the containment vessel circa ‘83-‘84.   120 degrees of fun wearing hazmat stuff.   A couple layers of booties and gloves wrapped at ankles and wrists with duct tape.  

I think I see my alarming dosimeter in case I lingered too long by some boron management pipes.   And as far as I can remember, the craziest sons of a bitches I ever partied with were the fuel pool divers.   Highest paid cats too. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, PTINS said:

It is noteworthy that Ukraine is getting towards the bottom of the list for refinery targets. It has to be comforting to shoot at targets with a heat signature that can be seen from space. 

It would be really interesting to see kind of a time lapse display of everything they’ve hit over the last three months, to see if they appear to be trying to put pressure on certain regions or cause some kind of cascading effect. 

I also suspect that since they seem to be doing more hits in broad daylight, that they’ve got eyes on these targets, specifically the air defenses. Or that they know the state of Russian air defenses as a whole, and they know how many are being used in Moscow or Saint Petersburg and along the Kerch Bridge and other high value targets. Then they can extrapolate out what areas have no protection.  

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Posted
2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It would be really interesting to see kind of a time lapse display of everything they’ve hit over the last three months, to see if they appear to be trying to put pressure on certain regions or cause some kind of cascading effect. 

I also suspect that since they seem to be doing more hits in broad daylight, that they’ve got eyes on these targets, specifically the air defenses. Or that they know the state of Russian air defenses as a whole, and they know how many are being used in Moscow or Saint Petersburg and along the Kerch Bridge and other high value targets. Then they can extrapolate out what areas have no protection.  

"G'head keep all those AA batteries around the Kerch Bridge.  We don't mind."  

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Posted
9 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Saw something that Ukraine will be buying over 100 fighters from Saab going forward.  Can’t blame them, the Swedes are much more reliable than us.  

To be fair, the Gripen is probably more in line with what Ukraine needs. 

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Posted

Putting an already deeply in debt Gazprom further in debt is a good thing.  As a state controlled entity, Putin has to go to the state rainy day fund to keep propping it up, money that can’t be spent on the war. 

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Posted
48 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Saw something that Ukraine will be buying over 100 fighters from Saab going forward.  Can’t blame them, the Swedes are much more reliable than us.  

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Posted
7 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

 

I am shocked that Ukraine successfully using long range missiles to hit Russian refineries has led to Trump now allowing the use of long range missiles to hit Russian refineries.

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