Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Silk escape maps were given to pilots in case they got shot down over the continent. This is both sides of one covering eastern Europe my mother acquired from a US serviceman, I believe.

They also printed less flalsh ones in just black ink on super thin but strong white paper that could be folded up very small, despite being large. I have one of those covering western Europe that was issued to my father.

It's most likely the silk escape maps smuggled to prisoners were the same ones issued to pilots and air crew.

Indeed. I think there are only a few that stayed in before aster Putin's rise.

While I am sure he would get replaced by someone terrible the actual faces of the new elite will be different with the current oligarchs getting left by the wayside.

China will always put it's interests first - so unless it's gioing to bite them in the pocket /wallet they'll use the opportunity to profit , and trade between china and Russia was increasing massively even before the war - but now Russia is under china's thumb ..

Even on that work of fiction, Chernobyl has a radioactive symbol. What were those poor bastárds thinking, digging trenches there.

You do know that people work in the Chernobyl power plant every day of the week.

Reactor 3 was in operation until 2000.

There were 200 workers caught there when the Russians arrived.

Now granted workers are rotated out so that they are not exposed long term.

And that has not happened because of the Russians.

There are certain areas of the old reactor 4 area that humans simply cannot go as the radiation would

The famous corium Elephants foot at one stage would kill you in 5 minutes although this has decreased over time.

Nobody, bar some older people have lived in the exclusion zone including the city of Pripyat have lived there since 1986.

There are two exclusion zones around Chernobyl, it has been deemed safe to stay overnight in the 30km outer Exclusion Zone but not in the 10km inner exclusion zone. There are a couple of hundred people living in the outer zone. The radiation is not that bad, but it is advised to bring old clothes with little metal zippers so that they can be thrown away if contaminated.

The inner zone is probably where the Russians have now dug in.

"Russian troops have again used phosphorus shells in Maryinka, Krasnohorivka and Novomykhailivka, this time injuring 11 residents from the Maryinka community, including four children, Donetsk Regional Military Administration head Pavlo Kyrylenko has said.

"Some 11 wounded civilians from the Maryinka community, including our children, were delivered to the Kurakhiv city hospital," he wrote on his Telegram channel on Thursday morning." https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/819685.html

Another day, another war crime.

If anyone ever offers to sell you corium I would run, very far away.

Anything around Reactor 4 is on the dangerous side.

BTW I bet people don't realise that a big problem for authorities was people going into the exclusion zone and places like Pripyat to scavange valuable materials and items.

Only problem is some of it may glow in the dark like a dial on an old Timex watch.

Actually the Russians might be stripping down the old equipment used in the clean up to replace all the missing parts that the army need for their kit in Ukraine.

What was the other one? I don't think a set of gates counts.

"Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, a cameraman and Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, 24, died in gunfire earlier this month in Horenka, on the north-west outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. The British correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured in the attack"

Bummer - my bad. Certainly Poland has, but those Mig-29s are sorely needed and they don't even really want them.

Hard to know for sure but that statement does seem to line up with an excellent YouTube channel I've been following since the war started called "1420". Seems risky but essentially the guy asks ordinary Russians (well, Moscow-dwelling Russians anyway) their views on things like the war and while lots of younger seemingly student-age to 30 odd population seem critical of it all (or at least, they suggest criticism without always outrightly saying it) some of the noticeably older people seem to sway more towards the official line of the State.

I suppose maybe there are a few sides to it: they are old enough to feel a perception that Putin is the man to have truly stabilised Russia since the downfall of the USSR, old enough to remember a deeper fear of annihilation at the hands of the West, and old enough to feel a sense of shame at the Soviet downfall but that Putin has restored Russia's pride in its place among the great powers (even if in reality this is highly caveated).

There's also a very prevalent machismo culture in Russia (almost painfully visible for example in much of their society's masculine insecurities when dealing with the "issue" of gay people) which Putin plays to absolute perfection.

So I'd probably agree Putin has more support than it seems fashionable / comforting right now in the West to assume. Remains to be seen if the next year or two will change that.