Obviously Russia doesn't publish any data about how long it takes them to repair their refineries, but some of them showed significant damages from the pictures and videos you can find online.
Past hits were on a much smaller scale and limited to a single tank or other construction. These new hits are on a completely new level, the fire covers an area that must be kilometers. In the past the fire fighters had a chance to stand near and try and their luck.
The current fires are on a completely new level that make humans ants as the fire reaches into the sky. No fire fighting force even from those from countries like mine would have a chance, and we Australians know when fires are that scale theres nothing we can do but run. These fires are like the bush fires we have seen.
Lets hope Ukraine can continue to attack all other refineries because i hope theres nothing stopping them.
There's one party that can very much easily stop this massacre. Unfortunately ending this massacre would be admitting a defeat, which is a no-go for people involved.
Let me be clear, I truly believe Ukraine has a right to defence itself, by itself. Currently Ukraine need the support of other countries to defence against Russia, and that support depends on the support of the citizens of those countries. No matter what you think, when the energy price gets high enough, people will be angry and their governments will not be able to keep sending money and ammunition to Ukraine.
With Russia losing its best defense, namely the Americans, hopefully Ukraine will be able to continue its recent attacks to the best of their capabilities. This war might have been over if Ukraine was able to attack Russia from the beginning.
More precisely, the current USofA government, which has been kicked hard in guts by the mid terms but still continues as is until January (?) and with the current veto powering wielding POTUS for another two years.
Absolutely good news for Ukraine, but the USofA origin road bumps haven't been fully passed yet.
Or the cost for Putin gets high enough for Putin to invent a face saving lie and stop the war. That would have the advantage for Ukraine to remain free.
Very hard to predict what will happen first. Energy transition away from fossil is happening so the clock is ticking for Putin (slowly though, to be fair)
Due to sanctions, Russia has become a sufficiently small part of the world energy market that it would not be able to affect prices enough to create that situation.
If it could it would have done so by hoarding all fuel internally.
This is untrue. The world market mayber be fractured and many countries may not directly buy OIL from Russia, but its all connected. India and China amongst many others for example are major customers of Russia. If their supply of oil is reduced they still need their oil and they will buy from the other suppliers.
> people will be angry and their governments will not be able to keep sending money and ammunition to Ukraine.
People are idiots and might stop sending money to Ukraine regardless.
I mean, just look at how idiotic people elected Trump after they ousted him the first time. It's gold-fish memory in geopolitical terms.
Europe does not send money to Ukraine because ordinary citizens want to or are happy about it, it does so because smart people in the deep state realize how much worse it would be for Europe if Ukraine loses and is eaten up by the Russian Empire.
If only Europe could get a clue about immigration, unify militarily, make its voice heard about climate change, nuclear energy, support EU tech and military companies while aiming for US/Chinese style efficiencies ...
This is how it has been explained to me by Russians. Losing a war would result in the end of Putin’s power (and possibly his life). Any form of perceived defeat is not an option for him.
Russian attacked Ukraine knowing that democratic countries, many outside NATO, would help Ukraine to protect democracy and world order. I would not call it "NATO's war"
What would be the use of maintaining the sanctions? In the Soviet era there were sanctions, yet they managed to clone most Western technology a few years behind. It actually helped them develop their own electronics manufacturing industry.
A drag on their economic growth means you can outscale them over the long run. Sanction evasion costs money. Copying technology only gets you so far. And it incentivises your economies to move off dependence on Russian resources, usually energy, that can be used for coercion that weakens the coalition.
> Do you like an energy crisis? Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
This is a Russian / GOP propaganda talking point. The current energy crisis is almost completely due to Trump attacking Iran and being unable to admit defeat.
The other part (a few percentages of the current crisis) is that there's a little bit less Russian oil available. Russian oil is low quality anyway. It is their gas which was interesting on the world market, and their main partner has winded down dependance on that.
These attacks hit Russian economy financially. The Russian economy is in an incredible weak state.
The Russians are losing ground (second month in a row) on the battlefield.
The Russians are targeting civilians increasingly which shows how desperate they are.
Yet, despite of that, Putin's demands are still idioticly unrralistic.
Because that's how you get the attention of the US?
What did you expect?
War in Europe is unnaceptable to us europeans, russian intervention is unnaceptable to us!
What's the point in havin cheap energy if we don't have security.
The US once more wants to fuck over Europe and make some shady deals with Russia to counterbalance (in their mind) China and keep US tech hegemony over Europe, Ukraine is obviously just a pawn to the US so while I don't like higher energy prices, I 100% get what they're doing: it's a desperate measure meant to stop the war and get the world's attention.
Commodities are global. Let's say India imports 1 billion barrels a month from Russia, and you somehow stop that, they now want to get it somewhere else, global oil market demand increases 1 billion which is very similar to supply decreasing 1 billion.
What about the right to eat food of people in developing countries? High diesel filters to everything in the economy, not just personal transportation.
Sure, I feel bad for those people. But does it follow that any country let itself be invaded so other people can eat? In addition, Ukraine was also exporting food (cheap grains and such) to poor countries and Russia killed their commerce/shipping over the Black Sea so they're not to blame here. In all honesty Russia needs reap what they saw and perhaps when they recover (it will take a while and a different leader to get there) they'll think twice about repeating their current behavior.
I fully support Ukraine's right to defend itself but the global effects go way beyond personal transportation choices. Shortages and higher prices for diesel fuel are having severe impacts on poor countries far removed from the conflict zone. They need it to run tractors, trucks, buses, trains, etc. Can't plow a field with a bicycle.
That is literally not true lol. Hitting Russian refineries means there is more crude for people outside Russia, as they are forced to export what they don't refine lol.
Even if you dont refine locally, they still need to transport and store. Nobody anywhere on earth is pumping directly from the ground to a waiting ship across thousands of kms.
As MiroslavPokorny notes though, there are still storage tanks at either end to ensure there's always tanks holding a head of crude from wells to feed into the pipes, and tanks at the port end to buffer incoming when no ships are in port.
This is about finished products, not crude oil. We have enough supply of crude oil to go around but not enough refinery capacity. That's why diesel price is at all time high nominally . People in first world countries will be fine, people in developing countries will suffer greatly if this goes on.
Russia contributed about 1/4 of all oil products in the past. The damage they are rightfully taking will take years to fix. Nobody in the west will be selling the replacement equipment for a long time.
Part of the strategy here is knowing what parts to knock out because not all parts are easily replaceable. I know they have been hitting a specific part, waiting for the fix to be implemented, and then hitting it again.
There are certainly people at CIA and other intelligence agencies who focus entirely on which refinery parts are on the Pareto frontier of easiest to destroy, hardest to replace, and most important to functionality.
That’s the key. Take out specific components that are hard to replace currently. In a few years maybe Russians will adapt and ramp up production of parts but it won’t be immediate.
An important distinction, and it makes Ukraines attacks all the more impressive since the reported impact is with respect to "operational refining capacity" rather than just a reported percentage of sites that have experienced any form of attack.
I remember earlier on in the war when some Ukrainian drones would make their way to Moscow and explode against the side of an apartment building or something, where the physical impact wasn't so big even if the headline was big. But the growing scale and speed of attacks that impact operational capacity are much harder to brush off as meaningless.
Take it with a pinch of salt. Oil price didnt spike much. Taking out 36% would have spike it over 150. Any news pro Ukrainian these days are closer to propaganda than factual. Reading them over 4 years, very low quality journalism.
One thing we're likely to see is Russia building more smaller "teapot" refineries. These are less efficient and produce lower quality products. But they're cheap and more difficult to target.
> Russia building more smaller "teapot" refineries
This would turn Russia into a suzerainty. Whose, who knows. But at this point I’d be fine with Beijing calling the shots over the war-mongering nutters in Moscow.
That's one more reason for Russians do away with their leader who got into a pretty bad situation. Had Putin abstained from attacking Ukraine, Russia would have a huge upper hand at the moment, especially after Trump caused the Hormuz strait to close.. I really think Putin squandered all the potential Russia built after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I have heard said elsewhere that Ukraine is awaiting a deep onset of winter to ravage natural gas pipelines throughout Russia, which will plunge substantial percentages of the populace into freezing cold (unexpectedly?).
I wish this were not happening. I miss the days that I drank with Russians and Ukrainians, and we were all friends. It seems like a lifetime ago.
I highly doubt that. Hitting pipeline is not that simple as main pipelines are mostly underground. With oil Ukraine was hitting pump stations, but the damage so far was limited to storage and mixing tanks, the pumping stations are in a concrete building that hard to damage with relatively small drones. Gas pumping stations do not have storage tanks.
Plus it is already cold in northern Russia and Ural and Western Siberia that Ukrainian drones can hit.
I build oil refineries as my day Job! You don't really need to knock out the whole plant to make the production to zero. Hitting just 2 to 4 towers is enough. And this knowledge is not some kind of secret. Anyone in the industry can figure out the softest spot.
As for world over production collapse, Saudi has got enough capacity. Even we (India) have good amount of spare refining capacity available.
Feels like drones and rockets have created a similar dynamic to mutually assured destruction, except for much smaller actors with far fewer resources. It's not hard to imagine a future where e.g. Taiwan is just armed with so many cheap drones and rockets that for even a great power like China the guarantee of enormous economic damage at home is just not worth it.
The impact of these strikes tends to be greatly exaggerated, both in terms of what was achieved as well as the ultimate effect. There's basic remedies available: increasing defenses at processing locations, decentralization of production, and so on. See the endless shocking headlines of the past 4 years. Or look at Iran that, to this day, continues their production of drones and missiles.
Nukes by contrast can destroy entire cities with one bomb. Hiroshima alone killed more than 100,000 people and turned a developed city into a wasteland. [1] And that was with a 15kt weapon. The strongest weapon live tested (let alone developed) since then, Tsar Bomba, was 50,000kt. Now a days Hiroshima level nukes would be considered tiny tactical nukes for battlefield advantage. There's even been artillery shells developed with much greater capability than Hiroshima. Modern strategic nukes, by contrast, can literally destroy countries.
MAD isn't successful because of the fear of taking lots of damage, but because you literally don't exist anymore. Like during the Proud Prophet war games [2], deaths were in the billions with the entire Northern Hemisphere was effectively killed off and rendered uninhabitable for decades. People don't seem to appreciate that Russia could literally end the existence of even the United States. This isn't on the table because the United States could also literally end the existence of Russia. I'd also add that the expected climatic effects of such a war predict around 5 billion global deaths from starvation after such a conflict. [3] No form of conventional war, even a swarm of millions of drones is even remotely comparable to this potential.
china can turn taiwan into rubble with conventional resources, there is a rather large body of water seperating the two as well which allows for very easy defense compared to something like ukraine where you have to deal with forests and radar noise.
Surely that just means tactics change? The attacking force needs to coordinate tightly to block airwaves and have total control as quickly as possible before any meaningful counter measure can be attempted - meaning more drone swarms, more boots on the ground and more direct attack and control of comms channels.
It also means that any potential victim probably needs to account for that scenario and be ready to retaliate at a moments notice.
I don't disagree with the principle necessarily, but I think it goes too far to think there's always just some tactical adjustment you can make that wholly neutralizes every next emerging combat technology.
Seems like lasers that fry drones en masse will become more important, and the scale and automation at which drones can be produced will be a BFD. But those are specific inputs that impact in specific ways, and those nuts and bolts need to be the target of analysis. That work can't be replaced by assuming eternal strategic equilibrium regardless of tech.
>Seems like lasers that fry drones en masse will become more important
Eh you don't need lasers, bullets are fine. You just can't have air defense these days that only relies on individual shots costing tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars each.
What's funny to me is that it's not unreasonable that a nontrivial amount of future air war is going to look like Top Gun dogfighting on the scale of childrens' toys.
Tactics will change but not all communication channels can be blocked. Some fraction of the drones used by Russia and Ukraine are now controlled using fiber optic cables. Those are relatively slow, have a maximum range of about 40 km, and can't be used over water. But they're immune to jamming and very effective against ground targets. Within line of sight, tight beam spread spectrum radio signals are also very difficult to jam.
As for putting more boots on the ground, geography and weather make it tough to put a large amphibious force ashore in Taiwan. There are only a few harbors or beaches where it could even be attempted.
That's what TW is relative to PRC. The real issue is quantity and quality gap with dash of geography, mass subsonic drone like Ukraine + Iran are basically 100% interceptable with modern interceptors. Still high double digit percentages for shit tier ballistics (i.e. Iran). Penetration really only issue with depletion - PRC can build more interceptors than TW can build drones. The dash of geography: TW vs PRC and Iran vs Israel has narrow corridors where defense can be concentrated. UKR vs RU over large front, too much gaps to cover, and difficult terrain (less clutter over water / flats).
The real threat is HIGH end conventional rocketry, i.e. PRC/US hypersonics vs modern missile defense very unreliable (technical/economic) against. This less issue for PRC vs TW since frankly every inch of TW is covered and reachable within 4-5m of PRC rocketry which is below typical TEL launch cycles - small close adversaries easy to defang if there's enough munitions to suppress... even at larger scale US vs Iran, US managed to lock down Iranian fires as long as there was coverage.
The corollary to high end conventional rocketry is they are basically hemispherical+ range. So everything that is happening to RU oil infra... can happen to US oil infra... or basically any above ground infra with PRC conventional global strike, i.e. PRC's deterrence/answer to Malacca energy blockade is just to deny US energy at refinery level. Extrapolate further and basically this well within reach of Central/South America countries past certain development threshold.
Yes, when it comes to waging war, a lot of relatively small and far away countries can sabotage the world economy (and their enemies' economies) quite a bit.
The problem used to be that the rest of the world was unwilling to put up with that, especially if it involved attacks at sea. AND they were willing to use military violence to stop it. And now rockets make the "sea" part of that somewhat less important (at least for Ukraine, clearly Iran's leadership has skipped a few important chapters in their "rockets for Dummies" books, but still getting there). You can sabotage other countries' economies with rockets, and you can mass-produce rockets.
We've given that trade security, clearly. But it's equally obvious that people aren't willing to deal with the obvious economic fallout of that either. So what's next?
This site is fundamentally, in the most neutral definitions of the words possible, a pro-billionaire propaganda outlet. It was created by US venture capital for US venture capital.
Headline: "Ukraine knocks out 36% of Russia's oil refining capacity in under two weeks" (same in the bolded subheading).
First paragraph: "The combined annual processing capacity of the Russian plants hit over the past 13 days exceeds 120 million metric tons of crude oil—accounting for 36% of the aggressor state’s entire domestic oil refining capacity."
The latter paragraph is likely true, but it's unlikely that all of the ones hit were taken completely offline, so the headline is a complete lie. (In this case, the same structure - lying headline + more accurate text below - is already present in the source they provide. In other cases, sources are often misleadingly mis-cited over several levels to arrive at a click-getting but still misleading or outright lying headline.)
The refineries are huge structures, often with multiple instances of the same type of processing unit, so it's rare that one of them gets taken out completely. Also, there is no information about the actual damage done. At least in some cases, I haven't seen any claims about the actual damage, just claims that there was a strike, i.e. there is a good chance the strike didn't cause significant damage.
Further down in the article, it explicitly references "operating capacity" itself and notes that it has been reduced by 30%, which isn't quite 36%, and I'm curious as to what the former describes that the latter doesn't. But it seems to be talking about a real thing that I wouldn't characterize as a lie.
They’ve been exporting crude to India (who pays a much discounted price) and then buying back refined products…at full market price.
How long can they keep that up? Reminds me of the Spanish bank default in the early 17th century thanks to India swapping silver for all the plundered gold Spain had taken from the Americas.
I wish that was true but Russia can keep this up indefinitely. Even with severe damage to their oil infrastructure they can still export enough to fund the war effort. The real question is how much pain the elites in the core Moscow - St. Petersburg region are willing to endure.
Russia can keep this for many years. Ukraine so far was not able to significantly disrupt their oil exports and war in Iran mostly offset export losses for Russian budget. As for fuel Russia can cut consumption by factor of 2 or 3 if necessary. Surely population will suffer, but not military production.
The overall trend is downwards and even if the war ended tomorrow the Russian economy would be in rough shape. But at the same time the civilian economy still hasn't been fully mobilized to anywhere near the extent it was in WWII. They have room to cut back domestic energy consumption (especially in the outer provinces) in order to maintain the war effort. Essentially turn Russia into something like North Korea.
Something to be noticed about authoritarian states is that, for all of their bluster, they are far less able to actually mobilize for war than democratic states. Note that Russia and Ukraine are putting approximately the same absolute of effort into the war--which is a much larger fraction of the Ukrainian economy than the Russian economy.
And to be honest, both countries also look about maximally tapped out for what they could actually politically afford to put into the field. There's a reason Russia is relying on North Korean troops to bolster its army rather than backfilling troops with more Russian conscripts (and it's not because those conscripts don't exist--they do!).
That they have Starshield at all is a miracle. That tech didnt exist 6 years ago and wouldnt exist at all without Musk. The fact it's temporarily limited to 100mph vehicles isn't some conspiracy.
It is. It just requires federal intervention since his Board is useless.
Fortunately, a lot of his supporters have publicly undermined themselves by coming out in favor of undermining American national security and sleeping with direct reports.
Musk may have given comfort to an adversary aiding and abetting a power targeting and killing American soldiers. That’s a crime.
I am recommending we build the investigational file, cut contracts out of appropriations and force depositions under oath until ‘28. This will be a patient project. We can’t just grenade him. We need a plan for what happens afterwards.
My point is that the only possible way to do anything to Elon over this would be to prove that what he was doing was against the wishes of the administration, which it seems pretty clear that it was not. The president controls policy on this. Also I am not convinced that Russia is targeting and killing American soldiers.
None of this matters. The rule is that the president sets the rules, and companies have no power to oppose him. You can come up with these logical gotchas all day long and it just doesn't matter because that's not how foreign policy works.
Furthermore, a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration, even if he could, because it undermines his own authority on the very same foreign policy matters.
Maybe they are trying to prevent Ukraine from using Starshield for offensive operations, but don't have a way of doing that without also preventing defensive operations. Preventing defensive operations is not politically viable [I would be suing Musk right now if this led to death of a family member], so maybe Ukraine has to launch their offensive operations only when they are actively being attacked.
Unfortunately Putin and his close advisors believe that they are essentially Lincoln fighting the Confederacy in an epic battle of good and evil for which no permanent peace can be accepted. Convincing them to see sense is the only non-military resolution to the war.
Dictators have always been paranoid about everyone else, this is why they are always extremely careful about personal protection.
What you dont appreciate is that Russia is a multi tiered society. Im not denying a small number of thousand European Russians have died, but the only cities or peoples that Putin fears are Moscow and St P. So far only a few thousnad have died from there and basically everyone in those cities knows they are effectively spared from being forced into the army.
Most of the dead and fighting are from places you and me have never heard of, that is cities and towns and regions filled with the many other non European peoples that are under Russia. Russia is a land of over a 100 peoples, there are dozens if not more different cultures and languages. Those are the people being killed.
The European type Russians in Moscow and St P know this, and they wont dare protest because they are not the wons dying.
The only language fascists understand is an overwhelming display of force.
There will be no non-military resolution. Either Russia wins by subverting Western governments - which has been a partial success so far, but not the knock-out Putin was expecting - or Russia implodes.
No, The type of Nazi's which invade their neighbors. Like Russia did when it co-started the second world war by invading Poland and shortly there after Finland. And then occupying eastern Europe til about 1990. And then occupying the Crimea and invading Ukraine. And of course Moldavia, Georgia, etc. Basically Russia has always been occupying countries in Europe (or pieces thereof) in the last century.
Nah, both sides have no choice but to fight because Ukraine can't make territorial concessions, and Russia can't leave a militarized Ukraine intact. If either government compromises the nationalist factions of their own countries will lynch them. The only resolution to this war is to fight it out until one or both sides collapse.
There is a difference between "can't" and "won't".
For Ukraine, losing means the end of their existence as an independent state, so they truly have no choice but to fight. For Russia, losing means one dude being embarrassed. They can stop whenever they want.
Russia losing means Putin will lose power. If he loses power suddenly he will likely die. Putin doesn't want to die. He can't stop, so he will never let Russia stop without a justification that can appease the Russian people. The Russian people don't want to stop either, because of the sunk cost fallacy and the perception that Europe wants to attack them and break Russia into little pieces and the internal propaganda that the only way to prevent that is to win and destroy Ukraine's military power.
Sure, everybody could sit down and agree to stop, but both sides have already many times vehemently denied any possibility of a compromise on their core issues, so what do you expect to happen? Both Ukraine and Russia view this war as existential. Both have red lines they refuse to bend on and which they demand the other side to bend to. Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
This is all about what the Russian people want, or think they want, rather than what they can. If they must live in fear of the scary Europe, that's good with me, we've been living in fear of them so far.
I don't think what happens to Putin personally matters that much in the grand scheme of things. His country was a murderous regime before him, and will remain one once he's gone.
> Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
I never claimed there is one, just that Russia has no say over whether Ukraine stays militarised or not. We should not normalise the demands of mad men as if they are legitimate.
"They" stopping the war really means Putin and he can’t afford to walk away empty-handed without admitting the invasion was a blunder. It’s more than just him being embarrassed, that would be the end for him.
My point is that he has to go, or Zelenskyy, or some external diplomacy that makes everyone look good.
That said, even if replacing Zelenskyy gave Putin a face-saving excuse to negotiate, Russian ultra-nationalist pressure means Putin still won't settle without keeping the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
With Zelenskyy refusing any land concessions, peace is virtually impossible while both remain in power.
I agree for the most part, but like I said in another comment, we should not sanewash the demands of a genocidal dictator. What Putin wants is of little relevance, we don't ask the victims of violence to make concessions towards their aggressors and promise they won't fight back next time.
Wanting some assurance that your country won't be invaded again in a couple years like this time isn't "optics" or "saving face". Zelenskyy openly said Ukraine is open to freezing the frontline where it is as long as we have any sort of assurance Russia won't attack us shortly after.
Russia demanding to limit our army size is not assurance
Russia demanding us not to join any defensive alliance is not assurance
Putin demanding we give up well equipped defensive positions even before any real negotiations start is not assurance either.
Except Ukraine never threathened to invade Russia.
Why would they?
Russia literally invades Ukraine so any territorial concession is just giving up your position for nothing. They will just continue from their new position.
This is their house and they are attacked by robbers. Luckily they are armed.
You dont understand the mind of the dictator especially a Russian dictator. They have always been paranoid about their neighbours, this is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years because of geographic luck they have no defensive boundaries.
The UK famously has the sea, which has helped it for a thousand years. Its no conincidence that the boundary of Spain and France are the Pyrenees or France and Italy are the Alps or China and India have the Himalayas.
Powerful countries like natural boundaries like this because they are always worried about the other side. Russia for all its size has mountains or water stopping others. Putin wants Ukraine because he wants to push RUssia back to the USSR boundaries which were mountains in Europe. WHen Russia controlled and had roops in East Germany the open plains were narrow, today they are thousands of kms. Yes Im not defending Putin his violence and aggression and changes to Finland are all his fault, but thats not whwat im discussing.
He wants the boundary to the sea and mountains. Unfortunately he doesnt care how many millions die, all he cares about is his imperial amb itions.
> You dont understand the mind of the dictator especially a Russian dictator. They have always been paranoid about their neighbours, this is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years because of geographic luck they have no defensive boundaries.
So, so wrong. Putin himself made it clear it's about territories. His admiration of imperial Russia isn't a secret. He wants more territories. It's not that deep.
Russia can absolutely leave a militarized Ukraine intact. Give back the pieces of the country they tried to steal, pay war reparations, send some people to The Hague to get fitted for new ties. Move on.
No one wants a war with Russia, even now. The whole "the West will invade" trope is just a way to keep Russians from focusing on their own situation. If the populace paid even knew a little of what Western media said about a potential conflict between the West and Russia, they'd realize this... "The Day After", etc.
Why would Putin care what ordinary Russians think ?
Every single Russian citizen is scared of Putin, because they know he owns everything including their lives.
They also know that most of the dead and fighting are not even European white Russian, most of the unfortunates are from the many other cultures and peoples that have been conquered.
I think russian government cares a lot about population support, and despite the efforts of the few Russian anti-war heroes, war still has broad support from a population, so it buys time for russian super rich to enjoy their position in society. Moreover, historically russian government used wars as a means to raise support, 1999 Ichkeriya war was used as a vehicle to prop up Putin popularity, 2008 Georgia invasion was able to gain widespread support for Medvedev, and of course 2014 invasion, and to lesser extent Syria invasion, repelled all the mass protests that were happening in early 2010s. Large chunk of population enjoys warmongering, hails strongmen and genocide. This does not extend to all Russians citizen, but likely majority of them.
Russia believes they have to attack their neighbours, because they believe they need to push all the way to geographic boundaries like the sea or mountains.
Unfortunately this is how dictators think. Nobodies die for their ambitions and tahts what we see.
Putin believes he needs the boundaries to be what Stalin took after WW2 from the old and sick Roosevelt who gave him too much of Eastern Europe.
Have you watched too much of Peter Zeihan? Dude is mostly talking nonsense confidently while hiking.
As someone living in Ukraine I can tell you he understands literally nothing about our politics, defense capabilities etc but talks very confidently about it.
I am not a Putin supporter and i hope he rots in hell, the sooner the better, but that doesnt change the fact that he does wish to recreate the USSR and its satellite state system.
Im sorry your home country cant be left in peace but those are the facts.
Putin has said the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest political tragedy of the 21C.
I don’t think Putin can. He certainly doesn’t believe that would be a better outcome than continuing to fight (although he’s definitely not being realistic about that). That would be complete defeat, and he can’t admit that.
It is interesting how this is allowed on the front page but news about the I country at a similar level of relevance isn't allowed on the same front page.
Those are limited resources that are being destroyed. Can't we just have presidents and politicians do the fighting and save resources and other people?
Independent sources say that damage wasn’t critical. The cost of such attacks is too high to justify, the sad truth is - such operations are funded by regular taxpayers in EU. Such news are written to shake global oil prices in order to gain profits
Drones attacks are not that cheap. Even when Ukrainian drone swarms consists mostly of very cheap decoy drones when there are 100 real drones costing 50K that fly each day it will cost over 15 billions per year. That is why Ukraine started they can produce 3 times more, but they have no money for that.
I am not buying the assertion that Ukraine was unable to inflict critical damage when I saw explosions in Moscow earlier this year.
It it hard to believe that I saw this, and the world did not come to an end. I cannot imagine what the United States would do in a similar event. Or perhaps I already saw it.
Refineries are huge, and hitting one doesn't automatically knock it out - Ukraine has actually already hit lots of Russian refineries this year, many of them more than once: https://www.reddit.com/r/RussianHitlists/comments/1ugfpiw/ru...
Obviously Russia doesn't publish any data about how long it takes them to repair their refineries, but some of them showed significant damages from the pictures and videos you can find online.
Past hits were on a much smaller scale and limited to a single tank or other construction. These new hits are on a completely new level, the fire covers an area that must be kilometers. In the past the fire fighters had a chance to stand near and try and their luck.
The current fires are on a completely new level that make humans ants as the fire reaches into the sky. No fire fighting force even from those from countries like mine would have a chance, and we Australians know when fires are that scale theres nothing we can do but run. These fires are like the bush fires we have seen.
Lets hope Ukraine can continue to attack all other refineries because i hope theres nothing stopping them.
> Lets hope Ukraine can continue to attack all other refineries because i hope theres nothing stopping them.
Do you like an energy crisis? Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
There's one party that can very much easily stop this massacre. Unfortunately ending this massacre would be admitting a defeat, which is a no-go for people involved.
Let me be clear, I truly believe Ukraine has a right to defence itself, by itself. Currently Ukraine need the support of other countries to defence against Russia, and that support depends on the support of the citizens of those countries. No matter what you think, when the energy price gets high enough, people will be angry and their governments will not be able to keep sending money and ammunition to Ukraine.
With Russia losing its best defense, namely the Americans, hopefully Ukraine will be able to continue its recent attacks to the best of their capabilities. This war might have been over if Ukraine was able to attack Russia from the beginning.
> namely the Americans,
More precisely, the current USofA government, which has been kicked hard in guts by the mid terms but still continues as is until January (?) and with the current veto powering wielding POTUS for another two years.
Absolutely good news for Ukraine, but the USofA origin road bumps haven't been fully passed yet.
Or the cost for Putin gets high enough for Putin to invent a face saving lie and stop the war. That would have the advantage for Ukraine to remain free.
Very hard to predict what will happen first. Energy transition away from fossil is happening so the clock is ticking for Putin (slowly though, to be fair)
Due to sanctions, Russia has become a sufficiently small part of the world energy market that it would not be able to affect prices enough to create that situation.
If it could it would have done so by hoarding all fuel internally.
This is untrue. The world market mayber be fractured and many countries may not directly buy OIL from Russia, but its all connected. India and China amongst many others for example are major customers of Russia. If their supply of oil is reduced they still need their oil and they will buy from the other suppliers.
You miss the point.
Yes the markets are all connected. Yes Russia could cause a mild price increase if it wanted.
No it does not have a big enough slice of the pie that it could increase prices enough to pressure countries to decrease support for Ukraine.
You dont need refineries to export oil.
Or they will demand their government sends even more? Clearly Russia can't win fast, but they could still easily just go home.
> people will be angry and their governments will not be able to keep sending money and ammunition to Ukraine.
People are idiots and might stop sending money to Ukraine regardless.
I mean, just look at how idiotic people elected Trump after they ousted him the first time. It's gold-fish memory in geopolitical terms.
Europe does not send money to Ukraine because ordinary citizens want to or are happy about it, it does so because smart people in the deep state realize how much worse it would be for Europe if Ukraine loses and is eaten up by the Russian Empire.
If only Europe could get a clue about immigration, unify militarily, make its voice heard about climate change, nuclear energy, support EU tech and military companies while aiming for US/Chinese style efficiencies ...
> which is a no-go for people involved.
This is how it has been explained to me by Russians. Losing a war would result in the end of Putin’s power (and possibly his life). Any form of perceived defeat is not an option for him.
> There's one party that can very much easily stop this massacre.
I wonder how far away the USA is from turning off all its weapons and ISR that are essential to NATO's (proxy) war on Russia ?
"NATO's (proxy) war on Russia"
Russian attacked Ukraine knowing that democratic countries, many outside NATO, would help Ukraine to protect democracy and world order. I would not call it "NATO's war"
Wouldn't it be Russia's proxy war on NATO, since they started it?
If we let Russia continue bullying the world, we(at least here in Europe) will be in permanent crisis.
The Russian federation must be decapitated and split up into parts.
Honestly, just pushing them back to their borders and maintaining the sanctions would suffice.
What would be the use of maintaining the sanctions? In the Soviet era there were sanctions, yet they managed to clone most Western technology a few years behind. It actually helped them develop their own electronics manufacturing industry.
A drag on their economic growth means you can outscale them over the long run. Sanction evasion costs money. Copying technology only gets you so far. And it incentivises your economies to move off dependence on Russian resources, usually energy, that can be used for coercion that weakens the coalition.
Not really they keep attacking their neighbours all the time.
> Do you like an energy crisis? Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
This is a Russian / GOP propaganda talking point. The current energy crisis is almost completely due to Trump attacking Iran and being unable to admit defeat.
The other part (a few percentages of the current crisis) is that there's a little bit less Russian oil available. Russian oil is low quality anyway. It is their gas which was interesting on the world market, and their main partner has winded down dependance on that.
These attacks hit Russian economy financially. The Russian economy is in an incredible weak state.
The Russians are losing ground (second month in a row) on the battlefield.
The Russians are targeting civilians increasingly which shows how desperate they are.
Yet, despite of that, Putin's demands are still idioticly unrralistic.
> Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
Because that's how you get the attention of the US?
What did you expect?
War in Europe is unnaceptable to us europeans, russian intervention is unnaceptable to us!
What's the point in havin cheap energy if we don't have security.
The US once more wants to fuck over Europe and make some shady deals with Russia to counterbalance (in their mind) China and keep US tech hegemony over Europe, Ukraine is obviously just a pawn to the US so while I don't like higher energy prices, I 100% get what they're doing: it's a desperate measure meant to stop the war and get the world's attention.
Why? Russian oil is being sanctioned. We don't buy Russian oil, do we?
Commodities are global. Let's say India imports 1 billion barrels a month from Russia, and you somehow stop that, they now want to get it somewhere else, global oil market demand increases 1 billion which is very similar to supply decreasing 1 billion.
Gotta end the war ASAP, and since Russia won't win (they can't even take Kyiv, let alone sustain an occupation) it's best they lose quicker.
Just two more weeks!!
I once heard a promise the war would end in 24h.
Ukraine has the right to defend itself as best it can.
They have the right to defend their homes and kids first above your right to drive a car. Go buy a bicycle.
What about the right to eat food of people in developing countries? High diesel filters to everything in the economy, not just personal transportation.
What about it? What do you think should change in order to guarantee this right? Maybe increase dependency on renewable energy?
eat local and energy efficient greens. stop importing wagyo beef from Argentina.
What a weird take. We're talking about poor countries that can barely grow enough food to have anything to eat, never mind importing beef.
Sure, I feel bad for those people. But does it follow that any country let itself be invaded so other people can eat? In addition, Ukraine was also exporting food (cheap grains and such) to poor countries and Russia killed their commerce/shipping over the Black Sea so they're not to blame here. In all honesty Russia needs reap what they saw and perhaps when they recover (it will take a while and a different leader to get there) they'll think twice about repeating their current behavior.
Many/Most of those countries are good friends with Russia. Surely they can move Russia to stop its invasion.
I fully support Ukraine's right to defend itself but the global effects go way beyond personal transportation choices. Shortages and higher prices for diesel fuel are having severe impacts on poor countries far removed from the conflict zone. They need it to run tractors, trucks, buses, trains, etc. Can't plow a field with a bicycle.
I fully support Ukraine's right to attack the country invading them. There's no 'but' needed.
That is literally not true lol. Hitting Russian refineries means there is more crude for people outside Russia, as they are forced to export what they don't refine lol.
Even if you dont refine locally, they still need to transport and store. Nobody anywhere on earth is pumping directly from the ground to a waiting ship across thousands of kms.
A close but not quite counter example being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Mountain_pipeline which transports crude (and refined products) from ground to port across 1,100 km (700 miles).
As MiroslavPokorny notes though, there are still storage tanks at either end to ensure there's always tanks holding a head of crude from wells to feed into the pipes, and tanks at the port end to buffer incoming when no ships are in port.
>> this is how we get an energy crisis
Only if you are russian.
Blown up refineries means more russian oil is available for export to China.
To quote John Adams:
Powder and Artillery are the most efficacious, Sure, and infallibly conciliatory Measures We can adopt.
Saidi Arabia has more than enough extra capacity to keep prices in check and make a bunch of money in the process.
This is why oil prices, while high, have no reason to hit stratospherical levels. The world will be fine.
This is about finished products, not crude oil. We have enough supply of crude oil to go around but not enough refinery capacity. That's why diesel price is at all time high nominally . People in first world countries will be fine, people in developing countries will suffer greatly if this goes on.
Russia contributed about 1/4 of all oil products in the past. The damage they are rightfully taking will take years to fix. Nobody in the west will be selling the replacement equipment for a long time.
Prices are not going down for a years.
Perhaps this will help shifting to other sources of energy, renewables and such...
I believe the attacks are rather precise and aim at taking out the distillation columns to focus on the critical parts.
Part of the strategy here is knowing what parts to knock out because not all parts are easily replaceable. I know they have been hitting a specific part, waiting for the fix to be implemented, and then hitting it again.
There are certainly people at CIA and other intelligence agencies who focus entirely on which refinery parts are on the Pareto frontier of easiest to destroy, hardest to replace, and most important to functionality.
That’s the key. Take out specific components that are hard to replace currently. In a few years maybe Russians will adapt and ramp up production of parts but it won’t be immediate.
God I hope so
An important distinction, and it makes Ukraines attacks all the more impressive since the reported impact is with respect to "operational refining capacity" rather than just a reported percentage of sites that have experienced any form of attack.
I remember earlier on in the war when some Ukrainian drones would make their way to Moscow and explode against the side of an apartment building or something, where the physical impact wasn't so big even if the headline was big. But the growing scale and speed of attacks that impact operational capacity are much harder to brush off as meaningless.
Take it with a pinch of salt. Oil price didnt spike much. Taking out 36% would have spike it over 150. Any news pro Ukrainian these days are closer to propaganda than factual. Reading them over 4 years, very low quality journalism.
One thing we're likely to see is Russia building more smaller "teapot" refineries. These are less efficient and produce lower quality products. But they're cheap and more difficult to target.
> Russia building more smaller "teapot" refineries
This would turn Russia into a suzerainty. Whose, who knows. But at this point I’d be fine with Beijing calling the shots over the war-mongering nutters in Moscow.
Beijing war mongering themselves https://mickryan.substack.com/p/chinas-lighting-operation-ar...
Past hits have materially diminished local fuel supplies.
That's one more reason for Russians do away with their leader who got into a pretty bad situation. Had Putin abstained from attacking Ukraine, Russia would have a huge upper hand at the moment, especially after Trump caused the Hormuz strait to close.. I really think Putin squandered all the potential Russia built after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I have heard said elsewhere that Ukraine is awaiting a deep onset of winter to ravage natural gas pipelines throughout Russia, which will plunge substantial percentages of the populace into freezing cold (unexpectedly?).
I wish this were not happening. I miss the days that I drank with Russians and Ukrainians, and we were all friends. It seems like a lifetime ago.
In any case, it will be a cold winter.
I highly doubt that. Hitting pipeline is not that simple as main pipelines are mostly underground. With oil Ukraine was hitting pump stations, but the damage so far was limited to storage and mixing tanks, the pumping stations are in a concrete building that hard to damage with relatively small drones. Gas pumping stations do not have storage tanks.
Plus it is already cold in northern Russia and Ural and Western Siberia that Ukrainian drones can hit.
It's rare to see somebody over 1000 years old posting on HN.
I build oil refineries as my day Job! You don't really need to knock out the whole plant to make the production to zero. Hitting just 2 to 4 towers is enough. And this knowledge is not some kind of secret. Anyone in the industry can figure out the softest spot.
As for world over production collapse, Saudi has got enough capacity. Even we (India) have good amount of spare refining capacity available.
IEA says repairs are getting slower: https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/economics-markets/news/...
Feels like drones and rockets have created a similar dynamic to mutually assured destruction, except for much smaller actors with far fewer resources. It's not hard to imagine a future where e.g. Taiwan is just armed with so many cheap drones and rockets that for even a great power like China the guarantee of enormous economic damage at home is just not worth it.
The impact of these strikes tends to be greatly exaggerated, both in terms of what was achieved as well as the ultimate effect. There's basic remedies available: increasing defenses at processing locations, decentralization of production, and so on. See the endless shocking headlines of the past 4 years. Or look at Iran that, to this day, continues their production of drones and missiles.
Nukes by contrast can destroy entire cities with one bomb. Hiroshima alone killed more than 100,000 people and turned a developed city into a wasteland. [1] And that was with a 15kt weapon. The strongest weapon live tested (let alone developed) since then, Tsar Bomba, was 50,000kt. Now a days Hiroshima level nukes would be considered tiny tactical nukes for battlefield advantage. There's even been artillery shells developed with much greater capability than Hiroshima. Modern strategic nukes, by contrast, can literally destroy countries.
MAD isn't successful because of the fear of taking lots of damage, but because you literally don't exist anymore. Like during the Proud Prophet war games [2], deaths were in the billions with the entire Northern Hemisphere was effectively killed off and rendered uninhabitable for decades. People don't seem to appreciate that Russia could literally end the existence of even the United States. This isn't on the table because the United States could also literally end the existence of Russia. I'd also add that the expected climatic effects of such a war predict around 5 billion global deaths from starvation after such a conflict. [3] No form of conventional war, even a swarm of millions of drones is even remotely comparable to this potential.
[1] - https://yandex.com/images/search?text=image%20of%20hiroshima...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet
[3] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
china can turn taiwan into rubble with conventional resources, there is a rather large body of water seperating the two as well which allows for very easy defense compared to something like ukraine where you have to deal with forests and radar noise.
Surely that just means tactics change? The attacking force needs to coordinate tightly to block airwaves and have total control as quickly as possible before any meaningful counter measure can be attempted - meaning more drone swarms, more boots on the ground and more direct attack and control of comms channels.
It also means that any potential victim probably needs to account for that scenario and be ready to retaliate at a moments notice.
I don't disagree with the principle necessarily, but I think it goes too far to think there's always just some tactical adjustment you can make that wholly neutralizes every next emerging combat technology.
Seems like lasers that fry drones en masse will become more important, and the scale and automation at which drones can be produced will be a BFD. But those are specific inputs that impact in specific ways, and those nuts and bolts need to be the target of analysis. That work can't be replaced by assuming eternal strategic equilibrium regardless of tech.
>Seems like lasers that fry drones en masse will become more important
Eh you don't need lasers, bullets are fine. You just can't have air defense these days that only relies on individual shots costing tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars each.
What's funny to me is that it's not unreasonable that a nontrivial amount of future air war is going to look like Top Gun dogfighting on the scale of childrens' toys.
Tactics will change but not all communication channels can be blocked. Some fraction of the drones used by Russia and Ukraine are now controlled using fiber optic cables. Those are relatively slow, have a maximum range of about 40 km, and can't be used over water. But they're immune to jamming and very effective against ground targets. Within line of sight, tight beam spread spectrum radio signals are also very difficult to jam.
As for putting more boots on the ground, geography and weather make it tough to put a large amphibious force ashore in Taiwan. There are only a few harbors or beaches where it could even be attempted.
Current air defense is lagging behind and was tailored to targets that were high, fast, few, and expensive.
New air defense tactics need to include mitigations for targets that fly low, are very cheap, and numerous.
In the end I think the cheap drone advantage will be entirely accounted for but it will take time and real world experience to figure out what works.
>except for much smaller actors
That's what TW is relative to PRC. The real issue is quantity and quality gap with dash of geography, mass subsonic drone like Ukraine + Iran are basically 100% interceptable with modern interceptors. Still high double digit percentages for shit tier ballistics (i.e. Iran). Penetration really only issue with depletion - PRC can build more interceptors than TW can build drones. The dash of geography: TW vs PRC and Iran vs Israel has narrow corridors where defense can be concentrated. UKR vs RU over large front, too much gaps to cover, and difficult terrain (less clutter over water / flats).
The real threat is HIGH end conventional rocketry, i.e. PRC/US hypersonics vs modern missile defense very unreliable (technical/economic) against. This less issue for PRC vs TW since frankly every inch of TW is covered and reachable within 4-5m of PRC rocketry which is below typical TEL launch cycles - small close adversaries easy to defang if there's enough munitions to suppress... even at larger scale US vs Iran, US managed to lock down Iranian fires as long as there was coverage.
The corollary to high end conventional rocketry is they are basically hemispherical+ range. So everything that is happening to RU oil infra... can happen to US oil infra... or basically any above ground infra with PRC conventional global strike, i.e. PRC's deterrence/answer to Malacca energy blockade is just to deny US energy at refinery level. Extrapolate further and basically this well within reach of Central/South America countries past certain development threshold.
I hope the war ends next year. What is stopping Russia from using bigger payloads and destroying Kiev or other cities?
Yes, when it comes to waging war, a lot of relatively small and far away countries can sabotage the world economy (and their enemies' economies) quite a bit.
The problem used to be that the rest of the world was unwilling to put up with that, especially if it involved attacks at sea. AND they were willing to use military violence to stop it. And now rockets make the "sea" part of that somewhat less important (at least for Ukraine, clearly Iran's leadership has skipped a few important chapters in their "rockets for Dummies" books, but still getting there). You can sabotage other countries' economies with rockets, and you can mass-produce rockets.
We've given that trade security, clearly. But it's equally obvious that people aren't willing to deal with the obvious economic fallout of that either. So what's next?
Did this site turn political? Because neutral comments getting flagged is kinda wild.
This site is fundamentally, in the most neutral definitions of the words possible, a pro-billionaire propaganda outlet. It was created by US venture capital for US venture capital.
Headline: "Ukraine knocks out 36% of Russia's oil refining capacity in under two weeks" (same in the bolded subheading).
First paragraph: "The combined annual processing capacity of the Russian plants hit over the past 13 days exceeds 120 million metric tons of crude oil—accounting for 36% of the aggressor state’s entire domestic oil refining capacity."
The latter paragraph is likely true, but it's unlikely that all of the ones hit were taken completely offline, so the headline is a complete lie. (In this case, the same structure - lying headline + more accurate text below - is already present in the source they provide. In other cases, sources are often misleadingly mis-cited over several levels to arrive at a click-getting but still misleading or outright lying headline.)
The refineries are huge structures, often with multiple instances of the same type of processing unit, so it's rare that one of them gets taken out completely. Also, there is no information about the actual damage done. At least in some cases, I haven't seen any claims about the actual damage, just claims that there was a strike, i.e. there is a good chance the strike didn't cause significant damage.
Further down in the article, it explicitly references "operating capacity" itself and notes that it has been reduced by 30%, which isn't quite 36%, and I'm curious as to what the former describes that the latter doesn't. But it seems to be talking about a real thing that I wouldn't characterize as a lie.
Take away trump’s support for Russia and further hobble their oil infrastructure and Russia is not going to be able to keep this up for much longer.
They’ve been exporting crude to India (who pays a much discounted price) and then buying back refined products…at full market price.
How long can they keep that up? Reminds me of the Spanish bank default in the early 17th century thanks to India swapping silver for all the plundered gold Spain had taken from the Americas.
I wish that was true but Russia can keep this up indefinitely. Even with severe damage to their oil infrastructure they can still export enough to fund the war effort. The real question is how much pain the elites in the core Moscow - St. Petersburg region are willing to endure.
Russia can keep this for many years. Ukraine so far was not able to significantly disrupt their oil exports and war in Iran mostly offset export losses for Russian budget. As for fuel Russia can cut consumption by factor of 2 or 3 if necessary. Surely population will suffer, but not military production.
They can't export and supply domestic needs - including military - at the same time.
Financially, the Iran oil shock provided some financial breathing room, but the overall trend is downwards.
The overall trend is downwards and even if the war ended tomorrow the Russian economy would be in rough shape. But at the same time the civilian economy still hasn't been fully mobilized to anywhere near the extent it was in WWII. They have room to cut back domestic energy consumption (especially in the outer provinces) in order to maintain the war effort. Essentially turn Russia into something like North Korea.
Something to be noticed about authoritarian states is that, for all of their bluster, they are far less able to actually mobilize for war than democratic states. Note that Russia and Ukraine are putting approximately the same absolute of effort into the war--which is a much larger fraction of the Ukrainian economy than the Russian economy.
And to be honest, both countries also look about maximally tapped out for what they could actually politically afford to put into the field. There's a reason Russia is relying on North Korean troops to bolster its army rather than backfilling troops with more Russian conscripts (and it's not because those conscripts don't exist--they do!).
WWII was not a war of choice with a mostly indifferent population secretary knowing it can be ended if Kremlin decided to.
You misspelled China, India and EU's support for Russia as Trump, very strange.
Total Russia/China trade (2025): ~$228B Indian imports (2025): $55 billion EU imports (2025): $30–31 billion
Much of that energy related. U.S. had $3.5B of trade mostly fertilizer and chemicals.
Trump support is mainly political.
That the EU is still there is for geographical reasons. Some locations just had no alternatives.
But I believe trade with Russia from EU has declined something like 90% since 2022 and is on a decline from there.
To be fair Trump called up India and told them to trade with Russia.
So what's the consequences going to be for that - and when will that be unleashed?
Already is - Starlink is throttled again: https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/zelensky-accuses-m...
Nvidia’s relationship with China is a problem, but Musk and Trump’s with Russia somehow isn’t.
That they have Starshield at all is a miracle. That tech didnt exist 6 years ago and wouldnt exist at all without Musk. The fact it's temporarily limited to 100mph vehicles isn't some conspiracy.
When you, a partner, pay for a product/service and are denied access to it for political reasons it is.
It is. It just requires federal intervention since his Board is useless.
Fortunately, a lot of his supporters have publicly undermined themselves by coming out in favor of undermining American national security and sleeping with direct reports.
Federal intervention by who and for what? Like it or not, the president has pretty much absolute power over these matters.
> Federal intervention by who and for what?
Musk may have given comfort to an adversary aiding and abetting a power targeting and killing American soldiers. That’s a crime.
I am recommending we build the investigational file, cut contracts out of appropriations and force depositions under oath until ‘28. This will be a patient project. We can’t just grenade him. We need a plan for what happens afterwards.
My point is that the only possible way to do anything to Elon over this would be to prove that what he was doing was against the wishes of the administration, which it seems pretty clear that it was not. The president controls policy on this. Also I am not convinced that Russia is targeting and killing American soldiers.
‘Aiding and abetting’ doesn’t mean directly killing. Though Russia doesn’t have too many qualms about doing that when it wants.
Russia and Iran are close allies. Is it hard to believe that they share intel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Russia_relations
None of this matters. The rule is that the president sets the rules, and companies have no power to oppose him. You can come up with these logical gotchas all day long and it just doesn't matter because that's not how foreign policy works.
Furthermore, a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration, even if he could, because it undermines his own authority on the very same foreign policy matters.
Maybe they are trying to prevent Ukraine from using Starshield for offensive operations, but don't have a way of doing that without also preventing defensive operations. Preventing defensive operations is not politically viable [I would be suing Musk right now if this led to death of a family member], so maybe Ukraine has to launch their offensive operations only when they are actively being attacked.
Afaik starshield is not operational for Ukraine outside Ukraine. It is totally doable to only allow this for defensive operations.
I thought it was operational in Russia, but also I have no idea how the defensive operations work. Maybe you need to start in Russia to be effective.
Defensive operation in Ukraine means launching counter drone drones. Inside Ukraine.
"so maybe Ukraine has to launch their offensive operations only when they are actively being attacked."
When was the last time, Ukraine was not actively being attacked?
If Russia stopped its "special military operation", then its oil refineries would still be intact.
Unfortunately Putin and his close advisors believe that they are essentially Lincoln fighting the Confederacy in an epic battle of good and evil for which no permanent peace can be accepted. Convincing them to see sense is the only non-military resolution to the war.
WRONG.
Dictators have always been paranoid about everyone else, this is why they are always extremely careful about personal protection.
What you dont appreciate is that Russia is a multi tiered society. Im not denying a small number of thousand European Russians have died, but the only cities or peoples that Putin fears are Moscow and St P. So far only a few thousnad have died from there and basically everyone in those cities knows they are effectively spared from being forced into the army.
Most of the dead and fighting are from places you and me have never heard of, that is cities and towns and regions filled with the many other non European peoples that are under Russia. Russia is a land of over a 100 peoples, there are dozens if not more different cultures and languages. Those are the people being killed.
The European type Russians in Moscow and St P know this, and they wont dare protest because they are not the wons dying.
That's not it at all, Putin talks about eliminating Ukraine, all Ukrainian culture, the language, the people, their history...
If you look at what Putin actually writes and says there's no comparison at all to anything Lincoln-like.
2018
https://archive.khpg.org/en/1520890100
The only language fascists understand is an overwhelming display of force.
There will be no non-military resolution. Either Russia wins by subverting Western governments - which has been a partial success so far, but not the knock-out Putin was expecting - or Russia implodes.
What Nazis are you talking about? These ones?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4799...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/congress-has-remo...
No, The type of Nazi's which invade their neighbors. Like Russia did when it co-started the second world war by invading Poland and shortly there after Finland. And then occupying eastern Europe til about 1990. And then occupying the Crimea and invading Ukraine. And of course Moldavia, Georgia, etc. Basically Russia has always been occupying countries in Europe (or pieces thereof) in the last century.
Nah, both sides have no choice but to fight because Ukraine can't make territorial concessions, and Russia can't leave a militarized Ukraine intact. If either government compromises the nationalist factions of their own countries will lynch them. The only resolution to this war is to fight it out until one or both sides collapse.
Why can't Russia leave a militarised Ukraine intact? What business is it of theirs?
Parent is right. It's for optics.
Neither side is willing to lose face, there's only three ways out:
1. One side achieves total military victory (unlikely and would drag on for years)
2. A new president takes office on either side and opens a fresh diplomatic path
3. Outside mediators broker a truce
There is a difference between "can't" and "won't".
For Ukraine, losing means the end of their existence as an independent state, so they truly have no choice but to fight. For Russia, losing means one dude being embarrassed. They can stop whenever they want.
Russia losing means Putin will lose power. If he loses power suddenly he will likely die. Putin doesn't want to die. He can't stop, so he will never let Russia stop without a justification that can appease the Russian people. The Russian people don't want to stop either, because of the sunk cost fallacy and the perception that Europe wants to attack them and break Russia into little pieces and the internal propaganda that the only way to prevent that is to win and destroy Ukraine's military power.
Sure, everybody could sit down and agree to stop, but both sides have already many times vehemently denied any possibility of a compromise on their core issues, so what do you expect to happen? Both Ukraine and Russia view this war as existential. Both have red lines they refuse to bend on and which they demand the other side to bend to. Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
This is all about what the Russian people want, or think they want, rather than what they can. If they must live in fear of the scary Europe, that's good with me, we've been living in fear of them so far.
I don't think what happens to Putin personally matters that much in the grand scheme of things. His country was a murderous regime before him, and will remain one once he's gone.
> Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
I never claimed there is one, just that Russia has no say over whether Ukraine stays militarised or not. We should not normalise the demands of mad men as if they are legitimate.
"They" stopping the war really means Putin and he can’t afford to walk away empty-handed without admitting the invasion was a blunder. It’s more than just him being embarrassed, that would be the end for him.
My point is that he has to go, or Zelenskyy, or some external diplomacy that makes everyone look good.
That said, even if replacing Zelenskyy gave Putin a face-saving excuse to negotiate, Russian ultra-nationalist pressure means Putin still won't settle without keeping the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
With Zelenskyy refusing any land concessions, peace is virtually impossible while both remain in power.
I agree for the most part, but like I said in another comment, we should not sanewash the demands of a genocidal dictator. What Putin wants is of little relevance, we don't ask the victims of violence to make concessions towards their aggressors and promise they won't fight back next time.
Wanting some assurance that your country won't be invaded again in a couple years like this time isn't "optics" or "saving face". Zelenskyy openly said Ukraine is open to freezing the frontline where it is as long as we have any sort of assurance Russia won't attack us shortly after.
Russia demanding to limit our army size is not assurance Russia demanding us not to join any defensive alliance is not assurance Putin demanding we give up well equipped defensive positions even before any real negotiations start is not assurance either.
Except Ukraine never threathened to invade Russia.
Why would they?
Russia literally invades Ukraine so any territorial concession is just giving up your position for nothing. They will just continue from their new position.
This is their house and they are attacked by robbers. Luckily they are armed.
You dont understand the mind of the dictator especially a Russian dictator. They have always been paranoid about their neighbours, this is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years because of geographic luck they have no defensive boundaries.
The UK famously has the sea, which has helped it for a thousand years. Its no conincidence that the boundary of Spain and France are the Pyrenees or France and Italy are the Alps or China and India have the Himalayas.
Powerful countries like natural boundaries like this because they are always worried about the other side. Russia for all its size has mountains or water stopping others. Putin wants Ukraine because he wants to push RUssia back to the USSR boundaries which were mountains in Europe. WHen Russia controlled and had roops in East Germany the open plains were narrow, today they are thousands of kms. Yes Im not defending Putin his violence and aggression and changes to Finland are all his fault, but thats not whwat im discussing.
He wants the boundary to the sea and mountains. Unfortunately he doesnt care how many millions die, all he cares about is his imperial amb itions.
Russia has more than 1000 nuclear warheads.
> You dont understand the mind of the dictator especially a Russian dictator. They have always been paranoid about their neighbours, this is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years because of geographic luck they have no defensive boundaries.
So, so wrong. Putin himself made it clear it's about territories. His admiration of imperial Russia isn't a secret. He wants more territories. It's not that deep.
I do understand this, Russia's soft underbelly and all that.
And Moscow being threathened or conquered by Swedes, Napoleon and Hitler
But since when did Ukraine, Poland, Finland get to choose their neighbors? I am sure they would also love to pick and choose.
Is the world going to just give up and lie down because Dictator is paranoid? I know who's got to go.
Of course they would, but we dont live in a fair or peaceful world.
Where does the paranoia end? Paris? Warsaw? Or maybe only Tallinn?
It never ends - thats the problem all of Eastern EU knows very well.
Kosovo?
PS (is Serbia)
Russia can absolutely leave a militarized Ukraine intact. Give back the pieces of the country they tried to steal, pay war reparations, send some people to The Hague to get fitted for new ties. Move on.
No one wants a war with Russia, even now. The whole "the West will invade" trope is just a way to keep Russians from focusing on their own situation. If the populace paid even knew a little of what Western media said about a potential conflict between the West and Russia, they'd realize this... "The Day After", etc.
Why would Putin care what ordinary Russians think ?
Every single Russian citizen is scared of Putin, because they know he owns everything including their lives.
They also know that most of the dead and fighting are not even European white Russian, most of the unfortunates are from the many other cultures and peoples that have been conquered.
I think russian government cares a lot about population support, and despite the efforts of the few Russian anti-war heroes, war still has broad support from a population, so it buys time for russian super rich to enjoy their position in society. Moreover, historically russian government used wars as a means to raise support, 1999 Ichkeriya war was used as a vehicle to prop up Putin popularity, 2008 Georgia invasion was able to gain widespread support for Medvedev, and of course 2014 invasion, and to lesser extent Syria invasion, repelled all the mass protests that were happening in early 2010s. Large chunk of population enjoys warmongering, hails strongmen and genocide. This does not extend to all Russians citizen, but likely majority of them.
> the West will invade
Year after year the west issue attacked. How many times has Russia attacked its neighbours?
Russia believes they have to attack their neighbours, because they believe they need to push all the way to geographic boundaries like the sea or mountains.
Unfortunately this is how dictators think. Nobodies die for their ambitions and tahts what we see.
Putin believes he needs the boundaries to be what Stalin took after WW2 from the old and sick Roosevelt who gave him too much of Eastern Europe.
Have you watched too much of Peter Zeihan? Dude is mostly talking nonsense confidently while hiking. As someone living in Ukraine I can tell you he understands literally nothing about our politics, defense capabilities etc but talks very confidently about it.
I am not a Putin supporter and i hope he rots in hell, the sooner the better, but that doesnt change the fact that he does wish to recreate the USSR and its satellite state system.
Im sorry your home country cant be left in peace but those are the facts.
Putin has said the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest political tragedy of the 21C.
I don’t think Putin can. He certainly doesn’t believe that would be a better outcome than continuing to fight (although he’s definitely not being realistic about that). That would be complete defeat, and he can’t admit that.
You already know they didn't blow up their own pipeline to the UK, right?
It is interesting how this is allowed on the front page but news about the I country at a similar level of relevance isn't allowed on the same front page.
Those are limited resources that are being destroyed. Can't we just have presidents and politicians do the fighting and save resources and other people?
Finally, two more weeks before Ukraine wins the war, right?
Independent sources say that damage wasn’t critical. The cost of such attacks is too high to justify, the sad truth is - such operations are funded by regular taxpayers in EU. Such news are written to shake global oil prices in order to gain profits
Drone attacks are quite cheap actually, in comparison to other attacks, and it's why this stuff is all happening.
Additionally here, the only reason why the EU isn't getting invaded is because Russia is being stopped in Ukraine.
Just listen to what they say. They were fully intending on taking all of Eastern Europe if they could get away with it.
Fortunately they can't and are being held up in Ukraine without EU people having to suffer any direct damage.
Drones attacks are not that cheap. Even when Ukrainian drone swarms consists mostly of very cheap decoy drones when there are 100 real drones costing 50K that fly each day it will cost over 15 billions per year. That is why Ukraine started they can produce 3 times more, but they have no money for that.
"independent sources" without source?
Independent sources say Putin died three years ago and he has been replaced by a robot.
I am not buying the assertion that Ukraine was unable to inflict critical damage when I saw explosions in Moscow earlier this year.
It it hard to believe that I saw this, and the world did not come to an end. I cannot imagine what the United States would do in a similar event. Or perhaps I already saw it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mpzObWu06yQ
Edit: I have upvoted you. I would like to hear what you have to say.
Fake (Ukrainian!) news!
Now it's time for HN to publish propaganda articles from sources sponsored by Ukraine?