What's that? Putin and Trump want to hand over what the russians stole for a fake-ass ceasefire that benefits only russia? In other words, the Orc manager and literal pedophile president are deciding the fate of a sovereign nation without said nation's input?
TACO friday.
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It's a little weird, because he's struck hard at India for buying Russian oil. That never really fit is M.O., so I suspect that is along the lines of the fentanyl excuse. They can legally justify the tariffs because India is breaking sanctions.
I didn't get the rationale right away, but it makes sense now.
It's a little weird, because he's struck hard at India for buying Russian oil. That never really fit is M.O., so I suspect that is along the lines of the fentanyl excuse. They can legally justify the tariffs because India is breaking sanctions.
I didn't get the rationale right away, but it makes sense now.
Threatened to strike.
India is still buying Russian oil.
TACO time.
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This is deeply damaging incompetence. Witkoff should finally start taking a notetaker from the U.S. embassy for future meetings. That's how professional diplomacy works. https://twitter.com/user/status/1954223991331385557
BREAKING: Norway says that in April, hackers took control of the digital system of the Risevatnet dam in Bremanger. For four hours, the valves were fully open, releasing nearly 500 liters per second before the breach was discovered and stopped. https://twitter.com/user/status/1955655163726676278
Budanov stated that North Korea plans to deploy additional troops to Russia in the near future. According to the head of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, this involves around 6,000 soldiers and up to 100 pieces of North Korean equipment https://twitter.com/user/status/1956015954321625415
Operation “Spider Web” [took down 34% of Russian strategic aviation] started one month late because the recruited Russian drivers got drunk during Easter, May holidays, and May 9th — Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Malyuk. https://twitter.com/user/status/1955691926151209173
I see a lot of pre-summit statements on heavy Russian casualties this summer by many senior officials globally. The Russians are sustaining their highest KIA/irrecoverable losses. https://twitter.com/user/status/1956036598589513968
Bloomberg sources report that around 10 countries, including the United Kingdom and France, are ready to send troops to Ukraine as a security guarantee. https://twitter.com/user/status/1958153984297877831
The UK is ready to help defend Ukraine’s skies and seas—but won’t send troops to the front line, The Guardian reports. Gen. Tony Radakin will confirm at the Pentagon that Britain is offering logistics and training support, not combat deployment near Russian forces. https://twitter.com/user/status/1958153490360086849
Ukrainian Special Operations Forces have released exclusive footage showing a strike on Russian Lieutenant General Esedulla Abachev in Russia’s Kursk region. https://twitter.com/user/status/1958129776666816930
Sweden’s Commander-in-Chief Michael Claesson warns Russia may test NATO not with a major offensive but via land grabs or hybrid tactics to exploit weaknesses. https://twitter.com/user/status/1958119323047714816
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"We did not want to go public with this one, but it seems to be the right time. Flamingo is the long-range cruise missile that can carry a 1,150 kilogram warhead and fly into Russia for 3,000 kilometers,” Iryna Terekh, the company's CEO and technical director, told POLITICO in an interview from her office.
Quote:
"I would say there is some sort of big dick energy moment. You don’t need a scary name for a missile that can fly 3,000 kilometers," Terekh said of the missile's claimed range. "The main goal is for a missile to be effective.”
Quote:
Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow and missile expert at the University of Oslo, called the missile "Ukraine’s strongest security guarantee."
Quote:
“People want results; they want to see Red Square on fire. But it’s important to understand we’re not terrorists like our neighbors,” Terekh said. “We founded our company in response to Russia's aggression, but we have no aggressive intentions; we’re ready to protect our sovereignty.”
Lots of hopium this week regarding the new Flamingo missile Ukraine has been developing recently. Let's hope that turns into a ####ton of copium for the russians when mass production is underway.
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Putin's palace on the black sea should be ashes already...
3,000 km is a pretty damn long way. Basically can hit any major Russian City west of Novosibirsk, which is the vast majority of major Russian cities/ developments. And a lot of their industrial base.
The first part of the video isn't that interesting we already know we got the expected TACO result from Trumps deadlines for Putin while the only thing Trump got back was a successful distraction from the Epstein files.
However, there's a lot of interesting stuff on the actual war in the latter part.
- Russian air campaigns have become increasingly focused on frontline target. With the Soviet vehicle stockpiles running out, this means the main Russian frontline strategy is basically air strikes + guys on foot.
- Ukrainian air campaign in contrast has become increasingly focused on economic and logistical targets. Strikes on oil refineries especially happen every few days now. It's a bit of a slow burn strategy, but one that makes sense considering the most likely perceivable victory condition for Ukraine is Russia losing its economic ability to continue the war.
- Drones have become so ubiquitous that supplying troops on the frontlines (plus cycling troops in and out, evacuating the wounded etc.) is now one of the most difficult logistical challenges for both sides, and the obvious solution is more drones, this time UGVs taking on more of the last mile logistics.
- While "WW1 with drones" is a popular and not completely unfounded description of the war in Ukraine, the reality of drones warfare means that increasingly there are no obvious trenchlines anymore. A typical Ukrainian battlefront is now bunch of small concealed positions with only a handful of men each scattered around a large area, with concealment such a big priority that you try to avoid ever using those positions for fighting. This is also due to the fact that despite the massive number of troops, the current frontlinea are just too long for either side to keep them fully manned. Current Russian tactics, successfully employed in Pokrovsk for example means constantly sending forwars small groups of men, sometimes just a couple of men, trying to slip through the gaps in the porous lines to create new positions behind the enemy, which are then used to support larger assaults. This still creates really high amounts of casualties as you would expect from Russians, (and those casualties I would imagine are likely to happen in places where evacuation is impossible), but it makes a lot of sense when you consider the priorities and of Russian leadership as well as the resources they have available.
- Artillery units have also been forced to create "hot" and "cold" positions, meaning they're now most of the time stationed in concealed positions away from their own ammunition (cold positions), and only move to "hot" firing positions when needed. Because getting attacked by drones with a bunch of ammo lying around is just so much worse than getting attacked without that ammo, and the best way to not get attacked is to hide.
- Basically: both sides are employing tactics that make sense for them. As expected, while the quality of Russian military leadership was atrocious to begin the war, over time the gap inevitably growa smaller, as Russians gather experience and more capable leaders rise up the ranks.
Last edited by Itse; 08-25-2025 at 02:21 AM.
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In the Russian internet space, based on sources close to the Kremlin (as they themselves write), information is spreading that philosopher Alexander Dugin’s public activity is already causing “tension” within the Kremlin. https://twitter.com/user/status/1960393360230732123
Ukraine has really ramped up it's attacks on Russia. oil refineries, hurting at least 14 just in August. In comparison, last year it took a 4 month campaign to hit less targets not as hard as they've been hit this year. Russia is also reporting that it's shooting down 3 digit numbers of drones and other things per day. (They don't release numbers on what they haven't shot down).
Here's Perun with longform analysis on the topic of Ukraines "kinetic sanctions" campaign, AKA "falling debris delivery system", or the artist previously known as "smoking accidents".
Some non-obvious points:
- Hitting oil refineries amont means that Russia needs to dump crude oil to global markets, which isn't just much less profitable than selling refined products, it also lowers the price of crude oil globally, creating an additional profit cutting effect.
- Fuel trains have also been a popular target for both drones and Ukrainian special forces. This is likely less about oil infrastructure though, and more about the fact that fuel trains are very soft targets that creates a nice big mess on the tracks that takes (relatively speaking) lot of time and effort to clean up and repair before that part of the railway system.ia back in use.
- Another target has been the oil pipeline delivering oil to, among other places, Hungary. Hungary being one of the two countriea that hasn't done much anything to cut down on buying oil from Russia (the other is Slovakia), so that hits their economy pretty bad. Hungary is also a major exporter of electricity to Ukraine, and as a response to the strikes on the pipeline, Orban has threatened to cut down on those electricity exports.
- Despite the West saying it has lifted restrictions on the use of western weapon systems, we still haven't seen a single case of a western weapon system used against the refineries. The most likely reason is of course that the West is full of s***, and they're still putting restrictions on the use of their weapons. While they aren't explicitly saying it anymore, it seems the West is still generally speaking very much against the strategy of bombing oil infrastructure, and that is also likely a big reason why they still won't sell more long range weaponry to Ukraine. This despite the fact that a prolonged campaign with better weapons that would overwhelm Russias ability to repair their facilities would quickly beat the crap out of Russian economy and very likely force them to pull out of the war in a matter of months.
- That said, while we can't say for sure what the exact impact of the campaign has had, and even estimates will take time, it's very likely a significant drain on Russia economically.
- The timing of this intensified campaign against the refineries is not accidental. This time of year is peak fuel consumption time in Russia, as their vast agricultural sector is busy harvesting. Plus it's holiday travel season. Like we have already seen in previous years, Russia has again been forced to ban export of refined oil products for this period.
Last edited by Itse; 09-01-2025 at 02:17 AM.
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How many refineries does Russia have? Seems like a new one is getting blasted every few days.
A lot. They're a huge oil producer, and they have quite a lot of slack capacity. But of course they're constantly repairing them too, and just running them at lower production rates. It would take a lot to completely destroy a whole facility.
Oil refineries aren't all interchangeable though, different refineries produce different things out of different crude oils. (A topic which I would assume some people on this board know a lot more about.)
According to Reuters calculations, Russia's total offline primary oil refining capacity has reached a record monthly high of 6.4 million tons in August, up 65% from previous estimates based on maintenance plans.
Drone strikes at various refineries on various dates have idled a cumulative 3.1 million tons this month, accounting for 48% of the total impact, the calculations show.
I work at a refinery, not as an operator or operating engineer so I don't know all the ins and outs but I'm constantly surprised at how well the plant adapts to unplanned/planned outages. There is usually quite a bit of redundancy built in to the refinery to start and then there's just the massive size of some of them. There is a lot of thought put into how the plant can keep making money when some units are down, so you could knock out a portion of the plant but they can bypass that unit with the stock and run it through somewhere else to keep making different products and keep the money coming in (to a point).
Of course you can only do so much and as reuters reports, the refining capacity is really taking a beating.
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A major incident in Russia’s strategic aviation according to well informed channel Dosye Sphiona: On the night of Sept 2–3, multiple Tu-160 bombers faced critical failures during a combat mission against Ukraine. https://twitter.com/user/status/1963297266132721885
Russian aviation specialists are being expended as assault troops, likely to make up for huge army losses. A prominent Russian warblogger has responded with a furious denunciation of 'meat assault' tactics https://twitter.com/user/status/1963290858553286894
At this point, I am becoming a broken disk, but this is NOT a country which is preparing for Peace; this is a country preparing for war, with us. At this pace, they will not need 5 or 10 years... this is just ONE YEAR of work. https://twitter.com/user/status/1963388221490171933
My Anonymous voulanteer friend in Ukraine wrote: ---- Some updates, we start with the fronts. A tendency that is now becoming increasingly clear is that we are making small but effective counterattacks across the entire front line https://twitter.com/user/status/1963204054839918781
Russia has carried out the largest regrouping of troops since the battles near Kyiv in 2022. They have prepared a lot of forces and are ready for a decisive battle for the rest of Donetsk region. https://twitter.com/user/status/1963505462747296035
Last edited by Cheese; 09-04-2025 at 09:16 AM.
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