Please never stop the good news.
Please let it peak with a revolution that overthrows Russias oligarchy and Putin hanging like Mussolini 🤞
Ukraine would go down as performing one of the greatest turntables in history. They deserve it for bearing the brunt of Russias atrocities.
Ukraine export of goods to Russia is literally booming :D
A real fire sale too! 🔥
The world’s “gas station with an army” is well on its way to become neither. After which Russia loses almost all its relevance (except for its nukes)
If Russia is unable to rebuild refineries, keep aircraft flying (safely), etc. without all the supplies they used to import from other countries, it makes me wonder if their nuclear weapons are actually useable at this point. They have to be properly maintained, and the nuclear materials occasionally replenished. The longer sanctions are in place, and the more infrastructure Ukraine damages or outright destroys, the less nuclear capability Russia will have. Not a bad thing.
Right now it’s kinda a battle between Ukraine’s ability to produce long ranged drones vs Russia’s ability to repair their oil and gas infrastructure. Keeping in mind that only 10% of drones have been making it to their targets, though that may increase in time.
Throughout the war they’ve been able to repair their infrastructure surprisingly quickly, even increasing production over time. That’s until the last month or so, where they’ve seen a pretty drastic drop in production ability. Nobody knows how long that will actually last, but it seems they’ve been hit pretty hard considering I believe they’ve paused gasoline exports until the end of November.
As far as imports for important tech to keep vital equipment running, it doesn’t seem the attempts to block trade with Russia has been super effective. Throughout the war they’ve created a lot of different ways to evade import bans through the use of shell corporations in countries they still do trade with like China. I think yesterday I saw an article that all their drones still had important parts being manufactured in Japan. Corporations are more than willing to turn a blind eye so long as it is technically legal trade.
Unfortunately the war in Iran has been a huge windfall for Russia, their national wealth fund is basically the life blood of the Russian economy, and it keeps growing as long as crude oil is above 59 dollars a barrel. Though they are banning exports of gasoline, they are still exporting more crude oil than ever. The attacks have mainly affected their ability to refine crude into gasoline, and other more valuable byproducts. If Ukraine could hit their ability to transport crude, that would have a much higher impact. That however would be much harder to do considering a lot of it is produced off shore, and it may upset some of their military partners who are cautious about raising fuel cost domestically.
Forbidding direct imports always adds friction, costs, delay, middlemen, possibility of counterfeit parts, etc. Plus reducing volumen.
Do you have any info on them repairing things faster than expected? I thought Ukraine switched their refinery targeting precisely to avoid them repairing it too quickly. Did that work?
I understand what you mean, but they had like 10k nuclear bombs at some point. Even if a lot of them were poorly maintained they should still have a few hundred functional ones by sheer numbers alone.
Maintaining nuclear weapons is far from trivial. The Wikipedia page on stockpile stewardship goes into a bit of detail. But in a nutshell everything from the nuclear material to the electronics to the high explosives used to initiate the nuclear reaction degrade over time.
The US hasn’t manufactured new nuclear weapons since 1992, meaning they’re all at least 33 years old at this point. The US regularly checks & replaces all these components to keep them operational.
Russia is also believed to have stopped building new nuclear weapons since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, so their arsenal is at least as old as the US one. I’m not sure Russia would have been capable to maintain their stockpile the way the US has. Among other things:
- Tritium, used as a booster, has a half life of 12 years, so needs to be replenished fairly regularly. It decays to Helium 3, which can hinder a fission reaction. So it’s critical it’s properly removed.
- The batteries that power everything need regular replacing every few years.
- The conventional high explosives used to initiate the chain reaction degrade over time, especially in high heat, and the close proximity to radiation from the nuclear core. These explosives are critical to triggering a nuclear reaction. They have to be very precisely shaped around the nuclear core, and the timing to detonate each piece of it is also critical. If they are even slightly degraded or the timing is off then you won’t get a nuclear chain reaction when the explosives detonate.
- plutonium changes phases over time, so cores require occasional purification.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s when we had treaties like START there were reports that US officials inspecting Soviet missile silos saw standing water in them. The implication was that the Soviets may not have taken maintenance as seriously as the US did.
But the bottom line is we truly have no idea. Organizations like the CIA and MI6 might have insight into all of this if they have assets (like Oleg Penkovsky was) who are able to provide them with verifiable data on the issue.
I know there are many reasons a poorly maintained nuclear weapon may not function as intended. And probably a lot of them are dysfunctional rn. But the idea that none of them work is wishful thinking…
Russia is still capable of producing the materials needed for a war that has been going on for 4 years now, or rather 12 if that’s how you want to count. They’re still using midrange ballistic missiles and probably still have ICBM capabilities.
Even if the bombs don’t work as intended, they could probably manufacture a dirty conventional bomb with great ease.
Not to mention Russia shutout international inspectors of its nuclear weapons in 2022, we have no counts or even status information about them since then.
And with all the corruption, I’m guessing the generals in charge of maintaining those nukes might have redirected some of those funds into their own accounts.
It seems like every day we’re hearing about strategic hits deep inside of Russia’s zone of control. I am sincerely amazed that both the Russian people and Putin’s allies are taking this laying down.
I’m sure someone has fallen down a flight of windows over it.
fallen down a flight of windows
LOL
Putin is too scared to do anything beyond troop surges, and the average Russian doesn’t care about anyone but themselves. They’ll take this lying down until they themselves at an individual level get affected or Putin gets popped by someone in his circle. Until then, its just another day of the week in Russia.
I’m not, they’ve been under the yoke for quite a long time, also, I think you think too highly of the general people. Look at America, they think voting Donald out would actually work while he’s busy replacing everyone he can with loyal lapdogs. He fought for it the first time an got away with it, why wouldn’t he again with a better stratagy now.
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Way more Sus that he’s getting down voted.
Almost like a lot of ‘these people’ don’t like hearing about the reality of what it takes to thwart a coup from violent and actually evil people.
No, you people just think to much of yourselves considering how poorly you act as a group. It’s why I know you’ll learn nothing from this experiance with Donald even if you do manage to get your shit together.
Who are “you people?” Are you lost or just confused?
All I did was comment how ABSOLUTELY STRANGE it was to interject a completely separate topic. Almost like it’s YOUR JOB to comment about that politics stuff, huh? Pretty weird if you ask me…
“you people” dumbasses who think the general populous won’t roll over when a gun is pointed at your face, idiots who think they can vote out an athoritarian who already tried to overthrow the gov the first time with his mob of slightly dumber idiots.
And now that he’s spent the last year and a half of entrancing himself and his cronies you think voteing him out will actually do any thing.
Also ‘you people’ are stupid,
and honing in on this phrase only tells me all I need to know, your one of those stupid Liby types that relys on mob mentality to silence others who have opinions you don’t like, go touch grass keyboarder.
You make a good point. People like to say we are only a couple of meals away from revolution but the great depression lasted nearly ten years and even by WWII almost half the men were turned away from enlisting because they were malnourished.
Guess what? No revolution. But sure, expensive groceries and corruption are going to change things.
You sound REALLY mad. You do realize you’re arguing with yourself, right?
Are you paid by the Kremlin directly or do they use a third party to deposit your pay? And do you get bonuses for good content, or are you paid by the hour?
Wow your really having a cuntniption fit over me calling you out huh. Your the one going across my account saying I’m a Russian bot loser, your just angry that I read you perfectly. No wonder you got kicked off reddit
Look at this guy, he thinks Donald is just a “phase” of the government. He is the natural evolution of the American Dream, a true representation of the values the US has.
The shocker, it was always this way. Our very first President was on track to becoming the world’s first billionaire adjusted for inflation.
Nice to see the three day special operation showing so much success.
I wish they would just hit Putin and get it over with. I’m guessing they don’t out of fear of nuclear retribution.
