It's not Russia's business to take out the people and structures you always mention. Why should Russia fight your battle?
You big mouthed cowards over there in the US need to get rid of those people, it's your battle to fight but instead you vote for them over and over again. Same applies to Europe.
I get a bit tired of this nonsense that Russia should, Russia could, Russia must.
Are you not voting for taking out politicians? Don't try to twist you out of it now. You together with GM and others always know what Russia must and could and should do. And it always includes some people or territory that Russia has no business to attack, destroy or kill. Russia has the SMO and how they do that is their business.
All the NATO-shit is business of the people that live in those NATO countries. Russia is not obliged to do your job for you.
>You together with GM and others always know what Russia must and could and should do.
It's pretty simple -- if a country is under attack and is capable of defending itself, it must defend itself, or it will be defeated.
The Iranians can be seriously cirticized for being way too cowardly too, but at least they hit back when they were attacked.
Russia is being bombed 24/7, the population is furious, the military is seething, meanwhile political leadership is getting chummy with the very people doing the bombing.
>It's not Russia's business to take out the people and structures you always mention.
It very much is.
And we know that because someone pretty high up in the Russian hierarchy, as high as it gets in fact, very publicly promised exactly that -- to hit "decision making centers". He did that on the day the war started, and a couple more times in 2022.
Then he stopped mentioning it because it became too ridiculous.
>Russia must look after themself, nothing more.
Well, yeah, but they are not doing that either.
Putin right now is begging for surrender terms that are effectively Brest-Litovsk while being bombed 24/7 and not making any serious effort either defend the country or win the war.
Looking after themselves only gets you so far. You can mind your own business but if I start punching you in the face, at some point you are going to be in a fight, whether you like it or not. We can’t vote our way of of this, they won’t let alone who would pose a threat to the deep state anywhere near the White House. So yeah, if your war is with NATO as even Putin has admitted, maybe fighting your actual enemy is what you need to do. It’s not because Elena or I think it’s Russia’s obligation to us, it’s their obligation to themselves.
The crisis in Kiev is real and it could have only been achieved with planning coordination, proper execution and also taking advantage of the cold spell.
Notice how different missile classes were assigned to particular targets. Also the air defense seems to be minimal.
It's showing sentience on the part of the stavka FWIW. Nothing too impressive, in contrast - americans/IDF would have displayed extreme (perhaps diabolical) cunning - and cruelty - if they were outsourced to perform this type of task.
GM too suggests the strategic choices, exemplified by empty threats by Putin, have cost Russia their deterrence. I am inclined to agree with it.
On the other hand one must consider that the strategic choices have been hampered by substantial tactical blunders and necessarily limited their strategic op space.
It's a grey zone really with incomplete information.
Consider Moskva debacle - what was Moskva's business being where it sunk? Was the RF Navy Offcer Core imprudent and derelict in their missile defense readiness of the flagship?
That huge debacle (complete with the attempted coverup) exemplifies the tactical fumble. And there were many such cases.
You can't do strategy if your Black Sea flagship sinks after being targeted with 2 old-school slow-ass missiles.
When the West went to war, in Iraq, Libya etc, these are the FIRST things they take out. Water plants, generating stations, hospitals, bridges, emergency services. And they also try to take out as many of the skilled personnel as they can in those strikes.
And then they "sanction" those countries to prevent replacements. Iraq didn't have clean water for well over a decade.
Yes, it's appalling. So is Kiev's forced conscription of over a million men to die pointlessly for Zelensky's coke habit and overseas mansions.
That power supplied the drones that kill Russian soldiers, moved the conscripts to the front lines to die, and beamed the daily Minute of Hate propaganda into every Ukrainian home.
Now, with the West obviously moving to destroy Iran, Russia has to get this over with quickly.
Ukrainian civilians can move out of the cities, and be warm with firewood, melting water as their ancestors did for millennia.
Compared to the victims of the West's wars they still have it comparatively good.
And it will SAVE their lives if this brings the war to a quicker end.
I would shed no tear, not even if they take out his wife at the same time... perhaps especially. But he would be replaced with another willing puppet as easily as the puppeteer opens the box and replaces one hand puppet with the next, for the next act.
But actually I disagree with you about Western war tactics - they EXPRESSLY maximise civilian casualties, with focus upon the emergency services and 'first responders'. Kill the brave people who rush in to save lives with 'double taps'. Mass civilian deaths to cause terror. Entire psychology depts are devoted to such methods for decades now, refining in each iteration.
What we are seeing in Gaza is simply what every other Imperial victim has faced for the past 300 years.
If you have a spare hour, and haven't seen it before, I do recommend that Pilger documentary. His is the horror of the true journalist.
The 2nd World War was primarily fought in Russia, and China. Russia wants to avoid that holocaust again at all costs - the weapons today are on a scale that dwarfs anything of that conflict, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Who REALLY ARE the decision-makers in all this? It's not Zelensky, not even Kid Starver, Micron or Schmertz. Not VDL or KK. Or Rutte. These are all middle-management yes-people who have a little local control to pretend to do their assigned roles.
Trump has ever so slightly more leeway, but even he takes his orders when they are handed down.
How do you hurt the banking clans? The secret Blackrock leadership, the offshored, the ones who pull the strings of the puppets?
And to do that without triggering WW3, or personal retaliation assassinations against the Kremlin?
If Zelensky was taken out, Zaluzhny would be flown in the next day. And he would have MUCH more security. And then the West would never shut up about the "New Churchill brutally assassinated by the evil Kremlin", as though Zelensky isn't profoundly hated by his own people, who would more gladly hang the fker than be conscripted to die for him and his oligarchy.
A lamppost would be a better ending than a Russian missile for him and the rest of his fellow Nazis, like Mussolini.
>How do you hurt the banking clans? The secret Blackrock leadership, the offshored, the ones who pull the strings of the puppets?
>And to do that without triggering WW3, or personal retaliation assassinations against the Kremlin?
Yeah, that the big question.
But the resistance holds the cards here provided it is genuine, because it has the numbers on its side.
How do you take out the banking clans? One by one. They are quite dispersed, but they are also a finite number. So missile strikes, FPV drones on the ground, bullets where you can get to them, etc.
Maybe they will kill Putin, but so be it. If there is genuine resistance, that would not be a problem, he would be replaced. You see how the Palestinians, Hezbollah. Ansar Allah, lose leaders all the time, but they get replaced immediately. Because those are genuine resistance movements from the ground up. Early communists in Russia were exactly like that too.
But Putin isn't drive by ideals and principles. So he won't risk his own skin. And it's not even that it is a problem for Russia if he goes, if Russia goes into full defend-the-motherland mode, it can take out all the Western elite at a 1:1 exchange ratio, or even worse, and it will come out on top. The problem is the Russian elites won't go there, because they won't sacrifice themselves.
It's why even Ukrainian elites have not been touched. They could have been all taken out before Ukraine gained the ability to strike deep in Russia, but they weren't because the Russian elites feared the much more remote back then chances of retaliation on some of them. Today it is a much worse situation.
But the principle has not changed -- if you have to fight a war on elites and one side is a rapacious oligarchy while the other is a genuine popular movement, if their kinetic capabilities are similar and the resolve to fight to the end is there, the latter will prevail.
Now how do you prevent that from going to full blown nuclear exchange? That's a difficult one. Ideally you separate the military on the other side from the oligarchy and you make them understand they will not be touched and cities and infrastructure won't be touched, thus they should sit it out in terms of pulling out the big guns. The problem is that the banking and business elites have very astutely integrated the military command into their ranks through the infamous revolving door. So that's a risk. But if the alternative is certain albeit slow death by a thousand cuts, you have to take that risk.
I agree about not killing Zelensky. However Russia is very afraid to step on the toes of the West. For example it could force all embassies to move to Lvov, bomb the train station in Kiev to prevent the circus of visiting politicians.
Denying electricity for Kiev and the western part is fair I think because while their compatriots (many Russian speaking) are dying on frontline, many parts of Ukraine were untouched, including discos and ski resorts.
"But actually I disagree with you about Western war tactics - they EXPRESSLY maximise civilian casualties, with focus upon the emergency services and 'first responders'."
One thing GM forgets to mention is the shooting down of US ISR satellites - shooting them down or having them have "accidents" would not be viewed as an act of war. That can be the best single thing that Russia can do to even out the ISR capabilities and cripple Ukrainian/US intelligence that can be used to target on Russian territories. Yet that is not done.
I doubt that shooting down ISR satellites would be any larger of an escalation than sending drones on Putlers residence or attacking Russia's nuclear triad. Actually, shooting down ISR would probably even it out.
I was shocked when I learned that Musk was providing Starlink...I kept waiting for an announcement on strikes on Starlink and...nothing happened as usual.
Also, all those "commercial" satellites that have been used to photograph Bucha and stuff should've also been shot down the moment they were used to photograph Russian territory....
Either Russia lacks capabilty to shoot it down, Putler is a ссыкло (hope I don't need to translate), or both
It's not due to lack of capacity, there were a dozen different programs to do that already in Soviet times, from the early 1960s in fact, and they kept working on that later on.
"One thing GM forgets to mention is the shooting down of US ISR satellites - shooting them down or having them have "accidents" would not be viewed as an act of war."
Removing Zelensky and other decision-makers would only turn them into martyrs and intensify the hatred of ordinary Ukrainian citizens towards Russia. It would also make life in the newly acquired Russian territories more difficult after the war. No, the Ukrainians must do that themselves. Or settle it through court rulings after the war. (I translated my post into English using a machine; my English isn't very good. Sorry.)
Surely the majority in the newly acquired Russian territories would celebrate the removal of those who have tried to destroy their cultural identity since Maidan?
"When the West went to war, in Iraq, Libya etc, these are the FIRST things they take out. Water plants, generating stations, hospitals, bridges, emergency services. And they also try to take out as many of the skilled personnel as they can in those strikes.
And then they "sanction" those countries to prevent replacements. Iraq didn't have clean water for well over a decade.
Yes, it's appalling."
It works. Just as Ukraine has used nazi tactics, but that kept the war going. They worked.
All of that would depend on how the "justified" is calculated, who weighs up the pros and cons. How would you make that judgement? But the judge isn't you and it isn't me either, it's calculated by the person, group, nation that does the deed.
If there is a judge and court that can correctly make that decision and enforce the judgement they certainly aren't on this earth today. We don't have international law, what we have today is the PRETENSE of international law.
The strong can pass judgements on others, but by laws that are never applied to themselves.
Everything that the Russians are doing now in Ukraine has been done by the West elsewhere, and much more, for many years.
The puppeteers in Paris and Berlin are already arguing about how to spend the 90m euro loan. D.C. has cut funding, and the EU puppeteers are struggling with limited funds.
Ukrainian industry which would have provided cost effective food, clothing, and essential supplies and support is being destroyed. The reliance on local supplies is illustrated by corruption scandals in Ukraine eg dragons teeth dumped, inadequate trench networks, overpriced food that was provided in Ukraine. With reduced Ukrainian industry, EU puppeteers will need to raise extra funds to purchase more expensive EU services, and transport to make up the shortfall.
It used to be said that wars didn't change things at home but did accelerate changes already occurring, perhaps we and the ordinary decent Ukrainians not living off American Caesar's largesse are about to find out?
Russia wants to empty the cities to avoid civilian casualties and they are using the FAFO principle against Ukrainian strikes inside Russia and its tankers on the high seas. Simple as that... Chip
Lots happening, Simplicius. Thanks for the update. I'd say the Russians often wait for substations and generation assets to be repaired before targeting again. Perhaps what's happening now is the Ukrainians and Europeans have exhausted their replacement equipment so Russia has decided to finish off the grid. Knowing how delicate AC grids are I'm amazed the Ukrainians have kept things going as well as they have. I guess the Soviets built a lot of redundancy into their infrastructure.
There used to be a lot of redundancy in expectation of war, sabotage, or accidents. Also overcapacity for further industrial development. The Ukraine in 1990 had ~50 million people and a lot of industry. Reduced population and decommissioned industry let this overcapacity grow.
The most likely source for replacement parts are the Baltics. Their grid was built to the very same specifics and norms and parts can just be switched once brought in. They have the very same deindustrialisation and depopulation. To give an example, Lithuania used to have 2 running NPP blocks (2 more were under construction) and 8 units TPP (running on gas and all kinds of oil). Now, there is only one single thermal unit (newly built in 2012) running. With some additional hydro, solar and wind. So, there is a lot of old spare parts to be shipped. The transformers where even built in Zaparoshe - which once upon a time used to be the worlds biggest producer of power transformers.
750 kV transformers are not interchangeable. They even have to be carefully matched at the factory (3 phase a/c so 3 transformers).
Then there is logistics. A single phase will weigh several hundred tons and thus can't even be moved over regular freight rail, thus water transport with specialized, extremely slow movers are required for the movement from dock to the location. Target rich environment, good luck getting insurance, as the prime mover will be even more expensive and rare than the transformer.
Many items in the USSR where standardized, with very few producers. Often only one producer within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance [vulgo: East Block]. Transformers were definitely highly standardized (GOST) as were complete power stations. Under such conditions you can switch a 750 kV transformer from say Latvia into a transformer station in Ukraine.
Like with some fancy spare parts for a Boeing 737-800 from say Ryanair into one from China Airlines.
Logistics may be difficult. Especially with changing track gauges. But once upon a time, they were brought from the producer Zaparoshe (which is in Ukraine), so it should be possible to transport them back. With better heavy load transport options these days. (It's not NASA and the Moon).
The producer for power transformers in the USSR was Zaporoshe. As someone who claims being knowledgeable in this industry - you should have heard about them
A transfomer isn’t just produced, it is designed. LV has it’s standards, and so does HV, but they still need customization particularly with penetrations and shielding. Electricity does not recognize nationalities or OEM, it does recognize grid characteristics.
It was nationalized by Ukraine in 2022, started producing military equipment and since then was attacked multiple times. You may read all you want on internet about this plant, but it won't produce any transformers any time soon.
Even maintenance work on HV equipment is extremely high skilled work in peace-time. How much more so in times where management structures have begun to breakdown, manuals burned, etc. As long as they are not sporting Nazi tattoos on the body and brain, the men working miracles on Ukraine's grid are extremely valuable assets that Russia would do well to keep alive for future use. (edit: That goes doubly so for any cats on the team)
I’m assuming Ukraine will be returned to productivity, eventually. One thing Russia does not have is an abundance of labour, hence imports of labour from Korea, India, etc.
Obviously you would not go after just Poroshenko, it would be a systematic campaign.
What happened to denazification? You don't hear much about that anymore, do you?
Kostyukov was forced to go to Abu Dhabi and sit on the same table as Budanov for two days. Budanov has tried to kill him who knows how many times. Meanwhile Kostyukov is under strict orders not to touch Budanov or Malyuk. I can only imagine how that feels.
Why the insults? If you look at the reports from Abu-Dhabi, the Russians are only talking about removing forces only from donbass. There is no mention made of denazification, reducing afu numbers or protecting speakers of russian language. if you remember in previous demands, russia demanded removal of forces from all 4 oblasts it controls - but now its only donbass. Why? Is it going to give up the other 3 oblasts?
There is no discussion about any of those issues simply because the meeting is only between the military and intelligence reps of both parties and none of that is within their sphere.
Are you just uninformed or a troll of the General Melschitt variety ?
Lol go see the official statements from the Kremlin or go read any number of telegram channels from both sides discussing the results of the agreements at abu-dhabi. They all say the same thing
Nobody here seems to remember, understand or care about the history.
How was the USSR collapsed? Through seven decades of creating crises for it to exhaust it, which eventually succeeded.
1) Civil war and Western invasion from all sides in 1918-1922
2) Sanctions and economic isolation, from the very beginning to the end
3) Engineering the rise of Nazi Germany as a tool to destroy it (the most successful such project)
4) Constant smaller attacks on the perimeter that it had to put out -- Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan, etc.
Plus constant subversion.
In the end it was exhausted and collapsed.
The USSR was gaining in that strategic confrontation only when it was on the offensive (duh). During Stalin's time and to a lesser extent in the 1960s and 1970s with decolonization.
They are doing the exact same thing to Russia, they never stopped for a second after 1991.
If Putin thinks he can just absorb hits endlessly while being squeezed everywhere on the perimeter with half the population of the USSR and a third of the landmass (but the most productive land) gone, and that he can find some accommodation with the West in which the West will stop trying to destroy Russia, well, I don't know what to say. Only a complete idiot can think that.
The world has changed since the 1600s and 1700s. Back then Russia was mostly strategically safe because of its vast geography combined with the technology of the time no allowing vast distances to be crossed quickly and there being no instant communication worldwide.
That world is long gone, and if you are not on the offensive, you are on the menu being slowly digested, and your fate is sealed. It's that simple.
I agree. This is the same fate that is reserved for China as well btw - since China is too afraid to commit and just wants to do "business as usual". But as the saying goes, "you can ignore politics, but that does not mean that politics ignores you". Just because China wants to not escalate, not take a side, make a deal, etc does not mean that the US won't be trying to create crises for it. China is currently growing so it can largely mitigate these crises, but they will start piling up unless China goes on the offensive itself and takes a position.
Notice, that somehow the US is remarkably internally stable - sure some protests occassionally happen, but largely life goes on. There is no exploitation of divisions in US society by either the Russians or the Chinese (the latter have enough money and expertise to foment it tho, particularly with the number of their people they have in the US and how many youths are sympathetic to China) - and the divisions in US society are many.
There are also no crises being artificially created on US borders, as the US does to other countries (that is outside the crises that the US creates itself).
If you are the piece of whatever take a look at what Russia was in the 1600s and 1700s.
You are like forker for real? Back then Russia was... can we ship you back to those glorious times so we won't hear a word from you. or as you are obviously that simple and sorta not that someone that matters talking about someone's fate.
You make some good points which Putin supporters fail to acknowledge. Putin seems to want to avoid 'escalating' things with the West by not taking firm decisive action against the many provocations and acts of war committed by the West. Such a strategy (appeasement) makes inevitable the open military clash you are seeking to avoid. The imperialist West only responds to decisive action and strong pushback. During the Cold War 1.0 the aggressive actions of American imperialism attempting to completely dominate the world were held in check to varying degrees by the actions of the USSR/Maoist China. During the US war on Vietnam the USSR/China provided large amounts of military/economic aid to N.Vietnam and thousands of military advisors. China sent large numbers of troops to N.Vietnam who would have fought an American invasion of the north. The Vietnam War overstretched US imperialism leading to a currency crisis for the US dollar which was forced to lose its gold backing in 1971 when Nixon took it off the last vestiges of the gold standard. After its defeat in Vietnam the US spent the best part of a decade licking its wounds recovering its strength for the next round of military interventions under Reagan.
The imperialist West will never accept the current governments of Russia/China and has not given up on its desire to dismember Russia into pliant cantons and take China back to the pre revolutionary period where it was carved up by Western imperialists into different spheres of influence/direct occupation.
Russia and China are doing little to defend their allies who are being picked off by the Trump regime. This is a grave mistake which will come back to hurt both nations, especially China in years to come. Trump and his neo-con handlers have made it very clear that intense economic warfare is being used and together with military measures will be stepped up this year to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Iran. The lack of firm action from Russia/China to deter the Trump regime is leading countries like Mexico to consider ending its critical oil supplies to Cuba which would be catastrophic for the people of that nation.
Most productive land gone? Wtf! In the 70s the USSR was a massive wheat importer. Now, Russia is the worlds largest wheat exporter, along with many other cereals and foodstuffs. What on Earth caused you to make that comment?
they have on both sides only spooks and military people who are engaging with a narrow set of issues. The Russian side in Abu Dhabi is not to deal with wider political issues
You’re not gonna get a response. These people are like abuse victims that perpetuate the cycle. Because they are smeared as Putin puppets by shitlibs in other fora, who refuse to engage in actual discussion, they just replace ‘West’ with ‘Russia’ and give us the very treatment they are getting elsewhere. You can’t argue with ideologues. Have you considered starting your own Substack?
And I do see a need for it, because I can't find anything in the English-language space that actually does a proper analysis of what is happening.
Russian social media is full of furious people who know exactly what is happening, but they some just don't exist outside of that space.
We'll see what the future holds.
Regaрding the rest, yeah, I didn't expect a reply either, and I have made on numerous occasions the point that this is a cargo cult that has appointed Putin in the role of John From who will bring the "cargo", in this case salvation from the evils of globohomo.
It is also why they are inherently incapable of opening their eyes, because that cargo cult was created on a foundation of a strange mix of US somewhat traditional right wing conservatism, libertarianism, and a bit of racism. And Putin intentionally plays on that with his BS about traditional values (as if coddling the marginal groups in the US will somehow get the US off his back).
But the real and serious criticism of Putin, and the one that is abundant inside Russia, is from a communist point of view. Which does not mix with such people.
The tragedy here is that the "alt-media" is not really independent. The MSM does what it's told by the people who bankroll it, everybody knows that. But the independent "alt-media" is not really free to speak its mind either, and paradoxically this is precisely because it survives on donations. If you start telling the people who give you money truths they don't want to hear, well, they stop giving you money. So the ruthless process of natural selection results in the dominant alt-media channels being echo chambers and peddlers of outright (ZAnon in this case) insanity.
You see it here all the time too -- Ukro-NATO-Nazi strikes deep inside Russia and the dail onslaught of terror in the border areas are barely reported. Even though they are the real story of the (not-)war -- NATO wanted a platform from which to fire at will into Russia. It got that platform, and the exact details of the Russia slow crawl westwards do not matter, because that crawl in no way threatens the existence of the launch platform. Not that Putin has even set its elimination as a goal to begin with.
Also, a lot of the usual voices you hear are outright charlatans who know nothing about Russia or the military-technical aspects. I don't claim to be a military expert, I work in a very different field, but do like to educate myself about things and I am stickler for checking sources and facts. Those people you hear on the podcasts are anything but that.
Classic example -- I don't know how many times I have heard that "NATO attacked Russian early warning radars in Voronezh", including and especially from people with credentials of having worked in the military and intelligence agencies. But there is no early warning radar in Voronezh, what we have is that the current series of Russian early warning radars is called "Voronezh" (Voronezh-M/Voronezh-DM/Voronezh-VP) and what was attacked were the Voronezh-DM radar in Armavir, the Voronezh-VP radar in Orsk, and the Container 29B6 over-the-horizon (a different thing entirely) radar in Mordovia. There are two 29B6 radars -- one in Mordovia and one is under construction in Amur Oblast -- while the Voronezh ballistic missile radars are in Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Leningrad, Armavir, Orsk, Barnaul, Vorkuta, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk; but nothing around Voronezh. How can you make such a stupid mistake? It obviously means you know nothing of Russian geography, of the facts about those strikes, or about Russian early warning systems. But the "experts" keep (very confidently too) making that same mistake again and again, and nobody notices.
Speaking of importe/ance. Your comments here are valid contribution to the fact of tiny family jewels of yours. Like a small dick theory going on and on.
Perhaps Russia has gamed it out that more NATO engagement always leads to a nuke exchange and they know the best way to win is to launch the first massive strike. So if baked in, maybe Russia is waiting to the last moment for some peace miracle before the super computers say press the button.
Your mental health matters. The way you are feeling about the whole situation is valid. Help is on the way. I do understand the high level anxiety of you living in the Western world. Horrific experience I might say. But you don't get out of it just like that, if there is a nuke exchange there is no you or me.
Chocolateshenko is not untouchable. Just hit him in London, like a Parubiy walking in the streets of Lwow, kurwa. But to whack Chocolateshenko will not bring much.
A better thing would be to send some hypersonic rocket on the conference center of Davos when Fink and co. are there.
Russia also hit Poroshenko's Roshen chocolate factory in Kyiv which is reported as assembling and producing long range Ukrainian drones instead of chocolates!
According to field commentary from Ukrainian army members, Poroshenko is a really big player in the drone industry. Much of the billion dollar aid transfers from the West go to him to keep producing all those wonderful Ukrainian drones that we are told are slowly but surely going to win the war for Ukraine.
It is worth noting that he is using his considerable power as a former President and quite possibly future President of Ukraine to keep the war going no matter how bad it gets for the average Ukrainian.
My understanding is that none of the anti-Russian Poroshenko-types will occupy government offices in the future should Ukraine survive as a country. Instead it will more likely be a pro-Russian government - rumour has it that a government-in-exile has been prepared in Russia headed by Viktor Yanukovych. I suspect that in the end, at least initially, Russia will form a civilian/military junta that will rule what is left of Ukraine until the anti-nazi programme is carried out, the military reduced to a number necessary for defense only and a new election can take place. Some of today's nazi-oriented elite will flee the country, some perhaps killed and others imprisoned. Ultimately, it is envisioned that Ukraine will become a part of the "Union State" along with Russian and Belarus.
The outcome you describe is the negotiated outcome that the Russians feel they need to be satisfied. But that is the result of a negotiated settlement that eliminates the need for otherwise senseless warfare.
However, now the Russians see an imposed settlement in sight and without too much warfare required to get it. A possible imposed settlement: fully take the remaining Ukrainian Black Sea coastline leaving Ukraine landlocked. Move on up to join the Russian speaking part of Moldova. Return large parts of captured western Ukraine (including the Romanian speaking parts of Moldova) *back* to Romania and/or Hungary and Poland as they were before Hit Ler imposed the current borders that the West is so feverishly defending.
That leaves a devastated, tiny Ukraine full of neo nazis who feel bitter and betrayed not by Russia who openly did what they said they would, but instead exploited by the west. A west which is full of Ukrainians who feel the same way and can be entangled in a neo nazi/criminal gang nexus with a goal of doing as much harm as possible while extracting as much money as possible. Props for the Russians who are fellow Slavs after all and hatred toward the conniving degenerate Euros.
Such an outcome works for the Russians, is doable and useful. Trying to remove neo nazis from Ukraine now is impossible. They dominate what is left of Ukraine. Better to let them be and put them to use. But powerless to impact Russia of course.
Almost all of the Ukrainian non public facing leadership is an actual neo nazi, sympathetic to them or is obligated to them by virtue of money, power or compromat. But in a tiny, third world rump state such people can't do much damage to Russia even if they wanted to. And they don't want to because basically they admire Russian culture and most them actually speak Russian in private discourse. Many of them are Russian citizens who fled because the Russian authorities don't allow them to be active. They hate the current Russian government but admire Russia. They hate the Euro government but despise the Euro culture even more.
Your view of a possible settlement is quite realistic, and in my opinion, a viable alternative to mine. Time will tell, but in the end Ukraine will never again be capable of causing Russia significant trouble. But further to your scenario, I would suggest that Russia will never allow the "runt Ukraine" to be ruled by nazis - they can not be destroyed but they can be removed from power and marginalised as far as the government goes, thus making them just another little barking dog.
Poroshenko will most likely move the remains of his drone production team to his Klaipeda factory in Lithuania. Production of Roshen chocolates has almost come to a standstill in Ukraine due to the lack of power so they make drones with just power from generators.
What is formally known as the Roshen factory has been in operation in Klaipeda for a hundred years. Roshen purchased the factory in 2006. They make good candies if anyone is interested in that type of thing.
I've asked this question elsewhere but allow me to try it here: While drones couldn't outright destroy a nuclear power plants-substations I imagine several dozen of them could take out all the structures carrying power lines or housing electrical gear. Seeing as how they can be guided, and are of such modest payload that an errant one couldn't seriously damage a reactor's dome, let alone penetrate it, I'm wondering if Ukraine's reactors are in range of Russia's guided drones, and if there are ones that could be launched from jets, similar to missiles, but guided.
Sure but the AD response or a wayward drone could damage the plants themselves and Russia needs those intact for when they annex and rebuild the east of Ukraine. They need to tread lightly.
Precize strikes they refer to. And for the better of society ofc or do you think that macron, merz, starmer, fundoflying, Kallas will stop before the destruction of Europe? I would argue that those precize attacks would be a great sacrifice of the above mentioned persons and that most people wouldn’t break their sleep over it.
Being a little sarcastic here, cause ultimately these same persons are puppets too and thus we will not destroy the head of the snake
Russia have all kind of systems with 1-5 meters CPE, including missile systems which Ukraine have no probability to defend from. It's question of political will, not ability. Given the order, it will be destroyed.
The question you should be asking is not if Russian drones are in range - the question you should be asking is why Russia does not have random drone launches constantly happening in random places all over Ukraine (indicating saboteur group activity) as they are happening in Russia (you seriously think that Ukraine flies drones all the way from Ukraine to Irkutsk?)? Where are the Russian saboteur groups? Where are constant assassinations of AFU commanders on leave? Where are the assassinations of soldiers in nightclubs in Kiev that are on leave spending their money on alehouses and whores? Where are random bombings and terror attacks in the middle of cities? This should not be difficult to arrange.
Read a claim yesterday--I think on Gold and Geopolitics--that 10% of the American population is responsible for 50% of consumption. If true, that explains a lot.
It certainly has its assets in Ukraine, but they simply provide information to the Kremlin, which it then uses to target such things as "chocolate factories," etc..
Since nobody in Washington, nobody in Brussels, nobody in Kiev cares in the least whether Ukrainians freeze or starve, the whole exercise is pointless.
Sorry but there is no poor memory about WWII in Germany.
It's simply that with help of the US the most of old Nazi's were integrated into the new BRD. From Globke to Gehlen and many others who served at universities and administration. The number of convicted Nazi's in West Germany is insignificant and most were given amnesty after a short while anyway. The rest were shipped out to Argentina, Panama and other Latin-america countries.
They managed to prohibit the KPD until today and accountability in Germany is only by talking and financing the terror state of Israel.
Where is the money coming from? My guess is future generations! More debt.
The USA funded Germany to rebuild after WW1, the Germans had to pay reparations to England and France, who had taken massive loans from the USA. The money never left the USA. Fast forward to 1929 and the scheme collapsed. As a result, the Nazis, until then a marginal organization, became one of the bigger parties in government and took power. They again got a shitload of money from the USA (government and business).
And who was the BIG winner after WW2? The new empire had rissen. European countries including Russia had massive debts, where more or less forced to buy American products with American money.
Btw the USA had lended a lot of money to support England and France in WW1. When it seemed the Germans were going to win, the USA stepped in, afraid that there loans would not be repaid.
Ok, one final note: what has the USA (and others to a lesser extent as well) deliberately been doing since WW2: burden countries with debt!
We all know this has much more to do with the future world order than Ukraine per se. The Russians are continuing to turn up the dial. They are obviously winning and NATO seems powerless to do anything but PR. If the grid does collapse that's the end of the fight. Perhaps you underestimate how much we depend on electricity?
However, it is also a sponge to absorb NATO military supplies and money to the point of exhaustion. Russia gets demonstrably stronger everyday. NATO gets weaker every day. And Ukraine gets neutralized by force instead of by the conforming to the previous agreement that was in place.
I thought NATO was the most powerful military alliance in history. Kudos for them being unconcerned about being humiliated on the world stage by a gas station masquerading as a country.
They don't see it that way at all. Rather, they see Russian impotence, unable after four years to subdue a minor NATO puppet, at no cost in european or American lives, while europe engages in open piracy and Russia unable to do a thing about it.
Ukraine industry and agriculture produces a lot - not now of course in the middle of conflict, but certainly the potential is there. And no one cares whether NATO cares - you state the obvious.
Russia will win. A new nazi-less Ukraine will be neutered, its military reduced, and the country rebuilt. NATO will fall into history. The EU will disband. Russia will negotiate a new European security architecture with Europe and America.
The former live bodies do not live in "Country 404" any more.
They have mass emigrated, just like all those Muslims, to Western Europe. Apparently the Country 404 popn is teetering at ~ 20million - over 40 million used to live there.
Au contraire. The Ukies can't fight without electricity. They can't produce drones or other weaponry without electricity. They can't supply troops without electricity.
And no one in Russia cares about winning hearts and minds in Ukraine during a war. They care only about winning and rebuilding what is left of Ukraine after.
Of course they do. Many are from China, or turkey or wherever but they have drone factories where they produce larger drones that strike deeper into Russia and against ships. In fact the latest Oreshnik struck one of their largest drone factories.
Even if that were true (it's not)! It didn'tow drone production in any way. And as I said, even if every drone factory in Ukraine were to cease production, the only thing that would happen is production would move to europe where Russia is afraid to strike.
Those days are gone? Really? We still have the fight against Russia, the fight against Iran, the fight against China, other battles. And where are the headquarters: Washington, Brussels (, London, Berlin, Paris). I agree Kiev is not one of them
The world no longer revolves around Washington, Brussels or Kiev. Anyone can start wars but they need to pay for them. The bigger the war the more money. These are highly indebted countries. They are broke and living off other's money. If they could win wars that would be very different situation. Nowadays they just pretend. The Russians have shone a light on the paper tiger. Mao was right.
My point is that they are still to powerful, still having a big influence, creating chaos everywhere they deem necessary for their own advantage.
Let me end with an example, that may not be relevant here, and I may be wrong, but nevertheless: I personally think that the terrorists that killed 26 people in the north of India (2025 Pahalgam attack) were payed by the west in their intent to encircle and eventually strangulate China. The effect of such ‘minor’ incidents almost led to a situation where 2 countries with nukes were willing to fight a war.
I never intimated that they aren't able to cause trouble. Just that "Luckily the world doesn't actually revolve around Washington, Brussels or Kiev." In fact that's why they are causing so much trouble. The world has moved on.
Chairman Mao said the population is the ocean the military swims in. While he was talking about guerilla forces, it applies to conventional forces, to a lesser extent. Local civilian manpower to build fortifications, supply food, clothing , and mechanical servicing of vehicles. In a later comment, you suggest that Ukraine is only supplying the manpower (presumably for the military), but there are plenty of local contracts for necessary supplies I imagine. If everything needs to be sourced from the EU, the logistic lines will be long, expensive and inefficient, and costs matter - many countries end wars when costs become prohibitive.
They won't work if there is nothing to feed into the supply lines. Sure, NATO is making more ammo, but it seems they have exhausted their reserves (at least as much as they are willing to send) so they can only send what they make and that is far less than what they have claimed to be able to do (and far less than what Ukraine is begging for). So supplies will trickle in, but not in a flooding river.
We've been hearing that one for years now. If that were true, it beggars belief that there is nobody in La Defense or Whitehall who can pull the politician's aside and tell them to stop letting their mouths write checks that their asses cannot cash. And if the politicians won't listen, the generals have other ways to get their message out.
This is a key point. The whole Ukraine/Russia war thingy is now 2nd page news. In the West there is a dawning realization that Russia is winning the AND becoming militarily stronger, even those who said (constantly in 23,24 and 25) that the Russian economy was close to imploding are mostly quiet now. Ukraine is losing the war big time and becoming militarily weaker and it's now on dwindling life support from the EU.
Its obvious to me that the Russians have the whip hand in negotiations and that until the Ukrainians final come to admit they have been defeated, this charade will go on.
I thought about it last night, and one positive benefit of de-electrifying Ukraine is that it is a lot harder to build a nuclear bomb when you don't have electricity.
Of course, that doesn't stop Ukraine's british and french friends from supplying them.
The 750 kV substation in the last picture seems primed for 1 or 2 Oreshniks. Each carrying 36 war heads grouped into 6 clusters per missile. Or perhaps those are saved for bigger and better things, time will tell.
Don't start with me - it is early. After all that talk about Russian missiles not sexy enough in the chart, I am happy to report that their warheads are the wonders of the Soviet/Russian generational institutional thought on the subject how warheads should behave once under constructive criticism.
Oreshnik MIRVs/MaRVs are notable for their unusually high accuracy for what they are, and considering how destructive they are to above and below ground structures, it's not like they'd need to thread the needle to destroy "just" a 750kV substation.
Ukrainians have alleged that the Russians are going to launch another Oreshnik or two for about a week now, so they've probably realized this, too.
I hope everyone understands that the US and EU are notified on Russian Launches of stuff that look like nuclear first strike stuff. The Russians are now flooding the channel with this stuff.
Keep in mind everyone asked the obvious question. How many hypersonics do they have? Easy answer. How many did they replace when they upgraded the 7000 unit nuclear ICBMs with new ones? What did they do with the old motors?
Seems I read about people laughing at the old rocket tech that used tubes recently....
Oreshnik is likely some combination of Yars missile parts and entirely new technology, as Oreshnik uses the same launcher and support vehicles as Yars and has some internal components in common with it, but its flight characteristics appear to be entirely different as instead of flying on a high, easily trackable ballistic arc like Yars, Oreshnik is seemingly impossible to track after launch, and unlike with older ballistic missiles that drop rocket stages that are easily found on the ground, no Oreshnik rocket stages have ever surfaced despite it being at least a two-stage rocket.
"...I understand it the 750 kV standard is a Soviet-specific legacy high-voltage transmission standard which is not compatible with most European countries, which run 300-500 kV max."
In the perfect world, I will request one Russian missile to permanently disable meth operation across the street in the midst of the snow storm I was waiting patiently for years to enjoy.
If there is a will there is a way. "To permanently disable all of that "- it is a common knowledge where all of that is situated. And there was at least one podcast on a Russian telegram man explaining the transformers side of the sexy Soviet tech. Every single thing is fashioned in the Bauhaus fashion, indestructible by weather elements or otherwise. My understanding is that any gadget in Russia has a different fork than in the Western World.
Not only that, the twilight geniuses came up with different railroad systems, and many other things, and that was not because they were insecure. Most likely they are territorial and know how to protect their women and children.
What you see on those substation shots is the switching gear spread out over a large area. The transformers themselves aren't as spread out or numerous. Take those out and the switching gear becomes redundant.
Also, sourcing 330kV transformers in the west is anything but easy. The lead time measures in years, and inventories are now tapped out.
Thanks for sharing the "Power" article Dave that's an eye opener for me as it looks like the US is in deep doodoo itself and can't even replace their own worn out tackle, never mind build new kit for increased demand.
This has been a long-recognised weaknessof the Western grid system, making it highly sensitive to an EMP attack. The soviet system was far more EMP-proof and designed with great resilience in mid.
Yes. I worked for a german transformer company several years. The pre-order time("Bestellvorlauf") for special insulation parts is 51 weeks(a year has 52 weeks) and there are 2 companys in europe who make these things. About voltage: in europe we had 110/220/380kV in the past, now ist mostly 120/(230)/400kV. highest voltage we had in the company was 550kV for the US/Canadian Grid. 750kV is a completely different design, its not "just 250kV more..."
Correct. A large EHV (500+ kV) substation will have 2 to 4 power transformer banks (consisting of 3 units per bank, one unit for each phase), for a total of 6 to 12 units. This one seems to have two banks. They are the heart of the s/s. There are many other transformers (but not hundreds), most of which are instrument transformers, current and voltage, for measurement and protection. You can think of them as nerves.
330kV level gear is difficult enough to source, but 750kV is an order of magnitude more so. There is only a handful of factories with extremely long lead times.
You can shut down the s/s for a long period of time if you strike the heart or if you strike the brain. The latter consists of the “relay” house located in the middle of the yard where the nerves converge, and the control room in a building somewhere on the periphery. If either one is destroyed, the gear is easier to replace but it will still take a long time to re-do the wiring, testing etc., everything that goes into commissioning a new s/s.
Cut the power and heat off to Kiev so the population moves out for survival. Then once a significant portion of the populations leaves issue an ultimatum that that have tell dusk to surrender and if not destroy their capital.
Hmm difficult decision , the mansion in Israel or Florida? Both built with embezzled US funds, so probably Israel, a fake democracy just like Ukraine and full of genocidal jews like himself.
That was a much needed lesson in power system destruction, thanks. The last one I studied in detail was the Chernobyl collapse of 4/26/1986, a localized event. Considering that January and February are the coldest months in Ukraine, a lot of pain and suffering can be handed down to the locals. We are looking at a systematical accumulation of stressful events: High rates of desertions from the armed forces, reduced support from the West, increased airing of corruption, etc. On top of all of this Ukraine society is increasingly realizing the hopelessness of the overall military situation. During WWI the Russian front started to collapse gradually by May of 1915. The main issues were lack of supplies, high casualty rates and poor logistics.
Tha might explain the Brusilov offensive that removed half of the Austro-Hungarian order of battle. Lots of the belligerents spent 1915 trying to recover from the catastrophe of 1914. The British pretty much dropped out of the European war until mid-1916.
Russia isn't doing anything differently than the US or Nato does as we all know: power grids are fair game to Nato so much so they've removed documentation from their website to hide this uncomfortable position. You either like it or you don't but you cannot pretend this isn't standard sop for the west.
Yes, but the difference is that striking power, water generation, food production, C&C is the first thing they do. It took 4 years, Carl, 4 years to start doing this. It is much too late.
>It took 4 years, Carl, 4 years to start doing this. It is much too late
And the death spiral started from the beginning with exactly the failure to do those basics.
It sent a clear messaged to the West that Putin wasn't serious and they can call his bluff and escalate, which is what they have kept doing for four years since then
What do you think Russia has been doing in Ukraine?
In this respect, first you upgrade, refine and then establish mass production of your attack systems. Then you systematically degrade Ukraine's anti air capacity. Once you have fulfilled the basic steps then you start hitting the system.
Pick off the low hanging fruit sitting there unprotected, exposed and key to powering the local economy and Ukraine's weapons manufacturing, thus shifting the burden to NATO.
Then you work your way up the grid chain depleting and exhausting Ukraine's ability to sustain its power distribution. Thus shifting much of the responsibility for producing the replacement hardware on to NATO.
And finally, after the grid is in chaos and terminal disorganization, you strike the mother load, the built for purpose, adjusted for location and expected requirements and even taking transportation into account when designed, top of the grid chain. All of which have to be replaced using NATO funds. The actual gear coming from Russia, China or Siemens in Europe depending on the cost benefit analysis. Most of the benefits in such a choice being a matter of opinion but with the costs being in your face real.
Do Swedanya Ukraine. And NATO for that matter but that takes even longer.
What you posted is classic ZAnon delusional nonsense aiming at rationalizing the facts on the ground so that the harsh truth is avoided.
Basic Warfare 101:
1) Destroy the enemy's command and control
2) Isolate the battlefield
3) Deprive the enemy of all other means of fighting
4) By all means do not allow the enemy to gain strength in any other way
If you have the capability to do those things, of course.
I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that Ukraine was weaker in 2022 than it has become since then. It's just absurd to claim it.
Which in turn is because none of the actions on that list above were carried out.
FFS, these days artillery is largely absent from the battlefield, because drones have made it so that it can't get within range, but for the first 18 months of the war that was not the case and in that time period the AFU was unloading trains full of soldiers and ammo within artillery range of the front lines and nobody was firing at the trains. Such was the extent of the total abdication from that most basic duty to isolate the battlefield. We're not talking major river bridges, we're not talking the Polish border. Just hit the damn trains that are unloading ammo 15 km from you. Even that wasn't being done. Why?
Russia had the capacity to carry out all of those actions on the list within the first days of the war and at any time since then. I as a mere armchair observer can give you an obvious concise and clear plan for what type of ammunition are to be fired where, you can be sure the General Staff had something much better and more detailed
But Putin didn't do it then and hasn't done it since then either. Why?
He also hasn't done any of the other obviously necessary things, such as doing a serious mobilization, while doing many absolutely inexplicable things such as negotiating with Trump right as 32 HIMARS missiles were fired into Belgorod today, an action that would have resulted in the immediate annihilation of all US forces outside the continental US in Soviet times and permanent severance of all diplomatic relationships.
Again, why?
You have to honestly ask yourself why these things are happening or not happening. But you are not honestly asking anything, you are making post-hoc rationalizations.
And if you do seriously approach the question, you will inevitably get to the issue of internal Russian politics, a vitally important matter that nobody wants to seriously think about.
Spare me all your blather about failure to launch a full on nuclear war with tens of thousand of nukes exploding cannot be anything more than criminal weakness on the part of the Russians.
Russia is winning the conflict in Ukraine. They are achieving their goals. NATO is losing. They are not only not achieving their goals but the reverse is happening. Winning is sufficient reward for some but not for you apparently.
C'mon ron, don't you know you are arguing with the second coming of Sun Tzu? The greatest military mind of a generation? He knows exactly how warfare is supposed to be done, and anybody who disagrees is obviously and idiot or if Russian, a traitor. He pines for the days when the USSR was an armed camp against the world and it was such an amazing place they had to build a wall in Germany to keep people from the West from flooding in.
High voltage A.C. distribution is not uncommon. The U.S. has several 765 kV lines - AEP is 2,200 miles long on the East Coast, and the 1,250 mile ERCOT line is being built in Texas to power offshore drilling. 765 kV carries 6x the power in the same cable as a 345 kV line at half the loss. Europe uses 800 kV D.C. lines for a similar purpose, as they have lower losses than A.C. lines at comparable voltages and can be used underwater.
Long lead times for replacement equipment (transformers, switching stations) is because of the high manufacturing tolerances required, and that each component is custom engineered and matched to other parts of the grid that it is being placed into. Ukraine's system is Soviet period in origin, but that has nothing to do with why order times are six to nine years out (and demands from AI for expanding the power grid will push it even longer).
A standard 110 kV transformer can use commodity copper; a 745 kV transformer requires not only copper completely clean of impurities, but that has certain magnetic properties that are difficult to manufacture. It is an enormous engineering challenge to make those bespoke components, and the engineering base to do so is constrained.
would you like to elaborate about the transformer copper properties as you appear to possess deep knowledge of the China state and the Russian behavior in these trying times. Would you like to block anyone in the chart who disagrees with you once we are at it?
You need strong magnetic performance in the core. A transformer works best when magnetic coupling is tight and losses are kept to a minimum.
The engineering talent base is constrained for a few reasons. First, high-power systems aren’t something you can truly learn in school—most of the real expertise is built on the job. Second, a lot of capability has been outsourced, which reduces local hands-on experience. And third, technical roles have become less popular, partly because they’re still seen as “blue-collar” a.k.a. “dirty” work.
This is probably the most interesting thing I have learned this week. Who knew ultra high voltage transformers are basically built like custom luggage? I love this. I wonder if I can find any documentaries or interviews with people who do such work.
Yes, it does happen "automatically" with the flow of electrons in the wire, however...
The shape of the magnetic field, it's frequencies, resonances are *highly* dependent on HOW you wind the copper wires, how thick they are, how many there are, their placement relative to each other, what they are wound *around*, all of which interact with current coming in and current going out.
Big, high voltage transformers are as much an art as a science and just one internal flaw or one unknown external factor can turn your 500 tonne, multi-million dollar transformer into a smoking pile of junk...
Those big-ass switching yards have protecting the transformer as job #1, switching electricity to where it needs to go is a far distant #2
The question is does Russia still produce 750kV transformers and associated infrastructure or did they begin to transition to Western standards under Yeltsin and let the Soviet-era industry decay? I'm reasonably happy to have Rivne & Khmelnitsky sent back to the C17th but the South Ukraine NPP and the infrastructure around Kiev and Chernigov will hopefully be needed for Novorossiya or a demilitarizated and denazified Ukraine within the Union State.
There's no difference from a manufacturing perspective between high voltage distribution components for the former Soviet electrical grids and western grids. It's not comparable to the difference in gauge size (track width) of the train system. The Russian and Ukrainian systems are 50 Hz - same as Europe and Asia. Ukraine is directly connected to the European electrical grid, and can both import electricity from and sell electricity into Poland and Hungary.
Components for EHV (Extra-High Voltage, 330 kV) and UHV (Ultra-High Voltage, greater than 330 kV) are completely bespoke manufactured products. Not only are transformers for EHV and UHV different between electrical networks and countries - they're different from each other on the same distribution network, and engineered specifically for a particular node on the network. There is a great deal of hand work involved in making them. There are a few countries that produce them - Germany, Russia, the U.S., China, probably more.
There's a detail it would have been good to include in my OP. The Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) that are being mentioned are natural-gas fired. Their primary purpose is to produce steam for heating buildings and providing hot water, but they also produce electricity (although their load is tied to their heating function).
Former Soviet states used monolithic masonry construction for buildings. The walls are non-insulated and very thick. Heating is by hot water loops and radiators under each window. You don't control the temperature in your flat, outside of having shut off valves for each radiator and windows to open. There are two hot water loops in buildings - one for hot water at the tap, and the other the radiator loop. The heating loop is turned on when the weather cools, and turned off and drained when the weather warms back up.
Even newer buildings, like the high rise apartment buildings you see in pictures of Kiev, are built like this. It's relatively efficient for the climate and where you have a large population density.
The reason for using UHV (ultra-high voltage, greater than 330 kV) distribution systems is that Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine all are largely fed by nuclear power. That results in long distances between cities and the power generation plant, as opposed to a system with coal plants that are often set in or close to every city. What will likely happen is that Ukraine's system will be rebuilt using EHV (extra-high voltage or 330 kV) components. It's not as efficient, but it can be deployed much more quickly. Then the very long lead time UHV networks will be rebuilt later. EHV is just much less efficient, and requires a lot more material, land, and ongoing maintenance / supervision to transport the same amount of electricity.
The current nuclear base world wide is not particularly efficient. Mining uranium is an incredibly dirty business because the concentration of it in any ore is very low. It takes a lot of energy and resources to extract. A more efficient process would use breeder reactors to recycle spent fuel, and regional plants that could consume it. The reason that's not done is due to non-proliferation fears and because the eventual waste is much longer lived (by orders of magnitude).
The decision on coal is dictated by geography. Modern coal-fired electric plants are clean, and the process generates useful inputs for other manufacturing processes. But coal is extremely heavy, so it doesn't make sense to build coal-fired plants that don't have easy access to coal supply from rail or sea.
The advantage of natural gas-fired plants is that it's easy to transport their fuel and they are relatively light facilities. That's why Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus make heavy use of them - you can have five or ten of them in a city without any problem, and they don't have a large footprint either so land usage is minimal.
If you have nuclear power or offshore wind, you have greater demands for distribution in terms of distance to cover - hence the reason Germany uses 800 kV D.C. for the purpose, and others use 750 kV A.C. systems. But those systems are engineering feats and incredible in their own right.
I have a house in Ireland. They are plumbed the same way with uninsulated walls (they do use double walls with an airspace between them -- which many people, including me, had pumped with foam beads). There are no thermostats. People used stoves burning coal, peat, or wood to heat the water which is then pumped around the house with a heat exchanger to heat potable water. Rads can be turned off or throttled but that is it., and if it is too warm people open windows. Many houses have switched to oil (including ours) partly for the convenience and because of the stupid carbon taxes on coal it is becoming more and more expensive. Also, while building and maintaining a coal fire was entertaining for a couple of years it did pall -- and we are only there during the summers (which are often cold). With regards to oil heat, most people using oil have a timer to give a certain amount of heat every day, plus a boost that will turn it on for a half-hour, hour, or whatever it is set to. Once the inner walls have warmed up they do hold the heat well so it isn't too bad to do it that way. We are used to a more constant temp, so I ordered a thermostat from Amazon UK to control the oil burner. The electrician had never installed one before. Works a treat!
As an aside, we don't use the hot water side of things too often. The showers are electric (the water is heated in the shower unit itself) and we have a dishwasher. Once in a while my wife runs a sink of hot water to do a small amount of dishes. If I'm doing it -- for a nonstick pan, mostly -- I usually just put some water in the electric kettle.
Houses where I'm at (northern Russia) typically have a "Russian stove". It has a small closed firebox, and is fairly massive - 1.5 meter wide by 3 meters long, and the bulk of the unit without the chimney portion is usually 1.5 meters high. The smoke makes either two or three complete horizontal trips the length of the stove (depending on if the firebox is on the same end or opposite end of the chimney) before being exhausted.
You have to prime the stove before lighting the fire by burning paper or birch bark (birch wood is the typical fuel because of its density and unsuitability for other purposes). Once the unit is drawing, you light the fire. It burns hot and fast for a few hours, and warms the entire masonry base which usually extends down through the floor into a root cellar or short basement. The main issue is that you have to be very careful to keep it clean. The slower movement of exhaust means creosote builds up on the walls and is a fire hazard. But burning birch minimizes that greatly - there's abundant pine and fir in northern Russia too, but they'll burn your house down eventually.
A lot of people build new Russian stoves with hot water pipes serpentined through the masonry and use it as a heat sink to power a hydronic radiator system, backing it up with an electric boiler and isolation valves on the stove so you can have heat without needing to start a fire. Older Russian stoves put metal hot plates over the firebox for cooking, and build an open area in the chimney that faces the room for storage.
The U.S. almost uniformly uses forced air systems. They seem incredibly inefficient to me. Hot air rises and pools near the ceilings of rooms. But with wood houses like Americans typically have, there's no mass to warm up and store heat. We use split systems for air conditioning if people have it; forced air makes sense for A/C.
Here in the States we'd call what you have a Franklin stove, supposedly invented by Benjamin Franklin, though obviously he could have gotten the ideas elsewhere. A lot of old Irish houses have a large metal stove as their only source of heat as well. It had a flat top to cook on, and and oven inside (protected from the direct fire). The step up from that was the back boiler, which was the same except had a water tank in them (called a boiler though water wasn't supposed to boil in it!) from which a small electric pump circulates the water throughout the house to radiators in each room. It is an easy step to oil because the only thing that changes is the source of the heat.
A friend of ours in Ireland still has that setup, and has a fire burning all year round because that is her only source of hot water. Likely she has an electric shower, though. As to American houses, it surely depends on where you live. Here in southern/central Florida CBS (concrete block with stucco) is the preferred building material. Concrete is cheap, wood not so much, and there are those pesky hurricanes to deal with.... You are certainly correct about the forced-air though. Of course, in Florida we don't have much choice. If air conditioners suddenly disappeared, so would much of the population! We do need to heat (sometimes) -- heck we are having a hard freeze (27F, -3C) tomorrow night and lows will hover at or below freezing for the next 5 days -- but it is rare to have more that a couple of days like that in a row!
That makes sense for construction of Florida houses. I had forgotten it, but someone mentioned to me once that masonry is preferred in the south and Florida due to insects as well. I'm not a fan of wood framing but it's becoming common here. It used to be that the choices were log for houses in the country, and monolithic masonry for apartment and commercial buildings. Nicer village houses were masonry. The style of wood framing here is a little different - I think the U.S. uses stud framing, where here the walls are built flat on the ground and have diagonal members (to support snow load).
Franklin stoves are a little different than Russian stoves (after a bit of reading on Wikipedia). The Franklins use a vertical baffle - the fire's exhaust flows down, turns, and then rises. In the Russian stoves, the exhaust flows horizontally after a very short rise from the firebox. The result of that is that Russian stoves take up a great deal of space in a typical Russian village house, but they're also a source of pride for people to own. Some of the new construction around cities in the northern part of Russia (like Moscow and St. Petersburg) have fireplaces mostly as a decorative feature, and have the shallow fireboxes that are mostly to reflect light into a room and common in northern U.S. homes (at least that I've seen).
You mean puppeteers in the City of London and Pennsylvania Avenue... :-)
It's not Russia's business to take out the people and structures you always mention. Why should Russia fight your battle?
You big mouthed cowards over there in the US need to get rid of those people, it's your battle to fight but instead you vote for them over and over again. Same applies to Europe.
I get a bit tired of this nonsense that Russia should, Russia could, Russia must.
Russia must look after themself, nothing more.
Are you not voting for taking out politicians? Don't try to twist you out of it now. You together with GM and others always know what Russia must and could and should do. And it always includes some people or territory that Russia has no business to attack, destroy or kill. Russia has the SMO and how they do that is their business.
All the NATO-shit is business of the people that live in those NATO countries. Russia is not obliged to do your job for you.
>You together with GM and others always know what Russia must and could and should do.
It's pretty simple -- if a country is under attack and is capable of defending itself, it must defend itself, or it will be defeated.
The Iranians can be seriously cirticized for being way too cowardly too, but at least they hit back when they were attacked.
Russia is being bombed 24/7, the population is furious, the military is seething, meanwhile political leadership is getting chummy with the very people doing the bombing.
How fucked up is that?
>It's not Russia's business to take out the people and structures you always mention.
It very much is.
And we know that because someone pretty high up in the Russian hierarchy, as high as it gets in fact, very publicly promised exactly that -- to hit "decision making centers". He did that on the day the war started, and a couple more times in 2022.
Then he stopped mentioning it because it became too ridiculous.
>Russia must look after themself, nothing more.
Well, yeah, but they are not doing that either.
Putin right now is begging for surrender terms that are effectively Brest-Litovsk while being bombed 24/7 and not making any serious effort either defend the country or win the war.
Looking after themselves only gets you so far. You can mind your own business but if I start punching you in the face, at some point you are going to be in a fight, whether you like it or not. We can’t vote our way of of this, they won’t let alone who would pose a threat to the deep state anywhere near the White House. So yeah, if your war is with NATO as even Putin has admitted, maybe fighting your actual enemy is what you need to do. It’s not because Elena or I think it’s Russia’s obligation to us, it’s their obligation to themselves.
Fair and right never had anything to do with it. Nor do you get any points for bravery.
Results are the only thing that matters, not how noble you look as you lose.
At the moment Russia and China seem to come out winning.
Feels sucks being with the losers, or it will feel sucks for many soon.
Results are that people get poor in the west while Asia people see their living standard rise. That's what counts indeed.
You'd think after four years, you'd learn not to declare premature victory.
You'd think that you'd learn not to jump to conclusions as to what I want.
It does seem to show Russians working with SOME agency, SOME coordination and possibly SOME resolve. All these have been seemingly absent up till now.
So the outcome is perhaps middling, however seeing the process is a positive.
The crisis in Kiev is real and it could have only been achieved with planning coordination, proper execution and also taking advantage of the cold spell.
Notice how different missile classes were assigned to particular targets. Also the air defense seems to be minimal.
It's showing sentience on the part of the stavka FWIW. Nothing too impressive, in contrast - americans/IDF would have displayed extreme (perhaps diabolical) cunning - and cruelty - if they were outsourced to perform this type of task.
GM too suggests the strategic choices, exemplified by empty threats by Putin, have cost Russia their deterrence. I am inclined to agree with it.
On the other hand one must consider that the strategic choices have been hampered by substantial tactical blunders and necessarily limited their strategic op space.
It's a grey zone really with incomplete information.
Consider Moskva debacle - what was Moskva's business being where it sunk? Was the RF Navy Offcer Core imprudent and derelict in their missile defense readiness of the flagship?
That huge debacle (complete with the attempted coverup) exemplifies the tactical fumble. And there were many such cases.
You can't do strategy if your Black Sea flagship sinks after being targeted with 2 old-school slow-ass missiles.
I believe that the crisis in Kiev is real. However, the crisis does not affect anyone who matters.
When the West went to war, in Iraq, Libya etc, these are the FIRST things they take out. Water plants, generating stations, hospitals, bridges, emergency services. And they also try to take out as many of the skilled personnel as they can in those strikes.
And then they "sanction" those countries to prevent replacements. Iraq didn't have clean water for well over a decade.
Yes, it's appalling. So is Kiev's forced conscription of over a million men to die pointlessly for Zelensky's coke habit and overseas mansions.
That power supplied the drones that kill Russian soldiers, moved the conscripts to the front lines to die, and beamed the daily Minute of Hate propaganda into every Ukrainian home.
Now, with the West obviously moving to destroy Iran, Russia has to get this over with quickly.
Ukrainian civilians can move out of the cities, and be warm with firewood, melting water as their ancestors did for millennia.
Compared to the victims of the West's wars they still have it comparatively good.
And it will SAVE their lives if this brings the war to a quicker end.
I would shed no tear, not even if they take out his wife at the same time... perhaps especially. But he would be replaced with another willing puppet as easily as the puppeteer opens the box and replaces one hand puppet with the next, for the next act.
But actually I disagree with you about Western war tactics - they EXPRESSLY maximise civilian casualties, with focus upon the emergency services and 'first responders'. Kill the brave people who rush in to save lives with 'double taps'. Mass civilian deaths to cause terror. Entire psychology depts are devoted to such methods for decades now, refining in each iteration.
What we are seeing in Gaza is simply what every other Imperial victim has faced for the past 300 years.
If you have a spare hour, and haven't seen it before, I do recommend that Pilger documentary. His is the horror of the true journalist.
The 2nd World War was primarily fought in Russia, and China. Russia wants to avoid that holocaust again at all costs - the weapons today are on a scale that dwarfs anything of that conflict, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Who REALLY ARE the decision-makers in all this? It's not Zelensky, not even Kid Starver, Micron or Schmertz. Not VDL or KK. Or Rutte. These are all middle-management yes-people who have a little local control to pretend to do their assigned roles.
Trump has ever so slightly more leeway, but even he takes his orders when they are handed down.
How do you hurt the banking clans? The secret Blackrock leadership, the offshored, the ones who pull the strings of the puppets?
And to do that without triggering WW3, or personal retaliation assassinations against the Kremlin?
If Zelensky was taken out, Zaluzhny would be flown in the next day. And he would have MUCH more security. And then the West would never shut up about the "New Churchill brutally assassinated by the evil Kremlin", as though Zelensky isn't profoundly hated by his own people, who would more gladly hang the fker than be conscripted to die for him and his oligarchy.
A lamppost would be a better ending than a Russian missile for him and the rest of his fellow Nazis, like Mussolini.
>How do you hurt the banking clans? The secret Blackrock leadership, the offshored, the ones who pull the strings of the puppets?
>And to do that without triggering WW3, or personal retaliation assassinations against the Kremlin?
Yeah, that the big question.
But the resistance holds the cards here provided it is genuine, because it has the numbers on its side.
How do you take out the banking clans? One by one. They are quite dispersed, but they are also a finite number. So missile strikes, FPV drones on the ground, bullets where you can get to them, etc.
Maybe they will kill Putin, but so be it. If there is genuine resistance, that would not be a problem, he would be replaced. You see how the Palestinians, Hezbollah. Ansar Allah, lose leaders all the time, but they get replaced immediately. Because those are genuine resistance movements from the ground up. Early communists in Russia were exactly like that too.
But Putin isn't drive by ideals and principles. So he won't risk his own skin. And it's not even that it is a problem for Russia if he goes, if Russia goes into full defend-the-motherland mode, it can take out all the Western elite at a 1:1 exchange ratio, or even worse, and it will come out on top. The problem is the Russian elites won't go there, because they won't sacrifice themselves.
It's why even Ukrainian elites have not been touched. They could have been all taken out before Ukraine gained the ability to strike deep in Russia, but they weren't because the Russian elites feared the much more remote back then chances of retaliation on some of them. Today it is a much worse situation.
But the principle has not changed -- if you have to fight a war on elites and one side is a rapacious oligarchy while the other is a genuine popular movement, if their kinetic capabilities are similar and the resolve to fight to the end is there, the latter will prevail.
Now how do you prevent that from going to full blown nuclear exchange? That's a difficult one. Ideally you separate the military on the other side from the oligarchy and you make them understand they will not be touched and cities and infrastructure won't be touched, thus they should sit it out in terms of pulling out the big guns. The problem is that the banking and business elites have very astutely integrated the military command into their ranks through the infamous revolving door. So that's a risk. But if the alternative is certain albeit slow death by a thousand cuts, you have to take that risk.
Well put.
I agree about not killing Zelensky. However Russia is very afraid to step on the toes of the West. For example it could force all embassies to move to Lvov, bomb the train station in Kiev to prevent the circus of visiting politicians.
Denying electricity for Kiev and the western part is fair I think because while their compatriots (many Russian speaking) are dying on frontline, many parts of Ukraine were untouched, including discos and ski resorts.
They already tried to kill Putin. How much more personal an assasination attempt can get here...
"But actually I disagree with you about Western war tactics - they EXPRESSLY maximise civilian casualties, with focus upon the emergency services and 'first responders'."
SPOT ON! Chip
One thing GM forgets to mention is the shooting down of US ISR satellites - shooting them down or having them have "accidents" would not be viewed as an act of war. That can be the best single thing that Russia can do to even out the ISR capabilities and cripple Ukrainian/US intelligence that can be used to target on Russian territories. Yet that is not done.
Yes, I have.
>although a very large escalation.
But shooting missiles into Russia isn't...
(I know you don't think that, just point it out)
I doubt that shooting down ISR satellites would be any larger of an escalation than sending drones on Putlers residence or attacking Russia's nuclear triad. Actually, shooting down ISR would probably even it out.
Starlink should have been Kesslerized a long time ago.
It is clear that it has very little commerical purpose and it is primarily a weapon system.
And there have long been rumours that it is also a front for orbital deployment of nukes. It is ideal for that.
There should have been zero hesitation on that decision.
I was shocked when I learned that Musk was providing Starlink...I kept waiting for an announcement on strikes on Starlink and...nothing happened as usual.
Also, all those "commercial" satellites that have been used to photograph Bucha and stuff should've also been shot down the moment they were used to photograph Russian territory....
Either Russia lacks capabilty to shoot it down, Putler is a ссыкло (hope I don't need to translate), or both
I was waiting for strikes on Musk himself too.
It's not due to lack of capacity, there were a dozen different programs to do that already in Soviet times, from the early 1960s in fact, and they kept working on that later on.
I bet that the Russians were using starlink and got more out of leaving it alone than sabotaging it. ;O)
"I bet" is doing a lot of work for you there.
Yup!
"One thing GM forgets to mention is the shooting down of US ISR satellites - shooting them down or having them have "accidents" would not be viewed as an act of war."
You sure?
Removing Zelensky and other decision-makers would only turn them into martyrs and intensify the hatred of ordinary Ukrainian citizens towards Russia. It would also make life in the newly acquired Russian territories more difficult after the war. No, the Ukrainians must do that themselves. Or settle it through court rulings after the war. (I translated my post into English using a machine; my English isn't very good. Sorry.)
Surely the majority in the newly acquired Russian territories would celebrate the removal of those who have tried to destroy their cultural identity since Maidan?
"When the West went to war, in Iraq, Libya etc, these are the FIRST things they take out. Water plants, generating stations, hospitals, bridges, emergency services. And they also try to take out as many of the skilled personnel as they can in those strikes.
And then they "sanction" those countries to prevent replacements. Iraq didn't have clean water for well over a decade.
Yes, it's appalling."
It works. Just as Ukraine has used nazi tactics, but that kept the war going. They worked.
Elena, compare:
https://johnpilger.com/paying-the-price-killing-the-children-of-iraq/
All of that would depend on how the "justified" is calculated, who weighs up the pros and cons. How would you make that judgement? But the judge isn't you and it isn't me either, it's calculated by the person, group, nation that does the deed.
If there is a judge and court that can correctly make that decision and enforce the judgement they certainly aren't on this earth today. We don't have international law, what we have today is the PRETENSE of international law.
The strong can pass judgements on others, but by laws that are never applied to themselves.
Everything that the Russians are doing now in Ukraine has been done by the West elsewhere, and much more, for many years.
But the Barbarians are always "The other guys".
The puppeteers in Paris and Berlin are already arguing about how to spend the 90m euro loan. D.C. has cut funding, and the EU puppeteers are struggling with limited funds.
Ukrainian industry which would have provided cost effective food, clothing, and essential supplies and support is being destroyed. The reliance on local supplies is illustrated by corruption scandals in Ukraine eg dragons teeth dumped, inadequate trench networks, overpriced food that was provided in Ukraine. With reduced Ukrainian industry, EU puppeteers will need to raise extra funds to purchase more expensive EU services, and transport to make up the shortfall.
It used to be said that wars didn't change things at home but did accelerate changes already occurring, perhaps we and the ordinary decent Ukrainians not living off American Caesar's largesse are about to find out?
Russia wants to empty the cities to avoid civilian casualties and they are using the FAFO principle against Ukrainian strikes inside Russia and its tankers on the high seas. Simple as that... Chip
🥳
Lots happening, Simplicius. Thanks for the update. I'd say the Russians often wait for substations and generation assets to be repaired before targeting again. Perhaps what's happening now is the Ukrainians and Europeans have exhausted their replacement equipment so Russia has decided to finish off the grid. Knowing how delicate AC grids are I'm amazed the Ukrainians have kept things going as well as they have. I guess the Soviets built a lot of redundancy into their infrastructure.
There used to be a lot of redundancy in expectation of war, sabotage, or accidents. Also overcapacity for further industrial development. The Ukraine in 1990 had ~50 million people and a lot of industry. Reduced population and decommissioned industry let this overcapacity grow.
The most likely source for replacement parts are the Baltics. Their grid was built to the very same specifics and norms and parts can just be switched once brought in. They have the very same deindustrialisation and depopulation. To give an example, Lithuania used to have 2 running NPP blocks (2 more were under construction) and 8 units TPP (running on gas and all kinds of oil). Now, there is only one single thermal unit (newly built in 2012) running. With some additional hydro, solar and wind. So, there is a lot of old spare parts to be shipped. The transformers where even built in Zaparoshe - which once upon a time used to be the worlds biggest producer of power transformers.
750 kV transformers are not interchangeable. They even have to be carefully matched at the factory (3 phase a/c so 3 transformers).
Then there is logistics. A single phase will weigh several hundred tons and thus can't even be moved over regular freight rail, thus water transport with specialized, extremely slow movers are required for the movement from dock to the location. Target rich environment, good luck getting insurance, as the prime mover will be even more expensive and rare than the transformer.
Many items in the USSR where standardized, with very few producers. Often only one producer within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance [vulgo: East Block]. Transformers were definitely highly standardized (GOST) as were complete power stations. Under such conditions you can switch a 750 kV transformer from say Latvia into a transformer station in Ukraine.
Like with some fancy spare parts for a Boeing 737-800 from say Ryanair into one from China Airlines.
Logistics may be difficult. Especially with changing track gauges. But once upon a time, they were brought from the producer Zaparoshe (which is in Ukraine), so it should be possible to transport them back. With better heavy load transport options these days. (It's not NASA and the Moon).
HV windings are not many items.
The producer for power transformers in the USSR was Zaporoshe. As someone who claims being knowledgeable in this industry - you should have heard about them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhtransformator
A transfomer isn’t just produced, it is designed. LV has it’s standards, and so does HV, but they still need customization particularly with penetrations and shielding. Electricity does not recognize nationalities or OEM, it does recognize grid characteristics.
It was nationalized by Ukraine in 2022, started producing military equipment and since then was attacked multiple times. You may read all you want on internet about this plant, but it won't produce any transformers any time soon.
https://www.mammoet.com/cases/tennet/
I dunno, doubletapping would be smart.
Even maintenance work on HV equipment is extremely high skilled work in peace-time. How much more so in times where management structures have begun to breakdown, manuals burned, etc. As long as they are not sporting Nazi tattoos on the body and brain, the men working miracles on Ukraine's grid are extremely valuable assets that Russia would do well to keep alive for future use. (edit: That goes doubly so for any cats on the team)
The idea that Russia lacks HVAC techs and thus must keep its sworn enemies alive in a "war of attrition" requires some real gyrations.
I’m assuming Ukraine will be returned to productivity, eventually. One thing Russia does not have is an abundance of labour, hence imports of labour from Korea, India, etc.
Regardless, giving sworn enemies jobs in supposed critical assets is perhaps unwise.
Yes, like building rockets. I spent 3 months under Arthur Rudolph working on ion motors.
https://gcaptain.com/power-cut-to-russias-main-naval-base-home-town/
I'd not be surprised that some of the men need to do the work to keep these structures sound are off collecting bonuses in the SMO.
But nobody in the Ukronazi or Western elites has been touched. That is the most important issue.
They hit the Roshen factory in Kiev yesterday, but Poroshenko himself is untouchable.
Until that changes, all of this is just more Russian impotence.
It is the most important issue only in your tiny pea like brain. Your idiotic comment is as irrelevant as Poroshenko.
Obviously you would not go after just Poroshenko, it would be a systematic campaign.
What happened to denazification? You don't hear much about that anymore, do you?
Kostyukov was forced to go to Abu Dhabi and sit on the same table as Budanov for two days. Budanov has tried to kill him who knows how many times. Meanwhile Kostyukov is under strict orders not to touch Budanov or Malyuk. I can only imagine how that feels.
Brain dead drivel as usual
Why the insults? If you look at the reports from Abu-Dhabi, the Russians are only talking about removing forces only from donbass. There is no mention made of denazification, reducing afu numbers or protecting speakers of russian language. if you remember in previous demands, russia demanded removal of forces from all 4 oblasts it controls - but now its only donbass. Why? Is it going to give up the other 3 oblasts?
Truth and zanon narrative are not compatible Scipio.
There is no discussion about any of those issues simply because the meeting is only between the military and intelligence reps of both parties and none of that is within their sphere.
Are you just uninformed or a troll of the General Melschitt variety ?
Lol go see the official statements from the Kremlin or go read any number of telegram channels from both sides discussing the results of the agreements at abu-dhabi. They all say the same thing
Nobody here seems to remember, understand or care about the history.
How was the USSR collapsed? Through seven decades of creating crises for it to exhaust it, which eventually succeeded.
1) Civil war and Western invasion from all sides in 1918-1922
2) Sanctions and economic isolation, from the very beginning to the end
3) Engineering the rise of Nazi Germany as a tool to destroy it (the most successful such project)
4) Constant smaller attacks on the perimeter that it had to put out -- Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan, etc.
Plus constant subversion.
In the end it was exhausted and collapsed.
The USSR was gaining in that strategic confrontation only when it was on the offensive (duh). During Stalin's time and to a lesser extent in the 1960s and 1970s with decolonization.
They are doing the exact same thing to Russia, they never stopped for a second after 1991.
If Putin thinks he can just absorb hits endlessly while being squeezed everywhere on the perimeter with half the population of the USSR and a third of the landmass (but the most productive land) gone, and that he can find some accommodation with the West in which the West will stop trying to destroy Russia, well, I don't know what to say. Only a complete idiot can think that.
The world has changed since the 1600s and 1700s. Back then Russia was mostly strategically safe because of its vast geography combined with the technology of the time no allowing vast distances to be crossed quickly and there being no instant communication worldwide.
That world is long gone, and if you are not on the offensive, you are on the menu being slowly digested, and your fate is sealed. It's that simple.
I agree. This is the same fate that is reserved for China as well btw - since China is too afraid to commit and just wants to do "business as usual". But as the saying goes, "you can ignore politics, but that does not mean that politics ignores you". Just because China wants to not escalate, not take a side, make a deal, etc does not mean that the US won't be trying to create crises for it. China is currently growing so it can largely mitigate these crises, but they will start piling up unless China goes on the offensive itself and takes a position.
Notice, that somehow the US is remarkably internally stable - sure some protests occassionally happen, but largely life goes on. There is no exploitation of divisions in US society by either the Russians or the Chinese (the latter have enough money and expertise to foment it tho, particularly with the number of their people they have in the US and how many youths are sympathetic to China) - and the divisions in US society are many.
There are also no crises being artificially created on US borders, as the US does to other countries (that is outside the crises that the US creates itself).
If you are the piece of whatever take a look at what Russia was in the 1600s and 1700s.
You are like forker for real? Back then Russia was... can we ship you back to those glorious times so we won't hear a word from you. or as you are obviously that simple and sorta not that someone that matters talking about someone's fate.
The only problem with that analysis which I will comment on is the simple question - "Who will be digested first?"
The western world is eating itself alive; whereas Russia is rebuilding its strength through global alliances.
The accelerating collapse of the petrodollar suggests that the US and its minions are finished; it's not "If" but "When."
The collapse, of course, is seen in the mirror-image rise in the price of gold, silver, and platinum.
What we see are the last thrashings of the dinosaur as it sinks into its self-created Tar Sands.
You make some good points which Putin supporters fail to acknowledge. Putin seems to want to avoid 'escalating' things with the West by not taking firm decisive action against the many provocations and acts of war committed by the West. Such a strategy (appeasement) makes inevitable the open military clash you are seeking to avoid. The imperialist West only responds to decisive action and strong pushback. During the Cold War 1.0 the aggressive actions of American imperialism attempting to completely dominate the world were held in check to varying degrees by the actions of the USSR/Maoist China. During the US war on Vietnam the USSR/China provided large amounts of military/economic aid to N.Vietnam and thousands of military advisors. China sent large numbers of troops to N.Vietnam who would have fought an American invasion of the north. The Vietnam War overstretched US imperialism leading to a currency crisis for the US dollar which was forced to lose its gold backing in 1971 when Nixon took it off the last vestiges of the gold standard. After its defeat in Vietnam the US spent the best part of a decade licking its wounds recovering its strength for the next round of military interventions under Reagan.
The imperialist West will never accept the current governments of Russia/China and has not given up on its desire to dismember Russia into pliant cantons and take China back to the pre revolutionary period where it was carved up by Western imperialists into different spheres of influence/direct occupation.
Russia and China are doing little to defend their allies who are being picked off by the Trump regime. This is a grave mistake which will come back to hurt both nations, especially China in years to come. Trump and his neo-con handlers have made it very clear that intense economic warfare is being used and together with military measures will be stepped up this year to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Iran. The lack of firm action from Russia/China to deter the Trump regime is leading countries like Mexico to consider ending its critical oil supplies to Cuba which would be catastrophic for the people of that nation.
Most productive land gone? Wtf! In the 70s the USSR was a massive wheat importer. Now, Russia is the worlds largest wheat exporter, along with many other cereals and foodstuffs. What on Earth caused you to make that comment?
All four oblasts are Russian sovereign territory.
You have been told many times what that means.
they have on both sides only spooks and military people who are engaging with a narrow set of issues. The Russian side in Abu Dhabi is not to deal with wider political issues
Please tell us how you see this war ending, in detail?
Who will do what and when, and what will the long-term outcomes be?
So that we don't waste time with exchanges of insults and engage in somewhat substantive discussion.
Please.
You’re not gonna get a response. These people are like abuse victims that perpetuate the cycle. Because they are smeared as Putin puppets by shitlibs in other fora, who refuse to engage in actual discussion, they just replace ‘West’ with ‘Russia’ and give us the very treatment they are getting elsewhere. You can’t argue with ideologues. Have you considered starting your own Substack?
>Have you considered starting your own Substack?
I've been told I should do that.
And I do see a need for it, because I can't find anything in the English-language space that actually does a proper analysis of what is happening.
Russian social media is full of furious people who know exactly what is happening, but they some just don't exist outside of that space.
We'll see what the future holds.
Regaрding the rest, yeah, I didn't expect a reply either, and I have made on numerous occasions the point that this is a cargo cult that has appointed Putin in the role of John From who will bring the "cargo", in this case salvation from the evils of globohomo.
It is also why they are inherently incapable of opening their eyes, because that cargo cult was created on a foundation of a strange mix of US somewhat traditional right wing conservatism, libertarianism, and a bit of racism. And Putin intentionally plays on that with his BS about traditional values (as if coddling the marginal groups in the US will somehow get the US off his back).
But the real and serious criticism of Putin, and the one that is abundant inside Russia, is from a communist point of view. Which does not mix with such people.
The tragedy here is that the "alt-media" is not really independent. The MSM does what it's told by the people who bankroll it, everybody knows that. But the independent "alt-media" is not really free to speak its mind either, and paradoxically this is precisely because it survives on donations. If you start telling the people who give you money truths they don't want to hear, well, they stop giving you money. So the ruthless process of natural selection results in the dominant alt-media channels being echo chambers and peddlers of outright (ZAnon in this case) insanity.
You see it here all the time too -- Ukro-NATO-Nazi strikes deep inside Russia and the dail onslaught of terror in the border areas are barely reported. Even though they are the real story of the (not-)war -- NATO wanted a platform from which to fire at will into Russia. It got that platform, and the exact details of the Russia slow crawl westwards do not matter, because that crawl in no way threatens the existence of the launch platform. Not that Putin has even set its elimination as a goal to begin with.
Also, a lot of the usual voices you hear are outright charlatans who know nothing about Russia or the military-technical aspects. I don't claim to be a military expert, I work in a very different field, but do like to educate myself about things and I am stickler for checking sources and facts. Those people you hear on the podcasts are anything but that.
Classic example -- I don't know how many times I have heard that "NATO attacked Russian early warning radars in Voronezh", including and especially from people with credentials of having worked in the military and intelligence agencies. But there is no early warning radar in Voronezh, what we have is that the current series of Russian early warning radars is called "Voronezh" (Voronezh-M/Voronezh-DM/Voronezh-VP) and what was attacked were the Voronezh-DM radar in Armavir, the Voronezh-VP radar in Orsk, and the Container 29B6 over-the-horizon (a different thing entirely) radar in Mordovia. There are two 29B6 radars -- one in Mordovia and one is under construction in Amur Oblast -- while the Voronezh ballistic missile radars are in Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Leningrad, Armavir, Orsk, Barnaul, Vorkuta, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk; but nothing around Voronezh. How can you make such a stupid mistake? It obviously means you know nothing of Russian geography, of the facts about those strikes, or about Russian early warning systems. But the "experts" keep (very confidently too) making that same mistake again and again, and nobody notices.
Speaking of importe/ance. Your comments here are valid contribution to the fact of tiny family jewels of yours. Like a small dick theory going on and on.
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
You seem to have grasped his “argument” such as it (always) is.
Ha Ha.
You perverts and your low comments are so ridiculous
Always ad hominem, never substance. The very thing Empire Simps do to you. You don’t see the irony, do you?
Maybe Russia figures all the western leaders do far more damage alive than dead.
Damage to Russia they indeed do.
Perhaps Russia has gamed it out that more NATO engagement always leads to a nuke exchange and they know the best way to win is to launch the first massive strike. So if baked in, maybe Russia is waiting to the last moment for some peace miracle before the super computers say press the button.
Your mental health matters. The way you are feeling about the whole situation is valid. Help is on the way. I do understand the high level anxiety of you living in the Western world. Horrific experience I might say. But you don't get out of it just like that, if there is a nuke exchange there is no you or me.
Chocolateshenko is not untouchable. Just hit him in London, like a Parubiy walking in the streets of Lwow, kurwa. But to whack Chocolateshenko will not bring much.
A better thing would be to send some hypersonic rocket on the conference center of Davos when Fink and co. are there.
👍👏
Yes. Hit the Jew wherever it is. Start with kushner and whitkoff and Netanyahu.
Name the Jew problem. Using ‘Nazi’ makes me question your analysis.
Russia also hit Poroshenko's Roshen chocolate factory in Kyiv which is reported as assembling and producing long range Ukrainian drones instead of chocolates!
Bob England
According to field commentary from Ukrainian army members, Poroshenko is a really big player in the drone industry. Much of the billion dollar aid transfers from the West go to him to keep producing all those wonderful Ukrainian drones that we are told are slowly but surely going to win the war for Ukraine.
It is worth noting that he is using his considerable power as a former President and quite possibly future President of Ukraine to keep the war going no matter how bad it gets for the average Ukrainian.
My understanding is that none of the anti-Russian Poroshenko-types will occupy government offices in the future should Ukraine survive as a country. Instead it will more likely be a pro-Russian government - rumour has it that a government-in-exile has been prepared in Russia headed by Viktor Yanukovych. I suspect that in the end, at least initially, Russia will form a civilian/military junta that will rule what is left of Ukraine until the anti-nazi programme is carried out, the military reduced to a number necessary for defense only and a new election can take place. Some of today's nazi-oriented elite will flee the country, some perhaps killed and others imprisoned. Ultimately, it is envisioned that Ukraine will become a part of the "Union State" along with Russian and Belarus.
They flee the country and 70 years later they are back in power… (neocons)
Plausible/probable conclusion IMO. Barring any black swans of course. Or anything precipitating a true global war... Chip
Victor
The outcome you describe is the negotiated outcome that the Russians feel they need to be satisfied. But that is the result of a negotiated settlement that eliminates the need for otherwise senseless warfare.
However, now the Russians see an imposed settlement in sight and without too much warfare required to get it. A possible imposed settlement: fully take the remaining Ukrainian Black Sea coastline leaving Ukraine landlocked. Move on up to join the Russian speaking part of Moldova. Return large parts of captured western Ukraine (including the Romanian speaking parts of Moldova) *back* to Romania and/or Hungary and Poland as they were before Hit Ler imposed the current borders that the West is so feverishly defending.
That leaves a devastated, tiny Ukraine full of neo nazis who feel bitter and betrayed not by Russia who openly did what they said they would, but instead exploited by the west. A west which is full of Ukrainians who feel the same way and can be entangled in a neo nazi/criminal gang nexus with a goal of doing as much harm as possible while extracting as much money as possible. Props for the Russians who are fellow Slavs after all and hatred toward the conniving degenerate Euros.
Such an outcome works for the Russians, is doable and useful. Trying to remove neo nazis from Ukraine now is impossible. They dominate what is left of Ukraine. Better to let them be and put them to use. But powerless to impact Russia of course.
Almost all of the Ukrainian non public facing leadership is an actual neo nazi, sympathetic to them or is obligated to them by virtue of money, power or compromat. But in a tiny, third world rump state such people can't do much damage to Russia even if they wanted to. And they don't want to because basically they admire Russian culture and most them actually speak Russian in private discourse. Many of them are Russian citizens who fled because the Russian authorities don't allow them to be active. They hate the current Russian government but admire Russia. They hate the Euro government but despise the Euro culture even more.
Your view of a possible settlement is quite realistic, and in my opinion, a viable alternative to mine. Time will tell, but in the end Ukraine will never again be capable of causing Russia significant trouble. But further to your scenario, I would suggest that Russia will never allow the "runt Ukraine" to be ruled by nazis - they can not be destroyed but they can be removed from power and marginalised as far as the government goes, thus making them just another little barking dog.
How is that going to happen without Russian troops controlling the territory?
Explain that to us.
Jew Poroshenko
What Ukraine?
Future prez of what Ukraine?
No shortage of Roshen chocolate in my grocery store so I dunno ..
Poroshenko will most likely move the remains of his drone production team to his Klaipeda factory in Lithuania. Production of Roshen chocolates has almost come to a standstill in Ukraine due to the lack of power so they make drones with just power from generators.
Which factory in Lithuania ?
What is formally known as the Roshen factory has been in operation in Klaipeda for a hundred years. Roshen purchased the factory in 2006. They make good candies if anyone is interested in that type of thing.
I've asked this question elsewhere but allow me to try it here: While drones couldn't outright destroy a nuclear power plants-substations I imagine several dozen of them could take out all the structures carrying power lines or housing electrical gear. Seeing as how they can be guided, and are of such modest payload that an errant one couldn't seriously damage a reactor's dome, let alone penetrate it, I'm wondering if Ukraine's reactors are in range of Russia's guided drones, and if there are ones that could be launched from jets, similar to missiles, but guided.
Sure but the AD response or a wayward drone could damage the plants themselves and Russia needs those intact for when they annex and rebuild the east of Ukraine. They need to tread lightly.
if needed they will be false-flagged and/or disabled or ruined as NATO withdraws.
tread lightly? You know people mentions hyper sonics on Berlin, Paris and London?
"A person" mentioned that.
Not part of official policy or intention - unless attacked first, of course.
Precize strikes they refer to. And for the better of society ofc or do you think that macron, merz, starmer, fundoflying, Kallas will stop before the destruction of Europe? I would argue that those precize attacks would be a great sacrifice of the above mentioned persons and that most people wouldn’t break their sleep over it.
Being a little sarcastic here, cause ultimately these same persons are puppets too and thus we will not destroy the head of the snake
Russia have all kind of systems with 1-5 meters CPE, including missile systems which Ukraine have no probability to defend from. It's question of political will, not ability. Given the order, it will be destroyed.
The question you should be asking is not if Russian drones are in range - the question you should be asking is why Russia does not have random drone launches constantly happening in random places all over Ukraine (indicating saboteur group activity) as they are happening in Russia (you seriously think that Ukraine flies drones all the way from Ukraine to Irkutsk?)? Where are the Russian saboteur groups? Where are constant assassinations of AFU commanders on leave? Where are the assassinations of soldiers in nightclubs in Kiev that are on leave spending their money on alehouses and whores? Where are random bombings and terror attacks in the middle of cities? This should not be difficult to arrange.
Read a claim yesterday--I think on Gold and Geopolitics--that 10% of the American population is responsible for 50% of consumption. If true, that explains a lot.
A couple dozen fiber optic FPVs flying through the right windows on Wall Street will end this war very quickly
It's pretty obvious why not.
Russia does not act as a terrorist state.
It targets military assets, not people.
It certainly has its assets in Ukraine, but they simply provide information to the Kremlin, which it then uses to target such things as "chocolate factories," etc..
Since nobody in Washington, nobody in Brussels, nobody in Kiev cares in the least whether Ukrainians freeze or starve, the whole exercise is pointless.
My friend in Kyiv said they sleep in winter coats, temperature inside 6-10C. Her workplace sent her what looks liked a big gas Primus heater.
It is horrible, and no, she is just a civilian.
So are you saying Germany has power to spare? They plan to save the planet from Climate Change all by themselves.
I personally think the German people need to pay more.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germany-Caps-Power-Prices-to-Save-Its-Industrial-Base.html
For stupidity, treachery and poor memory of wth they did in WW2, yes
Sorry but there is no poor memory about WWII in Germany.
It's simply that with help of the US the most of old Nazi's were integrated into the new BRD. From Globke to Gehlen and many others who served at universities and administration. The number of convicted Nazi's in West Germany is insignificant and most were given amnesty after a short while anyway. The rest were shipped out to Argentina, Panama and other Latin-america countries.
They managed to prohibit the KPD until today and accountability in Germany is only by talking and financing the terror state of Israel.
Where is the money coming from? My guess is future generations! More debt.
The USA funded Germany to rebuild after WW1, the Germans had to pay reparations to England and France, who had taken massive loans from the USA. The money never left the USA. Fast forward to 1929 and the scheme collapsed. As a result, the Nazis, until then a marginal organization, became one of the bigger parties in government and took power. They again got a shitload of money from the USA (government and business).
And who was the BIG winner after WW2? The new empire had rissen. European countries including Russia had massive debts, where more or less forced to buy American products with American money.
Btw the USA had lended a lot of money to support England and France in WW1. When it seemed the Germans were going to win, the USA stepped in, afraid that there loans would not be repaid.
Ok, one final note: what has the USA (and others to a lesser extent as well) deliberately been doing since WW2: burden countries with debt!
Luckily the world doesn't actually revolve around Washington, Brussels or Kiev, no matter how much you seem to believe it does. Those days are gone.
Well, it won't stop the ukrainian army from continuing to fight, either, nor will it convince anyone in ukraine of Russia's good intentions.
Most of the Ukrainians i know, the ones who were once favorably inclined to Russ!are no longer favorably inclined at all.
I lived in Ukraine for the better part of a decade.
I'm from Ukraine and I'm shocked to see how my life-long friends, people I know from teens are saying now "we hate Russians," etc.
We all know this has much more to do with the future world order than Ukraine per se. The Russians are continuing to turn up the dial. They are obviously winning and NATO seems powerless to do anything but PR. If the grid does collapse that's the end of the fight. Perhaps you underestimate how much we depend on electricity?
More likely NATO doesn't care. Russia is doing the equivalent of punching a wall.
Ukraine produces nothing other than warm live bodies.
However, it is also a sponge to absorb NATO military supplies and money to the point of exhaustion. Russia gets demonstrably stronger everyday. NATO gets weaker every day. And Ukraine gets neutralized by force instead of by the conforming to the previous agreement that was in place.
By using Russian bodies to soak up NATO munitions?
I thought NATO was the most powerful military alliance in history. Kudos for them being unconcerned about being humiliated on the world stage by a gas station masquerading as a country.
They don't see it that way at all. Rather, they see Russian impotence, unable after four years to subdue a minor NATO puppet, at no cost in european or American lives, while europe engages in open piracy and Russia unable to do a thing about it.
NATO will claim msm victory .
Ukraine industry and agriculture produces a lot - not now of course in the middle of conflict, but certainly the potential is there. And no one cares whether NATO cares - you state the obvious.
Russia will win. A new nazi-less Ukraine will be neutered, its military reduced, and the country rebuilt. NATO will fall into history. The EU will disband. Russia will negotiate a new European security architecture with Europe and America.
Yep, inevitable, as it has been nearly from the beginning
Potential doesn't deliver bacon, bullets or beans.
The former live bodies do not live in "Country 404" any more.
They have mass emigrated, just like all those Muslims, to Western Europe. Apparently the Country 404 popn is teetering at ~ 20million - over 40 million used to live there.
If that were in fact the case, the army would not still be in the field and fighting.
I actually know people who were press ganged into the army, and I helped others escape.
Turning up the dial for 4 years.
😂
Saw a brief clip on SouthFront the other day showing one of Kiev's trams being pulled along the track by a Kamaz truck!
Reminded me of how the Germans towards the end needed to pull Me262's onto the runways with horses.
Au contraire. The Ukies can't fight without electricity. They can't produce drones or other weaponry without electricity. They can't supply troops without electricity.
And no one in Russia cares about winning hearts and minds in Ukraine during a war. They care only about winning and rebuilding what is left of Ukraine after.
"no one in Russia cares about winning hearts and minds in Ukraine"
I believe at one point they did. It is apparent that they are done with that thinking
Ukraine doesn't produce drones. They modify Chinese and other drones. This work can easily be done in europe.
Of course they do. Many are from China, or turkey or wherever but they have drone factories where they produce larger drones that strike deeper into Russia and against ships. In fact the latest Oreshnik struck one of their largest drone factories.
Even if that were true (it's not)! It didn'tow drone production in any way. And as I said, even if every drone factory in Ukraine were to cease production, the only thing that would happen is production would move to europe where Russia is afraid to strike.
NATO has no comparable fears concerning Russia.
Those days are gone? Really? We still have the fight against Russia, the fight against Iran, the fight against China, other battles. And where are the headquarters: Washington, Brussels (, London, Berlin, Paris). I agree Kiev is not one of them
The world no longer revolves around Washington, Brussels or Kiev. Anyone can start wars but they need to pay for them. The bigger the war the more money. These are highly indebted countries. They are broke and living off other's money. If they could win wars that would be very different situation. Nowadays they just pretend. The Russians have shone a light on the paper tiger. Mao was right.
My point is that they are still to powerful, still having a big influence, creating chaos everywhere they deem necessary for their own advantage.
Let me end with an example, that may not be relevant here, and I may be wrong, but nevertheless: I personally think that the terrorists that killed 26 people in the north of India (2025 Pahalgam attack) were payed by the west in their intent to encircle and eventually strangulate China. The effect of such ‘minor’ incidents almost led to a situation where 2 countries with nukes were willing to fight a war.
I never intimated that they aren't able to cause trouble. Just that "Luckily the world doesn't actually revolve around Washington, Brussels or Kiev." In fact that's why they are causing so much trouble. The world has moved on.
Let’s hope for the world then that we don’t end up in a nuclear war. Those that feel themseves trapped in a corner are the most dangerous ones
And I hope your are.
It's not impossible for the Empire to reverse it's decline but no one seems to be betting on it. Gold is $5000 for an ounce!
Exactly.
Chairman Mao said the population is the ocean the military swims in. While he was talking about guerilla forces, it applies to conventional forces, to a lesser extent. Local civilian manpower to build fortifications, supply food, clothing , and mechanical servicing of vehicles. In a later comment, you suggest that Ukraine is only supplying the manpower (presumably for the military), but there are plenty of local contracts for necessary supplies I imagine. If everything needs to be sourced from the EU, the logistic lines will be long, expensive and inefficient, and costs matter - many countries end wars when costs become prohibitive.
“ many countries end wars when costs become prohibitive.”😂
Tell that the EU!
The supply lines are long, but since Russia doesn't touch them, they work.
They won't work if there is nothing to feed into the supply lines. Sure, NATO is making more ammo, but it seems they have exhausted their reserves (at least as much as they are willing to send) so they can only send what they make and that is far less than what they have claimed to be able to do (and far less than what Ukraine is begging for). So supplies will trickle in, but not in a flooding river.
We've been hearing that one for years now. If that were true, it beggars belief that there is nobody in La Defense or Whitehall who can pull the politician's aside and tell them to stop letting their mouths write checks that their asses cannot cash. And if the politicians won't listen, the generals have other ways to get their message out.
If that were true, of course.
You do recall that our Admirals like Lavine, etc., are gender-confused pediatricians, don't you?
I highly doubt that everyone in the Pentagon is stupid. If so, that makes Stavka look *really * bad.
This is a key point. The whole Ukraine/Russia war thingy is now 2nd page news. In the West there is a dawning realization that Russia is winning the AND becoming militarily stronger, even those who said (constantly in 23,24 and 25) that the Russian economy was close to imploding are mostly quiet now. Ukraine is losing the war big time and becoming militarily weaker and it's now on dwindling life support from the EU.
Its obvious to me that the Russians have the whip hand in negotiations and that until the Ukrainians final come to admit they have been defeated, this charade will go on.
I thought about it last night, and one positive benefit of de-electrifying Ukraine is that it is a lot harder to build a nuclear bomb when you don't have electricity.
Of course, that doesn't stop Ukraine's british and french friends from supplying them.
The 750 kV substation in the last picture seems primed for 1 or 2 Oreshniks. Each carrying 36 war heads grouped into 6 clusters per missile. Or perhaps those are saved for bigger and better things, time will tell.
My thoughts exactly, the seismic wave should do wonders. There are concerns about accuracy of the warheads though.
Don't start with me - it is early. After all that talk about Russian missiles not sexy enough in the chart, I am happy to report that their warheads are the wonders of the Soviet/Russian generational institutional thought on the subject how warheads should behave once under constructive criticism.
Oreshnik MIRVs/MaRVs are notable for their unusually high accuracy for what they are, and considering how destructive they are to above and below ground structures, it's not like they'd need to thread the needle to destroy "just" a 750kV substation.
Ukrainians have alleged that the Russians are going to launch another Oreshnik or two for about a week now, so they've probably realized this, too.
I hope everyone understands that the US and EU are notified on Russian Launches of stuff that look like nuclear first strike stuff. The Russians are now flooding the channel with this stuff.
Keep in mind everyone asked the obvious question. How many hypersonics do they have? Easy answer. How many did they replace when they upgraded the 7000 unit nuclear ICBMs with new ones? What did they do with the old motors?
Seems I read about people laughing at the old rocket tech that used tubes recently....
Oreshnik is likely some combination of Yars missile parts and entirely new technology, as Oreshnik uses the same launcher and support vehicles as Yars and has some internal components in common with it, but its flight characteristics appear to be entirely different as instead of flying on a high, easily trackable ballistic arc like Yars, Oreshnik is seemingly impossible to track after launch, and unlike with older ballistic missiles that drop rocket stages that are easily found on the ground, no Oreshnik rocket stages have ever surfaced despite it being at least a two-stage rocket.
"...I understand it the 750 kV standard is a Soviet-specific legacy high-voltage transmission standard which is not compatible with most European countries, which run 300-500 kV max."
In the perfect world, I will request one Russian missile to permanently disable meth operation across the street in the midst of the snow storm I was waiting patiently for years to enjoy.
If there is a will there is a way. "To permanently disable all of that "- it is a common knowledge where all of that is situated. And there was at least one podcast on a Russian telegram man explaining the transformers side of the sexy Soviet tech. Every single thing is fashioned in the Bauhaus fashion, indestructible by weather elements or otherwise. My understanding is that any gadget in Russia has a different fork than in the Western World.
Not only that, the twilight geniuses came up with different railroad systems, and many other things, and that was not because they were insecure. Most likely they are territorial and know how to protect their women and children.
What you see on those substation shots is the switching gear spread out over a large area. The transformers themselves aren't as spread out or numerous. Take those out and the switching gear becomes redundant.
Also, sourcing 330kV transformers in the west is anything but easy. The lead time measures in years, and inventories are now tapped out.
"can be easily sourced and replaced from a variety of Western countries." Nope
Transformers in 2026: Shortage, Scramble, or Self-Inflicted Crisis?
https://www.powermag.com/transformers-in-2026-shortage-scramble-or-self-inflicted-crisis/
Thanks for sharing the "Power" article Dave that's an eye opener for me as it looks like the US is in deep doodoo itself and can't even replace their own worn out tackle, never mind build new kit for increased demand.
This has been a long-recognised weaknessof the Western grid system, making it highly sensitive to an EMP attack. The soviet system was far more EMP-proof and designed with great resilience in mid.
Small island off the coast of Maine. About 1300 year-round residents. Lead time for transformers: six years.
Steal them from NorthHaven?
They have too many, anyway <grin>.
Just stand under the windmills….I hear that works!
Yes. I worked for a german transformer company several years. The pre-order time("Bestellvorlauf") for special insulation parts is 51 weeks(a year has 52 weeks) and there are 2 companys in europe who make these things. About voltage: in europe we had 110/220/380kV in the past, now ist mostly 120/(230)/400kV. highest voltage we had in the company was 550kV for the US/Canadian Grid. 750kV is a completely different design, its not "just 250kV more..."
Correct. A large EHV (500+ kV) substation will have 2 to 4 power transformer banks (consisting of 3 units per bank, one unit for each phase), for a total of 6 to 12 units. This one seems to have two banks. They are the heart of the s/s. There are many other transformers (but not hundreds), most of which are instrument transformers, current and voltage, for measurement and protection. You can think of them as nerves.
330kV level gear is difficult enough to source, but 750kV is an order of magnitude more so. There is only a handful of factories with extremely long lead times.
You can shut down the s/s for a long period of time if you strike the heart or if you strike the brain. The latter consists of the “relay” house located in the middle of the yard where the nerves converge, and the control room in a building somewhere on the periphery. If either one is destroyed, the gear is easier to replace but it will still take a long time to re-do the wiring, testing etc., everything that goes into commissioning a new s/s.
As you say, those 750KV substations seem designed to be Oreshnik targets.
Sad that it had to come to this...
Cut the power and heat off to Kiev so the population moves out for survival. Then once a significant portion of the populations leaves issue an ultimatum that that have tell dusk to surrender and if not destroy their capital.
You know which option Zelensky will choose.
Hmm difficult decision , the mansion in Israel or Florida? Both built with embezzled US funds, so probably Israel, a fake democracy just like Ukraine and full of genocidal jews like himself.
That was a much needed lesson in power system destruction, thanks. The last one I studied in detail was the Chernobyl collapse of 4/26/1986, a localized event. Considering that January and February are the coldest months in Ukraine, a lot of pain and suffering can be handed down to the locals. We are looking at a systematical accumulation of stressful events: High rates of desertions from the armed forces, reduced support from the West, increased airing of corruption, etc. On top of all of this Ukraine society is increasingly realizing the hopelessness of the overall military situation. During WWI the Russian front started to collapse gradually by May of 1915. The main issues were lack of supplies, high casualty rates and poor logistics.
Tha might explain the Brusilov offensive that removed half of the Austro-Hungarian order of battle. Lots of the belligerents spent 1915 trying to recover from the catastrophe of 1914. The British pretty much dropped out of the European war until mid-1916.
Many thanks for this excellent report. All your hard work is greatly appreciated.
And I think that the answer to the main question is that Russia has definitely begun to destroy the power grid and thus speed up the SMO.
It makes perfect sense and, hopefully, the 750KV substations will be fully cut off soon.
Russia isn't doing anything differently than the US or Nato does as we all know: power grids are fair game to Nato so much so they've removed documentation from their website to hide this uncomfortable position. You either like it or you don't but you cannot pretend this isn't standard sop for the west.
Yes, but the difference is that striking power, water generation, food production, C&C is the first thing they do. It took 4 years, Carl, 4 years to start doing this. It is much too late.
>It took 4 years, Carl, 4 years to start doing this. It is much too late
And the death spiral started from the beginning with exactly the failure to do those basics.
It sent a clear messaged to the West that Putin wasn't serious and they can call his bluff and escalate, which is what they have kept doing for four years since then
The new tag team; General Moron and Scipio the African Anus
GM
What do you think Russia has been doing in Ukraine?
In this respect, first you upgrade, refine and then establish mass production of your attack systems. Then you systematically degrade Ukraine's anti air capacity. Once you have fulfilled the basic steps then you start hitting the system.
Pick off the low hanging fruit sitting there unprotected, exposed and key to powering the local economy and Ukraine's weapons manufacturing, thus shifting the burden to NATO.
Then you work your way up the grid chain depleting and exhausting Ukraine's ability to sustain its power distribution. Thus shifting much of the responsibility for producing the replacement hardware on to NATO.
And finally, after the grid is in chaos and terminal disorganization, you strike the mother load, the built for purpose, adjusted for location and expected requirements and even taking transportation into account when designed, top of the grid chain. All of which have to be replaced using NATO funds. The actual gear coming from Russia, China or Siemens in Europe depending on the cost benefit analysis. Most of the benefits in such a choice being a matter of opinion but with the costs being in your face real.
Do Swedanya Ukraine. And NATO for that matter but that takes even longer.
What you posted is classic ZAnon delusional nonsense aiming at rationalizing the facts on the ground so that the harsh truth is avoided.
Basic Warfare 101:
1) Destroy the enemy's command and control
2) Isolate the battlefield
3) Deprive the enemy of all other means of fighting
4) By all means do not allow the enemy to gain strength in any other way
If you have the capability to do those things, of course.
I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that Ukraine was weaker in 2022 than it has become since then. It's just absurd to claim it.
Which in turn is because none of the actions on that list above were carried out.
FFS, these days artillery is largely absent from the battlefield, because drones have made it so that it can't get within range, but for the first 18 months of the war that was not the case and in that time period the AFU was unloading trains full of soldiers and ammo within artillery range of the front lines and nobody was firing at the trains. Such was the extent of the total abdication from that most basic duty to isolate the battlefield. We're not talking major river bridges, we're not talking the Polish border. Just hit the damn trains that are unloading ammo 15 km from you. Even that wasn't being done. Why?
Russia had the capacity to carry out all of those actions on the list within the first days of the war and at any time since then. I as a mere armchair observer can give you an obvious concise and clear plan for what type of ammunition are to be fired where, you can be sure the General Staff had something much better and more detailed
But Putin didn't do it then and hasn't done it since then either. Why?
He also hasn't done any of the other obviously necessary things, such as doing a serious mobilization, while doing many absolutely inexplicable things such as negotiating with Trump right as 32 HIMARS missiles were fired into Belgorod today, an action that would have resulted in the immediate annihilation of all US forces outside the continental US in Soviet times and permanent severance of all diplomatic relationships.
Again, why?
You have to honestly ask yourself why these things are happening or not happening. But you are not honestly asking anything, you are making post-hoc rationalizations.
And if you do seriously approach the question, you will inevitably get to the issue of internal Russian politics, a vitally important matter that nobody wants to seriously think about.
Why? Because Russia is not run by genocidal Jews like in the west where the goal is to murder civilians. See Dresden Nagasaki and Palestine.
GM
Spare me all your blather about failure to launch a full on nuclear war with tens of thousand of nukes exploding cannot be anything more than criminal weakness on the part of the Russians.
Russia is winning the conflict in Ukraine. They are achieving their goals. NATO is losing. They are not only not achieving their goals but the reverse is happening. Winning is sufficient reward for some but not for you apparently.
C'mon ron, don't you know you are arguing with the second coming of Sun Tzu? The greatest military mind of a generation? He knows exactly how warfare is supposed to be done, and anybody who disagrees is obviously and idiot or if Russian, a traitor. He pines for the days when the USSR was an armed camp against the world and it was such an amazing place they had to build a wall in Germany to keep people from the West from flooding in.
Apparently not too late for the Russians. Reality can sometimes be like fitting a square peg in a round hole. Don't stop on my account though.
High voltage A.C. distribution is not uncommon. The U.S. has several 765 kV lines - AEP is 2,200 miles long on the East Coast, and the 1,250 mile ERCOT line is being built in Texas to power offshore drilling. 765 kV carries 6x the power in the same cable as a 345 kV line at half the loss. Europe uses 800 kV D.C. lines for a similar purpose, as they have lower losses than A.C. lines at comparable voltages and can be used underwater.
Long lead times for replacement equipment (transformers, switching stations) is because of the high manufacturing tolerances required, and that each component is custom engineered and matched to other parts of the grid that it is being placed into. Ukraine's system is Soviet period in origin, but that has nothing to do with why order times are six to nine years out (and demands from AI for expanding the power grid will push it even longer).
A standard 110 kV transformer can use commodity copper; a 745 kV transformer requires not only copper completely clean of impurities, but that has certain magnetic properties that are difficult to manufacture. It is an enormous engineering challenge to make those bespoke components, and the engineering base to do so is constrained.
would you like to elaborate about the transformer copper properties as you appear to possess deep knowledge of the China state and the Russian behavior in these trying times. Would you like to block anyone in the chart who disagrees with you once we are at it?
You need strong magnetic performance in the core. A transformer works best when magnetic coupling is tight and losses are kept to a minimum.
The engineering talent base is constrained for a few reasons. First, high-power systems aren’t something you can truly learn in school—most of the real expertise is built on the job. Second, a lot of capability has been outsourced, which reduces local hands-on experience. And third, technical roles have become less popular, partly because they’re still seen as “blue-collar” a.k.a. “dirty” work.
This is probably the most interesting thing I have learned this week. Who knew ultra high voltage transformers are basically built like custom luggage? I love this. I wonder if I can find any documentaries or interviews with people who do such work.
Yes, it does happen "automatically" with the flow of electrons in the wire, however...
The shape of the magnetic field, it's frequencies, resonances are *highly* dependent on HOW you wind the copper wires, how thick they are, how many there are, their placement relative to each other, what they are wound *around*, all of which interact with current coming in and current going out.
Big, high voltage transformers are as much an art as a science and just one internal flaw or one unknown external factor can turn your 500 tonne, multi-million dollar transformer into a smoking pile of junk...
Those big-ass switching yards have protecting the transformer as job #1, switching electricity to where it needs to go is a far distant #2
The main thing is "built in Texas" you got me at hello. The Landman, season 2.
You go, girl. The woman who can comment on that subject of electricity should and would have a good life and the dynasty.
The question is does Russia still produce 750kV transformers and associated infrastructure or did they begin to transition to Western standards under Yeltsin and let the Soviet-era industry decay? I'm reasonably happy to have Rivne & Khmelnitsky sent back to the C17th but the South Ukraine NPP and the infrastructure around Kiev and Chernigov will hopefully be needed for Novorossiya or a demilitarizated and denazified Ukraine within the Union State.
Yes, there are multiple manufacturers, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, etc.
There's no difference from a manufacturing perspective between high voltage distribution components for the former Soviet electrical grids and western grids. It's not comparable to the difference in gauge size (track width) of the train system. The Russian and Ukrainian systems are 50 Hz - same as Europe and Asia. Ukraine is directly connected to the European electrical grid, and can both import electricity from and sell electricity into Poland and Hungary.
Components for EHV (Extra-High Voltage, 330 kV) and UHV (Ultra-High Voltage, greater than 330 kV) are completely bespoke manufactured products. Not only are transformers for EHV and UHV different between electrical networks and countries - they're different from each other on the same distribution network, and engineered specifically for a particular node on the network. There is a great deal of hand work involved in making them. There are a few countries that produce them - Germany, Russia, the U.S., China, probably more.
Thanks for such an informative post
There's a detail it would have been good to include in my OP. The Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) that are being mentioned are natural-gas fired. Their primary purpose is to produce steam for heating buildings and providing hot water, but they also produce electricity (although their load is tied to their heating function).
Former Soviet states used monolithic masonry construction for buildings. The walls are non-insulated and very thick. Heating is by hot water loops and radiators under each window. You don't control the temperature in your flat, outside of having shut off valves for each radiator and windows to open. There are two hot water loops in buildings - one for hot water at the tap, and the other the radiator loop. The heating loop is turned on when the weather cools, and turned off and drained when the weather warms back up.
Even newer buildings, like the high rise apartment buildings you see in pictures of Kiev, are built like this. It's relatively efficient for the climate and where you have a large population density.
The reason for using UHV (ultra-high voltage, greater than 330 kV) distribution systems is that Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine all are largely fed by nuclear power. That results in long distances between cities and the power generation plant, as opposed to a system with coal plants that are often set in or close to every city. What will likely happen is that Ukraine's system will be rebuilt using EHV (extra-high voltage or 330 kV) components. It's not as efficient, but it can be deployed much more quickly. Then the very long lead time UHV networks will be rebuilt later. EHV is just much less efficient, and requires a lot more material, land, and ongoing maintenance / supervision to transport the same amount of electricity.
Is it not more efficient to have a few nuclear plants than lots of coal or gas plants?
Also are you presuming Russia or the west will rebuild ?
The current nuclear base world wide is not particularly efficient. Mining uranium is an incredibly dirty business because the concentration of it in any ore is very low. It takes a lot of energy and resources to extract. A more efficient process would use breeder reactors to recycle spent fuel, and regional plants that could consume it. The reason that's not done is due to non-proliferation fears and because the eventual waste is much longer lived (by orders of magnitude).
The decision on coal is dictated by geography. Modern coal-fired electric plants are clean, and the process generates useful inputs for other manufacturing processes. But coal is extremely heavy, so it doesn't make sense to build coal-fired plants that don't have easy access to coal supply from rail or sea.
The advantage of natural gas-fired plants is that it's easy to transport their fuel and they are relatively light facilities. That's why Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus make heavy use of them - you can have five or ten of them in a city without any problem, and they don't have a large footprint either so land usage is minimal.
If you have nuclear power or offshore wind, you have greater demands for distribution in terms of distance to cover - hence the reason Germany uses 800 kV D.C. for the purpose, and others use 750 kV A.C. systems. But those systems are engineering feats and incredible in their own right.
I have a house in Ireland. They are plumbed the same way with uninsulated walls (they do use double walls with an airspace between them -- which many people, including me, had pumped with foam beads). There are no thermostats. People used stoves burning coal, peat, or wood to heat the water which is then pumped around the house with a heat exchanger to heat potable water. Rads can be turned off or throttled but that is it., and if it is too warm people open windows. Many houses have switched to oil (including ours) partly for the convenience and because of the stupid carbon taxes on coal it is becoming more and more expensive. Also, while building and maintaining a coal fire was entertaining for a couple of years it did pall -- and we are only there during the summers (which are often cold). With regards to oil heat, most people using oil have a timer to give a certain amount of heat every day, plus a boost that will turn it on for a half-hour, hour, or whatever it is set to. Once the inner walls have warmed up they do hold the heat well so it isn't too bad to do it that way. We are used to a more constant temp, so I ordered a thermostat from Amazon UK to control the oil burner. The electrician had never installed one before. Works a treat!
As an aside, we don't use the hot water side of things too often. The showers are electric (the water is heated in the shower unit itself) and we have a dishwasher. Once in a while my wife runs a sink of hot water to do a small amount of dishes. If I'm doing it -- for a nonstick pan, mostly -- I usually just put some water in the electric kettle.
Houses where I'm at (northern Russia) typically have a "Russian stove". It has a small closed firebox, and is fairly massive - 1.5 meter wide by 3 meters long, and the bulk of the unit without the chimney portion is usually 1.5 meters high. The smoke makes either two or three complete horizontal trips the length of the stove (depending on if the firebox is on the same end or opposite end of the chimney) before being exhausted.
You have to prime the stove before lighting the fire by burning paper or birch bark (birch wood is the typical fuel because of its density and unsuitability for other purposes). Once the unit is drawing, you light the fire. It burns hot and fast for a few hours, and warms the entire masonry base which usually extends down through the floor into a root cellar or short basement. The main issue is that you have to be very careful to keep it clean. The slower movement of exhaust means creosote builds up on the walls and is a fire hazard. But burning birch minimizes that greatly - there's abundant pine and fir in northern Russia too, but they'll burn your house down eventually.
A lot of people build new Russian stoves with hot water pipes serpentined through the masonry and use it as a heat sink to power a hydronic radiator system, backing it up with an electric boiler and isolation valves on the stove so you can have heat without needing to start a fire. Older Russian stoves put metal hot plates over the firebox for cooking, and build an open area in the chimney that faces the room for storage.
The U.S. almost uniformly uses forced air systems. They seem incredibly inefficient to me. Hot air rises and pools near the ceilings of rooms. But with wood houses like Americans typically have, there's no mass to warm up and store heat. We use split systems for air conditioning if people have it; forced air makes sense for A/C.
Here in the States we'd call what you have a Franklin stove, supposedly invented by Benjamin Franklin, though obviously he could have gotten the ideas elsewhere. A lot of old Irish houses have a large metal stove as their only source of heat as well. It had a flat top to cook on, and and oven inside (protected from the direct fire). The step up from that was the back boiler, which was the same except had a water tank in them (called a boiler though water wasn't supposed to boil in it!) from which a small electric pump circulates the water throughout the house to radiators in each room. It is an easy step to oil because the only thing that changes is the source of the heat.
A friend of ours in Ireland still has that setup, and has a fire burning all year round because that is her only source of hot water. Likely she has an electric shower, though. As to American houses, it surely depends on where you live. Here in southern/central Florida CBS (concrete block with stucco) is the preferred building material. Concrete is cheap, wood not so much, and there are those pesky hurricanes to deal with.... You are certainly correct about the forced-air though. Of course, in Florida we don't have much choice. If air conditioners suddenly disappeared, so would much of the population! We do need to heat (sometimes) -- heck we are having a hard freeze (27F, -3C) tomorrow night and lows will hover at or below freezing for the next 5 days -- but it is rare to have more that a couple of days like that in a row!
That makes sense for construction of Florida houses. I had forgotten it, but someone mentioned to me once that masonry is preferred in the south and Florida due to insects as well. I'm not a fan of wood framing but it's becoming common here. It used to be that the choices were log for houses in the country, and monolithic masonry for apartment and commercial buildings. Nicer village houses were masonry. The style of wood framing here is a little different - I think the U.S. uses stud framing, where here the walls are built flat on the ground and have diagonal members (to support snow load).
Franklin stoves are a little different than Russian stoves (after a bit of reading on Wikipedia). The Franklins use a vertical baffle - the fire's exhaust flows down, turns, and then rises. In the Russian stoves, the exhaust flows horizontally after a very short rise from the firebox. The result of that is that Russian stoves take up a great deal of space in a typical Russian village house, but they're also a source of pride for people to own. Some of the new construction around cities in the northern part of Russia (like Moscow and St. Petersburg) have fireplaces mostly as a decorative feature, and have the shallow fireboxes that are mostly to reflect light into a room and common in northern U.S. homes (at least that I've seen).