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Grasshopper Kaplan's avatar

European farmers don't t want cheap grain from former UKraine lowering the cost and value of what they grow themselves I am told

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Sam Ursu's avatar

Thank you for yet another superb analysis.

A couple of notes:

1) In the interview with the Kaskad (Cascade) battalion about Lancets, the auto-translator keeps saying KGB instead of KBB (a special fire unit). Just in case anyone's confused, there is no KGB in modern Russia :)

2) Starshe Eddi (various spellings in English - Старше Эдды) means "Older than the Edda" referring to the ancient text of medieval Iceland (~1000 years old). Again, just an FYI for folks who don't speak Russian. Otherwise, it sounds like some guy named "Old Eddy."

3) As for the shipping Ukrainian grail via rail situation, it has to do with the rolling stock that Ukraine uses and the physical characteristics of the European rail network. Ukraine's hopper cars (the kind used to carry grain) are almost entirely of the 19-752 variety, which are incompatible with both European gauge (the width of the tracks) railways as well as the equipment used for unloading grain at the destination point. About the only way to make it feasible for Ukraine to directly ship grain by rail (as opposed to first trucking it to an EU railhead) would be somehow buy, ship, and deliver hundreds of European Union bogies (the "wheels" of the train) and attach them to Ukrainian hopper cars (a very lengthy and laborious process).

However, even if that were done, EU rail networks require something called an ECM certificate as well as other documentation about things such as noise levels (don't want clackety-clack loud trains running through EU neighborhood) and all this paperwork/certification stuff would be a REALLY BIG pain in the ass to make happen w/r/t Ukrainian rolling stock, which is all on the Soviet standard and never once designed to interconnect with (Western) Europe or its rail network.

DeutscheBahn (German railways) actually wrote up a very comprehensive study on the issue back in December 2022, for anyone interested.

3b) Frankly, it would be pretty easy for Russia to disrupt large-scale rail shipments of bulk cargo out of Ukraine especially as there only a few viable places to do it from:

https://db-engineering-consulting.com/en/news/ukrainian-grain-european-route-mapping-for-transport-completed/

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