Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

Welp, Putin just bought himself some more time.

Putin and Trump had a 2.5 hour telephone conversation this morning. During that telecon, they agreed to a meeting in Budapest at an undisclosed future time. Now, with Putin having an arrest warrant in the ICC, one might think Putin would be at risk of being arrested, but Hungary is currently in the process of withdrawing from the ICC and is arguing that it is no longer required to abide by it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy85d9613zxt?post=asset:5dff2e1c-23d0-40e7-9d5e-5917d9f9a8e0#post

 

Hungary is a NATO country, so we could send drones into Hugary, because we spotted a number of unidentified Russian planes over Hungary and make him have an emergency landing in ...let's say ...Poland?

 

What effect has that quality on the reliability of engines in battle vehicles?

 

The government, including the military, get first dibs on all gas and diesel fuel so they always get the good stuff.

 

The Kinel-Cherkassy substation in Samara oblast and the Balashovskaya substation in Volgograd oblast were both hit last night. The second is vital in channeling the power from the Volzhskaya hydroelectric plant.

 

Once again Russia launched a major armored assault near the former Dobropillia salient with almost two dozen vehicles. Artillery, mines, and drones turned half back and half into fiery wrecks.

Russia seems desperate for this.

 

It makes me wonder why Russia cares about the troops in that salient? They are burning a lot of resources to relieve a few hundred troops and keep them supplied. Given how little Russia cares about the lives of its soldiers, it would be better if they just told the surrounded soldiers they are on their own.

 

If anyone wants to understand warfare in the drone era, this sentence says it all.

A “major” assault with <24 vehicles.

 

A bit different from the Battle of Kursk in which about 2 million soldiers and ten thousand tanks fought in an area about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire.

 

In case anyone thought this was a temporary thing... it's not. It's actually gotten worse. There are now 10,000 trucks waiting.

https://www-kommersant-ru.translate...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

I'm just waiting for the Ukes to get a few of these
https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/ADFX-10

 

Ukraine is heavily bombing Crimea with drones this night. They hit the oil depot at Gvardiyskе, and hit multiple electricity substations. A Russian Su-30SM aircraft sent to help shoot down drones was itself shot down by Russian air defense.

 

Attacking Russian power substations is now a thing. Ukraine also hit the large Vladimirskaya substation in Vladimir oblast. While there was an explosion and a light show, the local power seemed unaffected so it wasn't a crippling blow.

 

Part of a chemical factory that produces nitrocellulose for Russian munitions went boom.

https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social/post/3m3fndttmzc2n

 

Well, in the public part of Trump and Zelensky's meeting, Trump sounds like he is going to TACO on providing Ukraine with Tomahawks. Zelensky offered a drone technology for Tomahawks exchange and while Trump complimented Ukraine's drone technology, he also said the US's jets are amazing and they shot down a lot of drones.


When asked directly if he would approve Tomahawks to Ukraine, Trump was very non-commital, if not opposed to it. His statement was that he would like to use Tomahawks as a bargaining chip with Russia, meaning that if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire, the US will give Ukraine Tomahawks. Obviously, Putin has been rope-a-doping Trump ever since he got into office, so there's no reason to expect Trump to actually stand behind his comments here.

https://bsky.app/profile/kyivindependent.com/post/3m3fuxpuo4k2j

 

Also, Zelensky (and Europe) will not be involved in Trump's meeting with Putin in Budapest.

https://bsky.app/profile/kyivindependent.com/post/3m3fvh3xqek2j

 

His supporters will say he is doing the weave.

 

yeah he has a phone call with putin and his tune changes.

 

Zelenskyy and European leaders have learned how to flatter Trump, and it has served them well recently. In the last meeting Trump was saying how good Zelenskyy looked in his suit. That kind of thing is really important to Trump.

But fundamentally Trump wants to side with Putin, and despite Putin being pretty bad at playing Trump, Trump is always going to look for any glimmer of reason to pick him. Trump has a morality where the poor and the weak deserve what they get, and are bad because they are poor and weak. Putin's big misplay in Alaska was trying to justify taking over Ukraine with centuries old esoteric history and that isn't going to fly with any American on any side, most of all to Trump who hates eggheads. But Putin has done better recently with the delaying actions and the plays to his version of morality, which you see in this quote.

 

Profiles in Cowardice, Chapter MCXVVII.

 

So far Russian bond sales this year have been regular and successful. However, they are pretty much only funding the payments from previous bonds and providing little to their budget. A budget where expenses far outpace income. Normal Russian operating procedure is to wait until the end of the year when the bills were due and sell a massive amount of bonds to cover them.

Things are going a little different this year. They are selling 4.25 trillion rubles worth of bonds right now. And expensive bonds at that - much of it is variable rate which they have tried to avoid this year. Watcher of these sorts of things Prune60 thinks they are probably trying to get ahead of any financial problems later this year. Whatever the reason, you don't make a change this big if everything was fine.

 

Last night Ukraine hit the Veshkama substation, with reports that it was heavily damaged. It looks like Ukraine is targeting large substations that feed Moscow. Because the power grid is, well, a grid, there are workarounds for losses. But as demand reaches capacity those workarounds reveal their limitations, and temperatures are only going to go down from here.

 

Tonight Ukraine hit the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery again.

What they hit for the first time was the Orenburg gas processing plant, which turns natural gas into propane, butane, and gasoline. This is many times larger than the gas processing plant hit a while ago.

 

Shitty fuel does engine performance no favours and shitty post-Soviet fuel is on a whole other level. Good luck trying to accelerate on that stuff, for example.

Speaking from personal experience, I wouldn't like to run any engines, even Kamaz truck engines, on the kind of garbage that was floating around in the 90s and the alarm among voenkors about this very thing is palapable.

Of which the officers will promptly resell a sizeable proportion on the black market while adulterating the rest with low-grade additives and substandard diesel or other fuels. As long as the engine starts and the tank/APC/IFV pulls out, it'll be somebody else's problem