Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

The OJSC Naftan refinery in Novopolotsk, Belarus caught fire. This was an accident, but there's been more accidents in Russian and now Belarus refineries due to lack of maintenance. The ones that haven't been blown up have to keep working until they break. There's only two refineries in Belarus.

The large Kostroma GRES oil and gas fueled powerplant (3720MW, 1.5% of all power in Russia) was attacked by Ukraine. Also struck were the Lukoil refinery in Volgograd, and yet again the Sterlitamak petrochemical plant.

 

Last night I saw a post that the reason why Ukraine deployed their special forces into the Pokrovsk region isn't necessarily to stablize the front, but to give the soldiers in the pocket time to get out. In the quote, they said the expectation was that Pokrovsk would fall within the next week after the troops are able to withdraw. One of the issues that withdrawing soldiers are having is that the area is crawling with Russian FPVs, so any movement in the pocket is very dangerous as they have to hide from Russian FPVs to do it.

In support of this, for the first time during this offensive, Russia was able to get a vehicle into Pokrovsk.

https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3m4xw4kvtpk26

 

If you’re not a war nerd but still follow this war, here’s an article explaining what “the front line” means in today’s warfare, compared to WW I and the Civil War.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/11/ukraine-update-the-looming-fall-of-pokrovsk

 

Yeah, you can see on this map that to evacuate the pocket you need to escape on the road I marked with a green arrow. That's the road Ukraine is trying very hard to protect right now.

 

Now that Lukoil has been sanctioned by the US, they have to divest of all foreign holdings. An early solution came from the Swiss firm Gunvor, which offered to buy all of them in one go. However, Gunvor was co-founded by a personal friend of Putin, so it definitely looked shady, and now a tweet from US Treasury Department put doubt on the deal and Gunvor has retracted the offer.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/oth...rgy-firm-lukoil/ar-AA1PXhvb?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Bulgaria has created legislation to sell off their Lukoil refinery. Lukoil has no say on the matter.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...russian-owned-oil-refinery-report-2025-11-05/

 

The large Russian tank producer Uralvagonzavod is going to be cutting 10% of their workforce and will stop hiring. They make more than tanks, and Russian government spending on mass transit has been slashed heavily, so I can't say this is related to tank production directly, but it's a good sign that they can't afford to keep skilled workers and move them to military tasks.

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

 

Among the targets of Ukrainian drones tonight are the Ryzan and Saratov refineries and a number of oil depots in Crimea, including one that was being served with a train and now some of the tank cars of the train are on fire too.

 

Russian grain exports have dropped 20%.

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

 

There's been a few reports that Russia's attacks on Pokrovsk have weakened in the last couple days, probably because they've used up the ready supply of assault troops and are waiting for reinforcements. It's given Ukraine a chance to shore up the lines of communication.

Both sides are aiming at the other's electricity grid, and for both sides increasingly with missiles. Ukraine has hit at least three power stations and as many large substations in the last few days. Among those hit was the Voronezh TPP-1 plant, damaging the impossible to replace gas turbines. Russia has destroyed Ukraine's new biomass green energy plant. The difference is that Ukraine is hooked up to Europe's grid and Russia isn't. Much of Russia is experiencing occasional power outages.

Russia is creating large units of volunteer reservists to do anti-drone and anti-sabotage work within Russia. And sabotage (or at least reporting of sabotage) has increased this fall. I'm not sure how much they can help. There's too many targets of sabotage to protect them all, and while I'm sure Russia has plenty of heavy machine guns and trucks to stick them on, they aren't that successful against drones.

 

Sea drones have attacked the port of Tuapse again. Ukraine really doesn't want this place operating.

 

Last week French sources said that recent changes in how Russia has been using Iskander missiles has resulted in the SAMP/T performing better against Iskanders than Patriots. spejic mentioned it earlier, but the changes are that Russia has gotten enough data from their Iskander losses to determine what the Patriot's performance envelope is and have identified "dead zones" that they can exploit. This isn't a dig on the Patriot system, or a flat out statement that SAMP/T are superior to Patriots, but rather it is a justification for having a diverse air defense system. While Russia has made adjustments to decrease the effectiveness of Patriots, it is only a temporary change and adjustments will be made to improve the performance of Patriots and while those adjustments are made, SAMP/T systems are available to target the Iskanders.

https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_an...russias_ballistic_missile_upgrades-16421.html

Also, last week, Lockheed Martin announced the delivery of its 750th HIMARS launching system. That's not just to Ukraine, but as a whole. They also mentioned that last fall they had doubled the production rate from 48 systems per year to 96. It is believed that Ukraine has around 40 launchers, but their main bottleneck is missiles and they don't get enough missiles from their Western allies to keep those 40 launchers operating at a constant rate.

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-u...ss-lockheed-martin-delivers-750th-himars.html

 

A Russian soldier has posted on Telegraph his story and why he is hiding from his commanders. He claims he hasn't deserted since he's still "somewhere" on the front, he's just hiding from corrupt commanders.

https://bsky.app/profile/chriso-wiki.bsky.social/post/3m5573b7xwr2h

1. His first complaint is that when he volunteered to join the military it was as a "driver", but instead, he was sent to the front where he and dozens of other soldiers, including 33 Indians, were locked in a basement for several months.

2. After 2 months in the basement, he was told he had been assigned to a tank unit and was taken to another village and locked in another basement where he was told that he was actually assigned to an assault unit.

3. One day, he was given body armor, put into an IFV and sent on a 10-vehicle assault, of which, only 2 made it back to Russian lines. Of the 120 infantrymen in the assault, only 4 survived.

4. For 6-days they snuck from behind Ukrainian lines and back to Russian lines. Upon arrival, they notified their commanders that they were back and all the commanders did was send them more ammunition, some food, and told them go back because they weren't done.

5. In their return trip to the Ukrainian lines, 2 of the 4 were injured by Ukrainian drones and abandoned by the other 2, who returned to their lines where they were sent off to Pokrovsk, where it is even worse. The battlefield is littered with the corpses of Russian soldiers, with no attempts to retrieve the bodies.

6. He's now hiding with another Russian soldier, somewhere on the Pokrovsk battlefield, but where there currently isn't any fighting.

 

And this is why having an independent corruption organization is important. NABU has, allegedly, uncovered corruption at one of Ukraine's largest energy companies and are in the process of conducting raids on the company and top officials, including Ukraine's energy minister, Timur Mindich, who is a Zelensky loyalist. Mindich was apparently tipped off and has, reportedly, fled the country.

https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3m5bjg332n22d

 

The logistics situation around Pokrovsk has improved and Ukraine is able to get all the supplies they need in and even get wounded out of Myrnohrad. Today was a very foggy day and drone use was extremely limited. Russia was able to insert many troops into the city, but it also meant Ukrainian tanks could get into the action.

 

Wow, the Russkies are running out of fresh meat? Never would have imagined

 

Only a temporary situation. I don't think Russia will ever run out of losers who are at some time drunk enough to believe the recruiters.

 

Truly Irvin Kershner and co were visionaries when they shot Robocop 2.

 

Saratov and Orsk refineries were hit. Saratov has stopped offering gasoline on the exchanges, so they are probably fully shut down at the moment. The oil terminal at Feodosia, Crimea was hit again. Also attacked is the Starobesheve power plant near Donetsk

 

Russian tax revenue for October is 12% less than last October. This is partially the oil sanctions, but importantly more than that. The non-oil part of the economy has also slipped into negative territory, and that's a much bigger slice of the pie. Government spending is also down 12% year on year. For a pretty much state-run economy, that is a horrible thing but they have no choice.

 

The Minister of Justice was also implicated in this corruption investigation. Both the Minister of Justice and Minister of Energy have resigned. Given Mindich's closeness to Zelensky, it is suspected that this investigation is why Zelensky tried to end the independence of NABU back in July. There has also been rumblings from Zelensky's opponents that he should step down over the scandal and some are even speculating that he was involved.

https://kyivindependent.com/suspect...for-ex-deputy-prime-minister-journalists-say/

 

The Sheskharis oil terminal near the port of Novorossiysk is on fire. Lots of fire. This is a vitally important location for exporting Russian oil.

 

Transneft shut down the pipeline to the port - all exports are suspended for the time being. 2% of the world's oil goes through here, so it's a big deal. Besides hitting the oil port, they also hit the container port and destroyed the S-300/400 SAM site guarding the port, making future attacks easier.

Going by the videos of the attack, there's still plenty of guns of various kinds, but those are only useful against slow drones and we know that that among the weapons Ukraine used on the port were the Long Neptunes.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...oil-exports-after-ukrainian-drone-2025-11-14/

 

It also means that, even though there's an actual war on, they're not getting enough orders to redirect those worker to weapons production.

IOW, there's no money in the Kremlin pigs' piggy bank to pay for those weapons or Russia's premier weapons producer is unable to to produce the weaponry that the country needs is time of war.

Either way, it's state failure on a major scale

 

Not doubting you but are you sure it was Neptunes and not the new Flamingo cruise missiles?

Either is good news. Neptunes confirm their demonstrated ability to modify and produce those anti-ship missiles at a reasonable scale but the Flamingo would be proof that this rather stripped-down cruise missile can hit well-guarded key sites and hit them hard