Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

The amount of gasoline refiners sell to independent gasoline storage depots (and thus to independent gas stations) is now zero according to Tass. Refineries are keeping what gas they have for their own stations (or exporting it - strangely enough Russian gasoline exports are going up). But the amount of damage to the various refining companies is not equal, so even some of those are going to be short on gasoline too.

Speaking of refineries, Saratov refinery was hit again tonight.

 

I'm reading things like
'Putin is terrified of the veterans returning from Ukraine'

Russian soldiers are portrayed as heroes. But that makes them feel untouchable.

Russia is increasingly struggling with traumatized soldiers returning home from the front. It is not uncommon for things to go badly wrong. Vladimir Putin is worried, sources say.

So what precisely is the problem for Pootin?

 

Ask Trotsky.

Vets have all kinds of social ills associated with them, drug use, homelessness, unable to hold a job, disaffected, domestic violence. However, they're trained to use weapons and often have no job and need money. They can be a useful source of alternative authority if properly directed.

 

I'm not a medium, can't speak with the dead

 

And that is the issues with regular Vets. Russia also have a lot of criminal veterans. There have ben A LOT of returning soldiers that resume their criminal ways once rotated and back into Russia. There are a lot of veteran reincident murderers.

 

Russia had gone through a huge criminal wave in the 1990s fueled by the mob-based employment of thousands of returning Afghan soldiers, who became criminal muscle. The 1990s were known to be the days of mass criminal wars and, yes, Russia is staring at a sequel.

 

Reuters is reporting that Russia may be close to cutting their ouput due to Ukraine's drone strikes on refineries. Russia has called it fake news, of course.

Allegedly, Transneft, which controls the pipelines for 80% of Russia's production, has told oil companies that it will no longer store oil in its pipelines. While this doesn't directly impact production rates, it can have an impact because if Transneft won't accept oil for its pipelines, then the oil production companies need somewhere to store the oil on the input side and there isn't a lot of that. So, end result, if it can't store the oil, then it can't extract the oil, so extraction rate drops.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...put-due-drone-attacks-sources-say-2025-09-16/

 

The night of Russia's drone demonstration over Poland we got photos of a rural Polish home with a massive hole in the roof and cracks in the wall probably indicating the whole thing is a loss. There was no way a Gerbera impact could do that, but a blast from a Shahed would have leveled the house. Today we know the cause. A Sidewinder missile from a Polish F-16 malfunctioned and decided to go wherever it felt like and that house is where it felt like.

 

Despite the worry about the next Russian push, Ukraine is actually slowly regaining land these past few weeks. Mostly it's on the Sumy front, which Russia now seems to have abandoned, but it's in other places too.

Advancing Ukrainian scouts who came across a Russian ammo dump found something curious:



These are artillery shell fuses, manufactured in 1934 and part of the Soviet and then Russian arsenal because at the time the Nazis and Communists were exchanging weapons and military information.

 

How soon and how many of those will be featured at Jitty’s weekend chalet?

 

Salavat Oil Refinery was hit this night. It is in Bashkortostan, and impressive 1300 km from the front.

 

This refinery had an impressive anti-drone system installed on the refining tower. Didn't help.



The Volgograd refinery was also hit that night. Russia is now postponing scheduled maintenance on working refineries to keep the supply of gasoline as high as possible.

 

There's 25% less gasoline being traded on the exchanges in Russia than in August. Imagine if everyone had to use 25% less gasoline. And it's worse because it isn't evenly spread out. The government gets the first cut, and I'm not sure but I pray for the sake of the Russian population that food production gets the second cut before regular drivers see any. And there are regional differences, so places closer to Ukraine and on the outskirts of the nation get hit harder.

Either they raise the price to a level forcing people to use 25% less, or there are going to be empty gas stations. And Russia really doesn't want to do the first.

 

I'm sure there are tactical reasons for Russia to fly warplanes and drones over NATO countries' borders, and geopolitical nose-thumbing that helps Russia's elite feel good about themselves and put on the airwaves for propaganda...but the reason they are so aggressively doing this at the same time that Ukraine has basically stopped the Russian advance is simple:

Russia is losing the war and they need direct NATO involvement in order to justify a partial or complete mobilisation to compensate for manpower losses.

 

Russia has declared a prominent warblogger as an enemy of the state.

https://bsky.app/profile/chriso-wiki.bsky.social/post/3lz7mbftdqs2x

Alekhin was recently accused of embezzling millions of donations that he raised for military supplies for Russian soldiers on the front, but other Russian warbloggers are more concerned that labeling Alekhin as a foreign agent has more to do with his criticism of how the Russian military supplies the troops.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/09/1...s-meant-for-russian-military-medical-supplies

Of course, the reason why all of the warbloggers are concerned about Alekhin's designation as a foreign agent isn't because it endangers their "freedom of speech". The actual reason they are afraid is because they all have embezzled large sums of money from their fundraising campaigns and, now, they are afraid that the government will label them as "foreign agents" to get to their money. Just being accused of embezzlement means that they can slip some money into the right pockets and the charges going away, but being labeled as a foreign agent means they are now cut off from their money. Once cut off from their money, the only way out is if a prominent benefactor steps in and asks Putin to step in..

 

That would be suicide IMHO. A partial/complete mobilization would be a disaster right now. Russia would fail way before NATO troops are involved in fighting

 

No no not as big as that. They want to provoke Poland and the Baltics into providing Ukraine with more support as a way to then claim the need to defend the motherland.

 

The Novokuybyshevsk and Saratov refineries were attacked again tonight.

In turn the Russians launched a massive attack on Ukraine with over 500 drones and multiple missiles of various kinds.

 

??
"claim the need to defend the motherland" in what way?



Host nation: Estonia
Framework nation: United Kingdom
Contributing nations: France
Host nation: Latvia
Framework nation: Canada
Contributing nations: Albania, Czechia, Iceland, Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden
Host nation: Lithuania
Framework nation: Germany
Contributing nations: Belgium, Czechia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway
Host nation: Poland
Framework nation: United States
Contributing nations: Croatia, Romania and the United Kingdom

It has already been stated that an attack there would make Kalinigrad fall within hours.

 

Pootin understands only one thing, call his bluff.
From now on every intrusion of NATO airspace has to be treated a hostile act and that plane should be shot down asap.
Make that claim in the open on tv, that from now on we shoot everything down in our airspace.
No but's and if's anymore.
Call this lousy pokerplayer's bluff.

 

Stop me if you've heard this one before!

Your average Russian conscript has three choices:

1) Exit: like a million of his compatriots, he can drive across the Kazakh or Georgian border and never come home.

2) Voice: he can take a gun and shoot the recruiting officer in the face.

3) Loyalty: he can accept conscription.

The Russian elite need a way to get this hypothetical Russian conscript to accept #3. Having 500 Polish observers on the front lines in Donetsk is an easy way to credibly say "See, comrade, we need you." The fact that a mobilisation hasn't been called should tell you that Russia knows a mobilisation would lead to lots of Exit and Voice, which can *destabilise an authoritarian regime.*

To paraphrase, Putin needs to find a way to get a bunch of Russians off a nuclear-powered submarine.

 

Okay, I get your clarification of the mindset/analysis of the "thinking" of Pootin/the elite, but that only means he's plugging holes on the front with human resources he already is having a shortage of in factories etc. supplying the front.