Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

That article is shit, as it waffles about Pootin escalating. The only way he can escalate is going nuclear or going from a war that he has been telling the rvssians isnot a war to total mobilisation and take on the EU and NATO...using what to fight with?
Focking Xi, via his representative in Bruxelles made known he can't let pootin lose the war. He fecking better understand his fokking China is going to be burned to hell if pootin escalates from fighting Ukrain to fighting Europe/NATO.
Xi better kicks his lapdog into submission before his lapdog causes serious damage with nukes to a region he fokking needs for his economical survival AND his goal to look the USA in the eyes in the pacific.
Fokking Xi has to understand this fokking petty war isnot worth supporting his lapdog snapping his teeth.

 

The main trucking route for Chinese goods entering Russia goes through Kazakhstan, and Kazakhstan has decided to implement European sanctions now that Russia isn't a reliable partner for things like providing gasoline. The flow of trucks has pretty much stopped with something like 5000 trucks stuck in massive lines. Everything is being checked, and anything like drone parts, batteries, and electronic jamming equipment is being confiscated.

 

The fire is spreading to new tanks. All the tourists are gone and families are sending their kids out of the city the smoke is so bad.

 

Much of the heavy fighting this summer was in the Russian attempt to take Pokrovsk, with lines pretty much to the outskirts of the town allowing frequent small groups of Russians to enter and cause problems which take a big effort to expel.

Now it looks like Russia has given up on that. Large blocks of troops are being moved from that front to other places, mostly to develop an offensive on the city of Novopavlivka (the southern arm attempting to encircle Pokrovsk is roughly the northern arm attempting to encircle Novopavlivka, except that the salient is pretty wide so the troops are making a meaningful journey.).

 

Thales Belgium has noted a number of drones flying over their factory presumably trying to spy their new cheap anti-drone rockets and are requesting permission from the government to jam them / shoot them down.

 

It would be a good way to test out their new, cheap, anti-drone rockets

 

We now know this attack took out about 60% of Ukraine's gas production, and they will need to import a lot for this winter.

 

Russia's Korobkovsky Gas Processing Plant and a related pump station 8km away were hit with drones and set on fire this night.

 

Tatarstan has reduced the signing bonus for someone joining the Russian ground forces from 2.7 million rubles to 400,000. Most of the money to bribe people to die for Putin comes from the regional level, not the national level, and Tatarstan is (used to be?) a rich region because it has a big oil industry. A lot of regions are struggling financially, so this can't be the only place.

 

No, tell me where pootin can escalate by throwing in bodies into let's say the Baltics?
The article doesnot, nor does it mention where pootin is going to get the weapons needed to arm let's say 500,000-1 million soldiers.
The escalation phrase in the article is a hollow one, as the only means for that pootin has is to climb the nuclear ladder.

 

Last night saw a heavy drone attack on Ukraine targeting their power infrastructure. Large parts of the country are blacked out.

 

Besides the 4-5 city encirclements that Russia is attempting in 2025 (without one succeeding yet), they are also attempting a grand encirclement behind the entire heavily built-up Sloviansk-Kramatorsk-Druzhkivka defense line. That breakthrough salient in the Dobropillia area is the southern arm of that. The salient is currently a series of virtual pockets with supply mostly cut off.

Russia has spent a great deal of effort in re-establishing the lines to the pockets, partially to rescue an unknown but large chunk of manpower, but also to re-establish the salient to continue the grand encirclement.

To further that goal, Russia launched the largest attack they have done in quite a while - a multi-wave coordinated affair using dozens of armored vehicles. They reached the village of Volodymyrivka but reportedly any part of the attack that wasn't repelled has been eliminated.

 

Hmmm.. Ukraine really needs to start building these things underground or something.

 

What's this about a Melon and Vlad backchannel? Could world peace really be achieved by a Slovenian Genius that sort of resembles a Husky?

 

https://dutchtimes.nl/opinion/bullets-over-bread-russias-economy-risks-war-addiction/

 

We're actually starting to get into the back end of this. Russia has stole from other parts of their economy to feed the war for so long that they are running out of things to take, and war funding is going to go down. Even workers that do war production are now getting wages cut and positions laid off.

 

It is now reported that F-16's make up 80% of the fighter sorties of Ukraine's air force. If you spend a lot of time watching Ukraine war videos this is surprising because most of the fighter videos are of Su-27's and MiG-29 dropping guided bombs, but I guess those are actually not that common and the counter drone sorties that F-16's do isn't as sexy. I imagine it's actually tough to keep those old Soviet-era fighters going and the Ukrainians are a lot better with maintaining Western tech than predicted.

 

Russian Telegram is saying these drops are now common, although not this steep. Some oblasts are now paying 1,500,000, others around 800,000 rubles, but that means they are paying half or one third what they paid months ago.

 

Brent is down to $62. That's going to hurt Russia badly.

It's also hurting Texas. But no one's told the local gas stations because the price is staying the same.

 

The Bashneft UNPZ oil refinery was hit with a drone reportedly taking out their refining tower. The Bashneft complex actually contains three refineries, of which the UNPZ oil refinery is one. This is 1400km from the front - bad news for Russia that something that distant can now be hit accurately.

 

From a Zelenskyy speech, Ukraine as a whole now has sufficient artillery shells and there is no more shell hunger. The main issue remaining is that Ukraine wants to standardize on NATO 155mm for logistics reasons, but there isn't enough of that to do so, so they will continue also using the Soviet 152mm, 122mm, and 100mm for the time being.

 

It may mean the wells are dry. No reason to even offer more if there's no one to pay.

 

The United States has been helping Ukraine for months with attacks on Russian energy installations that are far from the front line.
This is reported by the business newspaper Financial Times on the basis of information from American and Ukrainian sources.
It would be a coordinated attempt to weaken the Russian economy and get President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
The US would provide Ukraine with intelligence that makes it possible to target targets such as oil refineries. With the American information, Ukraine can make decisions about when to attack and which routes attack drones take.

The US would provide Ukraine with intelligence that makes it possible to target targets such as oil refineries.
With the American information, Ukraine can make decisions about when to attack and which routes attack drones take.
In this way, Russian air defenses can be bypassed. The ongoing Ukrainian attacks are causing energy prices in Russia to rise.
According to an American source, Ukraine chooses the targets, the US then lets you know how vulnerable the targets are.
Other sources say that the US itself also passes on priorities when choosing targets.