Putin's Invasion of Ukraine

[Cassia]

Most of the news is good, except I read something about N Korea giving Russia a load of ballistic missiles. Maybe that genius, Dennis Rodman can sing happy birthday to Kim again and get him to stop helping Russia.

[Hydra009]

Most of the news is good, except I read something about N Korea giving Russia a load of ballistic missiles. Maybe that genius, Dennis Rodman can sing happy birthday to Kim again and get him to stop helping Russia.

Yes, the bottleneck is missile production. Russia can only produce about 120 ballistic missiles per month. And due to shortages, they've been using North Korean missiles more often. The use of said ballistic missiles and their devastating results is the main reason Putin still thinks he's winning this war. I've said it before and I'll say it again, North Korea has greatly prolonged this war, deepening the humanitarian and economic toll for both Ukraine and Russia. Without North Korean aid, Russia would've already folded.

Ukraine has three options to stop these missile barrages:

1) Shoot down the incoming missiles. Easier said than done, very costly and only advanced anti-ballistic technology can effectively do this. It's the reason why Zelenskyy has specifically asked for Patriot missiles from allies. Trump backing out his earlier support is sad, inhumane, and completely on-brand. This chronic liar and fraud cannot croak soon enough. Fortunately, Ukraine has other options, including building its own anti-ballistic system, Freya. Unfortunately, it'll be sometime in mid-2027 at the earliest before this is up and running.

2) Stop the flow of foreign components to Russian ballistics. They're evading sanctions in order to make the 120/month. Closing the loopholes means the Russians produce less missiles, kill less Ukrainians, and stop the war sooner.

3) Blow up the ballistic missile launchers/stockpiles. Much easier said than done. Many of these targets are deep in Russia and very secretive with small time windows for successful strikes.

4) Do enough economic damage that Russia can no longer afford war production. Sad to say, but this option has progressed the most out of all options. Ukraine is doing serious economic damage and the Russian economy is finally starting to crack under the strain. Between the fuel crisis and the warehouse crisis, Russia's economy is taking a serious beating and the war has suddenly become much less popular in Russia. While I don't think Russia will collapse anytime this year, it's a lot more likely now than it was in 2024 or 2023. Put enough pressure on Russia's economy for long enough and it will break.

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

Speaking of cooking:

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

Ukraine strikes largest Wildberries in Russia

Ukraine's Defense Ministry confirmed the attack on the Wildberries warehouse, noting that it is the company's largest such facility, at 250,000 square meters.

Ukraine strikes Russian war factory that produces fuel for Iskander ballistic missiles

Ukraine strikes Progress Rocket and Space Center in Samara, which produces space rockets

Now why is this a target? Because these rockets launch satellites into orbit and Russia has slowly but steady been deploying satellites to create its own version of Starlink. If completed, this would affect the course of the war. That's why that's a target.

Russia tattoos foreigners in its military

These tattoos are eerily similar to something from history...

Putin's regime and especially Wagner often get maligned as nazis, but clearly there's been some sort of mistake. The mistake is that they're not called nazis nearly enough.

[Hydra009]

Russian economist warns of looming economic crisis, fired two days later

Klepach offered a blunt evaluation of Russia’s wartime economic outlook, saying that the country is “losing not only to China and the United States, but in some ways, we’re losing to Ukraine.” While noting Ukraine’s severe demographic and economic problems, Klepach argued that Western financial backing was a key reason the country “despite everything is surviving.”

“We won’t win the competition in this war of attrition,” Klepach said in the report. “We’re under the illusion that everything [in Ukraine] will collapse. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Meanwhile, the costs we bear are mounting.”

I mean, this is true. Ukraine has proven to be resilient and on top of that, Western aid is keeping them afloat.

Klepach said Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure, Western sanctions and high domestic interest rates are cramping future growth and hindering technological investment.

Even though he's being frank in some ways, he's a little too Kremlin-minded in other ways, softening the reality of the situation so it's not so harsh for a Russian audience, and especially a Kremlin audience, not that it helped him much.

The war and interest rates aren't the only reasons the West is hesitant to invest in Russia. For starters, there's corruption galore. #157 out of 182 on the Corruption Perception Index (for comparison, Ukraine is sitting at #104, which isn't great, but at least they're doing something about it)

Second, the moment Russia does go to war, any Western company operating in Russia risks having its assets seized by the Kremlin. That's a hell of a risk right there.

And third, why would anyone want to invest in Russia? Aside from gas/oil and to some extent wheat, what does Russia have to offer the world? It's a glorified gas station. What's the point of investing?

“I don’t believe Russia will collapse, but I’m almost certain we’re coming up against a social crisis,” he warned. “We won’t collapse economically, but we are going to lag behind even further, with all of its ensuing consequences.”

Since he was communicating primarily to a Russian audience, this might be a bit of a white lie aimed at calming panic. The reality is probably slightly worse than even that. We're looking at some sort of destabilizing economic crisis on the horizon similar to the one that knocked out the USSR. It might not collapse the country, but it'll certainly disrupt everyday life and definitely will be felt in the Kremlin. Russia might survive, but Putin's "Presidency" likely won't.

And don't take my word for it, Russia's having a run on the banks right now. This one might not be the big one, but who can say that the next one won't be?

[Hydra009]

Lots of news lately. It's no exaggeration to say that a week's work of events happens in a day. It feels like more. Even if I made this thread my full time job, I couldn't cover it all.

I could cover news about the changing frontline, the outcomes of various small battles and the actions of each unit, naval news, airforce news, missile news, drone news, various "hybrid warfare" and tense diplomatic exchanges between NATO countries and Russia, foreign aid and deals between Ukraine and its allies, foreign aid and deals between Russia and its allies Iran and North Korea. I could cover economic news. I could also cover the daily lives of Ukrainian civilians living as best they can with frequent Russian missile and drone threats. And I can't even take it all in, let alone make a write-up about it. There simply aren't enough hours in a day.

So this is what caught my eye today: Russia's renewed gasoline crisis.

Apparently, the imported fuel didn't make the fuel crisis go away. Rationing is back and shortages never really went away, but they're becoming worse again after becoming somewhat better in recent weeks. Now, about 70% of Russian gas station are out of gas.

from January through July, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) had disabled at least 26 oil refineries in Russia through drone strikes. Seven of them have not resumed production, and in August, four more facilities ceased operations.

In addition to the galaxy-level big brain economic decision to sell crude to India at steep discounts and then import the refined gasoline at market rate ("'in the red' is good, comrade, USSR was red"), it seems that India and Morocco want surge pricing.

fuel, including from India and Morocco, remains on tankers in Murmansk: oil companies want to sell it at a significantly higher price than Russian domestic prices because of the high delivery costs.

They reportedly want 1.5 to 2x what Russia expected to pay. Looks like Putin might have to sell a palace or two or go without. So sad. *plays world's smallest violin*



Well, it's been over a month, so let's check out how things are going:

[Cassia]

I remember when Russians took to the streets to protest Yeltsin's dismantling of parliament. Moscow was a war zone. It led to a violent military crackdown and the consolidation of absolute executive power under a new constitution. Protest made their lives even worse. Kinda adds up why they just let the dictator do his thing.

[Hydra009]

I remember when Russians took to the streets to protest Yeltsin's dismantling of parliament. Moscow was a war zone. It led to a violent military crackdown and the consolidation of absolute executive power under a new constitution. Protest made their lives even worse. Kinda adds up why they just let the dictator do his thing.

It's definitely a lose-lose situation. But the long-term consequences of society being "apolitical" during a dictatorship is that the dictator has a free hand to do some seriously heinous stuff, mostly to the host county. We've seen the populace of whole countries struggle against a dictator (Hungary comes readily to mind) and we've seen countries quietly acquiesce to them (Russia, North Korea, etc). The latter is worse by any conceivable metric.

I've often heard conflicts summarized as a "struggle for freedom" but painting it in such abstract terms does it a real disservice - we're really talking about the people in a country having a say in how they are governed, to choose their own leader and own political agenda, to have a say in their own future. Often, we're also talking about the ability to live without being attacked by secret police, without having people being abducted, etc. And not just freedom from unjust rule and arbitrary harm, but the ability for normal people to live peaceful and prosperous lives connected to the rest of the world. These conditions change the course of the lives of millions and also the future of the world as a whole. It's lamentable that dictators ever successfully convince the people to part with such truly valuable things.