Untethering Ukraine from US aid means the US has no leverage. Keep trying to save those midterms chief, you don't have the cards in that hole you dug yourself into. Even if the 1% of GDP is an...
Untethering Ukraine from US aid means the US has no leverage. Keep trying to save those midterms chief, you don't have the cards in that hole you dug yourself into.
Even if the 1% of GDP is an accurate statistic, and since it was said by Russia it isn't, it doesn't take into account knock on effects of severely damaging infrastructure related to the refinement. Parts that are difficult or impossible to source eventually run out. We're seeing it elsewhere too, the industry being disabled in the Gulf States will take a decent amount of time to replenish.. and those aren't even destroyed.
Ukraine is going for the "Our drones will blot out the sun" strategy. I don't see an exit ramp for Russia that doesn't end in defeat. Truthfully I haven't seen one since they couldn't take the capital in the first week but it's even murkier now.
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From the article:
The military campaign has achieved such disruption in part by targeting critical refinery parts, notably the desalting and distillation units, that sanctions have made increasingly hard to repair, according to a Washington Post examination of satellite imagery and other visuals, as well as interviews with experts and Ukrainian military officials. The strikes on refineries have been aided by rapid advances in drone production and intelligence from allies that helps Ukraine plan and execute the attacks, the experts and officials said.
At least two-thirds of the 36 major Russian refineries tracked by market analysis firm S&P Global Energy were hit between April 1 and Aug. 31, some as many as five times, at a rate of one strike every three days, according to a Post analysis of a subset of Ukrainian strikes.
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Of 54 strikes analyzed by The Post and reviewed by the experts, more than half appear to have damaged the desalting and distillation units, the examination found. More than one-third of the 54 appear to have hit nearby secondary processing units, which further refine the distilled materials into more valuable products like gasoline, jet fuel and liquefied petroleum gas.
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The day after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the European Union banned the export of atmospheric-vacuum distillation and secondary processing equipment to Russia as part of a sweeping sanctions package. The United States followed days later and restricted export licenses for the same components, effectively banning their sale to Russia.
Those sanctions make it difficult for Moscow to obtain the parts necessary to repair units struck by Ukraine, said Alexander Kolyandr, the Europe director at the Eurasia Group and an expert on the Russian economy. “I don’t think that anything that’s been hit cannot be mended, the problem is the frequency of attacks is shorter than the time needed for repair,” he said.
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On Saturday, Trump lit into Zelensky for refusing to stop attacking Russian refineries. “He’d better damn well stop,” Trump told reporters. “It’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in an October public appearance that Ukraine had targeted Russian oil refineries in an attempt to damage the economy. “Did they achieve their goal? Partially, because, by our estimates, we lost about 1 percent of GDP,” Putin said.
He has pledged to improve the country’s air defenses, and his administration issued a decree allowing the state to take over privately owned critical infrastructure, including refineries, if owners can’t protect such properties or refuse to repair them. For the first time, the government has also begun to allow private companies to purchase and install their own air defenses.
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One person involved in the deep-strike drone campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to discuss sensitive security matters, said that since last year Ukrainian forces have doubled the number of drones and decoys in each wave. Decoys, which carry no explosives, help confuse Russian air defenses and force them to waste ammunition.
“The ratio of success of drones is based on the decoys,” the person said. “If you don’t do this you will just lose quite expensive systems.” The person declined to comment on whether Ukraine is specifically targeting desalting and distillation units but said Ukrainian forces were generally targeting hard-to-repair parts of refineries.
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Intelligence assistance from Western allies has helped Ukraine exploit gaps in Russia’s air defenses, according to experts and Tango, the drone commander. U.S. intelligence about the specific locations of Russian air defense systems and radars has been crucial in allowing planners to map routes that evade detection, according to a European security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss sensitive security issues. Such U.S. assistance has been previously reported.
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Ukraine is also able to mount attacks deep inside Russia by at times using high-altitude balloons to float drones before they deploy. This allows the drones to carry less fuel and more explosives, according to the European official and Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Green Flag Ventures, an American venture capital firm that invests in Ukrainian defense technology including drones. Artificial intelligence has helped improve Ukraine’s targeting, Fairlamb and Tango said.
In addition to targeting refineries, scores of other Ukrainian strikes this year have damaged fuel storage tanks and pumping and pipeline infrastructure across the country, making the transportation of fuel more difficult even as it becomes more limited, said Christina Harwood, a Russia researcher at the Institute for the Study of War.
Untethering Ukraine from US aid means the US has no leverage. Keep trying to save those midterms chief, you don't have the cards in that hole you dug yourself into.
Even if the 1% of GDP is an accurate statistic, and since it was said by Russia it isn't, it doesn't take into account knock on effects of severely damaging infrastructure related to the refinement. Parts that are difficult or impossible to source eventually run out. We're seeing it elsewhere too, the industry being disabled in the Gulf States will take a decent amount of time to replenish.. and those aren't even destroyed.
Ukraine is going for the "Our drones will blot out the sun" strategy. I don't see an exit ramp for Russia that doesn't end in defeat. Truthfully I haven't seen one since they couldn't take the capital in the first week but it's even murkier now.
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