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The Russian-Ukrainian War Is Ongoing
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As a former artillerist and former volunteer fireman. I can not really make sense of what has happened there.
At some point there was a fire somewhere on the right, which spread along the roof and then ignited something along the left wall which in turn burnt for a while and scorched the wall&paint. The temperatures inside the building did not get very hot, you can see that while the mattresses have ignited the paint on the beds is only scorched where it was exposed to direct fire from the mattresses itself (so the mattresses were probably ignited by burning insulation dropping down from the roof).
If there was an explosion it happened behind the camera, but if there was a blast it either happened very far behind the camera or there was a very limited blast without much of a shrapnel lining (corrugated steel tends to look like swiss cheese if there was a nearby shell explosion). There are some holes in the ceiling nearest the wall, but fire accelerates rustholes. So if there was a rustpatch on the roof before a fire it would create a hole, and it makes sense that there are holes where the fire was the hottest but it does not make sense that shrapnel would be concentrated in the corners.
Also, the way the roof has collapsed looks weird to me, but then I'm used to seeing the effect from fire and explosives on brick&concrete buildings. Warehouses&factories hit by artillery (generally when I've seen corrugated steel buildings hit by artillery or fire) they were either much lighter damaged or absolutely destroyed.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
My rule is "Didn't Read Don't Care".
Video is of the Spokeswoman for the DPR, a rump state created and backed by Russia.
Tweeter is Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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There was a fire there (by whatever means it was ignited). And if someone was for example killed by individual shrapnel hitting something important they would have bled out and then been burnt in a fire.
Spoiler contains Fiendishrabbit talking about the slightly more gruesome aspects of fire:
P.S: A M31 warhead does not contain 200lbs of TNT. That "fact" is New York Times being idiots. It contains a 200lbs warhead (slightly smaller one for the extended range version), but of that warhead only 51lbs is PBXN-109 explosive filler (equivalent to about 15-20% more TNT), the rest is fuze and fragmentation lining.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The biggest thing that makes me suspect that it wasn't them is that the munitions that the Ukrainians are getting would be more explosive/fragmentary then incendiary; like they're using these things to take out command core and Ammo dumps and fire isn't nearly a efficient for that kind of thing.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I live in Columbus, GA, where he moved and man, the amount of people here who take up for him and "what a nice guy he is" is pathetic.
(Still no word on the order I placed with them 5 hours before the Russian invasion, though).
Yeah Ukraine may lack a lot of things (aircraft, SAMs, anti-ship missiles etc) but detailed intel on exactly what they're using their precision munitions on is not one of them.
Plus, if it had been Ukraine that did it, Russia would be saying the prison camp spontaneously exploded in a bizarre accident. Anyone with half a brain is going to know Russia did it, so Russia blaming Ukraine is just some textbook propaganda for their TV channels and a giant "yeah we did it but we have nukes so what are you going to do about it?" to everyone else.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
If these are the Ukrainian troops that surrendered a month or two ago it's a clear Geneva Convention violation they were held in an active combat zone.
Anything else is irrelevant, Russia has a responsibility to move them out of the war zone once they surrendered and it's another war crime to add to the list.
Edit - this is mostly to prevent using POWs as human shields. And partially to ensure fair treatment. But Russia fuck Russia.
I think that's the point of claiming it was HIMARS?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Doesnt matter though. If Russia keeps them in the combat zone it's a failure of Russia caring for POWs.
Which is of course a joke and everyone knows it. But still one to add to the list.
Natural Gas
2% goes to China
There is no inter-connectivity between the pipelines, it cannot be shunted over to there.
Those pipelines cannot replace exports due to capacity even if they could.
China built one pipeline, however:
- China doesn't want to pay European prices for Gas.
- China doesn't trust Russias ability to build and maintain additional ones themselves, especially now.
- China has apparent untapped gas reserves.
The 'other' %'s mainly go to post soviet states, which are experiencing a breakdown in relations eg Kazakhstan
Their current gas field yields are dropping and their reliance on outside skills and technology means drilling more difficult locations questionable.
Oil
20% to China
Rest mostly goes to other Asian destinations
Oil makes up 45% of revenue
Their oil fields yields are slowing even faster and reaching end of life, and again are reliant on outside skills and tech to open new ones which are more difficult to reach.
China is buying at a $35 discount.
It takes 35 days travel to ship to East Asia as opposed to 2-7 days for entirety of Europe, and even 18 for the US
Energy revenue represents 60%~ of total Russian government revenue
China and 'the pivot the East'
However Russia is nowhere near equal, they are 11th on destinations out of China. Russia is not as important to China as China is to Russia.
The US is Chinas largest export destination at over 500 Billion in goods and services, compared to 72 to Russia. The EU and UK combined look to be close to the US, plus Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia on top of that. Thus the Idea that Chinese companies will stand up and abandon them to export to Russia risking sanctions on themselves is not probable, they point to examples such as Huawei.
Internal
Official inflation is 20%. Some sectors it is up to 60%.
Retail sales and consumer spending is down 20%.
Nearly all foreign car companies have left, and Russias own production is down 75% as of May.
There are many more statistics covered, all of it is bad and in the negative.
The Exodus
They made up 40% of Russias GDP
Their investments made up 600 billion
1million were employed by them
500k have fled Russia
50% were highly educated/skilled such as tech
15k of those with 30million+ $ have left
Economy
And it's not working
Not even Russians want Russian investments
So... the average Russian is spending 20% less on retail and consumer goods that cost 20+% more. Is that implying that they're purchasing about 40% less good and services?
With respect to the rest:
Jesus fuck that's an absolutely dire picture painted there. And mark you this is what it's like after no more than 5 months of the sanction regime, of which only ~3 months have been the full suite. Russia is not going to be a happy place come winter if they don't radically change the situation.
It's also worth noting that Russia has lost 10x as many people to emigration as they have to military casualties.
Also "15k of those with 30million+ $ have left" - that implies a $450 billion capital outflow, although in practice I suspect that a significant fraction of illiquid assets had to be left behind.
Even in a best case no sanctions corruption magically reduced to minimal levels scenario and climate change not being as bad as we're afraid it will be, it would take Russia a decade to recover from this. If Putin keeps on with his madness, it's going to be a generation at least before they get back to where they were.
Remember that many of those figures were only up to the end of May, so those ones only show the effect of the first 2 waves of sanctions, and only the first 3 months. Now I suppose there's a universe where 2 more months of those sanctions plus the even harsher 3rd wave didn't make things worse faster, but I don't think it's this one. I'll bet that emigration outflow didn't stop at 500,000 people, for a start.
Now it's rather clearer why Putin pushed the "EVERYONE WITH EVERYTHING" campaign in June/July and they've been using irreplaceable naval cruise missiles to blow up primary schools and so on. He needs to push Ukraine to give some kind of deal, anything that doesn't look like a total defeat, something, and soon.
It's going to be a bad, cold winter for us in the UK and Europe. I hope you've all been stocking up on quilts and blankets and warm clothing. Open your windows and make sure that everything is ventilated and dry, and give your kitchen and bathroom a dousing with anti-mold spray now, because you sure aren't going to want to be opening them much when the weather turns, with what we're paying for domestic energy. Make sure you've got a good amount of shelf stable food stashed away, especially if it's stuff you particularly like and don't want to do without: Pasta, beans, rice, oil, spices, tinned fish, preserves, sugar, chocolate, toilet paper, basic medicines, supplements, and of course a few bottles of liquor because you're prolly going to need em this winter.
But. It's going to be worse in for the ordinary people in Russia. Considerably worse. Wolf time.
The US is increasing their LNG exports to UK and EU. I don’t know by how much and if that’s going to be enough, or what the pricing of that looks like.
It's almost like disconnecting yourself from the global economy for stupid and unpopular reasons when your primary economic focus is exporting natural resources is catastrophically stupid.
It won't be enough but some is better than none.
I have gas heating. I have bought electric blankets to fit on my chairs and bed; 50 watts of 60x90cm heat pad is a very efficient way of warming V1m directly compared to running multiple radiators to warm the whole property.
Speaking of Putin The gist of things: certificates that can be exchanged for a new home in Donbass after it gets build or 6000 rubles per square meter for repairs of broken home. I have no idea how you'll rebuilt it before freezing temperatures come
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69072
Speaking of locals, in Kherson people are already looking forward to upcoming liberation, the region was not hit much during war, but nearly all businesses had effectively closed, at least it is agrarian area, so people have their own produce to it, or to take on sales run to Crimea. Russian soldiers are not so fortunate - occasionally they beg locals to buy them food from market, because they have literally no money. And apparently Russian army has started raiding local homes in search of their own deserters
https://meduza.io/feature/2022/07/29/my-znaem-nas-osvobodyat
Aaand, Deputy Head of Southern Military District has been arrested for embezzlement, he is going to see trial at August 1th. Well, looks like after defense contractors time has come for generals
https://www.rbc.ru/politics/29/07/2022/62e3e62e9a794749f2bf5b1c
Eh, FSB again with other group of spies arrested, seems they finally started going with their own PR. This time "spies" from Ukraine wanted to blow up a bus station in Lipetsk. I just want to facepalm here, but this is not all! Aside from home made explosives, they've had in their possessions phones with video of some Ukrainian soldiers doing shooting drill at secret boot camp ran by foreign officers they've confessed to attended, and had contacts in the phone-book saved as "Right Sector" - the far right Ukrainian political party and long standing boogeymen here.
Here is video on Telegram channel of Russian propaganda media
https://t.me/rian_ru/172591
Gazprom stopped gas supply to Latvia, claiming "break rules by Latvia", no comment on which, guess goverment really wants to rung Gazprom and itself into the ground
Source: oficial telegran channel of Gazprom
https://t.me/gazprom/838
1. russia doesn't border India and the use either has to loop continents or build a pipeline (We'll put a pin in that pipeline for now)
2. The Baltic and Black sea are effectively closed to russia as shipping points.
3. China has control over a *lot* of the shipping ports throughout the Indian ocean and south pacific which would straight up refuse russian oil/NG shipments to India due to the fact that India is their major rival for control over the continent and has no reason to allow russia to pursue trade with them through their territory.
4. Remember that pipeline I was talking about? In order to run a pipeline through to the border of India via the most direct route (not even major cities or such, just the border) You need to run a line through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, the foothills of the Himalayas and Pakistan... all of whom are going to want a cut of that... and some of whom will refuse to co-operate because fuck "that guy" (IE a lot of these countries are likely to refuse to co-operate as part of a whole).
5. In theory they could go through china but the only reason that china might greenlight this is to watch a bunch of poor bastards trying to build a pipeline going over the Himalayas before shutting it down because why in the fuck would china toss India or russia a bone?
6. "Ok, what about an indirect route?" Ok, sure lets look at the other possibility: running a line through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and from there... pushing the line 12 miles out to sea and running it around Pakistan's territorial waters. Again everyone there is going to be looking for a cut of this (Including Iran who are probably wondering why they're supposed to be helping russia with exporting fossil fuels given their own problems with this) with no actual investment on their part.
7. Much like with a china pivot the infrastucture to do this kind of a shift simply doesn't exist on a serious level.
Well yes, Putin must act like he believes he's going to get away with this. The moment he admits "I've thrown away Russia's military power and destroyed the economy for nothing except making our country a pariah state" he's a dead man walking.
Not to mention the little fact that Russia has just shown that it views energy supplies as a noose around the neck of the customer. I'm sure India is happy to snap up LNG at buyer's market prices to top up their reserves and maybe give their economy a little lift, but they'd be absolute fools to become dependent on it the way Europe let themselves. Likewise China.
Like heres the thing with trade deals: in order to not be taken advantage of you need to be competetive and that means having a broad base of customers. When you cut out the overwhelming majority of the market out (for whatever reason) then whoever is left is going to have much, much more power at the bargaining table to the point where they are going to inform you of the actual price of your goods.
Kinda like if you had an action comics #1 with a 10 CGC rating (Effectively the book is in perfect condition; like it just came off the printing press).... but you could only sell it to someone in say... Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut.
Basically any other party is going to work with them almost solely because of spite against Europe/US, the economics of any deal are very minor considerations
Even there it becomes a real problem since the two countries russia would turn to to make this work (India and china) are pretty deeply integrated into western economies due to how they're major sources of cheap labor for other people's economies and thus can't really jeopardize that for a deal with *russia*.
AKA, anyone reliant on Russian gas should have started taking steps to either be on an alternative or reduce their reliance on gas months ago. Still time to minimize the sting and who knows, maybe an upside to shitty climate change is that they won't need as much gas this winter to stay warm. I don't think they are seeing the nonsense the US has seen in winter in regards to climate change (where even though our winters are shorter and we have more warm days, we get a fair number of visits from the polar vortex that really drops things). I mean at this point, anyone that was buying Russian gas in Europe before, probably is going to struggle to be able to buy more, in the unlikely event that sanctions going away overnight, in sufficient amounts for their winter needs.
Which, you know, they have good reasons to do so. The US being stupid enough to court Pakistan as an ally despite the fact that they were and are the main backers of the Taliban set the tone for the entire Afghanistan debacle. So sure, oil on the cheap while they still can, all for it, but signing up entirely on one side is not happening for a while.
Cold pragmatism would be that Bending over a dollar (trade with the west) to pick up a nickle (cheap gas and trade with russia complicated by the realities of getting goods back and forth) is a fools errand.