Unfortunately Putin and his close advisors believe that they are essentially Lincoln fighting the Confederacy in an epic battle of good and evil for which no permanent peace can be accepted. Convincing them to see sense is the only non-military resolution to the war.
Nah, both sides have no choice but to fight because Ukraine can't make territorial concessions, and Russia can't leave a militarized Ukraine intact. If either government compromises the nationalist factions of their own countries will lynch them. The only resolution to this war is to fight it out until one or both sides collapse.
Russia can absolutely leave a militarized Ukraine intact. Give back the pieces of the country they tried to steal, pay war reparations, send some people to The Hague to get fitted for new ties. Move on.
No one wants a war with Russia, even now. The whole "the West will invade" trope is just a way to keep Russians from focusing on their own situation. If the populace paid even knew a little of what Western media said about a potential conflict between the West and Russia, they'd realize this... "The Day After", etc.
Russia believes they have to attack their neighbours, because they believe they need to push all the way to geographic boundaries like the sea or mountains.
Unfortunately this is how dictators think. Nobodies die for their ambitions and tahts what we see.
Putin believes he needs the boundaries to be what Stalin took after WW2 from the old and sick Roosevelt who gave him too much of Eastern Europe.
Have you watched too much of Peter Zeihan? Dude is mostly talking nonsense confidently while hiking.
As someone living in Ukraine I can tell you he understands literally nothing about our politics, defense capabilities etc but talks very confidently about it.
I am not a Putin supporter and i hope he rots in hell, the sooner the better, but that doesnt change the fact that he does wish to recreate the USSR and its satellite state system.
Im sorry your home country cant be left in peace but those are the facts.
Putin has said the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest political tragedy of the 21C.
USSR bit might be true, but the Russian invasion so far is the top contender for the greatest tragedy political or not of the first half of the XXI century.
You didnt read my response. I simply repeated what PUTIN said, im not talking about actual reality. The two are very different. In Russia only one persons opinion or will matters and thats PUTIN.
I don’t think Putin can. He certainly doesn’t believe that would be a better outcome than continuing to fight (although he’s definitely not being realistic about that). That would be complete defeat, and he can’t admit that.
Why would Putin care what ordinary Russians think ?
Every single Russian citizen is scared of Putin, because they know he owns everything including their lives.
They also know that most of the dead and fighting are not even European white Russian, most of the unfortunates are from the many other cultures and peoples that have been conquered.
I think russian government cares a lot about population support, and despite the efforts of the few Russian anti-war heroes, war still has broad support from a population, so it buys time for russian super rich to enjoy their position in society. Moreover, historically russian government used wars as a means to raise support, 1999 Ichkeriya war was used as a vehicle to prop up Putin popularity, 2008 Georgia invasion was able to gain widespread support for Medvedev, and of course 2014 invasion, and to lesser extent Syria invasion, repelled all the mass protests that were happening in early 2010s. Large chunk of population enjoys warmongering, hails strongmen and genocide. This does not extend to all Russians citizen, but likely majority of them.
I recall second war very well, despite I was a child. Ukrainian TV was broadcasting Russian news at a time, so I saw resident buildings explosions and learned from the reports that evil Chechen terrorists were behind them. A humble but purposeful prime minister worked hard to stop these terrorists, and I was then fully on his side. This was years before I learned about sugar bag drills in Ryazan.
There is a difference between "can't" and "won't".
For Ukraine, losing means the end of their existence as an independent state, so they truly have no choice but to fight. For Russia, losing means one dude being embarrassed. They can stop whenever they want.
I agree for the most part, but like I said in another comment, we should not sanewash the demands of a genocidal dictator. What Putin wants is of little relevance, we don't ask the victims of violence to make concessions towards their aggressors and promise they won't fight back next time.
We’re all sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, but they won’t win this war.
It’s easy to say you don’t want to make any concessions when you’re not the one actually sent to the front by force (conscription).
Essentially the elites are arguing, people from abroad are watching (sometimes amused by it), and citizens who are not sent to the war on both sides say they don’t want to concede.
Russia losing means Putin will lose power. If he loses power suddenly he will likely die. Putin doesn't want to die. He can't stop, so he will never let Russia stop without a justification that can appease the Russian people. The Russian people don't want to stop either, because of the sunk cost fallacy and the perception that Europe wants to attack them and break Russia into little pieces and the internal propaganda that the only way to prevent that is to win and destroy Ukraine's military power.
Sure, everybody could sit down and agree to stop, but both sides have already many times vehemently denied any possibility of a compromise on their core issues, so what do you expect to happen? Both Ukraine and Russia view this war as existential. Both have red lines they refuse to bend on and which they demand the other side to bend to. Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
This is all about what the Russian people want, or think they want, rather than what they can. If they must live in fear of the scary Europe, that's good with me, we've been living in fear of them so far.
I don't think what happens to Putin personally matters that much in the grand scheme of things. His country was a murderous regime before him, and will remain one once he's gone.
> Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
I never claimed there is one, just that Russia has no say over whether Ukraine stays militarised or not. We should not normalise the demands of mad men as if they are legitimate.
Wanting some assurance that your country won't be invaded again in a couple years like this time isn't "optics" or "saving face". Zelenskyy openly said Ukraine is open to freezing the frontline where it is as long as we have any sort of assurance Russia won't attack us shortly after.
Russia demanding to limit our army size is not assurance
Russia demanding us not to join any defensive alliance is not assurance
Putin demanding we give up well equipped defensive positions even before any real negotiations start is not assurance either.
The only language fascists understand is an overwhelming display of force.
There will be no non-military resolution. Either Russia wins by subverting Western governments - which has been a partial success so far, but not the knock-out Putin was expecting - or Russia implodes.
You got more Nazi/fascist apparatus in France by an order of magnitude than Ukraine.
And Putin is a stone-cold authoritarian war criminal, whose reign of terror in Ukraine goes from invading Crimea with little green men, to shooting down civilian airliners, to mass graves, to stealing kids, poisoning the opposition, to drones hitting hospitals and schools.
No, The type of Nazi's which invade their neighbors. Like Russia did when it co-started the second world war by invading Poland and shortly there after Finland. And then occupying eastern Europe til about 1990. And then occupying the Crimea and invading Ukraine. And of course Moldavia, Georgia, etc. Basically Russia has always been occupying countries in Europe (or pieces thereof) in the last century.
Dictators have always been paranoid about everyone else, this is why they are always extremely careful about personal protection.
What you dont appreciate is that Russia is a multi tiered society. Im not denying a small number of thousand European Russians have died, but the only cities or peoples that Putin fears are Moscow and St P. So far only a few thousnad have died from there and basically everyone in those cities knows they are effectively spared from being forced into the army.
Most of the dead and fighting are from places you and me have never heard of, that is cities and towns and regions filled with the many other non European peoples that are under Russia. Russia is a land of over a 100 peoples, there are dozens if not more different cultures and languages. Those are the people being killed.
The European type Russians in Moscow and St P know this, and they wont dare protest because they are not the wons dying.
It is. It just requires federal intervention since his Board is useless.
Fortunately, a lot of his supporters have publicly undermined themselves by coming out in favor of undermining American national security and sleeping with direct reports.
My point is that the only possible way to do anything to Elon over this would be to prove that what he was doing was against the wishes of the administration, which it seems pretty clear that it was not. The president controls policy on this. Also I am not convinced that Russia is targeting and killing American soldiers.
None of this matters. The rule is that the president sets the rules, and companies have no power to oppose him. You can come up with these logical gotchas all day long and it just doesn't matter because that's not how foreign policy works.
Furthermore, a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration, even if he could, because it undermines his own authority on the very same foreign policy matters.
> The rule is that the president sets the rules, and companies have no power to oppose him
Not how rule of law works!
> a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration
Not how rule of law works!
If a future administration—or the Congress, the DoJ is a creature of statute—seeks to restore the rule of law, they have to do this. And there is popular support for, how should we say it, draining the swamp.
Congress and the DOJ are creatures of statute, but foreign policy, national security, and the military are not. In these areas, which are the relevant ones here, the president has extremely broad powers, including the power to prevent SpaceX from providing Starlink to Ukraine completely if they so choose. Perhaps you do not like this, but it is quite irrelevant to the fact that this is the way it works.
Perhaps if there were some specific congressional legislation requiring SpaceX to provide this service (and even then I'm not sure the president's power over foreign policy wouldn't prevail), but in this case there is not even such a piece of legislation. So basically the only way that the restrictions would be illegal is if Elon Musk defied the administration because companies have no authority over foreign policy. But if SpaceX were defying the president, the administration would handle that very swiftly and brutally because, again, the president has extremely broad authority to punish any company that is stupid enough to cross him on a mater of foreign policy / arms exports. The absence of such action leaves the only rational conclusion that SpaceX is not defying the president, and is, therefore, not breaking the law.
A future democrat president would be a fool to try to intervene against such action under a previous administration, even if he disagrees with it, because he will expect to wield the same authority as the last president. The last thing he will want to do is set the precedent that the CEO of a defense contractor can be prosecuted for complying with a president's orders by the next incoming administration. When he want to execute his foreign policy goals the last thing he will want is hesitation and evasion from private sector contractors because they fear that cooperation will mean prosecution by the following administration.
That they have Starshield at all is a miracle. That tech didnt exist 6 years ago and wouldnt exist at all without Musk. The fact it's temporarily limited to 100mph vehicles isn't some conspiracy.
Maybe they are trying to prevent Ukraine from using Starshield for offensive operations, but don't have a way of doing that without also preventing defensive operations. Preventing defensive operations is not politically viable [I would be sueing Musk right now if this led to death of a family member], so maybe Ukraine has to launch their offensive operations only when they are actively being attacked.
I wish that was true but Russia can keep this up indefinitely. Even with severe damage to their oil infrastructure they can still export enough to fund the war effort. The real question is how much pain the elites in the core Moscow - St. Petersburg region are willing to endure.
Russia can keep this for many years. Ukraine so far was not able to significantly disrupt their oil exports and war in Iran mostly offset export losses for Russian budget. As for fuel Russia can cut consumption by factor of 2 or 3 if necessary. Surely population will suffer, but not military production.
Trump is attempting to negotiate a peace settlement. That's not support for Russia. Let's not pretend never-ending conflict in Ukraine is a good thing for anybody. Both sides are losing right now and there is no path to "victory".
They’ve been exporting crude to India (who pays a much discounted price) and then buying back refined products…at full market price.
How long can they keep that up? Reminds me of the Spanish bank default in the early 17th century thanks to India swapping silver for all the plundered gold Spain had taken from the Americas.
Obviously Russia doesn't publish any data about how long it takes them to repair their refineries, but some of them showed significant damages from the pictures and videos you can find online.
Part of the strategy here is knowing what parts to knock out because not all parts are easily replaceable. I know they have been hitting a specific part, waiting for the fix to be implemented, and then hitting it again.
There are certainly people at CIA and other intelligence agencies who focus entirely on which refinery parts are on the Pareto frontier of easiest to destroy, hardest to replace, and most important to functionality.
While that’s certainly true, it is not a guarantee. International industrial supply chains are complex, and Ukraine’s top military intelligence people undoubtedly have their hands full. What’s clear is that western intelligence assistance is hugely valuable for their war effort.
That’s the key. Take out specific components that are hard to replace currently. In a few years maybe Russians will adapt and ramp up production of parts but it won’t be immediate.
One thing we're likely to see is Russia building more smaller "teapot" refineries. These are less efficient and produce lower quality products. But they're cheap and more difficult to target.
Past hits were on a much smaller scale and limited to a single tank or other construction. These new hits are on a completely new level, the fire covers an area that must be kilometers. In the past the fire fighters had a chance to stand near and try and their luck.
The current fires are on a completely new level that make humans ants as the fire reaches into the sky. No fire fighting force even from those from countries like mine would have a chance, and we Australians know when fires are that scale theres nothing we can do but run. These fires are like the bush fires we have seen.
Lets hope Ukraine can continue to attack all other refineries because i hope theres nothing stopping them.
What about the right to eat food of people in developing countries? High diesel filters to everything in the economy, not just personal transportation.
I fully support Ukraine's right to defend itself but the global effects go way beyond personal transportation choices. Shortages and higher prices for diesel fuel are having severe impacts on poor countries far removed from the conflict zone. They need it to run tractors, trucks, buses, trains, etc. Can't plow a field with a bicycle.
And the ammunitions would be depleted within a month. Predictions such as these are a great filter for people to take seriously on the his subject (not many). Also, odd that so little of the moralists speak about the hundreds of thousands Ukrainian ánd Russian lives destroyed by this war. It is a huge failing of >worldwide< diplomacy that we have allowed this war to take place and then continue for so long.
A huge failing of worldwide diplomacy? What do you want them to do?
There are only two routes out of this: Persuade Russia to stop, or persuade Ukraine to stop. To persuade Russia to stop, you have to persuade Putin to stop. But Putin won't, not with anything short of victory as perceived by him (or at least something he can sell to his people as victory). And Ukraine won't, not without their territory back. There is no common ground between them.
That leaves the options as either assassinate Putin, or intervene strongly enough so that one side or the other receives irrevocable military defeat. So, concretely, what exactly do you think the world should have done??
Americans need to stop thinking that leaders act alone and everyone under them only accepts orders.
Nothing will change because those currently enjoying their privilege because of their position dont want that to change. If it kills millions of others, they simply dont care. It doesnt bother the current batch of generals to send thousnads to die on a daily basis why would that change tomorrow if Putin dies ?
Iran is structured very differently from Russia. Putin has spent two decades establishing the "vertical of power" - all the power is under his control. Iran has spent a decade or five spreading power so that there is no single person you can take out to stop the whole country.
If Putin dies tomorrow, those generals have a decision to make: Do they want to continue fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, and maybe get killed? Or do they want to rush back into the power vacuum created by Putin's death, and see if they can be the one (or one of the ones) that emerges with power?
That is literally not true lol. Hitting Russian refineries means there is more crude for people outside Russia, as they are forced to export what they don't refine lol.
Even if you dont refine locally, they still need to transport and store. Nobody anywhere on earth is pumping directly from the ground to a waiting ship across thousands of kms.
As MiroslavPokorny notes though, there are still storage tanks at either end to ensure there's always tanks holding a head of crude from wells to feed into the pipes, and tanks at the port end to buffer incoming when no ships are in port.
Because that's how you get the attention of the US?
What did you expect?
War in Europe is unnaceptable to us europeans, russian intervention is unnaceptable to us!
What's the point in havin cheap energy if we don't have security.
The US once more wants to fuck over Europe and make some shady deals with Russia to counterbalance (in their mind) China and keep US tech hegemony over Europe, Ukraine is obviously just a pawn to the US so while I don't like higher energy prices, I 100% get what they're doing: it's a desperate measure meant to stop the war and get the world's attention.
What would be the use of maintaining the sanctions? In the Soviet era there were sanctions, yet they managed to clone most Western technology a few years behind. It actually helped them develop their own electronics manufacturing industry.
A drag on their economic growth means you can outscale them over the long run. Sanction evasion costs money. Copying technology only gets you so far. And it incentivises your economies to move off dependence on Russian resources, usually energy, that can be used for coercion that weakens the coalition.
So, assuming a negotiated peace settlement, there will be lots and lots of calls for normalisation of trade relationships immediately. The EU/UK (important to include them because of shipping insurance) have most leverage around trade, as that's where they/we are strongest.
The problem I forsee is that (in general) depending on authoritarian regimes as a democracy leaves you open to further exploitation and aggression, if said authoritarian regime thinks it has you in their grip (as Putin clearly believed prior to starting the second invasion of Ukraine).
This is less of an issue with democratic regimes, as often aggressive behaviour is unpopular, so democracies can self-correct.
Maintaining sanctions corrals the authoritarian regime from being able to start building dependencies again.
To be fair, this basically won't happen as the commercial interests would be too strong, and additionally this might not even work, and might cause more aggression if there is no benefit to trade.
So I guess that was my reasoning, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is now a good idea, so well done on your question ;)
The Soviet economy was like today mostly based on exporting resources such as OIL. There was no total sanction encorcement.
THere may have been some sanctions but ther eality is the USSR economy would fail if the west stopped trade with them. The USSR collapsed because their exports value collapsed in the 80s.
Commodities are global. Let's say India imports 1 billion barrels a month from Russia, and you somehow stop that, they now want to get it somewhere else, global oil market demand increases 1 billion which is very similar to supply decreasing 1 billion.
> Do you like an energy crisis? Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
This is a Russian / GOP propaganda talking point. The current energy crisis is almost completely due to Trump attacking Iran and being unable to admit defeat.
The other part (a few percentages of the current crisis) is that there's a little bit less Russian oil available. Russian oil is low quality anyway. It is their gas which was interesting on the world market, and their main partner has winded down dependance on that.
These attacks hit Russian economy financially. The Russian economy is in an incredible weak state.
The Russians are losing ground (second month in a row) on the battlefield.
The Russians are targeting civilians increasingly which shows how desperate they are.
Yet, despite of that, Putin's demands are still idioticly unrralistic.
An important distinction, and it makes Ukraines attacks all the more impressive since the reported impact is with respect to "operational refining capacity" rather than just a reported percentage of sites that have experienced any form of attack.
I remember earlier on in the war when some Ukrainian drones would make their way to Moscow and explode against the side of an apartment building or something, where the physical impact wasn't so big even if the headline was big. But the growing scale and speed of attacks that impact operational capacity are much harder to brush off as meaningless.
That's one more reason for Russians do away with their leader who got into a pretty bad situation. Had Putin abstained from attacking Ukraine, Russia would have a huge upper hand at the moment, especially after Trump caused the Hormuz strait to close.. I really think Putin squandered all the potential Russia built after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I have heard said elsewhere that Ukraine is awaiting a deep onset of winter to ravage natural gas pipelines throughout Russia, which will plunge substantial percentages of the populace into freezing cold (unexpectedly?).
I wish this were not happening. I miss the days that I drank with Russians and Ukrainians, and we were all friends. It seems like a lifetime ago.
I highly doubt that. Hitting pipeline is not that simple as main pipelines are mostly underground. With oil Ukraine was hitting pump stations, but the damage so far was limited to storage and mixing tanks, the pumping stations are in a concrete building that hard to damage with relatively small drones. Gas pumping stations do not have storage tanks.
Plus it is already cold in northern Russia and Ural and Western Siberia that Ukrainian drones can hit.
Take it with a pinch of salt. Oil price didnt spike much. Taking out 36% would have spike it over 150. Any news pro Ukrainian these days are closer to propaganda than factual. Reading them over 4 years, very low quality journalism.
Refineries don't produce oil, they consume it to produce gasoline, diesel etc., so knocking some out won't increase the price of oil - possibly the other way around.
What kind of math leads you to think that a 36% reduction in Russian oil refining capacity would cause a near 50% increase in the price of global oil supplies?
Headline: "Ukraine knocks out 36% of Russia's oil refining capacity in under two weeks" (same in the bolded subheading).
First paragraph: "The combined annual processing capacity of the Russian plants hit over the past 13 days exceeds 120 million metric tons of crude oil—accounting for 36% of the aggressor state’s entire domestic oil refining capacity."
The latter paragraph is likely true, but it's unlikely that all of the ones hit were taken completely offline, so the headline is a complete lie. (In this case, the same structure - lying headline + more accurate text below - is already present in the source they provide. In other cases, sources are often misleadingly mis-cited over several levels to arrive at a click-getting but still misleading or outright lying headline.)
The refineries are huge structures, often with multiple instances of the same type of processing unit, so it's rare that one of them gets taken out completely. Also, there is no information about the actual damage done. At least in some cases, I haven't seen any claims about the actual damage, just claims that there was a strike, i.e. there is a good chance the strike didn't cause significant damage.
Further down in the article, it explicitly references "operating capacity" itself and notes that it has been reduced by 30%, which isn't quite 36%, and I'm curious as to what the former describes that the latter doesn't. But it seems to be talking about a real thing that I wouldn't characterize as a lie.
>> it's unlikely that all of the ones hit were taken completely offline, so the headline is a complete lie
Usually the next day after the strike there is a satellite image where damage to the crude oil distillation unit is visible. All such units are known, as well as their processing capacity.
Until those units are repaired the whole refinery is offline. Depends on the damage, it takes from a few weeks to several months to repair.
Feels like drones and rockets have created a similar dynamic to mutually assured destruction, except for much smaller actors with far fewer resources. It's not hard to imagine a future where e.g. Taiwan is just armed with so many cheap drones and rockets that for even a great power like China the guarantee of enormous economic damage at home is just not worth it.
china can turn taiwan into rubble with conventional resources, there is a rather large body of water seperating the two as well which allows for very easy defense compared to something like ukraine where you have to deal with forests and radar noise.
That's what TW is relative to PRC. The real issue is quantity and quality gap with dash of geography, mass subsonic drone like Ukraine + Iran are basically 100% interceptable with modern interceptors. Still high double digit percentages for shit tier ballistics (i.e. Iran). Penetration really only issue with depletion - PRC can build more interceptors than TW can build drones. The dash of geography: TW vs PRC and Iran vs Israel has narrow corridors where defense can be concentrated. UKR vs RU over large front, too much gaps to cover, and difficult terrain (less clutter over water / flats).
The real threat is HIGH end conventional rocketry, i.e. PRC/US hypersonics vs modern missile defense very unreliable (technical/economic) against. This less issue for PRC vs TW since frankly every inch of TW is covered and reachable within 4-5m of PRC rocketry which is below typical TEL launch cycles - small close adversaries easy to defang if there's enough munitions to suppress... even at larger scale US vs Iran, US managed to lock down Iranian fires as long as there was coverage.
The corollary to high end conventional rocketry is they are basically hemispherical+ range. So everything that is happening to RU oil infra... can happen to US oil infra... or basically any above ground infra with PRC conventional global strike, i.e. PRC's deterrence/answer to Malacca energy blockade is just to deny US energy at refinery level. Extrapolate further and basically this well within reach of Central/South America countries past certain development threshold.
The impact of these strikes tends to be greatly exaggerated, both in terms of what was achieved as well as the ultimate effect. There's basic remedies available: increasing defenses at processing locations, decentralization of production, and so on. To this day, even Iran continues their production of drones and missiles.
Nukes by contrast can destroy entire cities with one bomb. Hiroshima alone killed more than 100,000 people and turned a developed city into a wasteland. [1] And that was with a 15kt weapon. The strongest weapon developed since then, Tsar Bomba, was 50,000kt. Now a days Hiroshima level nukes would be considered tiny tactical nukes for battlefield advantage. There's even been artillery shells developed with the same capability as Hiroshima. Modern strategic nukes, by contrast, can literally destroy countries.
MAD wasn't successful because of you take a lot of damage, but because you literally don't exist anymore. Like during the Proud Prophet war games [2], deaths were in the billions as the entire Northern Hemisphere was effectively extincted and rendered uninhabitable for decades. War starts with lots of young people paying the ultimate price - the idea that there's pain in victory is a given. MAD works because victory is literally impossible, regardless of how much pain you're willing to accept.
It's a bit different with refineries, where in theory all you need to get to the target is a lit match, and anything else, which doesn't amplify your payload by a factor of a million once the match is lit.
Independent sources say that damage wasn’t critical. The cost of such attacks is too high to justify, the sad truth is - such operations are funded by regular taxpayers in EU. Such news are written to shake global oil prices in order to gain profits
Because people are stupid. When given a problem they can't solve, they create new problems while the old one still festers - Theory of Bounded Rationality.
Alternatively, it could reduce Russia’a chances of moving onto attacking other nations and escalating violence/the chance of nuclear war in the region. The world is complicated
I have a clearer picture of reality than you do. Do you believe Russia is not capable of killing mass civilians. Or Russia doesn't have nuclear bombs they could use on Europe. Russia has enough bombs to blowup the world.
I didn't say they were justified or pass judgement on who is justified to kill who but that's what happens next. It's a bad strategy that hurts the Ukraine. What does the Ukraine war decision makers think is going to happen next Russia will leave now?
It didn't escalate then and it won't escalate now inspite of all hand wringing. They didn't go to war due to isolationalism, not due to nuclear war. Dictators won't use nuclear as escalation as they also know the devastation that would be caused by nuclear war until unless they're cornered.
I build oil refineries as my day Job! You don't really need to knock out the whole plant to make the production to zero. Hitting just 2 to 4 towers is enough. And this knowledge is not some kind of secret. Anyone in the industry can figure out the softest spot.
As for world over production collapse, Saudi has got enough capacity. Even we (India) have good amount of spare refining capacity available.
This site is fundamentally, in the most neutral definitions of the words possible, a pro-billionaire propaganda outlet. It was created by US venture capital for US venture capital.
Most of the flagged comment seem to be of the form Russia is justified killing lots of people because <some dubious propaganda>. Is that neutral? That sort of thing indeed doesn't seem very popular on HN.
Those are limited resources that are being destroyed. Can't we just have presidents and politicians do the fighting and save resources and other people?
Yes, when it comes to waging war, a lot of relatively small and far away countries can sabotage the world economy (and their enemies' economies) quite a bit.
The problem used to be that the rest of the world was unwilling to put up with that, especially if it involved attacks at sea. And now rockets make the "sea" part of that somewhat less important. You can sabotage other countries' economies with rockets, and you can mass-produce rockets.
We've given that trade security, clearly. But it's equally obvious that people aren't willing to deal with the obvious economic fallout of that either. So what's next?
It is interesting how this is allowed on the front page but news about the I country at a similar level of relevance isn't allowed on the same front page.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 42.1 ms ] threadNow they get to enjoy hyperinflation and a continued increase in energy costs.
Bravo.
No one wants a war with Russia, even now. The whole "the West will invade" trope is just a way to keep Russians from focusing on their own situation. If the populace paid even knew a little of what Western media said about a potential conflict between the West and Russia, they'd realize this... "The Day After", etc.
Year after year the west issue attacked. How many times has Russia attacked its neighbours?
Unfortunately this is how dictators think. Nobodies die for their ambitions and tahts what we see.
Putin believes he needs the boundaries to be what Stalin took after WW2 from the old and sick Roosevelt who gave him too much of Eastern Europe.
Im sorry your home country cant be left in peace but those are the facts.
Putin has said the dissolution of the USSR was the greatest political tragedy of the 21C.
Every single Russian citizen is scared of Putin, because they know he owns everything including their lives.
They also know that most of the dead and fighting are not even European white Russian, most of the unfortunates are from the many other cultures and peoples that have been conquered.
Neither side is willing to lose face, there's only three ways out:
1. One side achieves total military victory (unlikely and would drag on for years)
2. A new president takes office on either side and opens a fresh diplomatic path
3. Outside mediators broker a truce
For Ukraine, losing means the end of their existence as an independent state, so they truly have no choice but to fight. For Russia, losing means one dude being embarrassed. They can stop whenever they want.
We’re all sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, but they won’t win this war.
It’s easy to say you don’t want to make any concessions when you’re not the one actually sent to the front by force (conscription).
Essentially the elites are arguing, people from abroad are watching (sometimes amused by it), and citizens who are not sent to the war on both sides say they don’t want to concede.
Sure, everybody could sit down and agree to stop, but both sides have already many times vehemently denied any possibility of a compromise on their core issues, so what do you expect to happen? Both Ukraine and Russia view this war as existential. Both have red lines they refuse to bend on and which they demand the other side to bend to. Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
I don't think what happens to Putin personally matters that much in the grand scheme of things. His country was a murderous regime before him, and will remain one once he's gone.
> Where do you see a non-military path to peace?
I never claimed there is one, just that Russia has no say over whether Ukraine stays militarised or not. We should not normalise the demands of mad men as if they are legitimate.
Russia demanding to limit our army size is not assurance Russia demanding us not to join any defensive alliance is not assurance Putin demanding we give up well equipped defensive positions even before any real negotiations start is not assurance either.
There will be no non-military resolution. Either Russia wins by subverting Western governments - which has been a partial success so far, but not the knock-out Putin was expecting - or Russia implodes.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4799...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/congress-has-remo...
You got more Nazi/fascist apparatus in France by an order of magnitude than Ukraine.
And Putin is a stone-cold authoritarian war criminal, whose reign of terror in Ukraine goes from invading Crimea with little green men, to shooting down civilian airliners, to mass graves, to stealing kids, poisoning the opposition, to drones hitting hospitals and schools.
F*ck off into yr little discord world, chud
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you look at what Putin actually writes and says there's no comparison at all to anything Lincoln-like.
https://archive.khpg.org/en/1520890100
Dictators have always been paranoid about everyone else, this is why they are always extremely careful about personal protection.
What you dont appreciate is that Russia is a multi tiered society. Im not denying a small number of thousand European Russians have died, but the only cities or peoples that Putin fears are Moscow and St P. So far only a few thousnad have died from there and basically everyone in those cities knows they are effectively spared from being forced into the army.
Most of the dead and fighting are from places you and me have never heard of, that is cities and towns and regions filled with the many other non European peoples that are under Russia. Russia is a land of over a 100 peoples, there are dozens if not more different cultures and languages. Those are the people being killed.
The European type Russians in Moscow and St P know this, and they wont dare protest because they are not the wons dying.
Fortunately, a lot of his supporters have publicly undermined themselves by coming out in favor of undermining American national security and sleeping with direct reports.
Musk aided and abetted an adversary aiding and abetting a power targeting and killing American soldiers. That’s a clear crime.
I am recommending we build the investigational file, cut contracts out of appropriations and force depositions under oath until ‘28.
Russia and Iran are close allies. Is it hard to believe that they share intel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Russia_relations
Furthermore, a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration, even if he could, because it undermines his own authority on the very same foreign policy matters.
Not how rule of law works!
> a democratic president would never prosecute anyone for complying with the previous Republican administration
Not how rule of law works!
If a future administration—or the Congress, the DoJ is a creature of statute—seeks to restore the rule of law, they have to do this. And there is popular support for, how should we say it, draining the swamp.
Perhaps if there were some specific congressional legislation requiring SpaceX to provide this service (and even then I'm not sure the president's power over foreign policy wouldn't prevail), but in this case there is not even such a piece of legislation. So basically the only way that the restrictions would be illegal is if Elon Musk defied the administration because companies have no authority over foreign policy. But if SpaceX were defying the president, the administration would handle that very swiftly and brutally because, again, the president has extremely broad authority to punish any company that is stupid enough to cross him on a mater of foreign policy / arms exports. The absence of such action leaves the only rational conclusion that SpaceX is not defying the president, and is, therefore, not breaking the law.
A future democrat president would be a fool to try to intervene against such action under a previous administration, even if he disagrees with it, because he will expect to wield the same authority as the last president. The last thing he will want to do is set the precedent that the CEO of a defense contractor can be prosecuted for complying with a president's orders by the next incoming administration. When he want to execute his foreign policy goals the last thing he will want is hesitation and evasion from private sector contractors because they fear that cooperation will mean prosecution by the following administration.
When was the last time, Ukraine was not actively being attacked?
Total Russia/China trade (2025): ~$228B Indian imports (2025): $55 billion EU imports (2025): $30–31 billion
Much of that energy related. U.S. had $3.5B of trade mostly fertilizer and chemicals.
That the EU is still there is for geographical reasons. Some locations just had no alternatives.
But I believe trade with Russia from EU has declined something like 90% since 2022 and is on a decline from there.
How long can they keep that up? Reminds me of the Spanish bank default in the early 17th century thanks to India swapping silver for all the plundered gold Spain had taken from the Americas.
Obviously Russia doesn't publish any data about how long it takes them to repair their refineries, but some of them showed significant damages from the pictures and videos you can find online.
The current fires are on a completely new level that make humans ants as the fire reaches into the sky. No fire fighting force even from those from countries like mine would have a chance, and we Australians know when fires are that scale theres nothing we can do but run. These fires are like the bush fires we have seen.
Lets hope Ukraine can continue to attack all other refineries because i hope theres nothing stopping them.
Do you like an energy crisis? Because this is how we get an energy crisis.
They have the right to defend their homes and kids first above your right to drive a car. Go buy a bicycle.
There are only two routes out of this: Persuade Russia to stop, or persuade Ukraine to stop. To persuade Russia to stop, you have to persuade Putin to stop. But Putin won't, not with anything short of victory as perceived by him (or at least something he can sell to his people as victory). And Ukraine won't, not without their territory back. There is no common ground between them.
That leaves the options as either assassinate Putin, or intervene strongly enough so that one side or the other receives irrevocable military defeat. So, concretely, what exactly do you think the world should have done??
Americans need to stop thinking that leaders act alone and everyone under them only accepts orders.
Nothing will change because those currently enjoying their privilege because of their position dont want that to change. If it kills millions of others, they simply dont care. It doesnt bother the current batch of generals to send thousnads to die on a daily basis why would that change tomorrow if Putin dies ?
If Putin dies tomorrow, those generals have a decision to make: Do they want to continue fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, and maybe get killed? Or do they want to rush back into the power vacuum created by Putin's death, and see if they can be the one (or one of the ones) that emerges with power?
It is about giving up territory AND being attacked again.
What would be the point of that?
As MiroslavPokorny notes though, there are still storage tanks at either end to ensure there's always tanks holding a head of crude from wells to feed into the pipes, and tanks at the port end to buffer incoming when no ships are in port.
Powder and Artillery are the most efficacious, Sure, and infallibly conciliatory Measures We can adopt.
Because that's how you get the attention of the US?
What did you expect?
War in Europe is unnaceptable to us europeans, russian intervention is unnaceptable to us!
What's the point in havin cheap energy if we don't have security.
The US once more wants to fuck over Europe and make some shady deals with Russia to counterbalance (in their mind) China and keep US tech hegemony over Europe, Ukraine is obviously just a pawn to the US so while I don't like higher energy prices, I 100% get what they're doing: it's a desperate measure meant to stop the war and get the world's attention.
The Russian federation must be decapitated and split up into parts.
This is conditional on Putin remaining in power. In a world where they became a real democracy, I'd be delighted to see them as a member of the EU.
The problem I forsee is that (in general) depending on authoritarian regimes as a democracy leaves you open to further exploitation and aggression, if said authoritarian regime thinks it has you in their grip (as Putin clearly believed prior to starting the second invasion of Ukraine).
This is less of an issue with democratic regimes, as often aggressive behaviour is unpopular, so democracies can self-correct.
Maintaining sanctions corrals the authoritarian regime from being able to start building dependencies again.
To be fair, this basically won't happen as the commercial interests would be too strong, and additionally this might not even work, and might cause more aggression if there is no benefit to trade.
So I guess that was my reasoning, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is now a good idea, so well done on your question ;)
THere may have been some sanctions but ther eality is the USSR economy would fail if the west stopped trade with them. The USSR collapsed because their exports value collapsed in the 80s.
Only if you are russian.
Blown up refineries means more russian oil is available for export to China.
This is a Russian / GOP propaganda talking point. The current energy crisis is almost completely due to Trump attacking Iran and being unable to admit defeat.
The other part (a few percentages of the current crisis) is that there's a little bit less Russian oil available. Russian oil is low quality anyway. It is their gas which was interesting on the world market, and their main partner has winded down dependance on that.
These attacks hit Russian economy financially. The Russian economy is in an incredible weak state.
The Russians are losing ground (second month in a row) on the battlefield.
The Russians are targeting civilians increasingly which shows how desperate they are.
Yet, despite of that, Putin's demands are still idioticly unrralistic.
I remember earlier on in the war when some Ukrainian drones would make their way to Moscow and explode against the side of an apartment building or something, where the physical impact wasn't so big even if the headline was big. But the growing scale and speed of attacks that impact operational capacity are much harder to brush off as meaningless.
> Putin squandered all the potential Russia built after the collapse of the Soviet Union
Oh yeah. And to be clear, Russians voted for them. And continue to support him.
I wish this were not happening. I miss the days that I drank with Russians and Ukrainians, and we were all friends. It seems like a lifetime ago.
In any case, it will be a cold winter.
Plus it is already cold in northern Russia and Ural and Western Siberia that Ukrainian drones can hit.
First paragraph: "The combined annual processing capacity of the Russian plants hit over the past 13 days exceeds 120 million metric tons of crude oil—accounting for 36% of the aggressor state’s entire domestic oil refining capacity."
The latter paragraph is likely true, but it's unlikely that all of the ones hit were taken completely offline, so the headline is a complete lie. (In this case, the same structure - lying headline + more accurate text below - is already present in the source they provide. In other cases, sources are often misleadingly mis-cited over several levels to arrive at a click-getting but still misleading or outright lying headline.)
The refineries are huge structures, often with multiple instances of the same type of processing unit, so it's rare that one of them gets taken out completely. Also, there is no information about the actual damage done. At least in some cases, I haven't seen any claims about the actual damage, just claims that there was a strike, i.e. there is a good chance the strike didn't cause significant damage.
Usually the next day after the strike there is a satellite image where damage to the crude oil distillation unit is visible. All such units are known, as well as their processing capacity.
Until those units are repaired the whole refinery is offline. Depends on the damage, it takes from a few weeks to several months to repair.
That's what TW is relative to PRC. The real issue is quantity and quality gap with dash of geography, mass subsonic drone like Ukraine + Iran are basically 100% interceptable with modern interceptors. Still high double digit percentages for shit tier ballistics (i.e. Iran). Penetration really only issue with depletion - PRC can build more interceptors than TW can build drones. The dash of geography: TW vs PRC and Iran vs Israel has narrow corridors where defense can be concentrated. UKR vs RU over large front, too much gaps to cover, and difficult terrain (less clutter over water / flats).
The real threat is HIGH end conventional rocketry, i.e. PRC/US hypersonics vs modern missile defense very unreliable (technical/economic) against. This less issue for PRC vs TW since frankly every inch of TW is covered and reachable within 4-5m of PRC rocketry which is below typical TEL launch cycles - small close adversaries easy to defang if there's enough munitions to suppress... even at larger scale US vs Iran, US managed to lock down Iranian fires as long as there was coverage.
The corollary to high end conventional rocketry is they are basically hemispherical+ range. So everything that is happening to RU oil infra... can happen to US oil infra... or basically any above ground infra with PRC conventional global strike, i.e. PRC's deterrence/answer to Malacca energy blockade is just to deny US energy at refinery level. Extrapolate further and basically this well within reach of Central/South America countries past certain development threshold.
Nukes by contrast can destroy entire cities with one bomb. Hiroshima alone killed more than 100,000 people and turned a developed city into a wasteland. [1] And that was with a 15kt weapon. The strongest weapon developed since then, Tsar Bomba, was 50,000kt. Now a days Hiroshima level nukes would be considered tiny tactical nukes for battlefield advantage. There's even been artillery shells developed with the same capability as Hiroshima. Modern strategic nukes, by contrast, can literally destroy countries.
MAD wasn't successful because of you take a lot of damage, but because you literally don't exist anymore. Like during the Proud Prophet war games [2], deaths were in the billions as the entire Northern Hemisphere was effectively extincted and rendered uninhabitable for decades. War starts with lots of young people paying the ultimate price - the idea that there's pain in victory is a given. MAD works because victory is literally impossible, regardless of how much pain you're willing to accept.
[1] - https://yandex.com/images/search?text=image%20of%20hiroshima...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet
Defenses are finite. What are you going to sacrifice in order to improve your defences around processing plants?
So are attacks. They aren’t cheap either. Nor are the results of reciprocal attacks.
Result: https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/27/ukraines-70-billion-shor...
All of these have the net effect of decreasing production efficiency, relative to the global technological frontier.
Ergo, yes, there are viable methods to protecting against massed drone strikes.
But if you do it at country-scale your industry falls economically further and further behind the rest of the world.
As for world over production collapse, Saudi has got enough capacity. Even we (India) have good amount of spare refining capacity available.
This is a tech platform. I don't know why people get into politics on here and very righteously.
The problem used to be that the rest of the world was unwilling to put up with that, especially if it involved attacks at sea. And now rockets make the "sea" part of that somewhat less important. You can sabotage other countries' economies with rockets, and you can mass-produce rockets.
We've given that trade security, clearly. But it's equally obvious that people aren't willing to deal with the obvious economic fallout of that either. So what's next?