Ukrainian Drones Are Burning Down Russia's Oil and Gas Industry
forbes.com
forbes.com
Russia is not a competent state. It's rife with corruption and skimming that will make the response to this heavily delayed. But what the article neglects to mention is that, in spite of this, Ust-Luga was repaired and reopened only a few days later, with Novatek resuming fuel loadings.
The columns of wrecked and burned down Russian tanks and APCs beg to differ. Some of us still recall Russia hastily retreat from the north and North East of Ukraine because it failed to consider the effectiveness of Ukraine's defensise strategy, which owe much to the inflow of weapons like the Javelin.
> Ukraine is failing.
We're on year 2 of Russia's 3-day invasion.
Russia spearheaded it's invasion of Ukraine with troops carrying parade uniforms.
Ukraine sunk Russia's flagship and another half a dozen ships, and destroyed a submarine.
Russia is begging the US through back channels to at least grant a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Ukraine is holding on so well that Russia is depending on Iran and North Korea to keep it's war effort afloat.
Russia felt compelled to spark proxy conflicts to try to split the support away from Ukraine.
And now Ukraine is hitting Russia where it hurts: it's oil and gas industry.
What a weird definition of failing.
I wonder if you call Russia's invasion of Ukraine a success.
> I wonder if you call Russia's invasion of Ukraine a success.
Ukraine already lost 20% of its territory, territory it won't get back and hundreds of thousands of its men with nothing to show for it other than wreckage and devastation. More territorial losses are possible in the coming year. The after-effects will be present for decades to come turning Ukraine into a failed state.
What do you call that other than an epic fail?
Lack of imagination on the doomsayers side perhaps?
It’s still an independent state, which is something.
Why aren’t countries all around the world flooding Ukraine with spare parts to make cheap drones of various sizes for Ukraine to simply flood the war torn region with hundreds of flying objects of which a small percentage are loaded with payloads that can strike?
That way, the target space is obfuscated for Russia and worst case they would have to spend their anti-drone defense systems on cheap utility drones that may or may not have done any damage..
Instead of struggling to send the leopard tanks or challenger tanks, why aren’t UK and Germany just buy a crap tin of such flying things from everywhere in the world and supply to Ukraine?
Considering all the tactics the UK pulled in the Nazis during the Second World War, I thought they would have come up with very creative ruses for Russia to chase after and lose valuable resources. (Or are they still chasing and UK doesn’t want to stop the fun yet?)
Not just that…
Spoil the supply chain to Russia.. send tractors full of nuisance into the region, drop pamphlets of soldiers being Russian soldiers being expended or whatever in key regions to demotivate the Russian soldiers even more..
Make fake mines that are detectable by the Ukrainians but not be the enemy and have them spend time on sweeping them..
Make honey pot targets that look like something important, but intended only to waste AirPower of the enemy..
I’m sure the collective minds of the larger populace could think of a lot more ways to waste time and resources of the Russians. Why are we not seeing any such?
I don't think there was a demand for millions of drones.
The little demand there was, it was well met by China's cheap drone industry.
What kind of ground targets do you expect to hit with your drone swarms in the middle of the ocean?
If you examine what happens on the front lines of the Ukraine conflict in day-by-day summaries(of which there are a few Youtubers who regularly post videos), by this point in the war, both sides have some degree of war exhaustion. They don't want to commit to major offensives to claim or reclaim territory. So, why is there no cease fire? Why were the Russian energy industries targeted now, and not years ago? It's the politics.
In the early part of the war, it was unclear that Ukraine would hold out; nobody wants to support a "loser" so this was really a test of national strength, that the government held together and its ministers didn't flee right away. When that passed, support came flowing in, because there are opportunistic reasons to destabilize Russia while putting Ukraine on a debt leash. But oversupplying Ukraine is not the game: it has to be drawn out so that the fight remains a stalemate, and the tendency is to send over old junkers and munitions first; when a war stays hot, ammo stockpiles from peacetime deplete rapidly, and this has led to a spinup in production of artillery rounds in the US solely to supply Ukraine. And the drone strategy of "cheap, light, disposable" was not preferred in peacetime: going big and expensive is attractive when you are trying to max out your budget so that it doesn't get taken away. Hence, Ukraine's command structure has had to figure out how to be competitive on its own.
The escalation in targets is a gradual thing. The early war was intended to be a bloodless takeover. When that didn't work, Russia moved towards destruction of civilian infrastructure, demoralization and subjugation. Russia's fighting doctrine and equipment favors this - it is not precise like the NATO stuff. On the Ukrainian side, the allies were cautioning against escalating in kind, but as the equipment came in and the front line situation stabilized, they became more willing to escalate. I would put the turning point of this as when they took down bridges in Crimea, cutting off supply lines to the forces across the river. The thing is, the front lines have still barely moved, and this is fine for Ukraine - the war has strengthened their national integrity - but terrible for Russia, because the Russian casus belli is that the troops have to come home with gains. That is coming directly from Putin: the war is conducted by way of being a scapegoat for domestic problems like the collapse in oil prices back in 2020. It has to succeed, or else Putin looks like a weak leader, and his power starts to evaporate. So the commanding officers, valuing their jobs and livelihoods, and asked to achieve the impossible, repeatedly send out an attack, lose almost everything, but get a few meters of progress for a few days. It is pointless: they are not going to succeed, but neither are they going to stop. The only way this will stop is if Putin passes away or the domestic situation forces the troops to come back, and with the energy infrastructure getting wiped out, the latter is impending.
I've read somewhere that the point of Russia's war crime-driven war doctrine is to basically torture and genocide the nations they attack and invade so that they serve as a cautionary tale for any prospective breakaway regions and countries they feel should be their vassal states. This is in line with all the civilian massacres Russia committed in Ukraine, systematic rape and torture of civilians, as well as their intentional targeting of critical civilian infrastructure.