Topic: Russian Invasion of Ukraine[In Progress] - page 4. (Read 78843 times)

When is the end of the war? What's to pull?

It tends to happen that when someone will loose using your rules, they will decide that the rules are other. Example: Ruzzia can use Iranian Sahed, but Ukraine cannot use missiles inside Ruzzia. Since that makes Ukraine lose, the rule is now: you hit our cities and energy infrastructure, we hit your refineries and airbases with anything we have. No brainer here.

 So yes, Ukraine has the right to decide what goes or does not go past Ukraine. It is not really a "new" rule and hey, you should be very happy as it was Ruzzia who wanted to cut the gas to "freeze Europe".

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Inside Ukraine’s Last Stand at a Vital Coal Mine

The mine, near the frontline city of Pokrovsk, produced coking coal crucial for Ukraine’s steel industry. It kept running until the very last moment, when Russian forces finally reached its gates.
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The closing of the mine, located just southeast of the embattled city of Pokrovsk, ended a desperate effort by Ukraine to keep it running until the very last moment. As Ukraine’s last operational mine producing coking coal — an essential fuel for steel production — it was vital to the country’s steel industry and, ultimately, its war effort.
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Now, the mine’s closure is expected to send shock waves through the economy. Steel production is projected to drop by more than half, from 7.5 million tons this year to less than 3 million next year, according to Oleksandr Kalenkov, head of Ukraine’s steel makers’ association. The fallout will affect trade — metal and steel products were Ukraine’s second-largest export last year — reduce tax revenues and strip the military of essential materials for armor production.

“The impact, in all its aspects, is tremendous,” Mr. Kalenkov said.
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The mine near Pokrovsk is not the first to fall to Russia, whose forces have decimated much of eastern Ukraine’s industrial base. But its story is one of Ukrainian resilience: after scaling back operations following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, coal production rebounded to 3.2 million tons in 2023, nearing prewar levels.
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Keeping the mine running as long as possible was critical for Metinvest, which relied on coking coal to smelt iron ore into steel at its factories further west. The steel is used to make rails for Ukraine’s railways, a transport lifeline during the war, as well as body armor and helmets for soldiers. Earlier this month, Metinvest launched production of protective armored plates for the U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems that protect Ukrainian skies.
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From 7,000 tons of coal a day this summer, production fell to just over 2,000 tons by mid-December, the manager said. The strike on the electricity substation, on Christmas Eve, dealt the final blow: the mine shut down and production dropped to zero.
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Mr. Kalenkov, the steel expert, said the mine’s closure put Ukraine in a precarious situation. Importing coking coal to make up for the loss will be costly and complicated by war-related logistical hurdles. He expects a strain on an already fragile economy, but also cutbacks in defense industry projects, such as the production of armor for Patriot systems.

“The loss of the mine definitely hinders Ukraine’s combat capabilities,” Mr. Kalenkov said.

I mentioned it earlier, but paxmao obviously could not calculate it, so here it is:

The energy of a 36-tonne mass hitting the ground at Mach 10 is approximately:

211.8 billion joules (211.8 × 10⁹ J),
Equivalent to 50.6 tonnes of TNT.

Ukraine has started some offensive operation in Kursk. Some people are puzzled as for the reason, my guess is that they attack where the defence is weaker.


Ruzzia does not seem to be able to tell the difference between a drone and a commercial plane. From the Ukrainian perspective that is an advantage, as Ruzzia needs to think twice before pressing the trigger which makes their air defence less effective. This is not a moral judgement, it is a fact.

Unless you are saying that Ruzzia is not going to think twice anyway? That the Ruzzian goverment is fine with hitting passenger planes and killing people as acceptable casualties so that their efficiency is not diminished? Because that is exactly what you imply.

Back to serious discussion, Ruzzia seems to be attacking with less and less mechanised means, sometimes to a ridiculous point of sending people on foot or - I have seen a video - riding scooters. There is something happening and it is not looking good for the Ruzzian army.

The addition of high explosives would seem to be a technical challenge due to re-entry protection issues, and less important than mass itself in transferring energy to a target.  The explosive energy would also possibly interfere and cancel out to a degree the kinetic energy delivery characteristics.  A simple tungsten rod would probably work best as well as being the easiest thing to do.

Seems that hypersonics would be primarily a digging tool useful in deeply fracturing material.  Having multiple attacks mixing in high precision devices which have a heaving effect (cleaning rubble out of the hole) could possibly be a method by which one could dig down to the guts of almost any bunker system.  Not to mention causing probably fatal effects on any humans trying to live underground in the area due simply to the shock effects.

Ukraine’s gas storage helps Europe avert further energy crises

War-torn country’s tanks enable continent to keep its own facilities close to capacity
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They had turned to Ukraine, home to Europe’s largest tanks, to store their reserves earlier this year despite the war in the country following Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022.
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“Ukraine is playing a key role for central and eastern Europe’s security of gas supply this winter,” said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas pricing at Argus Media, a price reporting agency.

Calling on gas stored in Ukraine “helps Europe to keep its domestic stockpiles high, reducing the risk of sites nearly emptying over any sustained cold in late winter”, she said.

Ukraine has more gas storage capacity than any country in the EU, a legacy of its role as a critical transit country for Russian pipeline gas, which accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the EU’s gas supplies before the invasion.
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Ukraine emerged as an alternative for holding gas destined for neighbouring states as storage sites in the EU reached near maximum capacity as early as mid-October.

The country also offered incentives such as cheap storage tariffs and custom duty exemptions for three years, allowing gas to be easily reimported to the EU as Kyiv seeks to further integrate itself into the bloc’s energy market.
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Most tanks in the country sit deep underground in western Ukraine, far from the front lines, and Kyiv has offered up to 10bn cubic metres, a third of national capacity, to foreign customers. That adds to the 115 bcm of existing storage capacity in the EU.
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Companies began taking gas out of Ukrainian storage in early November, with net withdrawals averaging around 10.7mn cubic metres per day, according to Argus Media. That pace accelerated amid a cold snap in December, with net drawdowns nearly doubling to an average of 26 mcm daily until mid-December.
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Withdrawals from Ukrainian storage were “definitely helping keep European storage around the 90 per cent region”, said Nikoline Bromander, senior analyst at Rystad Energy.

Keeping these levels high during the winter months is important because it affects the level of difficulty the EU would face in refilling storage during summer, ahead of the following winter.
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Rystad forecast that barring major supply disruptions, and if demand continues at current subdued levels, the EU will be left with 80 bcm of gas in storage at the end of March, or about 70 per cent capacity.

“Europe is in a quite healthy position,” Bromander said.

he Ukrainian General Staff said it had struck as deep as 1,100 km (680 miles) inside Russia, targeting oil storage, refinery, chemical and ammunition plants in the Bryansk, Saratov, Tula and Tatarstan regions.

I wonder if Mrs. Z is down to Argentina setting things up for when Z has to flee Ukraine. True, the political climate down there is way different than at the time of Hitler. Do you think Milei will remain true for a couple billion USD in bribes?

Seems that Trump wouldn't agree with you.
[...]

...the Kremlin has been compelling Russian banks to extend preferential loans to war-related businesses on terms set by the state. Since mid-2022, this off-budget financing scheme has helped drive an unprecedented $415 billion surge in overall corporate borrowing. This report estimates that $210 to $250 billion of this surge consists of compulsory,...

Another coke binge perhaps?  Just a friendly suggestion for the little green goblin.

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Zelensky is going nuts trying to figure out what to do next. Will he try biting himself in the forehead?
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Nope, that is not true. Ruzzia is a hopless nation. It went from leading the USSR to becoming "the second best army in Ukraine". Ruzzias technology, economy and industrial capabilities are not even close to those that the USSR had and are miles away from - not the US - but even away from the GDP, innovation and political power of many European countries.

Ruzzia can put up some fireworks and call it a missile - that is where it is now.

To be honest, it is quite good for Europe that Ruzzia self-demilitarises in an useless war (sorry for the Ukrainians that bear the brunt of it). It is much easier to keep peace when the Ruzzian army stocks of tanks are to 1/4.

Perhaps you are super professional a these things. Even if you are, it means nothing. Anything Ukraine and the US can do, Russia can do just as well.

Talking about how to protect one's self doesn't mean promoting war. Russian Oreshnik and others can reach the US. It's simply considerations of what they might or might not do.

Your technical figures don't mean anything because there are other options for Russia with them. Sure, consider everything that you can. But it means little until you can get into the minds of the Russian leaders.

The point is that Russia, using Oreshnik like they did in Dnipro, means Kiev wipe-out with only one more virtually unstoppable Oreshik. We don't see Ukraine making any big moves that might invite such an attack. Maybe next week. But not yet. They are taking it to heart.

Then, besides all this, Trump is coming. So, the whole Ukraine thing might simply shut down in a month or two. Zelensky is like a wild cannon with all that power, and you don't really want him to tease the bear too much, do you? I mean, the UK would be next after Ukraine... maybe even first, before Ukraine.

Wake up. Russia responded in a big way at least twice, now. Next time might be a REALLY big way. Do you really think you or your AI are guessing right? Are you ready to take that chance?

BTW, a few posts ago you were in favour of peace... now you are suggesting how to kill more people. You are a joke of a person.

But dumBAss, this is amazing!!! You and I agree in something: there are definetly much much better ways to hit a target! They are called drones, and Ukraine is nearly producing a million a year. The newest ones are definetly able to reach most major cities and I have even stopped publishing here the daily impacts in refineries and military facilities, but this is now everyday.

The addition of explosives to and ICBM is not a "technical challenge", it is an absolutely stupid idea. The ICBM rebranded as Oreshnik costs 18 million USD a pop and would not cause any destruction even close to justifiying that because it pretty much falls randomly in a 2 km area. It is time you little trolls start unhooking from the official Ruzzia TV and understand that all this is propaganda and means absolutely nothing for the war effort.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6240qepyppo

In WW1 they dropped nails from planes on troops on the ground. Quite effective when they hit anybody.

The tungsten idea has been around for some time. There must be something better... like water-filled tanks for cooling and for attitude control (steam rocket engines)... to hit targets not anticipated by the enemy. Much cheaper than tungsten.

The BBC has talked to one Ukrainian company which is already developing a new cruise missile, at least 10 times cheaper than a British-made Storm Shadow missile.

The addition of high explosives would seem to be a technical challenge due to re-entry protection issues, and less important than mass itself in transferring energy to a target.  The explosive energy would also possibly interfere and cancel out to a degree the kinetic energy delivery characteristics.  A simple tungsten rod would probably work best as well as being the easiest thing to do.

Seems that hypersonics would be primarily a digging tool useful in deeply fracturing material.  Having multiple attacks mixing in high precision devices which have a heaving effect (cleaning rubble out of the hole) could possibly be a method by which one could dig down to the guts of almost any bunker system.  Not to mention causing probably fatal effects on any humans trying to live underground in the area due simply to the shock effects.

I mentioned it earlier, but paxmao obviously could not calculate it, so here it is:

The energy of a 36-tonne mass hitting the ground at Mach 10 is approximately:

211.8 billion joules (211.8 × 10⁹ J),
Equivalent to 50.6 tonnes of TNT.