Ukraine knocks out 36% of Russia's oil refining capacity in under two weeks
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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.
This would turn Russia into a suzerainty. Whose, who knows. But at this point I’d be fine with Beijing calling the shots over the war-mongering nutters in Moscow.
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.
If it could it would have done so by hoarding all fuel internally.
Yes the markets are all connected. Yes Russia could cause a mild price increase if it wanted.
No it does not have a big enough slice of the pie that it could increase prices enough to pressure countries to decrease support for Ukraine.
People are idiots and might stop sending money to Ukraine regardless.
I mean, just look at how idiotic people elected Trump after they ousted him the first time. It's gold-fish memory in geopolitical terms.
Europe does not send money to Ukraine because ordinary citizens want to or are happy about it, it does so because smart people in the deep state realize how much worse it would be for Europe if Ukraine loses and is eaten up by the Russian Empire.
If only Europe could get a clue about immigration, unify militarily, make its voice heard about climate change, nuclear energy, support EU tech and military companies while aiming for US/Chinese style efficiencies ...
More precisely, the current USofA government, which has been kicked hard in guts by the mid terms but still continues as is until January (?) and with the current veto powering wielding POTUS for another two years.
Absolutely good news for Ukraine, but the USofA origin road bumps haven't been fully passed yet.
How many generals have resigned ?
Every time Trump wants to harm Ukraine and demands starship service be reduced or denied, every single American complies. They are just as guilty as the command, because they freely help.
> that means the American military personnel and related companies are all freely ...
Nope. It doesn't mean that at all, not in the slightest, and I'm sure you must realise that "logic" is just a cheap rhetoric trick
> How many generals have resigned ?
I don't have the figures but some have and, worse for the USofA, a good many that oppose the administration in various ways have been fired.
> every single American complies.
They don't - have you not tracked the news of the past two years? Many protests and riots pushing back on Trump policy.
> They are just as guilty as the command, because they freely help.
Including those free citizens that donate time, money, resources to the benefit of Ukraine?
All that aside, can you use more Bushmasters? - https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2023-07-1...
Very hard to predict what will happen first. Energy transition away from fossil is happening so the clock is ticking for Putin (slowly though, to be fair)
This is how it has been explained to me by Russians. Losing a war would result in the end of Putin’s power (and possibly his life). Any form of perceived defeat is not an option for him.
I wonder how far away the USA is from turning off all its weapons and ISR that are essential to NATO's (proxy) war on Russia ?
Russian attacked Ukraine knowing that democratic countries, many outside NATO, would help Ukraine to protect democracy and world order. I would not call it "NATO's war"
This is why oil prices, while high, have no reason to hit stratospherical levels. The world will be fine.
Prices are not going down for a years.
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.
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.
As for world over production collapse, Saudi has got enough capacity. Even we (India) have good amount of spare refining capacity available.
It also means that any potential victim probably needs to account for that scenario and be ready to retaliate at a moments notice.
Seems like lasers that fry drones en masse will become more important, and the scale and automation at which drones can be produced will be a BFD. But those are specific inputs that impact in specific ways, and those nuts and bolts need to be the target of analysis. That work can't be replaced by assuming eternal strategic equilibrium regardless of tech.
Eh you don't need lasers, bullets are fine. You just can't have air defense these days that only relies on individual shots costing tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars each.
What's funny to me is that it's not unreasonable that a nontrivial amount of future air war is going to look like Top Gun dogfighting on the scale of childrens' toys.
New air defense tactics need to include mitigations for targets that fly low, are very cheap, and numerous.
In the end I think the cheap drone advantage will be entirely accounted for but it will take time and real world experience to figure out what works.
As for putting more boots on the ground, geography and weather make it tough to put a large amphibious force ashore in Taiwan. There are only a few harbors or beaches where it could even be attempted.
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 live tested (let alone 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 much greater capability than Hiroshima. Modern strategic nukes, by contrast, can literally destroy countries.
MAD isn't successful because of the fear of taking lots of damage, but because you literally don't exist anymore. Like during the Proud Prophet war games [2], deaths were in the billions with the entire Northern Hemisphere was effectively killed off and rendered uninhabitable for decades. People don't seem to appreciate that Russia could literally end the existence of even the United States. This isn't on the table because the United States could also literally end the existence of Russia. I'd also add that the expected climatic effects of such a war predict around 5 billion global deaths from starvation after such a conflict. [3] No form of conventional war, even a swarm of millions of drones is even remotely comparable to this potential.
[1] - https://yandex.com/images/search?text=image%20of%20hiroshima...
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.
This is a tech platform. I don't know why people get into politics on here and very righteously.
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.
Why would they?
Russia literally invades Ukraine so any territorial concession is just giving up your position for nothing. They will just continue from their new position.
This is their house and they are attacked by robbers. Luckily they are armed.
The UK famously has the sea, which has helped it for a thousand years. Its no conincidence that the boundary of Spain and France are the Pyrenees or France and Italy are the Alps or China and India have the Himalayas.
Powerful countries like natural boundaries like this because they are always worried about the other side. Russia for all its size has mountains or water stopping others. Putin wants Ukraine because he wants to push RUssia back to the USSR boundaries which were mountains in Europe. WHen Russia controlled and had roops in East Germany the open plains were narrow, today they are thousands of kms. Yes Im not defending Putin his violence and aggression and changes to Finland are all his fault, but thats not whwat im discussing.
He wants the boundary to the sea and mountains. Unfortunately he doesnt care how many millions die, all he cares about is his imperial amb itions.
And Moscow being threathened or conquered by Swedes, Napoleon and Hitler
But since when did Ukraine, Poland, Finland get to choose their neighbors? I am sure they would also love to pick and choose.
Is the world going to just give up and lie down because Dictator is paranoid? I know who's got to go.
PS (is Serbia)
So, so wrong. Putin himself made it clear it's about territories. His admiration of imperial Russia isn't a secret. He wants more territories. It's not that deep.
There have been many examples of their delivery vehicles blowing up most of the time in recent tests as confirmed by satellite photos.
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.
My point is that he has to go, or Zelenskyy, or some external diplomacy that makes everyone look good.
That said, even if replacing Zelenskyy gave Putin a face-saving excuse to negotiate, Russian ultra-nationalist pressure means Putin still won't settle without keeping the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
With Zelenskyy refusing any land concessions, peace is virtually impossible while both remain in power.
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.
If you look at what Putin actually writes and says there's no comparison at all to anything Lincoln-like.
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 may have given comfort to an adversary aiding and abetting a power targeting and killing American soldiers. That’s a crime.
I am recommending we build the investigational file, cut contracts out of appropriations and force depositions under oath until ‘28. This will be a patient project. We can’t just grenade him. We need a plan for what happens afterwards.
Russia and Iran are close allies. Is it hard to believe that they share intel?
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! (Or the APA.)
> 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?
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 they were willing to use military violence to stop it. And now rockets make the "sea" part of that somewhat less important (at least for Ukraine, clearly Iran's leadership has skipped a few important chapters in their "rockets for Dummies" books, but still getting there). 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?
Financially, the Iran oil shock provided some financial breathing room, but the overall trend is downwards.
And to be honest, both countries also look about maximally tapped out for what they could actually politically afford to put into the field. There's a reason Russia is relying on North Korean troops to bolster its army rather than backfilling troops with more Russian conscripts (and it's not because those conscripts don't exist--they do!).
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.
Additionally here, the only reason why the EU isn't getting invaded is because Russia is being stopped in Ukraine.
Just listen to what they say. They were fully intending on taking all of Eastern Europe if they could get away with it.
Fortunately they can't and are being held up in Ukraine without EU people having to suffer any direct damage.
It it hard to believe that I saw this, and the world did not come to an end. I cannot imagine what the United States would do in a similar event. Or perhaps I already saw it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mpzObWu06yQ
Edit: I have upvoted you. I would like to hear what you have to say.