THAT is how you destroy an armored column. You blow up the vehicles at the head and tail of the column then destroy it in detail.
US to ask someone else to send Ukraine diesel more like it. Good thing Europe nuked its own diesel supply by throttling deliveries of diesel from Russia then.
No way. Even if it could the gas would be so expensive it would render European manufacturing non-competitive. It is possible to replace Russian gas with US, Qatari, and other LNG and piped gas sources in the long term. But we are talking like a decade here.
If Russia shut down its gas supply the Europeans would need to shut down their industry to keep power usage low.
The US government was dumb enough to believe they did not need Russian oil supplies. But the thing is a lot of the refineries in the Gulf coast were designed to process heavy Venezuelan oil. When the US sanctioned Venezuela they had to replace that oil with Russian oil. And fracked oil is not a replacement since it has less dense hydrocarbons in it not suitable for diesel. The logical replacement is to make a pipeline from Canada to send heavy tar sands oil to those Gulf coast refineries. Currently it is being sent by rail but transport capacity is maxed out. Iran is necessary to cover some of the supply and to replace Russian oil sales to Europe. But even Iran can't do this all by themselves. They will need the Saudis and their allies to release their oil reserves.
There was already a critical fuel situation with a lot of production capacity struggling to ramp up after COVID-19 lockdowns were eased and global oil consumption was ramping up. They can't ban Russian oil from the global market on top of that. Everything will break.
You will see massive diesel oil shortages in Europe and likely some in the US as well.
He seized the assets of not just the Russian government but also Russian billionaires abroad. They are arresting the mansions of Russian billionaires in Europe for example. Do you have any clue of how many houses Middle Eastern oil sheiks have in Europe? They also have huge sovereign wealth funds invested in Western countries. If all of those can be taken from them just like that because they get into a war the West does not like, and Saudi Arabia IS in a war in Yemen right now, do you think they would just keep compliant and pliable?
They did covert supplies to Chechnya as well. They sent foreign insurgents and weapons via Turkey overland from Georgia into Chechnya. The Russians tracked the helicopters all the way to NATO bases in Turkey back then. If he thinks he can do the same here I think he will find out the Russians might not just stay back and not hit those bases this time.
The Su-34 has basically built-in targeting equipment in it. It might not be that good but it is there.
Even the Ukrainian forces around Donbass are basically close to built up areas not that far from civilians. To do that the Russians would have to stop minimizing civilian casualties.
They might do it. They also have reserves available they have not bothered to call back into service yet.
This war of attrition favors the Russians. Ukraine is basically a giant meat grinder right now.
Since the Ukrainians refused to compromise I doubt it will be just that. Would the Russians just go out from Kherson knowing the local people would suffer reprisals from the Ukrainian government because their local government surrendered to the Russians? They would be fools to leave the places they took over.
A lot of people expected Putin to impose martial law on day 1. But he did not. I think he could do it but even in case of limited conflict with NATO it wouldn't be necessary.
I doubt it. They pulled a designer of the Yak-130 to work as chief designer on Orion. That is how they got it to work so quickly after floundering for years with drones.
The Russians also have Izdeliye 30 engine program. Last I heard they had problems manufacturing it reliably. Still flying in prototype stage.
If you can skip the research phase and have a copy you can clone it simplifies things a lot.
The USSR's army was mostly defensive in nature. They did not have huge expeditionary air forces in their force structure. Most of their aircraft were plugged into their air defense network and were basically appendages of it. Modern Russian aircraft are not as dependent on the availability of ground radars. But this is a legacy thing to consider when you look at their air force. SAMs are much cheaper than aircraft as well. Against the larger industrial economy of the combined West that is the way they found to keep costs down.
China's forces will need to be more expeditionary in the long term yes. They will need to deploy into the Southeast Pacific or Persian Gulf region or both. Only way to secure supplies in case of conflict. This is why Russian energy supplies to China are critical for global security.
Global Britain does it again. Major fail. I don't know what they think can do in the XXIst century pretending they are still a colonial power.
They are not second line troops. They are VDV paratroopers. You wouldn't send paratroopers to assault a huge city like that.
I would not trust those numbers too much. This happens with every conflict. Aircraft are misidentified, or identified as destroyed when they weren't, crap like that.
