From all the indications based on videos, photographs, and written reports, the Russians are in control of most of Mariupol and are operating in most of Mariupol. The Ukrainians cannot be relieved in Mariupol. The Russians are undertaking efforts to evacuate the city entirely of civilians so as to ensure that they can use much more destructive and less discriminate fire power than what they have used so far - less than using WMDs. And believe it, they can use much more destructive firepower than they have so far...
Ukrainian War Developments
- Thread starter james smith esq
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Azov are one battallion, there are lots of others. There are armed militia roaming around Kiev killing robbing and killing civilians.
Town close to Kiev gets hit repeatedly and indiscriminately by Ukrainian artillery, people die on the spot wherever they are. That's what it looks like to me. Why would Russians shell a town they are occupying? Or tie someone up just to shoot them on the street?
Bringing up Chechnya or Georgia is just a whataboutism.
Putin May Collect $321 Billion Windfall If Oil and Gas Keep Flowing
Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Russia’s economy has staggered through the first full month of the war with Ukraine but it may yet emerge with a sparkling balance sheet if some of its biggest trade partners don’t turn off the tap on its exports of energy.
For all the hardships visited on consumers at home and the financial chokehold put on the government from abroad, Bloomberg Economics expects Russia will earn nearly $321 billion from energy exports this year, an increase of more than a third from 2021. It’s also on track for a record current-account surplus that the Institute of International Finance says may reach as high as $240 billion.
“The single biggest driver of Russia’s current account surplus continues to look solid,” IIF economists led by Robin Brooks said in a report. “With current sanctions in place, substantial inflows of hard currency into Russia look set to continue.”
The calculus may change completely, however, in case of an embargo on energy sales. And even without it, Russia’s oil exports and output are already falling, with the International Energy Agency predicting it may lose nearly a quarter of its crude production this month.
Many of the country’s traditional customers are also looking elsewhere and choosing not to sign new contracts for Russian supplies amid widespread condemnation of President Vladimir Putin’s aggression. Others like India are getting steep discounts.
The invasion of Ukraine has shocked Germany and its European Union allies into a radical shift in energy policy, and the bloc is rushing to cut its dependence on Russia. For now, Europe’s largest economy opposes sanctions or political pressure that would prompt a full energy embargo. Only a handful of nations -- including the U.S. and the U.K. -- have imposed explicit bans on imports from Russia.
Oil and gas account for about half of Russia’s exports and contributed around 40% to last year’s budget revenue.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
“Hydrocarbon revenue is a lifeline for Russia’s economy, helping to damp the impact of otherwise severe sanctions and stave off a balance-of-payments crisis. But even without an energy embargo, inflation is soaring and a deep recession looms.”
--Scott Johnson.
Still, the combination of a steep ruble depreciation and a higher dollar price for oil will generate an extra 8.5 trillion rubles ($103 billion) in budget revenue this year, according to TS Lombard.
“The Finance Ministry will use some of it to cushion the blow but cautiously, not to spark inflation further,” said Madina Khrustaleva, an analyst at TS Lombard in London. “It seems that all these sanctions will destroy the non-energy part of the economy. Russia will depend on energy even more.”
Although the showdown over Ukraine has rattled energy shipments, the shock to imports and domestic demand will be so severe that the current account, the broadest measure of trade and services, may hit a new historical high after last year’s record $120 billion.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose upward revision for the current-account surplus this year puts it at $205 billion, says it may be enough for the Bank of Russia to meet the private sector’s demand for foreign exchange and allow it eventually to loosen capital controls.
With Russian consumers already caught in a barrage of shocks from inflation to a hollowing out of incomes, Goldman economists predict a 20% collapse in imports this year, double the expected decline in exports.
A healthy balance sheet won’t save Russia from a deep recession, but it’s helping sustain government spending at a time when the government has no access to international capital markets. TS Lombard analysts said the ruble’s exchange rate is effectively backed by current inflows now that sanctions froze much of the central bank’s currency reserves.
Russia’s ability to sell oil and gas abroad may be the only thing keeping the economy from descending into an even worse financial meltdown.
The IIF, an association of the world’s biggest financial institutions, said an energy embargo by the EU, the U.K. and the U.S. would lead to a contraction of more than 20% in output and may cost Russia as much as $300 billion in export receipts, depending on price swings.
Russia itself is in sure need to diversify its economy away from fossil fuel exports.
Odessa fuel depot blown up.
Idk why it took until April for this to happen.
Indeed, we shouldn't be surprised that both parties commit war crimes or ignore these war crimes just because they are committed by the side we support. Even if the head of state ask their troops not to commit them, there will always be some disturbing individuals/groups that will commit them anyways out of their sick hatred or resentment against their enemies.
What we should all support is that these individuals that committed these war crimes, no matter which side they are on, should be trialed for their crimes. If Russia is serious about protecting and not harming civilians, then they must bring justice to those affected, during or after the war has ended.
It is now a war of attrition. Previously, it is blitzkrieg and brothers war.
I suspect both sides are taking orders from General Mud at the moment. The ground has thawed and the spring rains have arrived.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
There are new images of an An-124 also getting knocked out, plus a new one of the 225, seemingly from Chinese internet.
People tend to forget that helicopters and low-flying, terrain-hugging vehicles are notoriously difficult to defend against. Long-range radar and AWACs will not be able to pick them up, leaving it up to point defense systems to do the job. Unfortunately the latter likely won't have the range to provide an adequate response time for the defenders. It is likely for this reason that the US military selected Apaches for the role of destroying Iraqi radar stations to clear the way for NATO high-speed aircraft during the initial stages of the Gulf War.
Footage of Apache helicopters in an anti-radar role:
Keep in mind that the Myanmar air force conducted its own cross-border bombing raids on Chinese territory in 2015, intentionally or otherwise, and I wouldn't be surprised if that mishap was due to the jets flying low & fast.
Russia's military leadership also had a few changes of personnel. Nothing really indicative of the war's progress; this happens in militaries around the world during wartime.
These cross-border raids are meant to improve morale of the Ukrainian forces; the damage that they inflict is not significant enough to justify withdrawing air defense systems from active theaters of the conflict in order to keep watch over these facilities. Additionally, it is difficult to actually detect low-flying helicopters, especially if they're traversing hilly or mountainous terrain. That being said, Russia could've prevented this during the initial phases of the war by conducting an all-out paralysing strike against Ukraine's air assets, à la Operation Focus in 1967.
The Sino-Vietnamese War was pretty much an unmitigated disaster for the Chinese, in which under-equipped and underprepared Chinese troops were victim to ambushes and guerilla tactics, which is ironically how the PLA won the Chinese Civil War in the first place.
And how will the Russians deploy such a device? The only aircraft capable of carrying this would be a transport plane or the Tu-160, although the latter's ability to do so remains unproven. Couple that with Ukraine's semi-intact air defense network, and you might actually end up with a few downed Il-76s.
This is what urban warfare looks like. Russia seems to have severely miscalculated Ukraine's resolve, and instead of opting for a quick and brutal decapitation strike against Ukraine's leadership that would've thrown their military into disarray, chose to go for a bloody, drawn-out war of attrition by way of a ground incursion.
Russia's inability to supply its forces with top-of-the-line systems is unlikely due to a technological or industrial defect but rather funding. That problem isn't going to be magically solved if China offers its equivalent hardware unless it is to be significantly discounted in price.
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