Not having an invading army roaming around, destroying large percentages of their infrastructure, is also a crucial element for their economy. In the long run, Russia making a strategic whoopsy is going to be worth the cost (and it’s not like any of us are voting on the subject - whatever Putin’s going to do is what he’s going to do).
That said, I do notice that there’s this big blob of land connected to the land border all to the West of Ukraine and I suspect that if I looked closely enough that I’d see some train tracks and roads crossing over that border…
Boat is a cheaper option for transporting large quantities of stuff but I don’t think that it’s a total write off if the water avenue is cut off. Passenger train companies will cut most of their long distance routes, yank the chairs, and start making extra money packing the train lines into Ukraine, for bags of wheat, if a European famine is really looking like a possibility.
They shouldn’t even need to repurpose passenger cars – they likely have plenty of freight cars.
OTOH, Ukraine uses a different train gauge than most of western Europe: the 1520mm gauge (just under 5 feet) that is also used in Russia and numerous other former Soviet/Warsaw Pact countries. Most of western Europe uses the 1435mm (4’ 8.5") “standard gauge,” which is also predominant in North America.
Another fire, I’m sure they are random.
After the fire at the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant and the fire at the defence research institute in Tver now comes the fire at TsNIIMash - Russian rocket and spacecraft scientific center in Korolyov: https://twitter.com/Flash43191300/status/1517479499125952513?
I’ve seen that. Many claim it’s TsNIIMash, but others say it’s just a warehouse. Will need to be confirmed whether it’s actually a military-related building.
That’s IF Russia in fact can mount a major attack. We’re so used to thinking of Russia as the steamroller Red Army of WW2, the Warsaw Pact juggernaut of the Cold War. The astonishing weakness of Russian forces in this conflict has surprised everyone.
My first instinct is this situation exactly. We all saw Putin annex Crimea, and it didn’t exactly take Nostradamus to predict that a follow-up invasion could happen. Maybe these drones were designed specifically to give to Ukrainians to fight off invading Russians. Sort of the 21st century version of what we gave Afghanistan in the '80s.
Yes, yes there are railroads. The problem is, Ukraine uses the old Soviet gauge, which is different than the gauge across their border. Anything shipped by rail to the Western border of Ukraine (except possibly in Moldova) has to be moved to a different train that runs on the other gauge, thereby adding complexity and expense to the operation, with additional costs.
Despite that, Poland and the Baltics are trying to work out some way to do this to assist Ukraine (and the rest of the world) in getting Ukrainian products to buyers.
Of course, Og knows just how much stuff Ukraine will be able to grow/produce/ship this year but hey, you do what you can.
I recall reading that Spain had a similar problem with nonstandard rail gauge and developed a passenger train railroad truck that would have the wheel spacing changed as it was pulled through a special track.
North American railroads (for one) had miles of “dual gauge” tracks.
In the short term - pack the grain in standard shipping containers, run two tracks parallel to each other, and just shift the containers from one train to the next.
The US Navy refused to confirm if they assisted Ukraine with the attack by providing intelligence data.
‘In keeping with our support to NATO’s eastern flank, we have been conducting some limited air patrols off the coast of Romania. But we will not speak to the details of operational matters,’ a Defence source pointed out.
Right now I put that in the realm of unverified reporting bordering on conspiracy theory. It’s really not that hard to figure out where a modern warship is when it’s known to be operating in the general vicinity (cruise missile range) of one’s own coast for prolonged periods of time. It is entirely possible, for instance, that they were able to track its location by the emissions of its own radar alone, no need for direct line of sight or aerial targeting.
Really, this just seems like another attempt to try and blames Russia’s military failures on the big bad NATO instead of the incompetence and corruption of their leaders.
That would be Air Force, maintaining long-range raid warning over NATO territory.
P-8 patrols do different things for different reasons, and the Navy could legitimately operate on a less intense patrol schedule than the NATO AIRWATCH mission.
Sure. I’m just saying that NATO generally and the US specifically have had as full radar coverage of the conflict as is possible from outside Ukrainian/Russian airspace. “Limited patrols” is a hilarious understatement.
