Are the hospital generators intended for extended service?
That’s the issue in Ukraine. The hospitals may be on generator power for months. We rarely see anything like that in the US.
I know maintenance goes up with extended use. They use more oil and it needs replacing more frequently.
I shudder at the electrical spikes that has to be coming off Ukraines power grid. It has to be frying computers and tv’s.
Depends on what you mean by extended service and I can only speak to US Hospitals in the 80s/90s in NJ.
Running continuously for a week(s) is expected, for months, not so much.
I have not kept up on generator tech, but a diesel generator can be pretty resilient if kept oiled.
The rise and fall of Russia’s Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu is quite a story. He was a good friend of Boris Yeltsin and later Putin.
I’m surprised he hasn’t already been scapegoated and removed from power. It will happen soon. Putin will blame the people around him.
Same? event, it seems …
def. not an army/environment to win a war …
That ain’t no latte. According to the article it’s Turkish-style.
When Granvoskiy makes coffee, places finely ground beans into a pot, adding water and gently heating for five to seven minutes, skimming foam away as needed. While the coffee heats, it gives soldiers something pleasant to focus on. “So you’re paying attention to it in a way that’s similar to meditation,” says Granovskiy. “All of your attention goes into this brewing and I wanted them to have this as a psychological practice of making coffee and letting go.”
I make French press coffee with coarsely-ground beans steeped off of the fire for four minutes – no foam involved. This stuff would likely stand a spoon.
Let’s hope rebellion spreads within the Russian army. It might be unsettling enough for the military to reconsider operations in Ukraine.
They’d only keep their best and most loyal troops for defending Donbas.
What What_Exit wrote, plus:
Emergency power generation for local healthcare facilities has been put to the test frequently over the past 20 years. Each major facility has redundancy built into their backup power systems (as opposed to individual generators), which allows indefinite power generation as units can ‘hot-swap’ and go offline for maintenance – or even replacement if necessary.
That is a big improvement over our one very robust generator. At least it was big enough to keep critical care units & the OR equipment up and running. But I’m talking the early 90s.
Russia has a military budget of $83 billion dollars. Much of it went to maintaining old Soviet hardware, paying crap wages, maintaining the ICBM fleet, etc. They don’t have the money to rebuild their military - they didn’t even have enough to properly maintain the equipment they had. Throw in corruption and the poor quality of soldiers, and Russia’s military is a basket case.
Russia has a smallish economy, but had a huge inventory of old Soviet hardware. To maintain and operate it all required lots of soldiers, which Russia couldn’t pay properly or afford to train properly. Now that much of that equipment is rusting in the fields of Ukraine, it has no hope of rebuilding its military to its former strength. Russia is destined to be a minor player in world affairs, and would already be one if not for its nuke arsenal. Its ability to project power more than a few hundred km from its border is gone, as is its logistical ability to support armies far afield
But still plenty of power to commit war crimes.
Pity it took so many dead Ukrainians to make that both apparent and a reality. Actually, it’s also sad it took so many dead Russians as well.
Good advice.
The Guardian feed
Remove all known Nazis from power…
No, Ukraine can agree not to join NATO (until Putin is dead), and concede Crimea.
Or dissolve it…
In other words, abject surrender until the next time Russia decides Ukraine doesn’t really exist.
Hardly abject surrender, just Realpolitik. Save hundreds of thousands of lives, and lose nothing. Crimea is lost, sadly.
My mothers side family is Ukrainian, we fly the flag, I wear the hat, I send support.
Give Putin a way out before he goes nutso and uses nukes.
The only way Putin could get forces to Portugal is by wargaming in the Kremlin with all his yes men playing opponents.
It’s hard to get any real idea of how widespread rebellion is. Has there actually been video of armed rebellion? I’ve seen some unarmed fighting, but most of the video I see is men who could be anybody, most wearing various styles of semi military clothing, most not armed or even carrying any body armor or equipment. They look more like they are already prisoners rather than active soldiers. Maybe their arms and equipment went the same place as the 1.5 million uniforms.
Who would those be? The Wagner Group?
Yep, and they seem to prefer it to actually trying to fight the Ukrainian army. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ratio of missiles/artillery was 100 civilian targets to 1 military. They are literally making their military situation worse and they don’t give a fuck.
Hey now, let’s not go that far. Once they agree to remove the Nazis, someone has to be the boss.
That just goes back to where things were when the Russians invaded. There is no going back there after all this slaughter. Pretty sure Ukraine would have a big no vote on that.
Then a long bloody war until either Putin dies or uses nukes. Do you think Ukraine can conquer all of Russia? Do you think Putin will give up unless he can claim some sort of win?
Crimea was lost back in 2014, not just before the war. The West more or less did nothing.
Well, minus the half of the Donbas that was in rebellion. A return of all of Luhansk and Donetsk (and every other bit and bob) to Ukrainian government control in exchange for a proper, de-militarized and internationally run referendum in Crimea might be a starting point. Crimea was a contentious absorption by Ukraine and while the Russian referendum of 2014 was a transparent and illegal sham, it is in fact in possible that given a genuine choice Crimea might prefer to join Russia. Possible.
But I think both Russia AND Ukraine would have to be at the end of their rope to consider such a thing. And Putin would have to be dead or in jail.
Perfect. There even seems to be Russians in Portugal. How’s that for proof?
No, but nobody thinks they have to, least of all the Ukrainians. Right now they are well on their way to getting their country back. If they are willing to fight for it, the least we can do is back them. If the world would have done something in 2014, we wouldn’t have this war right now.