NATO would be a major, indeed overwhelming, threat once combat has started. But Russia clearly understands that they’re the only side engaged in starting combat for the hell of it. They could withdraw all their forces of all sorts from every border region they have and nobody would move in. Nobody. Well, except maybe for Ukraine, but they’ve been given a Darn Good Reason as Steve Martin once said.
Russia is not seeing a problem with Ukraine’s air force or helos causing much damage. They have de facto air superiority over their own forces. The problem the Russians are having stems from missiles, rockets, and drones, plus good old fashioned artillery. The defense against which is not conventionally defined as air superiority.
You missed which direction the money flows.
Pre-war the Russians had about 1100 airliners, almost all of which were Western products leased from Western businesses or bought from Boeing or Airbus and mortgaged by Western banks. All of which jets the Russians have seized, and are not paying lease fees or mortgage payments on.
Of the 1100, some 76 have been successfully repossessed when they somehow ended up in the West. Most of which occurred in the first week of the war. The remaining 1000+ airplanes at $50M to $100M each have been successfully stolen by Russia.
And given the maintenance problems caused by sanctions, those airplanes will be constructive losses even if the war ends tomorrow and all is forgiven. Once you can’t trust the provenance of every single part on the jet it’s cheaper to scrap it than to replace everything you can’t prove is good.
The worldwide airline leasing / financing industry is looking at a $50B-100B loss of assets. And the loss of income those assets would have produced in the absence of the war.
If they are owned by Western leasing companies or have Western banks backing their mortgages, yes. One or the other of which applies to nearly the entire Russian fleet.
Ukraine says that Russian killed and wounded for November averaged 931 per day. UK Ministry of Defense says that’s a reasonable estimate. So about 24,000 so far this month. I read another post that said Russia has advanced about 2 km near Adviika which is their greatest advance since the spring.
I know Russia has a population 3-4 times that of Ukraine but they still can’t afford to loose 12 soldiers per meter advanced. Not that Putin cares.
This is probably some kind of psychological attack on the spy chief would be my guess. Why take him out (with unknown consequences since you don’t know who his successor will be) when you can hurt him and make people paranoid instead? If it isn’t Russia, I’ll be somewhat surprised, but it could easily be something faction-related.
To what extent can you cannibalize parts from civilian airliners to maintain military planes? Because to whatever extent that’s possible, Russia is probably doing it, leaving those airliners even more inoperable.
Russia better ramp up their civilian aircraft production, because they’re going to be cut out of the world market for the foreseeable future. Oh wait, they need all production for the war effort. Never mind.
Boeing, Airbus, (together 90% of the market) Bombadier, Embraer, Dassault. They won’t be selling to Russia anytime soon.
The Chinese company Comac is trying to enter the market with a widebody airliner. They did have a joint venture with Russia, but that’s in the toilet now.
Yet more consequences of Putin’s ill advised ego trip/invasion.
I’d bet the extent is minimal. Mostly because the airliners are Western products, while the Russian military is equipped almost exclusively with home-grown Soviet or post-Soviet Russian products.
I would certainly expect that the e.g. hydraulic pumps on a Tupolev airliner and a Tupolev bomber are similar if not the very same part number. But that won’t be the same as what’s found on a Boeing or Airbus.
I would hope that breaking sanctions against Russia would be monitored pretty closely, and any company doing such an obvious ploy would be blacklisted quickly. They would then not get any parts from Boeing, and that would be bad for them.
Also, any company in India ordering parts from Boeing would have to have a track record and show where the parts are going in the first place. It’s not like Boeing is going to happily sell to a brand new company who has no connection with it’s planes in India. It would be pretty obvious what they’re up to.
The problem is that Russia’s credit is in the toilet, so nobody, anywhere, is going to accept credit from Russia. The only way anyone is going to be willing to sell anything to Russia is for cash up front (real cash, which they don’t have, not rubles), or a trade for some tangible asset equal to the full value (including inflated price) of whatever they’re selling.
Reminds me of that Johnny Cash song, “One Piece at a Time”
Now, up to now my plan went all right
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that’s when we noticed that something was definitely wrong
The transmission was a '53 and the motor turned out to be a '73
And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone
A Russian Major General stepped on amine in the rear area of the battlefield. He was deputy commander of the 14th Army Corps of the Russian Federation.
Article says it’s suspected another Russian unit placed mines to prevent Ukrainian raids.