Another lost Russian SU-35.
Guardian live feed
Technically those claims are not in conflict.
Reuters March 28, 2024 — 07:45 am EDT
Belarus has agreed to help Russia with gasoline supply, lawmaker says
MOSCOW, March 28 (Reuters) - Russian senior lawmaker Pavel Zavalny, the head of parliament’s energy committee, said on Thursday that Belarus has agreed to help Russia with gasoline supply.
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Industry and trade sources told Reuters on Wednesday that Russia had increased gasoline imports from neighbouring Belarus in March to tackle the risk of shortages in its domestic market because of unscheduled repairs at Russian refineries after drone attacks.
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Zavalny told reporters that supplies might reach between 100,000 metric tons and 150,000 tons a month (24,000 barrels to 36,000 barrels per day).
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Usually Russia is a net exporter of fuel and a supplier to international markets, but the disruption of Russian refining has forced oil companies to import.
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This year, Russia has again increased gasoline imports from Belarus and in the first half of March they reached almost 3,000 tons, according to sources familiar with the statistics.
So instead of bringing in foreign money from oil exports the Russians will have to pay out for fuel. How long can they keep juggling all the balls of domestic economy, balance of payments, and war demands before one or more of the balls goes sideways?
It’s about time. I was beginning to wonder if Russia’s cold war inventory was bottomless.
You can export a hell of a lot of crude and import all your gasoline and still make a net balance of payments gain. Provided your crude production / export volume holds up.
Which is where Russia is now.
If the West would get serious about stopping all petroleum trade between Russia and anyone siding with Russia, they’d have folded a year+ ago. Sadly the West lacks the willingness to pay the economic and diplomatic price of enforcing a planetwide economic blockade on Russian petroleum.
You’re certainly correct that Russia needing to import finished petroleum products is harmful to their cause and their economy. But until / unless we choke off the other side of the equation they (or at least their war effort) will get along OK.
Withdrawn, probably a hijack.
Supposedly Ukraine aid will be up for the US House of Reps when they come back from recess. This ridiculous delay is costing Ukraine lives.
800 miles inside Russia! The range of drones keeps improving.
Fixed-wing drones are less maneuverable than quadcopters (and can’t hover), but the tradeoff is that you can design them for high speed or long range, same as we do for full-size fighter jets and gliders. So if your long-range drone is based on a glider design (long wings with a short chord, and modest air speed), you can get good range with a small motor and modest energy reserves. The US military’s MQ-1 Predator has similar design features, and based on cruise speed (80 MPH) and endurance (24 hrs), it could handle a one-way flight of almost 2000 miles (although not particularly cost-effective to sacrifice one of these in a kamikaze attack).
I wonder how big the fixed-wing drone was that Ukraine used in this attack. It’s hard to tell from the video in your article whether that was just a full-sized general aviation plane that they converted, or just a large RC model plane (i.e. something with a 4- or 5-meter wingspan).
5 posts were split to a new topic: Danger of Drones on US hijack from Ukraine Invasion thread
Might want to check out how many Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border first…
Sorry - back of topic: what’s more interesting isn’t that Ukraine can strike that deeply into Russia, but that Russia can’t seem to stop them from doing it.
Well, in the video of the most recent attack, it looks like a light GA aircraft was modified to be unmanned. We’ve got lots that could protect against that, but I doubt we are watching for it.
800 miles is a long way for a GA aircraft – at least for something like a Skyhawk. But if the drone was something like a Flight Design CT, which it resembles and comes from Germany, that aircraft is claimed to have a 1,200 mile range.
And from a news item we went into a full scale hijack. Well done all. @Sam_Stone why am I not surprised you’re not even vaguely talking about the war here.
I allowed a small bit and off we went.
Drop the non-Ukraine drone stuff now.
@LSLGuy, please be careful. minor observations are used for jumping off points for hijacks all the time.
I’ll move this mess to In My Humble Opinion I guess.
The move caused some issues, this was @Sam_Stone:
Considering how many warnings and modnotes you’ve generated for hijacks, this is an official warning and I’m bumping this up to the modloop. You can’t seem to help yourself with hijacks. You see something in a thread you want to respond to and even though you’ve been warned far too often, you make a hijacking post.
It has happened too often and you just don’t appear to be getting any better.
That one is all on me. As Agent 86 was wont to say at least once per episode:
Sorry 'bout that, Chief!
Thanks for the split new topic; we’ll / I’ll take up residency there.
A small side note about the drone attack on Russia-I hope those students that were “recruited” ( or maybe knew what they were doing) are all right. They’re just civilians.
Forbes is saying it was a modified “Cessna-style light plane”: