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Zelensky is going nuts trying to figure out what to do next. Will he try biting himself in the forehead?
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Seems that Trump wouldn't agree with you.
[...]

...the Kremlin has been compelling Russian banks to extend preferential loans to war-related businesses on terms set by the state. Since mid-2022, this off-budget financing scheme has helped drive an unprecedented $415 billion surge in overall corporate borrowing. This report estimates that $210 to $250 billion of this surge consists of compulsory,...

I wonder if Mrs. Z is down to Argentina setting things up for when Z has to flee Ukraine. True, the political climate down there is way different than at the time of Hitler. Do you think Milei will remain true for a couple billion USD in bribes?

Ukraine has started some offensive operation in Kursk. Some people are puzzled as for the reason, my guess is that they attack where the defence is weaker.


Ruzzia does not seem to be able to tell the difference between a drone and a commercial plane. From the Ukrainian perspective that is an advantage, as Ruzzia needs to think twice before pressing the trigger which makes their air defence less effective. This is not a moral judgement, it is a fact.

Unless you are saying that Ruzzia is not going to think twice anyway? That the Ruzzian goverment is fine with hitting passenger planes and killing people as acceptable casualties so that their efficiency is not diminished? Because that is exactly what you imply.

Back to serious discussion, Ruzzia seems to be attacking with less and less mechanised means, sometimes to a ridiculous point of sending people on foot or - I have seen a video - riding scooters. There is something happening and it is not looking good for the Ruzzian army.

The addition of high explosives would seem to be a technical challenge due to re-entry protection issues, and less important than mass itself in transferring energy to a target.  The explosive energy would also possibly interfere and cancel out to a degree the kinetic energy delivery characteristics.  A simple tungsten rod would probably work best as well as being the easiest thing to do.

Seems that hypersonics would be primarily a digging tool useful in deeply fracturing material.  Having multiple attacks mixing in high precision devices which have a heaving effect (cleaning rubble out of the hole) could possibly be a method by which one could dig down to the guts of almost any bunker system.  Not to mention causing probably fatal effects on any humans trying to live underground in the area due simply to the shock effects.

Ukraine’s gas storage helps Europe avert further energy crises

War-torn country’s tanks enable continent to keep its own facilities close to capacity
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They had turned to Ukraine, home to Europe’s largest tanks, to store their reserves earlier this year despite the war in the country following Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022.
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“Ukraine is playing a key role for central and eastern Europe’s security of gas supply this winter,” said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas pricing at Argus Media, a price reporting agency.

Calling on gas stored in Ukraine “helps Europe to keep its domestic stockpiles high, reducing the risk of sites nearly emptying over any sustained cold in late winter”, she said.

Ukraine has more gas storage capacity than any country in the EU, a legacy of its role as a critical transit country for Russian pipeline gas, which accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the EU’s gas supplies before the invasion.
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Ukraine emerged as an alternative for holding gas destined for neighbouring states as storage sites in the EU reached near maximum capacity as early as mid-October.

The country also offered incentives such as cheap storage tariffs and custom duty exemptions for three years, allowing gas to be easily reimported to the EU as Kyiv seeks to further integrate itself into the bloc’s energy market.
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Most tanks in the country sit deep underground in western Ukraine, far from the front lines, and Kyiv has offered up to 10bn cubic metres, a third of national capacity, to foreign customers. That adds to the 115 bcm of existing storage capacity in the EU.
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Companies began taking gas out of Ukrainian storage in early November, with net withdrawals averaging around 10.7mn cubic metres per day, according to Argus Media. That pace accelerated amid a cold snap in December, with net drawdowns nearly doubling to an average of 26 mcm daily until mid-December.
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Withdrawals from Ukrainian storage were “definitely helping keep European storage around the 90 per cent region”, said Nikoline Bromander, senior analyst at Rystad Energy.

Keeping these levels high during the winter months is important because it affects the level of difficulty the EU would face in refilling storage during summer, ahead of the following winter.
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Rystad forecast that barring major supply disruptions, and if demand continues at current subdued levels, the EU will be left with 80 bcm of gas in storage at the end of March, or about 70 per cent capacity.

“Europe is in a quite healthy position,” Bromander said.

It tends to happen that when someone will loose using your rules, they will decide that the rules are other. Example: Ruzzia can use Iranian Sahed, but Ukraine cannot use missiles inside Ruzzia. Since that makes Ukraine lose, the rule is now: you hit our cities and energy infrastructure, we hit your refineries and airbases with anything we have. No brainer here.

 So yes, Ukraine has the right to decide what goes or does not go past Ukraine. It is not really a "new" rule and hey, you should be very happy as it was Ruzzia who wanted to cut the gas to "freeze Europe".

...

Inside Ukraine’s Last Stand at a Vital Coal Mine

The mine, near the frontline city of Pokrovsk, produced coking coal crucial for Ukraine’s steel industry. It kept running until the very last moment, when Russian forces finally reached its gates.
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The closing of the mine, located just southeast of the embattled city of Pokrovsk, ended a desperate effort by Ukraine to keep it running until the very last moment. As Ukraine’s last operational mine producing coking coal — an essential fuel for steel production — it was vital to the country’s steel industry and, ultimately, its war effort.
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Now, the mine’s closure is expected to send shock waves through the economy. Steel production is projected to drop by more than half, from 7.5 million tons this year to less than 3 million next year, according to Oleksandr Kalenkov, head of Ukraine’s steel makers’ association. The fallout will affect trade — metal and steel products were Ukraine’s second-largest export last year — reduce tax revenues and strip the military of essential materials for armor production.

“The impact, in all its aspects, is tremendous,” Mr. Kalenkov said.
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The mine near Pokrovsk is not the first to fall to Russia, whose forces have decimated much of eastern Ukraine’s industrial base. But its story is one of Ukrainian resilience: after scaling back operations following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, coal production rebounded to 3.2 million tons in 2023, nearing prewar levels.
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Keeping the mine running as long as possible was critical for Metinvest, which relied on coking coal to smelt iron ore into steel at its factories further west. The steel is used to make rails for Ukraine’s railways, a transport lifeline during the war, as well as body armor and helmets for soldiers. Earlier this month, Metinvest launched production of protective armored plates for the U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems that protect Ukrainian skies.
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From 7,000 tons of coal a day this summer, production fell to just over 2,000 tons by mid-December, the manager said. The strike on the electricity substation, on Christmas Eve, dealt the final blow: the mine shut down and production dropped to zero.
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Mr. Kalenkov, the steel expert, said the mine’s closure put Ukraine in a precarious situation. Importing coking coal to make up for the loss will be costly and complicated by war-related logistical hurdles. He expects a strain on an already fragile economy, but also cutbacks in defense industry projects, such as the production of armor for Patriot systems.

“The loss of the mine definitely hinders Ukraine’s combat capabilities,” Mr. Kalenkov said.

Just for general understanding, note that LNG storage of significance is almost always done by simply pumping gas back down spent fields, or sometimes in other favorable rock formations.

Tankage is a minor part of gas storage, and I would presume that it is primarily used as a temporary cache associated with pipeline operations.

Such storage was developed in a rural area where I used to live.  The constructed fasted pipeline I've ever seen with dozens of crews working simultaneously on different segments, and as soon as they were done Californians to get fucked completely raw due to 'shortages' (engineered by Enron before they got shut down.)

Even the Oreshnik isn't going to make it down 10,000 feet to hit any main storage sites.