As before. Because strikes on oil refineries are not attempts to physically deprive Russians of fuel. It is about price increases, losses due to export bans, repairs, imports, the addition of additives and alcohols against the backdrop of peak consumption, holidays, and harvests.
During the attack on the Beriev Plant, the goal was not to destroy that experimental aircraft with a laser on board or the flying laboratory where the new AEW&C aircraft was being tested.
These are secondary targets, although they are extremely painful for the enemy in terms of media coverage — how is SVO going, according to plan?
The main goal — in the burned-out hangars and the punctured roof of the workshop — windows protruding from their frames, collapses, traces of fire. Disrupting the modernisation cycle of Russian Tu-95s, destroying engines on test benches, machine tools and cranes inside — this hurts the pocket and will affect the pace of recovery of Russian long-range aviation after Spider’s Web.
Repeated flights to the Sheskharis oil terminal — the enemy has announced that it is resuming transshipment, but satellite images do not show any tankers moored there. Therefore, they are probably repairing, and we have added several hundred kilograms of warheads to the system of pipes, pumps, compressors and tanks. Twenty per cent of Russian oil transshipment takes place there, and this is painful.
Knocking out half of the Shatura TPP’s 1,500 MW capacity through supply nodes, boiler rooms and transformers is also expensive. Of course, restoring the transformers in three days after the fire, as the governor reported, is the stuff of science fiction.
Even repairs due to partial damage involve weeks of dismantling the active part (windings), drying the insulation in vacuum cabinets, repairing or replacing the insulation, rewinding the coils, impregnating them with varnish, assembling, filling with grease, and retesting.
So they shut it down, threw away the reserve and are spending roubles, while plugging the holes with propaganda.
The enemy’s plan is obvious: using a combination of fairly expensive (mercenaries, contract soldiers) and cheap (convicts, persons under investigation, all kinds of marginalised individuals) numerous infantry, constantly pressing with saturation, flanking, tying down garrisons with fire and assaults from the grey zone on motorcycles and buggies.
Vehicles are used here as a disposable means of transport for troops — some of the damaged ones can be evacuated, but in general they have already resigned themselves to loss as soon as the tracks enter the kill zone.
At the same time, drones are no longer focused on supporting their infantry, but on hunting our pilots and freely hunting logistics.
All this causes a stream of damaged supply vehicles, pickups, various trucks, water trucks, and MRAPs for those who are used to looking at the numbers of the analysts. Losses that are one and a half times higher than Russian losses in equipment seem wild, but this is mainly the tactical rear, the supply segment.
Their task is to deprive the last kilometre of heavy weapons, building materials for repairing positions, normal food, ammunition, etc.
Meanwhile, cast iron and high-precision shells are flying towards the positions of the Defence Forces, of which the Russians still have twice as many, despite production in the EU, the US and purchases by the Czech Republic on third-country markets.
Accuracy and quality do not matter here, especially in urban combat — wherever they hit, they will cause fires, collapses, and make it impossible to deliver zinc and mines again.
And it does not allow for the construction of a strong defence — on pillboxes, basements, houses with breached passages and embrasures. Because sooner or later, the target will be hit, even if a dozen are deflected by electronic warfare or simply miss.
The reason is that in order to disrupt production in North Korea, Iran and Russia, the European Union will have to, if not mobilise the entire civilian sector, then certainly resort to state regulation, voluntarily–compulsorily involve the workforce in the sector, and fight with the trade unions.
This means not only investment, but also restrictions on rights, penalties for disruptions, and confiscation of enterprises. The stick from the state.
And we remember that in Ukraine itself, society does not accept women in the army, children under the age of 23 must study in the EU, more than a million reservists and special registration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs are urgently needed, and so on. Cherkasy Azotcalmly produces fertilisers for export to the EU. Well, too many things in Ukraine are far from a war for survival.
Therefore, everything here is logical: our society is in no hurry to go to the workshop to make millions of 60 mm mines, and there are no volunteers willing to work three shifts to make them for us.
They are building factories for themselves and for the brigades deployed on NATO’s eastern flank. The EU is building ammunition factories in the Baltic states and Germany, which is far from urgent.
Plus, in terms of energy and factories, ballistics and Shahed drones are still flying — we do not produce air defence systems, and the palliative measure of reprocessing Soviet and Western missiles from storage is a finite resource.
This means that production needs to be ramped up, and even the SAMP-T in France can only produce a few spare packages for each air defence system and a few dozen missiles per year.
The US plans to produce interceptors for itself and all its allies at a level equivalent to the annual production of Russian Iskander and Kinzhal missiles are also telling.
All this is causing the frontline to decline: logistics in the last kilometre are deteriorating, the enemy has numerical superiority and, despite losses, is advancing on positions. We have a shortage of infantry, which exacerbates the problems.
This cannot be remedied solely by increasing the number of UAVs, because reaction time, weather, combat unit restrictions, and countermeasures (electronic warfare, pilots in the artillery fire zone, cassettes can knock down antennas and cut cables) cannot be eliminated.
Although this is important as an element of hunting for the same Rubicon — it is high time to create special units to hunt down hunters.
A complex approach is needed.
And within it, we must clearly distinguish between what we can influence and what we cannot.
Western F-16s and Mirages must intercept cruise missiles and receive Western air-to-air missiles to hunt down Shahed drones.
The new aircraft should gradually replace the MiG-29s used for ground strikes, and two French guided bombs per day will not help there.
Of course, we need not only air defence aircraft, but also front-line fighters or multi-role aircraft to hunt down guided aerial bombs.
We can only influence this indirectly.
If the EU finds the funds, Swedish and French aircraft will come to us. If not, it will all end with memoranda and protocols of intent. As with a dozen missile defence batteries, finding them is not a problem, but supplying them with interceptors is.
But we can influence less dense battle formations, ensuring that the garrison has 60 mm mines, MANPADS, means of combating small aircraft, dense mining, and a fire system with neighbouring positions. We need to mass-produce 105 mm and 155 mm towed guns to support the front line, create a system of well-trained mobile firing groups, UAV interceptors, and helicopters to hunt long-range drones.
And, of course, we can influence the enemy to have less money, so that they divert resources from the production of equipment and training of pilots, infantry, etc. to strategic bombers, the navy, oil refinery protection, and oil transshipment. We have been working more actively on the latter in recent months.
They have bet everything on our front collapsing because we will run out of infantry. We have bet that they will collapse when (unless) their economy collapses.