re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

Those ex cons will shoot anything lol

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Witkoff and Kushner hard at work.
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Axios reports that the US has asked Russia to draft a new European security agreement.

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It's amazing to me that not only do these two not understand that writing a 'European Security Agreement' that doesn't actually include the Europeans but doing so while the Russians are losing isn't going to get them anywhere.

This is an informative article from Russia Matters.

The Midterms and U.S. Policy Toward Russia and Ukraine

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Democrats have said that they will launch inquiries into the business dealings of Trump’s family and of Witkoff and Kushner, including their projects with Russia. It is possible that the prospect of these investigations could discourage further business deals with Russia, thereby challenging the administration’s misguided belief that offering economic carrots to Russia will somehow moderate the Kremlin’s maximal demands for Ukraine’s surrender. 

Congress could have more influence over U.S. relations with Ukraine. The Democrats are hoping to use the lame duck session before the new Congress returns in January to provide more assistance to Kyiv. They are preparing a $15 billion aid package for Ukraine and are also hoping to use the National Defense Authorization Act—which must be passed by the end of the year—to include amendments “on sanctions, on intel support, on interceptors, and then on Starlink and Starshield.”

Democrats are also hoping to amend the Lindsay Graham sanctions Act which mandates financial sanctions on Russia’s defense and energy sectors. The bill contains a waiver clause which Trump used to lift sanctions on Russian energy exports before the midterm elections, hoping to lower gas prices. Democrats want to remove the waiver clause from the bill.

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It is possible that the new ‘blue’ Congress could make it more difficult for Trump to pursue the warming of ties with Russia and the normalization of diplomatic relations. 

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Killed by a Rastafarian... Very strange, but we'll take it.

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The explosive device that was placed under the car of a Russian Air Force colonel in St. Petersburg was probably planted by 31-year-old Yan from the Pskov region.

According to preliminary data, the bomb was delivered to Russia by a hot air balloon flying from the Baltic countries.

A month before the explosion, the man settled in a grocery store near the colonel's house to monitor his routine.

Today at 01:00, Yan planted the explosive device under the bottom of the car, and by 06:05 he was already in Istanbul. When the bomb exploded, the perpetrator was already flying to Chisinau, from where Russia does not extradite suspects.

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A major fire has erupted at the Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererabotka refinery in southern Russia following a Ukrainian drone attack overnight on November 12-13. The facility is among Russia's ten largest refineries, processing approximately 14.8 million tonnes of crude oil annually

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DniproOsint reports that Ukrainian drones struck two key units at Russia's Volgograd refinery overnight: ELOU-AVT-1 and AVT-6. Together, they account for roughly 70% of the plant's primary crude processing capacity. Storage tanks may also have been hit.

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The Leningrad attack on the 11th had an extensive target list. Destroying these radars may have opened the approach window for the other drones.

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Trigger warning

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Z sure i9s a whiney little nazi. His real problem is he has run out of electrical generation/distribution across Ukraine and is short of power for military use. He needs to blame someone, certainly not blaming Russia cause that would be losing

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Russia targeted substations and power plants in the fall/winter of 2022. In cities there are massive subway tunnels, in villages and farms they still use wood for heat/cooking. No different than Tucker the Stupid Phucker getting excited that rural Poles were getting wheelbarrows of coal thinking it was because no natural gas from Russia. They've been doing that for decades. Even in England narrowboats still deliver bagged coal to rural citizens for heating/cooking.

Cities were heated by central boilers for cities via steam pipelines in the Soviet Era and much of that still remains. It was this way in pre WWII Polish cities. A client's grandfather owned the steam plant for Warsaw pre WWII, He, his wife and 2 year old son escaped the ghetto before being sent to a concentration camp. After a few years in Sweden, they came to the US where he worked as an engineer building Sulfuric Acid plants while starting his own boiler company in his garage. The son served two tours in Vietnam as a Marine. The Chicago Mafia never frightened him.

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It's almost incomprehensible how massively this war has destroyed the long-term future of Russia.

To get an idea of the scale, try to think about the combined deaths of all US service members in all conflicts since the end of the Civil War. We're talking about every death from General Custer at Little Bighorn to those who died a few months ago in the fight with Iran, including the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and our recent conflicts in the Middle East. The high end estimate for those total deaths is 630,000.

So this war has already claimed more Russian lives than every US conflict since the end of the Civil War (and it isn't over, of course), and Russia's population is less than half of America's, so the societal impact is more than double what it would be if the US had lost all those lives in the last 5 years.

To be sure, Ukraine is being demographically destroyed as well, but that's not my concern in this post. The point is that one of the reasons that Putin fought this were was to maintain Russia's status as one of the great world powers, and what he has actually done is destroy that.