True but we allowed it to deteriorate so our defense industrial plant is limited. One cannot just flick a switch to increase production. It takes YEARS to build capacity.
Latest Russian attack.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-09/russian-strikes-knock-out-more-than-half-of-ukraine-gas-output-ahead-of-winter
Russian Strikes Knock Out More than Half of Ukraine Gas Production Ahead of Winter
Ukraine expects it will need to buy roughly 4.4 billion cubic meters of gas by the end of March, at a cost of nearly 2 billion euros, to survive the looming winter.
Good News for gas producers. This should jack up natural gas pricing this winter in Europe.
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And for LNG transporters.
DB2
Long LNG
Or convert car assembly lines to tank assembly lines.
WWII lasted only six years (39-45) and America was mass producing weapons long before it ended.
Inside the Ship That Changed WWII | The Liberty Ship
HOW IT WORKS: WW2 Tank Factories
The Captain
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Might be a bit more complicated today. The Sherman tank had a gasoline engine. The Abrams has a gas turbine engine. Plus the Abrams has advance targeting optics system. Not saying it can’t be done just that it would take longer to do.
Can’t find any independent source for this - bank run in Russia
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The clock is ticking for Putin and that, precisely, is the imminent danger facing Europe.
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Economic collapse is NOT confined to Russia.
Is Ukraine Headed for Collapse?
Almost 900 miles from Ukraine’s borders, a fire erupted at a Russian oil refinery on Saturday.
But the energy war is a two-way street. Recent barrages of Russian missiles and drones have seriously damaged Ukrainian gas production and caused extensive power cuts across the country. Ukrainian officials say they’ll have to turn to expensive imports of European gas to make up the shortfall.
The latest Russian strikes on Ukraine left more than 240,000 homes in the southwestern Odesa region without power on Saturday, according to officials. Ukraine’s energy ministry said more than 800,000 customers in Kyiv lost power for a time.
Layoffs in Russia, and a ban on leaving the country:
This fall, one in ten companies in Russia plans to reduce staff. Businesses are forced to cut costs due to falling demand, higher taxes, and more expensive loans,
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the UNHCR has recorded 5.7 million Ukrainian refugees around the world
So 14-15% have left the country. Cuts into number of available workers & potential soldiers
Washington Post
China has materially helped Russia gain a key battlefield advantage in its grinding war against Ukraine, dramatically increasing exports over the summer of key components needed to make the fiber-optic drones that have enabled Moscow to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses on the front lines.
“It’s critical; it’s crucial,” Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of China’s support for Russia’s frontline advancement. “Chinese play a big role here because this is where they are happy and ready to adjust their production lines.”
Beijing claims it is neutral in the conflict and Chinese manufacturers, which account for 80 percent of the global commercial drone market, have reduced their direct exports of ready-made drones to Russia.
But official Chinese trade data shows that Beijing has allowed a sharp increase in the components that are enabling Russian manufacturers to build fiber-optic drones, which are operated through superthin cables of glass, the kind traditionally used for high-speed internet, that unspool midflight for distances of 12 miles or more. These drones are increasingly used by Moscow because they are less susceptible to interception.
China has been restricting access to parts and technology for Ukraine and its supporters while “opening up the floodgates for components for Russian drones,” said Mick Ryan, a senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Sydney.
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Russia is vast and the trucking business vital for moving goods around. Ukraine’s attacks have resulted in massive fuel shortages and endless queues:
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The US is doing its part.
US becomes first country to export 10 million tonnes of LNG in single month
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-becomes-first-country-export-10-million-tonnes-lng-single-month-2025-11-03/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20exported%20a%20record,record-setting%20months%20in%202025
Already the world’s largest LNG exporter, the U.S. has been ramping up sales with four record-setting months in 2025. The surge was led by the start-up of Venture Global’s Plaquemines export plant and the ramp-up of Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage 3 project, the data showed…
Europe remained the prime destination for U.S. LNG, with 6.9 mmt, or nearly 69% of total exports, heading to the continent last month. That figure compares with 6.22 mmt in September, as Europe continued to fill storage ahead of the winter, LSEG ship tracking data showed.
DB2
I could go on and on about this. The Russian economy is in shambles. And it likely will be in shambles for some time after hostilities end (which, eventually, they will).
I really like this guy. He does deep-dives, and he’s an expert on defense economics (to the point that he gets invited to international weapons shows, and conferences, and such).
If you really want to get into it, he’s a great source. He publishes almost every week. I went back to the start of the war to watch all his videos (I discovered him in late 2023).
As for sending Ukraine our old equipment, that is exactly correct. It was stuff we had already replaced with newer versions. In principle, we could have reactivated it. But it was otherwise sitting in warehouses awaiting some form of disposal. It likely saved us some money by shipping it to Ukraine rather than having to scrap it all.
Meanwhile, satellite imagery confirms that Russia has picked the old Soviet boneyards clean. There is very little left. The oldest armor I’m aware of seen on the front lines was some T-54s (from the 1950s). Lots of T-62s (from the early 60s), and T-72s. It’s difficult to know how many were scavenged for parts in addition. Their latest is T-90, which they lost many of during the early part of the war.
Plus artillery. Again, we don’t know how much scavenging for parts is occurring, but they’ve been pulling pieces dating back to WWII. I would guess, mostly for the barrels and some parts. You have to replace artillery barrels relatively frequently. I don’t think all barrels are useful (i.e. not all the sizes are the same between WWII and now), but stuff like the Soviet 152mm should be compatible.
As another poster said, as long as the West supplies Ukraine, Ukraine is willing to fight. It’s existential for them. In which case, it’s just a question of time before Russia quits and goes home. Just like they did in Afghanistan, or we did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. At some point, it’s not worth the costs to remain.
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I recently read an article about how the German economy is collapsing in part because they can’t afford American LNG, much more expensive than piped Russian gas. Who blew up the pipelines?
Maybe we should do less to save Gaia before we bankrupt her denizens.
The Captain
Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years behind bars in Putin’s prison system and now lives in London, downplayed the effectiveness of Western sanctions in swaying the Kremlin, saying they were “creating some pressure on the Russian economy, but nothing dramatic.”
*He was similarly skeptical that Ukraine’s long-running drone campaign against Russian oil refineries would cripple the Kremlin’s war machine. *
“Even the most powerful drone, even a Tomahawk missile, can hit about two hectares at most,” Khodorkovsky, the former owner of oil giant Yukos and once Russia’s richest man, explained.
“A typical facility in Siberia typically spans 1,500 hectares. The damage being done is the equivalent of stepping on someone’s foot,” he said.
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Agreed that if the entire facility needed taking out, then yes. But do you really need to hit all, or even most, of those “hectares” or are there critical points that could be more surgically targeted and still be quite effective?
Pete
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Especially for an oil facility…
DB2
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Yes, the Russian in the article seems a bit deluded. You hit the storage tanks, and anything of value in the 1500 hectares is going to smoldering rubble (after a few days when the fires burn out). Those facilities aren’t typically hardened, and I don’t believe anyone thought about designing them for survivability. Why would you? You design for efficiency and function.
We already know that Ukraine has scored some significant hits against Russian oil. Before and after satellite images reveal the extent of the damage to many of them. Here’s a more general story about the Ukrainian campaign against Russian oil. The source is rated as highly factual with very little bias.
(sorry about the “paywall”, but you can request a free link to the story, so you really don’t have to pay)
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky might have some knowledge about oil fields/refineries.
in the mid-1990s, he accumulated considerable wealth by obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields unified under the name Yukos, one of the major companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s (a scheme known as “Loans for Shares”).
As Gessen explained, the Russian government, after the fall of Communism, “still nominally controlled Russia’s largest companies, though they had been variously re-structured, abandoned, or looted by their own executives.” A dozen men, the “new oligarchs”, including Khodorkovsky, hit upon the stratagem of lending the government money against collateral consisting of blocks of stock that amounted to controlling interests in those companies. The oligarchs and government both knew that the government would eventually default and that the firms would thus pass into the oligarchs’ hands. “By this maneuver”, wrote Gessen, “the Yeltsin administration privatized oil, gas, minerals, and other enterprises without parliamentary approval.” This was how Khodorkovsky came to own Yukos
When he came into possession of Yukos, a conglomerate consisting of over 20 firms, most of them were “in terrible condition”, and he enjoyed the job of turning them into well-functioning units.
In April 2003, Khodorkovsky announced that Yukos would merge with Sibneft, creating an oil company with reserves equal to those of Western petroleum multinationals. Khodorkovsky had been reported to be involved in negotiations with ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco to sell one or the other of them a large stake in Yukos.