[RD] Russia Invades Ukraine: War News Thread: Round 6

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In the battlefield an enemy airplane is among the most frightening things a soldier can see. The destructive power of an aerial bomb is far farrrr superior to any artillery shell or even a whole average artillery barrage. Artillery shells of 152 or 155 mm carry between 3 and 7 kg of high explosive while a 500 kg bomb carries like 300 kg of high explosive and a 1000 kg bomb up to 600, and an A-10 (or a Su-25) or any fighter-bomber can carry several of those. Add the fact bombs (and aerial launched missiles) can be used with real time information in close air support missions and launched with almost total precision in the case of laser and GPS guided bombs make air power the kind of weapon that can decide a war in a few weeks if used properly and in the right amount. The fact Russia has not a powerful enough air force doesn't make air power any less powerful. Having an effective air force with really capable aircraft even if in small numbers, be it bombers to attack the enemy or fighters to destroy enemy bombers, won't make Ukraine win the war per-se but will contribute, and can make a big difference for moral.
 
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Like other Central/Eastern European countries used to have, Hungary's main source of Russian gas is through the long-term gas contract between the two countries. These are 10-15 year contracts which regulate gas flows between Russia and Hungary. The pricing is usually some kind of TTF (Dutch gas exchange) pricing with a few months delay. So kinda competitive. If we are lucky we can even get some discount here and there compared to TTF.

Now in September the Hungarian govt decided that they want to source more gas on top of the long-term gas contract. They decided to buy a lot from Russia for basically around the spot price. You can see below that the TTF price in September was around 200 EUR.
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To make this deal the Hungarian govt had to sweeten up to the Russians, even when everyone else in Europe tried to distance themselves.

Szijjártó (Minister of Foreign Affairs) met with Lavrov despite the EU's explicit request not to​

"The meeting between the Russian and Hungarian foreign ministers in New York took place hours after European Commission foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano stated a press conference that it would be inappropriate to hold bilateral talks with members of the Russian government during the UN General Assembly. According to Stano, this position was understood and accepted by all member states."

Now buying such amount of additional gas at the worst prices indicate that the Hungarian govt didn't believe that the EU would be able to properly solve its gas crisis for the winter and wanted to generate political leverage against the West with the help of Russia. The gas storage facilities also had an okay amount of gas in them at this point, so it was not a critical deal to make.

By now gas price has fallen to around 40-50 and due to lowered consumption, more LNG supplies and a mild winter Hungarian gas storage is still in a pretty good shape and this extra gas has not been used. So effectively this amount was bought for 200 EUR or even higher and compared to the current prices Hungary paid an extra 2bn EUR for them (which is a lot of money for such a small state).

Heh. I knew Europe used gas a lot back in the 90's but didn't realize how bad it was until recently.

They ripped up the gasoline here in the1960's. Ww have a small museum in the old gas works.
 
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Called it. Majority of the world supports Russia because they're authoritarian and conservative.

Graphics like that are as useless as it gets. You cannot project the political leaning of a nation's government onto the entire population of the nation. That's not how any of this works. Portraying it as such just paints a wrong picture, even when you include the line about what it is supposed to mean.

There are also some oddities in there. Kazakhstan, for example, is listed as Russian leaning on this matter. It is in fact anything but. For a nation that is actually politically linked to Russia, it has been very critical of Russia's behaviour and enacted quite a few decisions that undermine Russian interests. That's not "leaning towards Russia". Considering their situation, they are obviously not standing against Russia, but they are also not in favour of Russia's actions.
Nah, the people's opinion is probably not too different, from what I've seen.
 
Majority of the world doesn't uncritically believe the claims coming from the US and Britain, but that isn't the same as supporting Russia.
 
Called it. Majority of the world supports Russia because they're authoritarian and conservative.
It doesn't show that though. If we're going by the graph then just 3.9% of the world supports Russia! If we add in Russian leaning it is still only 31.5% less then a third.

If you called it, then you called it wrong...

Lets not even start on the gdp graph which in reality is much more important and makes for much grimmer reading for Russia.
 
Called it. Majority of the world supports Russia because they're authoritarian and conservative.


Nah, the people's opinion is probably not too different, from what I've seen.
Nah, the people's opinion would more likely be "who?"

Do you really think the hundreds of million of Chinese or Indians who live in the middle of nowhere care in any way what happens in other countries?
Many of them probably could find neither Russia nor Ukraine on a map, because it just has no meaning at all to their daily lives.
The only possible glimpse you could see, would largely come from the elite, and they make up only a small part of the population. The rest either doesn't care or will claim to support anyone who makes his life a bit easier, while not caring much either. Staunch support will be negligible.
 
"Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday formally authorized Moscow’s annual spring conscription campaign, which calls for adding 147,000 troops between April 1 and July 15"
The only response i can think of is in Gif form.
 
TLDW: Russians massaged there figures, data.
Weird to have 5 Mil furlough workers that are paid in full
And reports that nearly all military production is down, even less production then before the war. Its funny because Russian moved to classify a lot of data but didnt classify this
Russia economy wont collapse it will shrink this year.

 
Russia's economy will collapse by June. It will also run out of cruise missiles, by April. This time for real.
 
Russia's economy will collapse by June. It will also run out of cruise missiles, by April. This time for real.

EU is going to freese, NATO is out of weapons, Ukrainian army is destroyed and only NATO mercenaries are left. This time for real
 
I don't remember A-10 being discussed by any serious sources, but whatever... How do those guys explain the two previous successful Ukrainian offensives ?

Normally Russian footage filters through into the western social media after a while, rather then is reported at face value given how much of it is made up garbage (save the viral videos)
Theres is some truth though as the role of artillery has been dominate in the current war, but NATO weapons were all about quality since they knew they wouldnt be able to match Soviets quantity
The aircombat technology gap will close with F16s, since Russians currently do enjoy an advantage with there more advanced missiles. The A10 has no business in Ukraine, unless Russian really start to scrape the barrel for equipment
 
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Normally Russian footage filters through into the western social media after a while, rather then is reported at face value given how much of it is made up garbage (save the viral videos)
Theres is some truth though as the role of artillery has been dominate in the current war, but NATO weapons were all about quality since they knew they wouldnt be able to match Soviets quantity
The aircombat technology gap will close with F16s, since Russians currently do enjoy an advantage with there more advanced missiles. The A10 has no business in Ukraine, unless Russian really start to scrape the barrel for equipment
Yep, Soviet plan was to launch many thousand tanks over Germany overwhelming quality with quantity trying to reach the Atlantic coast quickly enough, before USA could come to help. I think we can say now how well that had worked in hindsight.
 
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