The Moscow region is a net importer of electricity and both of those power plants are massive. However they also have a lot of power plants. After all the population of Moscow and Moscow Oblast combined is 21million.

An initially Russian company, which moved to Dubai, which is most popular by all sorts of right wing Russian propagandists and used by the Russian military. Chances are pretty good that it is controlled by Russia at this point.

If you want a better alternative try Signal or XMPP.

Those are basically small self flying stealth jets. Just to give you an idea.

Storm Shadow will not be wasted on oil refineries. They are too expensive. The better target are radars of air defense sites. Those are extremely expensive as well and hard to replace. They also can not be easily targeted by cheaper long range missiles. However more of those missiles can reach deep into Russia, when air defense is in worse shape.

Why not train them in the EU? Seriously no attacks from Russian missiles and the like and the EU has proper facilities for training as well.

“Stop yelling, this is a museum!”

Lukashenko is a lot of things, but he is not a fool. Using Belorussian troops to go into Ukraine, would allow Ukraine to use their Belorussians to invade Belarus. Luka likes his job of being Putins trolling henchmen.

Or it is due to Chinese banks making paying for the oil more difficult.

There is a lot besides an actual peace plan Modi can be usefull for. For example Ukraine captured a lot of Russians in Kursk and Russia still has Ukraninans from the beginning of the war. A prisoner exchange would be usefull for both sites. Also just getting an idea what Russia is willing to do for peace is at least intressting. If their proposal is somewhat serious, then they might run out will to fight.

Seriously in Europe many investment funds activly go to the unions and ask which problems the company have. They are often better informed and honest then the normal management. They also have an obvious intresst in keeping the company around.

You mean lower weapons production, due to lacking workers? Problems with the electricity grid, shutting down factories and transport to the front. China refusing to transfer payments making it much harder to buy weapon parts. Economic problems causing some protests, which requires armed men to put down. Hence fewer soldiers to the front line.

It already matters to Ukraine.

No, this is it. The military industry is one of the places Russia can not afford shortages. The fact that they have worker shortages, means they can not take enough workers from other industries. This is war, so producing weapons has priority. We also see wages and benefits for soldiers rising all the time. They probably have shortages in that too. Inflation is already high and the intresst rate is incredibly high too. We have seen some large blackouts already and winter is coming. At the same time Russian farmers have trouble finding workers, which drives up food prices. China is stopping payment from its banks with Russia, so imports from China will likely drop. All of that is going to drive up inflation. Inflation right now is offically at 9.1% in July. The impact of loss of payment with China is not part of that and winter will means higher energy demand, with Ukraine targeting energy infrastructure.

Make no mistake Russia is in an economic crisis. 9.1% inflation with 18% intrest rate is really a telling sign. It will get worse, but it is already bad.

Just to say it, a job in the defence industry means you will not be drafted to the front line. If you can not leave Russia for some reason and want to avoid to fight, it is by far the best realistic option. So just imagine the personal shortages of companies outside the defence industry.

First of all the entire area is mostly cut off already. The Snarkost river, which flows into the Seim is cutting the Russians off south of Korenvo. The Ukranins control those bridges.

Blowing up the bridges creates a dillema for Russia. They can fight for the land and probably have high losses or they withdraw their soldiers and give Ukraine a stronger defensive line. The Seim is a fairly large river, so a good position for Ukraine and it shortens the line they have to defend. At the same time Ukraine does not have endless resources in the region as well. So allowing the Russians to withdraw is an option.

Especially if Ukraine plans another attack it would be a good choice. Ukraine has something like 100Leopard1, which have hardly seen combat and thousands of new recruits, which have recieved training. We have so far not seen those units. Many front line units in Donetzk are also complainign that the general staff is withdrawing assets. Kursk is a few thousand men, so not something they would notice. We also know that Ukraine has been attacking Crimea for some time. So maybe we see another offensive in the south soon. But all of that is just speculation.

The existing front lines are hundrets of km away. When you advance you have to move your supply line, air defence, artillery and so forth forward as well. If you move too deep, then it becomes easy for the enemy to target valueable assets, which should be a bit behind the front line. That is what Russia failed to do in the opening months of the war. They advanced a lot and Ukraine could just target air defence, artillery, tanks from behind, blow up or take supplie and so forth.

This would not have worked. The Russians are not that incapable.

I did not know that and changed the link.

Russia still has a large airforce, the navy outside the Black Sea has also not been hit and the nukes also still work. All of that is with an army, which is clearly able to fight a large scale war. Obviously they are so far failing to take a country with a quarter of the Russian population, but they are clearly able to fight.

What this does do is destroy the massive Soviet era weapons stockpile, it hurts the Russian economy and kills a lot of the willing fighting age men. If Putin is removed and Russia and the war ends, chance are that Russia ends up in a huge economic crisis, with a lot more of its talent leaving the country, massive cuts in military spending and the demographic crisis becoming even worse. It probably means a lot of infighting, maybe even a civil war, but certainly a lot of crime. However Russia as an entity will survive this and will remain a threat to Europe, as long as its culture does not change.

The last point is probably a big one. Scholz SPD is in real trouble making the 5% hurdle in both states, which would be a disaster for him.

By who? The budget would mean as much money for Ukraine in 2025 as Poland or France have send so far in total. That is not including EU contributions. Also there is about 3billion worth in Russian money, which goes to Ukraine from Germany. Makes the right ones pay.

The current budget allocation is about as high as the one in the 2024 budget was initially. They just added further spending over the year. Th other part is using Russian money instead. The real reason this is the current state, is that they want to get the budget passed as quickly as possible and the debt brake means that any funding for Ukraine has to be balanced with a cut in social spending. Obviously that is not popular.