Posted on 03/18/2025 11:09:37 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a series of steps to work toward an eventual ceasefire in Ukraine following a two-hour call Tuesday.
Putin continued to signal, however, that he has major reservations about the unconditional ceasefire Trump has proposed, according to the Kremlin.
-snip-
The Kremlin said Russia was prepared to halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days, and the White House statement signaled Ukraine will also be expected to comply.
Kyiv has conducted drone strikes in recent days on Russian fuel facilities, while Russia has made repeated attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure a key element of its war effort.
While far short of the full halt Trump has been seeking to all fighting, including along the front lines, the plan is similar to a previous Ukrainian proposal to halt aerial attacks prior to a full ceasefire.
(Excerpt) Read more at axios.com ...
Perhaps peace
A positive step, usually you work with the losing side in these situations, but it seems Ukraine would rather keep losing land daily and hope for a miracle.
Will the dwarf Ukraine dictator comply?
LMAO
I had said from the start Russia’s weak spot was its oil refineries. Of course they would be willing to stop all attacks on that in particular if Ukraine agrees.
LMAO
All of Russias refineries should have already been destroyed. An opportunity missed.
“Putin continued to signal, however, that he has major reservations about the unconditional ceasefire Trump has proposed”
Putin needs to get with the program and get out of the way of President Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize.
They've almost retaken Toretsk and Russia has also been losing ground slowly around Pokrovsk.
They may have reason to believe that if the war of attrition continues, they'll get better terms.
the choke point on Russia is its refineries.
You can pump all the oil you want, but if you have no way to refine it you are screwed. Without oil refineries, not only would Russia economy tank, but they would literally have no refined oil for their army to attack with.
So,
These were the power plants Trump was talking about. The many in Ukraine.
As I have mentioned before, drones are grossly overrated when their payload is at most 5 lbs of explosives. If you did not need big numbers of pounds to do significant damage, the US would not have 2000 pound bombs in the inventory, with the MK-82 500 pound bomb somewhat standard.
A bit of babble here about how a refinery works. It’s not rocket science. A burner (of natural gas) is placed under a tank of crude oil. It heats it up to vapor which cools at different heights to yield different constituent parts — gasoline, diesel, kerosene, bunker fuel, asphalt.
It’s pretty easy to set the natural gas pipeline on fire. A spigot closes, the gas stops, the pipe is repaired, operations resume. It’s not a big deal, particularly.
There may be tanks for the various products around the refinery. They won’t resist a few pounds of explosives and can be set on fire. You put out the fire, probably multiple days, you haul in another tank, you resume operations.
There is a widespread presumption that a 5 lb package of explosives can permanently destroy a 200,000 barrels/day throughput refinery. That’s pretty absurd. It will be a week offline, if that.
As for the Ukraine powerplants being spared — from the early days of the war it was known from pre war wikis that huge % of Ukraine rail travel was electric. That’s a lot of food moving around to the populace.
It’s a legit tradeoff overall.
Take all the time you want Ukes and Europe will pay the price.
Where are they going to get the weapons? NATO has sent what they had and has little ability to produce large amounts quickly. NATO isn’t on a war footing like Russia, with factories converted to weapons production. It’s still 140mm against 38mm people. They are short on troops and their front line hasn’t even been rested in a long time.
Ukraine takes little pieces of land back all the time and loses them again but continues to lose ground overall. I believe Russia’s main goal is not land at this time. They want to destroy Ukraine’s military. Land beyond their original goal is just a bargaining chip at the end.
An excellent way to start.
The population advantage you cite is 3.5:1. If Ukraine keeps killing Russians at > 5:1 they win. In light of Russian tactics, that's not a hard ratio to reach.
It's not as clear cut as it seems.
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