13:52 – Johan No.1
I seriously underestimated the task and had to give up sometime in the morning 😀
Record mentions are good, you probably can’t be mentioned too often and it was a bit fun to see that we started discussing quite directly after the war started two years ago.
Yep, I’ll park that one now because there’s a good chance it’s a psyops but if it turns out to be true, the FBI almost needs to develop a perpetrator profile on him because he is that slippery.
18:57 – MatsExtrude
Impressive compilation regarding the refineries!
I had the idea to try to go through and count but as you write, it’s damn hard to see what is a distillation tower or not. You can’t trust the chimneys, as you say the furnaces are also used for other parts of the process. The towers when seen directly from above and lacking shadows are almost impossible to detect, or at least to see if it is a distillation tower or a smaller tower, or even if it is a tower.
But of course, if you count all of them even if you might miss some or include some that are wrong, you still get a good approximation.
It would be interesting to know how the whole facility works. Whether each block with distillation towers is standalone or if they actually need to work together and are connected. Sometimes there are 2-3 blocks next to each other, sometimes they are spread out in the facility. In some facilities, they look more “self-sufficient” as they, for example, also have 4-8 tanks for storage in their block.
There are facilities with only one block, so I think they can act independently. Here is an example of that:
57.820794462201846, 39.61106973962911
That facility looks almost completely rusted out, but I suspect that the part in the north, which has the distillation tower, is in use, the roads there look OK. There may have been another such block further down, but it looks completely rotten.
”The Ryazan plant halted units that account for about 70% of its output, sources said.” can actually only be interpreted as them having lost 70% of the facility’s capacity (and not that the facility itself accounts for 70% of the company’s production capacity as I previously interpreted it, so I have to admit I was wrong).
In that case, you have to say they did damn well!
As you write, for a smaller facility a successful hit can mean 100% loss but in a larger facility it can be about 15-50%.
18:59 – Johan No.1
I amused myself by reading the support that was mobilized to defend the person and am surprised by the total lack of empathy towards the Ukrainians expressed in these tirades.
Yes exactly, it was satire and now it’s truth 😀
There were a couple in the thread who argued with LW that it was satire and therefore should be allowed, but now the person in question has come out himself saying there are facts supporting the assumption, namely 30 arrested sex buyers.
19:02 – Johan No.1
Yes, that was a fun task, thanks for joining in, I felt we made progress and I have increased my understanding of how refineries work a bit 😀
As you probably wrote the other day – the big damage is probably ahead of us now that Ukraine has figured out where to put the drones and is starting to accelerate.
I’m starting to get really positive about this and the Belgorod raids 2.0 that haven’t been driven out after six days.
19:35 – MatsExtrude
Yes, you learn about both this and that when you hang out here and follow the war!
Almost thought about setting up a shared spreadsheet and helping to fill in your list.
It’s enormously positive. If they can continue like this (and there is no indication that they won’t) sooner or later they will have knocked out 50%. Then maybe some on site can help with those that are too far away.
Accidents seem to happen now and then too, with a bit of luck they manage to burn down one or two blocks themselves now that they surely have to rush production.
This could ultimately be what decides the war!
Belgorod is of course also positive. Really hope they can hold out longer this time!
20:39 – Johan No.1
Don’t know if this is accurate but around Europe Putin got 5% at the embassies
https://x.com/officejjsmart/status/1769417837846614296?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
12:59 – Johan No.1
The Lions,
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1769035177102123242?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Started working my way through my little Sunday project and came to a completely different conclusion than I hoped below, discovered that we do not have data on how extensive the damage was, which production line was affected, and notoriously difficult to add up the number of groups of distillation towers.
The funny thing is that GUR has also been doing this, first googling, then begging the USA for satellite images or buying commercially, then finding some expert and finally there is pink highlighter on one of the distillation towers, and off with the photo and coordinates in the margin with a blue ballpoint pen in a manila brown envelope to the drone command.
Running out of fuel means the end of the war, it also means the end of electricity supply since 70% is powered by generators (apparently) and there will be less agriculture, less transport, and less moped riding for Ivan with his mash can big or small and especially without a helmet.
If Russia is forced to import fuel, money will also flow out of the country – so what Ukraine is doing right now is extremely important and potentially war-winning.
It feels a bit like Ukraine has been allowed to knock out refining capacity but not crude oil exports or oil production because that would affect the world price. They started with exports, oil terminals and then there have been some fires in oil production but the focus since the turn of the year has clearly been on refining capacity and depots presumably for fuel.
Since early January, UA has carried out violent carpet bombing liberation raids on 11 refineries (including the two in Samara).
Erik14 had a link to 9
https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3knr42egvmc2h
Then another came yesterday, Krasnodar, which also counts so 12 total.
Erik14 posted a link yesterday where 15 refineries were targeted but it was in Russian and my Russian is a bit rusty.
It also seems that one refinery is missing from the list, Kuibyshevsky in Samara (7 Mtpa) which according to various sources has also been subjected to a violent liberation raid. I have included it at the bottom in parentheses.
Pevyi Zavod in Kaluga also seems to have been liberated, a smaller refinery.
Then I possibly have one refinery listed twice.
Something I picked up in my googling is that a new line with production capacity of product X seems to cost 10-15 billion USD so it is really Russia’s precious soft parts they are going after now, it really hurts.
This is also the reason why Russia has not commented with a single word on the violent liberation raids against the refining industry. They often get upset over a shot-down plane or a few shells against an empty marketplace in Donetsk but that Ukraine has carpet bombed drones against 50% of their refining capacity is met with complete silence. That’s because it hurts too much 🤣
It was not possible to copy the table so here is a link to the post instead.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3knvacwwrt725
A bit about how Sunday went –
Refining capacity year 2022 – 6.8 million barrels/day – 6.8 million x 365 – 2,482 million barrels -2,482,000,000/7.46 – 332,707,774 million tons/year
In 2022, refining capacity/production was 265 Mt which is 265,000,000 tons or 265 million tons annually.
7.46 barrels is one ton.
These two figures correspond fairly well and I am going with 265Mtpa (I don’t know this and have to try to confirm that the numbers I throw around are at least ballpark figures).
Then Reuters writes that Ryazan has 12.7 metric tonnes per annum and that it is 5.8% of total refining capacity so the total would be 220 million tons annually but Ryazan is higher according to Google. What I think is the problem is that they mix up refining capacity and annual output maybe?
They apparently have idle refining capacity in Russia as well.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-offline-primary-oil-refining-capacity-revised-further-up-77-oct-reuters-2023-10-27/
Good map of where all the refineries are located
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep31046.6.pdf
Not the easiest, not all red-white chimneys are for distillation towers – Slavneft Yanos below for example,
According to their own publication they have two distillation units but how many distillation groups they have is unclear.
https://www.yanos.slavneft.ru/en/production/production/
If you look here you see that the left chimney does not have distillation towers but the right one has towers.
https://www.google.com/maps/@57.5329236,39.7851574,3a,75y,296.91h,92.97t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUJe826ME4rH_AsdY5DIwMQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUJe826ME4rH_AsdY5DIwMQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D296.6635%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
It’s really not the easiest to try to figure out how many groups of distillation towers a facility has 😐
There were some differing opinions in yesterday’s thread but Rikkitikitavi wrote
“The thing is they don’t try to build modularly, e.g. 3 parallel lines except in some cases because there is an economy of scale.
It may be so, depends on the size of the whole refinery. Sometimes they parallelize to be able to do maintenance on one part while the rest produces.”
The oil experts can clarify themselves if needed but I interpreted it as it says.
Then a quote from Reuters
“NORSI’s (Nizhny Novgorod – Johan No.1 clear clarification) main crude distillation unit was damaged, which meant at least half of the refinery’s production was stopped, industry sources told Reuters. The Ryazan plant halted units that account for about 70% of its output, sources said.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-drones-hit-russias-syzran-oil-refinery-regional-governor-says-2024-03-16/
A happy amateur’s conclusion
-Ryazan is one of the largest refineries in RU according to Google so one can assume that UA has carried out liberation raids against six (6) of Russia’s larger refineries.
-UA has over 2.5 months carried out liberation raids against 50% of Russia’s refining capacity to date (not knocked out – liberation raids against)
-Different groups of distillation towers produce different products in a refinery and different refineries produce different products. One can thus knock out for example all vehicle fuel by targeting the right distillation tower or the right refinery.
https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/chemicals/033022-refinery-news-roundup-smaller-russian-plants-likely-to-run-at-50-in-april
It was not possible to figure out how much refining capacity has been knocked out but I think that is secondary, we can probably assume that Ukraine chooses the production line for vehicle fuel when they strike and then the refinery’s production of vehicle fuel is either e.g. 30%, 50% or up to 100% knocked out depending on the size of the refinery and whether there is parallel production of the same product or not.
I find it hard to believe that GUR is putting everything into knocking out Russia’s naphtha production 😀
Since Russia has stopped all exports of refined products for six months I believe it will in the future show that they have suffered a very significant production loss of fuel during January – March 2024 that far exceeds what we have guessed.
We must also not forget that UA continuously strikes Russian oil depots as well, I have no summary of those so we will have to wait until Erik14 deigns to post. I believe (without knowing) that they are fuel depots.
This is how it sounds from an MEP, Ukraine has whole kennels of children that they send for trafficking to the EU, everything is prostitution and pedophilia.
https://x.com/jpe25216052/status/1769236061937705053?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
My Peruvian colleague whom I am constantly forced to listen to from breakfast to dinner has stated more than once that Ukraine is only prostitution, career criminals and drugs and that all Ukrainians are a disease in Europe and the best thing would be if they were all thrown out, especially no EU membership.
Our friend – “the Ukrainian women can be found in the brothels” – is thus driving this Russian influence operation consciously or unconsciously, probably unconsciously, but this is the third or fourth derogatory post about Ukrainians the person has written during the course of the war, and there is reason to raise criticism.
There are certain battles worth fighting, and the Ukraine war is one such, which many in Sweden seem to agree with. I remember at the beginning of the war how it immediately became a very strange discussion that Ukrainians were not “real refugees” because they were “white,” how “Swedes” treated Ukrainians better than other refugee nationalities and that they got a “fast track because they are white.” The discussion was so extensive that it could not be missed, and it came from completely the wrong direction, I felt, and it died out remarkably quickly.
Now, two years into the war, I think what you read indicates exactly the opposite – the daily allowance is too low, they do not get personal identification numbers, little is done to support them, and instead it is civil society that steps up, and the refugees themselves find ways into work and housing.
These “Ukrainian women in the brothels” barely manage day to day with their children and are consumed by worry over their husbands who are fighting in Ukraine, or they have received the message that they have fallen or are in hospital without legs – the stress must be almost unmanageable. Above all, their relatives defend all of Europe; we live in peace in Sweden thanks to them. Our neighbor’s UA lodger had just that, the husband was an officer and in Donbass.
Now I guess, but all the negativity in the first paragraph above may have meant that in their encounters with the administrative Sweden, which has taxpayer-funded salaries to help those in need, they have not received the treatment they should because they were not considered worthy of protection and because of their privileged ethnic background?
The Ukraine war has turned a lot upside down for me, things I grew up with and learned, and tried to live up to, and then curveballs come that I can barely handle.
You almost feel like you cross the line in your attempts to defend women who have fled one of the great wars of our time with the men left fighting for all of Europe and who are treated degradingly. I personally find it difficult to express criticism in a way accepted by society. If it had been Johan Persson in the Liberals, it would have been much easier.
It is, however, noteworthy that if we step back from supporting the Ukrainian refugees out of contact fear with things we have been taught to avoid, the only ones who suffer from this are the Ukrainian refugees; it is not so bad that those who cross the line get factual criticism.
Now I did something so unusual as to enter a discussion after reading the person’s new defense on Twitter where the person called those who criticized her “hypocritical dishonest people who pretend to care about women” and that it is “disgusting racism,” as well as a link showing that 30 of 38 men arrested for buying sex did so from women from Ukraine.
75% of those arrested had bought sex from women from Ukraine on April 11, 2022, and the women stated that they themselves ended up in this because of the war.
So the person extrapolates 30 proven cases of women (or fewer) forced into prostitution by war to all Ukrainian women can be found in brothels – and furthermore thinks it is a good argument to defend herself with.
I can hardly formulate myself on this issue and have rewritten I don’t know how many times, but I am quite disappointed…
There has been a period of increasingly high-value targets that UA has lost, right, and my suspicion was, as you know, that after Sirsky fired the entire combat leadership and appointed all new ones, targets began to be knocked out, the two Patriot launch units among others, Archer and a few more. The Russians know which geographical area to look in.
According to the source below, possibly two Patriot launch units were knocked out, but it is noteworthy that RU air losses have ceased and they still fly, so hit-and-runs with Patriot are not unlikely as we guessed.
https://x.com/ukikaski/status/1768622585141506141?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Then we have had a number of nights with 1-2 Iskanders instead of a missile shower, and we thought it was a bit meager. They fired them behind a cloud of Shaheds.
We know that when they want, they can put an Iskander in a café with meter precision.
At the same time, Russian channels are rejoicing that a lot of Western personnel have been knocked out.
I wonder if RU is getting coordinates to places where Western personnel are located and that this is an attempt to get the West to pull out of Ukraine.
They have in that part of the war we will never know anything about before the secrecy is lifted really increased the temperature.
If I may guess, they chose this in their escalation ladder when Ukraine started going after their refineries and the West allowed it.
– this is my highly personal opinion.
I just want to park this one for the archive, now my working thesis is that this is Russian psyops. If it turns out that Macron plans a ceasefire for two months this summer for the Olympics, then it is a commissioned job from Putin, and then Macron is considerably more complex than we guess. We will have the answer this summer.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1769160452204867692?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Lots of shrapnel protection on the way from Bulgaria to UA, good to have for a spring offensive, for example.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1769097395176952017?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Armor on heavy transport in Romania, unclear if it is intended for UA or not.
https://x.com/romaniau93389/status/1768768556143903091?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
It seems to be 30–40 long-range UAVs on a night shift the nights they make bigger efforts – a good number.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1769234269023461583?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This one was posted but incredibly funny when the person lobbed a Molotov cocktail out of the voting booth.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3knt4cpyoi524
Here the person tries to extrapolate artillery losses against what ammunition is available and possibly the NK ammunition is now finished.
https://x.com/verekerrichard1/status/1768970245723635882?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And here he tries to extrapolate with data that RU is very short on armor but we already knew that.
https://x.com/verekerrichard1/status/1768877271329169858?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Gorkovkij in Russia is liberated, hooray.
https://x.com/friaukraina/status/1769260331854127125?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The invasion of Russia is progressing, Russian refineries are on fire, and today Putin is proclaimed emperor – feels chaotic in Russia right now.