From what I can find the flow was already stopped before the ruptures, and all the gas in the pipelines is expected to have leaked out by next week:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/world/europe/nordstream-pipeline-gas-leak-explosions.html
From what I can find the flow was already stopped before the ruptures, and all the gas in the pipelines is expected to have leaked out by next week:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/world/europe/nordstream-pipeline-gas-leak-explosions.html
NOHOME said:On that gas pipeline thing.
I have read that shutting off the flow of product in the pipeline will cause a lot of damage to the entire pipeline. This has to do with the fact that the pipeline travels in permafrost environments and a non moving fluid will freeze.
This looks like a good way to keep the fluid flowing when there are no customers on the other end.
That's an interesting consideration, but as noted, the flow had been shut off. I suppose this would allow it to be turned back on with impunity, but I also have to think (I have very little knowledge of pipelines) there are provisions for venting built into the system that would achieve the same results.
In the end I think these attacks were carried out primarily for domestic political purposes, not technical requirements.
GameboyRMH said:pheller said:GameboyRMH said:I think it would be better for European houses to switch rapidly to heat pumps and add power to the grid in whichever way is convenient/affordable. Build SMRs, rapidly erect wind turbines and solar panels with storage, build biogas-to-RNG plants, all that good stuff. This way there is no single central fuel transport bottleneck, no hard necessity for additional fossil fuel combustion, and they're better prepared if this happens again rather than just kicking the can down the road by treating a symptom of overdependence on a very specific fossil fuel (from a very specific source, worse yet). It may even be cheaper overall. Too bad it's pretty late in the game for this, they should've put wartime priority on these tasks as soon as the invasion started.
This would require a complete overhaul of the electrical grid as well.
The amount of heating BTUs you can push through a pipeline requires a tremendous amount of electrical energy.
More than likely right about the time that Germany would complete such a transition, Russia would have huge social changes and end up being a bastion of democratic reform.
It's not a bad goal, and it probably should happen, but whether or not it can beat the conflict impacts in a limited amount of time is debatable.
Grid capacity could be an issue, but pushing all those heating BTUs as electricity would only be required if all the houses were using resistive heating, a heat pump only needs to drive the compressor to move the heat around like an AC unit, which requires about half as much energy.
Yes and no. Residential heat pump systems usually have a resistive heater element for situations when the ambient conditions are below the optimal operating conditions for the heat pump. The electrical supply capacity needs to be sized in order to function during those conditions, even if those situations only occur a few times per year.
The Russia blowing up it's own pipeline thing immediately reminded me of this.
Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
93EXCivic said:Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
Yeah. What scares me is Putin is running out of cards to play here. Just announcing the annexation and claiming they are defending Russians is unlikely to really gin up more support for conscription (or volunteers), and almost everyone outside the country sees it for the farce it is, so it is not like the coalition helping Ukraine is going to back off. There are no off ramps left for Putin at this point, and any of the ones he had, he destroyed. If he decides to do something drastic, I hope cooler heads prevail.
93EXCivic said:Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
Is that not the exact desired effect of the annexation announcement?
What frustrates me is that there was a peace deal almost in place before the US and UK torpedoed it.
93EXCivic said:Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the annexation will make the regions officially "Russian Soil" Hence any bombardment would be the equivalent of the Ukrainians bombing over the Russian border; something that they have not done and have been forbidden by the US to do with the Himar shells.
Good move on puties side.
OR the Ukrainians will decide that it is now fair game to bomb any target that is over the russian border but in reach of their weapons. That puts a lot of russian civilians at risk, people who have up until now been able to sit at the border with their popcorn and watch a war in real life with little risk.
NOHOME said:93EXCivic said:Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the annexation will make the regions officially "Russian Soil" Hence any bombardment would be the equivalent of the Ukrainians bombing over the Russian border; something that they have not done and have been forbidden by the US to do with the Himar shells.
Good move on puties side.
OR the Ukrainians will decide that it is now fair game to bomb any target that is over the russian border but in reach of their weapons. That puts a lot of russian civilians at risk, people who have up until now been able to sit at the border with their popcorn and watch a war in real life with little risk.
Even if they do attack inside Russia, the last thing they are likely to do is attack civilians directly. They'd go after military targets, and industrial targets that could support the Russian war effort. Like that refinery they hit early in the war.
NOHOME said:93EXCivic said:Russia will announce the annexation of the 4 regions of Ukraine tomorrow. This last week to me feels like a worrying and massive escalation of this war.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the annexation will make the regions officially "Russian Soil" Hence any bombardment would be the equivalent of the Ukrainians bombing over the Russian border; something that they have not done and have been forbidden by the US to do with the Himar shells.
Good move on puties side.
OR the Ukrainians will decide that it is now fair game to bomb any target that is over the russian border but in reach of their weapons. That puts a lot of russian civilians at risk, people who have up until now been able to sit at the border with their popcorn and watch a war in real life with little risk.
There have been many quotes from many world leaders saying that this approach is illegitimate and will not be honored.
Updates:
Here is a detailed view of the condition near Lyman:
Another update. Note that this is IRAN, not Russia (things are really not going well with that "axis").
Circumstantial evidence suggests that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is at least temporarily unable to perform his normal duties. Khamenei has been unusually absent in recent days amidst countrywide, anti-regime protests, which began on September 16. Rumors have circulated that Khamenei’s health has deteriorated significantly since early September.[1] CTP cannot verify these rumors about Khamenei’s health, and such reports should be treated with skepticism. There are indications that Khamenei is ill or incapacitated, however. Regime power centers are behaving as if succession is either imminent or underway. President Ebrahim Raisi—a prominent frontrunner to succeed Khamenei—is positioning himself to become the next supreme leader with support from senior officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
An interesting clip I ran across, show a bit of the size of the balls on some of the Ukrainians. I am not sure if they are still using this tactic, but it involves taking a helicopter with unguided rocket pods then lofting those rockets at a calculated angle to bombard the target. This is going to be very inaccurate and at best result in fairly large area of effect (in this case with what looks to be 8 rockets). Probably mostly for harassment of troop concentrations.
This looks like an Mi-8, which is really not an attack helicopter (kind of the same realm as a Huey) but can be equipped with weapons. You can see the pop up, fire, turn and pop flares tactic, as well as some rather low flying (watch out for those rotor tips!)
It will be interesting when Ukraine moves in and annexes the territories in question back into Ukraine.
Noddaz said:It will be interesting when Ukraine moves in and annexes the territories in question back into Ukraine.
is that before or after they round up all the Russian sympathizers and ship them someplace else like the Russians are doing with the Ukrainians?
stroker said:Noddaz said:It will be interesting when Ukraine moves in and annexes the territories in question back into Ukraine.
is that before or after they round up all the Russian sympathizers and ship them someplace else like the Russians are doing with the Ukrainians?
Just launch, I mean send them over the border to Russia since they love it so much.
FP reporting that Russia has stripped its forces facing the Baltics. Aside from the obvious fact that Ukraine is consuming vast numbers of men and equipment, this is indicative of two important points: 1) Russia's view of the NATO threat as portrayed in its media does not accord with these actions, confirming its public statements as domestically-oriented propaganda, and more importantly, 2) Russia does not intend to escalate the conflict to or near a point where it feels the risk of NATO military retaliation is a factor. This does not say that accidental escalation is out of the question, but doing so intentionally having denuded a critical sector of men, armored vehicles, and air defenses would be foolhardy at best.
Well Putin officially has annexed the regions and now says he wants to peace talks.
In reply to 93EXCivic :
Well good luck with that. Ukraine has the momentum and I'd be shocked if they'd be willing to concede any territory at this point, knowing full well that Russia could rearm and try to finish the job in a few years.
Putin has to be shocked how poorly his army has faired. He could have grabbed Donbas, bombed the hell out of Kiev, declared victory and gone home. But he's too far in now. All of Russia knows that they're having a rough time of it, and in addition to the economic and social aspects it's a monumental national embarrassment. Can you imagine if the USA tried to conquer Canada and got bogged down with heavy losses in lower Manitoba?
He wants Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Donetsk and Luhansk, maybe (they stink so much of Russia I am not sure they are saveable), but I see no way Ukraine can agree on the other two. Perhaps a a bold bet he can back off of.
This, as noted previously by o2, is going to become the point where the continuation of the war is heavily determined by the Wests willingness to support a war that has an offered end point.
It does look pretty bad for the Russians though. As soon as they start loosing ground, they yell peace. A VERY bully style move. This could both heavily embolden Ukraine as well as demoralize Russian troops.
There is no "turning on the natural gas supply pipeline" chip on the table though.....
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
I am guessing what he is going to try to do is have his army sit defensively and flood men in to try to force a bloody stalemate that leads to another frozen conflict at some point. Also I think by annexing he is trying to make the nuclear threat feel more real and cause more on the fence countries to start pushing for peace talks (Hungary, Turkey, China, India). But given he is pulling air defenses out of the Baltics that seems like a very empty threat. Also given some articles I have read recently talking to Ukrainian soldiers on the front line I think the state of Russian army maybe overstated a bit. NPR had one talking about a battle in North East and the soldiers said the Russians were well dug in, well armed with modern equipment and seemed to have a unlimited supply of ammo. Another one I read (don't remember which website) the Ukrainian soldiers talked about how they were using Toyota pickups and vans as infantry carriers and it was easy pickings for the Russians. I think there is a bit of bias to the thought that the Ukrainians are for sure going to be able to push the Russians out completely
I don't know that I agree with the statement that they can just rearm and come finish the job though. Ukraine will probably continue to receive western arms after the war is finished and how destroyed much equipment the Russians have lost and the slow rate of production on many of their modern weapons I think it is highly unlikely they would be able to do that.
Un/poorly-trained conscripts probably make better defenders than attackers. Give someone a gun, stick him in a foxhole and say "shoot anyone who comes from that direction". Hell, my fat, middle-aged ass could still do that. If the Russians can make their current gains permanent, they will have achieved their most important goals: securing a land bridge to Crimea with a permanent fresh water source. That wasn't the original plan. Putin thought that he could take the entire country if he could control Kiev.
I went through this previously, so I'll try not to repeat myself, but this is the scenario I envisioned, more or less. What's changed is the removal of the Nord Stream 1 bargaining chip from the Russian side of the table; this suggests to me that no matter what happens, Russia is pivoting their economy east, and has probably already inked deals with China to expand pipeline construction tying the two together. This undermines the Western negotiating position by leaving them with little to offer, which in turn enables Russia to press for more territorial gains. Hungary and Turkey have yet to ratify NATO's expansion to Sweden and Finland, and Erdogan publicly stated a day or two ago that he is willing to mediate. You can bet both Hungary and Turkey will be pushing hard for giving the Russians something in exchange for expanding NATO.
All of this leaves Ukraine more or less waiting to see what happens. Paradoxically, they should hope that these behind-the-scenes talks are dragged out for as long as possible, because right now they have significant momentum, Russian forces are struggling, and they will want to grab back as much land as possible before Western governments start to push them to agree to a cease-fire (which will very likely be a cease-fire in-place, meaning stop where you are and hold; these often end up determining or influencing post-war boundaries, even if not initially intended for that purpose).
For Russia, once any talks start, they will be pressing hard for Western governments to pull the leash on the Ukrainians. This is not likely to work at the outset unless the Russians have something to offer. They won't say it publicly, but I suspect they're willing to give back the land west of the Dnipr (including Kherson city), and I think the Ukrainians would choke down the idea of giving up Donetsk and Luhansk if they had to. The real sticking points are Zaporizhia, the remainder of Kherson Oblast, and Crimea. I can't see how either side can accept giving up that territory. If the war continues and Ukraine retakes some or all of it, that's another matter, but right now ongoing talks, especially if accompanied by a cease-fire, help Russia a lot more than anyone else.
I think we already talked about it, but isn't part of the reason for the annexation also that the claim to be defending Russian territory means that soldiers can be kept deployed beyond their contracts? I mean, it's not like Putin is following any laws anyway, but this gives it a veneer of legality to keep them in the field.
With the additional HIMARS inbound, and Russia's continued lack of air superiority, it doesn't really matter much if they can field a bunch of conscripts if they can't maintain supply lines or a command structure.
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