Right, some nerdy missile stuff for people that like that kind of thing.
And some "Russia is fecked" stuff too.
"Saturday Missile Missive!
I thought it would be a good idea to debate the impotency missiling of Russia in somewhat more detail.
What Missile?
Since there seems to be somewhat of a confusion in this regard with everyone scratching their heads and mentioning various missiles all the way from Putin, White House and the ever- glorious Punderati, it befalls upon me to explain what is what and where.
There has now been 3 IRCBMs lofted against Dnipro City. Let me first start with explaining the terminology, the European nomenclature is Intermediate Range Continental Missile (IRCBM), whereas the US use the term Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Same **** different name.
IRCBM, pronounced Irkbam) is the STANAG term, but Muricanos as per usual are confused and use IRBM, pronouned Urbam. Now I have reached a level of nerdery that even I find staggering, so let us continue in kind.
The first IRCBM was indeed a RS-26 Rubezh, well at least of sorts. The RS-26 program was started in 2011 when they adapted the RS-24 Yars from ICBM (Icebam) to IRCBM by removing the last rocket stage.
Around 2018 the money was reallocated into producing the Vanguard Hypersonic Multiple Warhead re-entry Vehicle. I will return to the erroneous usage of the word hypersonic by Russia below.
Somewhere along the line Russia decided that it needed a conventional multiple warhead re- entry vehicle for their expensive ICBMs and IRCBMs. We think they started to develop this in 2020 or 2021, but we are not sure.
It is interesting that they chose to do this, it sort of implies that they all of a sudden decided that they needed a new conventional deterrence weapon to rely on, instead of nuclear arms. This is psychologically interesting.
Firstly, they never mentioned it to us that they were going to go non-nuclear in their deterrence weapons. And since we don’t know we would react as if they had launched a nuke and strike back with nukes.
Obviously Russia must have understood this little point. I bet that their plan was to tell us before they attacked us.
But I got stuck on something that “Putin” stated. “…with nuclear weapons like effect…”. It definitely sounds like a replacement for nukes to me. Now let us return to the payload setup of the IRCBMs that Russia used so far, I will return to the nukes later on.
Russia developed in secret a brand-new payload/warhead that contained 6 Re-entry vehicles containing 6 bombs each. Delivering 36 bombs is impressive, but if you start to divide up the
brisance of each bomb you end up with 36 bombs on the small side. Likely at weight of 75kg each.
Here we need to note that Russia previously have used Short-range ballistic missiles (SBMs), and Medium-range Ballistic Missiles (MBMs) carrying much larger unitary warheads. Apparently they wilfully picked carpet bombing over a big unitary one.
Carpet-bombing is more efficient as a terror-weapon compared to a big unitary warhead. Another reason can be lack of precision.
Now let us debate each missile at a time, there has after all been 3 of them.
Dnipro City 1 was a RS-26 with the new warhead, seemingly in this configuration renamed into Oreshnik by the Russians. We do know that it was an SR-26 from the debris that was recovered. My guess is that Russia had figured out that having a missile pronounced “Rubbish” in the West is not good when you are trying to “wag your penis”.
Mystery Missile 2 we do not know a lot about, the initial trajectory was sufficiently similar that we suspect it was another Oreshnik/Rubbish pair. It failed and dunked down in Russia at the midway point.
Dnipro City 2, now here it is getting interesting. This does not seem to be a RS-26 missile, instead it seems to have been a Kedr (Cedar) Medium-range Ballistic Missile that was used with an Oreshnik Payload strapped onto it. Now what in the name of feck is a Kedr?
Here is where it becomes interesting and let us just say that the Russian missile-penis just shrivelled substantially.
Of 4 known RS-26 launches, half of them have failed. 2 tests came with 1 failure, and when used “sharply” the same thing happened. It seems like Russia is far from as good at building missiles as the Soviet Union was, even when just cutting them down from 3 stages to 2 stages and reprograming the trajectory computer.
Now for the new Russian Kedr missile that somehow sprouted forth from nowhere. Let us begin with saying that it is “Russian” and not Russian. Except for the Payload it is a Qadr 1, or as it is also known, Ghadr-110.
It is an Iranian Medium Range Missile fitted out with a unitary warhead and was last used on Israel. It has a range of 1 800 to 2 000km. And it seems to actually achieve a stable trajectory 9 out 10 times judging from the Iranian attacks on Israel.
And 90 percent is a lot better than 50 percent. Who would’ve thunk that Iran had a bigger missile-penis compared to Russia? The old Soviet Cosmonauts and rocket engineers must be rotating in their graves over this lack of erectile functionality in the missile department.
Numbers
After the Astrakhan Missile Factory and the Astrakhan Fuel Factory blossomed into fiery night- flowers Russia has a huge problems. And lacking the ability to build more missiles of this type is just one of them.
Fuel is the worst part. RS-26 used solid fuel stages, unlike the big Russian ICBMs that still use liquid fuel. The same factory supplied solid fuel to the entirety of the Russian missile program,
and until they either get it up and running again, or build a new one at a better location, they are somewhat in the pickle.
As the first RS-26 came lumbering we believed that they had between 1-3 of them in storage, and it now seems like the answer was 2, unless of course they do not want to use the third due to No 2 failing.
We do know that there are 2 more facilities producing the more short-ranged ballistic stuff, but those got the fuel from Astrakhan. Only the Astrakhan factory was tooled up for the medium- range and intermediate-range stuff.
This leaves Russia with 2 options, they can use RS-24 Yars, or they can shop for other missiles. Using an ICBM would truly be frown upon by NATO since this is their only true ICBM that uses solid state fuel, it is their main weapon in a nuclear war as a fast response strike weapon if we would start a nuclear war.
Russia currently has 50-60 RS-24 Yars at around 60M€ a pop, and being the main Russian nuclear deterrent carrier it is highly unlikely that they would use them for hitting Ukraine with a bunch of small conventional bombs.
From a Western standpoint it would though be hilarious if they rage-missiled away their main deterrence weapon against our nuclear strike capacity, by using it with conventional low-yield bombs.
Obviously this would be far less fun for Ukraine. And since there is a potential that this might happen, we will need to do something about that.
The other option is obviously that Russia bites down on the sour grape and buy missiles from Iran and North Korea. So far North Korea has even crappier stuff than Russia has, but beggars can’t be choosers.
No, Iran is the preferred option from a Russian perspective. They produce fairly good, albeit stodgy, missiles that are proven in battle. Well, proven in the manner that Israel blew up most of them.
How many have Russia purchased? We know that 10 has been delivered as of now, and one has been used, so 9 are remaining in inventory.
Iran has used up a lot of them on their own by rage-missiling Israel, so it is sort of expected that they will be less willing to sell more to Russia, what remains is assumed to be kept in storage for when Iran needs them if a big war with Israel kicks off.
Helping Russia is of a far less importance to Iran compared to being able to strike Israel, and so far they have used around 50 against Israel, and sold 10 to Russia. That would leave them with around 90-120 for their own use. And, that is almost certainly not enough already, in a war with Israel.
Future
I fully expect that Russia will use up the remaining 9, and then go and beg like donkeys to buy more from Iran, and if they decline Russia will look at those RS-24 Yars, or their ageing SS-27 Topol-M. The latter are of unknown function nowadays.
Let us say that those SS-27s still are operational, than Russia has around 150 missiles to pop. Now this is a lot when carrying nukes, but carrying conventional low-yield bombs? The destructive equivalent is similar to 150 cruise missiles.
Answer
Problem here is that Ukraine has a decided lack of tools to respond with. Currently Ukraine has Patriot PAC-3s and SAMP/T Aster 30 Block 1NT’s that are capable of taking down Ballistic Missiles.
There are though two problems. The first is that they do not have enough launchers to cover all of Ukraine. The second problem is a general lack of PAC-3 missiles for the Patriot. More SAMP/Ts are on the way, but production is not enough of complete systems to solve it quickly.
On top of that we are reticent to send more Patriot systems due to El Humpo, and even without him the missile production rate is way to low on the PAC-3s.
The final problem is that going after high altitude ballistic missiles is an add on feature on the Patriots, and only a secondary feature on the SAMP/T. We need a more dedicated system like the THAAD or the Israeli/Boeing equivalent.
US is not about to deliver a THAAD, and even if they did we would end up with 1 system, and very few missiles, and then El Humpo happens, and we stand there with a 1.2 Billion Euro pile of garbage.
The other thing would be to buy a system from Israel, but they are right now kind of occupied, and on top of that they are currently not picking up the phone when EU is calling due to the ICC wanting to send Netanyahu and Golant to The Hague together with the leader of Hamas.
There is though 1 THAAD system available that we are trying to borrow from the US that is stationed in Romania. We could then station that in Kyiv and protect everything 200km out from Kyiv.
But that we fully expect to run out of missiles in the not to distant future due to the El Humpo- effect.
No, the only real answer is saturating Ukraine with SAMP/T systems, but that will take such a long time that many of the ballistic missiles will dunk down in cities.
The only “good thing” is that so far Russia is giving us warnings 15 minutes before launching them, and with 15 minutes of travel time that gives Ukrainians 30 minutes to run down into the bomb shelters, so far that has been enough to protect lives.
I do though suspect that as soon as the El Humpo-effect takes hold that they will stop being “that nice”.
Response
What goes around, comes around.
Yesterday Defence Minister Umerov visited Sweden to get some morale-boosting for Ukraine. And what better country to visit, Sweden is already hellishly mad with Russia over the cut cables, and they do not give a single **** about US/German de-escalation politics.
And with Sweden being the de facto leader of the NB8 Group it comes with sway nowadays. It was a carefully crafted meeting against the steady beating of war drums. “The defeat of Russia is our number one priority”, how’s that as an opening statement by a country?
Next came the news that Sweden has founded a ballistic missile factory in Ukraine, that also produces cruise missiles. After that came “Sweden is preparing a substantial financial package to purchase Ukrainian missiles for use by the Ukrainian army”.
I’ve seen “the factory”, it is a series of monster factories inside and outside of Ukraine. In a Joint Venture between Sweden and Ukraine, and SAAB/Ukroboronprom, Sweden/Ukraine is now the worlds largest producer of Ballistic Missiles with a capacity of 300 MRBMs per year, with IRCBMs entering production in late 2025.
The first two MRBMs rolled off the production line a couple of weeks ago, and was used in the field upon Astrakhan, how’s that for an irony?
I wish I had been able to see the Russian faces on the other side when NATO relayed the message from Ukraine: “Missile launch notification. In 15 minutes two MRBMs will be launched by Ukraine, target Astrakhan, please acknowledge notification.”
I’m very certain that the word “blyat” was used to acknowledge the notification.
Anyway, in Ukraine there was much rejoicing that they now have the power to strike back with even the most vaunted of weapons. I’m also certain that Russia is feeling the weight of Swedish love coming their way.
Potatoes
No, this has nothing to do with missiles, or perhaps everything.
Nothing says Russia more than a big bag of spuds. As long as a Russian has potatoes, flour, sugar and beats he is a happy Russian. From that he will not starve, and if needs be he can make homemade vodka.
Russia has never ran out of potatoes, not even during the worst Soviet times. Other things may have run out, like butter and eggs. But potatoes? Unheard of.
Last year in December Russia had an egg shortage, and a couple of egg riots, now the eggs are a thing again, a full month earlier. And butter is so pricey that Russia is having butter-heists. This has led to egg and butter being on the way to be rationed.
But with the almighty potato Russians should be happy Russians. Just one small problem. Russia is forced to import potatoes already.
Russia is obviously not importing that from the West. Yes, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it, food is not sanctioned after all, but they do not have any way to pay for it. Instead, they have turned to Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia for their spud-needs.
These are the same countries that is already supplying Russia with butter, so they are already customers there, and figured out ways to pay for things to those countries.
Now, anyone with half a farming brain will say, “what now countries?” Egypt farm quite a bit of spuds and do actually produce butter. But UAE and Saudi Arabia? Not so much, they import these things themselves in large quantities, and at considerable cost.
Guess from where? Yup, Ukraine. And it is getting even more hilarious. Let me explain.
Ukraine obviously knows how much these countries import each year for their own needs. Previously they sold the butter and spuds at dock-price in Odesa, and the price in UAE and SA was dock-price plus shipping, easy peasy.
As Ukraine noticed that they started to order more, they rapidly figured out where that was going. So, after a bit of haggling came to an agreement. The usual amount is sold at the usual pricing system, but any excess is sold at a higher price, and UAE and SA is then forwarding that price hike onwards to Russia.
Everyone making extra profit, everyone happy, except for Russians that has to pay more for the goods. This has obviously driven up butter and potato prices in Russia. Butter is now 150 percent more expensive, if even available out in the smaller cities.
Potatoes are now 67.5 percent more expensive, and the price is ricing sharply. I will though give Ukraine that they are not overly taking advantage of the Russians on the potato part, they are just hiking the cost 30 percent.
The rest is due mainly to shipping, and middle-man profits. And now that Ruble is dropping like a stone prices will go up even further in the next few weeks.
So far it is just fun and games, but in the end things will start to run out in large parts of Russia. Nobody ever expected that the mighty potato would be one of those things. Putin is having a big problem on his hands.
Freezing
As I predicted the Russian heating systems started to break down with sizeable numbers of Russians being turned into icicles. Novosibirsk alone now has 30 000 inhabitants without heating.
And Russia is now openly telling people to get diesel-generators and wood stoves to survive the winter and telling them to hoard firewood.
Problem is just where they will get those generators and wood stoves from, and the even bigger issue is that firewood is cut during winter, then drying over the summer, and cut and chopped during the following autumn.
You just can’t go out and chop down a tree in a park and expect it to burn in your cobbled together fire hazard of a wood stove. And even if you get it burning it will be smoking like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Winter is now a dark, cold and hungry reality in Russia. "
And some "Russia is fecked" stuff too.
"Saturday Missile Missive!
I thought it would be a good idea to debate the impotency missiling of Russia in somewhat more detail.
What Missile?
Since there seems to be somewhat of a confusion in this regard with everyone scratching their heads and mentioning various missiles all the way from Putin, White House and the ever- glorious Punderati, it befalls upon me to explain what is what and where.
There has now been 3 IRCBMs lofted against Dnipro City. Let me first start with explaining the terminology, the European nomenclature is Intermediate Range Continental Missile (IRCBM), whereas the US use the term Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Same **** different name.
IRCBM, pronounced Irkbam) is the STANAG term, but Muricanos as per usual are confused and use IRBM, pronouned Urbam. Now I have reached a level of nerdery that even I find staggering, so let us continue in kind.
The first IRCBM was indeed a RS-26 Rubezh, well at least of sorts. The RS-26 program was started in 2011 when they adapted the RS-24 Yars from ICBM (Icebam) to IRCBM by removing the last rocket stage.
Around 2018 the money was reallocated into producing the Vanguard Hypersonic Multiple Warhead re-entry Vehicle. I will return to the erroneous usage of the word hypersonic by Russia below.
Somewhere along the line Russia decided that it needed a conventional multiple warhead re- entry vehicle for their expensive ICBMs and IRCBMs. We think they started to develop this in 2020 or 2021, but we are not sure.
It is interesting that they chose to do this, it sort of implies that they all of a sudden decided that they needed a new conventional deterrence weapon to rely on, instead of nuclear arms. This is psychologically interesting.
Firstly, they never mentioned it to us that they were going to go non-nuclear in their deterrence weapons. And since we don’t know we would react as if they had launched a nuke and strike back with nukes.
Obviously Russia must have understood this little point. I bet that their plan was to tell us before they attacked us.
But I got stuck on something that “Putin” stated. “…with nuclear weapons like effect…”. It definitely sounds like a replacement for nukes to me. Now let us return to the payload setup of the IRCBMs that Russia used so far, I will return to the nukes later on.
Russia developed in secret a brand-new payload/warhead that contained 6 Re-entry vehicles containing 6 bombs each. Delivering 36 bombs is impressive, but if you start to divide up the
brisance of each bomb you end up with 36 bombs on the small side. Likely at weight of 75kg each.
Here we need to note that Russia previously have used Short-range ballistic missiles (SBMs), and Medium-range Ballistic Missiles (MBMs) carrying much larger unitary warheads. Apparently they wilfully picked carpet bombing over a big unitary one.
Carpet-bombing is more efficient as a terror-weapon compared to a big unitary warhead. Another reason can be lack of precision.
Now let us debate each missile at a time, there has after all been 3 of them.
Dnipro City 1 was a RS-26 with the new warhead, seemingly in this configuration renamed into Oreshnik by the Russians. We do know that it was an SR-26 from the debris that was recovered. My guess is that Russia had figured out that having a missile pronounced “Rubbish” in the West is not good when you are trying to “wag your penis”.
Mystery Missile 2 we do not know a lot about, the initial trajectory was sufficiently similar that we suspect it was another Oreshnik/Rubbish pair. It failed and dunked down in Russia at the midway point.
Dnipro City 2, now here it is getting interesting. This does not seem to be a RS-26 missile, instead it seems to have been a Kedr (Cedar) Medium-range Ballistic Missile that was used with an Oreshnik Payload strapped onto it. Now what in the name of feck is a Kedr?
Here is where it becomes interesting and let us just say that the Russian missile-penis just shrivelled substantially.
Of 4 known RS-26 launches, half of them have failed. 2 tests came with 1 failure, and when used “sharply” the same thing happened. It seems like Russia is far from as good at building missiles as the Soviet Union was, even when just cutting them down from 3 stages to 2 stages and reprograming the trajectory computer.
Now for the new Russian Kedr missile that somehow sprouted forth from nowhere. Let us begin with saying that it is “Russian” and not Russian. Except for the Payload it is a Qadr 1, or as it is also known, Ghadr-110.
It is an Iranian Medium Range Missile fitted out with a unitary warhead and was last used on Israel. It has a range of 1 800 to 2 000km. And it seems to actually achieve a stable trajectory 9 out 10 times judging from the Iranian attacks on Israel.
And 90 percent is a lot better than 50 percent. Who would’ve thunk that Iran had a bigger missile-penis compared to Russia? The old Soviet Cosmonauts and rocket engineers must be rotating in their graves over this lack of erectile functionality in the missile department.
Numbers
After the Astrakhan Missile Factory and the Astrakhan Fuel Factory blossomed into fiery night- flowers Russia has a huge problems. And lacking the ability to build more missiles of this type is just one of them.
Fuel is the worst part. RS-26 used solid fuel stages, unlike the big Russian ICBMs that still use liquid fuel. The same factory supplied solid fuel to the entirety of the Russian missile program,
and until they either get it up and running again, or build a new one at a better location, they are somewhat in the pickle.
As the first RS-26 came lumbering we believed that they had between 1-3 of them in storage, and it now seems like the answer was 2, unless of course they do not want to use the third due to No 2 failing.
We do know that there are 2 more facilities producing the more short-ranged ballistic stuff, but those got the fuel from Astrakhan. Only the Astrakhan factory was tooled up for the medium- range and intermediate-range stuff.
This leaves Russia with 2 options, they can use RS-24 Yars, or they can shop for other missiles. Using an ICBM would truly be frown upon by NATO since this is their only true ICBM that uses solid state fuel, it is their main weapon in a nuclear war as a fast response strike weapon if we would start a nuclear war.
Russia currently has 50-60 RS-24 Yars at around 60M€ a pop, and being the main Russian nuclear deterrent carrier it is highly unlikely that they would use them for hitting Ukraine with a bunch of small conventional bombs.
From a Western standpoint it would though be hilarious if they rage-missiled away their main deterrence weapon against our nuclear strike capacity, by using it with conventional low-yield bombs.
Obviously this would be far less fun for Ukraine. And since there is a potential that this might happen, we will need to do something about that.
The other option is obviously that Russia bites down on the sour grape and buy missiles from Iran and North Korea. So far North Korea has even crappier stuff than Russia has, but beggars can’t be choosers.
No, Iran is the preferred option from a Russian perspective. They produce fairly good, albeit stodgy, missiles that are proven in battle. Well, proven in the manner that Israel blew up most of them.
How many have Russia purchased? We know that 10 has been delivered as of now, and one has been used, so 9 are remaining in inventory.
Iran has used up a lot of them on their own by rage-missiling Israel, so it is sort of expected that they will be less willing to sell more to Russia, what remains is assumed to be kept in storage for when Iran needs them if a big war with Israel kicks off.
Helping Russia is of a far less importance to Iran compared to being able to strike Israel, and so far they have used around 50 against Israel, and sold 10 to Russia. That would leave them with around 90-120 for their own use. And, that is almost certainly not enough already, in a war with Israel.
Future
I fully expect that Russia will use up the remaining 9, and then go and beg like donkeys to buy more from Iran, and if they decline Russia will look at those RS-24 Yars, or their ageing SS-27 Topol-M. The latter are of unknown function nowadays.
Let us say that those SS-27s still are operational, than Russia has around 150 missiles to pop. Now this is a lot when carrying nukes, but carrying conventional low-yield bombs? The destructive equivalent is similar to 150 cruise missiles.
Answer
Problem here is that Ukraine has a decided lack of tools to respond with. Currently Ukraine has Patriot PAC-3s and SAMP/T Aster 30 Block 1NT’s that are capable of taking down Ballistic Missiles.
There are though two problems. The first is that they do not have enough launchers to cover all of Ukraine. The second problem is a general lack of PAC-3 missiles for the Patriot. More SAMP/Ts are on the way, but production is not enough of complete systems to solve it quickly.
On top of that we are reticent to send more Patriot systems due to El Humpo, and even without him the missile production rate is way to low on the PAC-3s.
The final problem is that going after high altitude ballistic missiles is an add on feature on the Patriots, and only a secondary feature on the SAMP/T. We need a more dedicated system like the THAAD or the Israeli/Boeing equivalent.
US is not about to deliver a THAAD, and even if they did we would end up with 1 system, and very few missiles, and then El Humpo happens, and we stand there with a 1.2 Billion Euro pile of garbage.
The other thing would be to buy a system from Israel, but they are right now kind of occupied, and on top of that they are currently not picking up the phone when EU is calling due to the ICC wanting to send Netanyahu and Golant to The Hague together with the leader of Hamas.
There is though 1 THAAD system available that we are trying to borrow from the US that is stationed in Romania. We could then station that in Kyiv and protect everything 200km out from Kyiv.
But that we fully expect to run out of missiles in the not to distant future due to the El Humpo- effect.
No, the only real answer is saturating Ukraine with SAMP/T systems, but that will take such a long time that many of the ballistic missiles will dunk down in cities.
The only “good thing” is that so far Russia is giving us warnings 15 minutes before launching them, and with 15 minutes of travel time that gives Ukrainians 30 minutes to run down into the bomb shelters, so far that has been enough to protect lives.
I do though suspect that as soon as the El Humpo-effect takes hold that they will stop being “that nice”.
Response
What goes around, comes around.
Yesterday Defence Minister Umerov visited Sweden to get some morale-boosting for Ukraine. And what better country to visit, Sweden is already hellishly mad with Russia over the cut cables, and they do not give a single **** about US/German de-escalation politics.
And with Sweden being the de facto leader of the NB8 Group it comes with sway nowadays. It was a carefully crafted meeting against the steady beating of war drums. “The defeat of Russia is our number one priority”, how’s that as an opening statement by a country?
Next came the news that Sweden has founded a ballistic missile factory in Ukraine, that also produces cruise missiles. After that came “Sweden is preparing a substantial financial package to purchase Ukrainian missiles for use by the Ukrainian army”.
I’ve seen “the factory”, it is a series of monster factories inside and outside of Ukraine. In a Joint Venture between Sweden and Ukraine, and SAAB/Ukroboronprom, Sweden/Ukraine is now the worlds largest producer of Ballistic Missiles with a capacity of 300 MRBMs per year, with IRCBMs entering production in late 2025.
The first two MRBMs rolled off the production line a couple of weeks ago, and was used in the field upon Astrakhan, how’s that for an irony?
I wish I had been able to see the Russian faces on the other side when NATO relayed the message from Ukraine: “Missile launch notification. In 15 minutes two MRBMs will be launched by Ukraine, target Astrakhan, please acknowledge notification.”
I’m very certain that the word “blyat” was used to acknowledge the notification.
Anyway, in Ukraine there was much rejoicing that they now have the power to strike back with even the most vaunted of weapons. I’m also certain that Russia is feeling the weight of Swedish love coming their way.
Potatoes
No, this has nothing to do with missiles, or perhaps everything.
Nothing says Russia more than a big bag of spuds. As long as a Russian has potatoes, flour, sugar and beats he is a happy Russian. From that he will not starve, and if needs be he can make homemade vodka.
Russia has never ran out of potatoes, not even during the worst Soviet times. Other things may have run out, like butter and eggs. But potatoes? Unheard of.
Last year in December Russia had an egg shortage, and a couple of egg riots, now the eggs are a thing again, a full month earlier. And butter is so pricey that Russia is having butter-heists. This has led to egg and butter being on the way to be rationed.
But with the almighty potato Russians should be happy Russians. Just one small problem. Russia is forced to import potatoes already.
Russia is obviously not importing that from the West. Yes, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it, food is not sanctioned after all, but they do not have any way to pay for it. Instead, they have turned to Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia for their spud-needs.
These are the same countries that is already supplying Russia with butter, so they are already customers there, and figured out ways to pay for things to those countries.
Now, anyone with half a farming brain will say, “what now countries?” Egypt farm quite a bit of spuds and do actually produce butter. But UAE and Saudi Arabia? Not so much, they import these things themselves in large quantities, and at considerable cost.
Guess from where? Yup, Ukraine. And it is getting even more hilarious. Let me explain.
Ukraine obviously knows how much these countries import each year for their own needs. Previously they sold the butter and spuds at dock-price in Odesa, and the price in UAE and SA was dock-price plus shipping, easy peasy.
As Ukraine noticed that they started to order more, they rapidly figured out where that was going. So, after a bit of haggling came to an agreement. The usual amount is sold at the usual pricing system, but any excess is sold at a higher price, and UAE and SA is then forwarding that price hike onwards to Russia.
Everyone making extra profit, everyone happy, except for Russians that has to pay more for the goods. This has obviously driven up butter and potato prices in Russia. Butter is now 150 percent more expensive, if even available out in the smaller cities.
Potatoes are now 67.5 percent more expensive, and the price is ricing sharply. I will though give Ukraine that they are not overly taking advantage of the Russians on the potato part, they are just hiking the cost 30 percent.
The rest is due mainly to shipping, and middle-man profits. And now that Ruble is dropping like a stone prices will go up even further in the next few weeks.
So far it is just fun and games, but in the end things will start to run out in large parts of Russia. Nobody ever expected that the mighty potato would be one of those things. Putin is having a big problem on his hands.
Freezing
As I predicted the Russian heating systems started to break down with sizeable numbers of Russians being turned into icicles. Novosibirsk alone now has 30 000 inhabitants without heating.
And Russia is now openly telling people to get diesel-generators and wood stoves to survive the winter and telling them to hoard firewood.
Problem is just where they will get those generators and wood stoves from, and the even bigger issue is that firewood is cut during winter, then drying over the summer, and cut and chopped during the following autumn.
You just can’t go out and chop down a tree in a park and expect it to burn in your cobbled together fire hazard of a wood stove. And even if you get it burning it will be smoking like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Winter is now a dark, cold and hungry reality in Russia. "
