Towards a New Nuclear Arms Race? Putin, the Breakdown of Nuclear Treaty Limits & MIRVs

Towards a New Nuclear Arms Race? Putin, the Breakdown of Nuclear Treaty Limits & MIRVs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnZLWjOkHU

1,000 Days of War in Ukraine – Russia’s IRBM Strike, Trends & The Forces after 1,000 days

1,000 Days of War in Ukraine – Russia’s IRBM Strike, Trends & The Forces after 1,000 days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf2vSoWsmgI

The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, with Anne Applebaum (Part 1)

A network of autocracies work together worldwide to undermine the interests of democracies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtRn6YD9cp8

The West is trying to starve the wrong part of Russia’s war machine, defense experts say

“The RUSI team argues that Western sanctions should target the artillery supply chain rather than primarily focusing on blocking advanced tech like microelectronics from reaching Russia.
“It is more difficult to secretly transfer thousands of tons of chromium ore into a country than to smuggle in a few thousand microchips,” the report said; chromium is used in artillery barrel manufacturing.

Endowed with vast natural resources and a huge Soviet-era defense industrial base, Russia is self-sufficient for many of its military needs. But the RUSI team zeroed in on two requirements where Russia depends on imports: Machine tools and raw materials that are essential for casting or refurbishing artillery barrels, and for producing artillery shells.

Until 2022, Russia depended on Western-supplied machine tools, especially advanced computer numerical control, or CNC, automated systems. Sanctions imposed in 2023 slashed imports of Western equipment, but China has been able to fill much of the gap, though “Russian companies have historically preferred Western machine tools over Chinese equivalents, as they are more precise and higher quality,” the report noted. However, China and other nations re-export Western tools to Russia. RUSI identified at least 2,113 companies that supplied Western tools to Russia in 2023 and early 2024, including equipment from Germany, South Korea, Italy, Japan and Taiwan.

Manufacturing artillery barrels is a rigorous task that requires highly specialized manufacturing facilities. Just as US defense manufacturing has consolidated into a few prime contractors who can build jets and ships, only four Russian companies can forge artillery barrels: Zavod No. 9 in Yekaterinburg; Titan-Barrikady in Volgograd; MZ/ SKB in Perm; and the Burevestnik Research Institute in Nizhny Novgorod, according to the report. Each company has its own supply chain of subcontractors, such as factories that make special steel.

As for raw materials, Russia imports about 55% of the high-quality chromium needed to harden gun barrels. It also depends on Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to supply much of the cotton cellulose that is a crucial ingredient in the nitrocellulose used to make explosives. There are three primary manufacturers of artillery ammunition in Russia — NIMI Bakhirev, the Plastmass Plant and KBP Shipunov — which also rely on a web of contractors and suppliers.

Evidence suggests that sanctions on these links in the supply chain can work. For example, Khlopkoprom-Tsellyuloza, a Kazakh company that was a major supplier of cotton cellulose to two Russian propellant factories, slashed its exports when those factories were sanctioned, RUSI pointed out. Indeed, Kazakhstan is now supplying cotton cellulose for NATO ammunition.

Current Western sanctions tend to be too broad and sporadic to cripple Russian defense production. A better approach would be a mixture of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure focused on Russia’s artillery supply chain, concluded the report. “A concerted approach, with additional resources dedicated to enforcement and disruption, will have a greater chance of success.””

https://www.yahoo.com/news/west-trying-starve-wrong-part-112301587.html

The Key Source of Cash Drying Up for Ukraine

“Charities have been essential to meeting these needs. No one knows precisely how many items they have donated, but the figure is likely in the millions. The donations were particularly sizable in the war’s first year. “We were sending primarily drones, night-vision equipment and optics, plates, helmets, carriers and uniforms,” said Tallat-Kelpša, whose group raised over $1 million in the first 10 months of the invasion. United Help Ukraine, which raised tens of millions of dollars in 2022, told me they sent 5,000 bulletproof vests and 100,000 tourniquets. Hope for Ukraine, a New Jersey-based group that raised over $6 million in 2022, was able to stuff a shipping container with aid — including food and medical supplies — every week or two.
“The entire war is crowdfunded,” said Matthew Sampson, a former U.S. soldier who serves in Ukraine’s International Legion, a unit of the Ukrainian armed forces composed of foreign volunteers. Like many NATO veterans now fighting in Ukraine, he is acutely aware of what Kyiv lacks. Foreign donors, Sampson said, allowed his unit to purchase food and fuel. They gave them cars. They even helped pay for housing. “For our safe houses, we had to pay rent, utilities and repairs,” Sampson told me. “Ukraine doesn’t have the money for any of that stuff.”

But today, almost every group helping the country — big and small alike — is taking in less money than before. During the first year of the war, Come Back Alive raised roughly $38 million in non-Ukrainian currencies. In the more than 18 months since, it has raised less than half that figure. United Help Ukraine also said donations had decreased, although they didn’t provide details. Hope for Ukraine said they raised roughly a third as much in 2023 as they did in 2022. “It was like a big roller coaster,” said Yuriy Boyechko, the group’s leader. “There was a big high, and then there was a big drop.””

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/17/ukraine-russia-war-aid-donations-00184025

North Korean troops helping Putin is a ‘grave’ threat to the world, Seoul says

“South Korea’s spy agency said Friday it believes North Korea has already begun deploying four brigades totaling 12,000 troops, including special forces, to the war in Ukraine.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/north-korean-troops-helping-vladimir-putin-grave-threat-world-seoul-yoon-suk-yeol/