Item — HN Reader

> By contrast, bombing can have some effect on industrial production, but only in wars where that production matters and is available to be bombed

The russian oil refineries that have been very successfully attacked seem to meet the definition of this. One obviously useful thing for the Ukrainians to do is to cut off the supply of refined diesel and petrol to the Russian army's vehicles.

If this also has the effect of causing significant pain to the russian domestic economy (lack of fuel for general civilian vehicle uses of all types), it has the additional benefit of being a very real and public pain point causing dissatisfaction with the average russian civilian.

1 comments

Indeed. And bringing the attacks deep in to Russia may embarrass the regime and may have led Putin to (allegedly) stage a frontline visit [0].

And yet we must never forget that there is no such thing as a wunder waffe and reducing German cities to rubble did not break the civilian resolve.

Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine I saw a common pattern: one side gains a technological or doctrinal advantage, may or may not make progress, the other side adapts and the situation levels out again.

0 - https://xcancel.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/20733425637973812...

Thing is - there's no need to break the Russian civilian resolve, because nobody has the goal of invading and occupying Russia. It just needs to become far too painful for Russia to continue on its present course of action.

Let's say theoretically that Ukraine successfully takes 90% of Russia's oil refineries out of action and this crashes the domestic petrol/diesel supply so thoroughly that plowing, seeding and harvesting with mechanized agriculture equipment also crashes in Russia. Or there is a breakdown of cold chain transport warehousing/trucking and grocery supply due to lack of diesel fuel for all of the trucking. Could it result in a collapse of the russian state and civil war? Very possibly.

> And yet we must never forget that there is no such thing as a wunder waffe and reducing German cities to rubble did not break the civilian resolve.

perhaps not, but exhaustion did lead to the Russian Revolution, and toppling the Tsar is what the AFU is explicitly hoping for...