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Earlier this week over at Instapundit, I half-dismissed a Reuters report that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is "increasingly concerned" about his country's increasingly deformed economy as the Ukraine War drags on towards its fourth year next month. "I don’t pretend to know what Putin’s concerns are and, for all anybody outside the Kremlin knows," I wrote, "Reuters’ five sources could be deliberately spreading misinformation about Putin’s concerns."
Ukraine's drone strike on yet another Russian oil refinery earlier this week put another small dent in Russia's economy as Kyiv continues its war on Russian oil — the lifeblood of Russia's finances and the fuel for its army.
The latest hit was to the Lukoil refinery in Nizhny Novgorod. It's a city of about 1.2 million people located northeast of Moscow — hundreds of miles away from Ukraine. The refinery was targeted with more than 100 drones, according to Ukrainian sources, and is the fourth-largest in the country. Unsurprisingly, the fires are impressive.
The Lukoil refinery of Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod, in Russia has been severely hit by UAVs. Flames are consuming large parts of the facility, which processes annually 15 million tons of crude oil. It is the fourth-largest refinery in Russia in terms of production. pic.twitter.com/ZAhUTpbDqL
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) January 29, 2025
A week ago, another series of drone attacks struck an aviation plant, a Russian army command post, and an oil depot in Liskinskaya, closer to Ukraine. Actually, Kyiv struck that depot twice last week, although I've been unable to find a reliable assessment of the damage — so I assume it isn't all that bad. Nevertheless, Kyiv continues to go after Russia's oil infrastructure and supplies, sometimes with serious effects.
Those attacks followed a drone strike two weeks ago on another Lukoil refinery, that time in Volgograd in southern Russia. Once again, the resulting fires are nothing to sneeze at.
Explosion and fire on the territory of the Volgograd oil refinery of the Lukoil company. Volgograd region, Russia. pic.twitter.com/jNwWsmLtSU
— CombatFootage (@CumbatFootage) January 19, 2025
One report indicated that the attack forced Lukoil to shut down the plant's diesel hydrotreating unit, costing Russia 10,000 tons of diesel per day. The fire burned for at least two days although local officials claimed "internal reasons" caused the explosions.
Uh-huh.
If Putin isn't increasingly concerned, he certainly ought to be. This is the time for President Donald Trump to start getting serious about bringing both sides to the negotiating table. Granted, Trump has a lot on his plate here at home and domestic affairs are and ought to be his number one priority. So when I say, "now," I mean, "the first half of 2025."
Here's why.
It is still correct to conclude, as the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard did last month, that although "Ukraine is slowly losing the three-year conflict on the battlefield. Russia is slowly losing the economic conflict at a roughly equal pace." The Russian military spent 2024 pushing Ukraine hard, likely hoping to bring the war to a successful conclusion before the U.S. election — but at a horrifying cost in blood and treasure.
Those drone strikes on Russia's oil refineries are driving up the cost in treasure higher still.
Please don't mistake those attacks as some kind of war-winning masterstroke — but Russia is having fuel problems, and it shows. Gasoline prices are up 30% or more since the start of the war. That's a faster increase than Russia's troublesome inflation, which makes Bidenflation look tame. Diesel prices have risen even faster — up more than 40% in just the last two years. That's despite reliable reports that the Russian army is relying more on foot power and less on diesel-powered tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in Ukraine.
That isn't to imply that Russia is suffering fuel shortages or is about to. Most of those price increases are due to Russia's overall inflation, which is bad and getting worse. There are fewer tanks and IFVs on the battlefield because drones continue to complicate combined-arms operations, and because combat losses have forced Moscow to rely on declining stocks of armored vehicles left over from the 1960s. Some are even older.
This one is World War II vintage, recalled to active duty.
But is "the end near," as X user David D. declared? I'm not at all certain of that. Even if the West were to increase military aid to Kyiv, Ukraine lacks the manpower to force a decision.
Meanwhile, you're free to laugh at comical-looking adaptations like this one...
...but it's the kind of adaptation that seems to work against drones. Although you do have to wonder how much extra fuel is consumed when you've got freakin' logs stacked up on each side of the vehicle.
A few words about the man in Moscow we'll have to treat as an equal for the sake of peace.
Putin's fans here in the West try to sell him to me as some kind of protector of Christian values against the "globo-homos" or whatever. Yeah, right.
In addition to putting the Russian Orthodox church under state control — the reason that Kyiv closed its domestic Russian churches — Putin has squashed Christian dissent, along with all other forms. That's not very Christian, at least not as we understand it in the West.
When Christian Armenia was invaded (again) by Muslim Azerbaijan in 2023, Russia was obligated by treaty to come to Armenia's defense. Instead, Putin sold them out and, as a result, around 100,000 Armenians have been ethnically cleansed from their homelands in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Untold numbers died.
Why did Putin turn his back on Armenia? Because with an estimated 97% of Russia's conventional combat power devoted to conquering Russia's Orthodox and Catholic cousins in Ukraine, he decided he couldn't spare a few thousand soldiers to deter the conquering Muslims.
Tiny Moldova, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, would love to join NATO. But Putin supplies money and arms to Russian separatists — colonists, really — in Moldova's east, along with constant meddling in Moldova's domestic affairs.
Putin also enjoys snipping off bits of Christian Georgia from time to time, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Unless your country happens to be a member of NATO, it isn't safe to be Christian and a neighbor of Putin's Russia.
The truth is that under Putin, Russia wages full-scale war on Christian Ukraine, maintains a low-level but consistent level of fear and sometimes violence against Orthodox cousins in Moldova and Georgia, and sold out Christian Armenians to Muslim invaders.
Putin's Russia is bleeding Christians to death at a time when the country's restive Muslim minority is out-breeding ethnic Russians. So whatever else Putin is, he's no mastermind. He has, in fact, weakened Christianity both at home and in Russia's "near abroad." His Ukraine War — win, lose, or draw — hastens the day that Russia's demographic time bomb finally detonates.
He's the villain of his story.
But forget all of that — at least publicly.
ISW reported Wednesday that in an interview published this week, "Putin stated that Western military assistance remains vital to Ukraine's ability to maintain its defense against Russian aggression." He also claimed that "the war in Ukraine could be over within two months if the West stops providing Ukraine with military assistance and that Ukraine's dependence on Western military aid indicates that Ukraine has 'no sovereignty.'"
The "no sovereignty" pitch is a longstanding part of the Kremlin's anti-Ukraine propaganda, an attempt to paint Ukrainian statehood as illegitimate. In other words, Putin has not yet abandoned — at least not publicly — his maximalist war aims of complete subjugation of Ukraine.
This is where Trump comes in, particularly his talent for knowing how to talk to Putin publicly and how to talk to him privately.
In a Right Angle segment that I recorded last week with my usual partners in crime, Bill Whittle and Scott Ott, Scott made a sublime point about bringing Russia to the negotiating table. Speaking in public, Putin is a statesman and should be treated as such. Speaking privately, Trump can and should treat Putin like the bully — the villain — he is.
Putin needs Sun Tzu's golden bridge to retreat across, and who better to build it than Trump? But he also needs to know that inside the velvet glove, there's an iron fist of heavy sanctions on Russia and continued weapons for Ukraine — both of which Trump already promised.
It's time to press for a deal — a good deal that's unfair to both sides. But not a deal that presses Russia too hard. They still have nukes and, as Trump reminded Hugh Hewitt last year, "You tend to speak a little bit differently when they have nuclear weapons."
Indeed. But the time to speak is now. The longer this war drags on, the greater the chance of a gray swan event that could cause a dangerous escalation or an equally dangerous collapse.
Food shortages and hyperinflation caused the Imperial Russian Army to abandon the field to the advancing Germans in 1917. Could something similar happen in, say, 2026? Probably not but it's also not the kind of thing you want to leave to chance. I don't know what happens when a country with hundreds of ICBMs and thousands of tactical nuclear weapons falls apart, and neither do you. Or Ukraine could collapse, leaving Europe with a refugee crisis unlike any since 1945 — and Putin's appetite whetted for more war.
We've seen enough war. Ukraine has certainly seen enough war. Even Russia, loath to admit it, has seen enough.
It's time for peace. Now.
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