Ukraine’s Brilliant Strategy to Hit Russia’s Oil Production
Despite ongoing sanctions, Russia is still the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and second-largest exporter of oil — behind Saudi Arabia.
The sale of these resources abroad is the absolute foundation of the Russian state and key to Putin’s long-term objectives.
A few weeks ago, I illustrated three ways Ukraine can win this war:
If you imagine a large barrel representing Russia’s long-term capacity for making war, then all of Russia’s natural resources (oil & gas), political leadership, military factories, and manpower availability — all get dumped into this barrel.
Their war-making capacity barrel has a conveyor belt attached to it. This conveyor belt represents Russia’s near-term ability to convert capacity into frontline power — like logistics, supply chains, ammo storage, and the like.
And on the other end of this conveyor belt is a much smaller barrel that represents Russia’s actual frontline combat power — troops and tanks on the ground.
I made the case that if Ukraine could destroy Russia’s frontline combat power faster than it could be replaced by the conveyor belt, Ukraine could effectively take land back.
