Ukraine struck Russia’s largest oil refinery, located in the city of Omsk, on Monday, marking what its forces say was its furthest-ever drone attack in the war.
The Omsk facility, which processes about 21 million tons of oil a year, is in Western Siberia and about 1,700 miles from Ukrainian territory — roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Houston.
Im a little out of the loop, why are they suddenly able to do this now? What changed in their capabilities?
TIL Siberia is way bigger than I expected. I knew it was big, but it looks like it’s more than half of Russian landmass. It can’t all be the climate I’m picturing, right? Like it borders Kazakhstan, so I figure at least part of it has to have hot summers
Siberia is actually 3/4ths of Russia’s landmass. The northern parts are taiga, which are giant uninterrupted forests. The shores of the Arctic Ocean are mostly tundra. In the southern parts the taiga gives way to steppes.
In the northern parts the climate has warm but quite short summers and long cold winters. In the southern part, where most of the population lives, they have the same climate as southern Canada/New England just less humid. The Western parts are also covered by warm winds that originate from the Middle East and hence have higher temperatures than their more Eastern areas. For reference in Novosibirsk, which is the largest city the average yearly summer temperatures reach 25 degrees Celsius but temperatures can also spike to as high as 38 degrees.
So yeah Siberia is not all some barren tundra as most people imagine.
Though is that comparison corrected for the projection? Texas is farther south than Siberia and with the usual projection used, you can only compare the sizes of things at the same latitude. It’s the same thing that makes Greenland look as big as Africa when it’s closer to the size of South Africa.
Though is that comparison corrected for the projection?
Yes. Check it out here: https://truesize.net/en/
lol, you got me, that’s what twigged it for me- I figured Siberia would start further east of Ukraine than Texas is of California
most of it is icy forest where it’s too cold to do agriculture (in the north). there’s a thin latitude where the weather is good for agriculture. south of that it’s not the heat but the drought that’s the problem. up north you have shortage of sunlight, south you have shortage of water. that’s why the fertile area is narrow.
Personally, I say California should be controlled by Australia.
Australia is a bad choice cause they’ve been low-key screwing up their country quite badly.
Their economy and social policies are great under Labor, it’s only when the grift fascists are in power that all the money goes to oligarchs.
Well, they both might benefit from eachother’s expertise in fighting wildfires…
… Why?
I replied to the wrong post somehow, this was supposed to be under the post of Trump saying Iceland should be under US control.
It probably makes a bit more sense there (I also don’t think California should be under Australia’s control, it was just snark)
I wonder if Ukraine got the idea from Iran?
I don’t mean that as an accusation, but… well, Iran basically has the world economy’s throat. And I know Ukraine’s drones just got the capability, but Iran had to be a fantastic reminder of how fragile an oil economy is.
They’ve been occasionally attacking oil infrastructure since the beginning of the war. Used to be their “allies” asked them to please tone that down a bit. I guess Ukrainians finally stopped giving a shit.
Backing Trump and MAGA has really backfired for Russia.
What? No it hasn’t.
Trump cut American aid. Russian win? Nope what Russia really wanted was for Trump to make Ukraine agree to a peace that included ceding territory to Russia. Trump could only do that by leveraging American aid. Which is gone now because Trump is stupid and easily angered.
And what Russia REALLY didn’t want was for it’s delicate rusting oil industry to be dismantled by a Ukraine who is no longer being held back by American aid conditions.
NATO is all in on supporting Ukraine despite the Orange dickhead’s threats.
NICE SHOT BROS!!!
Pretty sure they didn’t fly ‘all’ the way there ;)
