Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 23, 2024 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
We are seeing a lot of posts and articles on X about Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign against Russian refineries .

People, including Jake Sullivan over at the Biden Adm. NSC think this is about AFU cutting off Russian oil.

They're wrong. It's about explosives.
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The Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries are less about POL than reduction of nitrogen,ammonia and methanol feed stocks for Russian explosives and propellants for it's artillery and missile production.

2/
Ukrainian OWA drones are engaged in strategic counter battery fire against the Russian artillery supply chain providing the explosive fillings & propellent for shells, rockets and missiles.

[This also has knock on effects for Russian fertilizer production.]

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Nitrogen, ammonia and methanol are the bell book and candle of chemical feedstocks that Russian refineries supply to it's war machine.

Fixing nitrogen is especially key in making high explosives.

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When the US EPA talks about crude oil refining, it mentions nitrogen thusly:

"Undesirable elements such as sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen are removed by hydrodesulfurization, hydrotreating, chemical sweetening, and acid gas removal."

5/
epa.gov/sites/default/…
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When you look up Russian Methanol production on Statistica, it reflects Russia's huge petrochemical refinery infrastructure.


6/statista.com/statistics/126…
The International Energy Agency's "Ammonia Technology Roadmap" says Russia is about 8% of the world Ammonia production capability.


7/iea.org/reports/ammoni…
When you look at modern explosives and artillery shell/rocket propellent on Wikipedia, a lot falls out that shows what Ukraine is up to with it's campaign against Russian refineries.

1. RDX and HMX are made from Formaldehyde that is made from Methanol and ammonia (both of

8/
1. Con't ...which are oil refinery products) via Hexamethylenetetramine.

2. TNT is made from Toluene, which is a refinery by product of gasoline.

3. Nitroglycerine is a made from Nitrogen, is a biodiesel by product, and is used to make #2 TNT.

9/
4. Ammonium perchlorate for rocket fuel comes from ammonia, for which see #1.

So, we have a lot of evidence here that Ukraine's anti-refinery campaign is more about removing oil refinery made chemical feedstocks for Russia's artillery supply chain than cutting off oil money

10/
...or fuel to the Russian Army. Yet, before I posted this, no one seems to have noticed any of that.

And everyone, especially the Jake Sullivan lead Biden Adm. National Security Council is screaming oil.

What's going on?

11/ft.com/content/98f15b…
Two things are happening here.

First, Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) is exactly right as to how Russian Reflexive Control Information Warfare has captured Jake Sullivan's crowd at the Biden Administration National Security Council.

12/
The second thing is US intelligence on Russia's artillery logistics and associated economic supply chain has sucked rocks for more than 80 years.

The CIA based all of it's Soviet artillery logistics projections on pilfered Warsaw Pact documents...

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...and mirror imaging pallets & forklifts on the Soviets without ever giving any collection priority to the problem or actually looking at chemical feedstocks.

The 80 year feedstock & forklift miss points to the intelligence validation step as a threat to career promotion

14/
...inside intelligence agencies.

It won't let senior intelligence analysts feed to senior politicians what they want to hear.

Their poor 1980's Iran-Iraq War intelligence product reflected this careertist patron-client defect.

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When the Lockheed Martin WARSIM software development team went to US Army TMs/FMs, the OPFOR World Equipment Guide and AMSAA for Russian log-data, it was INA (Item not Available) because "mirror imaging was good enough."


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What we are seeing with the combination of 80(+) years of intelligence dysfunction & the JD degree spin doctor run NSC is the ultimate American Government expression of the Dunning - Kruger Effect.


17/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E…
We have people running the US Russo-Ukrainian War security policy at the NSC that have absolute confidence in bad intelligence product, while knowing absolutely nothing.

And who are too lazy to do a flipping internet search on Russian refineries chemical feedstocks.

18/18 End
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More from @TrentTelenko

Feb 19
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine was in fact spent inside the USA to replace vastly overpriced by the Biden Adm. National Guard & Air Guard surplus weapons.

Spending aid money buying Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace NG surplus Humvees

Infowar🧵
1/
...was just one of the aid grifts @JakeSullivan46 NSC crew played to pretend they were helping Ukraine while not offending Russia & buying US Defense contractor kit.

Pres. Trump is literally parroting Russian reflexive control scripts from Biden Adm.

2/
This should not be a surprise as I've pounded on the fact for 2 years that Russia has mapped & fed to each specific US tribal & professional demographic the data to eat up messages/memes Russia wants those groups to believe.

Calling Ukraine's...

3/
Read 7 tweets
Feb 9
This @sambendett thread here makes Russia seem like a poor kid looking through a candy store window at the "candy" of Ukrainian ground resupply drones.

1/
We still don't see D-rings on Russian UGV's to hold down pallets lifted by all terrain forklifts and telehandlers.

[Hey, @TimothyDooner! Rate this strap work⬇️]

2/
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I mean, seriously, Russia is now introducing a camel transport corps because the Russian startups and big defense contractors cannot produce supply UGV's at scale to deliver potable water to front line troops.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Feb 9
This 🧵by @GrandpaRoy2 demonstrating the increasing battlefield obsolescence of tube artillery in the face of fiber optic fiber guided FPV drones is a useful jumping off point the following:

66% of RuAF AFV's & equipment killed in Jan 2025 were victims of drones

Drone tech🧵
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Back in November 2024 I did a long thread on how drones were an "effectiveness revolution" on the battlefield and we would see drones displacing other battlefield weapons because of it.

2/
Drones are a cost effectiveness revolution compared to conventional weapons.

3/ Image
Read 12 tweets
Feb 7
It appears the collapse of Russian Army motor transport is nearly complete and hippo train (mules & horses) are being pulled out of the 19th century for the "2nd strongest Army in the world."

This won't end well for Russia.

A Mule Logistics🧵
1/
Being a WW2 historian of electronic warfare and logistics has it's advantages when it comes to looking up US Army standard operating procedures for horse & mule logistics.

See #1 thru #9 below and consider if a Mobik from a Russian city could do them.

2/ Image
Russian Mobiks have a hard enough time maintaining trucks, cars and tractors. How do you think they will care for a mule?

Again, from the US Army Wagoner S.O.P.:

"ROUTINE DUTIES OF THE WAGONER
It is a good plan to have a fixed time for every routine duty, as then there will be no chance of over looking anything. Certain duties should be attended to daily and others weekly. The following is suggested as a daily program to be followed:

3/
Read 16 tweets
Feb 5
The NTSB - via Epoch Times - is reporting the UH-60 and Commuter jet altimeters were showing different altitudes.

"Officials said the control tower recorded the Black Hawk helicopter flying at an altitude of 200 feet at the time of the collision,

1/5
theepochtimes.com/us/ntsb-confli…
...in line with its maximum allowed altitude for its flight path.

However, data from the passenger jet’s flight recorder show the collision occurred at an altitude of about 325 feet, plus or minus 25 feet.

2/5
“That’s what our job is, to figure that out,” NTSB member J. Todd Inman said during an evening news conference on Feb. 1.

Investigators hope to reconcile the altitude differences with data from the helicopter’s black box, ...

3/5
Read 6 tweets
Feb 5
I asked Grok a series of questions about what seemed like a pattern of reduced or suppressed news about Russian Glide bomb strikes.

This is what Grok told me in my last question:
x.com/i/grok/share/W…
This is the 1st half of the answer:

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This is the 2nd half.

BLUF: There is more evidence of reduced Russian glide bomb strikes due to Ukrainian OWA drone strikes on Russian depots, but the huge loss rate of Russian ISR drones may also be playing a part.

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Read 4 tweets

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