Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 10 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Since the Russian NWF has run out of stored Western hard currency.

This means that any hard currency Russia uses for its war effort, such as on Chinese high tech electronics for missiles, has to come from their sales of oil and natural gas.

This has deadly implications.
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These implications are issues about sharing with the gangster oligarchs forming Putin's regime, as Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary revolt underlined.

Russia's gangster oligarchs use violence to settle..."sharing disputes."

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The Russo-Ukrainian War is now very bad for the gangster oligarchs businesses as it involved sharing oil income where a Russian State Budget was planned for the _PROFITS_ from $70 a barrel oil with costs at $35-$40 a barrel.

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Russia's OIL PROFIT INCOME are only 57% of planned levels at $55 a barrel vice $70

Putin's involuntary retirement over "sharing disputes" with the gangster oligarchs, likely with a 9mm resignation notice, is now on the horizon.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Apr 9
Drones are truly the "King of Battle" in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The reality of drones as bona fide persistent overhead PGMs has not sunken in yet for Senior Western military ground force leaders.

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In the skies over Afghanistan, air power migrated to persistent killbox interdiction model with B-1 and B-52 as orbiting platforms to get engagement cycle times under 5 minutes for laser & GPS guided bombs.

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Drones in Ukraine are producing similar persistent killbox interdiction effects, but are a tier down the firepower food chain, three tiers down in cost and five in terms of retail granularity, AKA hunting individual soldiers as targets.

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Read 6 tweets
Apr 9
This harsh 'over leveraged reality' is reflected in the US defense industrial base consolidation in the contractor & gov't sectors.

The reality of the simultaneous transition from four level to two level maintenance was the systematic deskilling of US military maintainers...

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...and logisticians required to operate a global supply chain of military equipment.

This shift was a geographic and technological artifact of the Post-Cold War world where DHL/FedEx/UPS operated wide body cargo jets...

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...from the USA & Europe allowing same-day and next day shipping with electronic inventory systems tracking weapons systems modules.

As long as there were enough modules/sub-systems for "plug & play" to cover usage, 2-level maintenance works.

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Read 11 tweets
Apr 9
The Russian state budget (per @Prune602 Blue Sky posts) was built around crude oil prices at $70 a barrel.

Today's crude oil trading price is $55 a barrel.

Russia is getting 78.6% of the foreign exchange it budgeted for and the NWF is tapped out of Western foreign currency.

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Russian NWF as of April 2025:

"The liquid portion of the Russian National Welfare Fund holds:

👉 164.3876 Billion Yuan (+0.1017  billion)
👉 168.2714 tons of gold (-6.3553 tons)
👉 1.6716 Billion Rubles (+0.422 billion)

And that’s it."

(Totals for March via @Prune602 )

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There are harsh economic reasons Russian missiles and drones are all now heavily favor Chinese sourced commercial off the shelf electronics.

The effects of Russian wartime disinvestment in industrial/transportation infrastructure is on top of this.

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Read 4 tweets
Apr 8
No⬇️

>>are we advancing fast enough?

US Army would have to shut down and merge part or all of the Field Artillery, Air Defense, Aviation, Military Intelligence and Signals branches into a new drone branch to organizationally adapt to drones.

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Any role a small drone can do, a drone will do, because it is cheaper with a large commercial industry supporting it.

Artillery and missiles are military only technology requiring a large and ongoing investment that only wars and mobilization for wars can fund.

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Missiles are built on the boost-glide model that aims for speed over all things.

Drones are persistently and continuously powered as well as relatively slow.  So they can react to last minute target maneuvers and pursue into cover. 

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Read 6 tweets
Apr 6
Russian railway repair trains derailing was one of the major phase change events I've been looking for in the story of the collapse via the capital rundown of the Russian railways engines & rolling stock.

Russian Rail system collapse🧵
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H/T @Prune602
kommersant.ru/doc/7637861Image
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In particular, the downstream from the cut off of Western cassette rail bearings that last ~2 million km % (5.25 years of normal service) in April 2022 from Russian engines and rolling stock should be showing up in increased derailments.

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What I posted Aug 7, 2024 still holds.

The Russian rail system collapse sequence is as follows:

1st trains on remote Russian rail lines derail.

2nd more Russian trains on lines closer to Moscow derail.
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Read 12 tweets
Apr 5
Ukraine has fielded a new counter to Russian radio jamming proof fiber optic guided (FOG) drones.

After a Russian FOG FPV drone impacts, the Ukrainians are attaching a device to light up the fiber optic thread
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...to provide a lighted 'bread crumb' trail to the Russian drone operators.

Ukrainian drones then back track the lit-up thread to kill the operators.

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The kicker is that, compared to the old US FOG-M missile technology of the 1980's and 1990's, Russian 2025 era FOG-drone launchers are immobile.

This is because the Ukrainian "Truck denial zone" with radio link FPV drones is now 10 km and growing.
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Read 9 tweets

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