Russian gasoline production the week of 1st-7th of April declined again to 754 400 tons and diesel production dropped further than before to 1 585 100 tons. In 2023 during the week of 3rd-9th of April gasoline production was 833 200 tons and diesel production was 1 769 000 tons.

Gasoline prices for Ai-92 rose slightly from 50,62 rubles to 50,67 rubles per liter. For Ai-95 also rose slightly from 55,30 rubles to 55,41 rubles and for Ai-98 prices rose from 68,70 rubles to 68,91 rubles.

Ru business news 01/Apr/2024 part 2:
Ru pharmacies have run out of the oncology medication uromitexane. In 2023 6 900 packages were importer in Ru compared to 56 700 in 2022 and 46 300 in 2021. The generic available in Russia called mesna-lens is also out.
kommersant.ru/doc/6608891 Russia's mobile telecom Tele2 will do a rebranding by the end of 2024 as its license to use the Swedish Tele2 brand expires on December 31st 2024.

kommersant.ru/doc/6609129

We have data on the Ru weekly consumption of gasoline for March, it rose by 13 000 tons per day in March to 794 000 tons a week and currently Ru oil firms are supplying more to the market than they are producing with 13-19 of Mar supply of 779 400 tons.

kommersant.ru/doc/6596233 The Russian oil companies are covering the deficit via an accumulated pool of 1,9 million tons of gasoline as of March 22nd. However a smaller part of that is high octane gasoline due its production being impacted for a while now.

A thread on how Russian aircraft manufacturers are doing when it comes to staffing. It's far from the image being cultivated that everything is running smoothly. Many of these entities shed thousands of workers prior to 2022. Salaries are quite low with lots of offers < 50 000. Tupolev - Kazan
Short 3000 workers to carry out its assigned projects based on the CEO giving an interview in late February 2024.
36 different open positiosn starting from 25 000 roubles

kazan.hh.ru/employer/160690
116.ru/text/transport…

Russian regions with utilities stoppages January 22-28
Yes there's a utilities collapse. Disclaimer:
I have not added sewage break downs if they don't impact drinking water nor snow clearing so poor companies got fined nor municipal transportation breakdowns.
Also this is just a baseline as I am still building my database of local news outlets.

I will do a breakdown of the recent collapse in Russia's winter coping measures and why it happened in 2024 for those who don't follow Russian news. There's a combination of reasons which led to this event. For starters Russian heating utilities often do not do preventative maintenance to replace pipes. That's due to the ownership or management of central heating companies be it private or state owned is a cushy job that you may not keep for a while.

Rostekh has announced a plan to increase bulletproof vests production at its Tula factor Oktava by an order of magnitude, until recently it was producing 2000 units per quarter. 2000 PER QUARTER in 2023.
kommersant.ru/doc/6379545 Revenue of Russian companies was halved for the first half of 2023, yet their profit grew by 31% for the period. Since this is dominated by state companies there likely has been a clamp down on corruption to some extent
kommersant.ru/doc/6379166

Here's what the data I gathered on the more recently missing Russian soldiers says about their age and composition, they're older, they're more likely to be ex-convicts and mobilised men and the intake of young volunteers is remarkably low:



There's a myth going around that there's a steady intake in contractees, but the data doesn't support it. The numbers Medvedev talks about appear to be fictional and training is next to non-existant given the time from signing to being in combat.

Did a tally of the posts where relatives are searching for Russian soldiers who've gone missing on telegram. These posts provide more info than just KIA notices. Will run them through Power BI when I have some more time but here's what's immediately interesting. Units that were thrown in Bakhmut in general or Klesheevka/ Andreevka in particular:

The world's second largest oil producer had to ban gasoline and diesel exports because of domestic shortage.
And everyone saw it coming from a mile away :
kommersant.ru/doc/6162047 But we got to a ban on exports likely because the issue reached Patrushev junior who escalated to Patrushev senior, who has ready access to Putin which forced the Presidential administration to intervene in the least delicate manner possible.
kommersant.ru/doc/6210089

I had anxiety before the offensive regarding Ukraine's chances, I could have missed something or overestimated something else. But I wanted to go through the process of reviewing what we know about the state of the Russian troops and what they could accomplish. Ru troops we have seen are unable to hold ground under even moderately concentrated shelling. Some units will withstand that but the bulk that's formed recently seem unable to do so. We're also aware that portions of the front are held by nearly immobile units of mobilized men.

Because I have seen the news of the death of the chief financial officer of the Russian Western Military district I want to say something regarding such deaths.
fontanka.ru/2023/02/16/720… Some of the people in Russia jumping out of windows are jumping out of windows because they're about to be caught red handed, not because they've been caught. The state is perfectly capable of killing them in SIZO or torturing them afterwards in SHIZO.

I don't think the loss of Kherson west of the Dnipro river would be as beneficial to Russia as imagined in terms of shortening the front-line.

https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1580573402426769408

First, as military historians like to point out , the line is shorter for both sides.
Second, sometimes the built up areas are important to hold for the sake of their built up characteristics. The bigger the town, the more suitable the housing is for quartering troops.

1/ Since 2013, the Russian military has had to deal with lower quality of forces, coupled with lack of financial ability to properly train its ground forces and other similar troops to a degree (naval infantry, VDV), as opposed to ignoring the importance of training. 2/I don't think the Russian army threw out the books or dismissed training practices, it just got squeezed by new tasks to the point it could barely field its diminished manpower, say nothing about actually training its official strength properly.

I will file this under "When you know so little about the Russian economy you boost an account that suggest the regular recalculation of the subsistence minimum under federal law 134 is a new one time salary increase" The idea behind the 1997 law is to give a tool to recalculate the subsistence minimum and adjust min. wages & pensions accordingly. Rostat has quarterly data but federal decrees on the subject aren't as frequent and the extra funds for local gov. to cover this are often lacking.

Hare's a thread on how I found out that Bulgaria is denying in practice medical aid to people with rare diseases fleeing the conflict in Ukraine and repressions Russia. Be warned, I am not a happy bunny about this. First off Bulgaria isn't ready 55 days into the conflict to issue all the cards for refugee status to Ukrainians partially because the process only started by late March.
dw.com/bg/55-800-%D1%…

My two cents on the "Moskva". While it was the flagship of the VMF's Black Sea fleet and it won awards it was in a pitiful state. Broader modernisation was cancelled in 2015 and what was done was mostly servicing and extension of power plant's life.
vpk.name/news/132344_mo… By 2019-2020 it was deemed uneconomical to even attempt it. It had years left in it. I believe it was seen that by the mid 2020s it would need 3 years in servicing to extend the life by another 5 years.

vpk-news.ru/news/55367

Two things, the production was never technically stopped but reduced to limited numbers and the factory cut a large chunk of the guys working on the plane. I don't know how you can churn out 20 planes in 2 years honestly.

https://twitter.com/scramble_nl/status/1513411465595789312

Also one of the issues I have with the attempts to exonerate Sedyukov as a victim of the defence industry is that he's the person cutting the workers of KAZ, last cut was a year ago or so with a proposed reduction of 800 people.
business-gazeta.ru/article/484982

1) This is a thread on the state of Russian infantry squads and platoons in the ground forces and naval infantry and VDV and how these rank comparatively. The VDV have been addressed and considered light infantry but the data suggests they are on the heavier side. 2) Let’s start with recent deliveries for comparison, 155th Naval Infantry Brigade re-equipped a battalion with 40 BMP-3Fs. Even if the support elements utilize other vehicle types, it is relatively on the lighter side as an amphibious assault battalion.
function.mil.ru/news_page/coun…

1) I am going to push back on the idea that what we see is that the Russian Armed Forces are merely having severe supply and readiness issues and that we should consider it to be overall modern.

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1501562863357472774

2)Here's the first problem, SEAD. It's failing to suppress UA air defences, but that's more a feature of procurement planning rather than a bug. The VKS lacks a significant number of modern ELINT platforms.

Here's what I think of the next step of this insane debacle. It seems we have indication that there are attempts to mobilize. There are however problems for the Ru MoD when it comes to mobilization. It's done via the Russian railway and it's length is measured in weeks or months. Moreover despite the existence of vast stocks of AFVs on paper, their overall readiness for use is dubious, we already saw the use of 30+ year old trucks and it's going to get worse. Instances of cannibalization of stores for parts that are then sold as new has been documented.