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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Kamil Galeev
@kamilkazani
Founder @rhodusinc
Fellakommando Südost 🇩🇪🇪🇺🇺🇦 Profile picture @littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture otaria123 Profile picture 🇺🇦🇺🇲☕️Coffee&Robots🤖🌊🇺🇦🇺🇲 Profile picture Michael Hood Profile picture 1355 subscribed
May 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you want to imagine Russia, imagine a depressive, depopulating town. Now on the outskirts of a town, there is an outrageously over-equipped, overfunded strategic enterprise that has literally everything money can buy in the world. It feels like a spaceship from another planet Strategic industry is extremely generously equipped. Western companies look scoundrels in comparison. That’s why I am so sceptical about the whole “corruption” narrative. Not that it’s wrong. It’s just that it is the perspective of a little, envious bitch.
Apr 29 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
We have successfully documented the entire Russian missiles industry, mapping 28 of its key enterprises. Read our first OSINT sample focusing on the Votkinsk Plant, a major producer of intercontinental ballistic missiles. How does it make weaponry?


Image The strategic missiles industry appears to be highly secretive and impenetrable to the observers. And yet, it is perfectly OSINTable, based on the publicly available sources. This investigation sample illustrates our approach and methodology (31 p.)

assets-global.website-files.com/65ca3387040186…
Image
Mar 22 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
In August 1999, President Yeltsin appointed his FSB Chief Putin as the new Prime Minister. Same day, he named him as the official successor. Yet, there was a problem. To become a president, Putin had to go through elections which he could not win.

He was completely obscure.Image Today, Putin is the top rank global celebrity. But in August 1999, nobody knew him. He was just an obscure official of Yeltsin's administration, made a PM by the arbitrary will of the sovereign. This noname clerk had like 2-3% of popular support

Soon, he was to face elections Image
Mar 17 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
In Russia, the supreme power has never ever changed as a result of elections. That simply never happened in history. Now that is because Russia is a (non hereditary) monarchy. Consequently, it doesn't have any elections. It has only acclamations of a sitting rulerImage Obviously, there has been no elections of Putin in any meaningful sense. There have been only acclamations. And that is normal. His predecessor was successfully acclaimed with an approval rate of about 6%. Once you got the power, you will get your acclamation one way or another
Mar 16 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
My team has documented the entire Russian missile manufacturing base. That is 28 key ballistic, cruise, hypersonic and air defence missile producing plants associated with four corporations of Roscosmos, Almaz-Antey, Tactical Missiles and Rostec

The link is in the first comment Image Our report How Does Russia Make Missiles? is already available for download



By the next weekend, we will be publishing the first OSINT sample, illustrating our methodology & approach. The rest of our materials will be made available laterrhodus.comImage
Feb 25 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
No one gets famous by accident. If Alexey @Navalny rose as the unalternative leader of Russian opposition, recognised as such both in Moscow and in DC, this indicates he had something that others lacked. Today we will discuss what it was and why it did not suffice 🧵Image Let's start with the public image. What was so special about the (mature) @navalny is that his public image represented normality. And by normality I mean first and foremost the American, Hollywood normality

Look at this photo. He represents himself as American politicians doImage
Feb 19 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Should Putin just suddenly die, @MedvedevRussiaE is the most likely compromise candidate for the supreme political power. He is the inaugurated President for God's sake. Which means, the anointed King.Image "Not a real king", "Figurehead", "Nobody takes him seriously" is just intangible verbalism. Nothing of that matters. What matters is that he is the inaugurated President, consecrated by God. Opinions are subjective, anointment is objective

It is the factImage
Feb 18 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
On Friday, @navalny died (most probably killed) in prison. This is a good time to discuss the prospects of Russian opposition and the future transition of political power, once Putin is gone. This is also a good occasion to debunk some pervasive myths on the mechanics of power🧵 Image First, getting rid of @navalny was probably a correct decision on behalf of Kremlin. Execution of this murder may have been suboptimal (unprofessional, etc.). But the very idea to eliminate him was reasonable and makes total sense. There is nothing crazy or irrational about it
Feb 9 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
There is one subtle detail in Putin's narrative, that may be difficult for a foreigner to detect or grasp. There is nothing "autistic" or "obsessive" about it. There is nothing even personal.

95% of it was a standard Russian History textbook for 13-15 years oldImage For a Westerner, Putin's narrative may sound like a bizarre, autistic rant, signifying some deep & obsessive interest in history. For a Russian, it's not. This is just a normal history textbook for the junior high school

That is what absolutely everyone has learnt as a teen
Feb 4 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
By the late 20th c. Israel won. It vanquished and conquered. Emotions aside, this is exactly what happened. As the victor, Israel could choose between two workable options for what to do with its victory:

1) One state solution
2) Two states solution

It chose neither One state solution. Annex the conquered land & give citizenship to the conquered.

Pro: Claim the entire territory from the river to the sea
Contra: You will not be the Jewish state anymore. To integrate the conquered, you would need to rethink and reinvent your own identity
Jan 29 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Not quite. The key thing understand about the UK is that it is a low capability & high capacity country. It produces very cool and often unique stuff. It may be even monopolist in some very important high end sectors. It is just that these sectors tend to be quantitatively smallImage Consider the following. The UK is an extremely important producer of the higher end measurement systems, including for the Russian military industry. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the UK is a monopolist producer

But it is a monopolist in a small nicheImage
Jan 28 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
IF Russia has been under the unprecedentedly wide sanctions for almost two years

BUT It has increased its output of missiles

THEN The sanctions have been targeted wrong all along

Now that is because the policy makers have limited understanding of how the war economy works The astonishing inefficiency in undermining the Russian military production makes more sense, considering that the sanctions have not been based on any serious understanding of the Russian military manufacturing base, of its rationales and tradeoffs, bottlenecks and chokepoints
Jan 23 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Do you realise that the Moscow Kremlin is the largest Italian fortress in the world? Far surpassing anything you can find in Italy, Europe or elsewhere? That its construction in the late 15th c. required around 200-250 million bricks, making it a project of Albert Kahnish scale?
Image Do you also realise that Moscow Kremlin is only *one* of the fortresses Italians built in these god forsaken lands in around 1500? There were more, see the Kolomna Kremlin for example. Don't look at the architecture, think about the insane quantity of bricks it took to build it Image
Jan 14 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. The old diverse, fuzzy & heterogenous world of realms, lordships and city states does not translate into the homogenous nation states very well

2. That is why nation states resort to ethnic cleanings of wrong population, destruction of wrong cultural heritage etc so often 3. As fuzzy ethnic reality of the past does not really translate into the nation state world, so don’t the old “fuzzy” borders

4. Most national borders are very arbitrary. As they don’t reflect reality of the past (they can’t), there is always a temptation to renegotiate them
Jan 9 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Silly questions are often the best
Image Were the US to develop slower & earlier (few centuries before the railway), we might have seen way more population, money & culture concentrated along Mississippi. First you gain "fat", due to easier communications and then it's largely path dependency

It would be Rhine Image
Dec 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Russia is forging almost all of its gun barrels (tanks/artillery) on the GFM Steyr (Austria 🇦🇹 ) machines imported in the late Soviet + Putin's era. This specific machine you see in the Medvedev's video was launched on Motovilikha Plants back in 1976

Still working today
Image The thing with the forging-pressing equipment is that it tends to be:

a) physically durable
b) less affected by transition to computer control

This screw press working at the Votkinsk Plant (major ICBM/SLBM producer) was produced in 1915. Works fine Image
Dec 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Toy countries make stuff to make stuff. As this market is small, it is almost invisible in the aggregated data. Yet, it is absolutely bottleneckish

Left: Watervliet Arsenal, NY 🇺🇸
Right: Motovilikha Plants, Perm 🇷🇺

Both use modifications of the same Austrian 🇦🇹 GFM machine


Image
Image Once again, toy countries don't make much stuff

But if you look at the stuff to make stuff, they role is huuuuugely disproportionate to their size and population
Dec 8, 2023 • 22 tweets • 8 min read
Contrary to the popular view, significant superiority in the quantity of weaponry does translate into the military victory. The military output delta is a great predictor of whether you win or not, and the longer a war lasts, the better it works

You outproduce -> You win
One major Russian advantage is the sheer quantity of air defence missiles. Countering the enemy airforce & projectiles, air defence systems cover the Russian ground forces from every possible aerial threat. They also allow Russian airforce to bomb Ukrainians without distractions
Dec 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Backed by the manufacturing power of Europe, Putin may very well win this war. The Russian machining park consists of Western (mostly EU 🇪🇺) tools imported in 2003-2023. With spare parts flow & tech support uninterrupted, Russia gonna steamroll over Ukraine as planned 🇺🇦

🇷🇺🚀💪
Image Ballistic missile producers continue to receive all the necessary supplies and maintenance

(You may go through this thread to get a first impression of how the Russian military manufacturing base looks like, on example of Votkinsk Plant)

Dec 2, 2023 • 24 tweets • 7 min read
1. Russia makes more weaponry than its enemies. If nothing is done about its military production, Russia will win this war

2. Establishing the new political rule:

Always bet against the US allies

3. With the absolutely destructive effect on the US policy and standing in Asia 4. The Russian victory in Ukraine will radically devalue the worth of the US alliance in the eyes of the world

5. Yes, America lost asymmetric wars before. But this is the first time, it will be defeated in the symmetric warfare

6. Its standing will be adjusted accordingly
Nov 14, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
1. Russian-Ukrainian war is mostly an artillery war

2. Russian artillery production fully relies upon a few dozen GFM Steyr (Austria) radial forging machines

3. Which rely upon the continuous supply of expendables from the original producer

It is *the* bottleneck. Target it The funny thing with the GFM Steyr is that it is not even a large business. In 2021, its revenue was estimated at only 32,5 million euros. In 2022, it rose to 69,8 million (for obvious reasons). Yet, the Russian artillery industry is critically dependent upon this single company