Inside Ukraine's Refinery Bombings and the Hidden Impact on U.S. Politics



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2024 has been the year of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. However, the White House is firmly against the policy, believing that Ukrainian drones would be better aimed at Russian weapons manufacturing facilities and concerned about European political stability. Critics argue that the Biden administration is worried about higher gas prices on the eve of a presidential election. This video examines the controversy around the subject and whether Ukraine and the White House may have aligned incentives on this front.

0:00 Ukraine’s Evolving Refinery Attacks
0:35 Overview of the Refinery Campaign and U.S. Objections
6:11 Why the White House Opposes the Refinery Strikes
9:52 Biden’s Electoral Incentives
16:07 Ukraine’s Deeper Dilemma

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Media licensed under CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/):

By Secretary of Defense:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/secdef/albums/72177720316100062/

Media licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/):

By Kremlin.ru:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51128
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60490
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61732
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62275
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71709
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73585
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73732
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73852
http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73933

source

38 thoughts on “Inside Ukraine's Refinery Bombings and the Hidden Impact on U.S. Politics”

  1. I can't help asking William, where does the nearly 6 trillion dollars of additional liquidity added to the US money supply over 6 or eight years just past fit into this calculus? Quantitative easing, Covid payments to everybody, massive omnibus spending bills, etc. etc. Seems inflationary at first glance.

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  2. When other nations refineries go down .. US refineries thrive we could sell refined petroleum to those very customers that are buying Russian ones. Build new ones in America that handle shale oil.

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  3. Inflation, energy prices, the border, Biden's disastrous rout from Afghanistan, and the world burning down. But somehow no one wants to talk about those four years of peace before 2020.

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  4. @william spaniel, what you omitted was i believe last fall 2023 the russians passed a law banning exports of diesel and gasoline out of russia. reason being russian petroleum companies make more selling it outside russia than selling it inside russia because of the subsidies they no longer get from selling it domestically. so hitting russian refineries has no impact on international crude prices rising. it only affects russian domestic economy.

    reason being the russian government use to pay the russian petroleum companies subsidies to sell gasoline and diesel at artificially lower prices. with the war, russian budget was stretched so the companies no longer got the subsidies so they started selling it outside of russia rather than sell at loss. so it cause fuel prices to rise in russia last september, so russia passed a law banning export of diesel and gasoline and forced the companies to sell to russian domestic market at low price points.

    so hitting russian refineries only affects the supply inside russia now.

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  5. The physical defence structure that Russia has developed across and deep into the occupied territories in Ukraine , is impassable.

    An attempt to pass in peace time would be arduous , tedium and deadly. For as long as Russia can hold their defence with any form of troop presence it will be impossible to break through the defence to make any significant advancement without a loss of life and equipment so great that they have nothing left.

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  6. I'm in Belgium. All of my family is in the U.S. Your claim, from every example I have available to me in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and France, that inflation has hit Europe harder than the U.S. is categorically false.

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  7. No offence, U.S, but if you are not going to commit to the fight, don't try to dictate it. Would you stand for a foreign party annexing parts of the U.S and then Canada stepping in to tell the U.S not to retaliate? Go eff right off.

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  8. By damaging refineries, more crude needs to be exported and that should lower world prices of crude and resulting refined products. Russia would want to avoid crude production cuts because once a well is shut down or slowed down, it is hard to get the flow stated again.

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  9. Putting Trump in the White House is a terrifying possibility. But high fuel costs will do it. That is why the Strategic Oil Reserves are 150 million barrels below the historical levels of 600 million. Resource scarcity isn't going to get better and Republicans aren't going to fix it.

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  10. I live in Norway and I did some math. The other day gas was $8.99 a gallon and diesel was $8.41 a gallon. I wouldn't mind if the prices didn't go up any more. There's no public transport where I live and nowhere to charge an EV.

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  11. You say inflation is down to 2% ? Prices that existed for groceries and fuel for the 8% inflation of 2022 haven't lessened . Those cost of living prices are still high. Mortgage rates are still near 7%. Are you using the 2022 8% inflation as a base to say that from there inflation is only up 2% ? Biden is the author of all this mess.

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  12. As much as I love watching his analysis, this one, however, unfortunately missed the mark for me. There was a lack of differentiation between hitting oil production capacities and oil refining capacities. And the fact that Ukraine is only hitting the refining, leaves the production unchanged, which, in turn means that ruzzia will have nothing to do in terms of choice but to focus on selling more oil itself (making it cheaper in the process due to supply/demand) rather than expensive oil products such as high octane gasoline. Hence, we didn’t see any oil price spikes, only relative stability, and recently, even a slight decrease. There’s only so much storage capacity that ruzzia has to store their oil until the prices rise, and even if it did – would it want to stop selling altogether until the price increases? That would leave them with no revenue at all
    Meaning that they’re selling as much as they can, hence the confusion in this video, and the clear fact that prices are trending down, not up

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  13. Good call regarding Wilkes-Barre. I live in upstate NY and often drive past Wilkes-Barre on my way to visit my father in Lebanon county PA. For years I assumed it was pronounced "Wilkes Bar". My father's wife is a local and calls it "Wilkes-Barry". I was quite surprised!

    Reply

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