voight

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In Kiev, they were convinced that Russian troops were forming an offensive group in the Kupyansk direction, and so the VSU began to wait there for a frontal assault. However, as a result, the Russian Army did not undertake anything of the kind in this area. Instead, the Ukrainian units were gradually ground down by the Russian army in positional battles, while the Kupyansk group of the VSU had to be replenished with whatever troops were left.

Now Ukrainian sources are complaining that as a consequence, a combination of lines has formed in the sinkhole areas (that’s the same Krakhmalnoye and Tabayevka). Into these lines the VSU has herded separate battalions from different units, with the result that unified management and command have been lost, and the performance quality of the troops has left much to be desired.

As a result, the VSU is considering the possibility of transferring the remnants of those forces which participated in the failed ‘counteroffensive”’ to Kupyansk from the southern direction. Before that, they had been sent in great haste sent to Avdeyevka.

But this is already a systemic problem for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since there is trouble in the southern sector. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have gradually regained some of the positions which were left during the so-called counteroffensive, and these forces continue to move forward. We are even talking about possible threats to Orekhov, a rearguard city for the VSU, from which all the communications and command of the ‘counteroffensive’ had been carried out.

Behind the defensive fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an open field for tens of kilometres opens up on a whole group of sites. Kiev’s military reserves are gradually being squandered, and there is practically no human materiel left to plug the holes. Related to these problems there are the panic campaigns in Kiev about total mobilization.

There is another problem: the attrition of officers. Western military personnel cannot replace this crucial resource — they can only be used to service technically complicated weapons systems such as air defence or long-range artillery. Along the line of contact, foreign officers are more likely to interfere due to their ignorance of the language and misunderstanding of the mentality of the [Ukrainian] subordinates.

There are other factors weakening the Ukrainian defence, but they are not directly related to military operations. For example, the Western sponsors are really concerned about the corruption of the Ukrainian leadership. The inspections and audits which are taking place in Kiev on this issue right now are preventing Ukraine from building new defensive lines swiftly enough.

Another non-military factor: political discord among the various factions of the Ukrainian authorities. The premonition of defeat is triggering a drop in morale, not only in the troops, but also in the elites.

All this in general creates a strategic opportunity for Russia to seriously change the situation on the line of contact.

Partial tactical successes must at some point turn into a major breakthrough in the enemy’s defence. Moreover, we are talking about such a breakthrough that will not stop in just two or three days at the next defensive line, but will lead inevitably, precisely, to the collapse of the front. This is exactly what the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces are now aimed at, probing for the weaknesses in Ukrainian defensive positions.

The liberation of Tabayevka is an example of just such an approach. Sooner or later, the VSU will not have time to create a new defensive line behind a particular settlement. And then we will see how the special operation will break the current positional deadlock.

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When the General Staff have been discussing with President Vladimir Putin the timing of the Russian offensive to force the Kiev regime into capitulation, it has been agreed, understood, and repeated that the strategic reserves of the Ukrainian forces should be destroyed first, together with the supply lines for the weapons and ammunition crossing the border from the US and the NATO allies.

This process, they also agreed, should take as long as required with least casualties on the Russian side, as determined by military intelligence. Also agreed and pre-conditional, there should be no repeat of the political intelligence failures of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) which precipitated the failed special forces operation known as the Battle of Antonov (Hostomel) Airport from February 24 to April 2, 2022.

Taking account of the mistakes made then by the SVR director, Sergei Naryshkin, and the subsequent mistakes of military officers around Yevgeny Prigozhin, the General Staff has also accepted that their tactical operations must run least risk of Russian casualties through March 17, the final day of the presidential election.

Reinforcing these preconditions for the timing of the Russian offensive, General Winter and General Patience have joined the Stavka meetings.

This week military sources believe there has been a turning point – on the Ukrainian battlefield, and on the Russian clock.

The daily Defense Ministry briefing and bulletin from Moscow reported last Thursday, before the Friday weekly summary, that the Ukrainian KIA (killed in action) for the previous twenty-four hours totaled 795, with the ratio of offensive tactics to defence, 3 to 3. On Monday, the KIA total was 680, the ratio 4 to 3. On Tuesday, KIA came to 885, the ratio 5 to 1. The casualty rate is unusually high; the shift to offence is recognizably new, if not announced.

The “Stavka Project”, a military briefing which is broadcast by Vladimir Soloviev, confirms the positional breakthroughs this week on several of the fronts or “directions”, as the Defense Ministry calls them, along the Donbass line; click to watch (in Russian).

In Boris Rozhin’s summary of the Defense Ministry briefing materials, published before dawn on Wednesday morning, the leading Russian military blogger (Colonel Cassad) identifies “small advances”, “slight movements”, some positional “successes”, other positional “counter-fighting”, and “no significant progress yet”. The adverb is military talk for timing.

According to a military source outside Russia, “the Russian breakthrough is beginning to happen now. It’s being coordinated with strikes and raids along the northern border. The commitment of the ‘crack’ Ukrainian brigades at the expense of other sectors shows how desperate [General Valery] Zaluzhny is to plug the holes. He knows that the target is the isolation of Kharkov, the establishment of a demilitarized ‘buffer zone’, as well as the development of a situation whereby all Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are threatened with being cut off… and he’s quickly running out of ammunition, not to mention cannon fodder.”

“By the end of the winter,” the source has added overnight, “the Ukrainians will barely be able to move along the roads they use to feed the front due to the Russian drone, missile, conventional air, and artillery strikes. Once they can no longer plug the gaps with mechanized units acting as fire-fighting brigades, it’s just a matter of time before the big breakthroughs and encirclements begin. At the current burn rate of Ukrainian forces, I imagine we’ll start seeing Russian tanks with fuel tanks fitted for extended range appearing and Russian airborne troops making air assaults in the Ukrainian rear within weeks.”

In yesterday’s edition of the Moscow security analysis platform Vzglyad, Yevgeny Krutikov, a leading Russian military analyst with GRU service himself and GRU sources for his reporting since, published a report entitled “What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?” “Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region,” Krutikov concluded, “threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.” A verbatim English translation of this piece follows.

Source: [https://vz.ru/](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131115403/https://vz.ru/society/2024/1/29/1250838.html)

January 29, 2024 – 19:10.

What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?
By Yevgeny Krutikov

“The settlement of Tabayevka in the Kharkov region has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry says. We are not just facing the capture of a village: Russian troops are now hacking into the contact lines, which have not budged for a year. Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region, threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.

First, Krakhmalnoye, then Tabayevka – Russian troops have advanced in the Svatovo direction (Kharkov region), pushing the enemy to a new line of defence (to the village of Peschanoye). Slightly to the north, already close to Kupyansk, the enemy’s positions are also gradually moving to the west and southwest.

Along the way, forests are being cleared, which the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] is turning into fortified areas, even giving them names (“Alligator” and “Woodpecker”). The enemy is losing the old lines of trenches, the first line of contact has been destroyed. Something similar is happening directly near Kupyansk, but there the advanced fortified lines in Sinkovka are being held still by the VSU, though the positions on the flanks have gradually begun to sink.

At first glance, we are looking at isolated episodes of positional warfare, since the big, iconic and recognizable geographical names do not appear in the information releases. But this is not quite true.

Firstly, even in this scenario as published so far, strategic threats arise for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example, in the possible drive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to the Oskol River which has far-reaching prospects. Notwithstanding, it is still impossible to predict when this will become possible in practice.

Secondly, the enemy has been demonstrating a systemic defence crisis in the Kupyansk direction during the past week. The defence of Kupyansk has been under construction by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the spring of last year, when the decision was made in Kiev on a ‘counteroffensive’ in the southern direction. New brigades with western armoured vehicles were sent to the southern section of the contact line, and Kupyansk and the area around it were designated for defence with the rest of their forces.

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The government has called on industry to create technological standards for more than 30 important automotive semiconductors by 2025 and more than 70 types by 2030, according to guidelines issued this month by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The guidelines, which were issued to trade groups on Jan. 8, seek to ensure safety and reliability by providing for performance tests of semiconductors used in finished vehicles and core systems.

An auto industry source said the government "will probably use the standard-setting process to instruct automakers to use domestically made semiconductors."

China aims to build a a homegrown semiconductor supply chain that is safe from the threat of U.S. sanctions. Semiconductors are a weak link in China's drive to become an automotive superpower by using its head start in the shift from gasoline-fueled cars to EVs.

Sales of new autos in China grew 12% in 2023 to 30.09 million vehicles, and exports reached nearly 5 million vehicles, putting China ahead of Japan as the world's top auto exporter, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. China led global growth in EVs and other new-energy vehicles last year, with a 38% increase in sales to 9.49 million vehicles. New-energy vehicles, a Chinese term, includes plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles.

EVs and self-driving cars require more semiconductors than conventional autos. According to a major Chinese automaker, EVs are loaded with about 1,300 semiconductors each, compared with a little under 500 in gasoline-powered cars.

Level 4 autonomous cars, which can operate without driver input under certain conditions, have more than 3,000 semiconductors, Chinese auto industry data provider Gasgoo reports.

Germany's Infineon Technologies is the leading supplier of automotive semiconductors by market share, according to Chinese news source Jiwei. Next is NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands, followed by Japan's Renesas Electronics.

With government encouragement, Chinese automakers are developing their own semiconductors. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the parent of Volvo Cars, puts proprietary semiconductors into its sport utility vehicles. Automotive semiconductor development is also a priority for leading Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to a senior executive.

But China is still a long way from self-sufficiency. In power semiconductors, which regulate electric current and are vital to EV performance, domestic production meets only about 15% of China's needs, according to Gasgoo. In advanced chips -- the kind needed for autonomous driving -- Chinese production is below 5%.

China's overall self-sufficiency in automotive semiconductors is estimated at around 10%, compared with about 20% for semiconductors in general.

The number of Chinese companies developing automotive semiconductors has reached about 300, but domestic technology has not kept pace with the auto industry's needs, and China remains dependent on imports. Worldwide, the industry is led by Infineon Technologies of Germany, NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands, Japan's Renesas Electronics and U.S. chipmaker Texas Instruments.

Many automotive semiconductors are not subject to U.S.-led export controls because they are less advanced than chips used for artificial intelligence and other high-tech defense-related applications. But China's access to foreign supplies of semiconductors for cars may yet be restricted depending on how relations with the U.S. play out.

"With the rise of trade protectionism, automotive semiconductors have become a focus of global competition," Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, told a December 2023 conference on semiconductors hosted by the trade group in Wuxi.

"We can create a new automotive semiconductor industry," Fu said.

More than a year earlier, in November 2022, Miao Wei, a former industry ministry with powerful connections to the auto industry, had urged industry leaders at a meeting in Shanghai to switch all of their semiconductor procurement to domestic sources.

Chinese media have quoted Gao Xiang, a researcher involved in automobile policy, as saying that government support and other measures can make it possible to replace even extremely technically difficult semiconductors with domestic production in five to 10 years.

...instead of cobalt or nickel (another metal often used in lithium-ion batteries).

In a new study, the researchers showed that this material, which could be produced at much lower cost than cobalt-containing batteries, can conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. The new battery also has comparable storage capacity and can be charged up faster than cobalt batteries, the researchers report.

“I think this material could have a big impact because it works really well,” says Mircea Dincă, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT. “It is already competitive with incumbent technologies, and it can save a lot of the cost and pain and environmental issues related to mining the metals that currently go into batteries.”

Dincă is the senior author of the study, which appears today in the journal ACS Central Science. Tianyang Chen PhD ’23 and Harish Banda, a former MIT postdoc, are the lead authors of the paper. Other authors include Jiande Wang, an MIT postdoc; Julius Oppenheim, an MIT graduate student; and Alessandro Franceschi, a research fellow at the University of Bologna.

Alternatives to cobalt

Most electric cars are powered by lithium-ion batteries, a type of battery that is recharged when lithium ions flow from a positively charged electrode, called a cathode, to a negatively electrode, called an anode. In most lithium-ion batteries, the cathode contains cobalt, a metal that offers high stability and energy density.

However, cobalt has significant downsides. A scarce metal, its price can fluctuate dramatically, and much of the world’s cobalt deposits are located in politically unstable countries. Cobalt extraction creates hazardous working conditions and generates toxic waste that contaminates land, air, and water surrounding the mines.

“Cobalt batteries can store a lot of energy, and they have all of features that people care about in terms of performance, but they have the issue of not being widely available, and the cost fluctuates broadly with commodity prices. And, as you transition to a much higher proportion of electrified vehicles in the consumer market, it’s certainly going to get more expensive,” Dincă says.

Because of the many drawbacks to cobalt, a great deal of research has gone into trying to develop alternative battery materials. One such material is lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), which some car manufacturers are beginning to use in electric vehicles. Although still practically useful, LFP has only about half the energy density of cobalt and nickel batteries.

Another appealing option are organic materials, but so far most of these materials have not been able to match the conductivity, storage capacity, and lifetime of cobalt-containing batteries. Because of their low conductivity, such materials typically need to be mixed with binders such as polymers, which help them maintain a conductive network. These binders, which make up at least 50 percent of the overall material, bring down the battery’s storage capacity.

About six years ago, Dincă’s lab began working on a project, funded by Lamborghini, to develop an organic battery that could be used to power electric cars. While working on porous materials that were partly organic and partly inorganic, Dincă and his students realized that a fully organic material they had made appeared that it might be a strong conductor.

This material consists of many layers of TAQ (bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone), an organic small molecule that contains three fused hexagonal rings. These layers can extend outward in every direction, forming a structure similar to graphite. Within the molecules are chemical groups called quinones, which are the electron reservoirs, and amines, which help the material to form strong hydrogen bonds.

Those hydrogen bonds make the material highly stable and also very insoluble. That insolubility is important because it prevents the material from dissolving into the battery electrolyte, as some organic battery materials do, thereby extending its lifetime.

“One of the main methods of degradation for organic materials is that they simply dissolve into the battery electrolyte and cross over to the other side of the battery, essentially creating a short circuit. If you make the material completely insoluble, that process doesn’t happen, so we can go to over 2,000 charge cycles with minimal degradation,” Dincă says.

Strong performance

Tests of this material showed that its conductivity and storage capacity were comparable to that of traditional cobalt-containing batteries. Also, batteries with a TAQ cathode can be charged and discharged faster than existing batteries, which could speed up the charging rate for electric vehicles.

To stabilize the organic material and increase its ability to adhere to the battery’s current collector, which is made of copper or aluminum, the researchers added filler materials such as cellulose and rubber. These fillers make up less than one-tenth of the overall cathode composite, so they don’t significantly reduce the battery’s storage capacity.

These fillers also extend the lifetime of the battery cathode by preventing it from cracking when lithium ions flow into the cathode as the battery charges.

The primary materials needed to manufacture this type of cathode are a quinone precursor and an amine precursor, which are already commercially available and produced in large quantities as commodity chemicals. The researchers estimate that the material cost of assembling these organic batteries could be about one-third to one-half the cost of cobalt batteries.

Lamborghini has licensed the patent on the technology. Dincă’s lab plans to continue developing alternative battery materials and is exploring possible replacement of lithium with sodium or magnesium, which are cheaper and more abundant than lithium.

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Something strange is happening in the U.S. oil patch. Oil drilling—an activity that has always been energy-intensive—has turned into a massive drain on the grid. The trend is an ironic twist to the U.S. grid problem, which is how to accommodate soaring demand for electricity in a non-inflatable grid.

Last November, the North American Reliability Corp. warned that blackouts could happen in the winter as demand for electricity soars and supply is constrained by coal and gas plant retirements and the variable nature of wind and solar output.

This was the second warning by NERC for the year and the latest in a series of warnings that also featured Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials telling legislators earlier in 2023 that the grid was becoming increasingly vulnerable because of the transition.

While this was happening—and the portion of wind and solar in the energy mix continued to grow—oil drillers were being pressured by their shareholders and activist groups to reduce their emissions footprint.

According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, one way that drillers chose to do this was by ditching gas generators in the field for electricity from the grid. But they are not the only industry switching from hydrocarbons to grid connections for their electricity demand. Cue a surge in demand and the realization that the amount of electricity on the grid is not infinite.

Grid constraints have emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to the transition of the United States from a hydrocarbon-powered to an electricity-powered economy. Various estimates have revealed that in order for the Biden administration to hit its target of a 100% low-carbon grid by 2035, the transmission network in the country would need to expand dramatically—in just over ten years.

But even before this could happen, if it could at all in that short timeframe, businesses are being pressured into going electric in order to reduce their emissions. As a result, the grid is getting strained. And oil drillers are starting to build their own power supply infrastructure.

The WSJ reports that oil producers in Texas, New Mexico, and North Dakota are contributing to a substantial increase in electricity sales. At the same time, they are finding out there is only so much electricity on the grid that is accessible to them. This is one reason flaring is getting reduced, in addition to stricter regulations.

According to the WSJ, some drillers are building gas-power plants and using the gas that would have been otherwise flared to generate the electricity they need to power their machinery. It is really a win-win decision. On the one hand, these drillers are emitting less because they are not flaring the gas, and on the other, they get some reliable electricity on site.

Yet, the WSJ report also suggests this is not enough to alleviate the strain on the grid as oil production continues to grow, and so do drillers’ efforts to become smaller emitters. It appears the only way to achieve the latter is to become fully electric-powered with electricity produced by wind and solar farms. And this is where the transmission challenge of the decade comes in to cast a shadow over the possibility of that happening.

The U.S. grid took over a century to build to its current size. Transmission lines take years, even if everyone along the way is okay with them, and many communities are not okay with transmission lines passing over their backyards.

Yet there is a shortage of qualified technicians to build all the transmission lines necessary, which further complicates the matter. It seems that oil drillers will have to keep relying on themselves to secure the electricity they need to boost their green credentials—and utilize some gas they cannot market because there are not enough pipelines to take it from the field to the network or the liquefaction plants along the Gulf Coast.