S-400s are pretty important to the Russians, but they aren't super rare. They started the war with about 450 systems and about 2000 S-300 systems. Ukraine has a long way to go before they start to be in critically short supply.
We don't know how many missiles the Russians made for the S-400. On the one hand the Soviets over produced ammunition on a large scale, but Russia with more modest defense budgets may have skimped on missile production. We don't know.
We do know the Russians have used S-300 missiles in the ground attack role when attacking Ukrainian cities. They have not used S-400 that way.
Probably not a good idea. Just as the third world is dependent on Russian grain and the poor Russian grain harvest this year is going to have implications there over the next year, the entire world's oil system requires a fairly high volume of Russian sourced oil in it for economic stability.
We can dream otherwise of a world in which countries are not dependent on imported oil and gas, but that world does not exist today and isn't going to exist for a while. We are headed in that direction and we can probably do better in our transition, but even an ideal transition time line is not going to fit within the time frame of this war.
Even though few western countries are taking Russian oil right now, the western economies are dependent on Russian oil and gas being in the system for their own economic stability. The US has managed to control inflation. It's a bit higher than the Fed would like to see, but it's dropping. That's not the case in most other developed economies where talk of the cost of living crisis is still common. Taking Russian oil offline would cause oil prices everywhere to skyrocket and spin inflation out of control.
The blowback effect could be a drop in support for the Ukrainians in this war.
The price cap imposed on Russia for their oil is forcing them to sell the oil at just a tiny bit above their production price. They are making a little bit on selling oil, but not much. This is the best solution for everyone.
Russia's economy is hurting from the sanctions. The sanctions have leaks and the Russians are able to get some things, but they are paying more for them and their income is down. The war is a major expense too. A lot more money is going out than coming in.
The pump facilities and gate mechanism might be damaged from the fire. Floating dry docks can sink (Russia's largest dry dock sank a couple of years ago and now they don't have the ability to repair the hulls on their largest ships), but land based dry docks at their core is a concrete tub you pump out to work on a ship's hull. That's pretty hard to destroy. However concrete can be weakened.
Burning fuel will cause reinforced concrete to spall and expose the rebar underneath. It won't be visible from casual inspection because the holes are small, but it's possible that happened to the dry dock. You don't want the rebar in a dry dock to be exposed to sea water, that's going to cause the rebar to break down with time.
The burning fuel on the Kerch rail bridge from the fire back in 2022 weakened that span of the bridge enough the Russians finally decided it needed to be replaced.
Trent Telenko has a couple of good logistics threads
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
He points to some evidence why Russia has a fuel shortage and it could mean a really rough winter for Russia. Their rail cars may be having a lot of bearing failures which they can't replace. China doesn't make the quality of ball bearings needed for rail cars. The tires on their trucks are wearing out and they don't even have the money to buy new ones from China. They have lots of worn out tires to throw on their aircraft though.
In the Rostov to Mariupol run they are making increasing use of passenger cars to move cargo. That's very inefficient, but that indicates either a shortage of diesel fuel (cars run on petrol for the most part), or a growing shortage of trucks, or both.
Russia might have to take a page from the Germans when they demechanized their supply system in early 1944 due to fuel shortages. The Germans replaced trucks with horse drawn carts. Making ersatz horse carts from car and truck trailers is not that difficult, but Russia may not have the horse population to do this. Just did some searches, Russia's horse population is around 1.3 million, but almost all are farm animals. Taking those off the farms would further hurt their agricultural sector.
China has a lot of horses. Though the largest populations are in the New World where the US has over 10 million and Mexico over 6 million.
Which Countries Have The Most Horses? | Horsemart
If we start seeing Russian horse carts, it will be obvious their transportation infrastructure is falling apart.
The advantage of horse drawn transport is that the engines fuel themselves to some degree, but it's incredibly slow compared to motorized transport. The Russians also don't have any current experience using horses to move supplies. Back when horses were part of every army there were specialized troops who made sure the horses were kept in good shape and ready for what they needed to do. The only armies in the world with any horse handlers are some third world armies. I think they are still used in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
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