Wait a day or two, there is a delay on your cards. The village of Peski has already been completely cleared. In Artyomovsk, fighting is going on within the city, in Avdeevka, things are also going badly for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Zelensky seems to have recently called what is happening there hell.

The situation with oil in the world is quite interesting, I will try to formulate my understanding, trying not to go far beyond the boundaries of my own competence.
1. There is quite a lot of oil in the world, but it becomes more and more difficult to extract it over time. The debit of operating wells is decreasing, the percentage of water cut of produced oil is increasing, it is difficult, long and expensive to explore new fields and drill new wells. The cost of produced oil is gradually increasing - and this is a global trend.
2. Oil is different. The Brent and Ural oil grades are widely heard, but I think few people know that the Ural oil grade is not produced in the Urals (although this would be quite logical), but is obtained by mixing in a certain proportion light low-sulfur West Siberian oil and heavy high-sulfur oil from Volga region. Different refineries in the world are designed for different grades of oil and you can't just change them to another grade of oil without a dramatic loss in productivity. Moreover, from a mixture of different grades of oil, different refineries make different end products - such as gasoline, aviation kerosene, ship fuel for tankers and bulk carriers, diesel fuel, plastics, etc. And for this reason, for example, the United States, which produces the most oil in the world, still cannot refuse oil supplies from Russia, because for some types of end products it is necessary to add a certain amount of heavy oil to the input of oil refineries, which even in the current situation is easier buy everything from Russia (and this is the reason why Biden recently had to conduct humiliating negotiations for the United States in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia).

In short, it is incorrect to talk about oil in terms of the number of barrels only.

I live in Russia and can share my opinion about Western sanctions. They have not affected everyday life in any way: food, gasoline, electricity, heating, the Internet, bank cards and other things that you encounter every day - everything is available and costs about the same as six months ago. There is no reason to panic or hysteria. The biggest discomfort from the sanctions, I personally had about coffee, in the spring it has risen sharply in price by 3-4 times, and so far the price has not returned to its previous level, you have to pay about 30% more for coffee. When Western politicians said at the beginning of spring that they dropped an economic nuclear bomb on Russia and the economy was torn to shreds, it was a lie.

As for the long-term perspective, the situation is more vague. Let's wait and see, now in any region of the world it is difficult to think far ahead.

The numbers look good except for Germany. Germany's demand for gas is huge, and its gas storage facilities are just a buffer to smooth out the fluctuations in gas consumption in winter and summer. Even if Germany fills its storage facilities by 100% by November (which will be extremely difficult to do with 20% pressure in the Nord Stream), this will be enough for her for a month and a half of a moderately cold winter.

Yep. Turkey has driven itself into a difficult economic situation, primarily due to the absolutely mediocre monetary policy of its Central Bank (or even Erdogan personally, who replaced several leaders of the Central Bank who disagreed with his vision of the situation). Technically, Turkey is now experiencing hyperinflation, perhaps not galloping.

I have no illusions about Russian-Turkish friendship, because there is no other country in the world with which Russia would fight more often than with Turkey. But Erdogan's policy is respected, if only by the fact that he is trying to pursue the interests of Turkey, in contrast to the leaders of Europe, who for the most part did not give a damn about their countries and pursue the interests of the United States. If you look at the location of US military bases in Europe, then technically the EU is a territory occupied by the US.

Your understanding will become deeper and more complete if you carefully consider the idea that Biden does not really need cheap oil and cheap gasoline. Expensive oil makes shale mining profitable in the United States, and expensive gasoline makes the transition to electric cars more attractive in the eyes of Americans (which directly fits into the democratic green agenda).

Well, the Sands are taken. There are significant successes in Avdeevka and Artemovsk (Bakhmut). The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kherson direction is again postponed, for the next year or never. The topic of Ukraine becomes boring, especially against the backdrop of another act of the Marlezon Ballet between Israel and the Gaza Strip and the growing tension around Taiwan. And Russia still does not run out of either missiles or combat Buryats.

Yep. Cherry on the cake - behind the modest name of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force is one of the most powerful fleets in the world.

Russia and Turkey have historically very complicated, contradictory and interesting relations. The current head of Turkey is a vivid example of a politician who simultaneously manages to sit with one ass not even on two, but on 3-4 chairs. For example, Turkey is a NATO member and supplies attack drones to Ukraine, but at the same time refrains from sanctions against Russia and welcomes Russian tourists in every possible way at its resorts. In recent history, there was an episode with a Russian plane shot down by Turkey, and a "tomato" war, in short, everything here is very interesting, confusing and complicated.

As recently as today, Erdogan met with Putin in Sochi, the details of their conversation are unknown to me.

I don't know what can save the Democratic rating, for example, apart from unleashing an armed conflict with China to protect the freedom of democracy in Taiwan. The war will write everything off.

If you misbehave and disrespect the Russians, we will again elect Dimon "Fierce" Medvedev as president.
You will then remember Putin as the lamb of heaven and Mr. polite adequacy.

A strange performance in Kyiv was staged by the relatives of the captured Azov militants who died from the HIMARS strike on Yelenovka. Can anyone explain what this means?

I'm more concerned about the outbreak of ethnic conflict between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. Russia is weakly involved in the Karabakh conflict emotionally, but the Serbs and Russian brothers are forever, and if the Serbs begin to be cut in Kosovo, this will probably result in a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. If NATO wants to fight Russia, they know what to do.

Ukrainische Soldaten nicht kapitulieren.

Why wait a year or two, even before the sanctions, Russia was a third-rate country with a backward economy. Now it is not yet obvious to an idiot that the sanctions have made Russia stronger, and it is Europe that suffers from them. But the main problem with sanctions is that they are not able to stop the Russian military special operation in Ukraine. What rate and size of economy will Ukraine be in a year or two, when it is already bankrupt?

I read your posts like a humorous magazine. Summary: Russia is falling apart, children are drowning in toilets, grandmothers are praying for Putin, and the Buryats are running out.

In my opinion, both the overestimation of China's military power and the underestimation of Taiwan's defensive capabilities are misleading (especially since defending is always easier than attacking). The soldiers and officers of the People's Liberation Army of China have a lot of training experience, but no real combat experience at all (and training experience is not always successfully extrapolated to real combat operations), and China has not yet completed its rearmament cycle, calculated until 2024, although it has managed to do a lot in this direction. If in the event of a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, time is more likely to work for Russia, then China needs a lightning-fast blitzkrieg in Taiwan. If China gets stuck in Taiwan even for half a year, its economy may not survive.

Japan is the number one candidate for this war. Japan has a long-standing score with China, Japan openly supports Taiwan, Japan is heavily dependent on the US, Japan has disputed islands with China, and Japan does not have nuclear weapons - so instead of an open US-China conflict, a indirect Japan-China conflict is more likely.

ps Japan's Defense Ministry said five out of nine missiles fired by China today landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone.

Hydrogen. More precisely, a mixture of 80% hydrogen and 20% natural gas (because hydrogen itself is a very volatile gas). For this mixture, the existing infrastructure of gas pipelines and underground storage facilities can be operated without changes. Moreover, two years ago the European Union published a hydrogen strategy for a climate-neutral Europe. Of course, the covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have pretty much confused the cards, but the EU has no other strategy on this issue.