In 1991, ordinary Soviet citizens lined up for hours at empty gas stations.
Bread disappeared from grocery stores.
Elise started stockpiling supplies.
And then in a matter of months, the country that had existed for 70 years simply stopped existing.
Well, this week, Russians are expecting the exact same thing.
That’s how bad the situation has gotten.
A Russian woman wrote in social media, and I quote, “This is my first collapse of the country.
Those who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, can you please tell me the normal procedure here? Because you see, as of yesterday, Ukraine did something that almost nobody thought was possible.
They knocked out the largest, deepest, and best defended oil refinery in all of Russia.
And with this strike, over half of country’s entire refining capacity is now offline.
So in this video, I want to walk you through how Ukraine hit a target 2500 km, roughly 1,500 miles from its border that Russia knew was coming and still couldn’t defend.
The secret partnership with the CIA that made these strikes so much more devastating, and why ordinary Russians are now literally buying horses because gasoline is unaffordable.
In fact, some Russians are preparing for the country to collapse.
And if they are right, we are literally watching history rhyme in real time.
My name is Sam.
You’re watching Business Basics.
And let’s start with what Ukraine just did.
Because to understand why yesterday’s strike is so important, you have to understand what Russians were expecting, what they told each other publicly, and what they still could not stop.
You see, just four days ago, one of the most prominent Russian war bloggers went on record and issued a public warning to his own audience.
He said the next Ukrainian target was going to be this refinery, the biggest refinery in Russia.
It’s called the Omsk refinery.
He explained why this would be the next target.
And then he noted that Omsk is very far away from the front lines, but still it’s the most valuable remaining target that Ukraine has, so it’s most definitely going to go after it.
Take a listen.
The coals derogatory for Ukrainians have one objective to blow up ours refinery.
But we have to stop this.
Damn it.
S OT should be locked down with four layers of security.
If they do hit us, half the government should end up behind bars.
Useless bastards.
What the hell are you all waiting for? Waiting for the president to tell you everything? Is there anyone here who can actually make a decision? What the hell are all these ministries for if none of you can decide anything on your own? You’re all just sitting around waiting for someone from
above to tell you what to do.
These are different times now.
The motherland is in danger.
The enemy is just sitting there jerking off and one day they’ll finish jerking off and come after us.
They’re already building concentration camps for us.
The Germans are saying they’ll seize Kining in a day, that they’ll take the Cola Peninsula.
What the hell are you all waiting for? We need to hit those bastards first.
Their plan is to move against us in 2027.
They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.
protect the president of Russia, otherwise we’re all screwed.
>> Now, if you’re someone who’s watching this war closely, you know this was coming.
If a Russian war blogger, a random guy in Russia knows this, you can bet that the Russian military knew this, too.
And the Ukrainian military knew this, too.
This was their strategy.
This is the strategy they’ve been implementing for last few months, maybe the last year.
Here’s what I mean.
Just at the start of this month, Ukrainian military published this graphic explaining that they have taken down roughly 43% of Russian refining capacity.
But there was one important thing missing here.
The biggest refinery in Russia was not hit yet.
Well, this graphic came out at the start of the month.
Now, that exception has been fixed.
Here’s what I mean.
Yesterday was a historic day for Ukrainian armed forces as Ukraine finally struck the largest refinery in Russia, 25 km from Ukraine, roughly 1500 miles.
Also important to point out, by the way, everyone is using this 25 km figure.
But this is from the border of Ukraine to this refinery, when in reality, Ukrainian forces don’t cover the eastern border as much or eastern territory that’s under Russian control.
So this drone probably flew way more than 1500 miles.
But nonetheless, this refinery represents 8% of Russia’s refining capacity.
Now, we already covered 43% is offline.
If you add this in, we don’t know exactly how much of this refinery is going to be offline, but number is getting pretty close to 50%.
And that’s a big issue for Russia because they’re already facing a fuel shortage.
Now, take a look at this what many people are calling refinery bingo.
Basically, Ukrainians going after every single refinery inside of Russia.
Now all of these were hit way before today but the top 1 ohms was hit now.
So that means top 11 refineries in Russia are now under Ukrainian control aka because of the drones.
Now of course important thing to point out here that almost all of these refineries have been hit multiple time.
So that means we can expect the same thing to happen with.
I’m sure it’s not going to be easy especially if Russia starts putting in more air defenses on the path the Ukraine used.
But nonetheless, Oshak could have done this with other refineries too, but they haven’t been able to stop the Ukrainian drones.
If we assume the same thing continues, that means Ohms refinery, even if there’s some surviving unit that’s still functioning, well, that’s going to be offline very soon.
Now, as you guys know, we have reaction from the ground.
We have clips from people who were around the refinery and they recorded everything in real time.
The first one is the funniest one because the guy is seeing the refinery burn and the first thought in his mind is like, “Hey guys, they finally got our refinery.
So go to the gas stations now and fill up because situation is going to get hectic.
” This is what he says.
Take a listen.
>> The refinery is on fire.
It’s official.
Don’t pay attention to the flare stacks.
What you should be looking at is this part.
They must have hit it about 10 minutes ago.
I didn’t hear any sounds.
I’m far away.
But I’ve got a prime view of the whole thing right here.
So don’t waste any time right now.
Anyone with a car who’s watching me, head to the gas station.
Especially since they lifted the limit on jerry cans today.
In case you didn’t know, today.
Grab your jerry cans, head to the gas station, and buy up the very last drop that’s left.
Today.
It’s serious.
It really is.
The lines are about to get crazy.
The thing is, I don’t have a jerry can with me.
I left it in the garage.
It’ll take a while to get there now because the garage is far away.
So, here’s some firstirhand info for you.
Now, the next clip is actually a liveaction footage.
There’s someone recording a drone going into the refinery and the attack happening.
Now, as you guys know, YouTube is not a fan of clips like these because after all, they are showing damage, maybe even people getting hurt.
We don’t exactly know because we’re far away.
But nonetheless, if you guys can help us out a little bit, hit the like and subscribe button down below.
It just helps us in the algorithm and we can continue showing this kind of content.
Here, take a look.
>> Another drone ising coming in.
Look at this now.
>> They’re shooting from everywhere.
There it is.
Bam.
Did you see it? Holy [ __ ] [ __ ] >> Then this next clip is probably the same guy or maybe someone recording from the same position somewhere close by, counting every single Ukrainian drone that is approaching the refinery.
And then he’s counting how many drones Russian interceptors actually take down.
And let me tell you, the final ratio, well, that’s not a pretty one for Russian air defenses.
So, take a look at the math yourself from this bystander.
>> There it is.
The whole refinery is going up in flames.
12 of them.
Only one was brought down and 11 got through.
>> That’s how it is.
>> So, I’m sure you guys are asking the obvious question.
If Russia knew four days ago or probably before that that this was coming, Target is probably the most important refinery at least now considering all the other refineries have been hit.
You can easily call this the most valuable piece of refinery in the country.
Why wasn’t it defended? Why weren’t there more air defenses, more troops there protecting something that’s so important? Are Ukrainian drones really that strong that Russia just cannot stop them? or Russia is just not good at predicting where Ukraine is going.
Well, the answer might surprise you.
Let me show you what I mean.
The answer is that Putin, he’s panicking.
So, he has started pulling air defenses from everywhere.
Wherever he can find an available air defense, he’s bringing it to Moscow because he wants to protect himself.
Or I guess if you want to be nice to Putin, you can say he wants to protect the elites in Moscow because he knows if the elites get mad, that’s when he has to stop the war or he’s going to face his gravest fear, gravity.
So, as you can see, Putin has been pulling air defenses from all over the place.
And that means that’s creating more and more holes for Ukrainian drones and Ukrainian missiles to go deal the damage.
Now, this is where I want to talk about something that’s kind of educational and kind of interesting.
how CIA has been helping Ukraine carry out these strikes.
Or I guess to put it more accurately, how CIA has been helping Ukraine carry out these strikes more effectively.
Now, as you guys know, Ukrainians have been hitting Russian refineries for a very long time, probably 10 months, maybe 14 months by now.
But if you look at the clip from the beginning of this campaign, and if you look at the clip now, you’re going to notice some differences.
At the beginning, we were seeing a lot of fireballs and we were seeing a lot of stuff go boom.
like the strikes were genuinely like very satisfying to watch.
I don’t know if that’s politically correct way to say, but you could see like things going boom like you see in the movies.
We don’t see that as much in recent strikes, and that’s for good reasons.
You see, there was a report that came out last year in December that basically explained to us how CIA quietly began working with Ukrainian intelligence around June of 2024.
And they started working with oil experts probably here from Texas but oil experts here from the United States who knew exactly how refineries operate.
And they also knew like what’s the most important thing in the refinery as in Russia has harder time replacing all the equipment in the refinery that Ukraine is destroying.
Okay, we already know that because of sanctions.
But if you were to make a list of all the equipment, there’s going to be some equipment that’s like the hardest thing to replace for Russia.
And the CIA was like, hey, how about instead of going after fuel depots, which again, they do do damage.
You destroy the fuel that’s stored in them, you destroy the depot.
They are dealing some kind of damage to Russia.
But if you start going after equipment, that’s very, very hard to replace and very, very crucial to the operation of the refinery.
If you destroy that equipment, that means refinery is out maybe for weeks, maybe months.
And that’s very important considering that when this project began, Ukrainians did have limited quantity of drones.
So if you have limited quantity of drones, you want to go after the thing that gives you the most bang for your buck, gives you the most ROI.
Basic investing, I guess.
So during this project, during all the consulting from experts from all the industry, they arrived at this answer called coupler.
Now I don’t exactly know what this means.
I am from Houston, but I have no clue like how the oil industry works or how the refining industry works.
But I’m guessing coupler is a nickname for something important.
One thing we do know is what Ukrainians are targeting.
So the official name of the system the Ukrainians are targeting is called catalytic cracking unit which is this picture that you can see on your screen.
And this thing is much harder to replace.
And that has been having a very good impact because we already know the Moscow refinery that Ukraine targeted let’s say two weeks ago is now offline for the rest of the year.
So more than 6 months that refinery is not going to come back online.
And that could for many reasons, right? One of the reasons could be Russians just don’t have the equipment.
I’m sure they can like fix the refinery in a week if they had the replacement, but they don’t have the replacement.
That means it just has to wait.
So that’s something that’s going to be a huge issue for Russia.
And it’s all thanks to, of course, Ukrainians, but also CIA working together with Ukrainians.
All this is creating a crisis that Russia is living through right now.
And if you want to know how bad it is, well, take a listen to this woman who’s basically contemplating why is she even living in Russia, this country that has so much oil, but you cannot fill up your car.
Why even live? How’s this place called livable? That’s what she’s questioning publicly.
Take a listen, >> guys.
I’m starting to panic.
We have zero kilometers of fuel left.
The low fuel light has been on for a while since yesterday.
>> I don’t know.
It’s just first of all, Russia is hitting people with high prices for food, for everything, for every service, foring utilities, and everything else.
And now you can’t even [ __ ] fill up your car.
What the [ __ ] happens next? Is transportation going to stop effiking running too? What the heck comes next? People whose jobs involve traveling or driving, what are they supposed to do now? I don’t understand how I’m supposed to survive in thising country.
What am I supposed to do? Maybe someone can tell me.
This crisis has pushed some Russians into buying horses.
in the 21st century.
Russians are literally going back in time because that’s how bad this war is going for them.
Now, before we get to the horses, we do need a quick meme break.
And I know you guys love the memes that we’ve been sharing.
So, you know the rule.
If you like the meme, just hit the subscribe button down below.
And if you’re already subscribed, just hit the like button.
So, let’s take a look at these pretty funny ones today.
First one we have is from a fellow YouTuber, Jake Bro.
A Russian man is waiting in line at the gas station.
He says, “I’ve had enough of this.
You take the wheel and I’m going to go shoot Putin.
” Two hours later, he returns and sits back in the driver’s seat.
The wife ask him, “Did you shoot him?” He goes, “No.
” The line to shoot Putin is longer than this one.
Then we have the next one, which is a bit sad.
Russia, which used to be a big exporter of grain before this war started, has now seen a 66% drop in its national grain production or grain harvest, I guess.
And then we have a picture of Tucker Carlson who was just shocked when he saw an Aldi in in Russia in Moscow.
He just could not believe it.
This was roughly two years ago.
I feel like he should come around in Texas.
We have a lot of Aldi.
I don’t know if they have them outside of Texas, but Texas is a lot.
And I can’t even imagine his reaction if he goes into a BIES.
Nonetheless, here’s the last meme.
And this one is a very disrespectful one, especially if you’re someone who loves Russia.
We have a Zoomer.
at Gen Z from Russia asking, “Hello everyone.
Many people here are saying that everything that is happening in Russia will now lead to the collapse of the country.
This is my first collapse of the country.
Those who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, tell me some kind of smart plan of action.
Stock up on certain products, water, gasoline, maybe something else.
” First collapse.
Probably not the last one if Putin continues, but it’s the first collapse nonetheless.
Now, unfortunately, this is not entirely a joke.
There are people in Russia who have lived through the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Soviet Union and they’re starting to notice similarities between what’s happening right now and what happened back then.
You see, at the end of the Soviet Union specifically, there were shortages all over the place, including gasoline shortages.
All the while, Soviet Union was like one of the biggest producers, if not the biggest producer of gasoline or of oil when they collapsed.
So many people are starting to notice the similarity and someone actually shared a clip from 1991 before the country collapses showing that hey people just couldn’t buy anything.
Take a look at this clip and you tell me if you notice any similarities or not.
>> A huge line for 93 octane gasoline stretches for nearly a kilometer.
How long have you been waiting? About 2 and 1/2 hours.
>> Is this some kind of state of emergency? No, this is normal.
>> Hello.
Could you tell me if you have 76 octane gasoline? >> No.
And please don’t film me.
I’m at work.
I don’t have time.
You’ll have to speak to the manager.
>> So, is this some kind of emergency? I don’t know what kind of situation we’re in.
I don’t know what happened.
I’ve driven all over the place.
There is no gas anywhere.
Maybe all the fuel went to the harvest.
Well, if it went to the harvest, that would at least be understandable.
And yet, the city has grown strangely quiet.
There are hardly any tourists left, and even the Matrioska doll vendors have disappeared.
>> Now, here’s what’s interesting.
After the country collapsed, the ‘9s in Russia was just hectic.
Oligarchs were looting state assets.
Yelson was just selling off anything he could sell off to stay in power.
and ordinary Russians, their lives got so much worse that they actually started missing the Soviet Union, a country where they didn’t have basic freedoms that we take for granted here in the United States.
And this is what paved the way for Vladimir Putin.
He came in promising stability after chaos.
He was like the strong man that Russia wanted or many said he was the strong man that Russia needed.
And if you ask a Russian in 2000s who lived through the ’90s and 2000s, he would say that at the beginning Putin did a pretty good job.
Now, you can argue that’s because oil prices were so high.
He had so much money, he could just invest so much into the country without actually being competent.
Like anyone could have done what Putin did in the first decade of his rule.
But take a look at where he has taken the country now.
All the problems that Russia is facing is because Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union.
invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea, then full invasion of Ukraine, and now Russians don’t have oil.
They have the second biggest oil reserves, and they don’t have oil for their own cars.
This brings us to the horses that we just talked about.
The fuel crisis has gotten so severe that Russians are actually buying horses.
Not just talking about it, they’re actually buying.
Take a listen.
And this is happening in Moscow, by the way, where Moscowits or what what would you call them? Mosavians are now buying horses in Moscow.
The elites.
Take a listen.
>> I want to get myself a horse.
We’ll ride horses.
That’s where the consequences are headed.
>> You mean a real horse? The kind you have to feed hay to? >> Yes.
It’ll be much easier and more interesting.
Do you think trokas or something like that will soon be riding through the streets of Moscow? They already do and they’ll keep doing so, of course.
Now, I do want to point out this is not like an isolated anecdote that I’m just showing you guys and blowing it out of proportion.
We can look at like big picture data that’s coming out of Russian state media and it tells us that this is a trend.
Take a look.
This is a report from a Russian state media called NASH, MASH, and this is what they’re saying.
Russian horse breeders are reporting booming sales due to ongoing fuel crisis.
Despite the expenses of owning a horse, they’re now cheaper to maintain than constantly refueling an SUV.
The report says about a thousand horses were saved from slaughterhouses in Russia due to the rise in gasoline prices.
Villagers are now increasingly buying four-legged animals instead of off-road vehicles because it’s cheaper to get around and you can go to the forest, just let the horse hay or eat grass and then you can go back to farming.
Now, Russians who have lived
through the ‘9s know that whenever the country is going back in time, especially economically, well, it creates its own kinds of problems like tensions.
Tensions are always high when people are just losing everything they own.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in Russia right now.
There are fights breaking out all over the place.
Take a look.
There are people waiting in line for gas stations and then things just get heated.
Did you know? >> Now, of course, now we have an exclusive segment from our membersonly video.
We have former Navy Seal Chuck Far back on the channel breaking down exactly what’s happening on the front lines.
Now, as you guys know, this analysis is exclusive to our Basics Insider members.
So, if you want the full breakdown plus the rest of our membersonly content, you can become a member right now by hitting the join button down below or by going to basicsinsider.
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Now, here’s the preview of the content.
You know what we what we’re seeing increasingly is Ukraine will send a number of drones against a single target.
And to show the payload capabilities, you could see that those brick walls were being broken down.
Uh they have a variety of payloads for the drones as well.
And there we see the entire house go.
Uh so there are incendiary, there are explosive uh drone warheads and incendiary.
>> First clip here we have a North Korean soldier knockking down a drone and then walking up to it.
>> And here is a guy who has actually somehow managed to down a drone and he forgets that there’s a war on and this thing was armed.
So kids, if you do knock down a first-person drone, just don’t do what this guy just did.
So that thing was down.
It was no longer flying, but its camera, its electronics, everything else was on.
This is being filmed by a second drone that tells the first drone, “Fire your warhead.
” So there have been several other videos just like this where people will walk up on a down drone and uh again these things contain mostly they contain shape charge warheads.
So there’s a the charge is oriented in a specific way but it’s also blast fragmentation.
So, it’ll put out a an explosive jet anti-armour, but it also blasts fragmentation uh material in all directions.
>> So, what’s the best procedures to deal with drones? Like if you’re in the battlefield, >> well, if you knock it down, uh you treat it just the way you treat a dud artillery shell, right? You’d stay away from it and you’d call somebody that supposedly knows what they’re doing.
I think I would get back 200 300 meters and hit it with a tracer round which probably would set it off.
>> Yeah.
>> But again, you know, military high explosives are extremely stable.
Uh for example, you could have a big block of C4.
If you hit it with a regular bullet, it just won’t do anything.
It takes >> pressure and heat together to set it off.
So, you hit that down drone with an armor-piercing incendiary round, it’ll it’ll probably go off.
But the thing to do was run away here.
The other thing I’ll I’ll point out is this guy’s situational awareness, right? So, he knocked this down and he has what we call in the SEALs target lock.
He’s only interested in this drone.
He never once looks up in the other direction to see that he’s being filmed by another drone.
Right? So you got to keep, you know, you keep your head on a swivel, right? That’s what we say.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
