'DrBen' AsiaReport, travel guide, sat.maps, books.

The Baltic oil transit of Russia has effectively been reduced to zero. Oil exports have been halted. On the night of March 23, more than 60 Ukrainian drones broke through Russia’s so-called air defense in the Leningrad region, turning the key Transneft-Port Primorsk terminal into a massive inferno. The tanks there are packed tightly like an anthill, the fire is consuming them one by one, and the Russians are physically unable to stop this hell. This is one of the most effective deep strikes in the entire war. Now to the dry math and logic of the process. The strike has shut down two main Baltic ports — Primorsk and Ust-Luga. To understand the scale of this economic meat grinder: Primorsk handled about 60 million tons of oil annually, while Ust-Luga exported around 700,000 barrels per day. Together, this accounts for exactly half of Russia’s total seaborne oil exports. Every day these terminals remain idle burns $80–100 million in direct losses from the Russian budget. Ten days of downtime means a loss of a billion. It turns out the colossus stands on clay feet: scarce air defense systems were pulled closer to the Ukrainian border, while strategic assets that feed their war machine are protected worse than Moscow itself. Against this backdrop of collapse, the crisis around the Strait of Hormuz — which Moscow had been hoping would bring windfall profits — now looks like a pathetic farce. The U.S. Treasury says that at best, Russia could squeeze out about $2 billion from the situation — roughly the cost of a single day of funding its budget. But even that figure is an unattainable illusion. It’s important to separate illusion from reality: speculative trading of Brent crude (which has already fallen to $97 amid Trump’s statements) has nothing to do with what Russia actually earns. The reality is prices at export ports. And there, Russia’s Urals crude is trading at massive discounts, nowhere near the $100 mark. Add to this European seizures of the shadow fleet (already minus five oil tankers), broken logistics, and kinetic sanctions from Ukrainian drones — and those hypothetical profits turn into absolute zero. Russia simply won’t be able to deliver its oil to buyers. To accelerate this financial agony, the market delivered another blow: gold prices have dropped sharply. Russia has spent years sitting on piles of gold whose paper value had recently increased, creating the illusion of a financial safety cushion. Now that bubble has burst. The valuation of Russian gold reserves is plunging, wiping out billions in virtual dollars that the Kremlin planned to use to plug budget gaps caused by the oil embargo. The financial vise is tightening perfectly: physical exports are burning in Primorsk, while reserves are being devalued by the global market. It is obvious that the strikes must target bottlenecks: pipelines, terminals, ports. If Ukraine systematically delivers another 5–10 strikes like the one in Primorsk, Russia’s oil logistics will be effectively finished. The Russians have no way to properly defend these facilities — their air defenses are already stretched to the limit, and redeploying systems from other directions would leave the front exposed. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will inevitably crash global oil prices, окончательно лишив Россию финансового преимущества. The war will end not only when Ukrainian forces grind down another 50,000 occupiers in a month, but when Russia’s economy simply stops without oil revenues. The process has already begun, and the math of it is ruthless for the Kremlin.

CRAZY: 🇦🇪🇪🇺 UAE’s Foreign Minister said, "Europe always wants to be politically correct, that's why far more Islamic terrorists will come out of there."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan: “British Muslims are scared”

Yes, Iran can hit Europe. And thanks to North Korea, Iran has the components for a missile, the Hwasong-15, that can reach all of the American homeland. This assessment, publicized by Bruce Bechtol of Angelo State University, is based on open-source reporting.

Scott Ritter: “If I were the Iranians, I would actually take out Israeli desalination plants now. Right now. End Israel right now. Just end it. Just take it out. End it. Make Israel over. Israel needs to cease to exist. It is literally the cancer on the planet.”

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian said, “China is a democracy in our own way.” It’s funny that in many countries, democracy means people choose their government, while in China, democracy means the government redefines what “democracy” means.