Europe's War-Hysteria Getting CRAZY | Stas Krapivnik

## Russia’s domestic mood and the reflex of escalation A political system that stages highly visible elections in the middle of a sustained war reveals as much about domestic legitimacy as it does about popular sentiment. The conversation makes clear that what is often depicted abroad as passive acquiescence in Moscow is, within Russia, an intensifying demand for stronger responses. Voters show support for parties calling for harsher measures; public opinion, amplified by media and social networks, is leaning toward escalation rather than restraint. That creates a feedback loop: rhetoric from European capitals that suggests tougher action feeds Russian perceptions that the West is committed to a prolonged contest, which in turn hardens Russian policy choices. Stas Krapivnik’s descriptions of the voting experience — webcams at polling stations, a mixture of online and in-person mechanisms, and an array of parties from the ruling majority to nationalist alternatives — underline that the electoral ritual itself legitimizes more confrontational policies. The electoral uptick of parties demanding harder strikes is less a surprise than a symptom. Once a political leadership can point to public support for escalatory measures, the room for diplomatic de-escalation shrinks. In short, domestic politics in Russia is not merely reflective of the war; it is actively shaping a trajectory toward wider economic and military escalation. ## Drone warfare, refineries and the illusion of decisive damage The recent wave of drone attacks and strikes on energy infrastructure sparked alarm in Europe and attention worldwide, but the conversation offers a corrective to an oft-repeated narrative: hitting refineries and fuel storage is disruptive, but it is not necessarily strategically decisive. The technical anatomy of refineries and storage tanks matters: above-ground tanks burn and can be replaced or isolated; key process vessels are relatively small and can be fabricated with modest lead times in many instances. Past patterns — like repeat outages at the Yaroslavl refinery — show that Russia has absorbed similar shocks repeatedly without systemic collapse. Still, the scale and frequency of drone strikes matter in aggregate. A dozen drones breaching Moscow’s defenses may be a small percentage compared to the thousands launched, but that handful has outsized political and psychological impact. High intercept rates give authorities tangible reassurance, but even an occasional successful strike inside a major economic or symbolic node amplifies pressure for retaliation. Moreover, the technical chain behind ordinary attacks — Western components, targeting assistance, and data orchestration — turns what might be episodic sabotage into an industrialized campaign. The result is not immediate paralysis but a steady attrition of logistical capacity and psychological endurance. ## Warehousing, logistics and the weaponization of supply chains The escalation beyond battlefield strikes into warehousing, ports and railways marks a dangerous shift from military attrition to economic warfare. The destruction of millions of square meters of storage space — and the counter-destruction of Ukrainian ports and rail links — demonstrates how the logistics backbone of economies becomes both a target and a vulnerability. When warehouses that feed urban stores are repeatedly struck, shelves go empty not because production stopped but because distribution has been dismantled. This functional collapse of distribution networks has cascading social effects. Food shortages, localized starvation risks, and the collapse of retail supply chains create internal instability that can be leveraged politically. The conversation highlights that both sides have weaponized these vulnerabilities: the West and its proxies may aim to “bring the war home” economically for Russia, while Russia targets the infrastructure that sustains Ukraine and the Western war effort. In a contest where trucks, rails and ports are deliberate targets, resilience becomes less about raw production capacity and more about the ability to move, store and protect the essentials of life. That vulnerability is transnational by design—supply chain disruptions ripple beyond national borders. ## Europe, rhetoric and the danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy Words matter. As interlocutors in the conversation emphasize, Europe’s increasingly bellicose language is not operating in a vacuum; it feeds perceptions in Moscow that the continent is moving toward direct confrontation. When influential European politicians publicly entertain or celebrate escalation, they do more than signal support for Kyiv — they help crystallize a Russian belief that a European war is possible or even probable. Stas Krapivnik relays a sobering assessment reportedly expressed in Moscow: Europeans are being taken at their word. That belief risks becoming self-fulfilling. This rhetorical escalation coexists with demographic and ideological narratives that further push the conflict toward permanence. Granular details from the conversation — demographic depletion in Ukraine, recruitment drives, and the importation of foreign labor/military-age migrants — are invoked to paint a picture of societies being remade to sustain extended mobilization. In such an environment, diplomatic backchannels and confidence-building measures face an uphill struggle; public pressure and high-profile political posturing greatly reduce the political space for compromise. ## Military readiness, asymmetric tactics and NATO’s dilemma The interview sheds light on how asymmetric tools—drones, partisans, and targeted strikes on rail and logistics hubs—have recalibrated operational thinking. Long-range precision or massed rocket barrages are no longer the only vectors of strategic effect. The systematic use of small, cheap drones in large numbers forces expensive defensive responses. High interception rates, while impressive, are not a complete defense: limited penetrations have strategic consequences beyond their physical damage. For NATO, the dilemma is acute. The alliance must weigh escalation risks against political commitments to deter aggression. The conversation notes episodes of derailments and sabotage targeting NATO-supplied trains inside conflict zones, blurring the line between logistics and combat. If allied materiel and personnel are systematically targeted en route, hard choices follow: either divert resources to protect supply lines at great cost or accept increasing attrition of equipment and influence on the battlefield. The danger is that incremental moves to secure supply chains, or to strike back at perceived sponsors, could be read as direct involvement, eroding the carefully maintained buffer between proxy support and full-scale alliance warfare. ## Europe’s winter: energy scarcity, fuel politics and social strains The coming winter emerges from the discussion as a pivotal test. Diesel shortages, constrained energy supplies, and disrupted food distribution will not be experienced as abstract economic statistics but as cold homes, longer commutes, and empty grocery aisles. Europe’s own policy choices—sanctions, redirection of oil flows, restrictions on diesel imports—intersect with the damage to Russian and Ukrainian infrastructure, producing unintended consequences for ordinary citizens. Several dynamics make the winter particularly dangerous politically. First, energy scarcity is highly visible and immediate; voters experience it directly and hold governments accountable. Second, uneven distribution—where some regions are hit harder than others—can create internal fractures in societies already strained by migration, inflation and political polarization. Third, as hardship increases, so too does the appeal of maximalist political actors who promise decisive remedies, even if those remedies are militarized. The combination of visible suffering and bellicose rhetori

Europe's War-Hysteria Getting CRAZY | Stas Krapivnik With every passing week, the Europeans are talking themselves deeper and deeper into a war- psychosis. And now, the Russians are starting to believe them. Stanislav Krapivnik joins Pascal to discuss drone strikes, Russian public opinion, and the danger of a wider European war. He assesses attacks on refineries, warehouses, ports, and transport networks, arguing that economic escalation carries consequences beyond Ukraine. Their conversation also examines military readiness, demographic pressures, sanctions, diesel supplies, and food distribution. Krapivnik offers a bleak outlook for the coming winter, while Lottaz questions how economic hardship and political decisions could affect the prospects for peace across Europe and beyond. Stas's Links: YouTube: https://www. youtube.com/@MrSlavikman X: https://x.com/STANISKRAPIVNIK Substack: https://zmeigarinich. substack.com Telegram (English): https://t.me/staswasthereenglish2 Telegram (Russian): https://t. me/stastydaiobratno Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 Introduction and Russia’s elections 03: 06 Drone strikes, refineries and air defenses 08:20 Warehouses, ports and economic escalation 16: 20 Europe, Russia and the risk of wider war 22:20 Military readiness and a possible NATO conflict 29: 49 Europe’s winter: diesel, energy and food 34:38 Sanctions and the global oil market 37:42 Shipping bottlenecks and political consequences #Guest Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies today, again, with an update by our friend and colleague Stanislav Krapivnik. Stas, welcome back. #Pascal Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure. #Guest And great having you. This is the second try we're doing because the first start got a little bit choppy in your regular place. Now you kind of moved to a different room. Thank you for this, and also for standing around. And let's not beat about the bush and talk about the strike that happened last Sunday, on your last day of voting in Russia, in the elections. Can you tell us a little bit? How was that? How bad is it? And do you think, because it was huge, it was a huge strike, actually, is it changing? Do you think it will change something in Russia's approach toward the war? -- 1 of 15 -- #Pascal First of all, just to talk about the elections real quick. Yeah, Sunday was the main day of elections. The way elections run in Russia, you can vote online if you register ahead of time and place proper software onto your phone, and you register through your government account. So they can't—it's a serial-numbered copy of the program—so you can't do multiple voting. So in case somebody steals your account, they can't go around voting in your name. I went to a polling place that I was registered at. Came in there, took some time to read through the polls to see who all the candidates were, local candidates. Went through, voted. You bring up your ID, they find you in the list, you sign off. Get your five sheets of paper for the different candidate lists for parliament, for your local county or your region, and then the state election itself. So in this case, the Moscow Oblast election. Took about 20 minutes, about that much. And there's webcams, by the way, everywhere. So you can actually pick any polling station that you want, and you can watch it all day if you want to watch it all day, and review what was done. And there were a lot of international poll watchers to Russia. It allows in like 10,000, 12,000 people, quite literally. And if they want to participate in accounting, they can participate in accounting. A friend of mine, Adrian McCree, he's a self-made millionaire in Australia. He was in Russia for business two election cycles ago, and he said, "Hey, I want to be an election observer." Like, "Go right ahead." Registered, and then including counting, he was at one polling station, said, "Hey, can I count?" Like, "Yeah, go ahead. There you go. You can count." So he probably took them that—so it's a pretty open system. Now, as far as the strike, first of all, the strike, unless I'm mistaken, because there's two oil refineries near Moscow, it was, again, on the Gazprom Neft oil refinery. If it's a big explosion and there's a lot of fire, then it's pretty easy to replace because that's the fuel storage facilities that are being hit. Those are just the round steel sort of facilities. Nobody puts them out. You close off the in and out pipelines and just let them burn out and then replace them. They're a pretty simple design. Sheet metal with an inner lining, basically. Add some valves controlling flow in and out. There were some hits on the actual refinery. They're looking at about two to three weeks out of some vessels that were damaged and they have to replace. And vessels are manufactured by hand, per design. Most vessels, I mean, you get up to 70, 78, 80-meter vessels, but those are onesies and twosies. The majority of vessels are one to three meters, maybe four meters. And that's where your chemical mixtures are occurring or separation is occurring. And those are—a three-meter vessel can be manufactured in less than a week. By manufactured, I mean untested, pressurized, everything else. So this is not a major hiccup. Just as an example, the Yaroslavl refinery has gone down 16 times in the last three and a half years. It's been hit 16 times. It's down for two weeks. It's back up and running again. So when the Ukrainians come out and say, "Oh, we've reduced Russian refining capacity to 40%," they have been corrected by a very neutral -- 2 of 15 -- organization called Reuters. Feel free to laugh at this point. But Reuters, the neutral, neutral Reuters, has come out and stated, "Well, 40 is a little high, maybe like 25%." So the reality is maybe 10 at most, and this was with massive effort. Now, to understand the level of effort, there were also several apartment buildings hit, as usual, and single-residency homes. Some were hit by debris falling on them. Some were hit because they were targeted. Now, to understand, there were maybe about a dozen drones that actually found the target. For that dozen drones in Moscow region and around Moscow, they hit targets. The West sent 1,900 drones. #Guest Yep, massive numbers that were thrown at you. Massive numbers, and 12 or so got through. So the defense system—the defense of Moscow, the air defense—works, I mean, at an incredible level, right? #Pascal Yeah, the Americans are dreaming about that in Jordan. That's a wet dream for them. That'll never come true. They're lucky if they intercept half of what Iran throws at them. Iran's throwing pretty old stuff at them. So, yeah, you're looking at less than one-tenth of 1%. #Guest So is this a source of reassurance for Russians, or are the calls still growing that the strategy of the war needs to be changed into something that then prevents those strikes from happening in the first place? #Pascal Well, preventing—you see, the problem is preventing is more difficult because these drones are being launched by small trucks. Now, Russia has done a lot to slow that down. And one of the reasons the intercept rates are so good is that they're having to launch them much further away from the front lines than they did before. Russia has done that by destroying all the gas, all the petrol stations in Kharkov Oblast and Sumy Oblast, and they're now working in Kiev Oblast and in Kiev itself, in Chernihiv. They just destroyed all the gas stations or the petrol stations where these light cargo trucks get refueled, because that's what they are. They drive the light cargo trucks and civilian trucks. These aren't military trucks. They use civilian trucks whenever possible, hide behind civilians. They drive these up and they launch three, four drones off them. And then they drive off and hide them somewhere during the day. So that's the problem with that. You can hide these trucks. These aren't very big trucks. You can hide them pretty much in any garage, underground parking, things like that, warehousing. -- 3 of 15 -- #Guest Now, speaking of warehousing... Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on NeutralityStudies.com. Links below. #Pascal See you there. As more and more warehousing is burning up in Ukraine and starvation started to kick in in certain areas, the West decided to upgrade their war on Russia: a full economic war. So they went after Russian oil refineries also, and a couple others. Now, they destroyed 3.5 million square meters of warehousing space in Russia. 3.5 million square meters. Square meters. Just to understand, at the present rate, Russia is building an average of 5 million square meters per year. Wow. #Guest Yeah. #Pascal Russia has responded, and there's estimates anywhere between 60% to 90% of Ukraine's warehousing has been destroyed. I mean, anything and everything that looks like a warehouse is now getting hit and being destroyed. In fact, there are a lot of internet photos of signs in Ukrainian grocery stores threatening a $3,000 hryvnia fine for anybody taking a photo of empty shelves, because the warehouses that were the distribution warehouses for groceries are gone, along with everything else. #Guest How did that war on warehousing start, and what was the logic behind it? Did the Ukrainians think that this would bring the war home, or did the Ukrainians—did NATO think this would bring the war home to the Russians, or what was the logic behind it? #Pascal Yeah, I wouldn't put—Ukraine is the meat that carries out the orders and dies. That's their job. Their job is to fight and die en masse for the owner class in the West. This was flat-out—this was America, first and foremost. Whether it was directly Trump or whether it was his handlers, we don't know. But we do know we had a press conference with Marco Rubio and Trump, and Rubio was asked when all this started. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, we're doing deep strikes on Russia now." So it's America. Let's just be honest about it. It's America. It's American, American-European-made drones. At most, -- 4 of 15 -- they're slapped together, just like a Flamingo missile. They upgraded V1, Nazi V1. It looks almost identical to it. It's just slapped together, fueled up, and sent out by the Ukrainians. All the targeting and everything else is from Americans, and the manufacturer is in the U.S. and in Europe. So when they fly—oh, and then after Rubio is saying this, Trump butts in and goes, "Yes, we're going to escalate to de- escalate." Well, they escalated. Russia counter-escalated. And now Europe is going to have a Hunger Games, and the Hunger Games are already here for Europe. And the fuel shortage is already here for America and Europe. And America is making it even worse because, you know, what else would America do but make things even worse? That's the level of people that's living in the U.S., ruling the U.S. these days. So Russia countered by, you know, it was the West that started hitting grain shipments out of the Azov Sea and out of the eastern Black Sea. Russia countered by just destroying all seven of Ukraine's ports. And yesterday, Russia struck the main rail bridge leading to southern Odessa Province, at least then across the Danube to Romania. So that's now gone as a route. Over 500 locomotives have been destroyed by the Russian military and by Russian partisans from the local population fighting the government. Yeah, there's quite a bit of that that goes unreported. There's been three NATO trains that were derailed and burnt carrying NATO equipment. So there's an active anti-NATO, anti-Zelensky partisan movement in Ukraine itself. And the