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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
@kamilkazani
Sep 25 • 13 tweets • 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
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The Rhodus Story

On a sunny spring day of 2022 someone transferred me 10 Ethereums. That was a lot of money. With this money I could do something big

So, I decided to do something interesting 🧵 Image
Not long before that, I wandered into an article «Germany and Czechia help Russia to build ballistic missiles Sarmat and Sineva with the nuclear warheads» (2017). A case study on the Krasmash missile producing plant, it posed some questions that analysts seldom ask:

🤔 Image
What was the article about?

The Krasnoyarsk Machine Building Plant (Krasmash) is one of two key intercontinental ballistic missile manufacturers in Russia. Krasmash produces and maintains the liquid-propellant missiles such as the ICBM Sarmat and SLBM Bulava Image
In 2016, a Krasnoyarsk regional TV channel "Yenisei" broadcasted a program on the modernization of Krasmash

It had some interesting visuals. Image
That was a VLC 4000 ATC + C1 vertical lathe produced by a Czech company TDZ Turn

Source: (p.1). tdz-turn.com/contentBox/dow…
Image
How did this European machine end up on Krasmash?

That was surprisingly easy to track. Back then, TDZ Turn listed a Krasnoyarsk-based company KR Prom (КР Пром) as their official distributor in Russia

TDZ Turn -> KR Prom -> Krasmash

*there is more documental evidence available Image
What did I learn from this article?

1. The most highly classified & strategically important military producers in Russia operate with Western machine tools

2. I can investigate this based on the most mundane publicly available sources

3. And track the entire supply chain
What did I *not* learn from this article?

1. How import dependent is the Russian military industry?

2. Who is it import dependent upon?

3. Why?
As I could not find the answers in literature, I had to produce them myself. If I do not have a credible picture of how Russia produces weaponry, I will construct it bit by a bit. As I cannot do it alone, I will build a team

And that's how the @rhodusinc was born Image
@rhodusinc One year later, we have... Image
@rhodusinc Some of our materials will be posted on our @Rhodusinc Twitter page. This is a short thread with selected visuals on a Russian strategic missiles producer - the Votkinsk Plant

Paywalled materials will be posted in our newsletter. Here we outline the case study of Votkinsk Plant in more detail

Votkinsk Plant: How to make an "Iskander"? Case study of a Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles producer https://rhodus.substack.com/p/how-to-make-an-iskander
It is your donations that made this investigation possible. If you want to support our work, you can:

1. Subscribe to our newsletter
2. Make a wire transfer

BENEFICIARY: Rhodus Inc.
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 9801141480
ROUTING NUMBER: 084106768
BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: 447 Broadway, 2nd Floor, 197 New York, NY 10013
BANK NAME: Evolve Bank & Trust
BANK ADDRESS: 6000 Poplar Ave, Suite 300 Memphis, TN 38119

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 22
Yes, certainly. Our decisions are primarily guided by impressions

1. Russian defeat makes an *impression* that one can hardly win a war of conquest anymore

2. Russian victory makes an *impression* that one absolutely can

The cost of (2) will be enormous
The first order effect is that it will encourage the wars of conquest, and encourage globally. There are perhaps few nations in this world that do not believe that a piece of their neighbor’s land belongs to them by right

There will be way more attempts for territorial conquest
The second order effect is that states will have to adapt to the now unsafe world. Even if their neighbors do not seem to plan a war of conquest right now, they may be considering it in the future. One must prepare for this scenario

You can say goodbye to the non-proliferation
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 21
Why fund Ukraine?

1. This world consists of states

2. That are war machines optimised for war purposes

3. Allowing the war machines optimised for war purposes to make territorial conquests and get away with this, makes the world unsafe

The unsafe world will cost you more 🧵
4. Many in the US take their current material prosperity as granted

5. It is not

6. Unprecedented in the world history, it became possible only in the unprecedentedly safe world

7. When the world becomes less safe, you will have to say goodbye to the current prosperity
8. The unprecedented safety of this world is based upon it being dominated by a single war machine (US)

9. That has severely limited the incentives for other war machines to fight each other

10. The US made it very difficult for a war machine to annex a new territory

11. Effectively impossible to legalise such an annexation

12. And straight out impossible to cash out from it
Read 14 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 21
Even if we have the blueprints, executing their design may be difficult to impossible. What we lack is the:

1. Material culture
2. Knowledge ecosystem

these blueprints had been created within

They are essentially relics of a lost (alien and incomprehensible) civilisation
Image
This applies to the seemingly mundane stuff. For example, even though Russian tanks are based on the Soviet blueprints, Russian tank barrels are of lower quality & durability than Soviet ones. Design may be the same, but details of the original production processes are lost
The nearly absolute reliance of the Russian war machine on the imported metal-cutting machines should be considered in the light of the qualified manual labour pool having shrunk and degraded
Read 5 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 20
On the chokepoints of the military production, I strongly recommend reading this. It gives a sufficiently good first introduction into the problem

No military industrial complex in the world can execute the mechanical design of weaponry other than based on the CNC technology*
Therefore, supply chain for the quality CNC equipment (including both mechanical and electronic components) being controlled by the US allies is of major and under appreciated strategic significance
* Exceptions exist of course, but they are less common and significant than one could presume. As a general rule, every or almost every economy has to deal with the constantly shrinking pool of the qualified manual labour -> alternatives gradually become impossible to execute
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 18
I think that a military conflict between China and the US is highly probable. I also think that China will lose it. While the US hard power (& the quality of strategic thinking) may have substantially deteriorated since 1991, China:

1. Is much weaker
2. Won't catch up
China is overall much more backward in terms of technology & manufacturing than almost anyone in the US foreign policy establishment is ready to admit. Beijing knows it, DC doesn't

Which, again, shows how much did the American strategic thinking deteriorate since 1991
PS I believe that the end of the Cold War had a corrupting effect on the US strategists. With the real and credible threat gone, too many started exaggerating (or making up?) BS threats. Consequently, the skills and competences for dealing with a real threat have atrophied
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 3
1. Time exists

2. Things change with time

3. In 2014, Russia could reasonably expect a fairly high level of acceptance

4. Which was not the case in 2022

5. This invasion was planned based upon the picture of how it *used* to be

6. Which became completely outdated by 2022
7. As time exists, you should not presume that the opportunities you have now will last forever

8. They probably won’t

9. In 2014-2015, Russia had a high chance to launch a successful full scale invasion

10. But it did not

11. I think this was due to the crash in oil prices Image
12. By the time Russia decided to invade (I have a reason to believe it was 2019) things changed

13. The popular sentiments changed

14. On the Ukrainian held territory, you could hardly find *young* supporters of Russia

15. The Russian fanbase had been reduced to the elderly Image
Read 8 tweets

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