We heard about devastating Russian airstrikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure a day ago. The Ukrainians meanwhile claim that their drone and missile attacks have crippled Russia’s refineries and forced Moscow to import gasoline!
In this 8 minute interview I bring the two stories together and comment on what is true, what is false. However, I emphasize here that the Russian side has been very sparing in its discussion of the Ukrainian strikes on refineries and other energy infrastructure inside the RF. They do not talk about the likely US-guided Himars strike on a refinery. The only open discussion relating to the subject of Ukrainian attacks has been the message from Moscow that the refiners, which are private, not government legal entities, should now put up the cash to protect their assets from Ukrainian drone attacks.
In short, the subject under discussion here bears on the question of whether Russia is really winning the war, not to say whether it has won the war as certain loudmouths interviewed by authoritative youtube channel hosts are saying day after day.
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write.
Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975).
After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility.
From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.
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Gilbert Doctorow 
The least we can deduct is th
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