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Ukraine Invasion Day 715: too much smoking in Izhevsk, Russia [1]

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Date: 2024-02-07  

Phillips O’Brien:

This is going to be a piece that takes an overview of how wars are won and lost, and engages in particular with the publicly stated ideas of Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s Minister of Strategic Industries.

I was lucky enough to have a meeting with Kamyshin when I was in Ukraine as part of a University of St Andrews delegation last Spring. At that time he had just taken over as the Minister of Strategic Industries, after having done an extraordinary job keeping the Ukrainian rail system running during the first few months after the full-scale invasion. In his job overseeing Ukrainian railways through the worst moments of the full-scale invasion, Kamyshin not only kept Kyiv linked to the outside world, he helped knit together all Ukrainian cities. Since then the Ukrainian railways have played a massive role keeping Ukraine in the fight. They both handle an enormous amount of freight and passenger traffic from the border (the airports have been closed for commercial flights since 24 February 2022), they also ferry Ukrainian troops almost to the front line itself. Most people who come to visit Kyiv from outside, seem to arrive by rail— including President Biden .

Now Kamyshin was obviously considered an enormous asset by the Ukrainian state, and so it was decided to move him from the railways and give him control of a new ministry (which as far as I know might have been set up just for him). This was the ministry of strategic industries, which has as its remit the establishment of a homegrown Ukrainian war industry to make the most important equipment Ukraine needs to fight the war.

(2022)

“I am about efficiency,” said the 38-year-old chief executive. He worked in private enterprise before taking the reins in 2021 of the state-owned rail company, Ukraine’s largest employer, with 231,000 workers and more than 16,700 miles of track.

One of his rules, he said, is: “War is not an excuse.”

Another rule is that he won’t send rail workers up against dangers that he’s not prepared to face himself. His dash to Kherson as the first Ukrainian troops were entering the southern city involved considerable risks, including driving along dirt tracks that de-miners hadn’t yet cleared, he said. He posted videos and photos of the odyssey on Twitter, showing wrecked and derailed rolling stock, torn up tracks and an impromptu breakfast of eggs fried outdoors with a camping stove. “Boots on the ground is our way,” he wrote.

[...]

“The whole country should rely on the railways,” Kamyshin said. Passengers will “always be transported and [at] the station they will always get hot tea, medical first aid and all the rest.”

The network is targeted so frequently, with infrastructure damaged daily and thousands of times, that the rail company has largely given up talking publicly about attacks, Kamyshin said.

“We don’t want to be the most boring guy in the party, constantly reporting that we’ve been shelled,” he said. “We just go and fix it.”

[...]

“We always have Plan B,” he said. “Stations are always supplied with electricity, always light on, always warm, and it will be so even in the winter. That’s my job. That’s our goal. That’s what we fight for.

www.latimes.com/...

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