Donbass Voentorg. New Russia has its own forces
2014.11.23 Boris Alexandrovich Rozhin in the article “Who started the war?»Accurately and convincingly (for all but professional Ukrainians - those who hope to benefit from separation of Ukraine from the rest of Russia) showed: Kyiv separatists were the first to use the champions of the separation of the south-western part of the Russian people, from the Polish hard hand called Okraintsy, from the rest Russians; the Russian majority of Ukrainian citizens were initially in the position of forced defense and resorted to force only to the extent of repulse against the separatist pressure of the punishers subordinate to Kiev; by the time the first Russian volunteers appeared in the Donbass, local residents had already formed structures that resisted irregular punitive detachments, although they were not yet ready to fight full-fledged troops or even Ukrainian troops. I suppose familiarity with this chronological selection exhausts the discussion of recent interviews with the former Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic: with all due respect for his military talents, he often expounds his thoughts so ambiguously that many words have accumulated around his words - including undoubtedly perverse ones. And the accusation of the Russian Federation, as a state, of organizing, or at least provoking, the transition of the anti-separatist movement into a force form, is even less closed.
But even if the authorities of the Russian Federation are not involved in the beginning of the struggle against the Kiev separatists (and the Galician Nazis, whose self-promotion serves as the ideological basis of Kiev separatism), how does the already liberated part of Novorossia resist for so long, though upset, but still the state military machine? Why, when the regular troops of Ukraine entered the business, are they just as regularly beaten? Where do the millions of rounds and thousands of shells needed for every day of a serious battle come from?
Donetsk coal basin - no later than the fourth time industrial region of Russia (if sclerosis does not change me - after the Moscow-Tula, Ural, St. Petersburg). The Lugansk plant supplied the Sevastopol defense of the 1854 – 55 with guns. And with the advent of nitration — a method of producing explosives by treating various organics with a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids — it was Donbass that became one of the country's largest producers of ammunition.
Donbass is not the world's largest mass of coal. Yes, the layers there are mostly relatively thin (in some mines layers of coal a little more than half a meter thick are developed, so they create especially compact equipment or even work by hand), and often steeply dipping. But almost all Donbass coal is either low-ash energy or coking. Therefore, metallurgy is developed primarily in the region (the benefit is the Krivoy Rog iron ore basin). For her, thousands of coke oven batteries heat the coal without air.
Microporous carbon is almost pure - coke is not the only result of this process. Oxides of nitrogen (of which they make nitric acid) and resin containing a significant proportion of benzene C6H6 and its derivatives phenol (hydroxyl –OH is attached to the benzene ring) and toluene (methyl –CH3 is attached to the same ring) are of equal importance. Trinitrobenzene can be obtained by nitration (and on its basis further chemical manipulations create especially powerful hexanitrobenzene and heat-resistant triaminotrinitrobenzene), trinitrophenol — melinite (from French miel — honey; in molten form is really similar) and trinitrotoluene — trotyl. All these substances are powerful explosives. However, melinite reacts easily with metals, and the salts obtained are very sensitive: in the Russian-Japanese war dozens of Japanese ship cannons were destroyed by internal explosions of shells stuffed with chimoses (by the name of the chemist who organized trinitrophenol production in Japan), and after the war the explosion in the artillery cellar destroyed flagship battleship "Mikaza". But TNT is exemplary safe in handling: it is chemically stable, it burns and melts in the fire without an explosion, does not explode in its cast form even with a rifle bullet. So, coke chemistry provides the production of the main stuffing for shells.
In the 20th century, other types of production were added to coke chemistry. atmospheric nitrogen fixation by the method conceptually found laureate (1918) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 'for synthesis of ammonia from its constituent elements "Friedrich Zigfridovich Haber (1868.12.09-1934.01.29) and technologically nuanced laureate (1931, Frederick Haynrihovichem Bergius (1884.10.11-1949.03.31)) The Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for merits in the introduction and development of high-pressure methods in chemistry" by Karl Karlovich Bosch (1874.08.27 – 1940.04.26), made it possible to create the industry of nitric acid in an amount incomparably greater than that produced by coke chemistry, and nitrogen fertilizers - primarily ammonium nitrate NH4NO3, also used in a variety of explosives. True, Severodonetsk, where Azot, one of the largest chemical plants in the USSR, is located (I was there at 1978 at a conference organized by the Severodonetsk creator of control computers, NPO Impuls, to show my latest developments applied by Nitrogen ; in total, I was on business trips on the “Impulse” 15 time), now occupied by Kiev punishers. But knowing the density of the intra-Donbass railway network, I suppose that during the battles with these punishers, it was possible to export many tens of thousands of tons of acid and saltpeter from the warehouse of the combine to other chemical enterprises of the region.
Ammonium nitrate-based explosive mixtures are insensitive: powerful detonators are needed to activate them. But there are such a dime a dozen in the Donbass: after all, nitrate with the addition of diesel fuel is the most common industrial explosive used in mining millions of times a year. A mixture of ammonium nitrate with diesel fuel - igdanit, since the optimal composition (7% of diesel fuel) was developed at the Institute of Mining of the Academy of Sciences (IGDAN) named after an outstanding specialist in air exchange in mines and mining safety of academician Alexander Aleksandrovich Skochinsky (1874.07.13 – 1960.10.06) - quickly splits , but almost any competent miner will be able to make a high-explosive bookmark from it while the enemy from the horizon approaches the place of this bookmark. Mixtures with aluminum powder — ammonals — are also short-lived: without a protective oil film on the surface, the powder quickly oxidizes. But alloys with TNT - ammatol - are stable and safe to handle, and at times more powerful than TNT. Three-component alloy - ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, TNT - again, powerful, safe, and also relatively cheap. Nitrate-based alloys are suitable for mortar and rockets, and with small additions of stabilizers, they are also stable in cannon ammunition.
By nitration of cellulose, pyroxylin is obtained - the basis of smokeless powders. True, cotton for Donbass was imported from outside, but several decades ago, as far as I heard, they mastered the nitration of wood pulp, and there are paper factories near Donbass. There is little non-ferrous metallurgy in the Donbas, but even in Soviet times, the production of ferrous metal liners and the production of waterproof coatings were mastered, first lacquer and then polymer. So for the Lugansk cartridge plant in the region, there is enough raw materials. And he worked even in the years ukronezavisimosti.
It is not enough to create cartridges, shells and even missiles (and ammunition for multiple launch rocket systems is not much more difficult to produce than artillery shots of a comparable caliber). We must also have something to release them from. At first, the militias had mainly machine guns and hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers with armory warehouses of local police departments, the security service of Ukraine and several military units that sided with the law against the coup in Kiev. But soon they had their own guns, launchers, armored personnel carriers and Tanks - including those that were not produced not only in the Donbass, but even in Kharkov factories (and Kharkov in Soviet times became one of the main centers for the development and production of tanks). Naturally, Kiev puppets and their Western puppeteers immediately declared all this as generous gifts of the Russian Federation (and the Russian Federation itself as an aggressor).
The first copies of heavy weapons and self-propelled vehicles used by the militias, no doubt, came to them from the military units of Ukraine - testimony and video recordings of trophy would be enough even for the most biased court. And in the future trophies were more than enough for the most serious combat activity. Unfortunately, in the armed forces of Ukraine there are still quite a few people who sincerely believe that they are not at war with their own people, and therefore are trying to bring down everything they cannot take with them when they leave the encirclement. But Donbass has a huge fleet of repair services of the most varied profile: not to mention everything else, so much technology is used in mining and it accumulates for so long that the masters can repair all the metal.
Nevertheless, trophies are really not the only channel for replenishing the technical arsenal of the armed forces of New Russia by the armed forces of Ukraine. One of the main characters of the series "Soldiers" - Ensign Shmatko - is not for nothing that he has the South Russian surname. Even in imperial times, the quartermaster of Little Russian origin became famous even against the general background. But the background was impressive. Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (1730.11.24 – 1800.05.18) at the beginning of the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763) landed his rear service, but in 1758 he achieved his transfer to the army and explained the desire for this briefly: “Anyone who has served for two years must be shot down for the quartermaster.” without trial. " In Soviet times, legends about Ukrainian ensigns competed with legends about Jewish speculators (both are far from unreasonable). In the post-Soviet hard times, the Ukrainian army managed to unofficially sell off almost all the reserves accumulated by the USSR for a strike through the Allied Balkan countries in Greece with Turkey and through almost neutral Yugoslavia in Italy. Can anyone really believe that some of the generous customers - for example, the Novorossiysk militias - will not be paid attention simply for political reasons?
2014.04.12 – 07.06 Artyomovsk, Donetsk region officially stayed under the flag of Donetsk People’s Republic. At that time, on the night of 2014.06.20, the militia stormed the enormous armored vehicles storage base in the city for an hour, but achieved nothing and retreated without entering the territory. Nevertheless, soon there were reports: the militia have taken on the basis of equipment. First, the stories found propaganda disguise supplies from the Russian Federation. But the materials of hacking of electronic correspondence of several Ukrainian officers of quite serious ranks have already been published. It is clear from them: the entire maintainable part of the database contents was taken out long before the assault - it was needed just to conceal the results of a successful commercial operation.
Calculations of many such combat and financial operations showed that all military equipment and artillery, already used by the militia, could be obtained from local resources. Just as all the ammunition consumed by the militia could have been produced on site or mined as trophies. For such mining need only skilled hands and a lot of money. But both in the Donbas have always been in more than enough. You can not even count on raising money in the Russian Federation (it is undoubtedly necessary for many organizational and political reasons, but can only cover the cost of clothing, food and medical support for the troops of Novorossia): local oligarchs - first of all Rinat Akhmetov - initially organized a massive public protest, just to remind the winning Dnepropetrovsk clan of the need to take into account the interests of the Donetsk clan (these two groups competed in Soviet times). I suppose, starting this protest, the Donetsk clan hardly strove for its transition into a direct military confrontation, but Donbass businessmen are well enough familiar with the resources of their region in order to assess its chances of fighting. In my opinion, these resources are sufficient, if not for the march on Kiev, then at least to create Novorossia from Kharkov to Tiraspol (taking into account the transfer of resources from the liberated regions to the liberators and the inclusion of new volunteers in their ranks).
Kiev punitive already realized that they could not subdue the Donbass. Now they are not conducting military operations, but a terrorist operation aimed at destroying the life-supporting and production infrastructure of the region. But the experience of the Great Patriotic War showed: Donbass can heal even incomparably worse wounds in years. Then the whole country helped him - but now there will be those who want to revive one of the best industrial regions of the world in order to use the fruits of his works in the future. But Kiev will either become an industrial and cultural center again, or it will rot and disappear along with provincials who have flooded it with okraintsy.
All this does not mean in any way that the Russian Federation does not at all help Novorossia with weapons, ammunition, military specialists. This only indicates: all the current and future successes of New Russia can be explained without the assumption of such assistance.
Information