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There was some worrying news for Volodymyr Zelensky this week when the US House of Representatives finally elected a new speaker. Mike Johnson, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, has consistently opposed US funding for the Ukrainian war effort. Now he’s the second most powerful man in US politics behind the president, Joe Biden.

As Thomas Gift, the director of the Centre on US Politics at UCL spells out, Johnson’s cooperation will be vital if Biden is to get his latest US$105 billion (£86.5 billion) national security aid package through Congress. More than$60 billion of that is earmarked for Ukraine and if it doesn’t come through, Kyiv will struggle.

Of course, Washington has other fish to fry. Whether you can call the Israel-Hamas war a “bigger fish” remains unclear. Only $14 billion has been earmarked to go to Israel so far. But for most people in the US events in Israel and Gaza are seen as being of the highest importance. Israel has replaced Ukraine as the lead story on most news channels and knocked the European war off the front pages. With Donald Trump relentlessly demanding a moratorium on aid to Ukraine, Kyiv has clear grounds for concern as its counteroffensive grinds on in the south with still no end to the killing in sight.

Read more: Funding for Ukraine is anything but certain after US elects new speaker

Russia meanwhile is struggling with its own offensive in the east. According to a recent report published by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, the Russian push around the town of Avdiivka in the Donetsk Oblast has run into heavily fortified Ukrainian defensive positions (similar to what Ukrainian forces in the south are experiencing with entrenched Russian troops).

Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

The MoD update, dated October 17, says that heavy casualties have forced Russia from the offensive into what it calls “active-defence”. Death tolls vary widely and should be taken with a grain of salt, but Newsweek claimed in a report on October 20 that Russia’s death toll was approaching 300,000 men, including 1,300 killed in a single day.

But plenty of men still appear to be joining up – at least, according to Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president, deputy national security minister and outspoken Putin mouthpiece, who said 385,000 men had enlisted so far this year. So the burning question is whether and when the Russian public will get tired of the bodybags and the news from friends or relatives that a loved one has been killed or maimed at the front.

Ben Soodavar, of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, believes that military loss is deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. Most Russians are brought up with tales of self-sacrifice in the second world war – the heroes of the Red Army who made the world safe from fascism. “For Russia, every dead soldier in Ukraine constitutes a step towards victory and reclaiming the great power image of the country’s Soviet past,” he writes.

It helps, of course, that the head of the Russian Orthodox church is as good as promising soldiers the keys to the kingdom of heaven if they are killed in the line of duty.

Read more: Ukraine: Russia's losses mount -- but self-sacrifice in war is part of the country's mythology

War at sea…

If the war on land continues to grind on, with every metre of land bitterly contested, the sea war took an interesting turn recently when it was revealed that Russia has relocated many of the vessels in its Black Sea fleet from its base in Sevastopol in Crimea to safer bases in Novorossiysk and Feodosia, on either sides of the Kerch strait connecting eastern Crimea with the Russian mainland. There are even reports of plans to build naval facilities in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.

Zelensky claimed on October 24 that: “The Russian fleet is no longer able to operate in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually fleeing from Crimea. And this is a historic achievement.”

Basil Germond, a researcher in maritime strategy at the University of Portsmouth, believes this is a significant moment, marking Russia’s inability to properly enforce any blockade of Ukraine’s grain shipments. It also makes Russia look weak in Crimea itself, which, as Germond points out, “is a big problem, given the central role that Crimea plays in Putin’s imperialist narrative”.

Read more: Russia's plan to relocate its Black Sea naval base from Crimea is priceless for Ukraine's morale

… and in cyberspace

Another theatre of war not much discussed thus far is cyberspace. Russia has long been thought of as a master of cyberwarfare, spreading disinformation, launching attacks against western systems and disrupting communications. But now Kyiv has formed its own “IT army”, launching disruptive cyber-attacks and data thefts against the Russian government and other high-profile targets such as energy giant Gazprom.

Launched in February by the deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, it is thought to be the first time that a state official has openly called on hackers from around the globe to join a nation’s military defensive efforts against an invading force. Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, who researches cybercrime and security at the University of Portsmouth, says the army has pulled off a number of coups, including hacking into Russian state TV channels to broadcast a message that: “the hour of reckoning has come.”

Karagiannopoulos believes this is the tip of the cyberwar iceberg and that a great deal of work is needed to incorporate activities in cyberspace into the rules of war.

Read more: Ukraine's IT army is a world first: here's why it is an important part of the war

Putin and Xi, a new world order?

Putin may not have been able to travel to South Africa for the Brics summit earlier this year for fear he might be and face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. But when China celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Beijing last week, Putin was there, front and centre, taking every opportunity to bask in the reflected glory of his apparently “no-limits friendship” with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Stefan Wolff, an international relations expert at the University of Birmingham, noted the asymmetry of this friendship. While Xi travelled to Moscow in March for a one-on-one with the Russian leader, Putin had to content himself with being one of many leaders in Beijing, and while he made the most of it for the Russian press, the occasion was all about Xi and his Belt and Road project.

Read more: Xi-Putin meeting: here's what it says about their current, and future, relationship

Writing after the summit, Natasha Kuhrt, a senior lecturer in international peace & security at King’s College London and Marcin Kaczmarski, who lectures in security studies at the University of Glasgow, observed what they described as “Putin’s explicit acknowledgement of the different roles played by Moscow and Beijing in international politics”.

They note that despite the presence of a number of high level representatives of Russian business, no contracts of note were announced, perhaps a sign of China’s wariness of openly deriding the west’s sanctions regime. And, for all Putin’s boasts of the volume of trade between the two countries, the bulk of this trade consists of export of Russian hydrocarbons and other raw materials to China. In the 1990s, Russia feared becoming a “raw materials appendage” to China. As Kuhrt and Kaczmarski note, this appears to be becoming a reality.

Read more: Putin and Xi: Beijing Belt and Road meeting highlighted Russia’s role as China’s junior partner

Trapped doing business in Russia

Meanwhile, more than 600 days since Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine and Russia was hit by increasingly stringent western sanctions, more than 1,400 international companies are still operating in Russia, many of them unwillingly.

Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St Gallen, and Niccolò Pisani, a professor of strategy and international business at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), have explored why some multinationals have been trapped in Russia, finding it very difficult, if not impossible, to exit the country. They explore four push and pull factors that have help explain why this is.

Read more: Four reasons why western companies have been 'trapped' in Russia since it invaded Ukraine

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We are all familiar with the greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels in car engines, central heating systems and power stations. Little discussed is the climate footprint of producing oil and gas in the first place.

Extracting, refining and distributing oil and gas requires energy. Pumps, compressors, heaters and drilling units treat and move the fuels from many kilometres underground using electricity typically generated by gas turbines. Clearly, burning gas at offshore production sites will result in local emissions of climate-heating CO₂.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) regulates the UK’s oil and gas industry and has a remit to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from UK operations. This does not, however, extend to emissions arising from the subsequent use of that oil and gas.

With what little scope it has to reduce the industry’s emissions, the NSTA is keen for oil and gas platforms to be electrified. In essence, converting these offshore production sites from running on gas turbines to imported electricity from renewable sources like wind turbines.

Conventional oil production only accounts for roughly 5-10% of the emissions associated with the fossil fuel. By far the bulk of these emissions come from when it is used in transport, heating and power generation.

It’s clear that, by pursuing platform electrification, the NSTA is focusing on the wrong emissions source.

Open heart surgery at sea

I worked in the oil and gas sector for over 40 years and know from experience that modifying an existing installation can be a risky undertaking. When dealing with equipment that is several decades old, unforeseen issues can emerge.

Shell’s UK chief Steve Phimister has compared the complicated process of converting oil and gas platforms to renewable electricity to open heart surgery. Some oil and gas companies have described electrification as a “huge concern”.

The configuration and location of some of the older installations mean that electrification will prove to be prohibitively expensive. On some installations, access to relevant equipment is limited.

Electrification is being proposed for clusters of platforms so that costs can be shared. For more remote platforms, sharing costs will not be feasible, so not all offshore platforms will be suitable for the switch to renewable electricity. Future North Sea oil and gas production would be a mix of electrified platforms and those which continue to burn gas.

For those offshore platforms that can be electrified, my experience tells me that costs are likely to be in the billions of pounds. Electrification costs are not quantified in the NSTA’s 2022 report on the industry’s emissions – in fact, there is only one mention of cost.

But even without cost and schedule overruns, electrifying a platform does not tackle all of its emissions. According to the NSTA itself, a large portion of the emissions from producing oil and gas will be unaffected by electrification. The authority estimates that around 35% of platform emissions come from activities unrelated to energy generation, mainly flaring and venting gas.

The NSTA does estimate that an electrification campaign could save 1.2 million tonnes of CO₂ a year. That might sound like a big number, but the UK emits greenhouse gases equivalent to around 420 million tonnes of CO₂ annually. The climate benefit of the UK oil and gas industry shedding 1.2 million tonnes of CO₂ from its offshore operations amounts to just 0.3% of the country’s yearly emissions.

Cut fossil fuel use instead

I believe electrifying offshore oil and gas platforms is a wrong-headed use of taxpayer and industry money and fails to address the wider picture.

The UK would cut far more CO₂ per pound spent if the billions earmarked for offshore electrification were directed at reducing the much larger carbon footprint from fossil fuel use instead. The government could cut these emissions by improving building insulation, building more electric vehicle charging points, investing in wind and solar installations and expanding the electricity grid.

But shifting money from offshore electrification to abating fossil fuel use will not be straightforward. Perhaps the NSTA could agree to let oil and gas firms operate without electrification, provided they can demonstrate they are operating their equipment in such a way as to reduce these emissions to as low as reasonably practical. This would not cut emissions as much as electrification, but it would free up money for more effective decarbonisation elsewhere.

And in this scenario, oil and gas companies would not need to undertake open heart surgery at sea. That sounds like a win-win for everyone.

Tom Baxter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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