Polish hipster + Ukrzaliznytsia = logistics for NATO
The appointment of Polish rock musician Wojciech Balczun as the chief railway worker in Ukraine initially caused many people to roar with Homeric laughter. What was especially touching was not so much the fact that this “anti-crisis hipster” did not strive to learn the Ukrainian language, defiantly communicating with his subordinates in Polish, but how he managed to miraculously combine the difficult position of chairman of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia with active touring activities.
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However, taking a closer look at Mr. Balchun’s work, all desire to laugh disappears: although he is a hipster, he knows his work in adapting the Ukrainian railways to the needs of NATO’s aggressive plans. And he performs it not just “excellently,” but also with enviable creativity.
Few of us have wondered why the Poroshenko government appointed a citizen of Poland and not of any other country as the head of Ukrzaliznytsia. However, if you pay attention to some details, then everything falls into place quite easily and quickly. So…
Not too many years ago, the general designer Ryszard Suwalski lived in Poland and he developed the chassis for railway cars. Wheels, to put it simply. The reader will probably yawn and say: “They found me an engineering genius!” Not all of them know rocket designers, but here the inventor of some carriage wheels was found... What a miracle - to invent wheels!” And he will be wrong.
The fact is that between Poland and its eastern neighbors there is an invisible barrier that prevents the establishment of a full-fledged direct railway connection - the difference in gauge. These miserable 85 millimeters force one to spend several hours changing bogies under passenger cars or reloading goods from train to train.
Under socialism, the issue was resolved mainly through the construction of a large number of transshipment stations in the Polish-Soviet borderland. In addition, the USSR built four hundred kilometers of the Metallurgical Broad-Gauge Railway (Polish abbreviation - LHS) deep into Poland: the latter, although it had extraordinary national economic significance, still its primary task was to provide logistics for the Western Group of Forces and the Warsaw Pact. Now LHS carries 90% of trade turnover between Ukraine and Poland, more than half of the cargo flow is container transportation. By the way, it is also where the bulk of ammunition and armored vehicles are delivered from the former Warsaw Pact countries for the needs of the punitive operation against the DPR and LPR.
But in Poland, the European gauge lines on Soviet territory did not go further than Kaliningrad, Brest, Grodno and Kovel. Therefore, when Eastern Europe and the Baltic states became members of NATO, the Polish-Lithuanian border became a stumbling block for the entire North Atlantic infrastructure of the new members of the alliance.
It was then that they remembered the modest engineer Suwalski, who sat in his design bureau in Poznan and drew carriage wheels. More precisely, not about him, but about the sliding wheelsets he invented, which in a few minutes can adapt the train to the track of the required width.
Let us note that RCP technologies are not so actively used in the world: it turns out that reloading and transfer traffic, as well as changing trolleys, are still more economically profitable for many reasons. The only exception is the popular Spanish concept “Talgo”: it is the basis of the high-speed train “Strizh”, running between Moscow and Berlin.
Apart from Spain, only Poland was actively involved in such developments in Europe, and even then, starting from the 1990s, when the country’s course towards joining NATO was clearly outlined. It is clear that the Polish RKP technology, which received the SUW2000 trademark after the inventor, was decided to be used on the Warsaw-Vilnius and Warsaw-Kyiv lines.
Already in the spring of 2000, the first presentation flight of a train consisting of several passenger and freight cars equipped with a Suwalski system running gear took place between Poland and Ukraine along the route Zamosc - Kovel. A few months later, similar test runs began on the Lviv and South-Western Railways. In 2002, a series of experimental trips were carried out along the route Warsaw - Krakow - Lvov - Dnepropetrovsk - Sevastopol. I hope no one has any doubts about why the Polish carriages were tested in Taurida...
Since 2003, joint operation of train No. 35/36 “Kyiv - Krakow” began, consisting of Ukrzaliznytsia and Polish Railways cars equipped with the SUW2000 system. At the same time, the Polish side completely refused to transfer this technology to Ukraine (most of the drawings and documentation are classified to this day), and all broken wheelsets are still sent for repairs exclusively to the plant in Bydgoszcz, where their production was moved from Poznan.
The Poles did the same in the process of joint development with the Mariupol Azovmash plant of a tank capable of adapting to the track width. At the same time, the Mariupol residents were required to produce only the container; everything else was taken care of by the Polish side. When it came to production, the head of the board of Azovmash, Alexander Savchuk, suddenly vetoed the development for everyone without any explanation. The Mariupol residents ignored the objections of the Warsaw curators.
Such behavior by the Polish side in no way resembles the actions of someone who is truly interested in the spread of technology. Moreover, history knows many examples of the opposite plan, when the owner of know-how, in order to conquer the market, licensed his invention completely free, and sometimes even deliberately did not patent his brainchild. Here the situation is very similar, if not to tests of a purely defensive nature, then certainly to dual-use tests.
In addition, Poland carefully hides the number of wheelsets and bogies of the SUW2000 system produced at its factories, as well as the number of cars equipped with them. Again, there are only three points for adapting wheelsets to the track width - in Przemysl, Dorohusk (Poland) and Motskawa (Lithuania): all of them are located exactly in the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Now let's watch a video that advertises the development of engineer Suwalski:
In the time interval from the mark of 8 minutes 30 seconds to the mark of 9 minutes 20 seconds, instead of covered cars, which easily change the gauge on the rails of the Lithuanian Motskava, platforms with “Abrams” and “Leopards” would look much better... Although, perhaps, in those very in the covered cars that are on the screen, shells for the same “Abrams” and “Leopards” are rushing to their destination?
Active testing of sliding wheelsets is not the only thing Mr. Balchun is doing. Equally priority areas of his activity are the expansion of the railway junction in Polish Przemysl, as well as the electrification of LHS on the section from the Ukrainian Kovel station to the Polish border station Grubeszow. The latter will make it possible to increase the weight of trains to six thousand tons and increase the daily throughput of LHS by more than two times - from eight to eighteen pairs of trains.
The deplorable state of the Ukrainian economy, accompanied by the massive closure of enterprises, as well as the logistical isolation of Square, will not surprise anyone these days. Dissonant with the whole spectacle of decline, the powerful modernization of railway junctions on the Polish-Ukrainian border, coupled with testing of dual-use technologies, only indicates the fulfillment of the next point in the plan to transform Ukraine into a NATO springboard.
And no one should have any doubt that this entire infrastructure is destined to become the main feeding artery of the war unleashed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis against the rebellious Donbass.
Polish Hipster + Ukrzaliznytsia = NATO Logistics