*** Official Russia vs. Ukraine Discussion - Invasion has begun *** (2 Viewers)

[fatness]

Finland ‘preparing for the worst’ as Russia expands military presence near border

Head of strategy of Finnish defence forces says they are monitoring Moscow’s manoeuvring ‘very closely’

www.theguardian.com

Satellite images, published in the New York Times, appear to show an expansion of military infrastructure near the Finnish border, including rows of tents, military vehicles, renovations to fighter jet shelters and construction on a previously unused helicopter base. Nurmi said: “They are changing structures and we are seeing moderate preparations when it comes to building infrastructure close to our borders, meaning that they will, once the war in Ukraine hopefully ends, start to bring back the forces that have been fighting in Ukraine, especially land forces.”

 

[Chadstroma]

Ukraine has shown you can now buy an intelligence agency off the shelf

What Ukraine has shown is the new way of warfare. They are the teachers now. When a surface drone that costs $80,000 can sink a Russian warship or shoot down jets and helicopters hundreds of kilometres out to sea then we must not shy away from the consequences. The new, simple platforms are incredibly lethal because of the data they feed on. Data is the new oil. There are now AI, satellite and even advertising companies who have data for sale. The one thing all these companies have in common is that they are not the state. They are private companies and many of them are vital to the new ways of warfare and intelligence. Not that long ago spy satellites and data mining were the preserve of governments. Then along came Google Earth. Suddenly nothing was secret.

The commercial satellites do more than observe. Elon Musk’s Starlink isn’t NASA: it’s for hire. The commercial world now has data, AI and collection assets to rival any state. With the right knowledge and expertise individual capabilities can be woven together to create a formidable intelligence, surveillance and targeting regime. You can literally buy, off the shelf, an intelligence agency – as long as you know where to go shopping. In March Mr Trump claimed he switched off US intelligence sharing as a way bullying Zelensky to the table. His bold statements, while causing short term harm, also exposed his ignorance of modern warfare. Supportive allies and companies soon stepped into the gap. If Tesco can switch suppliers in a matter of hours so too can armies.

British intelligence might be replaced by 'off the shelf' intelligence but it is hard to take this article serious even from a former British Defense Secretary when it pretty much states that US intelligence that was held for a time was replaceable. It wasn't. It isn't.

 

[Dezbelief]

Russia classifies budget as Ukraine war costs spiral out of control

Nearly one third of government spending in Russia is classified amid high military spending.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Chadstroma]

Oil prices fall more than 1% on potential further increase to OPEC+ output​

LONDON (Reuters) -Oil prices dropped by more than 1% on Thursday after a report that OPEC+ is discussing a production increase for July, stoking concerns that global supply could exceed demand growth.

Brent futures lost $1.08, or 1.7%, to $63.83 a barrel by 1134 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down $1.02, or 1.7%, at $60.55.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known collectively as OPEC+, are discussing whether to make another large output increase at their meeting on June 1, Bloomberg News reported.

An increase of 411,000 barrels per day (bpd) for July is among the options under discussion, though no final agreement has been reached, the report said, citing delegates.

Reuters previously reported that that the group planned to accelerate output increases and could bring back as much as 2.2 million bpd by November. OPEC+ has been in the process of unwinding production cuts, with additions to the market in May and June.

"We're seeing the market reacting to evidence that OPEC is letting go of a strategy to defend price in favour of market share," said Harry Tchiliguirian at Onyx Capital Group. "It's a bit like taking off a Band-Aid; you do it in one fell swoop."

In a note on Wednesday, RBC Capital analyst Helima Croft said that a 411,000 bpd increase from July is the "most likely outcome" from the meeting, primarily from Saudi Arabia.

"A key question will be whether the voluntary cut will be fully drawn down before the leaves turn brown in many parts of the world, in line with the original taper schedule," she said.

Prices were already lower in the session after Energy Information Administration data released on Wednesday showed U.S. crude and fuel inventories showed surprise stock builds last week as crude imports hit a six-week high and gasoline and distillate demand slipped. [EIA/S]

Crude inventories rose by 1.3 million barrels to 443.2 million barrels in the week ended May 16, the EIA said. Analysts in a Reuters poll had expected a drawdown of 1.3 million barrels.

The EIA's surprise stock builds will exert downward pressure on prices, particularly on WTI, said Emril Jamil at LSEG Oil Research, adding that this could further encourage more U.S. exports to Europe and Asia.

While OPEC+ deliberates, a rising yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds suggests that the producer group could be increasing oil supply into a market with lower demand.

 

[BassNBrew]

Russia Has Started Losing the War in Ukraine​

More than three years after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the myth of Russian invincibility is showing signs of collapse.

The Russian president, long adept at shaping optics to avoid the appearance of defeat, is now facing a conflict he cannot simply narrate away. Ukraine is proving to be his most consequential and costly mistake.

Putin Has Problems Beneath the Surface​

As noted by Foreign Policy magazine, May’s Victory Day parade in Moscow was meant to project strength, with Putin standing beside Chinese President Xi Jinping as troops marched across Red Square. But beneath the pageantry lies a hollow reality: Russia is bogged down in a war it cannot win, bleeding manpower, money, and morale.

Far from being isolated, Putin insists Russia is thriving. State media blames NATO expansion, American weakness, and Ukrainian stubbornness for the conflict.

Yet none of that can conceal the growing strategic dead-end.

Putin Trapped in Ukraine​

Although the Kremlin has claimed some nominal territorial gains, Russian forces are yet to cement any major breakthroughs. In particular, the battle for Pokrovsk has typified the slow-moving war of attrition this conflict has snowballed into, taking tens of thousands of lives in the process.

Western estimates suggest Russian casualties are nearing one million. With Ukrainian drone strikes multiplying and morale on the home front waning, Putin is locked in a war of attrition with no clear exit.

Ukraine Won't Be Broken​

Ukraine, for its part, has refused to break. Despite being outmanned and outgunned, it continues to innovate on the battlefield. The shift from conventional warfare to strategic, asymmetric tactics—particularly in drone and cyber warfare—has kept Russia from consolidating its hold on occupied territories. And while Ukraine’s economy suffers, its people remain fiercely defiant.

This resilience is not born of political calculation, but of survival instinct, reinforced by the brutality of Russian occupation.

Diplomatically, the Kremlin’s options are narrowing. Russia has failed to drive a wedge between Washington and Europe. On the contrary, the U.S. and newly assertive Germany, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have hardened their stance.

Moscow’s hopes of exploiting divisions in the West have largely evaporated, not least because of its well-documented indiscriminate bombing campaigns and scorched-earth tactics. Some reports even suggest that Putin’s generals are lying to him about the situation on the ground.

Watch the Russian Economy​

Economic stagnation may also be a worry for the West, but Russia’s situation is also deteriorating.

Its early wartime boom has fizzled. Growth has flatlined, inflation has surged, and energy revenues are under pressure from global trends beyond Moscow’s control.

Many in Russia and beyond see Putin as offering no credible postwar vision, and who can blame them?

Interesting, everything else points to Russia winning,

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Сommander of 68th Brigade on Pokrovsk's fate, role of drones in war, and problematics of truce for the sake of truce

Q: We can say that the situation in the Pokrovsk sector has stabilized. Or would that be an exaggeration?

A: I will say that it has become much easier than it was, for example, in the winter. The enemy is still hoping to take this city. It is also trying to reach the border of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The situation will be fully stabilized when the enemy stops advancing at all, we create the conditions, and start advancing.

Q: If we compare artillery and drones, what is the number of hits caused by drones?

If we look at the percentage, I think about 80% of the Russian personnel who die are killed by drones. Maybe even 85%. Because we usually use artillery when there is a concentration of personnel. And now they are storming two or three soldiers at a time. It's a waste to use a lot of shells on that.

Q: How many drones do you currently receive from the government?

Not enough, let's just say. Most of the drones are covered by volunteer help.

Q: Can drones win the war?

No, never. Drones are one of the elements that will ensure victory. But never with drones alone.

Former Ukrainian commander says Ukraine cannot restore post-Soviet borders, media report says

Ukraine should abandon any notion of restoring its borders established with the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule or even those dating from the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion, the country's former military commander was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Valery Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine's ambassador to London, was replaced as top commander in February 2024 after months of reported disagreements between him and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy and other public figures have long called for the eviction of Russian forces and a return to Ukraine's 1991 post-Soviet borders, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
But as efforts over recent months have focused on launching talks to secure a ceasefire, public statements by Kyiv have been more moderate on the question of ceding territory.
"I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022 and that there will be great happiness afterward," the RBK Ukraine news site quoted Zaluzhnyi as telling a forum in Kyiv.
"My personal opinion is that the enemy still has resources, forces and means to launch strikes on our territory and attempt specific offensive operations."
Zaluzhnyi said Russia had been waging a war of attrition for a year and, given Ukraine's smaller forces and difficult economic circumstances, its only hope was to rely on advanced technology.
"We can speak only about a high-tech war of survival, using a minimum of economic means to achieve maximum benefit," he was quoted as saying.

https://x.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1925697921304948923

I've seen some criticism of Zaluzhnyi’s recent statement that Ukraine currently lacks the capacity to fully liberate its territories - whether to the 1991 or even the 2022 borders. Overall, I believe it’s a fair and realistic assessment. While many have disagreed, the statement has solid merit.

Right now, offensive operations are extremely costly. Whether you're Ukrainian or Russian, every meter of land gained comes at a high price in casualties. Typical combat situations, such as recent incursions or Ukrainian attempts to retake even small areas, often end with heavy losses. These losses, both in personnel and equipment, are becoming increasingly difficult to replenish.

Russia, for its part, is advancing slowly but steadily. However, neither the pace nor the resources being spent make the gains particularly worthwhile. For instance, Russia may have the capability to take over towns like Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, and potentially push toward the Kramatorsk–Slovyansk agglomeration. Yet the time, manpower, and equipment required to achieve that don’t justify the limited strategic value of such advances. Unless somebody seriously thinks that Russia started a full-scale war to take over provincial town in Donetsk oblast 3 years later.

In theory, Russia could try to outlast Ukraine through sheer resource superiority. However, doing so would lead to severe long-term demographic and economic consequences that would undermine any political or strategic rationale. So, even if Russia eventually captures places like Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, it won't be that difference on strategic level.

In the end, both sides may claim some form of victory: Russia, by pointing to territorial gains; and Ukraine, by claiming its success in preventing Russia from achieving its stated strategic objectives objectives set by Putin despite commanding one of the world’s largest militaries and inheriting the biggest stockpile of Soviet-era equipment and ammunition.

Ukraine could potentially change the course of the war if European forces were to enter the country and engage directly in combat against Russian troops. However, since such involvement remains highly unlikely, the current trajectory of the war is expected to continue.

Russia’s elite drone unit destroying Ukraine’s precious Himars launchers

Footage captured the moment a Ukrainian Himars rocket launcher was destroyed by an elite Russian drone unit just 10km (six miles) from the front line last month.
In a grainy video filmed just outside Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk, the US-supplied missile system was seen hurtling along a dirt-laden road as a Russian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) closed in from above.
The feed cut out seconds before impact, but separate footage showed an explosion moments later, confirming one of Ukraine’s most valuable rocket systems had been destroyed.
The attack was reportedly carried out by Rubicon, the Kremlin’s elite drone warfare unit that Ukrainian soldiers have come to fear.
Previously deployed earlier this year during Russia’s brutal campaign to recapture the eastern town of Kursk, Rubicon has now been redirected to hunt Ukraine’s most valuable battlefield assets: its US-supplied long-range missiles.
There are signs it is succeeding.

Because of their importance, it is unusual for a Himars launcher to be placed just 10km from the front line. The one that was destroyed near the war-torn town of Chasiv Yar was therefore probably being used to hit a target deep behind enemy lines.
“Himars have remained an important tactical and operational level system for the Ukrainians, particularly as it can hold Russian targets at risk some distance from the front line, affecting Russian logistics and command and control, as well as combat power,” said Tom Withington, a weapons expert at Rusi, a defence think tank.
But, following the latest destruction of the launcher near Chasiv Yar, at least four have now been lost – a small but significant dent in Ukraine’s arsenal at a time when US support appears likely to dry up.

The latest method used to destroy a Himars launcher is especially concerning for Kyiv.
Unlike previous losses, which mostly resulted from missile or artillery strikes, the latest attack on one of the systems was reportedly carried out by a first-person view (FPV) drone using a fibre-optic guidance cable – a sophisticated and largely jam-proof design that signals a dangerous shift in the conflict.

Rubicon, established in October 2024 at the personal instruction of Andrei Belousov, Russia’s defence minister, has become a test bed for this type of new technology. Its drone pilots now operate in at least seven specialist detachments across eastern Ukraine, carrying out complex, decentralised missions.
The unit’s tactics are equally modern. During the Kursk offensive, Rubicon drones reportedly struck short segments of road – just 100 to 300 metres long – from multiple angles at once, catching convoys in lethal ambushes.
Some drones were embedded in road surfaces, exploding beneath passing vehicles like land mines. Others attacked head-on, targeting the front and rear vehicles to trap the rest in a kill zone.
The results were devastating, with the majority of Ukrainian troops pushed out of Kursk after the Rubicon unit destroyed their supply route.
In the process, Rubicon is believed to have disabled hundreds of Ukrainian vehicles, including M2 Bradley infantry carriers and heavily armoured MaxxPro trucks, often with fibre optic cable drones.

The strike near Chasiv Yar – believed to be the first destruction of a Himars launcher by a fibre optic cable drone – suggests that Russia now has the means to reach even Ukraine’s most protected assets.
If Kyiv cannot adapt quickly to this new threat, the consequences could be far-reaching.
“Years ago, I spoke to soldiers stationed in Germany during the Cold War. They said there were fields and valleys filled with wire-guided munitions… I wouldn’t be surprised if Ukraine starts ending up like that too,” Mr Withington said.
“Until a meaningful counter is developed, the uptake will just continue.”

 

[fatness]

Russia cuts key projects in aviation, tech, auto industries as oil revenues plummet

The Russian government is slashing budgets for major projects across a number of sectors in response to plummeting revenues from oil and gas, the pro-Kremlin news outlet Kommersant reported on May 22. Earlier this month, oil prices in Russia dropped to a two-year low. Prices fell below $50 per barrel — about 40% lower than what was planned in the Russian budget, Reuters reported on May 6. In response to the price collapse, the Kremlin has introduced sweeping budget cuts to several state programs, Kommersant reports. These include programs to develop Russia's aviation, automotive, tech, shipping, and robotics industries. The state will cut an aviation development program by 22%, reducing the original budget of 101.2 billion rubles to 78.8 billion. The aim of the program was to replace Western aircraft with Russian planes.

 

[Chadstroma]

Russia cuts key projects in aviation, tech, auto industries as oil revenues plummet

The Russian government is slashing budgets for major projects across a number of sectors in response to plummeting revenues from oil and gas, the pro-Kremlin news outlet Kommersant reported on May 22. Earlier this month, oil prices in Russia dropped to a two-year low. Prices fell below $50 per barrel — about 40% lower than what was planned in the Russian budget, Reuters reported on May 6. In response to the price collapse, the Kremlin has introduced sweeping budget cuts to several state programs, Kommersant reports. These include programs to develop Russia's aviation, automotive, tech, shipping, and robotics industries. The state will cut an aviation development program by 22%, reducing the original budget of 101.2 billion rubles to 78.8 billion. The aim of the program was to replace Western aircraft with Russian planes.

Their ability to continue to keep the economy functioning and to continue the fight is extremely reliant to the cost of energy. Both administrations should have been focusing more on lowering the worlds energy costs to pressure the Russians. (not to mention the benefits of our own economy in doing so)

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Kharkiv: Why Russian troops are massing near Ukraine's 'fortress city'

After pushing Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, the Russian region they had occupied parts of for many months, what's left of the 50,000-strong Russian force is positioned just across the border from Kharkiv.

Kremlin troops have been gathering on the other side of the border near Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, according to a senior Ukrainian military figure.

"The enemy is trying to pull its personnel closer to the line of combat contact and conduct at least some assault actions," Andriy Pomahaibus, chief of staff of the 13th Operational Brigade, said this week.

"In general, they are not succeeding."

Nonetheless, he said there is "clear preparation for active assault actions by the enemy".

Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke says the accumulation of troops comes off the back of the Russian operation to push Ukraine out of the pocket of the Kursk region they had occupied, which is not far from Kharkiv.

"Now they have Kursk back the argument is: will they keep going?"

Some of Russia's most experienced soldiers - including from the elite VDV airborne unit - were moved to reinforce the Kursk campaign, and could still be among the gathered troops.

Prof Clarke adds: "If they have left those units there, that would suggest they want them to spearhead something else.

"If those units turn up back around Pokrovsk (in Donetsk) that would then mean they are not about to build up a major strategic attack near Kharkiv."

Prof Clarke says Russia has a "four-month window" to make a breakthrough in Ukraine this year.

"I think they must know this is their last year of build-up before they reach a plateau," he adds, referring to Russia's issues with tank production.

Thus far Russia has been using its vast stocks of vehicles left over from the Soviet era, with only about 25% of its armour coming from new production.

Dr Watling agrees: "Russian stockpiles of legacy Soviet equipment, from tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, to artillery pieces, will be running out between now and mid-autumn, such that Russia's ability to replace losses will be entirely dependent on what it can produce from scratch."

This, he added, makes the prospect of fresh sanctions from Europe and possibly America particularly timely.

https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1926176491416453275

Big, building-shaking Russian attack on Ukraine overnight — drones and ballistic missiles targeted Ukraine’s capital and other cities. Air defenses lit up the sky, with several loud blasts one after the next. It went on for hours.

This morning, Zelensky said Russia had launched “250 strike drones, the absolute majority of them Iranian ‘Shaheds,’ and 14 ballistic missiles.”

“The Odesa, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kyiv, Dnipro regions suffered damages,” he added. “All strikes targeted civilians. There are fatalities.”

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1926051720410374626

Russia is mounting a major strike on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, tonight. Dozens of drones and ballistic missiles have targeted the city as civilians flee to shelters.

Seen here, an intercepted Russian Shahed attack drone falls, burning, after a successful Ukrainian interception.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Ukraine scrambles to overcome Russia’s edge in fiber-optic drones

Fiber-optic drones remain in the minority on the front line, but demand from Ukrainian troops has dramatically increased in recent months, said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, who is deeply involved in drone development and weapons distribution.
Of Ukraine’s roughly 500 drone manufacturers, he said, at least 15 are now developing fiber-optic drones. An additional 20 are making the cylindrical coils that carry the cable, which is still being imported for now.

Boxer, 28, a Ukrainian drone platoon commander who has been fighting in Kursk for nine months and does not have fiber-optic drones, said that by March, so many Ukrainian vehicles were being destroyed on the logistics route that surviving soldiers often trekked back to Ukraine on foot. Soldiers passing by in undamaged cars didn’t dare slow down to help, knowing they could be next.
Only heavy rain or fog could disrupt the fiber-optic drones. Ukrainian troops in trenches in Sudzha knew that when they “saw clear skies, there would be no deliveries,” said Oleh, another soldier.
The soldiers, like some others in this article, spoke on the condition that they be identified by their call sign or first name because they were not authorized to discuss operations in Kursk.
Russia “had a huge advantage in Kursk due to the use of fiber-optic drones because they basically killed Ukraine’s logistics,” said one 24-year-old drone commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions from higher command.
Some essential weapon and food deliveries to the front were halted and missions to retrieve the wounded delayed, especially during daytime. “People with amputations … were rotting while waiting for evacuations,” he said.

Elsewhere on the front line, Ukrainian troops are sprinting to build fiber-optic drones themselves — opting for newer, lightweight Ukrainian components to limit their imports from Asia.
In a basement in northeast Ukraine, soldiers in the Achilles Regiment are tasked with repairing and building drones for their fellow troops. Five to 10 percent of the devices are fiber-optic, and even a tiny detail — like a simple speck of dirt on a cable — could mean the difference between life and death.
The troops build three sizes of fiber-optic drones, with ranges of six to 12½ miles, depending on the size of the attached coil. Bigger and farther isn’t always better, said Achilles commander Yuriy Fedorenko, whose troops hunt Russian tanks with the drones. “The bigger the distance, the bigger the coil; the bigger the coil, the bigger the drone; the bigger the drone, the more likely it is to be shot down,” he said.

Ukraine’s drones disrupt Russia with airport closures, internet blackouts

Large-scale Ukrainian drone attacks have rattled multiple Russian regions for the third consecutive day, grounding flights, disrupting internet access and stretching the country’s air defense systems thin.
Russian officials claimed more than 700 drones were intercepted within the past 72 hours, nearly 100 of them near the capital. The attacks, while far less destructive than Russia’s missile barrages on Ukrainian cities, still demonstrate Ukraine’s evolving use of this low-cost, high-impact technology.
The Ukrainian drones are striking deep into Russian territory, and although the damage is limited, they are disrupting day-to-day life in a jarring reminder to Russians far from the front lines that the war is not confined to the trenches.

The Ukrainian drone attacks have repeatedly paralyzed aviation in and around Moscow and several regional hubs in western and southern Russia. On Wednesday night, Rosaviatsiya, the country’s civil aviation authority, closed the skies over the capital, halting operations at all four major airports — Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky.

To mitigate the threat from incoming drones this week, Russian authorities jammed mobile internet in at least six regions, paralyzing local economy. It is believed that the drones may use local mobile data networks for navigation.
“This is intended to complicate the orientation of enemy drones in space. The Ukrainian Armed Forces often supply them with Russian SIM cards that connect to local cell towers amid electronic warfare,” Rybar, a Telegram channel run by prominent military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, said on Friday.
Photos and videos posted by Muscovites on social media showed electronic-warfare systems deployed in central Moscow amid a surge in attacks. The equipment was spotted on bridges leading up to the Kremlin. Mobile service in the city center has reportedly been disrupted.
The Russian military has reportedly used a similar technique to penetrate and confuse Ukrainian air defenses by installing Ukrainian SIM cards into their Geran drones, which frequently target Ukrainian cities.
Using Russian SIM cards would enable Ukrainian drones to approximate their location by pinging nearby cell towers as they traverse the Russian airspace and help drone operators adjust future routes, said Mikhail Klimarev, a cybersecurity and telecommunications expert.

The major downside of internet blackouts imposed by regional officials is the heavy toll they take on the local civilian economy, disrupting businesses and services that rely on mobile internet — from taxis and ATMs to ticket validators on public transport.
“In Moscow right now, it’s often very difficult to use car-sharing apps, for example, because the app thinks the car is located somewhere at the airport,” said a 45-year-old Moscow resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for speaking with Western media. “Home internet works, but mobile internet is bad. It’s all inconvenient, but it would be a sin to complain, as compared to Ukraine everything is fine here.”
One Russian official suggested bringing back landline phones to Russian homes in response to mobile internet blackouts to prioritize public safety.
“In the future, we need to return to wired radio in every home. We also need to restore wired telephones, and therefore the good wired internet of the 2000s. I am sure that cable television will again find a place in the consumer market,” parliamentary lawmaker Stanislav Naumov told a local outlet.

How Putin’s new drone war is getting deadlier

A soldier told me later that we were 9 km (5.5 miles) from the nearest Russian position. In the everchangeing struggle for drone supremacy in Ukraine’s war, 9 km is now well inside the kill range.
“Nine kilometres is now an easy range in which to die,” shrugged a Ukrainian lieutenant, known only as “Stanyslav”, from the 93rd Mechanised Brigade, in the basement of a nearby building.
“No other weapon type has changed the face of the war here so much or so fast as the FPV drone,” he added. “Almost any vehicle within five kilometres of the front is as good as finished. Anything moving out to ten kilometres is in danger. Drone strikes at 15 or 20 km are not that unusual.”

“The changes posed by drones are so fast that concepts we implemented just a month ago no longer work now,” said an infantry battalion commander, whose call sign is “Cuba”, with the 13th Khartiia brigade. “We live in a space of perpetual fast adaptation. In the past week alone, Russian drone strike ranges have increased by four kilometres.”

Until late 2023, infantrymen of both sides on standard rotation deployment were usually carried to a position near the front in armoured personnel carriers, walking the last few hundred metres on foot.
Now, under drone-filled skies, infantrymen are dropped off by 4×4 pick-ups, and walk between five kilometres and eight kilometres at night, in meandering routes through trees to avoid detection, just to take up their positions at the front line, known as the “zero point”.
Once there, rather than be rotated out of the front a week or two later, as was common in early 2024, Ukrainian troops now spend months in foxholes, often devoid of almost any other human contact, resupplied with water, rations and ammunition by agricultural drones.
“A year ago my soldiers were on the front for a week or weeks,” said the battalion commander Cuba. “Now they are on the zero point for a month or months due to the difficulties in rotating them. That requires very careful psychological support of my men, and huge amounts of rest between rotation.”
Casualty evacuation has become a nightmare. Depending on the ferocity and topography of the sector, wounded soldiers commonly have to wait for night-time for evacuation. Even then the operation is fraught.
“As a word ‘stressful’ doesn’t even come close to describing it,” said a senior logistician for 93rd Brigade’s drone crews, call sign “Hashish”, speaking in the basement of an abandoned house in Kostiantynivka. “Every mission I think, ‘God forbid we get a casualty and have to work out how to get them back’.”

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Russia pushes forward in Donetsk Oblast, threatening Ukrainian pocket around Toretsk

Russian troops have upped the intensity of their Donetsk Oblast offensive in recent weeks, increasingly pressuring a relatively large Ukrainian pocket between some of the last cities in the region.

An unsettling situation for Ukrainian troops is now unfolding south of the town of Kostiantynivka, which has long served as a relatively safe logistics hub around the now Russian-occupied Bakhmut.

Russian troops have been pushing toward Kostiantynivka from two directions, slowly closing in on the Ukrainian pocket west of Toretsk. Western military experts say that Russia appears to have the resources to keep "creeping" forward, and the question is how much and for how long the Ukrainian forces deployed in the area can hold on.

"The problem is this large bulge between Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk has been growing relatively fast," Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst at the Finland-based Black Bird Group monitoring the war closely through open sources, told the Kyiv Independent.

"If it grows at this rate, the Russians will be threatening the supply routes into Kostiantynivka in a couple of months already."

Concerns rise over the potential Russian encirclement of Ukrainian troops defending the Toretsk and Kostiantynivka area, according to Kastehelmi.

The experts who spoke to the Kyiv Independent said that the current Russian push in Donetsk Oblast is setting the stage for a major upcoming offensive.

"I think that this is a development that will continue to be a growing issue for Ukraine during the summer because, as far as I know, the Russians should have relatively large reserves that they can commit to the battle in the coming weeks and months," Kastehelmi said.

Retired Australian Army Major-General Mick Ryan, who has closely observed the war in Ukraine, said that even if Ukraine were to lose the pocket south of Kostiantynivka, he doesn't believe that it would bring "any significant shift in the trajectory of the war at this point."

While it is still "a significant bit of territory," the more pressing concern is for Russia not to gain momentum after potentially conquering it, according to Ryan.

"The last thing you want is for the Russians to become more confident and think they can generate additional momentum because they take this area," Ryan told the Kyiv Independent.

Russia's upgraded ballistic missiles harder to intercept by Patriots, Air Force says

Russia has upgraded its ballistic missiles with radar decoys and evasive maneuvers, making them potentially harder to intercept even by Patriot air defenses, Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on May 24 after a massive attack on Kyiv that injured around a dozen civilians.

Ihnat confirmed that six out of nine ballistic missiles launched at Kyiv, Iskander-M and KN-23, were successfully intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses.

"Two-thirds is a high figure," he said. "But we know (Russia) is improving its ballistic weapons."

According to Ihnat, the modified missiles are now equipped with radar-decoy systems and use quasi-ballistic flight paths that make them more difficult to track and intercept using Patriot systems.

"It complicates (the interception), but doesn’t make the interception impossible," he added. "I think our partners are already working to improve the system's capabilities."

"The flight of a ballistic missile along such a quasi-ballistic trajectory — when the missile doesn't just fly in a straight line like it's falling, but actually performs maneuvers in flight — makes it more difficult for the Patriot system, which calculates the interception point using software, to predict exactly where the missile will be," Ihnat explained.

Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast 90% destroyed or damaged, situation is critical

The city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast has been 90% destroyed or damaged, while the situation in the Kupiansk hromada is critical. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.]

Source: Andrii Besedin, Head of Kupiansk City Military Administration, on a national joint 24/7 newscast

Quote: "90% of the city has been destroyed or damaged."

 

[Don't Toews Me]

https://x.com/RALee85/status/1926324281136300132

Updated map showing Russian advances north of Velyka Novosilka and southwest of Pokrovsk. @Deepstate_UA assesses that much of the previous grey zone in Sumy oblast across the border from Kursk is now Russian-held.

Russians manage to gain foothold in Sumy Oblast, DeepState analysts say

DeepState, a Ukrainian group of military analysts, has reported that Russian forces have managed to gain a foothold in Sumy Oblast along the Veselivka-Zhuravka-Novenke-Basivka section. On its interactive map of hostilities, DeepState has marked this area as occupied, rather than designating it a "grey zone".

Source: DeepState

Quote: "For a long time, Sumy Oblast could have been perceived as a grey zone, because fighters from the defence forces tried and are trying to restrain the enemy by carrying out drone strikes on their movements and attempts to build up. In this area, the katsaps [Russians – ed.] use infantry and engage ATVs to quickly reach the targeted point of attack.

However, it is worth noting that they have managed to gain a foothold along the Veselivka-Zhuravka-Novenke-Basivka section and are continuing to make attempts to enter Bilovody; the situation in Loknia is also challenging.

Details: DeepState noted that Ukraine’s defence forces have managed to stabilise the sharp advance of Russian troops deep into Sumy Oblast. Meanwhile, "crews [from the defence forces – ed.] are taking out infantry day and night – they swarm like locusts, attempting, despite suffering heavy losses, to capture more ground. After being pushed out of Kursk Oblast, their aim was to establish a buffer zone in Sumy Oblast, a move that is quite logical and expected under the circumstances".

DeepState also reported on Saturday 24 May that the Russians had advanced near the settlements of Odradne, Troitske, Novenke, Basivka and Zhuravka.

Effective 24 May, part of the territory in Sumy Oblast near the settlements of Veselivka, Zhuravka, Novenke and Basivka has been designated as occupied by Russian forces.

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1926347838780305571

A Russian mil blogger admits that American and German tactical drones - apart from the Switchblade - caused a lot of problems for the Rus forces; he admits that Western defense sector is not standing still when it comes to tactical drones.
At the same time, another Rus commentator says that when it comes to drones, Americans, Britz and NATO in general are basically Neanderthals in the sense that they only understand a drone as a “Reaper” and have no idea how to deal with FPVs or how to refit a DJI Mavic to drop a munition.

EDF intel chief: Ukraine capable of fending off Russia's breakthrough attempts

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are capable of repelling attacks by the Russian army, and at present, it does not appear that the aggressor is capable of achieving a successful breakthrough, said Ants Kiviselg, head of the Estonian Defense Forces' Intelligence Center.

"The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are not currently capable of achieving an operational-level breakthrough on any section of the front and Ukrainian units have successfully withstood the offensive pressure," Col. Ants Kiviselg said Friday at the Estonian Ministry of Defense's weekly briefing.

"Over the past week, Russian forces have made limited advances in the area between Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where they control a stretch of road between the two settlements spanning roughly a few dozen kilometers. Although the amount of territory captured is not large, they have seized a critical section of that highway. So movement of units along that road is now somewhat disrupted," said the head of the Defense Forces' Intelligence Center.

"In summary, the situation on the front lines has remained largely unchanged over the past few months, since the beginning of the year. The Russian Federation continues its offensive with the goal of fully seizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. [But] we see that their advances are very minor. The Russian Federation continues to suffer heavy losses in manpower and Ukraine's defense has largely held," Kiviselg concluded.

He also emphasized that there is no indication Russia is preparing for peace talks or even a temporary halt in hostilities on Ukrainian territory.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Russia launches largest air attack yet on Ukraine

Russia has intensified strikes on Ukraine, with the highest number of drones and missiles launched in a single night yet.

At least 12 people, including three children, were killed and dozens injured in widespread strikes, officials said. The attack came a day after the Ukrainian capital Kyiv suffered one of the heaviest assaults of the war.

Ukraine's Air Force said that since 20:40 on Saturday local time (17:40 GMT), Russia had carried out strikes using 367 missiles of various types, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones.

The air force said it had shot down 45 cruise missiles and destroyed 266 UAVs, with most regions in Ukraine affected and hits recorded in 22 locations.

https://x.com/RALee85/status/1926536981556695160

The Ukrainian Air Force says that Russia launched 9 Iskander-M / KN-23 ballistic missiles, 55 Kh-101 and Kalibr cruse missiles, 1 Kh-22, 4 Kh-59 / Kh-69, and 298 Shahed / simulator UAVs overnight.

https://x.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1926611325938991146

Ukraine: This weekend, Russia launched 90 ballistic and cruise missiles and 500 drones at cities across the country.

‘Expect no miracle’: Ukraine braces for Russia’s summer offensive

Yehor Firsov, an MP and drone unit commander in Ukraine’s 109th Brigade, said it’s time his country faces the “harsh reality” that Russia’s confidence may outlast western unity.
“Putin is convinced he can break Ukraine,” he said. “He simply believes our complete capitulation is only a matter of time . . . the US might stop its aid any day now. He sees Europe as weak and indecisive.”
Along Ukraine’s more than 1,000-kilometre frontline, the rhythm of war has settled into a brutal, deadly pattern. Moscow is regrouping ahead of what soldiers and analysts said is the lead-up to a new, big push in the months ahead.
Ukrainian troops on the eastern front said that Russian infantry are darting around on motorcycles, buggies and electric scooters. Said Ismahilov, a soldier who was once Ukraine’s senior Muslim cleric, compared them to a “swarm of locusts . . . not one great wave, but an endless stream.
“They don’t care about losses. They just keep coming . . . not to take kilometres, but metres — wrecked trenches, a few blasted trees, the shell of a house.”

However, the Ukrainians “remain a formidable force on the defence”, said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst. “We can expect gradual Russian advances but no imminent collapses, no collapse of the front line.”
The Ukrainians are now much less dependent on the US for artillery supplies, with the Europeans having stepped up. Russia has only “slight superiority in artillery fire,” he added.
A deputy commander of an assault unit near Pokrovsk said they were still holding the line, “but we’re exhausted”. He has fought since 2014, through injuries, and missing family milestones. Trump’s campaign pledge to end the war in “24h” initially gave him a glimmer of hope. But recent developments have forced him and his troops to ignore the news because it sends them into a rage.
“It’s just noise. Propaganda. Lies,” he said. The war has narrowed his world to “the next mission . . . the next fight” — so much so that at times he doesn’t feel human. “I’m a zombie.”
That sense of exhaustion and frustration is spreading through the ranks. Among both seasoned officers and newly mobilised troops, morale is fraying — worn down by a growing feeling that there is no clear plan to end the war, and that lives are being sacrificed for nothing.

The war has exposed long-standing weaknesses in Ukraine’s command structure. Fixing them is difficult “when you’re engaged in the highest-intensity war since the second world war,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of the defence consultancy Rochan.
Some reforms are under way, but doubts linger about whether they will go far, or fast, enough to meet the moment.
Manpower remains one of the most pressing issues.

However, Ukraine has refused to lower its conscription age below 25, resisting pressure from the US and other allies. Its mobilisation drive remains riddled with corruption and forced conscription, including recruitment officers nabbing unregistered men off the street and stuffing them into vans. A recruitment drive to attract 18 to 24-year-olds has largely failed, with only several hundred applicants, according to people briefed on the programme.

Russian missile strikes hitting civilian areas in Ukrainian cities well beyond the frontline remain a serious concern. Muzyka’s team has tracked major attacks across this spring — some involving more than 200 missiles each. Russia is now producing more rockets than it launches, while Ukraine’s Patriot interceptors are running low.
Drone attacks are also intensifying. Russia launched over 2,000 Iranian Shahed drones in the first 20 days of May alone. While Kyiv has improved its capacity to distinguish between decoys and those with live warheads, the sheer number is becoming unmanageable.
“More will get through and hit their targets,” Muzyka said. Russian drones have also been upgraded and now fly higher and faster, making them harder to shoot down with machine guns. Patriot systems and F-16s — both in short supply — are often the only viable counters.

 

[fatness]

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 24, 2025

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces conducted one of the largest combined drone and missile strikes of the war against Ukraine on the night of May 23 to 24, but used fewer missiles than in previous large-scale combined strikes.
• Ukraine and Russia conducted a second round of prisoner-of-war (POW) exchanges on May 24 as part of a larger 1,000-for-1,000 exchange agreed upon during recent bilateral negotiations in Istanbul.
• Russian officials will reportedly submit a draft document of their conditions for peace in Ukraine following the conclusion of the POW exchanges, although Russia's conditions are unlikely to be anything short of Ukraine's full surrender.
• Russian forces have significantly expanded their salient southwest of Kostyantynivka in recent weeks and established sufficient positions to launch an offensive operation toward Kostyantynivka from the south or to support the envelopment of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad from the northeast in the coming weeks and months.
• The Russian salient southwest of Kostyantynivka is likely sufficient to support a future Russian offensive operation toward Kostyantynivka or Pokrovsk, but Russian forces will have to make further advances from Chasiv Yar and Toretsk and west of Pokrovsk before Russian forces will pose a significant threat to either of these towns.
• Russian forces recently advanced near Lyman, Toretsk, and Novopavlivka.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Merz: 'Ukraine can now defend itself'

"There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine - neither by the British nor by the French nor by us nor by the Americans," he says.
"This means that Ukraine can now defend itself, for example, by attacking military positions in Russia... With very few exceptions, it didn't do that until recently. It can now do that."

Merz has also accused Russia of attacking civilian targets ruthlessly – saying Ukraine did not do that.

Germany's Merz says Western allies no longer impose range limits on Ukrainian weapons

The previous German government of center-left chancellor Olaf Scholz strongly backed Kyiv but shied away from sending it long-range Taurus missiles, worried that this might escalate tensions with Russia, a nuclear power. Merz has in the past said he favors delivery of Taurus, which could strike targets deep inside Russia. His government has since stressed it would no longer detail what arms it is sending to Ukraine, preferring a stance of strategic ambiguity. Speaking in a lengthy interview with public broadcaster WDR, Merz did not say whether Germany would now send Taurus missiles to Kyiv.

Merz announces lifting of restrictions on arms deliveries to Ukraine

So far, Germany has not supplied Ukraine with weapons with a range of more than around 70 kilometers. The Federal Chancellor left open the impact of the decision on future arms deliveries to Ukraine.
His statements now once again raise the question of whether the German government under his leadership will deliver the powerful Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine. Merz had emphasized during the election campaign that he was willing to deliver, but only in coordination with the allies who have already delivered similar weapons or have them.
Most recently, the Chancellor announced that the new federal government would again keep German arms deliveries to Ukraine largely secret.

https://x.com/konrad_muzyka/status/1926743488005091766

Here’s a brief update on the situation in Ukraine, focusing on Donbas and the air picture.

Over the past week, Russian elements from the 57th and 33rd Motor Rifle Regiments penetrated Ukrainian defensive positions along the TO504 road linking Pokrovsk and Konstantynivka. Although this line has long ceased to serve as a reliable GLOC, the tempo and vectors of Russian advances northward remain concerning.
Russian forces are advancing along three primary axes toward Konstantynivka:

- The eastern axis from Chasiv Yar, which has seen limited gains over months;

- The southern axis via Toretsk, currently contested with Ukrainian forces holding firm;

- The eastern flank, which has gained operational momentum and now threatens Ukrainian rear areas, complicating sustainment and force disposition.

The rapid pace of the eastern push risks outflanking Ukrainian defensive lines and denies time for construction of new fortifications. Should Russian forces secure a breakthrough near Rusyn Yar, it would constitute a critical tactical gain, severely degrading Ukrainian defensive depth.

From a terrain perspective, movement from Novooolenivka toward Stepaniva affords the Russians dominant ground, enabling fire control over approaches to Konstantynivka and interdiction of Ukrainian reinforcement routes from Druzkivka.
Paradoxically, these territorial gains coincide with a reported overall reduction in Russian ground offensive operations across the front, including near Pokrovsk and Toretsk. This raises the question: Why is Russian forward momentum accelerating amid diminished ground attack activity?

Ukraine is also facing increased missile and drone strikes, including cruise and ballistic missiles and Shahed-type drones, aimed at overwhelming air defences. The reported shortage of PAC-3 interceptors further exacerbates the challenge. High-precision missile usage has surged to unprecedented levels, while drone deployments in early 2025 reached record highs. Ukraine needs cheaper solutions, especially for the Shahed-type threat. For missiles, there are no easy fixes. Russia is producing a lot more long-range precision missiles than the West is producing interceptors.

Russia’s strategy is one of cumulative attrition: continuous pressure through relentless missile/drone attacks very often aimed at civilian populations, sustained troop replacements enabled by ongoing recruitment, and increased production of precision munitions. After a brief pause earlier in the year, Ukraine again faces difficult weeks ahead.

 

[Chadstroma]

Germany, UK, France, and US lift strike range limits for Ukraine — Merz​

“There are no longer any restrictions on long-range strikes using the weapons provided to Ukraine—neither from Britain, nor France, nor us. Nor from the United States,” Merz said during a live broadcast on German public television at the 27th annual WDR Europaforum.

“This means Ukraine can now defend itself, including by striking military targets inside Russian territory. Up until now, it could not do that,” he added.

Merz said this policy shift would bring “a qualitative change in how the war is conducted” for Ukraine.

He emphasized the distinction between Russia and Ukraine’s military behavior, noting that Russia continues to bomb civilian targets—including cities, kindergartens, and hospitals—unlike Ukraine.

“It’s important to us that this remains the case,” Merz said, referring to Ukraine avoiding attacks on civilian targets. “But a country that is only defending itself on its own territory cannot adequately defend itself.”

Earlier this month, during a visit to Kyiv on May 10, Merz stated that discussions about further arms deliveries to Ukraine would no longer take place in public.

“Under my leadership, debates over weapons deliveries—calibers, systems, and so on—will be removed from public view,” the chancellor said.

He also addressed the issue of whether Germany might supply Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine. Merz said Germany supports Ukraine militarily “to the extent it is able and bears responsibility for doing so.”

On May 9, the German outlet Tagesspiegel reported that the new German government had decided to keep all information about future arms deliveries to Ukraine classified. Government sources told journalists that Berlin plans to “significantly reduce communication regarding the delivery of weapons systems going forward.” The goal, they said, is to deny Russia a tactical advantage. This is reportedly part of Germany’s broader wartime strategy.

On April 14, Deutsche Welle reported that Merz had expressed his willingness to support transferring Taurus missiles to Ukraine if such a decision were coordinated with Germany’s European partners.

On April 17, the German government confirmed a new package of military aid for Ukraine, including three Zuzana 2 self-propelled howitzers, missiles for the IRIS-T SLM air defense system, and ammunition.

 

[Chadstroma]

Russia's cooling economy facing 'hypothermia' risks, minister warns​

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov on Monday urged the central bank to take slowing inflation into account when it meets to set interest rates next week, warning that Russia's cooling economy is showing signs of "hypothermia".

Grappling with stubbornly quickening inflation, Russia's central bank has kept its key interest rate at 21% since October, tight monetary policy that has stifled investment just as the economic impact of soaring military spending starts to ease.

President Vladimir Putin In March urged his economic officials not to freeze the Russian economy as if it were in a "cryotherapy chamber" with high borrowing costs, which many analysts interpreted as a call to start an easing cycle.

Reshetnikov, speaking in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, said that inflation in recent weeks had been in the 3-4% range when recalculated in annual terms.

"We expect that May data will consolidate this trend and we of course expect that the central bank will take duly take this into account when taking decisions because we also see risks of economic hypothermia in the current regime," Reshetnikov said.

The ministry forecasts annual inflation for 2025 at 7.6%, an estimate that Reshetnikov described as "realistic".

Major Russian exporters including Rusal and Gazpromneft have cut the planned volume of commodities like metal and oil products they send by rail, a Russian Railways document seen by Reuters showed last week, demonstrating the real-world impact of subdued demand as the country's economy slows.

The central bank's next rate-setting meeting is scheduled for June 6.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Slammed by Russian missiles, Ukraine seeks more U.S. air defense systems

Ukraine is increasingly worried about securing more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, as stockpiles sent during the Biden administration are drying up and the new administration is resistant to sending more, according to six Ukrainian and Western officials.
While Russia bombards Ukraine with drones and cruise missiles, it is the ballistic missiles that are the most feared, and they can only be reliably countered by Patriot missiles. Ballistic missiles travel several miles per second and they obliterated half of Ukraine’s power capacity in strikes on power plants in 2023 and 2024.
Their speed and size, plus the fact that they are difficult to intercept, have made ballistic missiles one of the most effective weapons in Russia’s arsenal, particularly against infrastructure.

A European diplomat in Kyiv said that U.S. manufacturer Raytheon is still in the process of expanding its production lines to meet post-2022 demand. “The U.S. needs to keep a certain amount for its own defense, in case of an attack from Iran or another adversary,” the diplomat said. Like the other officials and diplomats interviewed, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, however, believe that the Trump administration would be willing to sell the country more Patriots rather than send them as aid, as the previous administration did. A senior Ukrainian official said he does not expect Washington to block the sale of future air defense systems to Ukraine, but understands the White House “will not give it away for free.”

The Trump administration allowed Germany to reexport Patriot materials to Kyiv after Ukraine signed the minerals deal in April — the U.S. retains veto power on the resale of any of its military equipment. In recent weeks, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters that his country would give Patriot missiles to Ukraine along with four IRIS-T systems, a short-to-medium-range weapon that is effective against cruise missiles but not ballistic missiles.
But Berlin plans to send to Ukraine its older PAC-2 Patriot missiles, which, unlike the newer PAC-3 missiles, are not as effective at intercepting ballistic missiles, the European diplomat said.

NATO allies have been in talks for weeks about finding another Patriot system for Ukraine, potentially from somewhere in Europe, but there has been no breakthrough, according to three European officials.

Russia is raining hellfire on Ukraine

A year ago, for 30 drones to strike Ukraine in a single night was considered exceptional. Now Russia is saturating Ukraine’s air defences with hundreds of them. On May 25th the Kremlin pummelled the country, with what it called a “massive strike” against Ukrainian cities, featuring 298 drones, probably a record. Russia is using more missiles, too: 69 were fired on the same night. As a result, Ukraine is once again stepping into the unknown. If the current ceasefire talks fail, which seems highly probable, air-defence units will need to ration their interceptors. More Russian missiles and drones will get through, to strike towns, cities and critical industry.

The main challenge facing Ukraine’s air-defence crews is the sheer number now flying at them. Last year the Kremlin was producing around 300 Shahed drones a month; the same number now rolls out in under three days. Ukrainian military intelligence says it has documents that suggest that Russia plans to increase its drone production to 500 a day, suggesting that attack swarms of 1,000 could become a reality. That is probably a stretch, cautions Kostiantyn Kryvolap, a Ukrainian aviation expert. Russia’s arms industry runs on bluster and false reporting, he says. “But it’s clear the numbers are going to increase significantly.” Even if Ukraine manages to stabilise the front lines in the east, the difficulties of protecting the skies will only grow.

As they continue to dissect the latest Shahed delivery, the engineers say one of their biggest worries is how the Russian drones are now being controlled. The newest models are unfazed by Ukraine’s electronic warfare, they say. This is because they no longer rely on jammable GPS, are driven by artificial intelligence, and piggyback on Ukraine’s own internet and mobile internet networks. The team say they recently discovered a note inside one of the drones they were dismantling—presumably left by a sympathetic Russian engineer—which hinted at the new control algorithm. The drones are controlled via bots on the Telegram social-media platform, the note indicated, sending flight data and live video feeds back to human operators in real time.

Not long ago, most of the drone-hunting was done by mobile crews with cheap machine guns, shoulder-fired missiles and short-range artillery. Now, says Colonel Denys Smazhny, an officer in the air-defence forces, the drones routinely manoeuvre around these groups. They initially fly low to avoid detection, then climb sharply to 2,000–2,500 metres as they near cities, breaching the threshold for small-calibre guns. So Ukraine is turning to helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and interceptor drones, which have begun to show good results. A senior official says the air defences around Kyiv are still knocking out around 95% of the drones that Russia throws at it. But the 5% that slip through cause serious damage.
Ukraine still has a fighting chance against drones and cruise missiles. But the outlook against ballistic threats is bleaker. Only a handful of countries have systems that can counter such fast and destructive weapons. In the Western world, the American Patriot system has an effective monopoly on the ballistic air-defence business. Ukraine now has at least eight Patriot batteries, though at any given time some are damaged and under repair.

 

[fatness]

Germany and Ukraine’s other allies scrap range limits on arms sent to Kyiv

Removal of restrictions, which is backed by UK, France and US, improves Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia

www.theguardian.com

The German chancellor has said that Germany, along with Ukraine’s other main western supporters, will remove range restrictions on weapons delivered to Kyiv for the first time, to enable it to defend itself against Russia. Friedrich Merz said Germany, Britain, France and the US had lifted the restrictions to enable Ukraine to be better able to hit military targets on Russian territory.

“There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine – neither by the British, nor by the French, nor by us, nor by the Americans,” he said on Monday, following Russia’s largest drone attack on Ukraine of the war to date. “This means that Ukraine can now defend itself, for example, by attacking military positions in Russia … with very few exceptions, it didn’t do that until recently. It can now do that.”

 

[Don't Toews Me]

In Ukraine, air defence is struggling to cope with the intensification of Russian strikes

"We are gradually approaching the time when the Russians will be able to launch more than 1,000 Shahed-type drones per day," predicts Maria Berlinska, a prominent Ukrainian expert and director of the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Center. The infernal night-time aerial ballet kills civilians almost daily who are unable or unwilling to reach an air-raid shelter. On Sunday, May 25, 12 people were killed, including three children.
Protecting Ukrainian territory, one and a half times the size of France, is becoming more and more difficult. The growing number of projectiles, their heterogeneity (drones, cruise and ballistic missiles) and the complexity of the routes they take are saturating the capabilities of Ukrainian air defence. In 2024, the company had managed to reduce the damage by setting up a multi-layered system combining numerous light mobile units, equipped with anti-aircraft guns, batteries of medium and long-range anti-aircraft missiles, helicopters and fighter jets, as well as a network of transmitters usurping the satellite coordinates received by the projectiles. By 2024, the rate of Shahed being destroyed or disoriented often exceeded 90%. This is no longer the case today, where this rate sometimes drops to 30%.

"The trend is bad," said Yakut, deputy commander of an air defence unit comprising 23 mobile groups and protecting the skies over the Odesa region. The 44-year-old explains that Shahed-type drones have been perfected since their appearance in the fall of 2022. "Since January, their machines have been flying between 2,000 and 3,000 meters above sea level instead of 200 meters until now. We can no longer reach them with our guns. When they attack in a dive at more than 500 kilometers per hour, it is very difficult to hit them," explains the officer. These drones, originally delivered by Tehran to Moscow, are now being mass-produced near the Russian city of Kazan. They carry a load three times larger (90 kilos), available in various types of explosives (fragmentation, submunitions, incendiary or thermobaric).

"The Russians are also innovating, and they have more resources. They have just fired five examples of a new type of missile, which they call Banderol, into our area," says Artem, 34, commander of an anti-aircraft missile battery with 30 soldiers, deployed in southern Ukraine. The blond and bearded 34-year-old officer, who comes from a military family, describes the enemy's tactics: "The Russians carefully study the results of each attack, look for holes in our defense. They use increasingly complex trajectories when programming their drones and cruise missiles. In some places, they scatter in the sky, then they regroup again. They also use a lot of physical and electronic decoys. The idea is to deplete our ammunition and saturate our capabilities."

Armed with a battery of Nasams, a Norwegian system equipped with American missiles, as well as Soviet-made S-300s, Artem's unit also deploys numerous decoys on the ground to deceive the adversary. But, to face the growing challenge, "we need many more long-range systems, such as the [American] Patriot, the [German] Iris-T and the [Franco-Italian] SAMP/T. We have nothing today to protect southern Ukraine from ballistic missiles," the officer said. According to a source in Le Monde, Ukraine no longer has a missile for its two SAMP/T batteries, and it has "not received a single missile for a year and a half" for the Crotale short-range anti-aircraft system.

Russia changes drone tactics to bypass Ukraine's air defense, Air Force says

The Russian military has modified its tactics for launching attack drones against Ukraine in order to bypass air defenses, Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said in an interview with RBC Ukraine published on May 27.

Russia has been ramping up its drone production to launch ever-greater strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. The night of May 26 marked the most extensive drone attack of the full-scale war, reportedly involving 355 Shahed-type attack drones and decoys.

Russia's new tactic is to launch the drones at high altitudes, more than 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) above the ground, and keep changing the drones' routes. Then, the drones swoop down directly onto the target, Ihnat said.

"At this altitude, they become more visible to our radars, but remain out of reach of small arms, heavy machine guns, and mobile fire teams," the spokesperson explained.

Ukraine Turns To AI-Controlled Guns To Stop Russian Shahed Drones

A large proportion of Shaheds are brought down by mobile defense units, equipped with automatic cannons or heavy machine guns and thermal imagers, and networked to the air defense system. They are highly effective but have the same limitations as other humans.
The Sky Sentinel defense system mounted on a mobile trailer provides the same sort of capability but with the added power of AI. It never needs rest, never gets tired, and reacts instantly and precisely to incoming threats at any time day or night.
Sky Sentinel uses a standard heavy machine gun, linked to a radar able to spot small targets. 360-degree rotation means it can cope with attacks coming from any direction. And while human gunners struggle to hit fast-moving targets, Sky Sentinel can reportedly hit drones moving at 500 miles an hour, and it has no trouble with the 120 mph Shaheds.

The AI system controlling was developed entirely in Ukraine. It copes with multiple variables including wind speed and direction, and can pick out drones from other flying objects such as birds. Hitting an aerial target with bullets requires extreme precision, and according to the makers, this has been one of the biggest challenges.

A prototype Sky Sentinel system is already in operation and has reportedly downed four Shaheds.

Sky Sentinel is only designed to bring down drones, not rockets and artillery shells. But at about a hundredth the cost of earlier systems, the Sky Sentinel is an affordable system which meets Ukraine’s needs.
The big challenge is likely to be scaling up production. Producing a mechanically perfect prototype is one thing, achieving the same precision in mass produced system is something else, thought the developers say it is “absolutely doable.”

Zelenskyy: Intelligence reports Russia is planning new offensive

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Ukrainian intelligence has information indicating that Russia is preparing new offensive operations.

Source: Zelenskyy's evening address on 26 May

Quote: "Today, I held a meeting of the Staff. There were intelligence reports – very thorough ones. We discussed the overall situation: the war, Russia's intentions, the capabilities of Russia's troops and its military and industrial complex, as well as our ability to pressure Russia and disrupt its plans.

We can see from the information obtained by intelligence and from open-source data that Putin and his entourage do not plan to end the war. There is currently no indication that they are seriously considering peace or diplomacy. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that they are preparing new offensive operations."

The European Commission and the EU’s most powerful member states are pushing to lower the price cap on Russian oil as part of a broader tightening of sanctions against Moscow, but it’s unclear if they have enough support at home and abroad, writes Paola Tamma.
Context: Brussels is seeking to hit Moscow with more substantial measures, including lowering a $60 per barrel price cap on crude oil exports to $45 per barrel, according to people briefed on initial discussions on the EU’s 18th sanctions package in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
But the idea has yet to convince all the EU’s 27 member states and its G7 partners.

Source

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Satellite Images Suggest a Russian Plan to Restart Seized Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

Russia is building power lines in occupied southeastern Ukraine to link to its own grid a major nuclear plant it has captured, according to a new Greenpeace report. It is the clearest evidence yet of Moscow’s intent to restart and exploit the offline facility, despite the risks and calls to address the plant’s status in peace talks.
The facility, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, was seized by Russia early in the war in a move widely condemned by the international community. Its proximity to frontline fighting has raised fears of a potential nuclear disaster, and experts have warned against any attempt to restart the plant under current conditions.
The Greenpeace report, which was shared with The New York Times, includes satellite images showing that, since early February, Russia has been building more than 50 miles of electricity lines and pylons between the occupied Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk, along the coast of the Azov Sea. The satellite images were verified by The Times.
Based on the location and direction of the work, Greenpeace said the project aimed to link the new power lines to a large substation near Mariupol that was connected to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, about 140 miles farther west.
“Putin’s plan for restarting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant depends on securing new electricity transmission lines — this is the first physical evidence of those plans,” Shaun Burnie, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine, said in an interview.
Moscow’s exact plans remain unclear. There are questions about whether it seeks to run the plant in a postwar Ukraine or to do so while fighting is still underway. In either case, experts note, Russia would need to build several more lines to connect the Zaporizhzhia plant to its own grid, a process that would take time.

Russia pushes forward in Ukraine’s northeast

Russia now controls four border villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, regaining a small part of territory that was liberated by Kyiv’s forces in 2022.

“The enemy controls the Sumy region’s Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka, and Zhuravka villages. Residents of those villages were evacuated long ago, so there’s no threat to the civilian population there,” Oleh Hryhorov, head of Sumy’s regional military administration, said in a statement.

The Russian army continues attempts to progress in the frontier region to create a so-called buffer zone, he added, which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced as a Kremlin priority last week.

In a rare recognition of Russia’s advances in Sumy, Hryhorov said that fighting continues on the outskirts of five more local villages.

https://x.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1927163628211323369

Over the past few months, Russians have focused on disrupting Ukrainian logistics, using a mix of drones, including fiber-optic. Once EW is neutralized or forced to withdraw by fiber-optic drones, it clears the way for drones like the Molniya, which can fly over 20 km. Thread:
2/ Cutting off supply lines has made vehicle transport nearly impossible. In some cases, individual soldiers must walk more than 10 km at night to deliver basic supplies: an unsustainable way for supporting any sizable unit, or even rotating troops.
3/ Despite growing logistical problems, Ukrainian command has made bad choices to launch Russian-modelled assaults. The attempt to capture positions while already struggling to hold current ones, with fewer troops and less equipment, lead to predictably poor outcome
4/ At the same time, Russia has sharply increased production of Geran drones (upgraded Shahed variants), with daily output likely exceeding 100 units. Our Satellite imagery analysis shows a clear rise in drone deployment - not from stockpiling, but from steady manufacturing.
5/ Russia’s position has improved thanks to successful efforts to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines across several frontline areas, including near Kostyantynopil and Pokrovsk. Still, their reliance on small-unit tactics allows for grinding advances but falls short of breakthroughs.
6/ Russian forces appear confident in their chances of making substantial gains in the summer of 2025. Meanwhile, despite clear fatigue, Ukrainian forces also remain firm and confident in their ability to hold the line and prevent Russia from achieving a strategic shift.
7/ Whether Russia sees major gains - or fails to advance - this summer and early fall could heavily influence its broader decision-making. A stalled offensive might force a reassessment of the war’s overall cost-benefit outlook.

https://x.com/JohnH105/status/1927226593228788152

The Dutch MoD announced yesterday that the last of 24 Dutch F-16s destined for Kyiv left for Belgium for preparation for delivery to Ukraine.

https://x.com/deaidua/status/1927291021219529042

After yesterday's statement about the lifting of range restrictions, Merz today takes one step backwards and says at a press conference in Finland that this has already been a reality for months.

This supports a statement by Germany's Vice Chancellor and Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil, who said at a press conference yesterday that there is no new agreement that goes beyond what the previous government (under Olaf Scholz) had (already) done.

At the same time, @ronzheimer reports that, according to his German as well as Ukrainian sources, there are no new developments or decisions regarding Taurus. There will also be no news tomorrow when Zelenskyy visits.

Why Ukraine must wait for long-range missile to strike heart of Russia

Military analysts suggest that if Kyiv was handed the Taurus missile, it could execute precision strikes against high-value targets deep inside Russia. If this occurred it would disrupt supply lines to Moscow’s advancing forces. They are big “ifs”.

Under pressure to do so from none other than Merz, Germany’s previous SPD-led government under Olaf Scholz repeatedly rejected the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Since taking power, however, Merz has proved reluctant, suggesting that the missiles would not be sent soon and, if they were, it would take place in secret.

Sources close to Merz suggest he still favours handing over Taurus missiles but is reluctant to say so openly because he does not want a public row with his new SPD coalition partners. By that logic, it might be easier for Merz to ask forgiveness than permission.

The weapons are undoubtedly desperately needed. Across the front line in Ukraine, soldiers complain that when Ukraine had the missiles, they had restrictions. Now they have permission, but no missiles. Kyiv has expended most of the long-range Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles it received in previous weapons shipments.

Taurus, then, is the game changer. With a range of more than 310 miles, the missiles surpass the capabilities of other western weapons gifted to Ukraine and they have advanced guidance systems that help them to navigate complex environments and evade enemy defences.

Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said that if Taurus was fired from the border it could conceivably hit targets close to Moscow. Though that would be the nightmare outcome for many of Kyiv’s allies, there is a more likely scenario.

Ukraine would use them to target ammunition storage sites, command and control centres, fuel depots and other similar locations that would enable them to disrupt support to Russian forces near the border or fighting inside Ukraine, he said.

There could also be a secondary benefit whereby deep strikes targeting bunkers and storage facilities might force the Russians to reorganise their air defences and give the Ukrainians more scope to get drones through the gaps.

However the missiles would not have a sufficiently long range to take out chunks of Russian military industrial centres, as those are even deeper inside the county, such as in the Alabuga economic zone, in the Republic of Tatarstan in southwest Russia. “This is why the Ukrainians are developing the long-range drone strike programme and their own cruise missiles,” Savill said.

 

[beer 30]

"The Sky Sentinel defense system mounted on a mobile trailer provides the same sort of capability but with the added power of AI. It never needs rest, never gets tired, and reacts instantly and precisely to incoming threats at any time day or night."

I swear this was the theme to a movie I saw once

 

[Chadstroma]

"The Sky Sentinel defense system mounted on a mobile trailer provides the same sort of capability but with the added power of AI. It never needs rest, never gets tired, and reacts instantly and precisely to incoming threats at any time day or night."

I swear this was the theme to a movie I saw once

Totally different! In the movie is it called Skynet. Duh.

 

[Chadstroma]

OPEC+ set to agree July oil output hike this week, sources say​

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - OPEC+ is likely to agree to a further accelerated oil output hike for July this week, three delegates from the group told Reuters, in the latest stage of a plan to meet rising demand and increase market share.

When the 22-member group meets on Wednesday to review the market, it is not expected to change policy, the sources said.

But they said they expected an output hike to be agreed for July when the eight OPEC+ members meet on Saturday.

OPEC+, which includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia, has agreed three layers of output cuts since 2022 to support the market, two of which are in place until the end of next year.

Eight members began unwinding the most recent layer in April, and for May and June made larger-than-expected hikes of 411,000 barrels per day.

Three OPEC+ sources told Reuters the eight members at their meeting on Saturday may decide on a similar 411,000 bpd output hike for July. All sources declined to be identified by name due to the sensitivity of the matter.

"We assign a high probability to another sizeable output increase of 411,000 bpd," SEB analyst Ole Hvalbye said. "However, this potential hike seems largely priced in already," he added.

United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei, asked about the plan for July output on Tuesday, said OPEC+ was doing its best to balance the oil market and needed to be mindful of rising demand.

Oil fell to a four-year low in April below $60 per barrel after OPEC+ said it was accelerating its output hike in May and as U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs raised concerns of global economic weakness. Since then it has recovered to about $65.

Earlier this month, sources told Reuters that the eight countries, in addition to another 411,000 bpd output hike for July, may unwind the remainder of their voluntary hikes by the end of October.

Wednesday's talks are scheduled to begin at 1300 GMT, the sources said.

 

[Chadstroma]

Oil prices inch up as U.S. bans Chevron from exporting Venezuelan crude​

BEIJING (Reuters) - Oil prices ticked up in early trading on Wednesday as the U.S. barred Chevron from exporting crude from Venezuela under a new authorization on its assets there, raising the prospect of tighter supply.

Brent crude futures rose 47 cents, or 0.73%, to $64.56 a barrel by 0028 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained 49 cents, or around 0.8%, to $61.38 a barrel.

The Trump administration has issued a new authorization for U.S. major Chevron that would allow it to keep assets in Venezuela but not to export oil or expand its activities, Reuters reported on Tuesday according to sources.

"The loss of Chevron's Venezuelan barrels in the U.S. will leave refiners short and thus relying more on Middle Eastern crude," Westpac's head of commodity and carbon strategy Robert Rennie wrote in a note.

U.S. President Donald Trump had revoked the previous license on February 26.

In recent years, the licenses to Chevron and other foreign companies supported a slight recovery in sanction-hit Venezuelan oil output to about 1 million barrels per day.

On the economic front, European Union officials have begun asking top EU companies for details of their U.S. investment plans, signalling that Brussels is preparing to advance trade talks with Washington. The move came after Trump over the weekend walked back a threat to impose 50% tariffs on European goods that would have hurt economic activity and demand for oil.

Wednesday's gains recouped most of the losses from Tuesday, when prices settled down around 1% after signs of limited progress emerged in a fifth round of Iran-U.S. nuclear talks. The market expects any resolution between the two countries could add more Iranian oil supply to the market.

A full meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, together known as OPEC+, is scheduled for Wednesday, though no policy changes are expected. A July output hike could be decided on Saturday when eight members of the group hold talks, according to sources.

Rennie said that a 411,000 barrel per day increase for July is the most likely scenario and would "add to rising inventory given signs that demand is weak as we move toward the summer driving season in the U.S."

 

[Chadstroma]

OPEC+ production plans keep pressure on crude oil futures but WTI holds above $60​

Crude oil futures fell Tuesday with expectations of further OPEC+ production increases in July outweighing the easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and the European Union, which raised equity markets.

Investors increasingly expect OPEC and its allied producers to extend into July a 411K bbl/day output increase when they meet later this week, despite weak oil prices.

The full 22-member group is not expected to change policy when it meets Wednesday to review the market, but an output hike is expected to be agreed for July when eight OPEC+ members meet on Saturday to determine production quotas - likely deciding on a 411K bbl/day output hike for July, similar to June's increase that was larger than expected when announced - Reuters reported.

But WTI crude stayed above the $60/bbl psychological level, likely due to market relief that the threat of fresh U.S. tariffs against the European Union has been postponed for now, although many uncertainties remain, particularly regarding U.S. sanctions policy; nuclear talks with Iran currently are inconclusive but optimistic, with a possible easing of sanctions on Iranian oil on the table, but the mood between President Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin may have deteriorated, raising fresh sanction concerns.

Also helping prices, a wildfire in Canada's oil-producing Alberta province prompted a temporary shutdown of some oil and gas production.

Front-month Nymex crude (CL1:COM) and Brent crude (CO1:COM) for July delivery each closed -1% to $60.89/bbl and $64.09/bbl, respectively, to the lowest settlement values in nearly three weeks, while U.S. natural gas futures made late-session gains as Nymex natural gas for June delivery (NG1:COM) ended +1.9% at $3.398/MMBtu ahead of tomorrow’s expiration, and the most-active July contract finished +0.5% to $3.744/MMBtu.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Exclusive: Putin, for Ukraine peace, wants a pledge to halt NATO enlargement, sources say

President Vladimir Putin's conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards and lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia, according to three Russian sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

Kyiv and European governments have accused Moscow of stalling while its troops advance in eastern Ukraine.
"Putin is ready to make peace but not at any price," said one senior Russian source with knowledge of top-level Kremlin thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The three Russian sources said Putin wants a "written" pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the U.S.-led NATO alliance eastwards - shorthand for formally ruling out membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and other former Soviet republics.
Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine, the three sources said.
The first source said that, if Putin realizes he is unable to reach a peace deal on his own terms, he will seek to show the Ukrainians and the Europeans by military victories that "peace tomorrow will be even more painful".

The first source said that if Putin saw a tactical opportunity on the battlefield, he would push further into Ukraine - and that the Kremlin believed Russia could fight on for years no matter what sanctions and economic pain were imposed by the West.
A second source said that Putin was now less inclined to compromise on territory and was sticking to his public stance that he wanted the entirety of four regions in eastern Ukraine claimed by Russia.
"Putin has toughened his position," the second source said of the question of territory.

Putin Has Retooled Russia’s Economy to Focus Only on War

But if or when Putin is ready to make peace, unwinding his military buildup could prove a trickier task.

“It is absolutely imperative for Russia to continue to rely on the military industry, because it [has] become the driver of economic growth,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “For a while, it will be next to impossible for Russia to reduce military spending.”

Russia’s arms industry has enjoyed billions of dollars in stimulus in recent years to boost production lines and keep them running at breakneck speed 24 hours a day. The influx of cash has boosted wages—partly to compete with military payouts—and fueled rising living standards for thousands of Russians in the country’s poorer backwaters.

If the war does end in Ukraine, some of Russia’s neighbors worry its war economy might be refocused on them.

In the Baltics, Estonian military planners grimly discuss the possibility of war spilling into NATO territory. In Kazakhstan, analysts carefully watch for signals that Russia could make a move into the north of the country, where a large ethnic Russian population still lives.
These fears stem partly from the belief that the Kremlin would rather keep the tens of thousands soldiers fighting on some other front line rather than bring battle-hardened and often traumatized men back home. After the end of World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin viewed returning veterans as a threat and sent many to the gulags to rid himself of the domestic pressures they could cause.

Today, peace would likely see many of the hundreds of thousands of troops in Ukraine, particularly those who signed short-term contracts, demobilized and sent back to civilian life at a time of slowing economic and wage growth.

“It’s not going to be a good idea to cut those wages radically or in a very short time,” said Volodymyr Ishchenko, of the Free University of Berlin. “It’s not a good idea for the state to disappoint armed men.”

If the fighting in Ukraine ends, Russia’s military will still need men. The arms industry will still be building the guns and vehicles needed to replace the Soviet stockpiles lost on the front line, but at a slower pace than during the war. Job losses on factory lines, together with an increasingly stagnating economy, could stir some discontent among those who saw the war bring the biggest redistribution of wealth since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Without an existential crisis like the war in Ukraine, it would be hard to justify continuing to pour money into the defense industry at the rate we already are,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “And Putin—even if they say he is an evil totalitarian—he is very sensitive about what people think and what they want.”

Vladimir Putin’s war economy is cooling, but Russians still feel richer

The sharp rise in Russians’ living standards that has helped underpin support for the war in Ukraine is coming to an end, according to a Financial Times analysis of job adverts.
Strong wage increases and a tight labour market since Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border in February 2022 have been a critical factor in maintaining public support for the Kremlin, despite sanctions, high inflation and other economic troubles.
But analysis of recruitment ads by the FT suggests that the booming salary growth for new hires weakened at the start of 2025.
Salaries for new posts rose by 4.2 per cent between September and December 2024 in nominal terms, but only by 2.2 per cent in the three months ending in April, according to the FT analysis. The method corrects for changes to the mix of new posts on offer and experience requirements.
However, economists and recent consumer surveys suggest Russians’ sense of financial stability will persist, even though other data, including slowing GDP growth and falling oil revenues, point to President Vladimir Putin’s war economy losing steam.
“Russia’s economy is under strain, and the problems are piling up,” said Konstantin Nasonov, a Russian economist and a former researcher in Russia’s Skolkovo business school. “Yet at the same time, people have more money than before. Strange as it seems, these trends aren’t mutually exclusive.”

For the first time in more than a decade, the share of Russians with a positive view of their finances surpassed those with a negative outlook in mid-2024, according to the Russian pollster Levada.
Russians rated 2023 as their best financial year in at least 10 years in surveys analysed in a paper by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Emerging Economies and collected by HSE, a Moscow-based university. More recent data is yet to become available, but the trend likely continued into 2024, said its co-author Will Pyle.
More recent surveys by Chronicles, a group of independent researchers, offer a slightly less positive view but suggest there is still no sign of a sharp decline that would spark political instability.
Nearly 40 per cent of Russians in the Chronicles surveys reported a deterioration in their financial situation. But the majority still noticed no change (40 per cent) or an improvement (20 per cent) in their finances.
Alexei Minyailo, Chronicles co-founder and an opposition activist, said there was a link between Russians’ sense of financial wellbeing and support for the war. The harder life becomes financially, “the less likely someone is to back it”, Minyailo said.
Putin’s war-related spending has been felt especially by those living on the breadline.
“For example, some families living in poverty now get money from conscripted husbands at the front,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“The state has been using money to pour cold water on the simmering pot of public sentiment.”

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Ukraine braces for expected Russian summer offensive in the east

Russia is expected to mount a major offensive this summer against Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which it has been trying to conquer since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian military officials and analysts said.

Accompanying the main push into Donetsk, of which it controls about 70 percent, the Kremlin plans to carry out smaller attacks along the border of Ukraine’s northeast Sumy and Kharkiv regions, to put more pressure on Ukraine’s already overstretched front-line troops, analysts say.
Russia’s plan is to “try to pin down Ukrainian forces along the front line, including in Sumy and Kharkiv regions, but otherwise they will prioritize Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, speaking of the two Donetsk towns that Russia has been trying to capture for almost a year.
He added that though Kostiantynivka is not on the verge of being taken, it is a “promising” prospect for the Russians at present, as Russia is in a position to attack it from three different directions.
Analysts had predicted last summer that the two towns would fall by December; Russia’s difficulty in taking them reflects Ukraine’s massive effort to defend them. But Ukraine is still struggling with recruitment and firepower, meaning the coming months will be yet another challenge.

“I expect them to focus on Donetsk region. Everything else will be diversion and dispersion of Ukrainian resources and attention,” said Bielieskov, adding that prioritizing the Sumy or Kharkiv regions won’t give the Russians the chunk of territory they are looking for.
It took Russia 80,000 troops to take the small city of Avdiivka in Donetsk in February 2024 after a grueling siege. There are currently 125,000 Russian troops stationed on the border of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions — not nearly enough to take two regional capitals, according to figures shared by Ukraine’s military intelligence.
More likely, these troops will be used to occupy slivers of Ukrainian land along the border, said Andriy Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence. Russia has already said it seeks to create “buffer zones” along the border to prevent further Ukrainian incursions into Russia’s Kursk or Belgorod regions.
According to Cherniak, however, Moscow’s troops will use these new salients inside Ukraine to exert pressure on both regional capitals, particularly on Sumy city. Already, Russian forces have captured four villages along the border, Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1927596560952750427

Moments ago, Ukrainian attack drones hit a major Russian cruise missile manufacturer north of Moscow, the Dubna Machine-Building Plant.

At least one drone slammed into the complex that produces long-range cruise missiles used to strike Ukraine.

https://x.com/RALee85/status/1927494021427110297

"Recent Russian drone attacks comprised roughly 60% of attack drones and 40% of Parodiya decoys, according to Ihnat."

German finance minister disagrees with Merz over Ukraine weapons policy

Germany’s Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil is clashing with conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz over whether the country has lifted restrictions on how Ukraine can use German weapons against Russia.

“There is no new agreement that goes beyond what the previous government had in place,” Klingbeil, a senior Social Democrat, told reporters in Berlin on Monday when asked whether the range limits on German weapons had been scrapped.

https://x.com/vonderburchard/status/1927618386994839882

Germany's Friedrich Merz will announce new Ukraine military aid during his meeting with Zelenskyy in Berlin today.

The package, worth billions, is expected to include air defense, other weapons and technical components that allow Kyiv to build cruise missiles.

Source: POLITICO

Ukraine Drone Carriers Launch First Long-Range Autonomous Strikes

Ukrainian startup Strategy Force Solutions claim their drone motherships have carried out the first autonomous missions with attack drones in a trials against Russian targets.
“A $10,000 mission replaces what previously required $3-$5 million missile systems,” CTO Andrii (surname withheld), told me.
The StatForce approach has a reusable GOGOL-M mothership delivering two FPV-type attack drones to hit precision targets up to 300 kilometers away. This approach leverages the ability of small drones to have big effects on vulnerable targets such as parked aircraft, air defence sites or infrastructure.
Andrii says they cannot yet release imagery of the attacks. However it is a logical progression of previously seen drone motherships and FPVs with AI-enabled automated targeting. In fact, it might be seen as an operational version of the autonomous long range attack system which the Pentagon’s DIU is currently racing to build, or the CGI swarm mothership shown off by China.
“By pairing them [small FPV type drones] with AI mothership drones, we can guarantee precision strikes,” says Andrii.

Inside Ukraine’s plan to track, jam and destroy Putin’s drones

Among them are the Azimuth radio tracking station, which follows drones using their radio signals, and the Mirage, which jams them. Kvertus, the Ukrainian company that builds both systems, is working with the defence ministry on Atlas, a plan to create a radio-electronic wall along 1,300km of the front line, deploying 260 Azimuths that can track targets within 30km and 5,600 Mirages that can jam drones up to 5km away.
Cutting-edge technology is expensive, however. Brave One, a military initiative of the Ukrainian government, is seeking £90 million to help Kvertus build the wall. Kvertus says it has already deployed hundreds of the systems to the front line as well as thousands of other electronic measures such as drone guns, vehicle-mounted jammers and personal jamming backpacks.
“Over these three years, we’ve sold, I believe, about 40,000 units,” says Oleksii Cherniuk, Kvertus’s operations director. “We started in 2017 with an anti-drone gun, but it only really works when a drone is attacking in a direct line. Now first person-view drones attack from above, from the left and the right. So the next challenge was to create a dome-style defence.”
The Mirage jammers can work in three modes, he says, the first controlled by a soldier using a tablet. The second mode allows it to be controlled through the internet from anywhere, and the third is autonomous, automatically shutting down targets identified by the Azimuth tracker.
Lieutenant Andriy “Danube” Bezsonov, the electronic warfare and electronic countermeasures service leader of the 18th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, is one of those using them on the battlefield. “We’ve had the main components of the Atlas system for a few months and they’ve already shown their effectiveness,” says Bezsonov, 45. “The idea is already saving lives.”
Yet even as the project gets under way, complications have arisen. The Russians have pioneered kamikaze drones controlled by fibre-optic cable that are impervious to jamming and give off no radio signal to detect. Often, fibre-optic drones are used first to take out electronic warfare stations, allowing radio-controlled counterparts with longer ranges to penetrate Ukrainian lines. “When we bring this idea to perfection, you know how it is, the Russians will start using more fibre-optics,” Bezsonov says.
Nor do the systems bring down GPS-guided munitions, such as Russia’s long-range Shahed drones, which do not need to transmit video, instead receiving their targeting co-ordinates by satellite through an antenna with eight sensors, all of which need to be defeated to stop it. Over the past week, Moscow has massed waves of hundreds of Shaheds against Ukrainian cities, seeking to saturate and overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences. At the front, the latest threat are drones controlled by artificial intelligence, which lock on to their targets more than a kilometre away.
It leaves electronic warfare specialists scrambling to keep up. Kvertus is developing a new system, Vepr, that it says it has tested successfully against the Shahed antenna and will deploy it to complement Atlas. Ultimately, the company plans to develop a single mobile platform combining radio detection, radar, jamming and a means of destruction such as a turret-mounted machinegun.

 

[fatness]

Many Ukrainians baulk at conceding land to Russia, entangling nascent peace process

Moscow has demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from four Ukrainian regions where fighting is raging, even though it does not control all of them.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians - 82% - reject those demands, according to an opinion poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted in May.
Slightly more than half of the population - 51% - would support a compromise with a de-facto recognition of currently occupied territories in exchange for robust security guarantees from Europe and the U.S., even though the latter has indicated it would not provide them.
But about 40% considered this unacceptable, raising questions over how Ukraine and Russia can break the deadlock in a nascent peace process.
"It is not fair to leave them what they took away. It is our land," said Dmytro, 35, who had settled in Mariupol after being forced to leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in 2015.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

China Cut Drone Sales to West But Supplies Them to Russia, Ukraine Says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said China has stopped selling drones to Kyiv and other European nations while continuing shipments to Russia.
“Chinese Mavic is open for Russians but is closed for Ukrainians,” Zelenskiy told a group of reporters on Tuesday. “There are production lines on Russian territory where there are Chinese representatives,” he added.
The Mavic is a popular civilian quadcopter, normally used for aerial photography, which can be adapted to carry explosives. On the battlefield, Mavics can be used both for surveillance and to attack enemy targets.

A European official said that Zelenskiy’s remarks match their own assessments. The official said that China also appears to have curtailed deliveries to western buyers of some drone components, such as magnets used in motors, at the same time as ramping up deliveries to Russia.

Germany pledges 5 billion euros in new aid to Ukraine, no Taurus missiles announced

The German newspaper Welt reported that the package includes about 400 million euros ($450 million) for the production of Ukrainian long-range BARS and AN-196 drones and Flamingo interceptor drones.

The package further contains four IRIS-T air defense systems and funding for contracts for the repair of military vehicles in Ukraine, namely Gepard air defenses. Berlin also pledged to help finance the operations of the Starlink satellite communications system in Ukraine.

Taurus missiles for Ukraine 'within the realm of possibility,' Germany's Merz says

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 28 that a potential delivery of Taurus cruise missiles for Ukraine is not being ruled out.

"Of course, that's within the realm of possibility," Merz said on air on ZDF TV channel when asked about the possibility of Taurus deliveries for Kyiv.

The chancellor nevertheless emphasized that using the missiles would require a lengthy training period, potentially taking "several months of training for soldiers in Ukraine."\\

Russia Appears to Launch New Offensive in Ukraine Amid Peace Talks

Most military analysts believe that Russia lacks the resources to occupy all Ukrainian land bordering Russia. But the Sumy incursion, they say, has succeeded in tying down thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, limiting Ukraine’s ability to reinforce its fraying defenses in the Donbas.

Russia also appears to have expanded the production and improved the effectiveness of its drones. Last week, Russian forces launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities over three nights, the biggest barrage of the war.
A small but significant fraction of these weapons are penetrating air defenses and causing damage to both industrial and civilian buildings. Military analysts have attributed this trend to a combination of Kyiv’s dwindling anti-air ammunition, innovations in Russian tactics and the sheer scale of the attacks.
In particular, Mr. Kuznets said, Russia has been able to upgrade the motors on some of the domestically made models of the Iranian Shahed drone. The new motor allows those drones, known in Russia as Geran, to carry bigger payloads and fly at higher altitudes, making it harder to shoot them down or jam their signals.

https://x.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1927730085819240527

During April and May, the Russians formed a dangerous salient against the Ukrainian defenses between Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk.

The so-called spring offensive has progressed relatively quickly, and serious issues may lie ahead in the near future. 1/
Defending forces in the area initially consisted of newer, less capable brigades, such as the 142nd, 155th & 157th. Elements from other units were also present. Reserves have been brought in – first the 36th marine brigade, and now the 82nd air assault brigade, among others. 2/
Russia's probable operational objectives for the coming months in the area include:

Formation of an encirclement threat around Kostiantynivka

Formation of an encirclement threat around Pokrovsk

Disruption of Ukrainian supply & command elements in the cities in the AO 3/
In the latest development, Ukrainians retreated from Stara Mykolaivka. This enables the Russians to continue north towards Kostiantynivka, while also undermining the long-standing defences in Shcherbynivka. However, the fight here seemingly brought Ukrainians some time. 4/
The most endangered area is Kostiantynivka. The Russians are attacking from three directions – Chasiv Yar, Toretsk and also from the new salient west of the city. The attacks in Chasiv Yar and Toretsk have not made much progress in recent months. 5/
Despite the gradual advancement east and south from the city, developments on the western flank present potential new opportunities for Russian forces. They are positioned approximately 13-15 kilometers from Kostiantynivka and maintain adequate reserves for further operations. 6/
Russians have not achieved a breakthrough in the true sense of the word. An actual breakthrough would entail a rapid collapse of defences, enabling mechanized units to exploit the situation and penetrate deeply into the defender's rear. This scenario isn’t currently unfolding. 7/
The Russians have pushed through an area of dense Ukrainian fortifications. Soon they may reach a less-prepared area, where the Ukrainians can’t bring engineering equipment in safely anymore. However, fortifications don’t solely determine the future of the offensive. 8/
For Ukraine, timely withdrawals from unfavorable positions and careful management of reserves are key elements for a successful defence this summer. The tendency of holding onto nearly encircled pockets usually causes unnecessary losses without significant tactical benefit. 9/
In the worst case scenario, insufficient preparation and bad decisions may lead to a reactive state, where the limited quality reserves are forced to rush from one sector to prevent emerging crises at the expense of another direction, attriting them in the process. 10/

 

[Don't Toews Me]

https://x.com/jakluge/status/1928362268611293516

New data from Russia's federal budget suggests that around 400,000 men signed a contract with the Russian military in 2024. The fourth quarter was particularly strong, with an estimated 1,700 new contracts signed each day.

https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1928340898242257180

Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight into Friday with two Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles and 90 Shahed drones, with Ukrainian air defenses downing 56 drones, injuring 11 in Kharkiv, the Air Force reported.

North Korea enabled Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, monitoring group says

North Korea enabled Russia to increase missile attacks against critical Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and supplied more than 20,000 containers of munitions, according to a report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a group comprising 11 UN members.
The group, launched in October last year to monitor U.N. sanctions against North Korea after a Security Council panel was scrapped by Russia and China, also said Moscow helped the North improve missile performance in return by supplying data.

As many as nine million rounds of artillery and rocket launcher ammunition was shipped from North Korea to Russia by Russian cargo vessels as part of military cooperation between the two countries in violation of U.N. sanctions, it said.
"At least for the foreseeable future, North Korea and Russia intend to continue and further deepen their military cooperation in contravention of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions," the group said in its first report.

Since it started shipping ammunition to Russia in September 2023, North Korea has transferred at least 100 ballistic missiles, self-propelled artillery, long-range multiple rocket launchers and munitions for them, it said.
Russia in return "supported North Korea's ballistic missile programs by providing data feedback ... leading to improvements in missile guidance performance," it said. Moscow also provided air defense equipment and anti-aircraft missiles as well as electronics warfare systems to North Korea, it said.

Russia has provided N. Korea with Pantsir air defense system, jammers since troop deployment: report

Russia has provided North Korea with its air defense system, electronic warfare jamming devices and other military support since late last year, in blatant violations of U.N. sanctions amid their deepening ties, an international monitoring report released by Seoul's foreign ministry showed Thursday.

Since November 2024, Moscow has transferred at least one Pantsir mobile air defense system and one Pantsir-class combat vehicle to Pyongyang, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) said in its first report on the sanctions enforcement.

The report stated that North Korea sent over 11,000 troops to Russia in 2024, with an additional 3,000 soldiers dispatched recently. Those soldiers were trained by the Russian military on artillery drone countermeasures and basic infantry operations.

Russia provided the North with more than 1 million barrels of fuel between March and October last year, the report said. The UNSC sanctions cap North Korea's annual imports of refined petroleum at 500,000 barrels.

UN official says Russia isn’t imminently turning on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog haven’t seen signs of Russia moving to immediately restart the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, an agency official said Thursday, after Greenpeace raised concerns about Moscow building power lines near the facility.

How the West is helping Russia to fund its war on Ukraine

Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine's Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine's allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion's share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia.

Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA's data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024.

Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.

Data shows that money made by Russia from selling fossil fuels has consistently surpassed the amount of aid Ukraine receives from its allies.

The thirst for fuel can get in the way of the West's efforts to limit Russia's ability to fund its war.

Mai Rosner, a senior campaigner from the pressure group Global Witness, says many Western policymakers fear that cutting imports of Russian fuels will lead to higher energy prices.

"There's no real desire in many governments to actually limit Russia's ability to produce and sell oil. There is way too much fear about what that would mean for global energy markets. There's a line drawn under where energy markets would be too undermined or too thrown off kilter," she told the BBC.

 

[Ministry of Pain]

'Russian bombers are burning en masse' — Ukraine's SBU drones hit 'more than 40' aircraft in mass attack, source claims

"Currently, more than 40 aircraft are known to have been hit, including the A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22 M3," a source told the Kyiv Independent.

kyivindependent.com

-Doesn't win the war but I was wondering when Ukraine was going to hit back with some larger scale drone strikes
A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22s are some of the planes they hit
The A-50s are for early warning and you might notice them by the little UFO on the top of the plane.
The Tu-95s date back to the late 40s and early 50s, mostly used for bombing raids

 

[Don't Toews Me]

https://x.com/JimmySecUK/status/1929164382061092952

Extraordinary footage showing the moment a Ukrainian SBU FPV drone strikes a Russian Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber at Belaya airfield.

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1929132446378775032

Footage of Ukrainian FPV strike drones flying into Russian Tu-95 bombers this afternoon.

https://x.com/Tendar/status/1929194430143082910

Ukrainian war journalist Yuri Butusov has summarized the details of the operation "Spiderweb" against Russian airbases:

- At the moment, according to our sources, the destruction of 41 aircrafts of strategic and military transport aviation of the Russian Armed Forces at four bases has been recorded.

- Some of the drones attacked the target with auto-homing, the results of their strikes will be determined using satellite images.

- A group of SBU agents transported 150 small attack drones and 300 ammunition to the territory of the Russian Federation. 116 drones took to the air.

- The drones were controlled via Russian telecommunications networks, using auto-homing.

- Drones attacked from a short distance during the day in the deep rear of the enemy.

- The air bases were covered by significant air defense forces - anti-aircraft missile systems, electronic warfare systems, regular patrols with small arms. But the Russians expected night strikes by heavy large strike drones, which are clearly visible in the air, and did not expect an attack by small quadcopters during the day.

- The attack on the Tu-95 strategic missile carrier base at the Olenya base was especially successful, the drones accurately hit the refueled fuel tanks and a significant number of aircraft burned to the ground. An operation of such a scale and with such a colossal economic and military effect, at such a high technological level, has no analogues in the world.

- SBU agents successfully returned to Ukraine. Ukraine did not suffer any losses.

Consequences:

- Military equipment worth billions of dollars was destroyed

- Strategic aircrafts which Russia does not produce were destroyed.

- the enemy's strike capabilities are weakened, since these aircraft were an important component of constant terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities.

- the enemy will have to spend a lot of money to strengthen the defense of its bases and facilities.

https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1929177391307309317

Ukraine smuggled the drones into Russia, followed later by small wooden mobile cabins, people familiar said. The drones were then concealed under the roofs of the structures, which had been loaded on to lorries. On Sunday, the roofs were remotely opened and the drones launched towards Russian military airfields.

https://x.com/MassDara/status/1929179925539410239

Russia’s VKS and the General Staff have been studying drone threats to bases for a few years and have implemented various air defense, EW and reconnaissance modifications, assuming launches from Ukraine . Today’s operation moved trucks to launch drones underneath all of that.

https://x.com/shashj/status/1929193508767776962

There were reports days ago that Russia had been shuffling around strategic bombers, perhaps to obscure launch patterns. "Olenya airbase in Russia’s Murmansk region was hosting an unusually high concentration of strategic aircraft." Olenya was hit today.

 

[Chadstroma]

'Russian bombers are burning en masse' — Ukraine's SBU drones hit 'more than 40' aircraft in mass attack, source claims

"Currently, more than 40 aircraft are known to have been hit, including the A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22 M3," a source told the Kyiv Independent.

kyivindependent.com

-Doesn't win the war but I was wondering when Ukraine was going to hit back with some larger scale drone strikes
A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22s are some of the planes they hit
The A-50s are for early warning and you might notice them by the little UFO on the top of the plane.
The Tu-95s date back to the late 40s and early 50s, mostly used for bombing raids

The loss of a large number of bombers is great but the A-50 is huge. They have very few of these and this is reportedly the third destroyed aircraft along with another damaged. The production on these ended a long time ago and they will have to rely on replacing with the A-100 of which sanctions have severely limited production capabilities.

 

[McBokonon]

Lookner is covering this live on Agenda Free Youtube if anyone is interested.

 

[McBokonon]

https://x.com/aviation_intel/status/1929192006175117788?s=46

Russia just lost an unknown number of strategic aircraft that are directly tied to validity of their nuclear deterrent. We don't know if this was four or 40 aircraft. The strategic nature of the effects of this attack puts it into uncharted territory. And YES, these aircraft are dual use conventional/nuclear platforms. And they have rained destruction on Ukraine from afar as cruise missile carriers. But this is not about them being legitimate targets (clearly they are) it's about this attack bleeding into potentially a major degradation in the most flexible prong of Russia's nuclear deterrent.

 

[HellToupee]

Lookner is covering this live on Agenda Free Youtube if anyone is interested.

Thanks. I get a kick out of Lookner. He hasn’t been on in a while

 

[Don't Toews Me]

Over one-third of Russia's strategic cruise missile carriers hit at airfields, Ukraine's Security Service reports

Quote: "US$7 billion – this is the estimated value of the Russian strategic aircraft assets hit today as part of the SSU’s special operation Pavutyna (Spiderweb).

We have struck 34% of Russia's strategic cruise missile carriers at their main airbases."

Details: The SSU has promised to release more information about the operation "a bit later".

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1929224999585407261

1/ QUICK TAKE by Rus mil bloggers on the technical aspects of today's Ukrainian drone strike: "FPV control was carried out via mobile networks (4G, LTE and the like). The bandwidth of modern mobile networks is more than enough to perform such tasks."
2/ "There were no ground control stations and, especially, no saboteur operators nearby. The truck driver in particular and the logistics chain in general are another story that our special services will have to figure out."
3/ "The FPV drone was controlled via the ARDUPILOT software and hardware solution (system). Absolutely the same solution on the "Baba Yagas", only instead of the Starlink terminal, there is an LTE modem with an Ethernet output, to which a single-board PC a la "Raspberry/Orange"."
4/ "A webcam is connected to the PC, which transmits the image and sends a UART channel to Ardupilot to send commands to control the drone. Ardupilot is used on platforms where flight stabilization and maximum control autonomy are needed, including in conditions of large delays in the operator-drone, drone-operator channel."
5/ "In other words, this is the solution chosen in the conditions of working via Internet channels. The genius of this operation is not in its tech uniqueness (this solution is used by both parties to the conflict), but in the organizational and logistical part, multiplied by total local Rus sloppiness in ensuring security measures."

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1929192038051844107

1/ QUICK TAKE by Rus commentators on the consequences of today's strike: "Reinforcement of air defense will be necessary - not only from fixed-wing (Ukr) drones, but also from FPV drones, specially since there has already been an experience of such an attack in Machulishchi, where (our) A-50 was damaged. Obviously, the security at the airfield was not prepared for this type of attack."
2/ "Strengthening counter-intelligence and counter-terrorist measures. The enemy was able to prepare and carry out a complex operation on our territory. This is a clear failure of the special services that allowed this to happen."
3/ "The drone revolution is not over. It should be taken into account that the options for using kamikaze attack drones will only become more numerous in the future. The possibility of using drones from hidden carriers (containers, ships with containers, trucks) is not new..."
4/ "and all this has been known since the mid 2010s. That is, for those who have been following this direction of development of strike UAVs at all. Of course there will be a search for those responsible for what happened, and heads will roll."
5/ "The negligence (by Rus services) is too expensive. It will not bring back the lost airplanes, but someone will be punished. Hopefully, the military and political leadership will find a way to respond with dignity. The response should be painful."
6/ "SMERSH is necessary - just like in the past (SMERSH was a Soviet WW2-era counter-intel service that was successful in detecting and neutralizing German spies). As well as the death penalty for complicity with the Ukrainian SBU and GUR."

War in Ukraine: Russia confirms that several of its military planes have "caught fire" after a Ukrainian drone attack

Ukrainian politicians hailed the operation as "brilliant". Russian military bloggers, on the other hand, deplored a "black day for aviation" in their country. The Telegram channel Rybar, which is close to the Russian army, considered that "this is without exaggeration a very hard blow", denouncing "serious mistakes" by the Russian special services.

https://x.com/JimmySecUK/status/1929157790142242837

Details and images of the preparation of today's extraordinary SBU operation have been revealed by Ihor Lachenkov.

"The special operation "Spiderweb", as a result of which the SBU hit 41 Russian strategic aviation aircraft, was prepared for more than a year and a half.

According to our sources, this operation was extremely complex from a logistical point of view. The SBU first transported FPV drones to Russia, and later - mobile wooden containers. Later, on the territory of the Russian Federation, the drones were hidden under the roofs of containers, already placed on trucks. At the right moment, the roofs of the containers were remotely opened, and the drones flew to strike the Russian bombers.

We have unique photos showing exactly how drones were prepared to attack military airfields.

Sources in the SBU emphasize that the people who took part in this historic special operation have been in Ukraine for a long time. So, if the Putin regime demonstratively detains someone, it will be another staged event for the domestic audience."

https://x.com/shakirov2036/status/1929160841959502019

Russian defense scholars have been worried for years that high-precision weapons including UAVs could be used (by the U.S.) to target strategic nuclear forces. E.g. this paragraph in a 2021 article by researchers of the academies of General Staff & RVSN
To be sure, as some pointed out, this is not the same as what happened today. Yet the article illustrates that defense experts were looking in the right direction: more covert, dispersed, smaller size threats to strategic forces

Russian war bloggers urge Putin to use Oreshnik missile on Ukraine

Pro-Kremlin war bloggers are urging Russia’s military to use its new intermediate-range ballistic missile, that Vladimir Putin has lauded as “unstoppable”, against Ukraine.

On Telegram, prominent bloggers called Ukraine’s coordinated drone attacks on strategic bomber bases “Russia’s pearl harbour moment”, referencing Japan’s 1941 attack on America’s Pacific fleet that brought the US into World War Two.

Calling for revenge, they said Vladimir Putin should strike Ukraine with the lethal missile, used for the first time in November, which splits into multiple warheads that rain down on targets in a deadly synchronisation.

Special Ukrainian operation targets more than 40 'enemy bombers' deep inside Russia, source says

Sources said the individuals who took part in this special operation have been back in Ukraine for a long time.

They claimed that anyone detained in Russia by the Russian authorities would be just for show.

 

[The Z Machine]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

 

[Don't Toews Me]

An astonishing raid deep inside Russia rewrites the rules of war

Commentators close to the Ukrainian security services suggest that as many as 150 drones and 300 bombs had been smuggled into Russia for the operations. The quadcopters were apparently built into wooden cabins, loaded onto lorries and then released after the roofs of the cabins were remotely retracted. The drones used Russian mobile-telephone networks to relay their footage back to Ukraine, much of which was released by the gleeful Ukrainians. They also used elements of automated targeting, the accounts claim.

A Ukrainian intelligence source said it was unlikely that the drivers of the trucks knew what they were carrying. He compared this aspect of the operation to the 2022 attack on Kerch bridge, where a bomb concealed in a lorry destroyed part of the bridge linking Crimea with the mainland. “These kinds of operations are very complex, with key players necessarily kept in the dark,” he said. The source described the operation as a multi-stage chess move, with the Russians first encouraged to move more of their planes to particular bases by Ukrainian strikes on other ones. Three days before the attack, dozens of planes had moved to the Olenya airfield in Murmansk province, according to reports published at the time. It was precisely here that the most damage was done.

Western armed forces are watching closely. For many years they have concentrated their own aircraft at an ever smaller number of air bases, to save money, and have failed to invest in hardened hangars or shelters that could protect against drones and missiles. America’s own strategic bombers are visible in public satellite imagery, sitting in the open. “Imagine, on game-day,” writes Tom Shugart of CNAS, a think-tank in Washington, “containers at railyards, on Chinese-owned container ships in port or offshore, on trucks parked at random properties…spewing forth thousands of drones that sally forth and at least mission-kill the crown jewels of the [US Air Force].” That, he warns, would be “entirely feasible”.

Zelenskyy on Ukrainian operation targeting aircraft in Russia: 117 drones were used and "office" was next to FSB HQ

Details: The president noted that he had thanked Maliuk for this triumph by Ukraine and has also instructed the Security Service of Ukraine to disclose the details and results of the operation that can be made public.

"Of course, we cannot reveal everything now, but these are Ukrainian actions that will definitely be in the history books," Zelenskyy added.

Update: During his evening address, Zelenskyy revealed that a total of 117 drones were used in the SSU operation – and that the operation's "office" in Russia was situated next to the office of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in one of the oblasts.

 

[dozer]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

Here's the home base for ours...

Whiteman AFB

 

[Desert_Power]

Fun article from a few days ago speculating on why Russia was concentrating so many bombers at that air field: https://united24media.com/latest-ne...trategic-bomber-fleet-heres-what-we-know-8738

 

[Desert_Power]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

To your point:

Western armed forces are watching closely. For many years they have concentrated their own aircraft at an ever smaller number of air bases, to save money, and have failed to invest in hardened hangars or shelters that could protect against drones and missiles. America’s own strategic bombers are visible in public satellite imagery, sitting in the open. “Imagine, on game-day,” writes Tom Shugart of CNAS, a think-tank in Washington, “containers at railyards, on Chinese-owned container ships in port or offshore, on trucks parked at random properties…spewing forth thousands of drones that sally forth and at least mission-kill the crown jewels of the [US Air Force].” That, he warns, would be “entirely feasible”

 

[Chadstroma]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

 

[dozer]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

 

[Chadstroma]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

I do not recall acreage but there has been reports of numerous bases with Chinese company owned land being bought up around US bases all over the country. I seem to remember the number 19. The bases that stood out to me were Whiteman, Norfolk, Pendelton, Liberty, MacDill and Hood (can't remember the new name). Pretty much a list of our most significant bases.

 

[Dezbelief]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

Not sure how much is located near military assets. 383,934 acres is 600 square miles.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184053690/chinese-owned-farmland-united-states

Chinese investors owned an even tinier fraction – about 383,934 acres, according to 2021 data requested by NPR. In fact, based on the data, Chinese land holdings account for less than 1% of farmland in any given state where there have been purchases.

 

[dozer]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

I do not recall acreage but there has been reports of numerous bases with Chinese company owned land being bought up around US bases all over the country. I seem to remember the number 19. The bases that stood out to me were Whiteman, Norfolk, Pendelton, Liberty, MacDill and Hood (can't remember the new name). Pretty much a list of our most significant bases.

Super interesting. Someone needs to ask some questions.

 

[Chadstroma]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

Not sure how much is located near military assets. 383,934 acres is 600 square miles.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184053690/chinese-owned-farmland-united-states

Chinese investors owned an even tinier fraction – about 383,934 acres, according to 2021 data requested by NPR. In fact, based on the data, Chinese land holdings account for less than 1% of farmland in any given state where there have been purchases.

Which is a tiny fraction of total farmland in the US.... and they just seem to find their way near military bases when buying. What a coincidence.

 

[Hippie Chief]

Wow, pretty incredible operation. It also makes one think about the vulnerability of the west's airfields and high value aircraft. I hope that the US doesn't store the B2s or F22s out in the open.

There is a massive amount of land owned by China that just happens to be nearby US bases all through the US. If Congress was smart.... well.... better put, if Congress could do a smart thing... it would be to force the sell of that land as a national security issue. I am much more concerned about that than Tik Tok. It is on the level of the kill switches found from Chinese equipment in our energy infrastructure. The US is half asleep at the wheel and we are increasingly putting ourselves not just in danger but at a disadvantage with the danger.

Wow! That's concerning... Just how much land are we talking about?

Not sure how much is located near military assets. 383,934 acres is 600 square miles.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184053690/chinese-owned-farmland-united-states

Chinese investors owned an even tinier fraction – about 383,934 acres, according to 2021 data requested by NPR. In fact, based on the data, Chinese land holdings account for less than 1% of farmland in any given state where there have been purchases.

Which is a tiny fraction of total farmland in the US.... and they just seem to find their way near military bases when buying. What a coincidence.

I know, right?! I mean, how much land do you need for a listening station… how much land do you need for a tunnel entrance? My ulcer is coming back…