In the salad days of the former Soviet Union, the entity known as Ukraine was not only the breadbasket of the empire in terms of agriculture, but also the arsenal of the empire in terms of weapons production. That legacy is something that’s beginning to pop up more noticeably on the battlefield and in the enemy’s strategic rear areas.
Much is made of Ukraine’s pleas for additional western weaponry with which to resist Russia. Or its pleas to use western weaponry already in hand to hit Russian targets deep behind enemy lines. Those are the items the western public hears most about and rightly so as they’re items of significant importance. Those entreaties won’t go away and Ukraine will not, can not stop asking.
That said, the Ukrainians have gone ahead and hedged their bets by developing capabilities similar to, and sometimes superior to, western weapons. It’s these weapons that are now beginning to be really felt.
First off the mark, the Ukrainians are really really good at conceptualizing, designing, and producing military-grade drones and operating them with lethal effectiveness. Ukraine is superior to Russia (or probably to anyone) in terms of numbers of drones and quality of both drones and drone operators. As well, the Ukrainians have perfected drone models that can reach hundreds of kilometres into Russian airspace and territory.
A case in point is the Russian arms storage site northwest of Moscow that the Ukrainians torched last night (17-18/09/24). In what has been described so far as the largest attack of the war on Russian territory, a recently completed super-storage site was hit by Ukrainian drones causing massive initial explosions followed by equally massive secondary explosions as the ammunition cooked off. The site is home to a large portion of Russia’s collection of Iskander ballistic missiles, North Korean Hwasong 11A ballistic missiles, as well as S-300 and S-400 air-defence missiles that can also be used as ground attack ammunition. In other words, the motherlode. The Ukrainians hit pay dirt big-time.
Now it appears that Ukraine has also been investing a lot of energy into a missile program of its own with concepts involving both cruise and ballistic missiles now seeing production and use. Some of these missiles have ranges of tens of hundreds of kilometres, meaning Russia will have nowhere to hide their strategic assets without the threat of attack.
Imagine if the Ukrainians continued with this level of productivity and then began to hit cities like the Russians do? Not as indiscriminately, of course, but major military/strategic targets located in and around civilian concentrations are fair game. And the Russians have no air defence to stop them. What they make is useless and what they had is mostly gone. Ukrainian drones get through unmolested every night. And Russian citizens get to see the special military operation up close.
Here’s my read of the situation right now.
The situation in Donetsk is dangerous but manageable. The Russian math will eventually add up, meaning the notion of gaining yards in exchange for thousands of dead and wounded may become unsustainable, both logistically and politically. The manpower advantage the Russians inherently own will no longer be a decisive factor in their favour as Ukraine begins to bring to bear additional superior weaponry, training, and tactics. This is the one and only sector where the Russians have a shot, but it’s a long-shot and it’s fading fast. For the moment, the best they can achieve is stalemate at an egregious cost of lives and equipment.
Crimea is as good as lost. The Ukrainians attack with impunity using missiles and drones and have chased away all Russian air defence. The Russian navy has been crippled with the remnants forced to retreat to Russian ports on the eastern Black Sea, there to sit out the rest of the war. And the Kerch Strait Bridge stands for precisely as long as the Ukrainians allow it to.
Once that bridge goes down, it’ll be for good this time, and it will cut off an escape route for Russian forces in the occupied Kherson and Zaphorizhzhia regions, leaving them only a land corridor within range of Ukrainian artillery. The entire southern sector of the Russian special military operation will collapse underneath the Donbas. It will be a strategic disaster for the Russians.
The situation in Kursk is already a strategic disaster for Russia. The Ukrainians don’t appear to be leaving, but rather are taking more in terms of both land and prisoners. And they’re digging in. The Russians, it seems, can’t do a damn thing about it.
Every night Russia attacks Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure with hundreds of missiles and drones. And every night, despite occurrences of tragedy, Ukrainian air defences shoot down 95%+ of these attack munitions. Even Russian war crime efforts are beginning to fail them.
Russia has no air defence worth talking about. It’s all been shot to shit, leaving countries like Turkey and India that spent billions on this crap now chewing on their fingernails. Ukraine can strike the Russian Modina (Motherland) any time it wants with virtually little response owing mostly to Russian incompetence and corruption.
Ukraine has already been blowing up Russian airbases, petroleum depots, fuel refineries, naval fleets, weapons and ammunition factories. Now their drones reach farther, and they’re bigger too. Same with their missiles. And they don’t need anyone’s permission to use them, how to use them, or where to use them.
If Ukraine starts reaching into interior Russia with greater regularity and increased ferocity with their native-produced weapons, the Russians are going to be in tough. Plus, anybody can figure out that a munition that can hit an ammo storage site 340 km northwest of Moscow could, well, hit Moscow.
And all Russia has to do to make it stop is go home.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 