For Those Who Might Be Wondering Why We Might Be In Ukraine

Just a little Ukrainian music - the anthem of the Ukrainian Army.....maybe Trump should listen to this one sometime

 
Shielding Ukraine's Skies: Time For Europe To Grow Up

Putin's increased resort to missile strikes against civilian targets of late is a sign of his desperation. Unable to win on the battlefield, his days are numbered. Time to seize the Ukrainian skies.
Andrew Tanner
Apr 15

This has been a tough week for Ukraine, though not because of the hyped spring offensive parts of the media keep going on about. The pattern of late suggests that Moscow is struggling to sustain enough combat power to meet all current battlefield demands, let alone escalate them. Even as the enemy tries to take revenge for the Kursk Campaign by pushing - and mostly failing - to breach the border in Sumy district, other fronts more vital to Putin’s only remaining hope of salvaging something he can pass off as a victory are short on reinforcements. In short, Moscow’s winter campaign never truly ended, nor is the fighting this spring likely to dramatically shift in character. To be frank, it no longer makes much sense to describe Putin’s military efforts in classical terms, with relatively clearly defined campaigns attempting to achieve a specific material goal.

The ruscist military machine has degenerated into a self-sustaining violent bureaucracy. It must constantly advance to preserve the illusion of invincibility against all rational evidence to the contrary. Conquering a specific city or even all of free Donbas is no longer the strategic purpose of the war. Nor is destroying Ukraine, not any more. This is now war for the sake of it, a form of national suicide, pure and simple. Neither Putin nor the core of elderly ex-Soviets who actually support him will be around for much longer. What they’re really doing is demanding that the whole world go down with them. Unfortunately, the prospects for peace when faced with a mass delusion like this are just about nil. It really is a form of zombie apocalypse. Either the ruscist nightmare turns inward and consumes itself, or it will keep on expanding outward to avoid coping with its fatal internal contradictions.

The lack of any truly material strategic purpose in Putin’s imperial quest - Ukraine was only ever envisioned as step one in an endless push to expand as far as possible - has doomed it from day one. Failure to comprehend that the key to defeating Ukraine was the destruction of its military, mostly deployed on the Donbas front in 2022, doomed the initial invasion. Inability to recognize in 2023 that the best move was to declare victory and wait for the western alliance to fall apart damned each of Putin’s offensive waves since. Without a clear strategic vision of achievable success, Moscow’s efforts have shifted between domains and regions, never concentrating on achieving one single destabilizing victory anywhere and expanding from that. The result has been Ukrainian forces moving more quickly to adapt in most cases. Moscow has managed to replicate the mistakes that cost Germany the war in 1918, even if the orcs took a couple years instead of a few months to reach near-exhaustion.

The orcs can still advance and seize a limited amount of ground, but never quickly enough to break Ukraine’s defense as a whole. Meanwhile Ukrainian troops have figured out how to offset the enemy’s numerical superiority with technology. This means that whatever Moscow does manage to achieve by summer, its overall strategic position and eventually operational capabilities on multiple fronts will fail, likely before the end of the year. It is the hard fact that Putin is racing against the clock on both the military and economic fronts which has led to the recent increase in pure terror attacks against Ukrainian civilians that have killed dozens, including children. This is a monster lashing out in frustration at a total failure to break its target by other means.

The story isn’t new: Hitler’s air power shifted from going after British factories, airfields, and radar installations to simple revenge bombing London after Britain managed to score some long-range hits on Germany. Churchill credited this shift with saving the RAF at a critical moment during the Battle of Britain when Germany was getting the better of the attrition fight. The Battle of Britain, for all the daring of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots who held back the Luftwaffe, was a grueling battle of attrition. German ability to destroy targets in Britain depended on sustaining a large fleet of bombers. Britain had to take down more than the enemy could replace, with the number of fighters available to intercept incoming bombers playing the key role in this factor. Ground based air defenses just weren’t as flexible, requiring large numbers of guns firing lots of rounds to score kills. Yes, there was radar and Tilly’s wonderful orifice (a mechanical device invented by one of the women working on Spitfires that improved its performance in certain situations) and the clever way the Royal Air Force organized the defense of Britain. But in the end the number of pilots trained and airframes produced mattered most, and at one point the Luftwaffe began to turn the tide by focusing its fire on the infrastructure keeping Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air. Churchill deliberately authorized dangerous bomber raids across Germany that couldn’t do much damage, but did have the effect of triggering a political uproar in Berlin. With Hitler’s cronies always fighting for his favor, Goering couldn’t tolerate the embarrassment of having his claim that Germany would never be touched by bombing proven wrong. In revenge, scarce bomber sorties were directed to the area bombing of London, taking pressure off the Royal Air Force, which was soon able to recover its strength and turn the tide. And yes, Churchill hoped this would happen: he sacrificed some civilians to save many more.

The moral of the story is this: only idiots target civilians, especially as part of a strategy for making a conflict too painful to continue. But that’s the choice that Putin is making despite a noted improvement in the accuracy of many of his best ballistic missiles, as well as their ability to evade Ukraine’s already thin air defenses.

I say that this week was hard for Ukraine, despite the dismal performance of the enemy on the battlefield, because there is no way to protect all of Ukraine from orc ballistic missile strikes right now - there aren’t enough Patriots to protect the battlefield and the home front. It’s impossible to properly cover all of Ukraine’s major cities and still be able to credibly threaten orc jets delivering glide bombs to the front. After over three years of war it is absolutely ridiculous that the mighty NATO alliance has only managed to get Ukraine six Patriot and two Aster batteries, a third of objective minimum needs. The systems exist, but are behind held back as a hedge against contingencies.

The result? After nine kids were murdered on a playground at Krivy Rih a bit more than a week ago, the orcs followed that atrocity up with bombing a bunch of civilians in Sumy who were out enjoying Palm Sunday, a Christian holiday Ukrainians often celebrate by meeting up with family. Dozens were killed and over a hundred injured. Naturally, the orcs say there was a group of Ukrainian officers meeting when the missiles struck. Sure, because important military meetings close to the front are always held above ground 3+ years into an all-out war… It is past time for Ukraine’s partners in NATO to put up or shut up when it comes to proving their readiness to defend not only Ukraine, but their own citizens. Ukraine is offering up the funds to buy ten Patriot batteries, and as they should have already been gifted, someone had better be digging deep into their stocks since we know the USA never will now.

But more than getting Ukraine more SAMs of its own, the time has come to, one way or another, fully enable Ukraine to dominate the skies behind and even over the front line. All the necessary prerequisites are in place. Political will is all that is lacking. And failure to demonstrate it in the face of Putin’s provocations is tantamount to surrender. Ukraine needs a lot more help to secure the skies.

In the other piece of unusually sad news this week, the orcs managed their first Viper kill, taking the life of a young pilot both Ukraine and partner countries put a lot of resources into training. While losses were and remain inevitable, that Ukrainian pilots have to take on additional incredible risks solely because Ukraine’s partners have not seen fit to give Kyiv all the tools it needs to own the skies is a tragedy unto itself. So this week’s brief on the fronts will take some extra time to lay out what should be happening right now if anyone really does hope to end the Ukraine War in 2025.

As the geopolitical brief that follows will suggest, failure to do so will represent the gravest error since the Muscovite assault on Ukraine was allowed to begin. The economic shocks wrought by the USA’s effective secession from the world are not liable to play nice with the geopolitical turmoil of the present day.
 
Andrew Tanner: April 15: Frontline Overview:

Despite the pain in the sky and where orc terror strikes happen to land, on the front line the situation looks markedly better than all the recent talk of a big orc spring offensive would suggest. The enemy continues to send in meat waves, and Ukrainian soldiers cut them down. A notable worsening in the casualties per square kilometer seized statistic appears to be undercutting Putin’s plans for spring before they can even really get going.

Moscow faces an impossible dilemma in choosing where to launch operations in Ukraine. What it needs to do is concentrate so much firepower along one or two narrow vectors that Ukraine can’t stop a chunk of the front from being lopped off, unhinging the defense then slowly peeling back Ukraine’s defense line. If your army requires sheer mass to accomplish anything, concentration of all available assets is key. But the Network Age makes this strategic approach deeply maladaptive, at least if the enemy isn’t painfully short on firepower. Choking off supply lines can still make it work, but all in all the ability to rapidly and accurately target anything spotted by a sensor makes any attempt to physically concentrate a lot of people and gear much too risky.

Regardless of the compelling evidence offered by ten thousand burned tanks and twice that many armored fighting vehicles, ruscist generals are now substituting civilian vehicles and even just long lines of soldiers on foot, some using crutches, hoping this will solve the problem. It can’t, not unless so much firepower is backing them in the form of drones and artillery that no stable defense can be mounted. That’s not happening now that Ukraine is avery systematically overwhelming orc artillery assets in sectors where Moscow is building up for a major advance. Reports of destroyed artillery pieces have soared in recent weeks, and drone surveillance is increasingly interrupted on a large scale. Concentration is death against an enemy with as much precision firepower as Ukraine now boasts.

Of course, dispersion creates its own issues. For the past year and a half Moscow has kept trying to expand the scope of the fighting in a bid to get around the flanks of Ukraine’s defense in the east and north. Now the orcs are trying to nibble at the south again near Orikhiv. The obvious objective is to keep Ukrainian forces from concentrating to launch their own offensive - or stopping all of Moscow’s. A breakthrough anywhere could, in theory, be rapidly transformed into an unstoppable steamroller headed for the Dnipro. But that hasn’t happened, nor is it likely to. Ukraine can shift forces more quickly to threatened fronts, and of late appears to be finding opportunities to rest more of its forces. As Moscow’s resources have dwindled, large portions of the line of contact have gone dormant, from a military perspective. So all that Putin’s generals have in fact accomplished is achieve a costly balance of strategic dispersion with operational concentration. Ukraine is able to maximize the power of the relative geographic concentration of its own forces accordingly, savaging each concentration while threatening surprises between.

This strategic-operational dynamic is responsible for the orcs finally bleeding off most of their real combat potential in the ground fight. That Moscow cooperated in engineering the one scenario that could actually lead to an epic military defeat for the ages will go down as an irony of history no less ridiculous than Trump’s self-sabotage of his own country’s power. The orcs will continue to advance on select fronts, and in the worst case could even still create one or more serious crises for Ukraine. However, I continue to forecast that the worst of the storm has passed. This summer, even the sun and heat should become allies of Ukraine. If fiber-optic and self-homing drones with a range of twenty kilometers are widely deployed, it should be possible to so thoroughly isolate ruscist positions that they run out of water.

No matter how tough the soldier, dehydration will bring them down in days. Ukraine’s lead in drone resupply will be another crucial advantage.
 
Andrew Tanner: April 15: Frontline Overview:

Northern Theater


The north is still defined by the ongoing orc attempt to break into Sumy, which Ukraine has chosen to resist in part by holding small chunks of ruscist home turf along the border in Kursk and Belgorod. The occupied part of Kursk is slowly shrinking, and Moscow has moved enough troops to Belgorod to contain that incursion. But so far there’s not much evidence that Moscow has the strength to push more than a few kilometers into Sumy. I’d say that the murder of all those civilians enjoying the holiday this weekend is a sign that the orcs don’t expect to get very far. Ukraine’s response in launching about a hundred drones at Kursk - one of which unfortunately went off course and hit a residential high rise, killing at least one civilian - suggests that orc logistics in the area are under severe threat.

Still no major movement on the Kharkiv front to speak of. Unless Moscow deploys troops away from Sumy, it’s unclear where the reserves needed to advance would come from. Though perhaps the spring leaf-out will help conceal buildups - on either side.

Eastern Theater

Fighting is also much the same on the Kupiansk front, Moscow slowly trying to expand a bridgehead over the Oskil one sector at a time. The reinforcements Ukraine moved to the area seem to have the situation in hand, blocking multiple attempts to set up bridges that would allow vehicles to push across. Ukraine also continues to threaten a counteroffensive on the east bank that would cut off the biggest orc bridgehead. Considering how the scale of effective movement on the ground has shrunk over the past few years, even a seemingly local level encirclement could have serious broader political and even operational impacts. Moscow is apparently committing whole combined arms armies theoretically staffed with tens of thousands of personnel to maintain bridgeheads a few hundred strong. Something is very off on their side of the lines.

The Borova front, guarded by Third Assault Corps, is intriguing right now, despite relatively little news coming from it. Here orc troops supplied from Svatove have slowly expanded a bridgehead over the Zherebets to match the one more recently seized downstream near Terny. The orc plan seems to be evolving towards an attempt to encircle this corps and push it across the Oskil. This would both protect Svatove and allow for a subsequent push south towards *****, long a ruscist target thanks to its proximity to urban Donbas, across the Siverskyi Donets. A major rail trunk linking Kharkiv with Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostyantynivka passed through ***** before crossing the Siverskyi Donets heading into Sloviansk.

Moscow needs to clear the space betweeen the Zherebets and Oskil to sustain a march on *****, which is much hindered by Ukrainian forces operating from the forest plantations along the banks of the Siverskyi Donets. These troops in turn help protect the Siversk bulge by covering the flanks of 81st Airmobile, which holds the blood-drenched quarry at Bilohorivka just south of the forests. The orcs also hope to break this chain of linked sectors by reaching Siversk, south of the Siverskyi Donets. So far, however, the corps led by 10th Mountain Assault continues to make them pay a high price for every failed attempt.

A long stretch of front along the highway leading from occupied Bakhmut directly to Sloviansk is interestingly almost ignored by the orcs, guarded by a single Ukrainian brigade, 30th Mechanized. It forms an effective internal boundary between the northern, central, and southern stretches of the long Eastern Theater. On the other side, the central part is defined by the struggles on the Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk fronts, which appear to be similarly linked from the orc frame of reference. Efforts to break through Chasiv Yar and Toretsk having failed, the orcs are now trying to get at Kostyantynivka along the axis I evaluated as most dangerous for Ukraine a year ago. One enemy convoy at one point was apparently allowed to drive several kilometers beyond Toretsk, at which point it was wiped out. The Ukrainian defense here has been very clever, on the whole.

A perhaps-inevitable effort to roll up the Ukrainian positions on a long slope between Chasiv Yar and Toretsk is also apparently finally getting started, aiming to displace the veteran 28th Mechanized Brigade. Eventually, Ukraine will probably be forced away from both towns, forced to take up new defensive positions roughly ten kilometers out, much as happened in Pokrovsk. But the ferocity of the forward defense the associated brigades have waged for the past year has thwarted the orcs from getting a lot further much faster. It is highly unlikely that an advance from the east will be accompanied by the necessary flanking thrust to the west north of Pokrovsk. Kostyantynivka itself should stand.

The main reason? Pokrovsk has not fallen, or even been encircled. For all the effort Moscow put into its operations along the central and southern portions of the Eastern Theater this past year, it has little of strategic or operational value to show for it. Reaching the end of their logistical tether, the orcs on the Pokrovsk front are struggling to hold their ground despite receiving large-scale reinforcements and renewing efforts to advance over the past couple weeks. It seems that Moscow must believe the southern edge of the theater, what I’ve been calling the Donbas-South front, is essential to the effort to surround Pokrovsk from the west. This explains the directions of the ongoing efforts to advance in this sector, which is otherwise of little particular value to Moscow.

In all likelihood, the difficulty the orcs have experienced crossing the Solona river west of Pokrovsk has convinced the orc generals that they need to bridge it on a broader front, much as they’re trying with the Oskil north of Kupiansk. Hindering this is probably the reason why Ukraine’s defense has stiffened far to the east of the confluence of the Vovcha, Solona, and Mokri Yali rivers. Once that line is secured, the orcs will be free to turn north. They do not appear to fear a flanking strike from the direction of Hulyaipole. As with most ruscist plans, this one continues to make the error of distributing forces just enough to make them uncoordinated but still concentrating them to the point that loss ratios are unsustainable. It’s a worst-of-both-worlds scenario for Moscow, even if the pain is taking a while to bite.

The orcs are making some slow progress towards Bahatyr from the south, which might force Ukrainian troops to pull back. But the pace of the enemy advance remains much too slow to produce a major crisis.
 
Andrew Tanner: April 15: Frontline Overview:

Southern Theater


So far the ruscist push towards Zaporizhzhia has stalled at Ukraine’s forward defense line, unable to push north, west, or east in the past week. Fighting continues, and the situation could still worsen, but this offensive isn’t going very well for Moscow so far. Neither are operations along the Dnipro, where there are reports of orc detachments starving after being more or less abandoned in the swamps or on some island. Ukraine quietly maintains several small bridgeheads across the river, backed by three coastal defense brigades organized under the auspices of the Marine Corps. Not much is expected in the south in the near future, save for expanding Ukrainian drone strikes. With Kherson under daily bombardment, hunting down orc artillery and drone operators is probably the priority here.

The Air Domain - Towards Victory In The Sky

Properly shielding Ukraine’s skies has never been a complicated matter in a general sense. It’s about having enough air defense systems and aircraft to make the majority of enemy attacks unproductive. Sadly, stopping terror strikes like the ones against Kryvyi Rih and Sumy, both fairly close to the front line, is inherently more difficult than blocking strikes on Kyiv. Still, what both have in common is the need for a multi-layered air defense network. The ground-based component of this consists of:
  • Long-range SAMs like Patriot and Aster that can knock down ballistic missiles coming down within about 50km;
  • Medium-range ones like NASAMS and IRIS-T which are best against aircraft and cruise missiles out to the edge of the horizon;
  • Short-range systems like the retrofitted Soviet models using NATO missiles (dubbed FrankenSAM) and even Humvees rigged up to launch converted heat seeking air to air missiles;
  • Mobile gun systems like the venerable German Gepard or just a machine gun on the bed of a pickup are highly useful for taking out drones and sometimes cruise missiles.
At least one former Ukrainian schoolteacher is credited with knocking down a cruise missile using a shoulder-fired SAM she barely looks capable of lifting, but obviously can. But her personal victory was critically enabled by sensors and networks.

Ukraine has no more than eight or nine long-range systems, which are the core of any air defense network thanks to their ability to intercept ballistic targets. These come down from suborbital altitudes at thousands of kilometers per hour, and while mid-range weapons can sometimes score a lucky hit, they can’t be relied on. Because Ukraine has numerous large cities and a front line spanning many hundreds of kilometers to cover, air defense systems are forced to move around, offering permanent protection only to Kyiv. Everyone else in Ukraine, soldiers included make due with temporary deployments that mainly force the orcs to do careful recon before launching attacks - or hit a target from two directions, as apparently happened in Sumy.

Even though Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors is always dangerously low, it’s the limited number of radars and control vehicles available that represent an even bigger problem. The launcher is only one component of the full system and perhaps the most easily replaced - and hidden. Radars and control vehicles, especially their crews, are prize targets which themselves have to be guarded by other air defense systems. Though Ukrainian technicians have reportedly made old S-300 radars work with Patriot systems to some degree, the crosswalk process probably isn’t smooth. The only answer is additional air defense batteries, and fast. Which is why Zelensky is again pleading for them, and what’s more, offering to buy them straight up at $1.5 billion a pop for Patriots. Trouble is, D.C. likely has to give the okay for more of these, which are apparently superior to Aster and far more plentiful.

Using other global demands (Israel) as an excuse to hold back from additional supplies was one of Biden’s tricks - funny, then, that for all Trump’s talk about Ukraine being Biden’s war, he’s treating the purchase - not donation - of air defense systems that can protect children as a huge ask. But European countries and several Gulf States that might be open to hedging their security bets are attractive prospects for sourcing more Patriot batteries, with American refusal probably having consequences D.C. would prefer not to accept. After all, anyone who takes a shot at a NATO country is going to suffer a lot more for the attempt than it could possibly be worth. If Moscow is going to start killing Europeans because their air defenses are in Ukraine, then war was inevitable - and coming much sooner than anyone realized. Moscow will as a natural result soon be short major chunks of its war machine. Europe is not defenseless.

Ten more Patriot batteries, as Zelensky is requesting, would transform Ukraine’s air defense network. Ukrainian defenders of the sky would have far fewer gaps in radar coverage to cope with, something the hopefully imminent arrival of two Swedish AWACS will also help remedy. The image below depicts the coverage of just thirteen (13) Patriot systems in operation - fewer than the total Ukraine would have if ten were added to the present six-seven - the inner 50km ring representing coverage against ballistic targets and the outer 150km showing the kill zone for aircraft and cruise missiles. Even if each of the 4-8 Patriot launchers assigned to a battery is carrying only a quarter of a full combat load, that still means that any orc strike on Ukraine’s biggest cities has to spend a solid $10 million just to guarantee a chance of breaking through to hit a target. A better density of radar coverage will enhance the accuracy of defense shots as well as improve prediction of where hostile weapons are set to land. Those which aren’t set to hit anything important can be ignored. Efficiency will rise, forcing the orcs to spend even more resources per attack to score a hit. The goal is not perfect protection, like you need in naval warfare, but just enough to make Moscow expend a large portion of its arsenal to achieve decisive impacts, something that proved difficult to sustain and was easier to shield civilians against.

It’s also worth noting that certain frontline cities, namely Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Sloviansk, and Kharkiv, if so protected would offer substantial coverage to Ukrainian formations in the field. Also note that the ability to forward deploy enough systems to survive dedicated suppression of air defense campaigns by the orcs means that glide bomb attacks will become ridiculously risky. Attempts to intercept Ukrainian jets near the front line with Sukhois or MiGs will likewise turn into deadly gauntlets for orc pilots.

The first loss of a Ukrainian Viper to hostile fire this week was reportedly the result of no fewer than three multi-million dollar missiles launched at the target fighter. No further details of the circumstances have been released, nor are they likely to come out for some time given the sensitivity of the circumstances. All that is known is that the loss occurred near the front lines, with S-400 ground-launched or R-37 air-launched missiles probably to blame. Considering Ukraine’s effective public announcement the other week of missions unleashing bombs inside of russia, my suspicion is that someone in Moscow decided that ambushing a Viper was a major priority and deployed assets accordingly on the ground and in the sky. As inept as the orcs are when it comes to strategy and operations, they do retain the ability to innovate with tactics. Having an aerial radar switch on suddenly after flying dormant well inside ruscist airspace could be just what the enemy needed to burn through the Viper’s jamming and score a hit. Alternatively, if both air and ground launched missiles were involved and came from different directions, the pilot would face an impossible dilemma, as missile evasion requires precisely-timed turns. If the enemy radar lock was strong enough, even the perfect defensive maneuvers might not matter.

Another factor has to be considered: improvements in the orc ability to counter or even exploit Ukrainian jamming. To jam enemy radar signals, you have to emit your own. This provides a signal that hostile weapons can be set to chase down. Both S-400 and R-37 missiles have very large warheads. Even if their home-on-jam mode is crude, it might be enough to score a kill, especially if the Viper pilot was dodging other weapons. And it is also entirely possible that the orcs played around with their own signals to evade the Viper’s own jammers. They’ve had nine months of exposure to the jamming pods that Ukraine uses, and a vulnerability may have been exploited. Engineers will figure out what happened and fix it, but Viper pilots will have to exhibit additional caution. There’s always so much that can go wrong in any operation, whatever the domain, that it’s sort of amazing anything ever goes right at all. The Ukrainian pilot was given quite a few awards and a posthumous promotion, so I do wonder if some kind of sacrifice was involved during an escort mission. I’d expect Vipers and their jamming pods to be covering more vulnerable bomb-toting Sukhois and MiGs, or even trying to hunt enemy air defenses themselves, Wild Weasel style.

Regardless, more Patriots near the front line and the arrival of AWACS support will only increase the margin of error that Ukraine’s bold pilots enjoy. Provided they get Link-16 or another network to prevent friendly fire incident.
 
Andrew Tanner: April 15: Frontline Overview:

Strike Campaigns


The contrast between Moscow and Kyiv in this war is perfectly exemplified by their respective strike campaigns. Where Moscow visibly aims to maximize civilian casualties while pretending targets are military, Ukraine doesn’t waste ordnance. Even in revenge, the Ukrainians don’t target civilians or even purely civilian infrastructure. While there are civilian casualties resulting from Ukrainian strike operations, these are caused by a weapon being knocked off course by electronic warfare or only partially destroyed by an air defense missile - or the interceptor itself. Which does happen. Ukrainian forces do not target civilians, however, because if they did, they would lose a certain moral high ground that is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s survival.

Successful Ukrainian strikes now happen as frequently as a successful orc raid, terror or otherwise. Light aircraft converted into drones carrying 250kg (roughly 500 lb) bombs are hitting targets 2,000km from the border. The sheer size of the ruscist empire is a vulnerability that Ukraine can now relentlessly exploit, routing drones through the inevitable gaps in Moscow’s own air defense network. At some point I guarantee that a Ukrainian drone developer will manage to strap a couple short range air-to-air missiles on a converted Cessna - or perhaps even a single air-to-ground anti-radar missile - to run escort for strike drones that might otherwise be vulnerable to helicopter patrols.

Small wonder that the orcs are so enraged that they’re using multi-million dollar missiles to kill Ukrainian civilians instead of destroying Ukrainian factories or something actually pertinent to the war effort. Granted, these weapons are increasingly coming from North Korea, so their reliability is questionable. Still, there are better targets for them than civilians, and it’s a blatant sign of weakness to have to resort to terror attacks. As for the nonsense about Moscow targeting gatherings of officers - look, any Ukrainian officers that would gather above ground in sizable numbers within ordinary rocket range of the border at this point are a liability to their own side. You want fools like that in command on the other side if you’re the orcs. No better enemy to fight than one with a hero complex - it should be understood that the American “warrior” culture a certain type claims to embrace without having the faintest clue what that term traditionally means is the just the tired old hero complex put through a rebrand.

That same delusional tripe fed to soldiers a hundred-plus years ago about proper moral spirit being the key to victory is shoved down the throats of American personnel today in modified form. It is bound to end exactly the same: in needless casualties, as officers do what their textbooks say is right and proper despite having been written by people who never experienced anything like the hell of total war in the Network Age. At least a soldier stuck in a hole in 1918 could take some minor comfort in the fact that the artillery barrage landing all around them wasn’t aimed at them personally. Now, hunker in whatever hole you like, a drone operated by a teenager on the other side of the horizon will hunt you down.

In any event, Ukraine’s drone strike campaign is slowly eating away at the sinews holding the ruscist empire on its feet. Moscow’s efforts, by contrast, spark renewed justified outrage abroad that gives wavering leaders a new reason to be seen publicly backing Ukraine. Moscow’s ability to inflict real harm is meanwhile steadily declining, Ukrainian drone developers releasing counters to the now-ubiquitous Shahed-type flights that probe Ukraine’s air defenses pretty much every night. This is not to say that the harm Moscow does is trivial, only that in military terms it’s nowhere near enough to have the same impact on Ukraine as the countervailing Ukrainian campaign is on Moscow’s war effort. Even in the ever-murky domain of morale, the incessant drone strikes across the breadth of Putin’s empire are doing more damage to him than his attacks, no matter how vicious, inflict on Ukraine. Every day people in the empire look up to see hard evidence of how badly their leaders have failed them. That’s very dangerous for a regime like Putin’s.

Frankly, I’m surprised that the orcs haven’t already staged a mass casualty false flag attack and blamed it on Ukraine. In a war that has already confirmed the validity of Larry Bond and Tom Clancy’s portrayal of the Muscovite military machine in Red Storm Rising, it would be entirely within the realm of imagination for the orcs to kill a dozen or so schoolchildren with a drone they make up to look Ukrainian. I’m sure there are enough downed parts to make the wreckage appear authentic.

One of the core objectives of Moscow’s terror attacks is to get Ukraine to finally reply in kind. Note how Trump is parroting Putin’s rhetoric about the war being Ukraine’s fault lately? That’s basically an invitation for the orcs to try something that will help Team Trump in their mission to equate the two sides. The first step in forcing someone to accept a bad and unjust deal is undermining the moral quality of their cause. Ukraine has avoided this trap so far, but sooner or later, the orcs will try to provoke or fake an atrocity. Games like that are all a hack spook like Putin has left. This is another reason that avoiding escalation is no longer a valid reason to avoid taking whatever actions are justified from the perspective of demonstrating strength in the face of ruscist provocations and threats. Putin will push and push until someone punches him right in the throat. Failure to respond with sufficient force is perceived by his kind as a sign of weakness that begs to be exploited.

Again, I don’t like this reality, I only offer policy analysis and forecasts. If Putin’s behavior ever actually changed, so would my position. At the start of this war, I never believed the terrible stories about russian soldiers. Then the hard evidence of systematic murder committed by supposedly elite, professional troops long lauded as among the best in the world by Michael Kofman, et al in Bucha and Irpin emerged. Now everyone knows russia for what it truly is, has always been, and will always be.

It is intriguing that some believe there can be two equivalent sides in this fight. But I guess in the warped world of Trump and Vance, the victim is supposed to apologize to the criminal.
 

James Comer: FBI Doc Alleges ‘Business Person from Ukraine’ Sent ‘Substantial Bribe’ to VP Biden​



WENDELL HUSEBØ7 Jun 2023

The FBI’s informant file of a $5 million bribery scheme allegedly linked to President Joe Biden concerns the family’s business deals in Ukraine, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed Monday.

In May, Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made bombshell claims after reviewing an FBI FD-1023 form that documented the informant’s allegations of an alleged bribery scheme involving an exchange of money for policy decisions between now-President Joe Biden and a foreign national. Comer disclosed the informant tip is dated June 30, 2020.

“Yes, it is Ukraine,” Comer told The Just the News. “This form 1023 involves a business person from Ukraine, who allegedly sent a bribe, a substantial bribe to then Vice President Joe Biden.”

The Biden family frequently visited Ukraine for its respective business. Then-Vice President Joe Biden served as the Obama administration’s Ukrainian “point person” on U.S. foreign policy. He visited Ukraine six times while serving as vice president.

More here: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...m-ukraine-sent-substantial-bribe-to-vp-biden/

I said long ago there is good reason to believe that Joe Biden has been compromised by Ukraine and other countries.
The dead and wounded in Sumi don't give a fuck about your political maunderings
 
Andrew Tanner: April 15: Frontline Overview:

Southern Theater


So far the ruscist push towards Zaporizhzhia has stalled at Ukraine’s forward defense line, unable to push north, west, or east in the past week. Fighting continues, and the situation could still worsen, but this offensive isn’t going very well for Moscow so far. Neither are operations along the Dnipro, where there are reports of orc detachments starving after being more or less abandoned in the swamps or on some island. Ukraine quietly maintains several small bridgeheads across the river, backed by three coastal defense brigades organized under the auspices of the Marine Corps. Not much is expected in the south in the near future, save for expanding Ukrainian drone strikes. With Kherson under daily bombardment, hunting down orc artillery and drone operators is probably the priority here.

The Air Domain - Towards Victory In The Sky

Properly shielding Ukraine’s skies has never been a complicated matter in a general sense. It’s about having enough air defense systems and aircraft to make the majority of enemy attacks unproductive. Sadly, stopping terror strikes like the ones against Kryvyi Rih and Sumy, both fairly close to the front line, is inherently more difficult than blocking strikes on Kyiv. Still, what both have in common is the need for a multi-layered air defense network. The ground-based component of this consists of:
  • Long-range SAMs like Patriot and Aster that can knock down ballistic missiles coming down within about 50km;
  • Medium-range ones like NASAMS and IRIS-T which are best against aircraft and cruise missiles out to the edge of the horizon;
  • Short-range systems like the retrofitted Soviet models using NATO missiles (dubbed FrankenSAM) and even Humvees rigged up to launch converted heat seeking air to air missiles;
  • Mobile gun systems like the venerable German Gepard or just a machine gun on the bed of a pickup are highly useful for taking out drones and sometimes cruise missiles.
At least one former Ukrainian schoolteacher is credited with knocking down a cruise missile using a shoulder-fired SAM she barely looks capable of lifting, but obviously can. But her personal victory was critically enabled by sensors and networks.

Ukraine has no more than eight or nine long-range systems, which are the core of any air defense network thanks to their ability to intercept ballistic targets. These come down from suborbital altitudes at thousands of kilometers per hour, and while mid-range weapons can sometimes score a lucky hit, they can’t be relied on. Because Ukraine has numerous large cities and a front line spanning many hundreds of kilometers to cover, air defense systems are forced to move around, offering permanent protection only to Kyiv. Everyone else in Ukraine, soldiers included make due with temporary deployments that mainly force the orcs to do careful recon before launching attacks - or hit a target from two directions, as apparently happened in Sumy.

Even though Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors is always dangerously low, it’s the limited number of radars and control vehicles available that represent an even bigger problem. The launcher is only one component of the full system and perhaps the most easily replaced - and hidden. Radars and control vehicles, especially their crews, are prize targets which themselves have to be guarded by other air defense systems. Though Ukrainian technicians have reportedly made old S-300 radars work with Patriot systems to some degree, the crosswalk process probably isn’t smooth. The only answer is additional air defense batteries, and fast. Which is why Zelensky is again pleading for them, and what’s more, offering to buy them straight up at $1.5 billion a pop for Patriots. Trouble is, D.C. likely has to give the okay for more of these, which are apparently superior to Aster and far more plentiful.

Using other global demands (Israel) as an excuse to hold back from additional supplies was one of Biden’s tricks - funny, then, that for all Trump’s talk about Ukraine being Biden’s war, he’s treating the purchase - not donation - of air defense systems that can protect children as a huge ask. But European countries and several Gulf States that might be open to hedging their security bets are attractive prospects for sourcing more Patriot batteries, with American refusal probably having consequences D.C. would prefer not to accept. After all, anyone who takes a shot at a NATO country is going to suffer a lot more for the attempt than it could possibly be worth. If Moscow is going to start killing Europeans because their air defenses are in Ukraine, then war was inevitable - and coming much sooner than anyone realized. Moscow will as a natural result soon be short major chunks of its war machine. Europe is not defenseless.

Ten more Patriot batteries, as Zelensky is requesting, would transform Ukraine’s air defense network. Ukrainian defenders of the sky would have far fewer gaps in radar coverage to cope with, something the hopefully imminent arrival of two Swedish AWACS will also help remedy. The image below depicts the coverage of just thirteen (13) Patriot systems in operation - fewer than the total Ukraine would have if ten were added to the present six-seven - the inner 50km ring representing coverage against ballistic targets and the outer 150km showing the kill zone for aircraft and cruise missiles. Even if each of the 4-8 Patriot launchers assigned to a battery is carrying only a quarter of a full combat load, that still means that any orc strike on Ukraine’s biggest cities has to spend a solid $10 million just to guarantee a chance of breaking through to hit a target. A better density of radar coverage will enhance the accuracy of defense shots as well as improve prediction of where hostile weapons are set to land. Those which aren’t set to hit anything important can be ignored. Efficiency will rise, forcing the orcs to spend even more resources per attack to score a hit. The goal is not perfect protection, like you need in naval warfare, but just enough to make Moscow expend a large portion of its arsenal to achieve decisive impacts, something that proved difficult to sustain and was easier to shield civilians against.

It’s also worth noting that certain frontline cities, namely Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Sloviansk, and Kharkiv, if so protected would offer substantial coverage to Ukrainian formations in the field. Also note that the ability to forward deploy enough systems to survive dedicated suppression of air defense campaigns by the orcs means that glide bomb attacks will become ridiculously risky. Attempts to intercept Ukrainian jets near the front line with Sukhois or MiGs will likewise turn into deadly gauntlets for orc pilots.

The first loss of a Ukrainian Viper to hostile fire this week was reportedly the result of no fewer than three multi-million dollar missiles launched at the target fighter. No further details of the circumstances have been released, nor are they likely to come out for some time given the sensitivity of the circumstances. All that is known is that the loss occurred near the front lines, with S-400 ground-launched or R-37 air-launched missiles probably to blame. Considering Ukraine’s effective public announcement the other week of missions unleashing bombs inside of russia, my suspicion is that someone in Moscow decided that ambushing a Viper was a major priority and deployed assets accordingly on the ground and in the sky. As inept as the orcs are when it comes to strategy and operations, they do retain the ability to innovate with tactics. Having an aerial radar switch on suddenly after flying dormant well inside ruscist airspace could be just what the enemy needed to burn through the Viper’s jamming and score a hit. Alternatively, if both air and ground launched missiles were involved and came from different directions, the pilot would face an impossible dilemma, as missile evasion requires precisely-timed turns. If the enemy radar lock was strong enough, even the perfect defensive maneuvers might not matter.

Another factor has to be considered: improvements in the orc ability to counter or even exploit Ukrainian jamming. To jam enemy radar signals, you have to emit your own. This provides a signal that hostile weapons can be set to chase down. Both S-400 and R-37 missiles have very large warheads. Even if their home-on-jam mode is crude, it might be enough to score a kill, especially if the Viper pilot was dodging other weapons. And it is also entirely possible that the orcs played around with their own signals to evade the Viper’s own jammers. They’ve had nine months of exposure to the jamming pods that Ukraine uses, and a vulnerability may have been exploited. Engineers will figure out what happened and fix it, but Viper pilots will have to exhibit additional caution. There’s always so much that can go wrong in any operation, whatever the domain, that it’s sort of amazing anything ever goes right at all. The Ukrainian pilot was given quite a few awards and a posthumous promotion, so I do wonder if some kind of sacrifice was involved during an escort mission. I’d expect Vipers and their jamming pods to be covering more vulnerable bomb-toting Sukhois and MiGs, or even trying to hunt enemy air defenses themselves, Wild Weasel style.

Regardless, more Patriots near the front line and the arrival of AWACS support will only increase the margin of error that Ukraine’s bold pilots enjoy. Provided they get Link-16 or another network to prevent friendly fire incident.
I appreciate your taking the time to post this note.
 
Just when you think the Trump Administration could not get more vile. These are people who literally would have sided with Hitler

Trump officials 'fed up' with Europe's efforts to strengthen Ukraine, Economist reports​

Some Trump administration officials are dissatisfied with European countries' ongoing support for Ukraine, underscoring the growing rift between Washington and Europe, the Economist reported on April 15, citing undisclosed diplomatic sources. Kyiv's European partners have sought to present a united front on Ukraine, pledging additional assistance and preparing a "reassurance force" of troops to monitor a potential ceasefire. Despite efforts to keep the U.S. engaged in the process, U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected providing security guarantees to Kyiv and has not announced any new aid packages, aiming instead to broker a ceasefire with Russia.

Some Pentagon officials have even questioned an unspecified ally about why it continues sending military aid to Ukraine, a query that was ignored, the Economist reported. The news outlet noted that the Trump administration's "chaotic" nature makes it uncertain whether these messages have any substance or are mere "noise." Trump has already demonstrated an unwillingness to support Ukraine militarily, even pausing all security aid in March to pressure Kyiv to the negotiating table. While the flow of these packages, approved under the Biden administration, has resumed, they are expected to run out in the coming months. European partners have sought to sway Trump toward providing security guarantees to Ukraine at least in some capacity, for example, by providing airpower or intelligence support for the "reassurance force." Trump has not only offered no commitments but is also expected to reduce U.S. military presence in Europe, signaling declining interest in the continent's security.

I guess Europe is going to have to come to terms with the fact that Trump is an isolationist, and that under the Trump Administration, the USA is going it alone and does not want to be involved in Europe while we lose our trade war with China. The American Century has ended, and the EU had better get their shit together and man up. Good luck guys, you're on your own now. Just remember not to buy the US stuff with kill switches or American-controlled software, and make sure you can build your own ammo. Who'd a think we'd go out with a whimper, led by a blustering pompous narcissitic old idiot who's so vile that he supports genocide.

https://kyivindependent.com/trump-a...orts-to-strengthen-ukraine-economist-reports/

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Dead is dead and their mothers all weep for them regardless of which uniform they were wearing.
 
Dead is dead and their mothers all weep for them regardless of which uniform they were wearing.

Yeah, but I could care less about dead Russians. Putin started this, and quite frankly, the more weeping Russian mothers and the more dead Russians the sooner they will be defeated. They're a curse on humanity. There is no equivalence between dead Russian war criminals who pillage, torture, rape and kill, whose deaths are to be celebreated, and herorc Ukrainian casualties who died defending their country and people from the invading orcs.

Heroiam Slava
 
Another German military assistance package for Ukraine

Germany has provided Ukraine with a new package of military assistance, including IRIS-T air defense systems and missiles for Patriots, according to an updated list released by the German government on April 17. The latest German shipment includes four additional IRIS-T systems and missiles for them, missiles for Patriot air defense systems, and 120 IGLA man-portable air defense missiles. The package has also provided 66 more Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, additional Kinetic Defense Vehicles, and 38,000 more rounds of Gepard anti-aircraft ammunition.

In partnership with Denmark and Norway, Germany also delivered three new Zuzana 2 wheeled howitzers. Berlin also sent additional artillery supplies, including 27,000 more rounds of 155 mm shells and 1,000 additional rounds of 122 mm ammunition. Drone support includes 70 more Vector reconnaissance drones, 150 additional HF-1 armed drones, and 10 more surface drones. The package also includes engineering and recovery vehicles, surveillance radars, laser rangefinders, assault rifles, personal and tactical gear, as well as continued medical treatment for wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

The support, drawn from Bundeswehr stockpiles and industrial contracts financed through Berlin’s security capacity-building initiative, brings Germany’s total military aid to Ukraine to approximately 28 billion euros since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

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Ukrainian forces liberate 16 square kilometers near Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, Syrskyi says


Ukrainian forces have liberated approximately 16 square kilometers of territory near Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast in recent weeks, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said on April 17. The recently recaptured territory by Ukrainian troops includes areas near the settlements of Udachne, Kotlyne, and Shevchenko, according to Syrskyi. He made the announcement after a three-day visit to the Operational-Tactical Group Donetsk, which he described as the strongest formation within the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "Over the course of three days, I visited almost all brigades of this most powerful grouping of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which bears the brunt of the enemy's spring offensive and destroys its best forces and means," Syrskyi said.

According to Syrskyi, Ukrainian forces are halting around 30 Russian assaults daily in the Pokrovsk sector in Donetsk Oblast, inflicting significant losses on Russian troops. During his visit, Syrskyi met with commanders at front-line command posts and reviewed operational plans with Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the operational-tactical group. He said that on-site problems related to logistics, ammunition supply, and combat organization were being addressed. Despite continued Russian efforts to push Ukrainian troops out of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and reach the administrative borders of these regions, Syrskyi said those objectives remain unfulfilled. "We continue our defensive operation, carry out counteroffensive actions, and are achieving certain successes," Syrskyi said.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraini...near-pokrovsk-in-donetsk-oblast-syrskyi-says/

Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi
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North Korean artillery supplies are preventing Russian defeat in Ukraine,

Pyongyang now provides up to 50% of Moscow’s ammunition requirements and has deployed thousands of troops to Ukraine, fundamentally altering the war’s trajectory and providing North Korea with valuable combat experience against modern weapons systems. North Korea has played a crucial role in sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, enabling Moscow to continue its offensive in Donbas and effectively push Ukrainian forces out of parts of the Kursk Oblast. North Korea has dramatically deepened its military and strategic partnership with Russia, marking a significant shift in the global security landscape. Pyongyang has not only supplied Russia with vast quantities of ammunition—covering up to 50% of Moscow’s war needs, including millions of artillery shells, rockets, and ballistic missiles—but has also deployed thousands of troops to support Russian operations in Ukraine.

“It’s fair to say that North Korea has prevented Russia from losing this war. Pyongyang’s contribution has been strategically vital. North Korean artillery shells are a strategic necessity. Without their support, Vladimir Putin would have faced defeat in Ukraine,”

Military expert Yurii Fedorov also notes that Russia’s defense industry is incapable of meeting the army’s demands for ammunition despite significant investments. “Even with huge financial injections and the hiring of hundreds of thousands of new workers, the Russian defense sector still cannot fulfill its most basic wartime needs,” Fedorov stresses.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/04...sian-defeat-in-ukraine-military-experts-warn/
 

North Korean artillery supplies are preventing Russian defeat in Ukraine,

Pyongyang now provides up to 50% of Moscow’s ammunition requirements and has deployed thousands of troops to Ukraine, fundamentally altering the war’s trajectory and providing North Korea with valuable combat experience against modern weapons systems. North Korea has played a crucial role in sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, enabling Moscow to continue its offensive in Donbas and effectively push Ukrainian forces out of parts of the Kursk Oblast. North Korea has dramatically deepened its military and strategic partnership with Russia, marking a significant shift in the global security landscape. Pyongyang has not only supplied Russia with vast quantities of ammunition—covering up to 50% of Moscow’s war needs, including millions of artillery shells, rockets, and ballistic missiles—but has also deployed thousands of troops to support Russian operations in Ukraine.

“It’s fair to say that North Korea has prevented Russia from losing this war. Pyongyang’s contribution has been strategically vital. North Korean artillery shells are a strategic necessity. Without their support, Vladimir Putin would have faced defeat in Ukraine,”

Military expert Yurii Fedorov also notes that Russia’s defense industry is incapable of meeting the army’s demands for ammunition despite significant investments. “Even with huge financial injections and the hiring of hundreds of thousands of new workers, the Russian defense sector still cannot fulfill its most basic wartime needs,” Fedorov stresses.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/04...sian-defeat-in-ukraine-military-experts-warn/
What?! How can little NK possibly have more military production capacity than Russia?!
 
What?! How can little NK possibly have more military production capacity than Russia?!

Think South Korea, except North, and the entire country is dedicated to the cult of fat face and war. They are not leading edge but they have factories that produce weapins and ammo 24/7 and they have been stockpiling since the Korean War ended. They have HUGE stockpiles and they are making hay while the sun shines selling it to Russia.


North Korea’s munitions factories are “operating at full capacity” to produce weapons and shells for Russia, according to South Korea’s defense minister, as Moscow’s devastating war in Ukraine grinds into a third year. The latest estimate from South Korea offers fresh clues on the crucial but highly secretive role North Korea is playing to help resupply Moscow’s war of attrition at a time when Ukraine’s own need for vital military resupplies is being held up by predominantly Republican lawmakers in Washington. The weapons and military equipment, which include millions of rounds of artillery shells, is being delivered to Russia in exchange for shipments of food and other necessities, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said Monday. Since August, Pyongyang has shipped about 6,700 containers to Russia, which could accommodate more than 3 million rounds of 152 mm artillery shells or more than 500,000 rounds of 122 mm multiple rocket launchers, according to Shin’s ministry.

“While North Korea’s arms factories (for non-Russian exports) operate at 30% capacity due to shortages of raw materials and electricity, the factories producing weapons and artillery shells for Russia are operating at full capacity,” Shin said in a meeting with reporters. In exchange, food accounts for the largest portion of containers from Russia to North Korea, and the food supply situation in the isolated Asian nation seems to be “stable,” according to the defense ministry. In a fact sheet released Friday, the US State Department said North Korea has delivered more than 10,000 containers of munitions or related materials to Russia since September.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/asia...-shipments-russia-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html

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What?! How can little NK possibly have more military production capacity than Russia?!
Notice how the warmongers say that Russia is both losing the war and threatening to overrun Europe? The math doesn't add up.

The fact is that Russia has already effectively won the war, and NATO, especially the European leaders, have gone into denial about it.
 
Notice how the warmongers say that Russia is both losing the war and threatening to overrun Europe? The math doesn't add up.

The fact is that Russia has already effectively won the war, and NATO, especially the European leaders, have gone into denial about it.
Define "won"
 
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