(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Last night, russians attacked Ukraine with three Kalibr cruise missiles and eight Shahed drones.
All missiles and drones were shot down.
Glory to Ukraine's air defenders!@KpsZSU— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 2, 2023
Saturday night in Kyiv. Eight Shahed drones and three Kalibr missiles downed. pic.twitter.com/LebcuigugZ
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) July 2, 2023
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
Ukrainian shores will never tolerate the occupier – address by the President of Ukraine
2 July 2023 – 16:01
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
Today I am in Odesa, first and foremost, to congratulate our warriors of the Ukrainian Navy on their professional day. To congratulate them and thank them for their courage, heroism, and the extraordinary results they have achieved and are achieving for Ukraine.
It is enough to recall what ambitions Russia had at the beginning of the full-scale aggression and what ambitions are now at the bottom of the Black Sea.
I thank every warrior of the Ukrainian Navy – all sailors, all marines, all commanders of our Navy, artillerymen, naval aviators, drone operators, I thank the warriors of the river flotilla, river divisions… I thank you all!
Today, I had the honor to award the best, and congratulated the cadets of the Institute of Naval Forces of our Odesa Maritime Academy. I visited the wounded warriors in the hospital. I wish everyone a speedy recovery. It was a special honor for me to leave my wishes on the copy of Kobzar that has been accompanying our warriors in battles since 2014.
Today I also heard the report by our Navy Commander, Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, and Commander of the Odesa operational and strategic group of troops, General Moskalov. They spoke about the current security situation and the strategic tasks for our fleet, for the new direction – the fleet of naval drones – and for our coastal defense. We will implement everything! I am sure of it!
The enemy will definitely not dictate the conditions in the Black Sea, and the occupiers will have to be as afraid of approaching our Ukrainian Crimea and our Azov Sea coast as Russian ships are already afraid of approaching our Black Sea coast.
Today I also congratulate all civilian workers of the Ukrainian sea and river fleet, all those who ensure the security and operation of our ports, our ability to give life to the Ukrainian economy and connect our Ukraine with global markets despite the Russian blockade of the Black Sea. I thank all the sailors, port workers, ship repairers, businesses, employees and, of course, every soldier who protects the security of Ukrainian ports, Ukrainian cities, and Ukrainian shores.
We will win together! Ukrainian shores will never tolerate the occupier.
Glory to all our defenders!
I thank you, Odesa, for this day!
Glory to Ukraine!
And now a public service announcement from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense:
Attention unwanted guests. A travel advisory is in effect this summer. pic.twitter.com/SJTNXPwWSJ
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 2, 2023
Orikhiv:
ORIKHIV AXIS /2110 UTC 2 JUL/ In the last 24 hours, UKR forces are pressing contacts on the T-08-15 HWY axis east of Bilohiria. Driving south on the T-04-08 HWY axis, UKR task elements are now reported in contact at Robotyne. There, Russian units have broken and withdrawn south… pic.twitter.com/LVwm4QOr1U
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) July 2, 2023
Krasnodar Krai, Russia:
An explosion is reported near a military airfield in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. pic.twitter.com/QmsMuKOeP5
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 2, 2023
Tatarigami has identified a major informational security and operational security issue:
У мене досить серйозне запитання до панства з @ServiceSsu
Ці камери, що транслюють наші міста, дороги та об'єкти інфраструктури ворогу, роблять це вже понад рік. І це ще не найгірше з того, що було знайдено. В мене питання – скільки ще має пройти років, щоб ви зарухались? pic.twitter.com/wCicdhziIO— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) July 2, 2023
Here’s the machine translation of his tweet:
I have a rather serious question for the gentlemen from @ServiceSsu These cameras that broadcast our cities, roads and infrastructure to the enemy have been doing so for over a year. And this is not the worst of what has been found. My question is: how many more years will it take for you to move?
What did our resident dirt slinger The Mighty Trowel know and when did she know it?
/2. Hurricanes were deliberately broken up and buried after the war so the Soviets did not have to pay back the United States. Under the Lend-Lease legislation, the USSR was required to pay for any donated military equipment that remained intact after hostilities ended. – BBC pic.twitter.com/FTtUERY4ZJ
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 2, 2023
One of my favorite documentaries about World War I is Digging Up the Trenches.
Natalia Antonova has published a new analysis of Putin’s position after Prigozhin’s revolt at Foreign Policy. Here are some excerpts:
During the pro-democracy protests that swept through Moscow in 2011-12, the Kremlin did its best to argue that Russians “shouldn’t rock the boat.” After all, it was argued, President Vladimir Putin had saved Russia from the “wild, chaotic 1990s.” To come out against him was foolish, even ungrateful.
The Kremlin then spent the next decade violently rocking its own ship as it exported war and terror abroad and stamped out democracy at home. The instability of Russia today has come from the top—made by men such as Putin who promised that every bloody deed was in the name of a strong and stable nation.
Then, a bloodthirsty criminal with his own private army of fellow criminals finally marched toward Moscow. And many people were, for some reason, surprised. To be sure, the specifics were hard to predict (though U.S. intelligence seems to have had a good guess.)
To understand what on earth just happened between Putin and corrupt-caterer-turned-warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, we need to realize that Putin’s stability was a myth from the very start.
Putin rode an oil boom and made a lot of key people very rich, while the majority got scraps from the table. Even as average Russians became better off, inequality deepened. Russian officials engaged in corruption on a breathtaking scale and exported it abroad. Overall domestic crime rates did stabilize, which greatly placated an exhausted population, but at the same time financial crime became a way of life for both the ruling elite and middle managers.
Putin doesn’t preside over a government in a way most outsiders would recognize; rather, he presides over a mafia clan that took over the top of an already hollowed-out state. Writers such as Masha Gessen and Mark Galeotti nailed it years ago. A good way to describe this system is the popular Russian phrase po ponyatiyam—wherein a criminal operation is run according to gentlemen’s agreements.
As various Russian journalists have pointed out over the years, Putin believes in ponyatiya, the criminal’s code of laws. It’s how he persuaded the Russian elites to retain loyalty to him as they enriched themselves, and he expected Western leaders to come to a similar understanding with him after he annexed Crimea and destabilized the Ukrainian Donbas region in 2014. The fact that Western governments aren’t run like the mafia proved a major stumbling block for him, and his resentment of the West continued to grow. Yet on the other hand, Western governments also did not show enough strength and force in opposing Putin in 2014, which made the eventual mass-scale invasion of Ukraine possible. A cerebral, enlightened approach to a thuggish Putin simply could not and did not work.
When you think of Putin as a mob boss with other thugs in his employ, Prigozhin’s attempted insurrection makes much more sense. The Russian Ministry of Defense, a.k.a. another group of criminals under Putin’s control, was trying to take over Prigozhin’s private military company and cash cow the Wagner Group, using the invasion as an excuse. Prigozhin felt threatened by his rivals. Inevitably, he lashed out.
But even with the insurrection stopped, Putin’s credibility is shot. He went from branding Prigozhin a dangerous traitor to letting him immediately escape. He acts very brave when it comes to jailing unarmed people waving peace signs, not so brave when an armed insurrectionist and his merry band of war criminals start rolling toward Moscow.
Ordinary Russians didn’t exactly rally around Putin during a day of crisis. Prigozhin’s forces essentially took over Rostov-on-Don—not some backwater town, mind you, but a city of more than a million people. And when Wagner forces were leaving, Prigozhin was treated like a rockstar, not a despised traitor, by onlookers. Government military forces, meanwhile—such as the much talked-up Chechen troops—mostly seem to have avoided major involvement in the conflict, or sat on the fence.
That’s because an aging autocrat such as Putin inspires, at best, passive support. Also because people who have spent decades living under a calcifying regime crave excitement. It’s not that Prigozhin is a good person; it’s that he’s someone different.
All this suggests Prigozhin’s insurrection is a preamble to greater instability in Russia. Putin’s war on Ukraine has claimed tens of thousands of lives but achieved no tangible aims. Sanctions continue to grind at the Russian economy. The sons of wealthy officials don’t have to worry about being drafted, while others lose their children and fathers.
Even Putin’s most loyal propagandists, such as the odious Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state broadcaster RT, are having a hard time explaining to people why everything is just fine, essentially declaring “laws don’t matter” in the wake of Prigozhin’s exit.
The boat is now rocking of its own accord. Exporting violence for years can have a boomerang effect. And violence inspires more violence. It becomes a cycle.
Criminals who go unpunished tend to escalate. Putin got away with violence and corruption for years, so he finally felt untouchable enough to launch a genocidal war of aggression. Yet the same can be said of the men whom Putin controls. They too have escalated, and they are up to their elbows in blood. Why shouldn’t they go from murdering Ukrainians to murdering fellow Russians, especially if the latter inconvenience them?
None of this is good news for the stability of the Russian regime down the road. To quote Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence, “It will get worse.”
Much more at the link!
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
Here’s some Patron adjacent material.
A Ukrainian Soldier is reunited with his cat:
Знайшли!!! Шайбусіка знайшли 🥹❤️🙏🏻 Поки вся країна шукала Шайбіка, цей герой любовник став розвідником 🫡, пройшовши не малу дистанцію, знайшов кошечок 🐱, та чилив з ними на другій позиції у військових 😅🐈 . Військові побачили AA оголошення яке я розклеїв поблизу,… pic.twitter.com/urBLT8C6I3
— Алекс Ляшук (@aliashukua) July 2, 2023
Here’s the machine translation of his tweet:
Found!!! Shaibusik was found 🥹❤️🙏🏻 While the whole country was looking for Shaibik, this hero-lover became a scout 🫡 , having traveled quite a distance, found a cat 🐱 and lived with them in the second position in the military 😅🐈 . The military saw the AA advertisement that I posted nearby, called and brought our hero to me 🐈❤️ . They did not ask for money, I myself asked them for a bank card number and transferred the promised reward, may these funds benefit them, for our social victory. Therefore, I want to thank them once again for returning my child to the family 🙏🏻 .
And also to thank all of you friends for being so worried about Shaybik and supporting me in my search for him 🥹🙏🏻❤️ I appreciate each of you, your love and support 🫶🇺🇦 You are incredible. Several of my followers, including our jeweler jeweler_jukovsky, who made the same incredible silver pendant with Shaybusik, offered to partially split the payment of the reward for people who find Shaybic.
If they don’t mind, I will definitely mark them ❤️ . Tomorrow I will take Shaybik to the vet to check his health 🐈 I put a collar and another AirTug on him, and I will look for another more effective jeep trainer in our conditions 🫡
There is a new video at Patron’s official TikTok, but its one of the slide show ones and they don’t embed here. So click across and give it a look.
Open thread!
zhena gogolia
I’ve been saying this for 23 years. But I’m no politolog.
Alison Rose
Damn, that Ministry of Defence video is excellent. Here’s hoping the Crimea Beach Party is poppin’ again this year.
Video of Zelenskyy’s visit with the wounded soldiers. I just love that he often takes the time to do this, and clearly as far more than a photo op. He stays and talks with all of them, and there is a clear mutual respect that is very heartening to see.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I’m sure there’s a YouTube video tutorial series if you want to make a career move.
Carlo Graziani
I really like Antonova’s analysis. To my mind, “Crime Mob Boss” has always been a better model to understand, predict, and manage Putin than the “Russian Imperial Statesman” model so poular with the IR crowd.
bjacques
@Alison Rose: #NAFO Fellas are still welcome in Crimea!
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Russia media game is chalk to Ukraine’s cheese. While I realize Russia’s tends to be turned inward to keep the rabble contained, you’d think they’d try harder/better to convince the greater world just what victims they’ve been. “We’ve been treated so unfairly. Now here is cute cat!”
Ukraine, by contrast, is very very good at this.
zhena gogolia
@Carlo Graziani: I heard Khodorkovsky make this point in some interview where the questioner wanted him to do some sort of sophisticated psychological or political analysis. He said, “The only thing to know about Putin is that he’s a criminal, and has been since he was a kid. So he will act the way a criminal acts.” Maybe “takes one to know one,” but I thought it was more cogent than, “Oh, did he read Dostoevsky or did he read Ilyin?”
Gin & Tonic
@Carlo Graziani: So much of the “IR crowd” and the “Russian and East European Studies” people here in the US and in Western Europe have been shown to be dupes, at best, and in some cases worse (the good professor zg obviously excepted.) I’m close with someone who got a Master’s from Fletcher a few years back and has been in fairly open battle with them about what seem like bald-faced improprieties in the “russia” group. But as I’m sure you know, academia is loath to conduct candid self-reflection when there is funding at stake. I mean, just look at the case of “Victor Muller” at Johns Hopkins. Consequences? Of course not.
Jinchi
Not that I’m complaining, but this seems like far fewer than Russia was firing just a few weeks ago. Is it my imagination, or might Russia be running low?
Gin & Tonic
Very sad news:
She was wounded in the shelling of the pizzeria in Kramatorsk a couple of days ago, and now has died from those wounds.
trollhattan
@Jinchi: Do not keep track myself, but get the impression they build up a stock then go through an extended heavy period of nightly bombardments, which include some military targets but in June seemed primarily focused on terrorizing cities not protected by the main air defense grid.
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
@trollhattan: I think a lot of that is that Ukraine is very European, and Russia is not. Ukraine understands “the West”, the people and what appeals to them. Russia can’t. They can manipulate a certain segment of the population, but those aren’t the people they need to convince.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
AGH! -spelling correction on my nym.
How long has that been like that? ugh!
oldster
@Gin & Tonic:
You have to remember: we pedigreed academics at fancy institutions are wrong *for the right reasons*.
You smelly hippies are right *for the wrong reasons*.
Of course we conduct self-reflection: our self-reflection looks lustrous and prestigious, thank you very much.
Carlo Graziani
@trollhattan: Yeah, that’ basically the conclusion that emerges from the simple-minded “bathtub model” that i posted here a few days ago, which Martin informed me is actually called an “inventory analysis”. The rate of missile acquisition and the firing rate wind up coming to equilibrium irrespective of the inventory size. Which means that if you sum the daily firing rate for each weapon over the course of a month (to eliminate day-to-day intermittency) you get an estimate of the monthly production rate for that weapon.
It’s not that they’re running out. It’s that their supply chain is a thin straw.
oldster
Adam, I am always in your debt for these reports, but today I have a further reason to be grateful:
I can no longer read anything on twitter, so these brief tweets from Tatarigami, Chuck Pfarrer, Special Kherson Cat, and the rest, are my only contact with a supply of information that I used to turn to daily via JoshTPM’s Ukraine Crisis list.
Thanks for distributing this information to those of us without accounts on the cursed bird site.
And thanks for adding your analysis, insights, and curation.
Dan B
This post seems very well balanced, thanks much! I loved the big macho soldier with the kitty he calls family and the kitty seems to agree.
Bex
@Alison Rose: He’s so good with people. He interacts so well with kids, always getting down to their level when he’s giving them gifts or as in this video, signing a book for them.
Mallard Filmore
Over the past few days, some YouTube channels have stated that Belarus is constructing facilities to host up to 25,000 Wagnerites.
belarus-leader-invites-wagner-train-military
I can’t see all those Wagner types staying on base, not getting leave time to mingle with the locals, being polite as they move around.
—
“Yeah? You and what army?”
zhena gogolia
@oldster: Yes, this is very helpful. I can’t see twitter either.
Carlo Graziani
@Mallard Filmore: I also can’t see those bases not receiving a flock of Storm Shadows, once they are manned up, as a Thank You note for the nice Bakhmut party.
Mallard Filmore
@Carlo Graziani:
I don’t recall Ukraine attacking anything inside Belarus, even though the Russians invaded through there. I think the Belarus army will get involved, revolt maybe, it the Wagners get too rambunctious.
Subsole
@A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno):
I’m reminded of CCP propaganda I’ve seen online.
It is almost comical how badass they make us look. Like, they fundamentally do not understand us.
@Carlo Graziani:
The great Russian military tradition of watching your logistic framework collapse on itself the day hostilities erupt continues, then…
Seriously. If anyone needs an iron-shod reason to stop the GOP, look at Russia. That is what they want to reduce us to.
Gin & Tonic
@Mallard Filmore: Last time russian troops were in Belarus they sold off their fuel to the locals to buy booze so they could stay hammered 24/7.
Alison Rose
@Bex: Yes, I love seeing him interact with kids!
Carlo Graziani
@Mallard Filmore: There hasn’t really been anything worth striking in Belarus since about May 2021. But if Wagner really sets up a shop there, I think the US might turn a blind eye to a cross-border cruise missile raid (or at worse issue some pious statement “deploring” Ukraine’s misuse of Western weapons but taking no other action), if the result is to write down several hundred Wagner mercenaries as casualties.
sdhays
@Carlo Graziani: Why would Ukraine want to waste precious resources helping Putin solve his internal domestic problems?
Chetan Murthy
@sdhays: excellent point! If Wagner does not attack Ukraine, then why should Ukraine waste precious military resources destroying their camps? That would seem to be an unwise way to fight the war.
Carlo Graziani
@sdhays: Because Wagner is a Russian-controlled military asset, and Wagner forces are likely to be thrown back into Ukraine next time there’s a Russian manpower crisis (i.e very soon now), and because those camps are in range, and because payback is a bitch.
Spanky
If Ukraine is smart, they’ll roll up to the Belarus bases with a couple of semis loaded with vodka. On a weekly basis.
Way cheaper.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: And yet
But I could be mistaken.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: All reports I’ve seen are that Wagner are not being allowed to take their heavy weapons to Belarus: those are all being returned to RU MOD. And today there was reporting that all across Russia, Wagner and Prigo businesses are being shut down. I have to wonder if we’ll actually see anything other than the core of Wagner ever get to Belarus. Heck, in Africa and Syria we see reports of RU foreign ministry and military officials telling their hosts that Wagner will be brought under the control of RU MOD in their countries, too.
I’m skeptical that Wagner is going to emerge from this as a credible military force.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: This is, of course,a purely hypothetical discussion. Nonetheless I would say that the time to strike such a target is when it is, in fact, a target—concentrated geographically, in range, with identified structures and personnel. Once Wagner forces leave those camps as part of a new mobilization, they cease to be a feasible target, and the opportunity is lost.
But I don’t doubt that the members of the targeting committee making that argument would also be thinking, in the back of their minds, about the annihilation of Bakhmut, and about the proverbially unlubed Dildo of Consequences.
Adam L Silverman
@oldster: You’re most welcome. It would make sense that Twitter would be working to fix this, but given I’ve seen reporting that one part of the problem is twitter’s code is querying Twitter every ten seconds or so. This means twitter’s code is mounting a DDOS on itself. And that the other part of the problem is Musk doesn’t pay his bills, so Twitter has hit its data caps. And, of course, Musk doesn’t understand any of this and won’t listen to anyone who does. So I expect this will get worse before it gets better.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: Anyway, Wagner troops have to get to Belarus before they can be struck. Last week the Polish President as well as NATO chief Stoltenberg warned that a Wagner presence in Belarus could potentially threaten Poland and Lithuania. So far though there are no reports of their appearance at the camps apparently being prepared for them.
One news site reported that when they inquired at several Wagner recruiting centers last week, they were told that Wagner was still recruiting! Maybe that was just to draw in the unsuspecting so they can be mobilized into the army.
Several of the recruiting centers have been set up at martial arts training centers for a while now.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy:
Whatever the Russians may say now about Wagner in the warm afterglow of that comedy-putsch is subject to radical re-evaluation and revision the moment any battlefield crisis leaves them yet-again scrambling to find manpower, and competent units.
I am fairly confident that there will be at least one such crisis this year.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: I think that unlike Turkiye,* other NATO countries require that weapons they supply be used only on targets in occupied Ukraine. So targets in Belarus might be ruled out like they are in Russia.
This sounds like a job for the Hrim-2!
*see Stijn Mitzer’s excellent article in Oryx, titled “The Stalwart Ally: Turkiye’s Arms Supples to Ukraine, ” Nov. 22, 2022
Adam L Silverman
@Geminid: Systema. The Russians have been using it to recruit individuals all over the Europe, the US, and Canada, and I’d expect elsewhere, for almost 20 years.
Tony G
A key fact about the aborted insurrection by the Wagner Group is that Wagner shot down a half-dozen Russian Army helicopters and killed their crews. Therefore, when Putin let the leadership of the Wagner Group get away with impunity, he literally let them get away with murder. Putin has demonstrated the epitome of weakness in this crisis, and I’m sure that his enemies have taken note of that.
Jay
Perun has a new YouTube up on the Wagner March
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8VPkWXOfU
Mr. Bemused Senior
“Crime mob boss” indeed, a perfect description.
===
Here is a gift link to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s Op-Ed in the WaPo on the subject of Wagner Group moving into Belarus.
Gin & Tonic
@Tony G: They actually shot down five helicopters and an Il -22M, a sort of AWACS equivalent – an airborne command post. It’s a four-engine turboprop with a crew of 10, all killed, of course. I’m having a hard time coming up with an estimated value in dollars, but reportedly russia had 10 of them. The fact that they could do this with no apparent consequences must be great for morale in the air force.
oldster
@Geminid:
Your mention of Turkiye reminds me of something I have wanted to ask the assembled wise and worthy:
What happened to the Bayraktar?
In the opening months, they seemed to play a large role in killing ruzzian tanks and generally assisting the Ukrainian defense. But of late I have not heard much about them.
Are they still an important element in the Ukrainian defense? Have they succumbed to some new anti-drone technique? Has Ukraine run out of them? Or perhaps they are still chugging along outside of the limelight?
I will say that I judge the question partly from a very stupid standpoint, namely that I see videos of tanks being taken out by artillery, loitering munitions, drones, mines, etc., but I never seem to see them hit by Bayraktars. That could be for hundreds of reasons, e.g. that they prefer to work with less leakage of video footage.
Anyone have an idea what’s up?
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
I read that only 6-8,000 of the core Wagner will go to Belarus. Without their heavy weapons and gear.
Prighozin’s company that supplies the Russian army with food had their contract cancelled and is being shut down. Food supply was already a huge problem for the Russian army and this might turn out catastrophic.
Geminid
@oldster: From what I’ve read, the Bayraker-2 combat drones wreaked havoc in the first week’s of the war, but then the Russians wised up and suppressed them with better anti-aircraft defense. They are still flying, but are more restricted in their scope of action.
There was reporting that a Bayraktar TB-2 drone contributed to the sinking of the Moskva by distracting the ship’s air defense. This is one of many stories that probably won’t be confirmed until this war is over, though.
The Oryx article I reference at #37 is worth a read. Mitzer listed the weapon Turkiye had supplied Ukraine as of November, 2022. Since Turkiye does not announce its contributions to Ukraine’s war effort, Mitzer learned of the weapons through Ukrainian sources, or by their appearance on the battlefield.
The arms supplied included smaller Bayraktar drones used for reconnaissance. Mitzer said their resistance to jamming comes in handy on this battlefield. Turkiye has also supplied a 230mm missile that can hit laser designated targets. Evidently the smaller Bayraktar is designed to spot and “paint” targets for this missile, which comes with a mobile, multiple launch platform.
oldster
@Geminid:
Thanks! Useful info.
Torrey
@Gin & Tonic:
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
I don’t have any other words.
She was an extraordinary talent.
Whoever sets the targets in these cases need to be tried as war criminals. But then, we already knew that.
Geminid
@oldster: Turkiye shipped a lot of weapons to Ukraine in the weeks before Russia invaded. Some might remember the Turkish cargo plane that was stranded at a Ukrainian for months after the invasion. That plane likely carried the last shipment of arms Turkiye flew in before Russia attacked.
The Russians did not destroy the cargo plane, but they did not let it fly home until August. A minor example of Putin’s and Erdogan’s transactional, “frenemy” relationship.
Sebastian
@Geminid:
Yes, Rocketsan MRLS, more or less equivalent to HIMARS. It arrived before HIMARS.
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: from what I remember, early on Bayraktars were effective, but Russia rapidly cottoned-on to them and started shooting them down. But Ukraine, mindful of their propaganda value, dribbled-out the videos, to make it appear that they were still effective against RU armor, long after they’d ceased to be. Also, even from the early days of the war, most RU armor was destroyed by artillery, not TB2s or ATGMs (or at least, that’s what I remember reading).
I could be misremembering.
Geminid
@Geminid: Speaking of Turkiye, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg plans an important meeting relating to Sweden’s NATO accession this week on Thursday, July 6 in Brussels. It sounds like he is determined to make progress on this matter; reports are that the Foreign Ministers plus the intelligence and national security chiefs of Sweden, Finland and Turkiye are slated to attend.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: Ukraine was attacking supply trains with BT2s well into the summer, as I recall.
Carlo Graziani
Today’s ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Update has a nugget and an appalling blind spot:
So close, and yet so off-target. The risk to Putin from continued alienation of MOD is not “an erosion of MOD’s credibility”. It is rather that MOD, which the war has made the independent power center that did not exist when the Siloviki held all the reins at the war’s outset, should decide to use it’s new-found autonomy against Putin. Whom they resent for imposing Shoigu (not a career officer) on them, and vastly more for tolerating Prigozhin’s antics, and for granting him a Belarusan vacation rather than executing him in a Lefortovo cell for his actions during his comic-opera Putsch.
So, lest we forget, the Russian Army descends from the Soviet Red Army, which regarded its political prerogatives as inviolable, having determined the outcomes of putsches in 1953 (Beria was actually shot after being arrested by Marshal Zhukov himself) and 1991 (the intervention of senior MOD officers in Yeltsin’s support, and their abstention from joining the previous putsch against Gorbachev signed the death warrant of the USSR), as well as vividly recalling their participation as senior vested members of the CPSU Politburo for 70 years. The Siloviki’s emasculation of MOD during Putin’s tenure must certainly have rankled many proud officers. And, what do you know! A reckoning with the Siloviki over the damage caused by Prigozhin’s insurrection is suddenly at hand!
The thing about a war is that you cannot run one without handing a hell of a lot of control to your armed forces, even if those armed forces were previously cowed. MOD today is a totally different political factor from the MOD of February 2021. Putin and the Siloviki need them, yet (rightly) fear them, and Shoigu certainly cannot control them as he once could.
When pundits write about Putin being “weakened” by Prigozhin’s revolt, they usually do so in vague, non-specific, even gnomic terms. But this aspect is very real and specific: Putin has had his levers of control over MOD go slack on him, because of the number of officers who are totally enraged at him and at Shoigu. He needs to appease MOD. And he can’t do that without further weakening Siloviki control. It will be interesting to see how he attempts to square this circle.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: these are excellent points, Carlo. Lots of food for thought, and let’s see what happens in the future. Certainly I’ve read multiple accounts of purges happening in the Russian Army at the mid level: that can’t sit very well with the officer corps.
Juliet
@zhena gogolia: k
@zhena gogolia: gf:;then:&7+pytrtreerr00p]9[pl I?yj8n68jjio
Sebastian
@Carlo Graziani:
You were looking for a data source for missile strikes and interceptions, right?
have you seen this Google sheet?
https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/dfbcec47-7b01-400e-ab21-de8eb98c8f3a/page/p_wdrgjv1iyc?s=k4bcar5pHyY
TheMightyTrowel
i solemnly swear i had nothing to do with uncovering hidden WW2 planes… what a neat find though!
(also greetings from an incredibly boring field in rural Australia where I’m currently trying to teach methods tho a group of only sort of interested undergrads)
Carlo Graziani
@Sebastian: It looks useful. I’ll see if I can export some missile data.
Carlo Graziani
@Sebastian: So, looking at that page, the”Development: UAVs & Air Defense” dashboard shows UAV strikes bulging up from an average of about 7/day prior to May 2023 to a peak average of about 30/day by late May, followed by a decline after the first week of June to the current average of about 13/day, which has been reasonable stable through June.
One possible interpretation of this pattern is that the bulge represents an initial shipment of drones from Iran following an updated agreement, coming largely from the Iranian stockpile, whereas the drop to a floor level in June represents the equilibration of the firing rate to the steady rate of supply/manufacturing by Iran—about 13/day, or about 50-60 per month. Whether this interpretation is a valid inference depends on how the firing rate evolves. If it stays steady for another month, it’s probably a good inference. More sudden motion of the average would indicate that we have not yet seen a true equilibrium.
The “Development: Missiles” dashboard shows a different, interesting pattern: in the 81 days between January 1 2023 and March 24, the Russians fired 198 missiles, in (usually) large (30-60 missile) but very intermittent salvoes spaced 1-2 weeks apart. Then there’s a 5-week pause until April 29. Since that date they’ve fired 322 missiles in 66 days, in typically smaller salvoes (10-15 per salvo, plus 2 or 3 larger salvoes of 30-50) typically spaced a few days apart.
So the average firing rate has gone up, from about 2.4/day (68 per 4-week period) in January-March, to 4.9/day (137 per 4-week period) since May. The intermittency of fire has been reduced considerably, so strikes are now every few days, rather than every week or two.
Given that the Russian theory of victory over the winter months was to freeze and starve Ukraine by striking at its electrical infrastructure, the lower and more sporadic earlier firing pattern is certainly not due to caution or restraint, but in all likelihood to actual stockpile starvation—they were almost certainly emptying out the inventory, then waiting 1-2 weeks to replenish it for another large strike.
The later pattern seems to suggest that they have brought online more production capacity, nearly doubling the available missiles, and have adopted a more sustainable and frequent firing pattern that permits them to build up a little inventory for occasional larger strikes.
Presumably this change also represents adaptation to Ukrainian A/D tactics and to the end of winter, and to the desire to keep Ukrainian A/D engaged in rear areas, so that it gives less trouble to the Russians near the front.
Very cool website. Thanks for flagging it.