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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 690: The Air War May Have Heated Up

War for Ukraine Day 690: The Air War May Have Heated Up

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Going to keep tonight’s update short(ish).

There are as of yet unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian Air Force brought down a Russian A-50 over the Sea o Azov. The A-50 is an early warning and control aircraft similar to the AWACs.

A few hours ago, someone apparently attacked two Russian aircraft over the Azov Sea: A-50 early warning and control and Il22-M command and control aircraft. The former is claimed to now be scuba diving, while the latter, well… the following audio recording emerged which apparently demonstrates the Il22-M requesting urgent landing in Anapa, calling for ambulance and fire crews.

Numbers in the recording are quite challenging to decipher. Information in Russian channels is scarce. But the events have most likely taken place and Russia lost at least one very expensive and valuable flying asset.

By the way, yesterday, Russian channels claimed destruction of a Patriot AA system in Western Ukraine. But didn’t provide any evidence whatsoever.

Eternal fishing!

 

Rumors are rumors, I think by this point in the war everyone should already understand this, but still a warning.
Ukrainian media are actively spreading claims about the downing of Russian A-50s and Il-22M near the coast of the Azov Sea. Allegedly, the tail number of the A-50 and Il-22M11 are known, (RF-50601) and (RF-75106).
https://rbc.ua/rus/news/zsu-pidbili-dva-rosiyski-litaki-azovskim-1705266536.html

Hopefully we’ll get confirmation of just what happened soon.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

Ukrainian initiatives are gradually becoming global initiatives – address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

14 January 2024 – 20:58

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

A few summaries of the day.

Today, a new meeting of advisors to the heads of state on the Peace Formula is taking place in Switzerland. This is the fourth such meeting, and it is extremely important that each one brings together more participants. More than 80 states and international organizations are now represented. And not only our usual partners in Europe and North America, but also states from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. This is a representative meeting. I am grateful to every leader and every country that takes part in this joint work of ours and confirms by their participation that the rules-based world order must be restored – for everyone on earth, without exception.

The rulers of Russia think that with violence and terror, with their lies and cruelty, they can impose some other, predatory world order – a world order without rules, without any security guarantees. It is precisely their confidence – the confidence of murderers – that we are now collectively reducing. With each meeting – for the sake of normal international law. By constantly expanding our international work to new regions and new states. Through new agreements for the sake of greater security. Ukrainian initiatives are gradually becoming global initiatives. I am grateful to everyone who helps us with this.

Today’s meeting in Switzerland furthers the work that took place during the meetings in Malta, Saudi Arabia, and Denmark. I look forward to a detailed report from our team, the Ukrainian team, on the discussions that took place.

Today, the work on security guarantees for Ukraine has also continued: negotiations with Romania have begun. This is the ninth country with which we are conducting such bilateral work. All the G7 countries plus the Netherlands, plus Romania. There will be more. We take the agreement we signed with the UK this week as a model. Once again, I am grateful to the UK for its leadership and for the very good, solid content of the agreement.

In general, the first two weeks of this year have already added to Ukraine’s strength and capabilities. There are new support packages for our warriors. There are much-needed agreements on the joint production of weapons and shells, a particularly sensitive issue is drones. There will be more drones. We are preparing more good news on air defense. We keep in mind both missiles and electronic warfare – there will be more of them. And invariably, month after month, we are ramping up our Ukrainian artillery production.

Ukraine has sufficient potential to make it through this difficult path of war. We have the potential to rally the world. We have the potential to win. The key is to believe in ourselves. To believe in Ukraine. I am grateful to everyone who is with Ukraine and in Ukraine. I am grateful to everyone who is fighting, working, volunteering, and helping for Ukraine to live.

Glory to Ukraine!

The reason:

Last night in the comments IvanX asked:

Man, reading these night after night…what happened to Russia supposedly running out of artillery a year ago?

Leaving aside that the sanctions regime has always leaked like a sieve, Russia, and the Russian part of the Soviet Union, had apparently been stockpiling anything and everything it thought it might need militarily. No matter how old. A lot of it is now junk, but there’s still a lot of it. And that’s not counting what Putin has purchased from Iran and North Korea. Also, despite the sanctions, Russia has put its economy on a war footing and ramped up production.

And this is a problem for Ukraine:

Moscow:

I want to say a few words about this map.

It was published a few days ago by Rybar, russian milbloggers, by russians for russians. Rybar publishes some content in English too but I couldn’t find an English version of this.

The title says “municipal utilities disaster in Moscow area and other Russian cities, January 2024.”

They don’t specify what kind of utilities exactly but we can assume it means heating. Maybe also some water supply, sewage, electricity. But given the season, I’d say mostly heating.

The word “КАТАСТРОФА” (catastrophy, disaster) is quite strong in russian language, russians don’t throw this word around lightly.

We know that there are at least three factors contributing to russian utilities problems.

– russian budget increasingly allocated to aggression war, which means spending reduced in other areas, including utilities maintenance.
– What little budget is left continues to be stolen because corruption.
– There is no staff available for utilities maintenance and repairs because they have been mobilized and meatcubed. I’m not making this up, it’s a fact, not just wishful thinking. We have seen reports from russian Telegram how in some cities there are literally no skilled service workers available for utilities repairs.

What to make of these facts?

You could think that russia is about to collapse, or you could think that this has zero effect. I think both of these extremes are wrong, and the truth is somewhere inbetween.

russia is not about to collapse due to utilities problems, because russian people are used to taking a lot of abuse and maltreatment, and russian authority is used to dealing with the people’s whining and complaints (mostly by doing nothing about it).

But also, the above three factors are compounding this year worse than usual, and it is increasingly hard for the russian authorities to just ignore this.

For me, there are two outcomes going forward.

One, we should continue to share the local stories of russian misfortunes, and mock and ridicule russia and russians based on that. I posted a longer thing about this the other day regarding russia’s egg troubles. Psychologically, russia and russians have a soft spot for being laughed at. An empire that cannot provide the very basics like winter heating to its people is complete laughing stock. But this will not have any direct, real and quick impact on events in the real world.

Two, I think russia is heading for some kind of black swan event that will have a real impact, and these utility problems are a contributing factor to that. I have no idea what kind of event or when exactly it will happen–the whole point of black swan events is that no one knows. Winter continues for a few more months, and we can expect to see more of this.

And of course none of this changes anything about how the West must provide more military assistance to Ukraine more quickly to help Ukrainian defenders keep fighting.

That’s enough for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

28Comments

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    It looks like Moscow is going to be about 25-30F warmer than Iowa over the next 10 days or so.  Weird weather. Imagine how bad it would be there if it were actually colder than normal.

    RFERL.org (from 1/12) has more on the failing city infrastructure in various places, etc.

    Russia’s winters are cold. This is not news. Russia’s municipal infrastructure, much of which is Soviet-era and sporadically maintained, is aging. This is not news.

    What is news this winter is that it is a presidential election season, in which the incumbent Vladimir Putin is less worried about winning than he is about getting a credible mandate from a Russian populace already anxious about the Ukraine invasion, which will be more than 2 years old at the time of the election.

    Anything less than a 75 percent victory in the March vote, with 70 percent of the voting population participating, will be seen as problematic by Kremlin officials, according to multiple press reports.

    Voters annoyed by the soaring price of eggs and bananas are likely to be unenthused. A population freezing due to decrepit housing stock and poorly managed municipal infrastructure even less so.

    “Unfortunately, the collapse (of municipal services) that occurs in Russia every winter is not news,” Fyodor Krasheninnikov, a journalist and a political analyst, told RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “The only news is that the deterioration in the quality of infrastructure is only accumulating.”

    “In a sense, every nation has the government it deserves,” Vladimir Pastukhov, a former Russian lawyer and political scientist, said in a January 10 podcast.

    “So generally speaking, I don’t expect that we’ll have any sort of communal riot,” he said, referring to the communal services — heating, trash collection, electricity supply — provided by local governments.

    ‘A Rather Dilapidated State’

    Central to Putin’s intention to seek a sixth term as president in the March election — with the possibility of staying in power until 2034 — is his command of the Ukraine war, which hits its second anniversary on February 24. Public-opinion polling shows Russians continue to support Putin, but there are signs of slipping enthusiasm for, and growing impatience with, the war.

    With Russia’s economy shifting focus toward producing more guns and less butter, there’s also growing alarm over domestic pocketbook issues.

    […]

    VVP is another guy who can be hurt if voters turn away from him.

    It will continue to be a very dangerous time in Ukraine this winter because VVP really, really wants to show that, somehow, the re-invasion of Ukraine wasn’t a disaster. Here’s hoping that Ukraine denies him that.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Thanks Adam and everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    Alison Rose

    I think I just got spontaneous frostbite watching the video of the man rescuing the doggo from the ice pond. That’s a good man right there.

    I hope the A-50 rumors are all true, and I was going to say I hope it pisses putin off, but TBH I don’t know if he is actual capable of feeling emotions. Like, any emotions. Even negative ones.

    I tried to find the full video of this on YT but could not, but the In Ukraine FB page has a clip from Ivan Shmuratko’s program at the European Figure Skating Championships, during which he’s wearing a white shirt with a prominent blood stain over the heart. It’s a striking image. The clip includes him landing a great triple axel.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  7. 7.

    wjca

    there are at least three factors contributing to russian utilities problems.

    – russian budget increasingly allocated to aggression war, which means spending reduced in other areas, including utilities maintenance.
    – What little budget is left continues to be stolen because corruption.
    – There is no staff available for utilities maintenance and repairs because they have been mobilized and meatcubed. I’m not making this up, it’s a fact, not just wishful thinking. We have seen reports from russian Telegram how in some cities there are literally no skilled service workers available for utilities repairs.

    Bear in mind that we aren’t talking about some remote regional city here.  This was in Moscow.  Which routinely gets special (good) treatment.  If the capital’s infrastructure is failing, it seems certain that infrastructure elsewhere is having worse problems.  For example, how many railroad maintenance workers are now cannon fodder?

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    AlJazeera’s update for 1/15:

    Excerpts.

    * Aleksiy Uminsky, a prominent liberal priest, faces expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church for refusing to read out a prayer asking God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine. A church court said Uminsky should be “expelled from holy orders” for violating his priestly oath. The decision was forwarded for approval to Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church who strongly backs President Vladimir Putin.

    * Russian poet Lev Rubinstein, a key figure of the Soviet underground literary scene who signed an open letter condemning the invasion of Ukraine as a “criminal war” and accusing the Kremlin of “lies”, died days after being hit by a car in Moscow, his daughter said. Rubinstein was run over as he crossed the street on January 8. He was 76.

    * The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration said it signed an agreement with the Nordic Ammunition Company to increase the production and delivery of 155mm artillery ammunition to support Ukraine.

    The first two are unsurprising, but are a lesson for democracies to keep in mind.

    The third is good news. More about it is here) (from 1/10). It looks like any contracts are still a few months away though.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  10. 10.

    Leto

    @Geoduck: no; the aircraft was produced between 1978-1992, with approximately 40 built. Russia had 9-10 operational craft (a number were sold to other countries), but those are deployed to multiple theaters, as well as one aircraft that was damaged/destroyed last March from a drone attack. There’s another AWACS style aircraft being built, but it’s years away from production as it’s still in its testing phase.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: 1) Separating Church and State is important.

    2) Freedom of Expression (without getting run over) is important.

    There are other lessons too, of course, like not having a tyrant control the police and the courts, but those 2 were the big ones for me (at the moment at least).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Really curious how the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to bring down the A-50 AWAC & the Il-22M C&C aircrafts, assuming the information is true.

    The longest range Patriot SAMs only have range of 160 km against aerial targets, so it should have been nearly impossible to bring down Russian aircraft over the Sea of Azov, even if the Ukrainian Armed Forces snuck a Patriot missile battery close to the front lines, taking enormous risk of Russia finding & destroying the precious asset. The Patriot system has to emit from their powerful radars to see the Russian aircrafts, attracting Russian fires of every variety, & they are not particularly mobile. The Ukrainian Air Force does not have any stealth fighters than could evade the Russian IADS and sneak up on the Russian aircraft, nor does it have the long range AAMs to snipe at the Russian aircrafts from far away.

    Perhaps a couple of very brave Ukrainian pilots flew their fighters at the nape of the earth to evade the Russian ground based radars, before getting close & popping up to shoot down the Russian aircraft. However, the whole point of AWACs is to render this tactic unviable, & the generally flat terrain of eastern Ukraine does not provide features for any fighters to hide in during ingress & egress. Then again, it wouldn’t be the 1st time the Russian Armed Forces completely messed up standard tactics. Maybe the Russian Air Force flew these valuable assets on predictable timetables & on predictable routes, & did not bother turning on the airborne radars while transiting to station.

    Perhaps it was sabotage, but 2 aircrafts falling victim?

  13. 13.

    wjca

    @YY_Sima Qian: Perhaps it was sabotage, but 2 aircrafts falling victim?

    Sabotage was my first thought as well.  Having it hit 2 aircraft the same day does seem a bit much.  But perhaps the Russians manage to have the second plane flying where debris from the sabotaged one would hit it.  That would perhaps account for why one went down in the sea, but the other might have managed to get down in one (battered) piece.

    Then again, perhaps Ukraine has picked up a couple of long range AA missiles.  Not enough to be worth use against the usual raids, but for a high value target like this?  Pure speculation, of course.  But absent facts, speculation is what we’ve got.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Some comments here speculate that it’s not impossible that it/they were brought down by “friendly” fire.

    Presumably we’ll know more in coming days.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Kent

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Could it have been done from the ground by commandos using some sort of handheld missile?  If they got close enough to where these planes are taking off and landing?

    Sneak in, take out the planes, then scoot?

  16. 16.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Kent: That’s actually plausible! Not Sure how the Ukrainians would pull this off, given that the Sea of Azov is almost an inland sea, Russia controls all of the coastlines. This is not a small hit & fade raid along the western coast of Crimea. The Ukrainian Navy does not operate submarines that can deliver SpOps forces that far away from Odesa.

    Also, the A-50 has four engines. A MANPAD taking out one & the plane should still have been able do an emergency landing, especially as MANPADs’ lower operational ceiling means they have to be used near the air bases where the aircrafts took off from. Not to mention that both Russian aircrafts should have the self-defense flares activated to defeat exactly such a threat. In theory, anyway, based repeatedly demonstrated incompetence, perhaps the flares weren’t activated, weren’t loaded, or simply malfunctioned.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Another Scott: It would be an extraordinarily costly friendly fire incident, & so deep inside friendly airspace for it to happen. But, you can never rule out incompetence when the Russian military is involved.

  18. 18.

    wjca

    @YY_Sima Qian: both Russian aircrafts should have the self-defense flares activated to defeat exactly such a threat. In theory, anyway, based repeatedly demonstrated incompetence, perhaps the flares weren’t activated, weren’t loaded, or simply malfunctioned.

    I could see a labor-saving (aka laziness) case for not using flares when supposedly out of range of the Ukrainians.  Because you’d have all the hassle of restocking/reloading after each flight.  Not to mention that command probably gets gold stars for cutting demand for supplies.  (Or, if they happen not to be used, sells them off.)

  19. 19.

    dimmsdale

    @YY_Sima Qian:  this is strictly in “wouldn’t it be nice” territory, but I’m told Ukraine is getting some help from the US that is not publicly acknowledged. Adam would know that better than I, but I’m wondering what sort of weaponry we don’t KNOW for a fact Ukraine has, would have been able to accomplish this?

  20. 20.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: 

    The longest range Patriot SAMs only have range of 160 km against aerial targets, so it should have been nearly impossible to bring down Russian aircraft over the Sea of Azov, even if the Ukrainian Armed Forces snuck a Patriot missile battery close to the front lines, taking enormous risk of Russia finding & destroying the precious asset.

    According to the “Measure Distance” function of Google Maps, a 160km circle centered at Orkhiv (so close, but not that close, to the front lines) extends well into the Sea of Azov, at least 50km off-shore.
    So supposing that the Russians were careless, and had let their aircraft fly predictable patterns, occasionally entering such a circle, then the Ukrainians might regard the prepositioning of a Patriot launcher module—probably the most expendable part of the modular Patriot system—at an ambush location to wait for a fire command.

  21. 21.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani: Also plausible, although the radar warning receivers on the Russian aircrafts should have lit up as soon as the Patriot system’s radar (presumably the older AN/MPQ-53 version) turned on, & should have been screaming when the radar achieved lock on. At that point the Russian aircraft should have immediately dived toward the ground & started dispensing chaff to confuse the radars.

  22. 22.

    YY_Sima Qian

    It seems the downed AWAC is a modernized A-50U, which the Russian Air Force only has 8 of, & 1 was damaged in a drone strike last year. Russia has been counting on the A-50Us & the S-400 SAMs to help blunt the impact of any F-16s in Ukrainian hands.

  23. 23.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @dimmsdale: Given how risk averse the Biden Administration has been, not just in terms of concerned about escalation w/ Russia, but also of the latest & greatest US weapons falling into Russian hands, I rather doubt it.

  24. 24.

    dimmsdale

    @YY_Sima Qian: thanks for your reply, and your comments here in general. I imagine there are levels of sophistication in the Biden administration’s decision process that I’m too uninformed to understand (at least I damn well HOPE that’s the case), but especially in light of Adam’s chronicles of Ukrainian shortages I’m aghast that the shortsightedness and risk aversion you discuss have led us to in effect desert our ally at such a crucial time.

  26. 26.

    Freemark

    These things emit a hell of a lot of EM. An S200 with an adapted HARM seeker would be possible. There is also the slim possibility of the US giving Ukraine a few AGM-88G. Considering how advanced they are I kind of doubt that though. But HARM missiles would be much harder to detect.​

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    KyivIndependent.com:

    Ukraine has destroyed at least seven Russian planes since the beginning of December, a landmark military achievement for the country and a significant blow to Russia. The sharp uptick in downing planes in recent weeks emerges as a bright spot for Ukraine amid a lack of progress on the battlefield.

    Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi confirmed on Jan. 15 that Ukraine had destroyed a Russian Beriev A-50 military observation plane and an Ilyushin Il-22 plane that operates as an airborne command post. The downing came less than a month after Ukraine shot down four Russian planes within one week — three Russian Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber aircraft and one Su-34 fighter-bomber jet near occupied Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast.

    The A-50 alone reportedly costs $330 million, and although estimates vary, Western sources say that Russia has fewer than 10 in its fleet. Belarusian partisans attacked another A-50 aircraft at an airbase near Minsk in February 2023, causing an unknown amount of damage.

    Russia’s supply of the Il-22 plane is not extensive either. During the short-lived rebellion of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group in June 2023, the mutineers reportedly shot down an Il-22 and six Russian military helicopters. At the time, the U.K. Defense Ministry said that Russia only had 12 such aircraft.

    […]

    More at the link, but no details yet on how it was brought down.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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