Sometimes the big trends that probably no one person can stop are best illustrated by factoids that, by themselves, are just boring but taken into context are pretty funny.
If this keeps up then it’s inflection point time
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On Jan. 23, Dmitriy Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Security Council and the Russian politician best known for talking a harder line than Putin himself, was profiled on Russian state-controlled media for visiting a chemical factory in Bryansk region that the Ukrainians had hit and set on fire with drones two days earlier. Medvedev told reporters this was a Bad Thing.
During the visit (pictured) Medvedev spoke with local authorities about the need for better air defenses and more production of anti-aircraft weaponry, with the qualification that, of course, Russia’s military is a mighty force that will soon crush the upstart Ukrainians. Here is what Kremlin-controlled RIA Novosti said about that:
Beleaguered Ukrainian Forces Avert Encirclement Inside Destroyed Town
”Deputy Chairman of the Security Council took part in a meeting of a special group of the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation. The participants of the meeting discussed issues of additionally increasing the production of the air defense system (AD)… Medvedev said that the best response to the ultimatum of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is the actions of the Russian Armed Forces.”
About 14 hours after Medvedev and his entourage flew back to Moscow from Bryansk, Ukrainian drones overwhelmed Russian air defenses in Bryansk region and torched a factory specializing in military electronics. It was a mixed strike using propeller and jet drones, some of the explosions (pictured) were massive, and later that day even official Russian media was admitting all production at the Bryansk Kremniy EL microelectronics plant was stopped. For those of us that giggle when Dmitriy Medvedev is embarrassed, this was all pretty humorous.
That same night, Ukrainian drones
- Set off some epic explosions in the AО “РНПК” oil refinery in Ryazan.
- Set an oil refinery in Saratov region on fire.
- Attacked the Moscow-area military airfield Dyagelovo with unclear results
- As a result of that, forced a shut-down of Moscow’s civilian Vnukovo Airport.
- Buzzed around Crimea, I’m not clear yet what the Ukrainian intent was there.
The Russians subsequently said that they had “shot down” 120+ Ukrainian drones entering Russian air space, which made the Jan. 23 strikes the biggest Ukrainian drone attack on Russian targets, ever, since the Jan. 17 raids last week.
That same night, the Russians managed 40-50 drones sent into Ukrainian air space, and if there was any significant damage I’m not aware of it.
We are now three weeks into an unprecedented – in warfare, ever in history – drone bombardment campaign by Ukraine against Russia.
Russia has about five times the population and ten times the military infrastructure relative to Ukraine. But you wouldn’t know it from aircraft launched and things blown up on the ground on Jan. 23.
The evidence is pretty much absolute, that we are now three weeks into an unprecedented – in warfare, ever in history – drone bombardment campaign by Ukraine against Russia. The area of drone hits covered the entire central part of Russia up to the Volga River, and, at times, reached 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) inside Russian air space. Russia has a lot of electronic warfare and air defense systems, and guys like Medvedev say they’re the world’s best. It seems like the world’s best air defenses are grossly inadequate for the task of defending the world’s biggest national air space.
The previous review contained a lot of the data points, but to sum up – in the last three weeks, the Ukrainians have hit (at least): Ust-Luga seaport in Leningrad region, Engels military airfield Saratov region (three times), a Rostov military instillation, Novorossysk port, a chemicals plant in Kazan, an fuel storage facility in Saratov (twice), an oil refinery in Voronezh (twice), a gunpowder plant in Tambov, an oil refinery in Tula, an oil refinery in Kaluga, an aircraft plant in Kazan, and a military components factory in Smolensk.
That’s not including Thursday-Friday overnight.
Conditionally, we are at a moment similar to the Russian naval abandonment of Sevastopol and Crimea in October 2023.
If the Ukrainians have the aircraft and production capacity to sustain the pace they have set, which is not for sure, then, January 2025 will become the time point at which Ukraine’s defeat of Russia’s national air defenses started, and systematic and effective Ukrainian bombardment and destruction of military infrastructure in west Russia began.
Conditionally, we are at a moment similar to the Russian naval abandonment of Sevastopol and Crimea in October 2023.
Moreover, apropos of the next section, anyone interested in the Ukrainian warfighting mindset needs to bear in mind, that from the Ukrainian point of view, at minimum, Ukraine has the proven capacity to blow up Russian military infrastructure almost at will. These drone raids are complex and the Ukrainians are writing new military textbooks on tactics.
That the Ukrainians can hit and destroy things in Russia if the Ukrainians decide the thing is worth the effort of a complex strike, and that the Russians can’t seem to stop it, is established fact.
Russian progress on the ground is still progressing, but it’s a special kind of progress
Across the front the intensity of fighting is falling, this is a trend that seemed first to appear last fall and became more apparent in winter.
The Russians are still making attacks and still slowly gaining ground where they attack, but they have lost the capacity for scale. Operationally their approach is to advance field-by-field at the price of heavy casualties, with the short-term goal of cutting off supply to towns or villages the Ukrainians have fortified, and then, once the Ukrainians in the fortifications have been beat up and bombarded long enough, assaulting and taking the locality.
The latest Russian victory of that type came in Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region, which some readers may remember personally. My sources say the defenders got out and that Russian encirclement attempts failed, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) says they still control the western suburbs. In practical terms Russia now owns the place.
It is very clear the Ukrainians lack the manpower to stop a concerted Russian effort to take a village like Velyka Novosilka, and as noted, there is all manner of hue and cry these days about bad leadership in some Ukrainian units, bad training of replacements, and overall manpower shortages that are preventing the Ukrainians from stopping such Russian attacks cold.
A couple of Ukrainian generals got arrested this week on incompetent leadership allegations and the media noise about that is massive. I don’t want to give you the impression the Ukrainians are holding successfully. They are not. In fact, they are slowly losing ground.
However, I think that picture misses how horrific and destructive, for Russian forces, these attacks are becoming. If the Ukrainian strategy is trade ground for Russian casualties, then objectively, not only is that strategy succeeding, it is obvious the Russians are unable to assemble force willing to make large-scale attacks with the potential of changing the situation on the ground. The best they can do is scattered small-scale attacks. I strongly suspect that the reason bigger attacks aren’t attempted by the Russians, is that they would face partial mutinies – but I can’t prove it.
What I can say is that now that it’s 2025 the dominance of drones on the battlefield seems at times overwhelming, and that the Western trope “The Ukraine War is like World War One” is somewhere between superficial and stupid when you look at the actual fighting.
This type of war has never been seen before. Here are some links to video confirmed by me (and others) of recent combat:
The 68th Jaeger demolishes a Russian attack, Pokrovsk region.
82nd Brigade demolishes a Russian attack, Kursk region:
Drones hunt down Russian infantry in Toretsk:
25th Airborne drone finishes off a wounded Russian soldier (graphic)
The last entry from the paratroopers in the 25th I’ve included because some clever airborne trooper decided to back the video with music from Terminator. This is the modern battlefield. Machines are not just killing humans, that’s old. Machines are hunting down humans and then killing them. Image of Arnold, obviously.
If you have survived this far to read into the next section, then maybe keep Arnold in mind.
In some ways, for the Russians to keep on attacking, they have to convince their troops to go fight against Ukrainian machines that will hunt every Russian soldier down, and there are piles of evidence (POW interviews, soldier comment, etc.) that Russian morale is harmed because soldiers feel like they are being thrown into attacks where the enemy is a ruthless machine that will never stop.
I’ll go into the production stats some other time, but again when reading the next section about peace plans, remember, the Ukrainians are going to be going into those talks with the knowledge that their army is the world leader in drone operations and, as production and drone operator units increase over time, chances will only go up that a time will come when the Ukrainians have more attack drones than the Russians have troops and armored vehicles to gain ground.
More on (that’s a pun, get it?) peace talks
Looking at it from here, US domestic politics and US internal domestic assumptions about the outside world – which, I think we can agree, often leave some space between themselves and actual accurate information – seem to be driving the Trump administration’s attempts to get a ceasefire in Ukraine.
To pick on the guy responsible first, President Trump spoke with Fox News on Thursday and either lied intentionally or was blissfully ignorant about the war.
Specifically, Trump stated the US had spent $200 billion on Ukraine and Europe practically nothing, that Russia started the war with 30,000 tanks and Ukraine had practically none, that the war was Zelensky’s fault because all he had to do to prevent Russian invasion was to “make a deal” with Putin, and that, in the early days of the war, Zelensky had the authority and public support so that an order for Ukrainian surrender would have been carried out.
In Moscow and Kyiv, Trump statements are so wildly disassociated from the facts on the ground they just sound stupid.
This is all absolutely false and has repeatedly been proved false, by me and lots of others. Fox News didn’t call him on it, but I have no doubt he will get fact-checked by others.
Which is all very nice, but, Trump is the guy saying he will cut a deal between Putin and Zelensky in 24 hours, which deadline passed five days ago. In Moscow and Kyiv, Trump statements are so wildly disassociated from the facts on the ground they just sound stupid.
Heck, it sounds stupid in Europe too, and the problem with that is, even if in the US political forum there are no consequences for talking horse hockey, in venues where players could care less what US voters think, that damages your credibility, and makes others wary of talking with you honestly, because you clearly don’t care about facts.
Sure, maybe Trump has a secret plan, and this, reality divorced rhetoric, is part of that plan. But as a cynical journalist, I have to entertain the possibility that the US President either is grossly uniformed about the Russo-Ukrainian War, or he could care less about the actual facts.
In my view this will not help US credibility or make US foreign policy more effective.
Then there was General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s lead negotiator on Ukraine and Russia, who went on Fox News on Friday. This is a guy who made Lieutenant General in the army, multiple degrees, green beret, years of experience at the top of the US intervention in Iraq, served on the NSC in the first Trump administration. His view on how the war will end?
Well, according to Kellogg a diplomatic solution is possible and a combat solution is not.
So far so good, that is maybe debatable but not overly controversial. The way forward, Kellogg said, might be cutting a deal with Saudi Arabia to depress world oil prices to $45 per barrel, which would make Russian oil unprofitable to sell abroad and threaten the Russian economy with destruction.
Few would dispute the theoretical, macroeconomic part of that. Everyone agrees the Russian military machine is heavily dependent on Russian overseas energy earnings, led by oil.
But, on the real-world business side, I’m sorry, what Kellogg is suggesting is laughable. Oil right now is at about $78 per barrel, meaning, for the world’s oil producers to get on board with the idea of undercutting Russian oil earnings, first thing, raw numbers, they would have to agree to a rough 50% cut in oil sales earnings. That loss of revenue would be higher for countries whose oil is more expensive to produce.
Saudi Arabia is the country most able to increase production easily because it has vast reserves of cheaply produced oil. They can certainly depress world prices if they wished. But, for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud to agree with Kellogg’s idea, the Prince would have to be cool with cutting Saudi export earnings from about $325 billion/year to about $160 billion/year.
The Saudi Royal Family keeps the population happy with generous social spending. The Saudi state budget right now is in deficit at about $27 billion out of about $270 billion planned expenditures.
Rough numbers, Kellogg’s price cuts would spike the Saudi state deficit to at least $75 billion and probably more AND face the Crown Prince with the choice of dipping into the national sovereign fund or losing market to producers willing to work for less profit.
It’s absurd. Why would the Saudis do that? Only a fool would suggest the Saudis would cut their own financial throats and, literally, risk public unrest and maybe even physical attacks on the Saudi royalty, to help Trump on Russia.
Kellogg is a smart guy, but that is precisely the Looney Tune suggestion he made. Fox didn’t call him on it, but it is still nuts nonetheless.
But even more important, from the US domestic political view, the US is a big oil producer itself and a lot of people in the US oil patch voted for Trump. The cost of producing oil in the US is much higher than in Saudi Arabia because the US energy companies lead the world in producing oil from hard-to-get places like deepwater or by fracking.
The heart of US oil production, these days, is in shale formations in several states but especially in Texas. You get at that oil by fracking. The break-even point at which, given current technologies, Texas ‘ull boys would shut down wells – because the price of getting that barrel of oil out of the ground would become too high to make it worth trying to sell – is at $55-$65, depending on the oil field.
Kellogg is smart. He has to know people in Texas watch Fox News. I struggle to understand how he could talk about cutting the market price of a barrel of American oil to something like 30-40% less than it costs US producers to produce it. Texas voted strongly for Trump, but, destroying oil earnings is by far the simplest and most effective way to turn Texas voters against a politician. Trust me on this.
There is also the not-inconsiderable matter that Kellogg’s boss, Trump, campaigned on a platform of turning US oil companies loose and maximizing US oil production. Demolishing the world price of oil and making it unprofitable for US producers to produce, is 180 degrees opposite of Trump’s stance on US energy policy. So what in the world is Kellogg doing telling Fox that could be the plan?
As always, we can’t exclude the possibility that this is all part of a brilliant plan with all manner of fast footwork and secret deals that will end the Russo-Ukrainian War.
But you ask me what it looks like, and I say it looks like there is no plan. Trump and Kellogg this week, to me, seem to have just thrown out statements either with the assumption no one really pays attention to what they say, or, with the assumption that since they now are set up in offices where there is a bald eagle emblem on the office stationary and the coffee cups, whatever they say will automatically become true.
Another facet of the maybe-they-just-don’t-have-a-plan theory you can spot in the latest news about US aid to Ukraine: On Friday the new secretary of state, Marc Rubio, said all US aid to Ukraine (and a lot of other places) was stopped cold pending a review.
Ukrainian and international media followed up with the Pentagon, and the answer there was: No, the military aid is still flowing. What Rubio was talking about was USAID stuff – like generators, to give Ukrainians electricity after a Russian missile strike, or medical supplies and equipment, to treat Ukrainians blown up in a Russian missile strike.
Meanwhile, the open-source research people checked out cargo traffic into Rzeszow airport in Poland, which as we all know is the hub for air-delivered military aid to Ukraine. The same carriers are still flying at the same intervals, no change there. One clever researcher even found a flight that really looked like a US Air Force C-17 Galaxy flew from Belgium to Tel Aviv, picked up something there (three hours on the ground), and then flew on to Rzeszow.
So are we seeing the new US leadership supplying Ukraine and just posturing that they’ve stopped? Or is the new US leadership not on the ball enough to track down all the existing aid streams to Ukraine and to shut them down?
Kellogg, in other remarks to Fox, said that in his view, a way to arm Ukraine would be to take Russian funds frozen in Western banks and use it to buy American weapons for Ukraine.
This is pretty easy for him to say because most of that money is in European banks and European business has more investments in Russia. So were the US to gain that income stream selling American weapons to Ukraine for Russian money, it would be European businesses and banks the Russians would retaliate against, not the Americans.
Of course, Kellogg can say whatever he wants, but, European politicians have their own voters (and corporations, and banks) to answer to, not US voters. So to me anyway, this doesn’t look like effective American diplomacy. It looks like wish-based American diplomacy.
Meanwhile, in the real world, earlier this week, on Tuesday, General Syrsky was talking with Radio Bayraktar (he’s appearing on media more these days in the wake of the 155th Brigade scandal it seems) and among other comments, he said that the Ukrainians are working hard on their own long-range anti-aircraft systems, progress is being made, and maybe there will be a working prototype sometime this year.
I’m not saying I know it to be true, but, I do know that without question the most irreplaceable part of US military assistance to Ukraine is the Patriot air defense system, and specifically, the highly effective missiles (closes down huge chunks of air space, only weapon that has a chance of taking out a Russian ballistic missile) but ridiculously expensive.
Are the Ukrainians the kind of people to reverse-engineer a Patriot missile and make a cheaper version of their own?
Already we have seen the Ukrainians mate Western air-to-air missiles to Soviet-era ground-based air defense systems (i.e., the FrankenSams) to build up their air defense network. But not Patriots. Yet.
Just ask yourself: Are the Ukrainians the kind of people who will sit and hope the Trump administration sees its way clear to keep on sending more very expensive Patriot missiles?
Or are the Ukrainians the kind of people to reverse-engineer a Patriot missile and make a cheaper version of their own? Kellogg sure seems to think the Ukrainians are “sit passive and let the important players decide” people.
My personal experience is, that would be an incorrect take on the Ukrainians.
My two cents, it would be a mistake for anyone to assume the Ukrainians will just wait to see what terms are possible and cut their losses as soon as they can. The Ukrainians are in a war of survival, they are far beyond pretending, and from their perspective they have more than a few tools with which they can influence the future. Drone swarms the Russians can’t stop is one of them. What’s more, it’s not in the Ukrainian national interest to abandon those tools or buy into the narrative that big countries get to dictate, and little countries must do what they say.
The Russians continue to make the mistake of believing that, with just a little more effort and expenditure of resources, they can dictate terms to the Ukrainians. This was an error repeated, more than once, by the Biden administration.
So far, it looks to me like the Trump administration hasn’t paid much attention to the mistakes of others on Ukraine, and what’s more, the new US leadership is full of the opinion that they can influence events without expending any resources at all. Others will pay and make sacrifices and concessions because the US will convince them to.
I’m not sure how that will work. But they sure do seem sure of themselves.
Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can find the original here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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