Piston-powered drones fly ahead of cruise missiles
It took a lot of chutzpah for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to issue an ultimatum to Ukraine late Monday: “The point is simple: fulfil [Russian demands] for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army.”
That’s rich, especially considering The Washington Post’s lead story this morning, headlined, Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war.
It is not that Russia does not still maintain the capacity to inflict damage on Ukraine, the way stinging insects raise painful welts. But Lavrov’s boast about the Russian army appears to be just that.
The Kremlin’s troops are badly depleted. Conscripts are fleeing the country. So much so that a Kazakh chocolate company created a pointed ad about it.
When Moscow diverted troops south to defend the Russian-held regional capital of Kherson, Ukraine advanced toward and retook Kharkiv:
In early September, Ukrainian forces would steamroll across hundreds of square miles, routing the Russians and surprising themselves. The Kharkiv offensive revealed the inability of an undermanned and underequipped Russian force to hold territory across a vast front. It shocked the Kremlin, and it proved to Ukraine’s supporters that they were not wasting billions in weapons and economic aid.
Putin was forced to conscript hundreds of thousands of men, making the costs of war clear to a Russian population that had isolated itself from its leader’s “special military operation.” The mobilization set off unrest but was too late to stop Ukraine’s momentum from spreading south to Kherson, where, after hard combat and significant losses, Kyiv’s forces in November recaptured the only regional capital that Putin had seized since the start of the war.
Moscow has not lost all its sting (New York Times):
Explosions rocked towns and cities around Ukraine on Thursday morning and electricity went out in several regions as Russia launched what appeared to be one its biggest strikes to date on the country’s energy grid.
The attack combined a swarm of drones and a volley of cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Facebook. Iranian-made exploding drones, which Russia began acquiring last summer, were launched in a first wave, apparently to bog down air defenses before the cruise missile strikes, it said, adding that its defense forces had shot down 54 of 69 missiles and knocked out drones.
It has been a busy day for Ukraine’s defenders:
Air-raid sirens sounded about 5:30 a.m. throughout most of Ukraine. The Ukrainian military’s southern command said two Russian ships in the Black Sea had shown signs suggesting that they were preparing to launch missiles, setting off the alarms.
As the sun rose on Thursday morning, a puffy contrail could be seen looping across the partially cloudy sky over Kyiv — possibly coming from a missile, a Ukrainian jet scrambled in defense or an air-defense weapon.
Seven or eight explosions followed in the capital. One rattled windows and set off car alarms in the city center. It was not clear whether the blasts echoing in the city were from intercepts or strikes by cruise missiles.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian air defenses had shot down 16 missiles over the city. At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people were pulled from a damaged home, he said.
Kharkiv and Odesa also reported damage from the attacks.
Many Ukrainians may spend the year-end holiday in the dark. As a safety meaure, Ukraine has shut down power in some regions in anticipation of Russian attacks on power grids on New Year’s Eve. “Last week in Kyiv, there was enough power for only 20 percent of the population,” the Times reports.
And what of the army of which Lavrov boasted?
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