Ukraine intensifies air strikes on Russia

Hello,

Last night, Ukraine conducted some of the most intense air strikes on Russia in the entire war, and I think it deserves some attention. Especially because it looks like a new pattern.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Hi, today is Tuesday the 14th of January and the night to today was one of the biggest Ukrainian airstrikes on Russia during the whole war so far. So a very large number of drones and missiles hitting a range of different targets inside of Russia and there have been significant damages on the Russian side. This comes after a period of intensified Ukrainian airstrikes so we've seen several of these very big and spectacular attacks on Russia with long range drones and missiles over the last month or so. And it's been a process where it's just gradually been becoming more and more intense also if we look further back. So if we go back two years for example Ukraine didn't have any such capability at all then we started seeing prototypes of long range drones and then gradually things coming into serial production and now there are many different types of these long range drones and they are causing significant damage on the Russian side.

If we look at the number of drones that Ukraine recently has been sending into Russia and we look at the number of drones that Russia has been sending into Ukraine then we are looking at something that is I would say at least parity. It seems that Ukraine now has the capability to send as at least as many drones toward Russia as Russia is able to send towards them and maybe even more. And I will say if we also take into account how effective the air defense is how many are they able to shoot down then it definitely looks like the Ukrainian air defenses are better than the Russian ones. So Ukraine is able to defend themselves against more of those drones that Russia is sending toward them than Russia is able to shoot down.

This is really interesting because I think it's a development in the air war that is not discussed so much in the West. In the West there is still just a lot of focus on Donald Trump coming into office and peace negotiations starting and what might that lead to, while on the battlefield, I think, we are seeing some quite interesting military developments.

Ukraine still does not have parity with Russia in every regard when it comes to air war. There are significant shortages we can say or disadvantages they have. They don't have the glide bombs for example that Russia uses quite successfully along the front line. Ukraine doesn't have a lot of those. They have some but not a lot. And also when it comes to the larger missiles then Ukraine is still also very dependent on Western missiles like the Storm Shadow missiles or the ATACMS missiles that have these very big payloads and bunker busting capabilities. Ukraine doesn't really have missiles that can substitute that. They have some. They have the Neptune missile for example but they definitely need to produce more and they also need different variations, different types of missiles with different characteristics.

But when it comes to drones then definitely we are seeing that Ukraine is in a place right now where they probably have the upper hand compared to Russia. And it's just a really interesting development that also indicates that Ukraine might be getting to a place where domestic production may be able to keep them in the fight even if it turns out that Donald Trump is difficult to deal with for example in the coming months, then that is not necessarily the same as Ukraine having to give up or anything like that because they actually do have other capabilities than what the Americans are giving them. I just think this is something that we probably don't talk enough about. It doesn't get quite the attention it deserves that we see these shifts.

A closing thought I think I will also bring up here is that we are now approaching what we can call halfway through winter. And this was a winter where there was a lot of speculation that Russia would really intensify their airstrikes, their campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure and this would be a terrible winter for the Ukrainians. And I mean that might still happen. There are still there's still a couple of cold months. But so far the Ukrainians actually seem to be doing really well. It's quite impressive how well they have been able to manage the Russian airstrikes. How well they have defended themselves but also how well they have been prepared to fix the things that are broken when inevitably something is hit. And how the whole society has been prepared for this situation.

And that's also really something I think is interesting when we look at both the both what's going on in terms of the Russian campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure and that it doesn't look like it's as effective as many people had anticipated and I'm sure the Russians had hoped. But also when we look at the fact that while this is going on Ukraine has actually been able to intensify their own air campaign against Russia to an extent where this winter might actually hurt more on the Russian side than on the Ukrainian side as a result of the airstrikes. So that's just interesting to keep in mind. All right enough for now. Thanks for watching.