The Russian Air Force and Energy Infrastructure Crisis in the Light of the Kremenchuck Measurement and the First Launch of a New High-Energy Air Defense System

The Stimson Center warned that Russia could be using cheap Iranian drones to get Ukraine to burn through its missiles before unleashing its air force.

Until more arrive, there is the risk – all too familiar to the government and people of Ukraine – that the Russian mix of missiles will wreak much greater havoc among the civilian population, especially if the Russians persist with the tactic of using swarms of missiles, inundating air defenses.

The biggest unknown is whether Russian inventory will fall so steeply that they will resort to older, less accurate but equally powerful missiles.

Some of that inventory was dispatched this week. Western officials say that Russia continues to have large inventories of older and less precise KH-22 missiles, which are used as anti-ship weapons. Weighing 5.5 tons, they are designed to take out aircraft carriers. Dozens of casualties were the result of a shopping mall in Kremenchuck in June.

The Russians have also been adapting the S-300 – normally an air defense missile – as an offensive weapon, with some effect. Their speed makes it difficult to intercept them, and they have wreaked devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. They are not accurate.

Zelensky said in a video message Tuesday that 20 of 28 missiles fired at Ukraine that morning had been shot down. Ukrainian officials told CNN that 65 out of 112 Russian cruise missiles were brought down.

He said that this was the first time Russia has attacked energy infrastructure since the war began.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks. “These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles (this week) were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said. “But of course, as long as not all of them are shot down, of course there is a need for more.”

It’s also uneconomical to waste advanced systems on taking out cheap drones. But there may be other answers for the hundreds of attack drones Russia is now deploying. Zelensky said that Russia had ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 drones from Iran.

The Patriot system – advanced long-range air defense that’s highly effective at intercepting missiles – offers an immensely expensive means of defending a very limited number of high value targets. Ukrainian air defense is not a complete solution to its problem, nor a swift one, with one earliest possible in-service date in February 2023.

Missiles for their existing systems and a transition to Western-origin air defense system were included on the wish-list.

The system is widely considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend airspace against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles as well as some aircraft. It can shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft if they’re far from their intended targets.

Western systems are starting to show up. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Tuesday that a “new era of air defense has begun” with the arrival of the first IRIS-T from Germany, and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) expected soon.

But these are hardly off-the-shelf-items. The IRIS-T had to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments have limited inventories of such systems. Ukraine is being attacked from three directions.

The Pentagon is preparing to send a Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Valerii Zaluzhnyi

Ukraine’s senior military commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, tweeted Tuesday his thanks to Poland as “brothers in arms” for training an air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

He said Poland had given Ukraine “systems” to help destroy the drones. There were reports last month of the Polish government buying advanced Israeli equipment and then transferring it to Ukraine, but Israel doesn’t agree with this policy.

The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine that could be announced as soon as this week, according to two US officials and a senior administration official.

The Pentagon plan must be approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before it can be sent to President Joe Biden. The officials said that approval is expected.

There is no official word on how many missiles will be sent but a typical kit includes a radar set, engagement control station, and up to eight missiles, each with four ready to fire.

After the plans are finalized, the country will be trained to use the troops at a US Army base in Germany.

It takes a large number of personnel to be trained, which is why the US is close to sending it to Ukraine, as first reported by Barbara Starr and Oren Liebermann.

The question of manpower was perhaps the biggest obstacle. About 90 positions are typically assigned to operate one missile battery. The course lengths for launching station operators are 13 weeks, for a maintenance role it is 53 weeks, according to Army recruitment materials.

The Pentagon is considering the possibility of transferring a Patriot battery overseas to Ukraine in response to the Ukranian invasion, a statement by Vladimir Putin

The US has provided armored vehicles to Ukranian in the past. The US also paid for the refurbishment of Soviet-era T-72 tanks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III could approve a directive as early as this week to transfer one Patriot battery already overseas to Ukraine, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Final approval would be up to President Biden.

The White House, Pentagon and State Department were unwilling to comment on the details of the transfer of a special type of weapon to the Ukranian military.

In a speech to the Group of 7 nations on Monday, Mr. Zelensky thanked the countries for their continued support but listed financing for weapons first among his requests.

Zakharova said that the rationality of such a step would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of dragging the US army into combat.

Patriot arrays are used around the world by the U.S. Army and about a dozen U.S. allies. It was originally designed as an anti-aircraft system, and newer variants are used primarily to engage ballistic missiles.

Asked Thursday about Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be “provocative,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. The comments wouldn’t have an effect on US aid to Ukranian.

“I find it ironic and very telling that officials from a country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion … that they would choose to use words like provocative to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians,” Ryder told reporters.

He explained that the US does not want conflict with Russia. Our focus is on providing Ukraine with the security assistance it needs to defend itself.”

The video of the installation of a Yars intercontinental missile in the Kaluga region was posted by the Russian defense ministry as a message to the Commander of the Kozelsky missile formation.

Russian President Putin said recently that his country could abandon its no first use nuclear weapons doctrine, which it has said it would only use to defend its homeland. After the strikes on military infrastructure deep inside Russia, Putin made a comment. The military from Russia blamed Ukraine for the strikes.

Appearing this week on Russian state TV, Commander Alexander Khodakovsky of the Russian militia in the Donetsk region suggested Russia could not defeat the NATO alliance in a conventional war.

Zelensky was quoted by TheEconomist as saying in an interview Thursday that he didn’t agree with the idea that Ukraine seek only to wrest land from Russia since February 2022, rather than those areas which have been under Russian control.

At their summit in March last year, NATO leaders agreed to equip, arm and train Ukraine to NATO standards. The message to Moscow was clear: It wouldn’t be a member. In the future, Ukraine will look and fight like it did in NATO.

The British Ministry of Defense said that the Russian military has a history of unsafe storage of ammunition which contributes to Russia’s high casualty rate.

“You load the ammunition and you cross your fingers and hope it’s gonna fire or when it lands that it’s gonna explode,” said the official, speaking to reporters.

The Kremlin, the U.S., and Russia’s War on Everybody: And What it Means for You (and Why you Can) See It)

“Over the past three hundred days, the Kremlin has tried and failed to wipe Ukraine off the map. Now, Russia is trying to weaponize winter by freezing and starving Ukrainian civilians and forcing families from their homes,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement announcing the aid package.

Russia meanwhile continues to stockpile arms and ammunition in large quantities close to the troops they will supply and well within range of enemy weaponry. Standard military practice dictates that large depots be broken up and scattered and that they be located far behind enemy lines — even within Russian territory that western powers have declared off-limits to Ukrainian strikes.

There was an attack on DONETSK. Ukraine has launched a serious attack in the Donetsk region, the area controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, according to a Russian-installed mayor there.

Editor’s Note: Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) works with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in the UK. He wrote a book called Russia’s War on Everybody: And What it Means for You. His views are his own in this commentary. Read more opinion on CNN.

repetition of the narrative that Russia dislikes any one of a wide range of events will make it much harder for the US and western world to act in a way that is friendly towards Russia.

Russia’s efforts at deterrence continue to bring success in the form of arguments for a truce as a preferable outcome to a Ukrainian victory – based on fear of the consequences of Russia suffering a defeat.

And yet, Russia’s UN Security Council veto and the fear it has instilled through nuclear propaganda have given it a free pass to behave as it wishes, without fear of interference from a global community looking on in either ambivalence or helpless paralysis.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to look for sources of replacement weapons as it scrapes the barrel for repurposed or adapted missiles to launch at Ukraine. Iran may not be the only country willing to supply Russia in the future.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. It says possession of nuclear weapons allows you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.

If that isn’t the message the US and the west want other states to receive, there should be more direct and assertive means to disillusion Moscow.

The nearly $3 billion package is among the largest packages of military equipment sent from the Pentagon to Ukraine since the war began. It comes as Ukraine prepares for intensive fighting in the spring as the weather warms.

The announcement was made as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington, DC to plead for more air defense capabilities as Russian strikes have disrupted the power and water supply in his country.

“It becomes a real humanitarian issue when you’re trying to deprive an entire country of its electrical grid and water and everything else,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, a 22-year Army veteran who now works as a Russia analyst at the Center for a New American Security. I believe that it is necessary for Ukrainians to sustain themselves in the fight.

If missiles are used to target something or someone, the battery can’t cover the entire of Ukraine and has a strike range of less than 100 miles.

“That will do a good job of defending maybe a single city, like Kyiv, against some threats. But it’s not putting a bubble over Ukraine,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Is the new Patriot missile system a sign of U.S. and Ukrainian militaries’ concerns about Ukraine’s air defense capability?

Even on a compressed schedule, the training requirements mean that the Patriot system is unlikely to be operational until late winter or early spring, perhaps in February or March.

Cancian said haste could hamper the system’s effectiveness, if Ukrainians didn’t know how to stop Russians from destroying it. That in turn could damage the political will to send future assistance to Ukraine, he said.

“If the Ukrainians had a year or two to assimilate the system, that wouldn’t be any problem. They don’t have a long period of time. Cancian said, “They want to do this in a couple weeks.”

The recent Russian airstrike barrages and ongoing assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure have turned up pressure on the U.S. and its allies to do more.

In addition to the Patriot battery, the new aid package announced Wednesday also includes additional HIMARS ammunition, mortars, artillery rounds and tens of thousands of GRAD rockets and tank ammunition.

Kelly Greico, a defense analyst at the Stimson Center, called the announcement “a sign that there is a real deep concern” among U.S. officials about Ukraine’s air defense capability.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144662505/us-ukraine-patriot-missile-system

A Defense Minister in Kiev: Fighting Back Against a Russian Army-Induced Bomber-Bomb Attack on Ukrainian Airfields

At $4 million apiece, the PAC-3 missiles that accompany the Patriot are much more expensive than Stingers or the missiles launched by HIMARS. They are costly enough that Ukrainians must be judicious in how they are used, analysts said. Cancian said that you can’t just let the things fly.

After October, Ukrainian air defenses were more focused on protecting frontline troops in the east and south.

GreICO said that the choice was terrible between protecting civilians from these brutal attacks and trying to ensure you have the long-term military wherewithal to continue to resist the Russian war effort.

Since some cruise missiles are launched from bombers that fly from the airfields hit in the attacks, the strikes could potentially destroy the missiles on the ground at the Russian airfields before they can be deployed.

When the first Ukrainian long range strike on Russian military targets hit, it was said that you should fight back, according to an interview with a former Ukrainian defense minister.

The Kinzhal, the most modern missile in the arsenal, is in short supply and can only be reached in a matter of minutes.

In recent weeks Western allies, including Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, have promised to ship tanks to Ukraine to help its forces fight back against a Russian offensive that is expected to begin when weather conditions improve in the spring.

Biden affirmed the new commitment in a telephone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. Germany will also send new fighting vehicles, as well as a battery to protect against Russian air attacks.

Zelensky wanted those systems because they would allow his military to hit Russian missiles at a higher altitude than they have been able to before.

The Case for Bad Security Communications in the Russian Army: An Overview of the Makivka Crisis during a December 13 Decelerating Christmas Day Attack

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. His views are not reflected in this commentary. View more opinion at CNN.

Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a Ukrainian strike on the occupied city of Makiivka killed dozens of troops, with Russia’s Ministry of Defense claiming its soldiers’ cell phone use exposed their location.

It’s clear that President Putin called for a truce on the Orthodox Christmas day after the deadliest attack on Russian servicemen. The move was seen as a cynical attempt to get some breathing space in the face of a very bad start to the year for Russian forces.

Russian officials said that four rockets from the Ukrainians hit the school that housed the forces, near an arms depot. The Russian air defenses shot down two of the rockets.

The satellite-guided HIMARS — short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — currently have a range of 80 kilometers. A longer-range 300-kilometer HIMARS has not yet been authorized, despite repeated Ukrainian pleas. The Biden administration is worried that the longer range system could lead to an expansion of the war.

Chris, a senior fellow for the Defense program and co-head of the gaming lab at the center for new american security, has told me that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is largely due to the reality that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

It’s a view shared by other experts. James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me in an email that bad security communications may be commonplace in the Russian Army.

The deaths of troops in Makiivka are part of a larger picture of soldiers being shipped to the front lines with little training and subpar equipment.

A number of prisoners from Russian prisons have been freed and are on their way to the Ukrainian side. The use of cell phones would be very appealing to prisoners used to years of isolation with little or no outside contact.

Changing the direction of the Russian army on the Ukraine front: Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister after the Makiivka attack

The question is when the blame will begin to fall on Putin himself since he has seemed ill-equipped to change the leadership at the top. The last change was the appointment of Sergei Surovikin as the first person to be placed in overall command of all Russian forces on the Ukraine front — an army general formerly in charge of the brutal Russian bombardment of Aleppo in Syria.

Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo and was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, attacked the Ministry of Defense for its “blatant attempt to smear blame” in suggesting it was the troops’ own use of cell phones that led to the precision of the attack.

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense could be “so sure” that the location of soldiers lodging in a school building could not have been determined using drone surveillance or a local informant.

A month earlier, the defense ministry underwent a shakeup when Col. Gen. Mikhail Y. Mizintsev, known to Western officials as the “butcher of Mariupol,” was named deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics, replacing four-star Gen. Dmitri V. Bulgakov, who had held the post since 2008. The location of the arms depot, adjacent to the Makiivka recruits, would likely have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

Still, Putin-favorite Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister — as recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

The West seems to have no intention of allowing its support for Ukraine to end. Both the US and Europe, which recently committed to raising their funding by $2 billion in 2023, appear determined to see Ukraine through this winter and beyond.

Russia thought that if the White House stopped Nord Stream 2, they would see that European power was no longer flowing through Berlin.

The United States does not want the new, high-capacity supply of high-capacity cables to replace the old overland lines that traveled from Ukraine to the west.

The decision by Biden and Scholz on tanks cannot prevent Russia from reaching its goals, according to Putin’s spokesman.

Europe has been slow to respond to the deep fissures in US politics and the uncertainty another Trumpian-style presidency could wreak on its allies. Decades of a reasonably unshakable reliance, if not complete trust, in the US, has been replaced by stubborn European pragmatism – and Germany leads the way.

Europe was able to find its moral compass at a time when it needed it the most. Scholz has found unexpected metal in his ponderous, often stop/go/wait traffic-light governing coalition and won thunderous applause in Germany’s Bundestag on Wednesday as he flashed a rare moment of steely leadership.

There have been many different aspects to the transformation from legacy Soviet force to NATO clone, but bringing NATO member states along with their politicians is the main one. In parliament on Wednesday, Scholz made that point.

“Trust us,” he said, “we won’t put you in danger.” He spelled out how his government had already handled Russia’s aggression and how fears of a freezing winter and economic collapse were not realized. He said that the government was able to deal with the crisis.

His speech was praised as loudly as he said it. In short, Scholz got it right for Germany, bringing with him a population typically averse to war and projecting their own power, and deeply divided over how much they should aid Ukraine in killing Russians and potentially angering the Kremlin.

The mixed messaging has some Muscovites CNN spoke with after the announcements by Biden and Scholz on tanks confused. Some said Russia would win regardless, and lumped the US and Germany together as the losers, but a significant proportion were worried about the war, dismayed at the heavy death toll and frustrated that Putin ignored their concerns.

It’s not clear if Scholz is aware of Putin’s softer stance or if he thinks that it’s relevant at this moment, but his actions, sending tanks, may help him loosen his grip on power.

Longer debates about the next military moves for Ukraine could be coming and will likely signal to Zelensky that weapons supplies will be on more of a German leash, and less unilaterally led by Washington.

This shift in the power dynamic may not change the way the war is fought but could impact the contours of a final deal and shape a lasting peace when it comes.

Russia-Ukraine War-Latest-News-Tanks: The American Embassy in Moscow arrives at the Kremlin after Russia’s Russian Embassy leaves Ukraine

Ukrainian troops will begin training in the United Kingdom to use the country’s Challenger 2, following the British government’s pledge to send a squadron of the tanks to Ukraine.

The World Economic Outlook will be released on Tuesday morning in Singapore. The IMF has stressed that the Russia-Ukraine war is a big factor causing economic slowdown and recession in some countries.

A group of European Commission leaders is expected to visit Ukraine on Thursday and European Union leaders plan to hold a summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the following day.

The military of Ukraine retreated from the eastern town of Soledar after a difficult battle. Russian forces continued to fight around Bakhmut and other parts of eastern Ukraine.

At a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., the new US Ambassador to Russia arrived in Moscow. Tracy was heckled by the protesters as she entered the Russian Foreign Ministry to present her credentials.

The Baltic states asked the Russian ambassadors to leave after the Kremlin branded them as “Russophobia.” Russia’s envoys to the Baltic states were told to leave after they were accused of expelling the Estonian ambassador.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1150812041/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-tanks-jan-30

The State of Ukraine: News from the U.S. and from the Cold War to the Middle East and Beyond, from NPR at the LEP Investigative Report on Ukraine

You can read past recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. Listen to the State of Ukraine show on NPR and receive updates all day.

US and European officials have similarly told CNN and said publicly that the F-16 fighter jets are impractical, and note that Ukraine has not been conducting many air missions with the fighter planes it already has because of the danger posed by Russia’s anti-aircraft systems, officials told CNN.

There are training courses that we can do in Europe. “It’s more convenient because we have to use a similar landscape and we have to have similar weather conditions.”

For the Leopard tanks, training could take between half a year and a year. He says he hopes we will do it within one month or two months.

Reznikov says Ukraine also needs time to set up supply chains for fuel and spare parts and also train mechanics to maintain and repair the new tanks. The new tanks will be a game changer, as Ukraine tries to regain occupied territory just like the high mobility rocket systems did in Kherson.

“I’m sure that’s absolutely realistic,” he says about the F-16s, noting that in the past, Ukraine has also secured other weapons that at first seemed out of reach, including HIMARS and Patriot air defense missiles.

President Biden seemed to suggest on Monday that the U.S. would not donate F-16s to Ukraine, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Tagesspiegel newspaper published Sunday that “the question of combat aircraft does not arise at all.”

Western allies are scrutinizing the government of Ukraine, says Reznikov. Ukrainian journalists recently reported that Reznikov’s own ministry was sometimes purchasing food and other supplies for troops at inflated prices.

Most defense ministry expenses were public before the Russian invasion. Now most are classified for security reasons. He says transparency is a delicate issue during wartime, but he is working with parliament to change laws and make defense expenditures at least “semi-transparent.”

The United States, Russia, and Ukraine are willing to send F-16 planes to the next war stage: a counterexample to the US and allied powers

“It’s not a piece of cake, but I will do it,” he says. “Because my principle is zero tolerance with corruption. The new Ukraine has to be a newer version of the old-fashioned Soviet Ukraine that has a legacy of corruption.

But that push is being met with skepticism by US and allied officials who say the jets would be impractical, both because they require considerable training and because Russia has extensive anti-aircraft systems that could easily shoot them down.

More puzzling to US officials is why Ukraine has made such a public show of asking for F-16s, when in private the jets are rarely mentioned atop Ukraine’s wish list of weapons.

“I don’t think fighter jets are easier than ATACMS, but I believe we need to try to push,” the Ukrainian military official told CNN, referring to the long-range missiles they still want.

“We are providing them what we think they are capable of operating, maintaining, and sustaining,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said last week. “The F-16 – this is a very complicated system.”

The Dutch prime minister told reporters on Monday that sending the planes would be a big next step. Poland’s Prime Minister said on Monday that his government would only send its fighter jets to NATO in full coordination.

“Our partners are aware of the types of weapons we need – first and foremost, fighter jets and long-range missiles that can hit targets up to 300 km away,” he said in a briefing. Weapons of defense and deterrence are what these are. All these solutions are being unlocked. I have told our diplomats in key capitals to make this a priority.

A top Ukrainian national security official said that Russia is preparing for a maximum escalation of the war in Ukraine as soon as the next few weeks.

The war will be defining months in the future, according to the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

“Not just on land, but on the sea and in air as well,” Natalia Humeniuk, head of the United Coordinating Press Center of Security and Defense Forces of the South of Ukraine, said on national television.

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Ministry: The transition from hostilities to high-energy wars in the coming era of a decisive crisis

Military personnel from the two countries will be planning the use of troops based on their past experience in armed conflicts, according to the ministry.

“We are on the edge of a very active phase of hostilities, February and March will be very active,” Andriy Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, said on national television.