Ukraine discovers a unique way to locate mines.
These people don’t deserve this misery. But neither did the Ukrainians downstream from the dam that Russia intentionally destroyed.
An update on the partisan attack in Mariupol.
He chose poorly.
Ukraine has found that drones can deliver mortar rounds more accurately, thus avoiding wasting scarce rounds.
This weekend I sat down with a Ukrainian SOF drone operator, and he described an operation in which a Ukrainian mortar unit fired 46 120 mm rounds at a Russian target — only 1 out of those 46 shots was a direct hit. The SOF drone team then took over.
Using a single drone, they flew four back-to-back sorties and dropped four 120 mm rounds (taken from the nearby mortar unit) on the Russian target. Four out of four direct hits. The target was done.
In an attritional war in which ammunition supplies are a limiting factor, drones are a potent force multiplier.
They are an invaluable way to increase precision — both through ISR, as well as strikes — in order to maximize the effect of available ammunition.
Ukraine still has a fifth column to worry about. You’d think these people would see the death and destruction that Russia has brought to them and react.
Besides the Russian military, there’s another thing that Ukrainian troops and police are being forced to contend with. According to interviews with dozens of soldiers, police officers, and civilians around Kupiansk, many of the local residents that remain are pro-Russian. Some of them are former or active collaborators of enemy troops.
"Subjectively speaking, there are many separatists here," said Yevhen Didkovskyi, a community relations officer with the 138th Battalion deployed in the area. "People who hate us on principle."
Kupiansk is not a separatist city as such. According to local police, pro-Russian people were in the minority, especially before most residents fled west. But closeness to Russia’s border, prolonged Soviet entanglement and nonstop access to Kremlin propaganda conspired to breed resentment and pro-Russian sympathies at higher rates than normal.
This can be deadly for the troops and the civilians who help them. Multiple soldiers told the Kyiv Independent that their living quarters were targeted in ways that suggest that someone fed coordinates to the enemy. A few soldiers quipped that people in the local marketplace are the first to know to clear out of the way when there’s something incoming.
Russia bombed a kindergarten in Lviv.
A kindergarten.
Russia is missing at least one, maybe two, colonels.
It’s easy to give away other peoples’ land.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry rejected this idiotic idea almost immediately.
This is big news only because it is the first time that an element of the legal discussion about how Ukraine could become a NATO member has been discussed publicly.
One of the accession scenarios could involve the rejection of the territories if Ukraine does not return them but insists on joining. After all, if there were practical tools to force Russia to return the Ukrainian occupied territories, they would have been used by now. Ukraine does not have to join NATO if it has to give up its territories. On the other hand, I think this discussion is too early, because it is unlikely that NATO will consider Ukraine's accession in the coming years. And we have the capabilities and resources to regain our territories.
Non-military aid from the United States for Ukraine.
I wonder what a song about love of Putin would sound like.
They signed up to fight for glory.
This cat takes a break from advising Ukrainian commanders.
And finally, puppies and kittens.