All this week, slower news platforms have coughed up four-years-of-war content. This is the best I have seen. If you want to see what 48 months of conventional war looks like, for real, go here:
I’ve slapped a few of the less well-distributed four-year images in here.
Also, an image appeared of a Ukrainian drone painted up to resemble the livery of Leonid Bykov’s plane in the classic Soviet war movie “Only the Old Guys Go to Battle.” Can anyone, please, identify the aircraft?
On to the week’s business. Probably the single biggest development in the war for the week, for my money, was the Ukrainian long-range drone forces really hitting their stride and pretty much blowing one big Russian chemical/explosives factory off the map. I’m not saying it was Flamingo missiles, but I’ll show the pix lower down. It was something big.
Considering how hard the US government tried to keep long-range strike weapons out of Ukrainian hands, it’s just funny to watch the Ukrainians plaster things in Russia. The long-range strike capacity that the smart people in the Biden and Trump administrations said the Ukrainians shouldn’t have, well, it took years, but now the Ukrainians have it, and I doubt they’re going to ask permission or worry much about antagonizing Russia.
The front
Both sides seem to be sorting out the new contours of the kill zone in the Hulyaipole sector, so the situation is like one of the early scenes in Terminator, trashed landscape, drones everywhere, humans trying to sneak from hiding site to hiding site.
Increasingly, it’s becoming clear that a basic open-source intelligence (OSINT) method used throughout the war to determine control of territory is losing its reliability. The technique was simple: observe footage of one side shelling or attacking a position, geolocate it, and infer that the targeted side had troops on the ground at that grid.
But in the current environment, troops don’t hold ground – they hide in it. If they appear in the open, the only certainty is that they won’t remain there for long.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and the military leadership are claiming they’ve retaken about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) and eight villages in this sector over the past three weeks, but that’s not confirmed, and certainly, we aren’t seeing many Russian prisoners of war (POWs). However, Russian difficulty in operating without Starlink is real, and the further the Russian soldier is out on a limb, the more it’s a problem for him. The Russians are working around dead Starlinks by, in rough terms, mounting antennae that extend Wi-Fi into the kill zone; these naturally have become targets for the Ukrainian drones.
A couple of Ukrainian assault infantry commanders talked to the media this week, and according to them, the point of the Hulyaipole counterattack wasn’t so much to liberate territory as to grab ground so that the spring offensive in the south is fought out on ground the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has picked, as opposed to the Russian army.
In Pokrovsk, according to multiple sources, the pace of Russian attacks is falling off. Some would see this as a devious Russian plan to amass reserves and spring a war-winning surprise attack. My evaluation in unchanged: it is not possible to send troops into the teeth of a strong, prepared defense indefinitely and take heavy losses, without losing the ability to attack because of shortages of warm bodies suitable for being sent to attack.
The French OSINT analyst Clement Molin this week did a big review of artillery impacts across the front and concluded the same sort of preparing for the next Russian offensive was going on in the east: “This means Ukraine probably regained control of most of the 2022 defensive line in this sector (obsolete, but the ditch, the barbed wire and the dragon teeth still offer good defense). We do not have all the confirmations, but with the impact of artillery strikes, we can be nearly sure... Ukrainian artillery advanced, Russian retreated…This situation largely benefits Ukraine. Russia lost in three weeks at least four months of infiltrations far behind the lines. This will buy time to better Pokrovsk’s defenses.”
I am pretty much in lockstep with that evaluation; if you look at the front as a whole, about 95-98% of it is a death trap where Russian combat activity seems only to generate Russian casualties. Thursday was a pretty typical day; there were about 240 Russian attacks at locations across the front; in two places, there is credible evidence that they picked up small plots of ground.
But yes, if you look hard, you can still find sources and analysts that will tell you Pokrovsk is about to fall to the Russians.
AFU structure and organization
Over the week, Zelensky promoted six young, new generation officers, I suspect despite resistance from General Oleksandr Syrsky and the old generation old boys network. Denys Prokopenko of Azov is now the youngest Brigadier General in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and quite possibly the youngest general in any army on the European continent. He is now a corps commander. I am informed by several Azov sources 1st Corps feels fairly solid in its sector of the line, although things are hardly simple. Details with short bios here.
Bombarding Ukraine
The Russians launched a sizable strike overnight Saturday-Sunday, which was a little out of character; usually, they seem to prefer workdays. Kyiv was the main target, but also strikes were sent towards Odesa, Lviv. As before, it seems like the Russians were trying to demolish power grid and heating infrastructure. Again, they shot some missiles at the Kropyvnytskyi substation nexus.
The figures on weapons launched/shot down or decoyed were: 297/274 strike drones, 4/4 Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missiles, 22/6 Iskander-M/S-400 missiles, 18/17 Kh-101 bomber-launched missiles, 2/2 Iksander-K cruise missiles, and 4/4 Kh-59 cruise missiles.
In Kyiv, a civilian building to the south of the city was crushed by a missile; one child died on the way to the hospital. In the Fastiv region, farther south, a man died from an explosion and falling debris. Seventeen were injured. One hundred buildings were damaged.
I have strong evidence that the Russians attempted, once again, to hit the power stations northeast of Kyiv and that in some part they missed and that in some part the incoming weapons got intercepted. This is not to say no damage was done, but rather that by some random chance, I can confirm some of the intercepts the Ukrainian air force claimed really happened.
All ballistics that hit Ukraine were manufactured in late 2025-early 2026. We are actually being attacked with missiles straight from the factory, Advisor to the Minister of Defense Serhiy “Flash” said.
The next big strike came overnight Wednesday-Thursday. Again, the main target was Kyiv plus power grid hubs supplying reserve electricity to Kyiv. What got launched by the Russian Federation were two Zircon anti-ship missiles from occupied Crimea (to minimize reaction time), 11 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles from Russia’s Bryansk and Rostov regions, 24 Kh-101 cruise missiles from above the Vologda region and two Kh-69 missiles (by bombers), and 420 attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): Shahed, Gerbera, and Italmas types.
Shot down or foxed from attack route: 2 Zircon anti-ship missiles, 4 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles, 24 Kh-101 cruise missiles, 2 Kh-69 guided aircraft missiles, and 374 enemy Shahed, Gerbera, Italmas UAVs and drones of other types.
So the picture is pretty obvious – Ukraine has a pretty effective air defense network, it knocks down over 90% of what is thrown at it if you except ballistic missiles. But ballistic missiles have an about 50% interception rate, and everyone knows this is because the Americans see more important uses for their Patriot interceptor missile stocks than selling them to NATO so NATO can send the missiles to Ukraine.
I can’t yet say with absolute confidence the Russians are running out of ballistic missiles, but this is the second month running in which the Ukrainian air force has claimed the Russians beefed up their Iskander-M missile salvoes, which are dangerous, with S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, which are inaccurate and wasteful.
Bombarding Russia
The really explosive development this week blew up in the Smolensk region near a very old, historical Russian town called Dorogobuzh. Overnight Feb. 25-26, the Ukrainians sent about 150 drones into the Russian Federation’s airspace, and about one-third of them zeroed in on the Smolensk region and an explosives manufacturing plant there.
Air defense was insufficient to stop all the drones. In some cases, of course, drone hits don’t cause catastrophic destruction. In this case, the drone doing the attacking was, according to the Ukrainian drone forces guys, an aircraft called FP-1, which carries 60-kilogram (132-pound) explosives warheads out to 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) sometimes, and heavier warheads if the target is nearer.
Smolensk is relatively close, maybe 300 kilometers (186 miles) inside Russia. The biggest known FP-1 warhead that I know of is 120 kilograms (265 pounds). But this is the Ukrainians, they are absolutely capable of tweaking a drone to squeeze maximum payload when a shorter range allows it.
As you can see from the image, if you bombard an explosives factory, it sometimes explodes. For those of you who are interested, the very first reports of this strike filtered into the Ukrainian military news feeds with the simple sentence that, for PG audiences, I would translate: “Dorogobuzh is royally screwed” (Дорогобужу – Пиздец).
The OSINT geolocators had very convincing evidence uploaded to the internet in a matter of hours: their conclusion was that drone strikes had set off a chain of explosions along a rail line, into and through the factory rail terminal, and into the main factory warehouse. Seven dead, at least 10 injured, total lockdown on the news in the Smolensk region.
The Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) factoid is that the factory is pretty much for sure a total write-off, and also, it produces about 10% of the military explosives (or more exactly, the critical component, aluminum nitrate, for all uses) in the Russian Federation.
It is worth recording that no less than TASS on Sunday complained that 172 Ukrainian drones had breached Russian Federation airspace during the day, somewhere between one quarter and one third of them flew to Moscow, and then circled around taunting air defenses and forcing all four Moscow airports to shut down for the afternoon and most of the evening.
Also on Sunday, the Ukrainian special forces released video of nocturnal drone strikes, supposedly taking place on Friday, in which Ukrainian drones flew all the way to Russia’s Orlov region, zeroed in on a military airfield, and blew up an Mi-8 transport helicopter and a Ka-52 attack helicopter.
On Tuesday, there was confirmation about the Flamingo strike against the Iskander-M ballistic missile fuel plant; imagery appeared showing a hole in the roof of the facility big enough to drive a dump truck through. This was on Feb. 20, and the target was a machining and fuel-processing plant in Udmurtia, upper Volga region, about 1,400-1,500 kilometers (870-932 miles) from probable Ukrainian launch sites. At the time, we knew the Ukrainians tried to damage missile fuel production there, but how successful they were at that wasn’t clear.
Thanks to overhead imagery and industrious OSINT observers, the world now knows that the Votkinsk plant took a hit from at least a single weapon – possibly an FP-5 Flamingo missile – galvanizing shop No. 22, and another shop in the adjacent building 19. The explosion was visible inside the building, not on the roof. The shock wave was powerful enough to blow double-glazed windows out of their frames 70 meters (230 feet) from the strike site. This is a lot of explosive force if the blast started out inside the building.
Almost all reports said this was proof positive of an effective Flamingo missile strike, not least because the Flamingo carries a one-ton-plus (1,150-kilogram / 2,535-pound) warhead. When asked about it, Zelensky didn’t deny it but would only go so far as to say he was glad Flamingo missiles were reaching the target area. It’s not clear what real damage was done to Iskander-M missile production. But it wasn’t helped.
Additional Ukrainian bombardment note – the AFU seems to be going after Russian Pantsir air defense systems energetically, and unless I miss my count, they blew up at least four systems this week, one on top of the slag heap by Azovstal in Mariupol. It seems like this is an ongoing special forces (SSO) operation. If it keeps up, the Ukrainian drones are going to hit more things. The focus seems to be on occupied territories, so perhaps this is a harbinger of a series of short-range drone raids, and as we have all learned, the shorter the range, the bigger the warhead.
Pink bandits inbound
This section wasn’t planned, but I can’t, in all fairness, leave it out. As I write this (late Friday afternoon, Feb. 27), I am seeing reports that there is a big drone raid into Russia in progress. The general direction is central Russia and probably the upper Volga with penetration of airspace in Kursk and Belgorod regions, and there are now 13 ( !) Russian oblasts with air raid warnings in effect, which is a record for the entire war. Also, for eight (!) of those regions, this is the first air raid warning of the war
Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Perm Krai, Tatarstan, Orenburg Oblast, Samara Oblast, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Penza, Belgorod, Saratov, and Ulyanovsk regions, and the Krasnodar Territory. Flight restrictions are in effect at the airports of Saratov, Penza, Nizhnekamsk, Samara, Cheboksary, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Perm and Izhevsk.
Final note, I am seeing reports, unconfirmed so far, that some of the weapons causing all this chaos aren’t drones, they’re Flamingo missiles, and that supposedly some of them are flying low above the water over the Don River as they move deeper into Russia. There are also images from about midday of something sizable that blew up in Kursk; whatever it was, it was a good deal bigger than a standard FP-1 drone, but what exactly, and what was being targeted, still isn’t clear.
ADDITION: The Flamingo manufacturer, Fire Point, just published a slick video of its next product, the FP-7, which is an S-300 anti-aircraft missile reconfigured and fitted with better guidance to function as a ballistic missile; it’s now officially in testing.
I wish I could communicate how stupid the White House sounds when its talking heads say the Ukrainians should surrender now because Russia will prevail and because Ukraine has no cards.
Bang up in Belgorod
A final, less apocalyptic but probably equally telling development in the Ukrainian bombardment campaign against Russia was related to media by no less than Vyacheslav Gladkov, luckless governor of the equally luckless Russian region Belgorod, which the Ukrainians have selected as the counter-bombardment target for attacks against the power grid, heating, and water supply. It’s Ukrainians targeting civilian infrastructure, and that’s not allowed in war, but most Ukrainians would point out they didn’t start it.
For a picture of how effective the Ukrainians have been in turning out the lights in Belgorod (and how information about that is suppressed in Russia), go here.
Gladkov, as the government’s point man, has had the unpleasant job of going to the media and making statements and essentially telling taxpayers what his bosses in the Kremlin want him to tell them: first, the government promises to fix everything immediately and shoot down all the Ukrainian drones, and second, don’t complain, be patriotic, Russia will prevail!
According to Gladkov, on Tuesday, following yet more explosions setting sub-stations in Belgorod on fire and once again shutting down the city heating/power plant, he had just returned to the city following a “business trip.”
The train broke down near Belgorod, so Governor Gladkov set out on a nearby road, found a local resident, introduced himself, and asked for a ride 600-700 meters (.37-.43 miles) away. It was “early in the morning.” The resident refused on the grounds that he is dissatisfied with the way the government is run in the Belgorod region, and because he pays taxes so that governors can travel, so why put wear and tear on his car?
Gladkov commented: “Frankly, it seemed to me that there’s some kind of internal resentment toward the authorities, either regional or local, so I’ll… go and talk (with other officials) about what the grievance is, what we haven’t accomplished, and what the internal dissatisfaction with the government’s actions is.”
This brilliant understatement followed Gladkov’s Tuesday statement to the public, marking the start of the fourth year of the war, in which he dropped pearls like: “I am confident that we have become stronger, we are confidently moving toward victory, and we will not spare any cost….we need to be resilient and patriotic. Strong…and patient.”
The Ukrainian drones hit Belgorod again on Thursday, targeting the city’s power plant and throwing another 10,000 power users off the grid.
Banzai! (maybe)
Regarding Ukraine’s Patriot interceptor missile woes, on Friday, the new Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, delivered a policy speech saying, in indirect Japanese fashion, that her government wants to loosen restrictions on Japanese arms exports and generally spend more money on armaments, because China.
She and her party have a supermajority in the Diet, so on paper, they can do what they want, although apparently in Japanese politics, it’s important that drastic change not look like change. But anyway, she didn’t say a word about Patriot missiles, which Japan manufactures under US license, and Japan is the only country that does that.
The very same day, you decide if it was coincidental, Japan’s major news agency Kyodo News scored and published an exclusive interview with Zelensky who, speaking a lot less directly than he does in public with the Germans or the British, said that his and Takaichi’s representatives are discussing ways Japan’s strict rules on lethal arms exports might be loosened, and that it would be “very helpful” if Japan opened a “corridor for the dialogue” on defense cooperation. Japan already gives Ukraine substantial non-lethal aid – $20 billion has been pledged, mostly for infrastructure.
On Feb. 21 Zelensky talking to reporters in Kyiv about his interview with Kyodo said he believes there “should be a new chapter of defense cooperation with Japan,” especially on missiles and advanced defense systems, and also Takaichi is welcome to visit any time she wants, and definitely Ukraine is upset with the 10,000 North Korean troops nearby in Russia gaining modern war experience that might be used against Japan.
In any case, it is now out in the open that Ukraine has just about run through its supply of PAC-3 interceptor missiles. On Friday, Defense Minister Federov, talking to the media, said that Ukraine is now trying to put together a consortium with Western states to build the missiles or something like them in Ukraine/Europe. The way he was talking, the capacity is there, and the money too, but the problem is time putting together the manufacturing chains. He did not mention that the faster approach – PAC-3 manufactured under license – would require a green light from the US, which many doubt the Trump regime would even consider.
Trust a Muscovite to be Russian – fifth year ennui
This section is about a Russian/American writer who got Ukraine ridiculously wrong; this section isn’t a war update per se.
On Feb. 22, The New York Times published a 4,800-word (!) opinion piece by Masha Gessen, with photos by Mila Teshaieva. Here is the link.
In this article, Gessen – an American woman living in Moscow until she was a teenager, and then emigrating – commits what I consider to be all manner of gross errors, silliness and idiocies.
Among them are the themes that Ukrainians are despairing because the Russo-Ukraine War isn’t working out like the Great Patriotic War, that the present war has left Ukrainians aimless in life and without personal relationships, and that Ukrainians see the war as endless. I say that with a perspective like that, I am quite confident I could go underground to a Tube station in 1940 and report accurately that Londoners were tired, despairing, and more than ready to give up and Herr Hitler the win.
It’s of course bothersome that the NYT extended its wide platform so that monstrosities and calumnies like that might spread among the reading public, but deconstructing a 4,800 word article would be two or three reviews all by themselves and no matter how riled up I might get, NYT isn’t going to change its editorial policy or pick different opinion contributors because of this review.
Still, if you want a perfect specimen of an outsider parachuting into Ukraine with a remit to report accurately but, because of bias or ignorance or personal agenda (or all of the above), arrives at what seem to me to be some pretty ludicrous conclusions, me, I recommend Gessen’s article to you. Who knows, maybe you will see she’s right and I’m wrong.
I will, however, offer you one direct quote from the article. The context is that Gessen is in Lviv visiting one of those rehabilitation centers where AFU soldiers go to recover after getting one or more limbs blown off. Here’s what she wrote:
“I interviewed two men who seemed preternaturally cheerful, full of hope for the future; both were fairly newly in love. Each of them was missing both legs above the knee – one because a rocket hit the trench where he was operating a machine gun, the other because an attack caused the loaded drone he was carrying to explode in his hands. This man is also missing one hand.”
Everyone is entitled to his/her/their opinion, and I’ll die on the principle that opinion has every right to reach the public, and that absolutely includes Masha Gessen and her cynicism.
But as it happens, I too, have met wounded AFU veterans. Lots of them. Four years is a long time.
All I can say is that if a person encounters a pair of Ukrainian combat veterans who’ve suffered severe injuries but their buddies got them to hospital so they survived, and those two survivors are upbeat, planning for the future and in love – meaning that somewhere out there, there are two young Ukrainian ladies who also just fell in love – and all of that took place in a war where the soldiers are defending their homes and families and fighting for nothing less than Interdependence and Freedom; well if you DON’T see heroism, bravery, inspiration and hope in all that, then I honestly feel sorry for you.
Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.