Noteworthy here is that Russia isn't using as many Shaheds anymore even though the idea was that they'd be ramping up to use more and more. Instead, Russia has been using a lot of extremely expensive high performance cruise missiles like the Kalibr, KH-101, KH-31, Kinzhal, KH-22, and S-300/400 in ground attack mode.
The attack this week (81 missiles) was not the largest in 2023 – the largest was one month ago with 105 total. This attack was different in terms of type of systems used, launch locations, variation of launchers and missile trajectories, making it complex to defend against. /4 It featured 6 Kinzhal hypersonic ALBMs – the largest salvo so far of them in the war and the largest recorded for combat use of this missile. Russia doesn't have large numbers of this system, rumored in the dozens. More on that: /5
Ukrainian officials say they cannot intercept Kinzhal, Kh-22 ASCMs and S-300 (SA-20) air defense missiles repurposed for land attack roles. too fast, trajectory is difficult. They claim Russia has fired 210 Kh-22 since 2022, none of them intercepted. /6 The Kh-22 (AS-4) Soviet-era ASCM was designed to be an aircraft carrier killer. It is not very precise, but it is supersonic. /7
From the info that I have, there is no set pattern to the makeup of the strike packages this year. Many are ASCMs or SAMs purposed for land-attack roles. A few reasons for this in no particular order: experimentation to see what works, stockpile issues, launcher readiness. /8
Note, no SS-26/SSC-7 in quite some time, probably as inventory is low. They are using different combinations of balloons, Shaheds, timing waves of missiles, shifting launch locations, and so on, to reduce interception rates. /8
Not depicted in the chart - each strike originates from slightly different locations. They haven’t launched much from Belarus in the last month, according to Ukrainian officials. It's a mix from Belgorod, Caspian+ Black Sea, Rostov, Kursk, and occupied Zaporizhzhia. /9
While the Russians likely know the limitations and strengths of Ukraine’s soviet/Russian origin SAMs, they are likely trying to probe weaknesses in NASAMS or IRIS-T performance. /10
Back in November, NASAMs had a 100% success rate according to SECDEF Austin. /11
I don't doubt that an AMRAAM can achieve a 100% success rate against cruise missiles. It is extraordinarily capable and intended to engage fighter jets deploying countermeasures and high G maneuvers, so a cruise missile is fish in a barrel for it.
As for overall targets – most of these strikes are continuing to target the power grid, an oil refinery, defense industrial targets – what is called “critical infrastructure” in Russian mil strategy. However, missiles are striking residential buildings. /12
Russia has a decent amount of firepower to throw at fixed targets like buildings, but is extremely bad at hitting moving targets because Russia seriously neglected ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) capabilities. Honestly speaking, the reason Ukraine turned the war around is because outstanding American ISR is being fed to Ukraine. The US identifies the Russian ammo dumps and HQs, then feeds the targets to Ukraine for HIMARS strikes. Russia seriously neglected these expensive capabilities in favor of having bigger firepower numbers on paper, but all that firepower is useless if you can't find targets for it. One of the greatest lessons of this war for any in doubt, is that the American warfighting doctrine of C3ISR which has been around since at least the 90s, won against Russias "just have the most tanks and artillery and throw them at the enemy" doctrine which has remain essentially unchanged from WW2. A handful of HIMARS were able to shut down Russia's offensive operations by taking out ammo dumps and HQs over June/July 2022, and Russia's forced mitigation measures of pulling HQs and ammo dumps further back and dispersing them more, have hampered its ability to mass the force required to break through anywhere, which is why they have to resort to Wagner's human wave tactics which... well, they're going to run out of prisoners long before Ukraine runs out of trenches.
Is Russia following their CONOPs for PGMs? Yes and no. On one hand there is an adherence to striking critical infrastructure, but on the other hand they not found lasting effects from this approach and haven’t switched to a fundamentally different strategy. /15
Ukraine just repairs their grid. Power was up again for something like 90% of people within hours of Russia's latest big attack. Russia can only launch these attacks every few weeks. So these attacks at this point are a strategic failure and only a mild nuisance.
Final thought - Russia is facing PGM inventory issues and is experimenting with what it has left. These attacks strain Ukrainian air defenses and this is a problem over time. The attacks come every few weeks. thanks for reading/end.
It has already been said that Russia's stockpiles of missiles are gone, and now Russia is just relying on how fast it can produce more. In the longer term I'd assume that Russia will be able to pump out Shaheds, but who knows how long they'll take to get their new factory set up and what its capacity will be. Using their Cold War era higher end cruise missiles is a waste, since those missiles are meant to sink carriers, not be thrown at heavy concrete buildings.
source: https://twitter.com/MassDara/status/1634300311744438272
That's good and all, but there's no way for Ukraine to 'win' this. I heard idiotic ideas like Ukraine retaking Crimea (ignoring the whole manpower shortages that Ukraine tries to downplay as it tries to get more 'volunteers') after this many years of being effectively Russian held, does not have a civilian population there that would want to support Ukraine so congrats, if they somehow did, they'll probably get an insurgency.
Taking the East is out too because the amount of bad blood created out of years of civil war means you'd have to repopulate that entire area. Good luck convincing people to move closer to a hostile nuclear armed power's borders. Russia has an out of just getting the east and that's it. It doesn't need ALL of Ukraine, just the East and that's feasible.
Russia is the attacker, Ukraine is the defender. Ukraine wins as long as they don't surrender or get conquered. That's literally how war works.
If Ukraine can't take back the occupied areas (it very likely can given how fucking stupid Russian leadership is attriting itself into weakness throwing itself at Ukrainian lines) that doesn't matter.
It got invaded. It stopped the invasion. That's a victory for the defender.
but muh "Russian got some land! that means it won! it ended the war with more than it started!!!" HAHAHAHAHAH Russia ended the war sanctioned up the ass, doomed to be China's bitch forever, having lost the large majority of its military equipment and a disgusting amount of lives of its young men, all to hold some strip of moonscape ruin that will never be profitable or valuable, and which they will continue to pay a high price for regardless through sanctions. Eventually Russia is letting go of that land simply because it will be too expensive to keep holding it.
Russia lost.
Let my guess, you're the type that would call a phyricc victory a 'victory'...
How war works is simple, aggressive you have more flexibility in what can be defined as a win as you aren't risking your own infrastructure so even a badly done raid can be considered a 'win' depending on how much people believe leadership for the reasoning (e.g. we managed to infiltrate a position they said was impossible to get past)
Defenders have a worse position in terms of win conditions for two major reasons:
The mongols are an example of this, they lost 2 invasions to the Japanese but their empire lasted longer, it was the Japanese that fell into civil war after because of another factor: it's easier to reward aggressive victories than defensive as aggressive you can give claimed land, defensive if you don't have the money, get ready for civil war.
Ukraine 'lost' this by it being a war in the first place, ever since it's damage control whereas despite Russia's loses, it can still claim victory and use this as a reason to update it's military apparatus.
It can claim it all it wants. It won't be true and no one will believe it, not even the people claiming it.
Russia has lost a lot of soldiers and gained some ground, while Ukraine has also lost a lot of soldiers but lost some ground.
Unless there are downstream consequences for Russia which outweigh the territorial gains, the current status quo would objectively be a victory for Russia.