Despite the many distractions – much of them Trump generated as he lays waste to the democracy that was once the core of the United States and its place in the world, the war in Ukraine rages on.
Barely a night passes without some kind of Geran/Shaheed attacks, often accompanied by Korean ballistic missiles Russia has improved to increase their accuracy. The drones grow ever more sophisticated as Russia tries to make them more destructive and get more through to their targets. The targets now are increasingly a high proportion of civilian homes, schools, cultural centers and shops. Anything that might undermine daily life.
While devastating, Russia seems unaware that in the end these attacks, harsh as they are at the time, simply make people even more determined not to give in. There’s not a long term shred of evidence that populations are broken by these attacks in the long run. Even in Syria, where Russia carried out wholesale civil destruction, in the end they were the losers.
You can also add that all the time Russia is concentrating on this hugely expensive effort to undermine the civilian population, it’s not helping it militarily. It’s also not undermining Ukraine militarily. From the harsh perspective of the way the war is being waged, the whole drone campaign is largely a waste of Russian efforts. The cost of defence is minimal in the larger picture, the cost of rebuilding can be put off until the war is done. In the harsh light of a cost-benefit analysis the Shaheed campaign and the effort it absorbs is a waste of time and money. It’s as though they found something they could use and have doubled down on it simply because it’s all they’ve got.
The fact that Ukraine does what it can to save the lives of its people is simply because they have humanity and Russians don’t. Yet the effort is not an excessive drain on the Ukrainian war effort. New weapons of defence – especially the new British designed micro-wave drone killer, have demonstrated a stunningly effective capacity for wiping these drones out as many as ten at a time. That in combination with other new technologies like lasers, where it’s cheaper to produce defensive weapons than the drones themselves cost, will turn the tide. That equation – ‘when destruction is cheaper than defence’, once turned around to read, ‘when defence is cheaper than destruction’, is the magic key that changes the whole strategic drone war. And we’re getting there.
Elsewhere in the tactical drone war, Ukraine seems to have gained a noticeable edge. Not only are they better equipped with superior drones, the tactical drone industry is producing 95% of its own components domestically. That’s a staggering figure. The industrialization of the drone war is a big deal. A recent United 24 documentary on the heavy Baba-Yagar drone showed them capable of producing as many as 4,000 per day.
It’s not just production, it’s the technical aspects of drones, their superior quality and their general availability. The Russians have had to make huge adaptations to try and cope with them, but Ukraine has deeper coverage, wider sight, and plenty of drones to hunt even individual soldiers down. Its campaign against artillery and support vehicles has been critical.
Ukraine is producing around 40% of its required equipment, from AFV’s to artillery.
Their prized possessions are the Swedish Archer artillery system, which may have taken some twenty years to develop, but has a staggering range, and a fire and scoot capability like nothing else. They would argue it’s the best artillery system in the world – and few would disagree. Anything that can stop, load, fire and move off in under two minutes with devastating range and accuracy is to be prized.
Yet the Ukrainian produced Bohdana has its own benefits. It’s not a fire and scoot machine. The barrel takes at least one, sometimes two shots to heat up before it becomes truly accurate and full ranged, but when it does, its quick firing and spot on, and can be packed up quite quickly. It’s what you’d call a vital stalwart and superior to the too-short ranged M-109 and M-777 artillery supplied by the US.
Wherever you look, Ukraine on the battlefield, is doing an extraordinary job keeping itself in the fight. It’s hard to imagine three years ago they would be where they are now.
In the air the Ukrainian Air Force has taken delivery of the two Swedish AEW&C aircraft based on the Saab 340. Known as the ASC-890 its equipped with the Erieye Radar, an extremely advanced AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array). It can detect ground and air targets out to 400km on land and at sea. That includes drones and cruise missiles, and its ability to track large numbers is key. The F-16’s had to be modified to work with the system, but it was a relatively simple modification. its apparently been possible to work to a degree with the Mig-29.
Yes, there are only two (there may be more, Sweden hasn’t ruled it out), but they transform Ukraine’s ability to see what’s happening in their airspace. These are not new being a 1990’s design and they are subject to some degree of jamming and they’re not by any means an E-7. Even so they will need to operate in almost total secrecy because Russia will place a prize on their destruction.
The Ukrainian Army has made huge strides in its operation with the change and roll-out of the Corps structure. There are clear signs that its improved operational behavior and allowed for both improved defence and offensive operations.
The question occupying everyone’s mind of course is what about peace? Zelensky has made it quite clear Ukraine would agree to a 30 day armistice. He has done and said almost everything Trump has asked of him.
We have to understand that what Trump, Rubio, Whitkoff and Walz are doing is almost an on the fly campaign to resolve the war. JD Vance is like the control rod, always keeping Trump on track the minute he sees it from Zelensky’s point of view and starts to doubt Putin’s intentions. He and his pay master, Pietr Thiel, the billionaire who bought Vance’s senate seat and his position as Veep, are not keen on Trump going it alone. They fear he will see that Putin has been playing him.
None of what’s going down in the foreign policy sector has anything to do with Project 2025 and Plan-47. Those were all about dismantling the US system of government and installing a permanent Republican/conservative majority. They touched on strengthening the nuclear arsenal and China being the main opponent, but what Trump is doing about Ukraine and Israel, Iran, is his gut feelings on the matter being put into action. He’s not interested in democracy or America being the leader of the democratic world. Ukraine is just an annoying problem he wants cleared from his desk because the real business is normalizing relations with Russia. And he wants to draw Russia away from China so that they don’t stand with the Chinese in the event of conflict with the US. It’s a stupidly naive policy, but look who we’re dealing with.
It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that if he says he’s bored with trying to bring peace he will walk away. He wanted it done by day 100 in office – and that was 29th April. It isn’t done and it’s not going to be.
Putin is resisting every effort to move towards even a 30 day ceasefire because he fears Ukraine will use it the same way he will – to recoup his losses, rotate and reorganize, bring up resources to the front. It would undermine and neutralize what he would do so what’s the point? Unless Ukraine can be made not to do any of that while he does. The idea of an unconditional ceasefire is simply not going to fit with Putin’s ingrained KGB paranoia.
The demand for a ceasefire May 8 through 10 so he can have a quiet parade unbothered by the possibility of everyone fleeing from the podiums because of a drone attack – because that’s the real reason he’s so worried, that it all goes to bits on live TV, is his only motivation.
Against all of these obstacles Ukraine has to carry on with a two track approach, appease Trump and get him to understand that Russia is the problem, not Ukraine. It’s unlikely to succeed. At the very least Ukraine needs the intel sharing to continue. Weapons supplies have dried up and there will be no more. Even trying to buy them seems to be an uphill battle. Indeed when it comes to Patriots, even if you could buy the missiles there’s almost nothing to be had from anyone and production won’t even reach two a day until well towards the end of 2026.
Ukraine has to keep going and join the EU – that’s where its future lies longer term, and for that it must continue the fight against corruption, it must keep its longer term goals on track, but for now it has to keep fighting this war. If there is no peace possible because Putin thinks the war must be decided on his terms, that a re-set with the US is less important – even with sanctions lifted – then Ukraine has won. Russia cannot sustain this war into late 2026-27 – even they have understood that. ‘All’ Ukraine has to do is hold out and bare the agony and the house of cards that is the Russian economy will start to collapse spectacularly. Trump’s inadvertent forcing down of the oil price with his economic chaos will see to that. Urals crude is sitting at $63.11 – that means its trading with discount at as low as $44.17, when Russia targeted a price of above $75 just to break even.
As long as Europe+ continues to stand by Ukraine, as long as it continues to stand up for democracy and holds true to its beliefs – as they did in Canada on Monday, Ukraine will prevail. Even if Trump walks off and never mentions Ukraine again, it will prevail. I’ve always been convinced of it. Good men did something – Evil will not have its way, not in the longer term. It never has and it never will.
I imagine the day Ukraine is a member of the EU, that its at peace and the military driving force behind a European awakening that makes it clear we may not be allied to the United States, but we can stand alone. We will stand alone, and we will prevail if anyone tests us. And we will look back, at Ukraine and its heroes and brave people, and see in them the inspiration to stand our ground.
In the meantime the fight goes on. With or without American aid. What choice is there?
The Analyst
militaryanalyst.bsky.social
The Military Analyst 
Good article… it opens the door to a number of others too. Please forgive the TLDR risk below, but this article is an overview and offers a tempting glimpse into a number of really important subjects that have a huge amount of analytical requirement:
EU is talking about ‘letting Ukraine join’, with Orban blocking it and a couple of others less than enthusiastic… Your comment at the end that Europe needs Ukraine in order to accelerate its own defence capabilities independently of USA is more than on the mark… it points to the fact that the EU/Europe+ narrative is not right. If Europe wants to get to a point where it is an attractive ally to any of the other main players (or enough of a steel porcupine that it is left alone) before the next conflict erupts, then Europe should be wrapping its arms around Ukraine like a lost brother and swiftly ushering them into the family of nations. The message to Orban needs to be clear: “choose which major Bloc Hungary wants to belong to… the RF or EU? …and don’t stand next to a window when you make that choice”.
If the next massive conflict hasn’t kicked off before the next US presidential elections and GOP hasn’t succeeded with Project 2025 (both fairly big ‘if’s IMHO) then US will return to the NATO table with probably very little penitence and an attitude of Business-as-Usual. A massively strengthened and self-sufficient Europe will totally change the dynamic (and strategic focus) of the organisation, probably to the point where USA is in danger of becoming a junior partner in a short period of time. Europe with Ukraine has nearly twice the population and economy of USA and will probably collectively have a much larger army. If it also leads the world in offensive drone and defensive microwave/laser capabilities then I don’t see USA getting to be as arrogant as they have previously been, especially as its own MIC declines.
When people talk about Urals oil dropping to $44-45pb when the budget is based on $75pb there is rarely a mention that the outcome of this is far greater than it looks. Urals costs about $26 to get out of the ground and another $18 to refine and transport. That means a previously derived corporate (i.e. state) income of $30pb is now $0. The importance of Urals in the Russian budget is massive, with Energy as a whole reflecting over 30% of state funding. March saw a 17% reduction in state funding thanks to the Urals pricing (which was higher overall in March than it currently is). We need to understand the cost of $1pb in Urals against the Russian state budget to truly understand the impact of low pricing and sanctions on the Russian state economy. It would also be interesting to identify what might happen if Urals drops to the point where maintenance costs are prohibitive and it becomes an actual drain on the Russian economy instead of propping it up.
The use of Swedish AEW&C is an important (and fascinating) step towards weaning Ukraine off US Intel. With Ukraine’s drone and technology industries developing and innovating at a pace that can only come in war, how long until we see distributed arrays of AEW&C Drones that paint a bigger picture than even E7s can and have massively more resilience at a fraction of the cost?
Atticus
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That was most helpful, thank you!
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I was travelling when you wrote the article on the Russian Oil industry a few days ago… have read it now and you have pretty much covered my specific point as well as a few others… a very good and comprehensive article. Thanks.
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Oil revenue underpins everything.
US intelligence gives more value behind the lines. AWACS is longer range radar to track multiple moving objects. The Swedish turbo-prop carrier’s operating ceiling also limits its range simply due to the curvature of the earth (albeit the tech they’re using may not have longer range). These assets will help F-16s enormously.
The value of the E-7s is the effective tracking distance is ~900 kms, and they can track (IIRC) ~360 objects. Forward deployed drones acting as arrays would expand the coverage, but they’d need a rear “mothership” receiving their data to build a single co-ordinated airspace image resolving all the duplicate objects.
It’s a good idea. It might not be much cheaper, but it could be much less vulnerable to being taken out. Especially if you have cheap decoy motherships along with some redundant failover capable mother ships…
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Russia can not learn that hitting civilians makes them stronger and orange blob noted that he has an idea Putin is not on his side at all. The rest of the world sees what is going on except the blob.
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IIRC, the current Russian budget is based on an average oil price of $69.75 pb. Extraction costs will rise due to the exit of western technology and assistance (save for some moral vacuums that are still there…); we don’t know what the shadow fleets cost to operate, but it’s safe to say that costs are significantly higher than they were previously, since Europe stopped buying RF oil. Gazprom has moved from cash generator to loss accumulator; oil will go the same way unless it’s bailed out.
However, the Russian oil industry will survive longer than its banking system.
Firstly, there’s the accumulated bad debt from shadow funding the military industrial supplies to keep this from the government balance sheets.
Then, there’s the strain from the building industry and other economic failures in the face of moving to a war economy. VTB (2nd largest bank, state owned) has received 2 Trillion RUB from the central bank to prop it up since December, with another 400 B RUB recently announced (cryptically – it’s “to fund a new project” that won’t see the light of day). At least half a dozen Russian banks are hanging on by a thread.
Trump may try to undo some of the damage he’s done once the US store shelves begin to empty on the back of his “big, beautiful tariffs”. Brace for a recession.
The only way this war ends now is when Russia collapse to become a failed state. Some smart people need to war-game how Europe deals with that, instead of trying to prevent it.
And keep the US out of it post collapse. They don’t have any strategic value to contribute at this point. It’s mind blowing they they’ve changed this much, this quickly.
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Just in…from a Russian source. Many Russian banks are no longer issuing ANY commercial loans, and have not issued any for some time. The only applicants for loans are businesses desperately trying to stave off collapse, and they’re all rejected on risk assessments. The inside word is that banking sector executives are widely and deeply nervous about their future. The outlook for them is bleak.
It might be coming sooner than we think.
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