THE PATH TO VICTORY: UKRAINE UPS THE ANTE

Video of shocked Russians walking to work on a sunny morning in St Petersburg looking up at the sky. There’s no air raid alarm, but high above them huge Ukrainian FP-2 drones could not be more clearly visible, the noise of their engines is loud and distinctive. One young student says “I’m just totally shocked, I can’t believe it”. Not far away beyond the tower blocks where he lives black smoke pours from the ground and blackens the morning sky. This is Russia’s second city, once its capital. This is the heart of Russia. This is Vladimir Putin and many of his senior acolytes home city. And there is not one sign of defence, no missiles, no gun fire. At least half a dozen drones are visible heading to various targets in broad daylight. They plummet into the Naval base and the oil export terminals. Nothing even tries to stop them.

A Russian milblogger writes about the concerns of his fellow soldiers as the war drags on. They’re already facing the fact that the mid-ranged Ukrainian Hornet drone is all over the Donetsk area. Nothing much moves without risking one of them finding and destroying it. It’s creating a nightmare for the logistics teams and savaging the operational capability of Russias armed forces on the front lines. The drones don’t care who you are or which direction you’re going on, they just target you and there’s no escape. Donetsk used to be a safe retreat away from the front. Now it’s almost like a plague of science fiction level flying machines, has made it impossible to get around.

He worries that if things get much worse with these drones, that if they gain just a little more range they will do to the mainland of Russia what they are doing to Zaporhizia, Kherson and Crimea. The main artery of this war for Russias military, is the M-4 motorway that runs Moscow-Rostov. It’s critical, there is no alternative. If Ukrainian drones reach it he saw it as the end, game over. You will guess by now that Ukraine knows that and you can be sure they’re working towards it.

In Zaporhizia, occupied Kherson and Crimea things have taken a dramatic turn for the worst. Civillians have just been barred from using the main motorway that runs near the coast and takes them to Crimea from Rostov. Ukraine has blown up the bridges that approach over the bogs and salt marshes in the NE sector of Crimea, leaving only the solid land roads to the NW intact, but you have to enter Kherson and turn south to use them, bringing you closer to Ukrainian drones.

Russia has said that no civilian use of the road is permitted, while at the same time revealing that mostly civilian vehicles will be used to carry supplies and fuel. Soldiers will wear civilian clothes and drive civilian bread vans, post office vehicles and whatever else looks convincing to avoid being attacked. If they are attacked the Russians can claim the Ukrainians are attacking civilians. I don’t think thats going to stop the Ukrainians.

Crimea is so short of petrol and diesel, one woman driving in Yalta said it took her just 15 minutes to travel the 1 hour to work caused by incessant peak time traffic jams on its narrow streets. There was nobody else on the road, they cannot get fuel. Holidaymakers are stranded, having arrived for the summer they now can’t get petrol to drive home. Slowly the shortages are starting to notice across Russia, especially declining supermarket stocks as diesel is in short supply for trucks. Russian farmers are facing huge shortages in ammonia based fertilizers after Ukraine hit the factories because they produce gunpowder too. Overall farmers are panicking about the coming harvest season, already affected by a cold winter and too much rain. Demand for diesel soars during July-September and they fear deep shortages and lost crops.

It’s a small part of occupied Kherson but the Kinburn Spit is symbolic of everything that has been and is happening. It sits at a strategic choke point oppositeUkrainian territory on the other side of the Dnepr estuary. After the Russians were driven out of Kherson City and Ukraine took the north bank of the Dnepr back in late 2022, the Russians have used the spit to shell the opposite bank, until it became increasingly difficult to do so as Ukraine responded. They also used small boat raids to attack Russian positions. Russia used it for drone launches for a while but Ukraine soon stopped that.

Now, with food, water and ammo shortages reaching such a level, as Ukraine turns the screw on Russian Ground Lines of Communication across the region, its army of specialised drones making life impossible, they have retreated. Its unlikely Ukraine will rush to seize it yet, and no doubt its been mined and booby trapped, but its a canary in the proverbial coal mine of what will happen in other areas unless Russia comes up with counter measures – a capability it seems unable to find. And there’s a reason for that. They just don’t have the innovation systems, the money, or the capacity to move as Ukraine does. They cannot adapt within months let alone days as the Ukrainians do. Their drones and updates and improvements come so fast, the destruction they wreck across the Russian landscape is so quick and happening at such increasing intensity, Russia is no longer able to react. It will not be able to stop what Ukraine is doing and it’s that which is finally starting to dawn on the Russians in the field. They don’t have solutions and to quote one, ‘we just have to fucking take it’.

If President Zelensky seems happier and more confident lately it’s because he knows things have changed. I suspect he didn’t want to believe it but after his visits to Europe and the NATO mission to Kyiv, I suspect that they have told him what his own people have been saying is true. The tide has turned. It’s now about managing the situation to the end and making no mistakes. Don’t give in to the Russians, don’t negotiate a premature ending, not after all of this. Thats why he sent that genius open letter to Putin.

There was an agonising moment at SPIEF for Putin. A journalist from I believe, India, was chairing the panel, and it’s not uncommon for Indians to have good Russian, many went to university there, and she lit up smiling when she was able to ask him directly, if he would agree to peace talks with Zelensky as per the open letter. This was the same morning that Putin had said he sought peace, just days after he said the war was coming to an end. She kept smiling. He did not, the camera panned right in, he looked over his nose at her, his eyes squinting, clearly fuming he’d been caught out, fiddling with a small red badge on his jacket. She knew to say nothing that would give him an out, and then he said it, almost muffled, ‘There’s no point at the moment.”

Evidence that despite the problems he cannot bring this to an end, it has to be on his terms or no terms and its starting to dawn on him, that any concept it will be entirely on his terms is actually no longer possible. If he had said yes to peace in late 2024 or even early 2025, he could have walked away largely crowing about his victory. Now the tables have turned and he will never have that chance again. Thats something he cannot countenance. He doesn’t know how to deal with it, how to sell it. He’s increasingly in no position to demand anything.

I my blunt opinion Ukraine must abandon any thought of talks now until a victory over Russia on the front lines somewhere has been achieved, and ideally with them being forced back because they cannot sustain their position. It doesn’t need a huge offensive, it needs what Ukraine is doing to carry on with such relentless fervor Russia must withdraw because it cannot stay.

Remember too that day and night 200+ Ukrainian drones enter Russia and are hammering industry, oil, military facilities and more – we just don’t see the video or the target because of Russian censorship. But it’s happening every single day; imagine the impact that’s having.

You know I believe in Ukrainian Victory. I know it is inevitable, and bizarrely I have to say, Ukraine must behave as the Allies did in WW2, only a win, a comprehensive defeat of Russian imperialism will end it for two generations and beyond. This is not about Ukraine charging with tanks to break the Russian army. It’s about millions of drones driving them to defeat and desperation, knowing they have lost and they cannot have what they have stolen. Nobody wants their land, nobody wants their lousy industries and their bleating victimhood. We just need to make sure they never do this again. And for that Ukraine must pull off perhaps one of the most extraordinary military accomplishments in history. It will stand as a lesson for generations, but it will not be how the next war is fought, thats a lesson we must also learn.

The Analyst

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