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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Russian barrage of drones and missiles hits beyond usual Ukraine targets
Still, the decoys have significant effects. Ukraine's military is forced to use its limited stockpiles of air defense missiles to counter Russia's large-scale assaults, which military experts and Ukrainian officials say are aimed at overwhelming Ukraine's air defense units on the ground. The air defense missiles are the only weapons capable of shooting down incoming missiles. Ukraine's air force said about 90 percent of the Russian drones were intercepted, were disabled by electronic jamming, or crashed without causing damage because they were decoys. But it added that only two-thirds of the missiles that Russia fired were shot down, including just one of seven ballistic missiles. These figures could not be independently verified. Advertisement It was unclear whether any civilians were killed during the overnight attack. But the Ukrainian air force reported the death of a pilot who crashed in his American-designed F-16 jet as he was trying to repel the Russian assault. Ukraine uses fighter jets to shoot down incoming missiles, for lack of enough ground-based air defenses. Advertisement The air force said the pilot had shot down seven aerial targets but went down with his jet after it was damaged in the attack. During nighttime attacks, Russia typically begins its assaults by sending waves of dozens of drones to strain Ukrainian air defenses, followed by missiles that are harder to intercept. A report released in May by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an American think tank, said Russia had significantly ramped up its use of drones starting last fall, 'increasing from approximately 200 launched per week to more than 1,000 per week by March 2025 as part of a sustained pressure campaign.' Given the current pace of attacks, Russia may exceed 5,000 drone launches this month, which would set a record for the conflict, said Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst at Rochan Consulting in Poland. To support these attacks, Russia has dramatically increased its production of long-range drones. 'Moscow will not stop as long as it has the capability to launch massive strikes,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media Sunday, as he called again for Ukraine's allies to increase sanctions on the Russian economy to cripple its weapons production capacities. Zelensky has also been lobbying President Trump to let Ukraine purchase American-designed Patriot air defense systems, the only ones reliably capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. Trump suggested last week that he was open to sending more Patriots to Ukraine, although it was unclear whether he meant batteries or only ammunition, and whether these would be donated or sold. Advertisement Russia's new campaign of air assaults on Ukraine has also come with deadly consequences for civilians. The United Nations human rights office reported Sunday that civilian casualties in Ukraine had increased 37 percent in the period from December to May, compared with the same period the previous year, with 968 civilians killed and 4,807 injured. The majority of these casualties occurred in Ukrainian-controlled areas. 'The war in Ukraine — now in its fourth year — is becoming increasingly deadly for civilians,' Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said in a statement. This article originally appeared in
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
At The Current Rate, It Would Take Russia Centuries To Capture Ukraine
Ukrainian army trainees. Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April. But it cost them 4,800 vehicles and more than 36,600 dead and wounded troops, according to one statistician who collects data mostly from official Ukrainian sources including the general staff in Kyiv. In the same month, Ukrainian losses were 'minimal,' concluded analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland. Ukraine sprawls across 233,000 square miles, 19% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101 million casualties. The current population of Russia is 144 million. Incredibly, staggering losses in people and equipment haven't yet crippled the Russian military in Ukraine. The Kremlin is equipping its forces with thousands of civilian vehicles, including scooters, compact cars and even at least one bus. Meanwhile, it's recruiting 30,000 troops per month, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told U.S. lawmakers on April 3. Since many of the wounded eventually return to the front line, the Russian armed forces recruit more people every month than they lose. As a result, Cavoli said, the Russian force in Ukraine is actually growing. It now numbers no fewer than 600,000 troops, 'the highest level over the course of the war and almost double the size of the initial invasion force' in February 2022, Cavoli said. How the Kremlin has managed to sustain and even expand its recruitment effort comes down to two things: money and mood. Record enlistments are 'driven by high sign-on bonuses and speculation that the war will soon be over,' explained Janis Kluge, deputy head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Russian recruits. Whether the money and good vibes are sustainable is an open question. 'All told, Russia's defense budget will account for 40% of all government expenditures which is at its highest level since the Cold War,' Cavoli said. By comparison, the United States spends just 13% of its federal budget on the military. The spending has buoyed Russians' attitude toward the war, even as total casualties exceeded 800,000 earlier this year. 'As a direct result of its defense spending, Russian investments in its industrial base have reduced national unemployment to 2.4%,' Cavoli said. 'The Russian economy is on a war footing and will remain so for the foreseeable future.' But a war footing isn't always very efficient. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has vowed to maintain the elevated military spending even as plummeting oil prices and the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks squeeze revenue from energy exports, cutting economic growth in Russia by more than half compared to a year ago. To prolong the wartime spending spree, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin raised personal and corporate taxes last year. 'Russia's leadership is not only prepared to increase the tax burden on Russians but is also shifting its economic development priorities,' explained Alexander Kolyandr, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. Obviously, war industries are the priority. Losing a lot to gain very little in Ukraine and sustaining the costly effort through massive spending, Russian leaders are walking an economic and political tightrope. But the danger hasn't dissuaded them. According to Cavoli, Putin and his ministers and generals are committed to a long war—one that could widen beyond Ukraine. 'The Russian regime has refashioned its military, economic and social structures to sustain what it describes as a long-term confrontation with the West—systemic changes that illustrate Russia's intention to confront us into the foreseeable future,' Cavoli warned.
