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It’s reckless, if not insane, to deploy an open-top, unarmored all-terrain vehicle—in essence, a heavy-duty golf cart—in combat just a quarter mile from the front line. But two years into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Russian commanders are at least reckless if not not insane. Apparently this weekend, a Russian unit—possibly the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment—attacked positions held by the Ukrainian 60th Mechanized Brigade in Yampolivka, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. A Russian column including what appeared to be MT-LB armored tractors and at least one T-90 tank motored west toward Yampolivka. That itself wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was...

The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses. The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse. Exactly how the Ukrainians are shooting down so many...

The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses. The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse.

The Ukrainian air force claimed it has shot down 10 Russian warplanes in 10 days: nine of the Russian air force’s best Sukhoi Su-34 and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter-bombers and also a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. -snip- The Ukrainian defense ministry announced this month’s ninth and tenth shoot-downs—both involving Su-34s—on Tuesday. “Oops, we did it again!” the ministry quipped. “And now it's 10 destroyed Russian planes in 10 days!” How the Ukrainians are shooting down so many jets is unclear. It’s possible the Ukrainian air force has assigned some of its American-made Patriot missile launchers to mobile air-defense groups that...

Marching quickly under a cloudy sky on Sunday, Russian troops infiltrated Avdiivka. Four months after a pair of Russian field armies, together with 40,000 troops and thousands of vehicles, first attacked toward Avdiivka—a Ukrainian stronghold just northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine—the long, bloody campaign may be culminating. “The situation in the city has become critical,” Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko wrote. If the campaign does culminate, and the Russians prevail, it will be clear who largely is to blame: Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who last fall began blockading U.S. aid to Ukraine and, as a consequence, starved...

Russia could run out of infantry fighting vehicles in two or three years, if a recent assessment is accurate. It might run out of tanks around the same time. According to one count, the Russian armed forces went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with 2,987 tanks. After 23 months of hard fighting, the Russians have lost at least 2,619 tanks that independent analysts can confirm. That’s 1,725 destroyed, 145 damaged, 205 abandoned and 544 captured T-55s, T-62s, T-72s, T-80s and T-90s. If the Kremlin didn’t have options for replacing war losses, the Russian military would be down to...

This weekend, an apparent Ukrainian rocket barrage reportedly blew up a rail bridge Russian workers were building south of Hranitne, 25 miles north of the Sea of Azov coast and 50 miles south of the front line in occupied southeastern Ukraine. It’s one of the biggest under-reported events in months in a grinding war where logistics are everything. In reportedly dropping the incomplete span over the Kalmius River, Ukraine sets back—indeed, makes a mockery of—Russia’s efforts to improve its supply lines to its beleaguered forces in and around Crimea in southern Ukraine. “The Ukrainians just shot a hole in a...

The 104th Air Assault Division was supposed to save the Russian campaign on the left bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Instead, the newly-formed division “suffered exceptionally heavy losses and failed to achieve its objectives during its combat debut,” the U.K. Defense Ministry reported. Two months ago, Ukrainian marines from the 35th Brigade motored across the Dnipro and, under the cover of artillery, drones and intensive radio-jamming, secured a bridgehead in the settlement of Krynky on the otherwise Russian-held left bank. It’s a new front in the war—one the Ukrainians hope eventually to exploit in order to push...

On Oct. 19, Ukrainian marines motored across the Dnipro River and, in a series of infantry actions in and around the settlement of Krynky, secured a bridgehead on the otherwise Russian-occupied left bank of the river. Winning, and holding, a bridgehead is a first step for Ukraine’s southern command as it tries to sustain the country’s southern counteroffensive—which kicked off in June but has idled in recent weeks—and set conditions for a possible push deeper into Russian-held southern Kherson Oblast. The gateway to occupied Crimea. The Kremlin knows it. And we now have seen the first thin evidence in several...

Russia is mobilizing for a long war in Ukraine. The West … isn’t. To preserve Ukraine’s independence and deter further Russian aggression, that must change. Ukraine’s allies must do more, faster – and brace for a conflict that could grind on for years.But they might already be losing their nerve.The authoritarian regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin was overconfident in the months leading up to its February 2022 wider invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin talked about a two-week “special military operation” that would “demilitarize” Ukraine by destroying its armed forces and toppling its elected government.The two-week war became a two-year...

The Kremlin is rushing reinforcements to southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It’s a desperate bid to prevent a major Ukrainian breakthrough along a critical axis. The reinforcements are from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which is “arguably Russia’s best division and is relatively fresh,” according to Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. The division most recently went on the attack early this year around Kreminna, where the Russians still are sustaining a limited offensive. That the Russians are redeploying the 76th GAAD speaks to the growing momentum of the Ukrainians’ 2023 counteroffensive, which kicked...

The low-flying, subsonic Neptune lends itself to the land-attack role, just like its predecessor missiles—the Kh-35 and Harpoon—do. To give the first-generation, anti-ship-only Harpoon a land-attack mode in its Block II model in the late 1990s, American missile-maker Boeing added GPS-aided inertial navigation, complementing the original Harpoon’s radar seeker. The Ukrainian navy reportedly used some of its Neptune anti-ship missiles in the missiles’ secondary land-attack mode to blow up a Russian air force S-400 air-defense battery in western Crimea on Wednesday. That the one-ton Neptune can strike targets on the ground should come as no surprise. Ukraine’s Luch Design Bureau...

The Ukrainian air assault forces finally have deployed their most powerful unit. The 2,000-person 82nd Air Assault Brigade, which is stacked with Marder and Stryker fighting vehicles and Challenger 2 tanks, rolled into action around Robotyne, in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast, apparently in the last few days. The deployment is good and bad news for Kyiv’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, which kicked off with a series of coordinated assaults across southern and eastern Ukraine starting on June 4.

A record 82 treason cases were opened so far this year, a Russian outlet claimed But the actual number is likely to be 'many times higher', the outlet has alleged Paranoid Vladimir Putin's security forces have massively increased the number of suspected 'traitors' they have arrested for treason. Now literally everyone can be accused of treason,' said the report. 'Even likes on Instagram and subscriptions on Telegram [messenger service] can lead to a criminal case.' Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, from human rights project Department One, said: 'Do not forget that the very content of the state secret is a state secret....

Where is the Ukrainian army’s 117th Mechanized Brigade? The answer to that question has implications for Ukraine’s 18-day-old southern counteroffensive, which has been making slow progress along several axes in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts. Kyiv and its foreign allies spent months standing up, training and equipping nine new brigades specifically for the counteroffensive, plus additional brigades that would function as a reserve. But so far we’ve seen just three, maybe four, of the brigades in action alongside older Ukrainian formations. The 117th Mechanized Brigade is one of the missing brigades. Where the brigade is, and what it’s waiting for, could...

The engineer battalions of the 33rd Mechanized and 47th Assault Brigades, the lead formations in Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, suffered heavy equipment losses in their assault just south of Mala Tokmachka last week. The losses include at least five of the battalions’ specialized engineering vehicles. Fitted with mineplows and minerollers, these vehicles lead tanks and infantry fighting vehicles through minefields, plowing and rolling a path so the tanks and IFVs can break through enemy defenses. ...

The Ukrainian army’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade and 47th Assault Brigade massed their Leopard tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles for a powerful assault on Russian positions two miles south of Mala Tokmachka in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast on or before Thursday morning. A dense minefield lay between the Ukrainians and their objective. And the Ukrainians knew it. They deployed at least one IMR-2 engineering vehicle and a Leopard 2R breaching vehicle in the hope of plowing away the mines and clearing a path for at least a company of 47th Brigade M-2A2 Bradleys and some attached Leopard 2A6s from the 33rd...

The Ukrainian air force has been ... busy. With a pre-war force of just 125 or so fighters and bombers, the Ukrainian air arm defended the sky over Kyiv during the heady early hours of Russia’s assault on the city in the spring of 2022 and then, after that assault collapsed, shifted its attention to the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine. In 15 months of hard fighting, the air force has lost at least half of its pre-war jet inventory—and scores of pilots. But amid this violence, one small community had been relatively idle: the section of the...

Russia’s winter offensive is grinding to a bloody halt in the ruins of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Yes, the Russians have occupied most of the devastated city. But it’s cost them thousands of their best troops. Having defeated the Russian offensive without committing its 20 or so newly-raised brigades, Ukraine is poised to launch a counteroffensive—perhaps as soon as the spring mud finally dries up. If there’s a big potential spoiler, it’s the Russian air force. For most of the first 14 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Soviet-vintage Ukrainian air-defenses have kept at bay Russia’s hundreds...

The Russian army is welding 80-year-old gun mounts, originally built to arm patrol boats, onto 70-year-old armored tractors—and sending them to Ukraine to get captured by the Ukrainian army. The up-gunned, tracked MT-LBs are further evidence of the Kremlin’s worsening equipment crisis as it struggles to make good its losses in Ukraine. Which is why the Kremlin is pulling out of long-term storage hundreds of 50-year-old T-62 tanks, 60-year-old BMP-1 fighting vehicles and 70-year-old BTR-50P armored tractors. These awkwardly up-gunned MT-LBs just further underscore the Russians’ growing desperation.