Russia has been increasingly experiencing drone attacks along with explosions at military and other facilities.
Targets include Moscow.
First, the Kremlin suffered a spectacular drone strike.
Then, Russia’s capital was swarmed by buzzing enemy UAVs.
The southern Belgorod Region was raided by hordes of armed saboteurs riding battle tanks,
while the Ivan Hurs spy ship took a hit from marine drones in the Bosporus Strait.
That was followed by kamikaze drones pummeling an oil refinery in southern Russia.
UAV attacks were also reported in the Pskov, Tula, and Bryansk regions of Russia.
No wonder the Russian generals were left stymied.
That was exactly what Ukraine aimed for.
Financial Times ran an interesting article on this.
Let’s break it down today.
The Ukrainian offensive has long been in the making.
The Ukrainian army (UAF) is flexing the muscles of modern Western hardware
and keeping their Russian opponents on tenterhooks
and making them dig in and build defenses stretching between Crimea and the city of Belgorod.
The tensions are running high.
Waiting and catching up are the worst things in life, they say.
To further spice things up, Ukrainians followed up with a series of unexpected strikes.
Financial Times military experts called these “shaping operations.”
They seek to mislead the Russian generals and force them into making bad, rash decisions.
This is a classic tactic employed in the run-up to a large-scale offensive.
John Spencer, a former U.S. army major and a researcher at the Modern War Institute at West Point, says,
“Deception operations have always been part of war, but now their effect is magnified by social media.”
Spencer is positive that UAF operations “require Russia to expend resources — be that troops or information operations.”
The retired major compares Ukraine’s actions with a magician’s sleight of hand:
“they deceive the viewer and force his attention elsewhere.”
Whoosh, here comes the rabbit!
Suddenly, a Leopard battle tank comes punching out of the greenery.
Psychological Offensive
Now, the connection between the Kremlin drone strikes, the pro-Ukrainian Russian nationalists’ raids in the Belgorod area,
and the attempted sinking of the spy ship may seem flimsy.
But what do they have in common?
First, it shows the enemy’s powerlessness to the world.
Moscow air defense systems are ineffective, the Russian border is vulnerable,
and the Black Sea fleet can’t feel safe 400 miles away from the Ukrainian shore.
Second, the Russians are baffled.
The capital city of Putin’s great empire isn’t impervious, it turns out.
The land borders aren’t protected, and the nearby seas aren’t their backyard.
Third, the Russian top brass are now facing an overload of secondary concerns and issues.
Michael Martin, author of How to Fight a War and former British officer,
is certain that the idea is to overload the Russian high command with dilemmas.
“Problems — such as a breakthrough of the front line — focus attention. Dilemmas, by contrast, paralyze actions,” he claims.
It’s not hard to imagine what Russia’s military brass are busy doing these days.
They’re banging their fists against the table, tearing into their underlings, and demanding beefed-up defense of Moscow,
the Belgorod Region, the Krasnodar territory, and the waters of the Black Sea.
All at once, that is.
This causes them to freak out and lose focus.
Given that the Russian command wasn’t particularly bright even when the cips weren’t on the line,
they’re now likely to make disastrously bad calls.
Fourth, the morale of Ukrainians, both civilians and, crucially, the military, is on the rise in the wake of recent strikes.
Ukrainian social media posts are now abuzz with memes about the “Belgorod People’s Republic”
and the Russian legion saboteurs buying their tanks from a local army surplus store.
Finally, it all can result in a fidgety Russian society and the so-called elites increasingly going into panic mode,
amid growing distrust of decision-makers’ moves.
True, the disappointment comes from a previously unusual source.
We’ll discuss several types of reactions after a brief announcement.
A NON-COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Let’s keep rolling.
So, the distrust is now almost overt.
Sometimes, things get weird.
Russia’s alleged invulnerability is now being questioned.
Volgograd Online, a Russian regional media outlet, ran an article alarmingly headlined:
“Ukrainian Drones Attack Moscow. Is Volgograd a Target?”
It can, it turns out.
The drone’s range is up to 900 mi (1,500 km).
Volgograd and Kyiv are roughly 1,000 km apart, reporters recall.
Besides, Russian airports are reported to be unable to purchase and install special-purpose anti-drone equipment.
It can lead to air traffic disruptions.
Even a popular pro-Kremlin newspaper mentioned the concerns of transportation and aviation security experts.
Russian pro-war bloggers were seriously alarmed by the Belgorod raid.
The Defense Ministry was excoriated by Wagner’s Yevgeni Prigozhin.
In an hour-long video, he lectured Russians on the local self-defense mechanisms.
Also, Prigozhin demanded that the government build up military presence along the border.
The Belgorod governor said, “De facto, we are at war.”
So what does it all make the viewership think?
The shaping operations made a psychological impact on the Kremlin.
Addressing the Belgorod raid, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, dodged the question and commented that the war
“warrants complex and harrowing efforts” that lead to “constant questions.”
Seriously?
The war warrants efforts, it turns out.
Did the generals ever entertain this thought?
The General Staff’s mouthpiece, Rybar, ventured a blunt statement.
According to the blog, Ukrainian drones in Moscow “contributed to the stressing out of the population.”
Statements like these don’t fuel particular optimism in Russians.
To quote a high-profile Ukrainian official,
“a successful offensive starts with a successful psychological offensive.” By the looks of it, it’s already in full swing.
Information War
The Ukrainian military intelligence admits that the Belgorod raid along with the other operations deep into Russian territory
are designed to shatter the Russians’ morale and force the top brass’ hand.
Like, they will move their troops from the occupied Ukrainian provinces back to Russia’s southern regions.
The Ukrainian side doesn’t rule out further operations like these.
Ukraine employed a similar tactic last summer. It bore fruit.
Over the course of several weeks, Ukrainians, Ukrainians were pondering the offensive in the Kherson Region.
Once the Russians moved their troops to the south to counter the attack, Ukraine unleashed an offensive in the north.
As a result, the AFU stormed through the thinned-out Russian defenses in the Kharkiv Region.
According to the above-quoted John Spencer, Ukraine is using the Russian tactic against Russia.
Moscow is stoking the rumors that it’s about to attack from the Belarusian territory.
However improbable, this scenario makes the Ukrainian side keep its troops at ready.
Just in case.
Today, Ukrainians are giving Russia the taste of its own medicine to distract it from their main offensive.
Moreover, they’re even more sophisticated as they distract the high command’s attention on several secondary courses.
Russia, however, isn’t just an idle spectator.
It resumed its missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities and on what it callously refers to as “military targets.”
For instance, they bombed a small regional city of Ternopil.
The Financial Times article claims it happened for a reason.
It’s home to a local music band that represented Ukraine at the Eurovision Sing Contested hosted by the U.K. this year.
There are no other good explanations.
On May 13, the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytsky was buffeted by a hugh blast.
According to the local mayor, it damaged schools, hospitals, residential blocks, and industrial facilities.
The Russians followed up with a strike on a nearby air base.
Besides, Russia has launched its own information operations.
Hackers spoofed the tracking data of commercial ships.
Their itineraries were made to look like a huge Z, a notorious symbol of the Russian invasion.
This fact was picked up on by experts, though.
Ordinary people are rare visitors to such websites.
For Russia’s military leadership, it’s apparently a great move in terms of information warfare.
What’s Next
Western experts can’t really predict and assess the potential efficiency of the Ukrainian offensive.
One thing is clear, though.
Ukraine is likely to continue its shaping operations coupled with precise strikes of military assets.
Their capabilities are expanding.
Ukraine has already been supplied with the U.K.-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, called them “treats.”
The missiles come with turbojet engines with a maximum speed of 1,000 kph and a range of 340 mi (550 km).
There's also an export version of Storm Shadow, with a range of 155 mi (250 km).
It’s unknown what version was shipped to Ukraine.
Anyway, all versions of these missiles are capable of hitting the Kerch bridge in Crimea.
The warhead features a penetrating charge to clear soil or break through a bunker
and a variable delay fuze to control the detonation itself.
Accord to a CNN source, Ukraine has assured the U.K. the Storm Shadow missiles will only be used
“within the sovereign territory of Ukraine.”
CNN experts go on to assert that the U.K. recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine.
But Ukraine doesn’t rush things and isn’t targeting the Kerch bridge thus far.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council, says it’s going to happen in the future.
Western experts that Storm Shadows will be a game-changer.
It’s not just the missile’s range, but the fire-and-forget missile guidance system that uses GPS,
but in the event of a spotty connection, it observes the preset trajectory.
Storm Shadow reaches the target area at a very low altitude, then climbs, and finally dives.
Eventually, it uses a thermal-vision self-guided warhead that reduces interference.
At sea, Ukraine has also stepped up its offensive capabilities.
This was largely aided by marine drones.
According to the Ukrainian military, they are now able to hit such “fat targets” as the Ivan Hurs spy ship.
Notably, Ukrainian sea drones struck the Sheskharis oil terminal in southern Russia as early as November 2022.
The attack didn’t wreak much damage, but showed Ukraine’s capabilities in terms of attacking Black Sea targets.
The Russian admirals apparently ignored it back then.
As a result, they got close to losing a second-to-none reconnaissance ship.
Western military pundits are closely following the events as they unfold
and are certain that the Ukrainians are just testing various capabilities against Russia and see what sticks.
Their actions have resulted in a situation where neither Russia nor Ukraine’s Western allies have got a clue
as to the upcoming offensive’s timing and location.
The Russian side can only wait and see what happens next.
Which is a losing war strategy.
From Ukraine’s perspective, the enemy’s tensions and lack of confidence are key to their victory.
Over the past month, one thing has become clear.
Russia keeps losing the momentum.
It’s just reacting to Ukraine’s moves.
Certainly, this isn’t getting Russia close to achieving its military goals, however flimsy and limited.
Conversely, it leads to Ukraine’s upcoming win.
This is the logic behind the ongoing combat action.
See you tomorrow!