Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings
Vladimir Putin will expand his war in Ukraine by attacking another European country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has predicted, and accused Russia of recent drone incursions that he said were an attempt to test Nato’s defences.
Speaking in Kyiv after his meeting with Donald Trump at the UN in New York, the Ukrainian president said Russia was preparing for a bigger conflict. “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he said.
Ukraine’s president said the Kremlin was deliberately checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies, after drone sightings in Denmark, Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets. More drones were spotted on Friday night above a Danish military base, and over a Norwegian base on Saturday.
Im curious if this is true in any way, or is just armchair chatter. Are there actual reports of this?
You also have to remember the phenomenon isn’t new, and the Russian elites expect and adjust for it. There’s internal spying going on, and I’m pretty sure Putin would have an idea how the war effort is going, even if there’s pretty serious information gaps on which exact parts will fail when.
This is also why they structure their troops the meat-grindery way they do. Sure, counting more bodies as more success is dumb and counterintuitive, but no bodies could either be great success or your unit selling their equipment to go on a bender, so it’s better to choose the way that guarantees some kind of combat. My source on that practice is Kamil Galeev.
Kinda yes to both variants.
Russia inflates battlefield gains after a costly summer offensive
It’s kinda been the thing at least since Soviet times where the tendency to report higher efficiency overcame any logic, and it wasn’t just production plans in with those famous “5 year plans”, it also creeped in into military, where there’d be, for example, tank hangar overseer reporting 50% of machines being battle ready to his commander, his commander would report 60, then up next it becomes 70, and like that until defence minister gets “we’ve got entire 100% machines ready”.
What We Can Learn from the Soviet Collapse in: Finance & Development Volume 31 Issue 004 (1994)
Thank you!