Below Senior Fellow Can KasapoÄŸlu offers a military situation report about the war in Ukraine.
Executive Summary
- Ukraine and Russia continued to engage in drone-on-drone warfare, resulting in what may be the first documented instance of a first-person-view drone destroying an unmanned surface vehicle.
- Reports emerged that the joint Russian-Iranian drone plant in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan exploits Tatar child labor and female African students to meet its production goals.
- Ukraine struck a Voronezh-DM radar site deep inside Russia, destroying a key asset that supports Moscow’s strategic nuclear early warning capabilities.
- The United States and many European nations signaled a growing willingness to allow Kyiv to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets within Russia, albeit with restraints.
Battlefield Assessment
This week, Russia’s offensive continued to focus on eastern and northeastern Ukraine. Russian combat formations pummeled the Kharkiv front and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and mounted a smaller attack in southern Ukraine. In Donetsk and Luhansk, positional fighting persisted. Moscow achieved around important contested towns such as Chasiv Yar and areas adjacent to Avdiivka, a city already occupied by Russian forces.
Open-source intelligence indicates that Russian and Ukrainian drones have over Kharkiv, constantly tracking the city and its surrounding environs. Reports suggest that Ukraine’s drone presence is pushing Russian troops to adopt alternative concepts of operations (CONOPS) using smaller armored vehicles, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles rather than bulkier supporting large combat formations. This adjustment is slowing Russia’s offensive by dispersing its troop concentrations and reducing its effectiveness in mechanized warfare.
Yet Russia is sending waves of glide bombs and missiles to wreak destruction on Kharkiv. While Russia’s strikes have produced only incremental advances and minimal territorial changes, the city’s civilian population, in an echo of the Kremlin’s massacres in the restive Chechnya during the 1990s.
Ukrainian officials suggest that Moscow is preparing additional regiments and brigades to bolster its push in the region. With force-on-force and force-to-terrain ratios that already favor the Kremlin, this move would stress Ukraine’s defenses even further.
Battlefield developments this week served as a reminder that drone-on-drone warfare is now a permanent feature of this conflict. Both sides are using first-person-view (FPV) drones to hunt their opponent’s own unmanned systems. Ukraine preys on advanced Russian robotic systems like the and . This week, a Russian FPV drone destroyed a Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicle (USV), providing the world with perhaps the first documented instance of an a naval platform of this kind. It remains to be seen whether Ukraine will use its USVs, some of which possess , to attack Russian aerial drones.
The Russia-Iran Drone Plant Uses Coercive Child Labor to Meet Its Production Goals
Russia is quickly—and bloodily—improving its arms production capabilities, likely by using abusive child labor. Western assessments suggest that in Alabuga in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan can now produce up to 6,000 Shahed loitering munitions per year. The Kremlin has achieved this gruesome milestone by child labor.
Some of Russia’s victims are as young as . Moscow is also Africa for its war efforts. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is the critical enabler of the child abuse in Tatarstan, supporting drone production there in return for critical arms deals and the flow of $1.7 billion, some of it in , from Russia. Following Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children, a war crime it with Belarus, Moscow and Tehran are using child abuse to advance their growing partnership.
Ukraine’s Asymmetric Strikes Now Target Russia’s Most Critical Radar Assets
Ukraine has continued to asymmetrically target the Russian Black Sea Fleet with growing success. Kyiv’s indigenous, combat-proven Sea Baby unmanned surface vehicles have pioneered robotic naval warfare efforts. Recent visual imagery suggests that a Ukrainian attacked two Russian warships, reportedly KS-701 Tunets patrol boats, off the coast of .
Ukraine has used its naval and aerial unmanned vehicles to prey on Russia’s critical naval assets and strategic oil refineries, such as the next to the Kerch Bridge. Recently, Kyiv has added a new target to its hit list: Russia’s strategic radar architecture.
Last week, Ukrainian forces conducted a bold strike on the Voronezh-DM early warning radar deep inside Russia. was one of the main pillars of Russia’s nuclear deterrence infrastructure and a key component of Moscow’s nuclear alert warning system. In another incident near the Luhansk region, Ukrainian forces hosting a Nebo-M high-band anti-stealth radar. Russia had used this system primarily to detect fifth-generation tactical military aviation assets.
Ukraine Attains Greater Freedom to Use Western-Supplied Weapons inside Russia
Responding to Ukraine’s pressing operational needs, a growing number of European nations have given Kyiv the go-ahead to use European-supplied weapons to strike critical assets inside Russia. This signals that several North Atlantic Treaty Organization members are changing their approach, which was clouded by wariness and skepticism in the early stages of the war. The this new perspective is the NATO allies’ belated admission that international law allows Ukraine to attack military targets in Russian territory to defend its sovereignty.
Perhaps signaling this political change, Europe’s most recent military assistance packages for Ukraine have included high-value strategic assets. Sweden, for example, recently sent two ASC 890 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) to the Ukrainian Air Force. The ASC 890, the first long-range high-end intelligence aircraft Ukraine is set to receive, carries immense strategic value for Kyiv.
Sent as part of a $1.3 billion military aid package, the aircraft will be a for the F-16s Ukraine is set to receive. The ASC 890’s advanced sensor systems will allow Kyiv to detect enemy assets such as helicopters, fighter jets, cruise missiles, and naval targets from a significant distance. The generous Swedish assistance package also supplies such as 155mm artillery shells and long-range aerial missiles. Copenhagen also announced will to use soon-to-be-delivered Danish F-16s to strike military targets inside Russia.
The wind of change sweeping Europe is also affecting the United States. The Biden administration recently announced a that allows Ukraine to use US-provided artillery and short-range rockets from High Mobility Artillery Rocket (HIMARS) launchers to strike command posts, arms depots, and other military targets Russia uses in its attacks on Kharkiv. Although Washington will continue to limit Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons, such as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), the Biden team’s recent adjustment is an important step in the right direction. Washington’s new policy also prevents Ukraine from using US-provided weapons to strike parked fighter aircraft and bomber jets inside Russia, for improvement in the push to fully enable Kyiv to defeat the Russian war machine.