If you want a read-out on the “peace process” this week, bottom section. I am more convinced than ever the best way to monitor developments on that front is to pay as little attention to the messaging, noise, fake news and posturing as possible. They want to waste my time and energy, I won’t let them.
As always, I think the most important thing is paying attention battlefield lethality. Which brings me very neatly to the first section.
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The Ukrainian drone has landed
On Friday Ukrainian media started kicking around a report: A local manufacturer had just completed a 1,000 FPV drone batch, for the first time ever, assembled completely out of made-in-Ukraine components. This wasn’t a one-off stunt, it was the first lot from a mass-production line.
The company is called Vyriy Drone and the order came from a government program called Army of Drones. Most of you know this but just for the record, an FPV drone is a remote-controlled helicopter about the size of a dinner plate, with four rotors, that can carry a payload equivalent to an 82mm mortar round or an RPG-type armor-piercing projectile. If this little weapon gets a decent hit, it can kill or wound usually one to five men, or take out a tank worth $2 million.
Why Trump Behaves Like a Mafioso
Generic FPV drones cost about $350-500. The drones in the picture cost about $700 because they have a basic thermal camera attached, meaning it can hunt down targets at night.
On the one hand, this development was predictable and not so surprising. The Ukrainians have been energetically developing and assembling attack drones for years. The government and civil society are 100 percent behind the effort. Probably tens of thousands of artificers, supply chain dudes, donations dunners and operators are involved. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian troops and equipment are pretty much unavoidable on Ukrainian media. It was kind of inevitable that a pure-bred Ukrainian attack drone would appear. So that’s interesting, but I would not call that big news.
However, what I would call huge for the progress of the war, are these data points:
– Ukrainian FPV drones are now cheaper to manufacture than any FPV drone anywhere.
– Ukraine already is manufacturing more drones than any nation, including the People’s Republic of China.
– Ukrainian drone-manufacturing is about as on track as any industry can be to expand geometrically, because in Ukraine more FPV drones = wartime national security.
For the record: No Ukrainians were surrounded, there aren’t thousands of Ukrainians encircled by the Russian army. The US President made it up.
Every drone operator I have talked to has told me that a day is coming when the entire line of contact will be a 20 km-wide dead zone in which anything that moves will be spotted and hunted down by drones. The main physical limit on that is quantities of FPV drones available. What just happened, is that at minimum, theoretically, that limitation just evaporated into thin air.
Ukraine is at war, FPV drones are by a major margin the most effective weapon on the battlefield, mass drone production and massed drones on the front line are top national security priorities.
The Russians can’t really influence how many drones the Ukrainians choose to build. The Americans certainly can’t. What sanctions or arms deliveries the Americans choose to give or withhold from Ukraine are absolutely irrelevant to the number of FPV drones Ukraine can put into the field. There are factors like scale, materials sourcing, workforce training, etc. The day when the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have as many FPV drones as it needs, wherever it needs, and can expend them like hand grenades or machine gun bursts, won’t arrive overnight.
But that day is coming with the inevitability of a freight train. While the Russians and Americans talk about how Ukraine is defeated and how capitulation is Ukraine’s only option, I think it’s worth bearing in mind: From President Zelensky’s office throughout the AFU and down to the operators and the volunteers, it’s screamingly obviously, every day of war that passes, AFU pilots are going to have more drones, and so with time the AFU will become more – not less – lethal.
Robert Brovdi put out some monthly stats for a drone battalion operating in the Pokrovsk sector. A Russian soldier, military vehicle or target like a bunker or an ammo dump, was hit – not attacked, hit with a result like damage or a kill – every nine minutes, 24/7, day after day after day. I estimate there are probably 50 drone battalions or their equivalent on the front line right now. Maybe more.
For the record, according to the last figures I saw, the Ukrainian government, which is not exactly rolling in cash, allocated about $2.6 billion, yes billion, towards drone production this year. The Army of Drones is one of the recipients. The target figure is 4.5 million drones in 2025. In 2024 it was about 1.8 million drones. The lynchpin of that objective is massed production.
Anyone wanting to challenge any of that, must overcome this reality: The Ukrainians don’t need anyone to achieve this goal. They’ve allocated the money, they have the tech to do it autonomously, they’ve demonstrated the tech works, they just have to organize it at scale. This is war and nothing is guaranteed. And things go wrong. But everything we have seen for the past three years argues that the Ukrainians will succeed.
Russia can mobilize at best about 20,000 to 30,000 men a month. The AFU is launching 200-300,000 FPV drones a month. The drone number is going to go up.
The retreat from Kursk
For the record: No Ukrainians were surrounded, there aren’t thousands of Ukrainians encircled by the Russian army. The US President made it up. I am absolutely sure of what I am saying. I am in country and I speak the languages and I’ll put my education up against Donald J. Trump’s any day of the week. But for sure he has a lot more money than me. Also more wives and criminal convictions. But I digress.
OK, rant out of the way, what happened at Kursk, really?
For the record, the Ukrainian Army has been quite clear that they conducted a withdrawal and that they have set up in new defensive positions still inside the Russian Federation, but outside the town of Sudzha. Official reports are the Russians are stopped.
Ukrainian forces appear to have lost a few (10-20?) prisoners of war and about a dozen vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces. That apparently includes a CV-90, a pair of Leopard 2s, and assorted lighter vehicles. Attached is an image of a Ukrainian T-64 “captured” by Russian forces advancing in Sudzha, Kursk region.
From what I can see, Ukrainians either were defeated and forced to retreat at some haste, or got orders to retreat under pressure. But either way, this week they evacuated out of a pocket they had held inside Russia for six months. As they retreated the Ukrainians ran a gauntlet of drones and artillery, and lost vehicles not just to fire but to busted bridges, rivers, etc. There are confirmed reports of guys walking 10 to 20 kilometers to make it back to friendly lines.
Aside from Kremlin-controlled news feeds, I am seeing zero – and I mean none at all – evidence of a Ukrainian collapse. No accusations that the generals in Kyiv sold the front line guys out. No dire warnings of the entire front folding shortly. No calls on volunteer networks for blood donations, or medical supplies, or emergency transport of wounded to hospital. Guys I talk to by phone or text? Same thing, fighting has stopped, lines are stable.
The only video the Russians could come up with of massed POWs, dates back to April 2022 and Mariupol. The only “evidence” of cut-off or isolated Ukrainians that I have found, is by Russian milbloggers. Russian local information feeds say the fighting has stopped. We have seen serious Ukrainian defeats before and the indicators are pretty well known. For practical purposes, I have seen zero indications the Ukrainian lines came apart. This is consistent with reports from front-line units.
Further, I know of three powerful brigades, that were in the Kursk sector and that now are in reserve positions behind the lines. Judging by unit information feeds, morale is fine and the brigade is going about standard rear area activities like rest, awards ceremonies, meetings with the big brass from Kyiv, and so on. I’ve confirmed at least two big drone battalions backing the Ukrainian line in that sector.
Finally, this morning’s daily SitRep by the Ukrainian army general staff reported a stable line and 20 engagements, total, in the Lyman and Kursk sectors combined. If you are on the line, that translates to “basically quiet, but not completely without shooting.”
Affaires françaises, adios amis and Endhaltestelle Deutschland
This section is all about European money for weapons. First thing, early this week the French parliament adopted a resolution calling for the seizure of Russian assets in French banks, and the direction of those confiscated funds to European defense. With the vote going 288 in favor and 54 against, the resolution is non-binding, but it’s a signal to the Macron government – which is nervous about the idea on rule-of-law grounds – that the French citizenry thinks investing Russian money in defense projects against Russia is une idée sacrée.
I would be remiss if I did not attach of picture of a Russian Imperial railroad bond sold in France in the early 20th century as a reliable investment vehicle (or so the advertising said at the time) for Frenchmen wanting to help Russia move towards European civilization. The Communists came to power and declared billions and billions of hard-earned Francs (with interest) confiscated by the Proletariat.
On Wednesday there were two big meetings in Paris. One was the ministry of defense chiefs of most European states as well as heavy-hitters like Australia and Japan, and the topic of discussion was cooperation and joint planning for national security. Generally, there was an agreement this is a good idea. The US wasn’t invited and didn’t participate.
The upshot of these talks was an EU-released white paper, the details of which were published by Poltico the following day, laying out plans to overhaul European defense industries. The really key bit is that it spelled out a big change in EU defense contracting – in the past it had to be EU-based producers, now EU-based producers are preferred. In simple terms, this means that if a European nation wants to build a piece of military kit and Japan makes a better or cheaper critical component, then the European nation is no longer required to source the component inside the EU at higher price, lower quality and slower delivery times.
The EU will spend $1.6 billion of its own money facilitating the process, but sourcing and contracting will be run, as before, by individual national defense ministries. Ukraine-related priorities include 1.5 million artillery shells, air defense systems, training of Ukrainian troops, placing orders in the Ukrainian defense industry, and development of EU mobility corridors (rail, road and air) up to and into Ukraine.
The other Paris meeting was with the defense ministers of UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland – and Ukraine – to discuss planning and cooperation for the Ukrainian war effort. Air defense support to Ukraine, given the unreliability of US deliveries of Patriot missiles, was a big theme. Some of the practicalities of the peacekeeping contingent that people are pretending will soon be sent to Ukraine were discussed. The US wasn’t invited to those talks either.
A report from Friday said the EU “recommends” bloc members voluntarily provide Ukraine with €20-40 billion military support this year including 2 million munitions, for which a special fund will be created. Cleverly, the special EU payments fund was created so it couldn’t be vetoed by Hungary, the Trump/Putin buddy. First priority will be large-caliber ammunition for which €5 billion will be earmarked. Then the focus is air defense systems, missiles, drones, fighters, and combat unit training and support.
I know, it’s fashionable in America to laugh at the Europeans, as “voluntary” is just how the Europeans say “we won’t do it,” right?
Na ja, weisst Du, nein. This week, as anticipated, Germany’s conservative Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz agreed with the Greens to spend hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure. It is Germany’s biggest armaments program since the Nazi period, and after the deal was signed, Merz said, and I quote: “Germany is back.” Image of some famous Germans.
The fact that the deal was agreed to so quickly is more evidence the third biggest economy on Earth – Germany – is going to gear up for war, or more exactly helping Ukraine and deterring Russia. Strategically, this is a disaster for the Kremlin, not as bad maybe as deciding to invade Ukraine in the first place, but still some of the worst geopolitical news in a decade.
Nuts and bolts, in Germany it is now OK to deficit spend past a constitutional limit if the spending is on defense. Germany has a terrific credit rating, so no one, and I mean no one, is questioning whether Germany will find the initial €500 billion to fill a special defense fund. I have seen speculation putting the final figure at a trillion euros.
The agreement specifically includes German state spending in support of “countries unlawfully attacked under international law”; in other words Ukraine. (I read this was a Green condition). Mertz said that the Bundestag will shortly sign off on a new €3 billion aid package for Ukraine. The very strong implication is this will not be the last.
For Ukraine and the war, events in Germany are like FPV drones. There was a limit on a key source of support, and this week that limit dissolved. Germany now is effectively not limited by money on what it might spend on Ukraine and defense, or more exactly, the limiting factor is not cash, it’s production capacity and political will to mobilize it.
So the question for the future is how quickly the Germans will choose to gear up, and with which priorities. This isn’t a done deal, but it is a critical step.
The next date to watch is March 18, when the Bundestag will consider these proposals. For the defense package to advance two-thirds of the deputies in both houses need to support it.
And a pack of smaller items:
The Russo-Ukrainian “Peace Process” this week:
– Ukraine: Play for time, pretend the US peace initiative will work. Kill Russians, fight an attritional war.
– Europe: Play for time, gear up national defenses and Ukraine assistance. Prepare to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine not because you intend to do it, but to box the Americans into admitting Russia is the barrier to peace, by removing the American complaint that “Europe doesn’t want to help.”
– Russia: Play for time but exploit the US obsession with a peace deal where possible. Kill Ukrainians and browbeat Ukraine into surrender. Pretend European rearmament isn’t serious.
– US: Get a ceasefire as fast as possible – terms unimportant, but in general it’s much better if it’s in Russia’s favor. Ignore Europe and pretend they aren’t players. String Ukraine along and insult them from time to time because your electorate likes it when you bully the weak.
Russian “peace” terms: Probably via a Western diplomatic source, and possibly via the US government, the Washington Post this week published a supposed Russian internal document on peace terms. I am 99.99 percent sure this is just narrative manipulation from the Americans or Russians or both.
Key terms included: 1) No peacekeepers, ever. 2) No deal of any kind until 2026. 3) Put in a demilitarized zone, in Ukraine, separating Ukrainian and Russian forces. 4) Remove the present Ukrainian government.
Putin this week said Russia is for peace and supports a ceasefire, but, during a ceasefire Ukraine may not receive weapons and raise or train troops, and also Russia would need to understand how a ceasefire might be monitored. Also for the record the US NatSec chief greenie beanie Michael Waltz said the White House saw all that as ground for “cautious optimism.” Recent image of Waltz wearing a fresh pink and green uniform, it must have cost him a couple of grand to get duded up like that.
Optimism? Wow, I want some of what Waltz was smoking. Only hours before Waltz was all upbeat about the prospects for peace in Eastern Europe, Sky News followed by everyone and all their relatives reported that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s designated envoy for the Kremlin, flew to Moscow for peace talks and Putin made him wait seven hours before deigning to grace the US envoy with his presence.
Further, there were no talks and discussions and meetings of minds. Putin handed Witkoff a piece of paper, on it was list of Russian demands and concerns, and Witkoff was instructed to take it back to Washington.
In the 19th century such treatment of an envoy of a major state by another major state might be grounds for war. But the Trump administration really didn’t comment on Witkoff’s treatment by Putin, which I call yet another example of inept diplomacy. But the White House has a different opinion on that; they keep saying they know what they are doing.
There are some rumors/Russian “news” reports out there that Keith Kellogg, the US envoy responsible for Ukraine, has been kicked out of the negotiation process because supposedly the Kremlin thought he was too pro-Ukraine. He certainly has been relatively low-profile this week but I’m not clear why.
More Ukrainian POWs murdered: A video appeared on the internet, generally considered credible, where the Russians (again) shot unarmed Ukrainian soldiers who had been captured. The report was five soldiers shot dead in the village of Kazachya Loknya, Kursk Oblast. Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets is the source, he said Ukraine has sent letters to the UN and the ICRC to record a war crime. No this did not make Western mainstream news, yes it will undermine US efforts to get Ukraine to “make a deal” with Russia, it is exactly the same as negotiating with terrorists.
Sure, Russia has endless men – OSINTers report that after following motorized rifle regiments formed from personnel of the Strategic Missile Forces and the Aerospace Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, in the SVO zone from November 2024. In the Toretsk area, the 20th Motorized Rifle Regiment, formed from the personnel of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, mainly from the protection of nuclear weapons storage bases, is involved in combat operations. Yes, the lack of manpower in the Russian army at the front is one of the reasons.
Here is some comment from the Ukrainian officer Kyrylo Sazonov on the state of Russian manpower: “Who still believes in the infinite resources of Russia? Our guys are sometimes finding empty Russian positions, there are four, a maximum of six people, that’s it. The Russians have run out, they’ve reached bottom. The [offensive to take] Kostyantynivka sector is a failure. Chasiv Yar was not taken. Toretsk – they reported that they took it, but did not take it. The 51st Russian Army promised to clear the road on Konstakh [Kostyantynivka] for the 8th Army… the 51st was wiped out in the assaults on Toretsk and the surrounding territories… Lyman sector – no noticeable results. Kupyansk – the bridgehead was taken a month ago and that’s all. Neither forward nor sideways. Novopavlivka is similar to Pokrovsk with a delay of two or three weeks. All advances are already measured in hundreds of meters. With losses. Reserves are exhausted. Those are the realities on the ground… We are also tired, we also lack reserves, but the result is visible.”
Sure, America is irreplaceable: This week saw the “return” of US arms deliveries and intelligence transfers to Ukraine, and from the high orbit point of view it didn’t look like the cut off changed very much, and the “return” didn’t change much either.
On March 13 a report appeared, unconfirmed, that the Ukrainians used data from a European Galileo navigation system to hit Russian forces in the village of Velyki Kopani (Kherson sector) with a pair of HIMARS artillery rockets which, if it really happened, would have been a clever tech jump. The US HIMARS system uses America’s military GPS system and, during the week the Americans cut off Ukrainian access to that data, theoretically the GMLRS rockets fired by the HIMARS didn’t work. There was some questionable photo images citing Russian sources, so I’m not sure it actually happened.
But I am sure there are Ukrainian engineers working on it, and it is not impossible that European operators of the same systems – like the Poles, Germans, French and British – aren’t devoting tech effort to it as well, because this is a powerful combat system, and buying American then expecting the Americans might play games with allowing the weapon they sold you to actually work, is clearly risky.
Dumb Smart Munitions: Within 48 hours of the Sunday announcement the US had “restored” arms supplies to Ukraine, the military information platforms all found themselves reporting the very specific factoid that among the deliveries will be modernized GLSDB aerial bombs, because actually the really effective weapon the HIMARS fires – a big fat medium-range missile called ATACMS – is out of supply and Ukraine isn’t likely to get more.
For people who aren’t living in a war, this may sound like a reasonable piece of information.
However, for those of us being bombarded long range or shot at from time, this was kind of a joke story.
Those of us that watch this stuff every day, we saw the big hoo-hah and drum rolls in 2023 about how Saab was filling a contract for Boeing to build a clever munition called a Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), which not only sprouts glider wings and its own rocket motor and has super-duper uber-accurate guidance, but can be fitted onto a rocket fired by a HIMARS. The idea it is a smart munition that could take all manner of sneaky paths to the target. You can find drawings on the internet of a GDLSB taking attack trajectories Houdini would approve of, but I’ll limit the image to a GDLSB with a lot of flame and smoke behind it.
When it finally got fielded, in about spring 2024, it turned out the weapon didn’t work so well because the targets seemed to have a lot of jammers around them that turned the GDLSB from a genius Ph.D munition to a dumb special-ed munition.
We are told the new, upgraded, better vs. jamming GDLSB will be in AFU hands shortly.
Me, I know the Pentagon field-testing an iffy weapons system when I see it.
Romanian Fighter Pilots: Romania has two new fighter squadrons, 32 aircraft in all, both with F-16s from Norway. According to Romanian Defense Minister Anghel Tilvar 48th Fighter Squadron will deploy to Campia Turzii Air Base in the north of the country. 571st Fighter Squadron will go to the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base down by the Black Sea and Constanza. There is a third squadron recently re-equipped with Norwegian F-16s but I don’t know where that is exactly.
As we know, last month the Romanian parliament changed law so that the Romanian air force is allowed to fire on unidentified and potentially dangerous aircraft in Romanian air space and, in extraordinary circumstances, adjacent to Romanian air space.
One thing this will do is reduce somewhat, or at least make more difficult, Russian drone and missile strikes against southwest Ukraine. NATO has been very nice and tolerant about Russian munitions wandering into Romania and blowing up; with more fighters available for patrol, perhaps the Romanian component of NATO eastern frontier defense will bare its teeth a bit more.
But also, apropos of the peace talks, a piece of that process is the Ukrainian-European idea that first should come an air-sea ceasefire, let the land forces duke it out, which suits Ukraine well but Russia has said “no way,” so I’m not holding my breath. However, part of the diplomatic process is arguing about what is possible down the road, and now, with these fighters in place, Romanian Air Force participation no-fly zone, peacekeeping patrols, or whatever else the diplomats might choose to call it – became more credible.
Ukraine Bombards Russia : The peace process has not stopped Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia, and this week Ukrainian kamikaze aircraft hit the Moscow region two days running. Daytime, as in the sun was up, as in it’s a worse air defense failure than at night, and plenty of people in the Russian capital got to hear the drones or run to shelter or even witness an explosion. This is not the sort of thing that should happen in the capital of a superpower. Map of where the booms were in Moscow.
Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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