Don's Weekly, 10 February 2025: Part 3 (Russia, Ukraine, Diplomacy, Equipment)

by Donald Hill

(…continued from Part 2…)

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Russia

The Astrakhan refinery produces 1.6% of Russia’s gas, 0.6% of its diesel and is Russia’s largest source of sulphur used in explosives. It was burning after a drone attack. The Volgograd refinery was hit yet again, this time only three days after the last attack. Workers at the Orenburg Gas Plant were evacuated due to aerial threats but there were no reports of an actual attack. Last year, one of the two catalytic crackers at the Kstovo refinery stopped functioning from January to May or June because they didn’t have a spare turbine due to sanctions.

An oil depot in Krasnodar was hit.

Two police investigators who worked on sensitive cases fell out of windows. One left a note apologizing to his wife and asked her not to blame anyone. The other survived. He said he entered the bathroom and didn’t remember anything after that. Officials suggested that he was stressed because high level management was on the scene.

Ten Russian officers and officials were killed in the last six months. One was likely related to corruption. One died after his vehicle ran over a mine. The others were assassinated by Ukraine.

A Chinese ship carrying 56 tons of diesel, 706 tons of fuel oil and 1,000 tons of coal ran aground on Sakhalin island in the Pacific. At the Ust-Luga port in the Leningrad Oblast, the tanker Koala took on 130,000 tons of fuel. There were multiple explosions in the engine room when the engines were started and the ship sank at the dock.

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Ukraine

The intensity and the number of Russian attacks and territorial gains are dramatically decreasing. Heavy losses and insufficient replacements are contributing factors.

A Ukrainian Su-27 was shot down by an R-37M missile fired over a range of 130 km from an Su-30SM-2 (others say: Su-35). In this regards, the West has still no ‘solution suitable for Ukraine’, and thus the PSU (Ukrainian air force) has no solution either.

…and that’s not going to change any time soon…

…makes one wonder: what have all the top PSU commanders and their political masters thought to themselves all the time between 2014 and 2022? That the PSU could combat MiG-31s, Su-35s, and Su-30s armed with R-37Ms - with ‘stuff’ like MiG-29s and Su-27s that were obsolescent already back in the 1980s?

…or, is one free to conclude they didn’t think at all?

Well, at least it’s obvious who is paying the price for strategic mistakes of this kind.

One is left to hope the French might have added some towed decoys to Mirage 2000Fs they’ve delivered a few days ago.

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Diplomacy

The glorious, wisest ever, magnificent and super-smart, solving-all-the-problems US President Donald J Trump is now in power for two weeks. Surprisingly enough, the war in Ukraine - a conflict for which he’s stated he’s going to end in a matter of 24 hours - is still going on. We have no explanation for this… perhaps it’s a wonder? Definitely, not his failure.

And so, Trump’s team is now divided: it’s divided between those who are pro pressuring Putin to end the war, and those pro cutting off all the aid to Ukraine.

In the meantime, Russia and the US are talking about the war without Ukraine, even though Russia says it’s ready for talks with Zelensky… which is a logical consequence of the Ukrainian political leadership managing to degenerate own armed forces, in turn manoeuvring the entire country into a helpless position…

But, lookie here: Trump’s ‘solution’ for peace in the Gaza Strip is to remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. To outsource the problem. Stefan Korshak reports that this is being viewed in Ukraine as Trump being unconcerned for people and their connection to their land.

We’re of the sort that, whenever facing such ‘news’ cannot but start asking unpleasant questions. For example: the idea might sound ‘nice’ (at least to everybody ignoring the Israel’s genocide on Palestinians), but, how realistic is it? Where does Trump want to move the 2 million of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip? What country is going to accept them on its soil? Who’s going to pay for taking care of them? And, does he really think the Palestinians are going to accept his ‘decision’ to kick them out of their own country just like that?

Good luck whoever has positive answers…

At least the most of restrictions on Ukraine using Western weapons inside the Russian Federation have been lifted. Apparently, a few of Western talking-heads have realised that ‘Pudding the Terrible’ didn’t nuke half the planet in retaliation for earlier arms supplies, or Ukrainian deployment of Western weaponry inside the Russian Federation…

Kellogg said current Russian sanctions are 3 out of 10 on an intensity scale.

…and then the US efforts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs all ended.

…and that happened after Trump spoke of using frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine…

Reminds one that, about 100 years ago, or so, the motto was something like ‘Proletarians of all the nations, unite’. Nowadays, it’s ‘Oligarchs of all the nations, unite’…

A former ambassador to Russia said Putin shut down USAID inside Russia because it supported free markets, democracy and human rights. A Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova said USAID was one of the things fighting Russian influence in the country. The agency provided $5.4 billion to Ukraine last year. Overall, it had provided Ukraine $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance and more than $30 billion in aid to Ukraine’s budget. All foreign aid in general is on a 90-day pause.

Trump, who doesn’t respect elections he loses, said Ukraine should have an election. Putin, who does not believe in democracy, also wants Ukraine to have an election. Ukraine’s constitution says elections cannot be held during wartime, but neither leader is a supporter of constitutions, either. Poroshenko, who was defeated by Zelensky and plans to run again, says that holding elections will undermine internal unity and benefit Russia.

…which is leading one to the conclusion: democracy and pluralism were never as unpopular before. Especially not between oligarchs and their puppets in power…

Kazakhstan delivered its first shipment of oil by tanker to Azerbaijan for further transport along the local pipeline. This will reduce Kazakstan’s reliance on Russian pipelines by 80%. It will also reduce revenue for Russia.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been working for independence from the Russian energy grid for years. As of last week, they are no longer reliant on their greatest threat for energy.

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Equipment

All along the front, Russians are reporting that their Starlink terminals no longer work. Two possible reasons are that access to the satellites was cut off, in which the Ukrainians would also not be able to use their Starlink terminals, or Starlink was able to identify the black market terminals sold to Russia and deactivate them. Russian access was blocked last May, as well, but a US official said then that he believed Russia might find a workaround solution.

Russian UMPK attacks returned to their high levels. About half of them are being dropped in Kursk.

Russian artillery attacks are on increase again. On the contrary - and rather surprisingly (because artillery rockets are much cheaper and simpler to manufacture than artillery shells) - MLRS attacks dropped by half in the last month.

The shortage of logistical vehicles means some Russians are using horses. It’s not the first time.

Ukraine claims to have a weapon system called Tryzub that uses a laser to shoot down targets at altitudes over 2,000 meters. Since Shahed drones can fly at higher altitudes, this would be a point defense weapon.

155mm artillery rounds can be very deadly but: it often takes a couple minutes of firing to be close enough to have an effect - and the enemy can leave or take cover in that time. The Excalibur round was effective in placing the first round on target by using GPS to determine where it is and by altering its course with fins that moved. That effectiveness ended when the Russians started jamming the GPS signals - which the Pentagon gloriously declared for ‘impossible’, at least since back in the late 1990s…

There are some munitions, such as the Copperhead, JDAM and AASM, that are guided with help of laser markers that are ‘painting’ a target. They are extremely accurate and cannot be jammed electronically. Since last August, Ukrainians had been using laser designators at select locations on the front line. The issue was that Ukraine did not have a platform with a laser designator for targets behind enemy lines.

Now it does.

After two years of development by over a hundred people, the ACS-3 Raybird reconnaissance drone now has an integrated laser designator. The drone can paint a target that is 5 km away while it is flying at altitudes of 2400 meters or less.

The M172 Copperhead development began in 1970 and production continued into the 1980s. Back then (yes, our memory is that ‘naughty’), there was a big affair over their excessive cost: lots of people in the USA were complaining that every single round came at a price of US$ 22,000. There were complains over their shorter range, too (at least shorter in comparison to conventional artillery shells): the Copperhead is so heavy that it can only reach around 16km; for comparison, a standard round can - depending on the gun firing it - reach beyond 20km.

Well, nowadays it turns out that money was well-invested: if visibility is good then the round follows its normal ballistic arc until it is 3000 meters from the target. Then fins extend and maneuver the round for a precise hit. If the cloud ceiling or visibility is low then the release of the fins can be set at a designated point.

In Hola Prystan, near Kherson, a concrete bunker was identified as a target. It was only 8 km away from the Dnieper river. A Copperhead round was used to destroy it.

The US Army had about 18,000 Copperhead rounds in its stocks. The number of those sent to Ukraine remains unknown (which is good that way… although, one must expect the GRU and the FSB to have been informed about the figures in question, better than we are).