Don's Weekly, 24 March 2025: Part 3
by Donald Hill
(…continued from Part 2…)
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Russia
The Engels-2 airbase was attacked by drones. An ammo bunker and fuel depots were hit and nearby homes were damaged. Ukraine says they destroyed Kh-101 and other missiles. Five bombers and a transport aircraft were reported at the scene. Given the size of the blast, it is possible that aircraft on the other side of the base could be damaged but there are no reports of that. Two Tu-95 pilots were reported killed by the Russian media.
The landing gear of an Su-34 malfunctioned but the drag chutes still worked.
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Ukraine
For February, attacks in most sectors are down 3-63%, but there were 8% more attacks in the Kupiansk and increased by 226% in Zaporizhzhia. To put that in perspective, Zaporizhzhia had 111 attacks. In Pokrovsk, attacks were down 58% and they had 1042 attacks.
30 km from Kursk, Sumy was hit by at least 3 missiles and 16 Shahed drones. This drone was transmitting video back to the Russians as it attacked a train.
11 km from the border and 15 km from the incursion at Demidovka, Krasnopillia was hit by multiple FPV, rocket and artillery attacks. It was also hit by 2 missiles and 22 airstrikes. Seven Shahed drones hit a hospital.
When war came to Sloviansk in 2022, Serhii Kovalov kept his restaurant, Slavnyi Horod, or Glorious City, open. He was the only one to do so. Only 20 km from the front line, the city has been hit by artillery and air raids. When a missile destroyed his apartment, he went to work with a concussion. His staff of 35 shrank to seven. Customers started asking for sushi, so he started serving sushi even though he doesn’t like it. Many suppliers won’t drive to Sloviansk because of the risk, so he makes the long journeys to bring in the supplies. They have a generator in case they lose power. Other restaurants have now reopened, but everyone is ready to leave if the Russian advance threatens the city.
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Diplomacy
Putin agreed to a 30-day cease fire of air attacks on Ukrainian energy and infrastructure. Within hours, Russia hit hospitals, railways and other targets. Ukraine retaliated. Trump reports that there’s a '“ceasefire on a lot of areas and so far that’s all held very well.”
Witkoff continues to ignore reality saying, "There have been referendums [organized by Moscow] where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule. There are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory." A bi-partisan bill in Congress was introduced stating “the exclusive policy of the United States to reject any and all claims made by the Russian Federation over sovereign Ukrainian territory—including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.”
The US proposed to take over ownership of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including the Zaporizhzhia power plant occupied by Russia. It is being sold as a way to protect the plants from Russian attacks, and for Ukraine to repay the US for the military assistance it gave. Zelensky said it wouldn’t happen.
When the US stopped funding an effort to find Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia. The group also lost access to satellite imagery tracking the children, so the recovery of the children and accountability of the abductors may be lost. Researchers also lost access to the database of information and there were concerns that it was deleted. A State Department spokesperson said that the data still exists but it is not controlled by the State Department. She also said that Trump will work closely with both sides to make sure the children were returned home. There is no indication that the researchers who act on the data have access to it.
The Eventin is an old tanker carrying 100,000 tons of oil as part of Russia’s shadow fleet. It was traveling from Egypt to Russia when it was held by Germany in January for investigation. Germany is seizing it so the ship and its $43 million cargo will be their property. Russia says it doesn’t know anything about the ship.
Estonia plans to increase defense spending up to 5% of its GDP. The opposition wants it to be 6-7%.
Germany voted to overturn its strict debt rules, allowing it to borrow more money to spend on infrastructure and defense. While it won’t reach the US achievement of WW2, this gives Germany the potential to be the leading arsenal of democracy.
The EU has $200 billion of Russia’s $300 billion in frozen assets and the Baltic States want them to be seized and used to help Ukraine. Belgium opposes seizure because future investments in Europe may be seen as risky. France believes the assets are a security guarantee to police any future peace deal. The sanctions must be renewed every six months and Hungary talked about vetoing a renewal but Rubio talked them out of it. The EU is discussing the possibility of an international claims commission that will create legal ways to use the frozen funds to pay for rebuilding Ukraine, which so far would cost $450 billion.
Prosecutors from Poland, the Baltic States, Romania, Ukraine and the International Criminal Court seek to hold leaders in Russia, Belarus, Iran and North Korea responsible for the war in Ukraine. The US was part of the group but Trump is pulling out of it.
Lithuania said Russia paid two people to start a fire in Ikea and shopping centers in Poland. Poland is investigating 30 acts of sabotage or preparation for sabotage. One study tracked 52 acts of Russian sabotage across Europe since 2022. AP reports 59 acts.
Trump Jr. traveled to Serbia to meet with President Vucic to talk about US foreign aid to Serbia and the plans to build a Trump hotel in Belgrade. Opposition leaders called for the deal to be scrapped. Junior also expressed his support for Vucic as calls for him to step down increased. The next day, Vucic resigned.
Canada is talking with the EU to reduce its military dependency on the US.
Because the US is unreliable, Europe is working on a plan to replace the US in NATO in the next 5-10 years. The US informed NATO they will stop participating in the planning of future military exercises in Europe.
Russia continues its war on Ukraine and Russia is excluded from international play, but Putin and Trump discuss hockey games between the two nations.
Erdogan’s biggest rival was arrested before he could become a presidential candidate. Imamoglu is the mayor of Istanbul and was accused of corruption and aiding a terrorist group. 100 other politicians, journalists and businessmen were also arrested. The Turkish constitution requires the president to complete higher education and Istanbul University annulled Imamoglu’s degree due to alleged irregularities. If upheld, he will not be able to run. Erdogan cannot run for office again unless he calls for an early election. There are large protests over multiple nights and, as of Friday, 343 people have been arrested.
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Equipment
The 12th Azov Brigade in Toretsk is using the SETH drone, which has a body similar to a Shahed drone, a push rotor, a 3-5 kg warhead and a 50 km range. What’s new is when a reconnaissance drone locates a target the SETH drone receives the data and strikes the target autonomously.
Ukraine was able to jam Russia’s 8-antenna CRPA on the UMPK bombs. 12- and 16-antenna arrays have been recovered on Shahed drones.
Electronic Warfare is constantly evolving. Russian drones use the same binding key for all their ELRS controllers. Because of this, Ukraine can send a signal that spoofs the actual signal and command Russian drones to shut off the throttle so the drone falls out of the sky. This will continue until Russia starts using unique keys for each controller.
The UK started sending Martlets to Ukraine at the end of 2023 and by 2030 5,000 will be shipped. It is a Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) that can be fired air-to-air, air-to-surface, surface-to-air and surface-to-surface. It has a 3 kg warhead, a range of over 6,000 meters, has a speed of Mach 1.5 and is laser-guided. The UK will also transfer the technology and help Ukraine build them locally.
The UK is also trying to triple production of the Martlet at its Thales factory in Belfast but says it would take 2-3 years to increase its workforce by 10% due to the shortage of qualified specialists. Other issues are the expense of training new personnel and the backlog of processing security clearances. It used to be that only 200-300 private contractors needed clearances each year. Now, 7,000 are being processed.
The UK, Italy and France ordered 218 Aster 30 missiles. Ukraine has been requesting 50 missiles for their two SAMP/T air defense systems for weeks. Italy has virtually no missiles to send.
About 40 to 60 Taurus missiles are currently being produced each year. The rate of production would increase with more orders and Germany announced they will buy 600 more for $2.3 billion that will begin to be delivered in 2029. 50 to 100 Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles are produced each year. France is expected to produce 1200 AASM Hammer munitions in 2025. The ‘Long Neptune’ took a year to develop and has a 1000 km range and a 300 kg warhead. It is believed to be produced at a rate of 30 to 60 missiles a month. Zelensky said that Ukraine will produce 3,000 cruise missiles of all types in 2025 along with 30,000 long-range drones. Russia produces about 1,400 missiles a year.
The price of drone components have dropped 200% since 2022.
Russia relies on Starlink, too. Their terminals have been deactivated last summer and last month, but there are workarounds to those moves. Without Starlink, Russian forces would be more condensed and easier to target, the speed and control of their drones are artillery fire would be reduced, it would be harder to share information and the pace of their operations would slow down.
Trump discusses sales of the F-47 aircraft that was just awarded to Boeing: “Certain allies, we’ll be selling them, perhaps, toned down versions, we’d like to tone them down about 10%, which probably makes sense, because someday, maybe they're not our allies, right?”
All this absolute tosh from European countries saying that commandeering Russian assets would spread risk to the markets and destabilise them. No. The only risk a sovereign nation has to its assets invested abroad are if they invade another sovereign nation and commit atrocious war crimes on a daily basis….otherwise your investments are safe.
Serbian president Vucic did not resign, prime minister Vucevic did