Hello everybody! This was originally planned for release back in October, and then at least in late November: sorry for repeated delays, but meanwhile not only my ‘job’, even family affairs came in between… In the Part 1 of this feature, I’ve described the basics of the available technology of the Western general-purpose and guided bombs; the basics of the technology of the Russian general-purpose bombs, and the reasons for the Russians – when in need of ‘a large number of precision guided bombs’ – finding no other solution but to create their glide-bombs, known under abbreviations MPK and UMPK.
Thanks for the analysis. Interesting and understandable. And demonstrates that while F16 is helpful (I assume all such airplanes at least help more than it costs to operativ them) it is the “old fashioned” anti-air craft and artillery that is needed. Sad that this message isn’t understood. As I stated, your analysis is quite understandable. Abbreviation list is helpful, agree on that. (I remember when I read about WW1 in my younger days that history book always used Roman numerals on the Axis side and arabic numerals on the Allied side. But it was usually at a much higher organizational level.)
Thanks for report. I as Ukrainian now feel that it is the hardest period of war, especially this circus in Congress. And Russians produce drones massively. But what is approximate ratio between Ukrainian and Russian drones number?
That differs by sectors of the front line. In Kherson/Dnipro direction it is about 3:1 in favor of Ukraine while in Avdiivka or near Bakhmut it may be 1:5 against Ukraine for combat drones.
There are also surveillance drones (e.g. Orlans) and long-range drones (Shaheds) which don't get that much discussion over the Web.
EW is another multiplier, and it differs from sector to sector.
Hard to say, but my impression is that the Russians have something like 10-fold more FPVs than Ukrainians. Moreover, they meanwhile do have a well-organised, 3-tier scout & shoot UAV-system, and this is causing massive problems.
Thanks Tom for the article. Over the past six months, it seems that the United States and the West no longer really want the war to end with a victory for Ukraine. It feels like they are just waiting for the Russians to simply crush the Ukrainians with the mass of people and the mass of shells. There is a huge problem with air defense, but no one wants to solve it somehow. But Ukraine cannot itself produce systems such as Patriot. Somehow I don’t want to feel like a Syrian when the Russians dropped bombs with impunity. Although even then no one cared...
Western oligarchy, and thus the politicians and the media this is controlling, are lulling the public into a false sense of security. 'Everything will be fine, because Ukrainians have stopped the Russians, and now we can get back to minding our own business.'
As next, our traditional political parties have no trace of clue how to counter all the right-wingers. They're absolutely helpless and watching in awe as such populists like Trump, Le Pen, 'Dutch Trump' Wilders, Orban, Fico etc. are winning one election after the other. Indeed, to a large degree, the same are playing straight into their hands - through a combination of own corruption and utter incompetence, and emissions of xenophobia-messages.
With other words: the War in Ukraine is gradually losing importance, and thus 'people' are wondering why should they continue financing Kyiv, 'instead'... :rolleyes:
Thank you Tom, much appreciated. Since you have mentioned F16 in this context I would like to ask - I came across the information, that the F16 that are to be provided to Ukraine are of the MLU type. Would that still limit them to the AIM-120C, or would they be compatible with a more modern / longer reach radar and air-to-air missile systems? Maybe this is a dumb question, but I am really out of my depth when it comes to fighter jets.
According to Wikipedia the MLU can use the AIM-120C-7 with increased (of course undisclosed) range coupled with systems which allow the launch of this missile beyond the max range of the radar... I guess we have to wait and see...
edit: sorry I misread... only romanian MLUs are explicitly compatible with the AIM-120C-7. The ukrainian MLUs should support the AIM-120C-5 whose max intercept range in real combat has been 45 Km. The attack profile of the SU35s can be also modified to practically render impossible an intercept at the now used drop range of 60 kms.
The F-16s said to be in the process of delivery to Ukraine should be old, ex-NATO F-16As, all subjected to the MLU upgrade (resulting in sub-variant designated F-16AM9. While this is making them comparable to some of latest blocks of the F-16C-variant, they do remain limited in terms of their radar range. And, their AIM-120C-5s and AIM-120C-7s are not known to have ever been deployed in combat from a range longer than 45-50km.
...and in that case, from high altitude (see: 10,000m or so).
Therefore, I consider any kind of thinking in direction of 'ah, is no problem: F-16s are going to shoot at incoming Su-34s from 100km away' - for daydreaming.
There are longer-ranged versions of the AIM-120 in service: for example, the AIM-120D. But, these are not only outranging the radar of F-16AM, but I simply do not see them becoming capable of engaging Russian fighters from ranges comparable to those from which the Russian fighters can engage with their long-ranged R-37Ms. And that's not to talk about such Russian long-range SAMs like S-400s...
You may be the only person I have ever heard say that the F-16 is "limited". Not that I disagree with you (well, much anyway, you really need something with some serious long-ranged weapons to have an effect), but still it's enough to make me snicker.
USA is sitting on ~2000 M1 Abrams tanks in storage, yet we see ~30 M1 Abrams delivered . "The West" is providing ~100 Leopards 2 and another ~100 completely outdated Leopard 1 (and the majority of those, as well as the M1 Abrams, arriving just now after the counter offensive is effectively over).
You do the math.
And you deduct what that means for the support of "the West" in terms of air defense capabilities.
A few more Patriot systems would be a major improvement.
Impressive Ukraine damaged a railway system around 5,000 Km away. If the Swiss Gotthard tunnel is a good example then the Severomuysky tunnel could be closed for months
We have more than 2000 M1 Abrams in storage and unfortunately they are not as useful to this kind of war as they were last year. If West had provided a lot of mechanised equipment last year along with the HIMARS, Ukraine would have punched a hole through Zaporizhzhia as well. But now the Russians have caught up to using commercial off the shelf drones. Its a really sh**y situation. So biggest thing Ukraine needs is artillery, CUAS, GBADS, drones, modern jets, and decently armoured fighting vehicles.
The fact no Western F-16s were shot down in combat since 1991, doesn't mean they're invulnerable. And the fact they're always fighting wars within well-developed air warfare systems of the USA and NATO, doesn't mean they're limitless. Actually, on their own - the way they are going to be operated in Ukraine - F-16s are very much limited, and quite vulnerable.
Yes, it's a great morale booster, no doubt about that.
But, the fact no Western F-16s were shot down in combat since 1991, doesn't mean the type si something like invulnerable. And the fact Western F-16s are always fighting wars within well-developed air warfare systems of the USA and NATO, doesn't mean they're limitless. Actually, on their own - the way they are going to be operated in Ukraine - F-16s are very much limited, and quite vulnerable.
I survived russian FAB-500 attack on Yakovlivka in Kharkiv region, while being in Vysokyi settlement and immediately got my portion of PTSD (I'm fine now). It felt like damn world just exploded under my feet and there is still too much uncertainties in this attack (from my point of view as civillian), except i know it were FAB-500 bombs.
Map shows that i was in about 5-6kms from Yakovlivka, my father in law told that Yakovlivka is about 2kms from Vysokyi. Explosions felts like all of them were right outside the house. I heard recognisable whistles before explosions, saw flashes, whole house were shaking like from extreme earthquake, windows were creaking, but at least not breaks. News said there is 200 damaged houses in Yakovlivka, i saw photos where Yakovlivka is just destroyed to the ground. News said there were "few" or as in some telegram channels, 9 FAB-500, i heard at least 15-20 explosions and loud "bombers sounds" just some 5-10 seconds before distinctive whistles and explosions. I still don't know what the hell it was, maybe our news just lie a little about this situation to make it "softer" for people, but thats my experience. It's very hard to describe just with words. You need to experience all this to understand what I'm talking about.
I was way more far away from explosions than ZSU on frontline, but knowing how "precisious" russians are and all those emotions i felt, i guess i can say i survived this, even if i was, in fact, in safe place. But being just some 200-500 metres from sh*t like this? Holy f*cking hell...
Btw, other people comments focusing only on F-16 and wetting their pants imagining and arguing on how cool this aircrafts will be in "intercepting Su-34" or even in "straight dogfight against soviet era aircrafts" as i saw many times on reddit(and I'm sure that at this point many of them are were really close to culmination), lead me only to one thought:
*Sigh
Westerners...
People don't understand that F-16 will be used mostly in the same way, as PSU using their own aircrafts now - just as another platform to launch some missiles that PSU already have and maybe occasionally intercepting russian missiles on short range. People are really don't understand that PSU has not so many aircrafts left at this point, to be used for most common and even boring job, without all this advanced super duper NATO style "we bomb you to the deepest depths of hell, so only steaming glass left on surface" operations. Thats why PSU need F-16 - just to have more aircrafts than it has now, and F-16 is most common military aircraft in NATO.
And my honest thanks to you, that you at least trying to clarify this to people in your articles. But sigh...westerners...
So sorry to hear about your experience. Its terrible what these lunatics are doing to your country. In as much as I agree with you about the F16s, I think it will be an excellent addition to Ukraine's airforce and much better than the current Soviet aircraft. There are so many add ons(ALQ-184) and data it can get directly from NATO for real time targeting. If you guys get the SLAM-ER, AGM-154 it will be a real game changer for the war and cause trouble for Russian S-300/S-400. We have quite a lot of them and the neptunes you develop could be used to hit Russia proper!!
Yeah, dude, just stop it. I'm not aircrafts expert (fortunately, we do have one here who probably can judge us), but F-16 won't be a game changer, because:
We don't have it yet, and considering how long US was wanking with giving us only 31 Abrams... There is a not zero chances that we will get F-16 by year 2135.
We won't get the most modern modification. It just won't happen, same as it didn't happened with literally any other weapons we already got. Wanna know what we realistically can get? Some super outdated and oldest F-16 modification, that was forgotten on some NATO airbase for tens of years, and that almost breaking apart just from the weight of years. Refurbish until it ± can fly and give it to Ukraine - thats what realistically will happen. And those oldest modifications of F-16 is realistically worse than aircrafts that PSU have right now. I mean, do you think that Ukraine is never upgraded own aircrafts to more modern modification, don't you?
We don't know how many of F-16 we will get. But considering how conservative west was so far, especially the USA, personally i think we will get sort of 10-15 F-16 + 10 more broken just for spare parts. And after that, the collective West will be wetting their pants online, bragging about how so many few F-16 is the game changer (it's not). And let's do simple math. russia have ± 900 military aircrafts of all kinds. PSU have less than 100. Does additional 15 + 10 aircrafts gonna be a game changer? You tell me...
We don't know what weapons west gonna give us with F-16. And we don't know how many of those weapons west ready to give us. And considering how west struggling to produce just more artillery shells than, god damn it, North Korea, even if we get 1000 of F-16, all this aircrafts will be completely useless without weapons. And oh boy, i can bet we will get sort of 100 short range missiles, which will be enough for number of air operations that you can count on one hand. And again, west will be bragging about it for next few months after we recieve it. Then, when F-16 not change anything on battlefield, they will switch agenda to "the problem is Ukraine is not using NATO tactics". It's all the old song that i hearing from the West for 2 years of full scale war. And i doubt they going to change it soon nor at all.
Thanks for sharing your experiences in such a frank and vivid fashion. I simply can't but agree with the complete content of your message: with every single word you've said.
I wish it would make sense to tell you something like, 'stay safe', and wish you the best. But, when one is facing this kind of weapons like you and brothers and sisters serving with the ZSU do... and that in combination with blissful public ignorance... sigh.... I know that such messages are making no sense at all. Thus, can only hope at least some of my posts might help increase public awareness...
Regarding the winged bombs and the alternative solutions that the Russians resorted to, it can be said that they are a good solution in the current state of war, but it must also be considered that the Russians, in recent months, have received great support from Iran with regard to preparing facilities to manufacture 5 types of Iranian drones, in addition to transferring licenses. For missile production, satellite images have monitored Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea transporting a large number of containers to Russia. The Russians are seeking to obtain Iranian short- and medium-range missiles. It has facilitated production between a range of 100 km to 1000 km. Iran has this capacity and can export thousands of missiles in this field. It supported the Houthis in the past and gave them techniques for producing missiles and equipping special production facilities in Yemen. From my point of view, the matter in Ukraine may develop, especially since currently those who support Russia are not only Iran, but North Korea, which is considered a huge warehouse and the largest manufacturer of weapons and ammunition, and China, even if it does not acknowledge this, but Railway trips to Russia have increased in recent months
Thanks for the analysis. Interesting and understandable. And demonstrates that while F16 is helpful (I assume all such airplanes at least help more than it costs to operativ them) it is the “old fashioned” anti-air craft and artillery that is needed. Sad that this message isn’t understood. As I stated, your analysis is quite understandable. Abbreviation list is helpful, agree on that. (I remember when I read about WW1 in my younger days that history book always used Roman numerals on the Axis side and arabic numerals on the Allied side. But it was usually at a much higher organizational level.)
What a master class on aerial ballistics. Many thanks for that, and hope family issues are actually “fixed”.
Thx. Sadly, death in family is an issue without solution...
My condolences.
Thank you. The claims you made in the first part make a lot more sense!
Thanks for report. I as Ukrainian now feel that it is the hardest period of war, especially this circus in Congress. And Russians produce drones massively. But what is approximate ratio between Ukrainian and Russian drones number?
That differs by sectors of the front line. In Kherson/Dnipro direction it is about 3:1 in favor of Ukraine while in Avdiivka or near Bakhmut it may be 1:5 against Ukraine for combat drones.
There are also surveillance drones (e.g. Orlans) and long-range drones (Shaheds) which don't get that much discussion over the Web.
EW is another multiplier, and it differs from sector to sector.
Hard to say, but my impression is that the Russians have something like 10-fold more FPVs than Ukrainians. Moreover, they meanwhile do have a well-organised, 3-tier scout & shoot UAV-system, and this is causing massive problems.
Thanks Tom for the article. Over the past six months, it seems that the United States and the West no longer really want the war to end with a victory for Ukraine. It feels like they are just waiting for the Russians to simply crush the Ukrainians with the mass of people and the mass of shells. There is a huge problem with air defense, but no one wants to solve it somehow. But Ukraine cannot itself produce systems such as Patriot. Somehow I don’t want to feel like a Syrian when the Russians dropped bombs with impunity. Although even then no one cared...
Western oligarchy, and thus the politicians and the media this is controlling, are lulling the public into a false sense of security. 'Everything will be fine, because Ukrainians have stopped the Russians, and now we can get back to minding our own business.'
As next, our traditional political parties have no trace of clue how to counter all the right-wingers. They're absolutely helpless and watching in awe as such populists like Trump, Le Pen, 'Dutch Trump' Wilders, Orban, Fico etc. are winning one election after the other. Indeed, to a large degree, the same are playing straight into their hands - through a combination of own corruption and utter incompetence, and emissions of xenophobia-messages.
With other words: the War in Ukraine is gradually losing importance, and thus 'people' are wondering why should they continue financing Kyiv, 'instead'... :rolleyes:
Thank you Tom, much appreciated. Since you have mentioned F16 in this context I would like to ask - I came across the information, that the F16 that are to be provided to Ukraine are of the MLU type. Would that still limit them to the AIM-120C, or would they be compatible with a more modern / longer reach radar and air-to-air missile systems? Maybe this is a dumb question, but I am really out of my depth when it comes to fighter jets.
According to Wikipedia the MLU can use the AIM-120C-7 with increased (of course undisclosed) range coupled with systems which allow the launch of this missile beyond the max range of the radar... I guess we have to wait and see...
edit: sorry I misread... only romanian MLUs are explicitly compatible with the AIM-120C-7. The ukrainian MLUs should support the AIM-120C-5 whose max intercept range in real combat has been 45 Km. The attack profile of the SU35s can be also modified to practically render impossible an intercept at the now used drop range of 60 kms.
What numbers of AIM-120C-5 are really available? As I understand it it’s been out of production for some time.
If I understood it correctly, version 5 is the most widespread.
The F-16s said to be in the process of delivery to Ukraine should be old, ex-NATO F-16As, all subjected to the MLU upgrade (resulting in sub-variant designated F-16AM9. While this is making them comparable to some of latest blocks of the F-16C-variant, they do remain limited in terms of their radar range. And, their AIM-120C-5s and AIM-120C-7s are not known to have ever been deployed in combat from a range longer than 45-50km.
...and in that case, from high altitude (see: 10,000m or so).
Therefore, I consider any kind of thinking in direction of 'ah, is no problem: F-16s are going to shoot at incoming Su-34s from 100km away' - for daydreaming.
There are longer-ranged versions of the AIM-120 in service: for example, the AIM-120D. But, these are not only outranging the radar of F-16AM, but I simply do not see them becoming capable of engaging Russian fighters from ranges comparable to those from which the Russian fighters can engage with their long-ranged R-37Ms. And that's not to talk about such Russian long-range SAMs like S-400s...
Thanks for putting that hope in its final resting place ...
You may be the only person I have ever heard say that the F-16 is "limited". Not that I disagree with you (well, much anyway, you really need something with some serious long-ranged weapons to have an effect), but still it's enough to make me snicker.
USA is sitting on ~2000 M1 Abrams tanks in storage, yet we see ~30 M1 Abrams delivered . "The West" is providing ~100 Leopards 2 and another ~100 completely outdated Leopard 1 (and the majority of those, as well as the M1 Abrams, arriving just now after the counter offensive is effectively over).
You do the math.
And you deduct what that means for the support of "the West" in terms of air defense capabilities.
A few more Patriot systems would be a major improvement.
Impressive Ukraine damaged a railway system around 5,000 Km away. If the Swiss Gotthard tunnel is a good example then the Severomuysky tunnel could be closed for months
We have more than 2000 M1 Abrams in storage and unfortunately they are not as useful to this kind of war as they were last year. If West had provided a lot of mechanised equipment last year along with the HIMARS, Ukraine would have punched a hole through Zaporizhzhia as well. But now the Russians have caught up to using commercial off the shelf drones. Its a really sh**y situation. So biggest thing Ukraine needs is artillery, CUAS, GBADS, drones, modern jets, and decently armoured fighting vehicles.
The fact no Western F-16s were shot down in combat since 1991, doesn't mean they're invulnerable. And the fact they're always fighting wars within well-developed air warfare systems of the USA and NATO, doesn't mean they're limitless. Actually, on their own - the way they are going to be operated in Ukraine - F-16s are very much limited, and quite vulnerable.
The F-16 is an excellent morale booster, if nothing else. The optimist in me is excited to see how PSU innovates with it.
It is not a morale booster. It's an affordable solution for attrition of the soviet era aircrafts. Lots of planes and lots of spare-parts.
It is good enough - not a magic bullet.
Yes, it's a great morale booster, no doubt about that.
But, the fact no Western F-16s were shot down in combat since 1991, doesn't mean the type si something like invulnerable. And the fact Western F-16s are always fighting wars within well-developed air warfare systems of the USA and NATO, doesn't mean they're limitless. Actually, on their own - the way they are going to be operated in Ukraine - F-16s are very much limited, and quite vulnerable.
There is a report of a Shahed's HE payload replaced with a 40 kg vacuum bomb.
Hi, Tom. Thanks for the second part.
I survived russian FAB-500 attack on Yakovlivka in Kharkiv region, while being in Vysokyi settlement and immediately got my portion of PTSD (I'm fine now). It felt like damn world just exploded under my feet and there is still too much uncertainties in this attack (from my point of view as civillian), except i know it were FAB-500 bombs.
Map shows that i was in about 5-6kms from Yakovlivka, my father in law told that Yakovlivka is about 2kms from Vysokyi. Explosions felts like all of them were right outside the house. I heard recognisable whistles before explosions, saw flashes, whole house were shaking like from extreme earthquake, windows were creaking, but at least not breaks. News said there is 200 damaged houses in Yakovlivka, i saw photos where Yakovlivka is just destroyed to the ground. News said there were "few" or as in some telegram channels, 9 FAB-500, i heard at least 15-20 explosions and loud "bombers sounds" just some 5-10 seconds before distinctive whistles and explosions. I still don't know what the hell it was, maybe our news just lie a little about this situation to make it "softer" for people, but thats my experience. It's very hard to describe just with words. You need to experience all this to understand what I'm talking about.
I was way more far away from explosions than ZSU on frontline, but knowing how "precisious" russians are and all those emotions i felt, i guess i can say i survived this, even if i was, in fact, in safe place. But being just some 200-500 metres from sh*t like this? Holy f*cking hell...
Btw, other people comments focusing only on F-16 and wetting their pants imagining and arguing on how cool this aircrafts will be in "intercepting Su-34" or even in "straight dogfight against soviet era aircrafts" as i saw many times on reddit(and I'm sure that at this point many of them are were really close to culmination), lead me only to one thought:
*Sigh
Westerners...
People don't understand that F-16 will be used mostly in the same way, as PSU using their own aircrafts now - just as another platform to launch some missiles that PSU already have and maybe occasionally intercepting russian missiles on short range. People are really don't understand that PSU has not so many aircrafts left at this point, to be used for most common and even boring job, without all this advanced super duper NATO style "we bomb you to the deepest depths of hell, so only steaming glass left on surface" operations. Thats why PSU need F-16 - just to have more aircrafts than it has now, and F-16 is most common military aircraft in NATO.
And my honest thanks to you, that you at least trying to clarify this to people in your articles. But sigh...westerners...
BINGO about F-16 !!! Will replace the attrition endured by PSU.
Good news about them is that neighboring countries operate and maintain them. It will make things a bit easier ...
So sorry to hear about your experience. Its terrible what these lunatics are doing to your country. In as much as I agree with you about the F16s, I think it will be an excellent addition to Ukraine's airforce and much better than the current Soviet aircraft. There are so many add ons(ALQ-184) and data it can get directly from NATO for real time targeting. If you guys get the SLAM-ER, AGM-154 it will be a real game changer for the war and cause trouble for Russian S-300/S-400. We have quite a lot of them and the neptunes you develop could be used to hit Russia proper!!
Yeah, dude, just stop it. I'm not aircrafts expert (fortunately, we do have one here who probably can judge us), but F-16 won't be a game changer, because:
We don't have it yet, and considering how long US was wanking with giving us only 31 Abrams... There is a not zero chances that we will get F-16 by year 2135.
We won't get the most modern modification. It just won't happen, same as it didn't happened with literally any other weapons we already got. Wanna know what we realistically can get? Some super outdated and oldest F-16 modification, that was forgotten on some NATO airbase for tens of years, and that almost breaking apart just from the weight of years. Refurbish until it ± can fly and give it to Ukraine - thats what realistically will happen. And those oldest modifications of F-16 is realistically worse than aircrafts that PSU have right now. I mean, do you think that Ukraine is never upgraded own aircrafts to more modern modification, don't you?
We don't know how many of F-16 we will get. But considering how conservative west was so far, especially the USA, personally i think we will get sort of 10-15 F-16 + 10 more broken just for spare parts. And after that, the collective West will be wetting their pants online, bragging about how so many few F-16 is the game changer (it's not). And let's do simple math. russia have ± 900 military aircrafts of all kinds. PSU have less than 100. Does additional 15 + 10 aircrafts gonna be a game changer? You tell me...
We don't know what weapons west gonna give us with F-16. And we don't know how many of those weapons west ready to give us. And considering how west struggling to produce just more artillery shells than, god damn it, North Korea, even if we get 1000 of F-16, all this aircrafts will be completely useless without weapons. And oh boy, i can bet we will get sort of 100 short range missiles, which will be enough for number of air operations that you can count on one hand. And again, west will be bragging about it for next few months after we recieve it. Then, when F-16 not change anything on battlefield, they will switch agenda to "the problem is Ukraine is not using NATO tactics". It's all the old song that i hearing from the West for 2 years of full scale war. And i doubt they going to change it soon nor at all.
Thanks for sharing your experiences in such a frank and vivid fashion. I simply can't but agree with the complete content of your message: with every single word you've said.
I wish it would make sense to tell you something like, 'stay safe', and wish you the best. But, when one is facing this kind of weapons like you and brothers and sisters serving with the ZSU do... and that in combination with blissful public ignorance... sigh.... I know that such messages are making no sense at all. Thus, can only hope at least some of my posts might help increase public awareness...
Regarding the winged bombs and the alternative solutions that the Russians resorted to, it can be said that they are a good solution in the current state of war, but it must also be considered that the Russians, in recent months, have received great support from Iran with regard to preparing facilities to manufacture 5 types of Iranian drones, in addition to transferring licenses. For missile production, satellite images have monitored Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea transporting a large number of containers to Russia. The Russians are seeking to obtain Iranian short- and medium-range missiles. It has facilitated production between a range of 100 km to 1000 km. Iran has this capacity and can export thousands of missiles in this field. It supported the Houthis in the past and gave them techniques for producing missiles and equipping special production facilities in Yemen. From my point of view, the matter in Ukraine may develop, especially since currently those who support Russia are not only Iran, but North Korea, which is considered a huge warehouse and the largest manufacturer of weapons and ammunition, and China, even if it does not acknowledge this, but Railway trips to Russia have increased in recent months