Majorityrights News > Category: Military Matters

The loss of Starlink was bad for Russian operations.  The loss of Telegram is worse.  But the sheer pace of Ukrainian innovation is the killer.  Prof Gerdes explains how, four years to the day when the Ukrainians first switched from defence to attack, the balance is shifting that way again.  Ukrainian forces are gaining more land than the Russians are taking.  The latter’s spring-summer offensive can’t get started.  The Russian deep rear is being hit.  At the line of contact losses are already running at or beyond what the Russian army can recruit.  The Russian strategies of attrition and war from the skies against the civilian population is being blunted.  Where does it all go from here?

0:00 ISW confirms Russia’s offensive is faltering
0:20 Ukrainian drone strikes hit key industry
0:54 Achilles 429th unit shows new capabilities
1:19 Ukraine’s expanding mid-range drone power
2:07 Targeting Russian air defense and logistics
2:45 Shift toward FPV and mid-strike drones
3:33 The economics of drone warfare
4:40 Mapping Ukraine’s strike patterns
5:17 Hits on Russian nitrogen facilities
5:40 Russia’s drone activity and defenses
6:13 Mounting Russian losses in detail
7:05 Real-time casualty and equipment trends
8:10 Measuring the offensive’s intensity
8:55 ISW: Ukraine disrupting offensive prep
9:30 Defense holds on the Lyman axis10:11 Phoenix Regiment and Achilles impact
11:00 Russian milbloggers admit heavy losses
11:39 SBU arrests suspected infiltrator
12:03 Electronic warfare training expands
12:53 Kyiv battle anniversary context

For some weeks now there have been growing signs of Russian failure at the front, particularly in the north and south.  In Donetsk, meanwhile, the Russian advance is slower than ever.  Pokrovsk is still not fully under Russian control, and may now never be so.  In this video Jason Jay Smart alights on the apparent flight of Vladislav Surkov as a sign of trouble in Putin’s inner circle, and pulls together the political and military strands to make the case for something broken at the top of Russian power that can’t be put back together again.

00:00 – Intro: Putin’s House of Cards
01:40 – Kremlin Exile: The Fall of Vladislav Surkov
03:04 – Putinism Unmasked: The Architect of Russian Propaganda
04:17 – Crimea Assault: Ukraine Destroys Russian Radar
05:04 – Frontline Failure: Russian Soldiers in Retreat
05:47 – Command Paralysis: The Kremlin’s Communication Crisis
06:52 – Internal Sabotage: Putin’s Health and Elite Purges
08:53 – Bot Network Collapse: Russia’s Failed Influence War
09:51 – Russian Shadow Fleet: Espionage and Oil Smuggling
12:38 – The Breaking Point: Putin’s Final Stand

Paul Warburg explains the technical impact and potential military consequences of the ending of unauthorised access to the Starling system:

This is the latest footage of the June 1 strike launched by the Security Service of Ukraine against Russian strategic aviation in the deep rear of enemy territory, thousands of kilometers from Ukraine.  This unparalleled coup, codenamed Operation Spider’s Web, employed domestically-designed Osa drones from the First Contact company, which has been making AI-powered UAVs since at least early 2024.

Of course, Russian propagandists have tried to minimise the operation’s success, even placing undamaged aircraft exactly on the burned shadow where wrecked aircraft had stood.  But then the videos roll!

UPDATE, 6th June 2025

The excellent Jake Broe reviews the damage, among other current news:

One way to address the betrayal of the Trump administration in denying war materiel to the Ukrainians is to deny war materiel to the Russian aggressor.  Yesterday afternoon a series of powerful explosions rocked the Kirzhatsky district of the Volodymyr region of Russia.  The regional Ministry of Emergency Situations issued an emergency warning asking local residents to avoid the village of Barsovo, which really means the 51st Arsenal of the DRAU of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense.

Located east of Moscow and 530 km from the border with Ukraine, this site is covered by the most concentrated air defense system in the whole of Russia.  It has an approximate area is 3.5 sq km.  Its design capacity is 264,000 tons of various ammunition.  In total there are forty-five separate covered facilities and thirty external storage points.  In the aftermath of the Ukrainian strike the explosions are continuing today.  Russia kept significant reserves of artillery shells at the site, plus missiles of various types including “Iskander”, “Point-U”, “Dagger”, ammunition for the Pansir-S1, S-300, and S-400, as well as “Grad”, “Smerch”, “Hurricane” rockets.  Ukraine’s UNIAN information agency reported the comments of Pavlo Narozhny, a Ukrainian military expert:

It is difficult to estimate the exact scale of losses as a result of the explosion at the Russian arsenal in the Kirzhatsky district of the Volodymyr region, because Russia hides such information. 

“You can give a rough estimate. 200,000 tons of ammunition was in this arsenal. If we imagine that these were exclusively artillery ammunition, then each projectile weighs about 100 kg, that is, it is 2 million artillery shells. Of course, there were not only artillery shells, but also rockets, rockets, etc. 2 million shells is approximately the annual production of shells of the Russian Federation and the DPRK combined”, Narozhny said.

He noted that this is a significant blow to the military capabilities of the Russians, which is almost impossible to quickly restore. The expert also called the possibility of extinguishing the fire at the arsenal “unreal”.

“Yes, they have special machines for simmering such fires. But in reality it does not work. In reality, it is impossible to stop it. There were shells for MLRS, rockets. Such a missile catches fire from fire, an uncontrolled launch occurs, and it can fly anywhere - both 100 meters and 10 kilometers. And other missiles, decomposed in clean air, begin to explode from it… We can say that 90 percent of this arsenal has been lost”, Narozhny added.

As a result of the on-going degradation in the number of Russian artillery pieces as well as similar strikes last September on very large-scale Russian ammunition storage facilities, the artillery offset in favour of Russia, which has generally been 10:1, reduced to an average of 3:1, even reaching parity in certain key areas.  It is only that “good” for the Russians because of the two million (variable quality) shells delivered from store by North Korea.  This latest strike will have a like impact, and will hopefully much reduce the use of ballistic missiles against civilian targets.

The American diplomat and academic Mitchell Reiss airs his views of Donald Trump’s forthcoming conversational intervention in Ukraine, indicating that Trump has a degree of realism that will disappoint the bravado-filled pro-Putin right.  Interview by Times Radio.

ATP Geopolitics explains:

So far, four large-scale ammunition storage sites have been hit in under two weeks. The first attack was on the morning of September 7.  The depot is in Soldatsky, Voronezh region, only about seventy-five miles from the Ukrainian border.  It is where North Korean-made KN-23 missiles were held.

Next, on the night of September 18 the SBU security service, GUR defence intelligence, and Special Operations Forces hit Military Unit 11777, the headquarters of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian Defence Ministry in Toropets, Tver region.  As many as 100 drones may have been used.  The depot is vast, and said to have held missiles for Iskander operational-tactical missile systems, Tochka-U tactical missile systems, as well as KAB aerial guided bombs, and artillery rounds.

On the night of September 21, the Defence Forces of Ukraine struck the Russian arsenal of Tikhoretsk, in the Krasnodar region.  This facility is one of the three largest ammunition storage hubs in Russia and one of the key ones in the logistics system of the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.  According to reports the arsenal had received at least 2,000 tons of ammunition, including from North Korea. The Podliot radar station, which detected air targets in the direction of the arsenal, was also attacked.

The same night the 23rd Arsenal of the Main Artillery Department of the Ministry of Defence, again in the Tver region.  This was another warehouse where the Iskander and Tochka-U ballistic missiles were located. It is about 15 km from Toropets.

All four were major hits.  There are claims from the front in Donetsk that Russian Army logistics have already been affected, and the rate of artillery fire is reducing.  Can the pressure be sustained by the Ukrainians (for example, if the Russians now have to move to a multiplicity of smaller but less secure storage sites)?  What would be the potential effect on the Russians ability to continue their current offensive war?

I didn’t even know that the old Cold War CIA front Radio Free Europe was still active until I came across an interview at its site with a Washington analyst named George Barros.  He said everything that I have been picking up elsewhere about the new generation warfare that Ukraine is developing to frustrate, starve of materiel, and drive out the Russian invader in the south of the country.  The interview is beneath the fold.

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