Ukraine: Despite overwhelming Russian pressure, Kyiv continues to knock out high value Russian targets.

(Mospyne) Despite the acute pressure Moscow is placing on Kyiv of late: 

• Large scale attacks on energy production capabilities
• Advances on the Avdiivka front
• Advances on the Kharkiv front
• Advances on the Sumy front 

The Ukrainians are still holding the Russians at bay making them pay heavily for every foot they concede,(reported Moscow is losing around 900 men a day)  but not only that, they are still taking the fight to Russia taking out a lot of top notch high quality equipment which is a lot harder to replace than your average conscripted infantry soldier such as the destruction over the weekend of the Karakurt-class corvette Tsiklon. 

A recent addition to the Russian navy (she was commissioned last July) whilst a naval asset, the Tsiklon has the ability to launch land strike cruise missiles such as the Kalibr and  the P-800 Oniksboth of which the Russians have used to deadly effect targeting primarily civilian targets all across the Ukraine . Ironically the small but deadly Karakurt class is also fitted with a most comprehensive air defence suite comprising of either a couple of AK-630M gun-based close-in weapon systems (CIWS), or, the Pantsir-M air defense system has been installed, but as we saw with her sister ship Askold in Nov 2023, all that defensive gear means squat when the Ukrainians have you in their sight, which is why the Tsiklon  which was pictured docked in Sevastopol on Friday the 17th May 2024 is now gracing the bottom of Sevastopol harbour.

And today it has been reported that the Ukraine targeted a air defence missile system in the village of Mospine which can be found 15 miles behind Donetsk city destroying the following:

·        X S-300/400 air defence missile launchers were destroyed:

·        1 X S-300/400 air defence missile launcher was damaged

·        1 X Radar “96L6E” was destroyed;

·        1X Control centre of the S-300/400 air defence system was destroyed:

So whilst the Russians is easily able to replace men and armour, its ability to replace high value targets such as Ships, Aircraft and Missile systems such as the S300 and S400 is a lot harder and that we have seen in how Ukraine in its selective targeting has effectively removed the Black sea fleet (due to losses) from around the Crimea Resulting in Russia conceding command of that area to the Ukraine which hasn't a navy and as we are seeing it is slowly but surely eradicating Russian long distance Anti-air missiles systems from the region as well, which I feel will come back to bite Moscow in the near future.

Russia: New weapon of choice is slowly turning the tide for Moscow.

(Ukraine)  One of the weapon systems Russia has quickly developed in which to make up for its depletion of its holdings of cruise and precision guided missiles (Which after 2 years of war  even Moscow's huge stocks which it started with has been drained) was knocking out their version of the US Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) or glide bomb. However whereupon the JDAM was designed in slow time taking 7 years to develop with it entering service in 1999. The Russians took less time and whilst their cheap as chips UMPK glide wing kit is deemed not as accurate as the JDAM, their ad hoc Heath Robinson affair works and allowed them to use the thousands of dumb bombs they held in stock, which due to Ukrainian air defence they couldn't use the old fashion way, but by fixing a set of wings and some form of guidance, they could drop the bombs from inside Russia (and safe from air defence) and hit targets 30 miles inside the Ukraine with 1000lb bombs 

which even if they miss still cause a lot more devastation than a 152mm artillery shell which contains around 6.5kgs of high explosive, it also explains the numerous gains Moscow has made this year, where instead of artillery , they have just targeted Ukrainian defensive positions with large bombs dropping 3,500 guided aerial bombs with the UMPK module in the first 77 days of 2024 alone.

Gaza: Pentagon states" None of Food Aid Moved Through Gaza Pier Has Made It to Palestinians"

(Gaza) On Tuesday (21/05/24) the Pentagon said it believes none of the hundreds of tons of aid delivered over several days via a military-built pier in Gaza has made it to Palestinians.

The pier, erected by the U.S. Army to ease the humanitarian crisis amid the Israel-Hamas war, was secured to the Gaza shoreline last Thursday, and trucks began dropping off pallets of food ashore on Friday. But the United Nations reported difficulties moving the aid once it reached the shore, including an apparent ambush that reportedly turned deadly. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters Tuesday that more than 569 metric tons of aid had been delivered to Gaza via the pier, called a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore operation, or JLOTS, but that it did not appear that any of it had actually been delivered to the starving residents of Gaza. During the first days of aid deliveries, reports indicate that the security situation outside the pier area is highly unstable and dangerous. Ryder confirmed that some of the first loads of aid that were brought in were looted before aid organizations could formally distribute them. "As it was being taken along the transportation route, it was intercepted by some people who took that aid off those vehicles," Ryder said.

The U.N. said that 10 truckloads of food aid - transported from the pier site by U.N. contractors - were received on Friday at a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir El Balah in Gaza. But on Saturday, only five truckloads made it to the warehouse after 11 others were cleaned out by Palestinians during the journey through an area that a U.N. official said has been hard to access with humanitarian aid."They've not seen trucks for a while," a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "They just basically mounted on the trucks and helped themselves to some of the food parcels."

Gaza: Egyptian spy single-handedly ruined the Israel-Hamas cease-fire:

(Cairo) Ahmed Abdel Khalek a Egyptian intelligence official sunk a potential cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas earlier this month by secretly changing its terms before handing it between the warring sides. it appears he changed the deal after Israel had already agreed to it by adding in more of Hamas' demands to the framework to clinch their approval.

One of the biggest points of contention in the deal was a call for "sustainable calm" to be reached in its second phase, Israel is opposed to discussing an end to the war until Hamas is defeated and all of its hostages are freed, If it had been passed, the deal could have seen the release of some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and temporarily paused combat. US officials have pushed for a temporary cease-fire in the hopes that a stop to the fighting could open the possibility to a more lasting peace. Officials involved in the talks from Qatar, the US, and Israel were blindsided and angered by the spy's secret changes.

One source familiar with the negotiations said Abdel Khalek told the Israelis one thing and Hamas another. More of Hamas’ demands were inserted into the original framework that Israel had tacitly agreed to in order to secure Hamas’ approval, the source said. But the other mediators were not informed; nor, critically, were the Israelis. “Hamas was telling their people, ‘We will have a deal in place tomorrow,’” the first source said. “All sides were under the assumption the Egyptians provided the same document” that Israel had signed off on and the other mediators, the US and Qatar, were aware of, the person said. Instead, the second source said, the Egyptians sought to blur the lines between the original framework and Hamas’s response.

Ukraine: Video show how poor Russian Tanks are to FPV drone attacks

(Donbas)  The one thing that has come out in the wash these past 2 years, is how poor Russian tanks are when it comes to protection. The main issue is primarily with all the tanks from the T64 onwards (T72/T80/T90) seeing as they are all based around the T64 which was designed to be smaller than contemporary designs (AMX 30/ Leopard 1/ Chieftain/ M60)  but just as lethal. However getting rid of a crew member and replacing him with an autoloader which whilst a good idea when designed when the enemy was supposed to attack from the front, (which is why the Soviet era tanks are pretty well protected from that direction) hasn't aged very well with the advent of Anti-tank guided Missiles and of late First Person View (FPV) drones which can attack from all directions. 

The Russians noted this weakness somewhat earlier on and after adding additional armour to the front of the T72 tank either side of the main gun (which garnered the nickname 'Dolly Patton and Super Dolly Patton", they went down the path of Explosive Reactive Armour (the tiny little bricks) common on Russian armour) which culminated in the T72B3M which came into service in 2014 where the ERA bricks are thinner , less distinguishable and flow into each other than previous iterations as seen below where the ERA on the front of the T72B3M cannot really be seen.

Most of the world looked at the latest Russian tanks as world beating and excused their poor showing across the Middle East as due to poor training and lesser quality export models sold by Russia and then the Ukraine happened and all the weaknesses of the T64 onwards which had supposed to have been rectified turned out not to have. Which explains the following video of a T80BV tank from last week, which on getting hit by a FPV drone (usually a drone with an RPG warhead affixed) 

suffers a catastrophic explosion which as we have seen this past 2 years has become something of a hallmark of Russian armour. The only problem for the Ukraine, is that Russia has thousands of tanks in stock and a leader willing to accept horrendous losses.