An advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister was wounded in an overnight Russian drone attack. Ukraine strikes Russia’s two large landing ships, an oil refinery and a drone plant. The Russian economy is faltering despite an oil windfall, according to FT.
Advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister wounded in overnight Russian drone attack
Russia launched 142 attack drones at Ukraine overnight on Monday. The drones included ones of the Shahed, Gerbera and Italmas types as well as other unmanned aerial systems, the Ukrainian Air Force said Monday.
The drones were fired from the area of Russia’s Kursk, Bryansk, Oryol, Millerovo, Shatalovo, Primorsko-Akhtarsk as well as from occupied Donetsk and Hvardiyske in occupied Crimea. Around 100 of the unmanned aerial systems were the Shaheds.
The Air Force and other branches of the Ukrainian military deployed aircraft, surface-to-air missile troops, electronic warfare units and mobile teams to repel the attack.
Ukraine’s military said it had shot down or otherwise neutralized 113 drones of the Shahed, Gerbera, Italmas and other types in the north, south and east of the country. Twenty-eight drones hit target in 18 locations and the falling debris fell in six other places, it added.
Advisor on defense technology to the Ukrainian Defense Minister, drone and electronic warfare expert Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov was wounded when a Russian jet powered Shahed drone hit his house overnight on Monday.
“Last night, the Russians tried to kill me. They fired four jet powered Shaheds. One guided jet powered Shahed drone hit a wall of my house. I no longer have a house,” Beskrestnov said in a post to social media Monday.
He also posted a photo of himself in a hospital bed, saying that he was injured. “I was injured, but what’s key is that I miraculously survived. I was morally prepared for such a turn of events, and it will not stop me,” Beskrestnov said.
Ukraine strikes Russia’s two large landing ships, oil refinery, drone plant
The Prymary (Phantoms) unit of the Main Intelligence Department of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry struck two large Russian landing ships, the Yamal and Nikolay Filchenkov, in occupied Crimea overnight on Sunday, the agency said in a post to social media Monday.
The vessels are part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. They were docked at the Sevastopol Bay at the moment of the strike. Both warships were disabled, Ukraine’s defense intelligence said.
The Yamal is a Project 775 large landing ship that was built in 1988. It is 112.5 meters long and can carry up to 500 tons of cargo, including armored vehicles and infantry. The ship’s tentative cost exceeds 80 million dollars.
The Nikolay Filchenkov is a Project 1171 large landing ship that was built in 1975. It has a capacity for carrying up to 1,000 tons, or dozens of armored vehicles and a large infantry contingent. The ship’s tentative cost exceeds 70 million dollars.
The Prymary unit also destroyed a Russian Podlet-K1 radar system in Sevastopol worth of around 5 million dollars.
Ukrainian troops struck the Tuapse oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region overnight on Monday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said. The strike hit an oil storage tank, igniting a fire. The facility was earlier targeted by Ukrainian attacks.
The Russian Service of RFE/RL released a satellite image of the Atlant Aero plant in Russia’s Taganrog on Monday, which it said showed that at least two workshops had been damaged in a Ukrainian strike with Neptune missiles overnight on Sunday.
The plant that manufactures Molniya drones was earlier struck on January 13. A building damaged in the earlier attack was demolished. Atlant Aero is situated next to the Beriev Aircraft Plant that was also targeted a number of times, RFE/RL said.
Russian economy is faltering despite oil windfall, according to FT
Russia’s ailing economy has failed to recover even as rising oil prices during the war in the Middle East have boosted the Kremlin’s depleted coffers, according to Sweden’s military intelligence chief, cited by a Financial Times article published on Monday. The paragraphs below are quoted from the article.
Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, told the FT that Russia would need prices for Urals crude, its main blend of oil, to remain above $100 a barrel for a year to close its budget deficit, and for significantly longer than that to smooth over its other economic problems.
But Nilsson said Russia would struggle further to finance its own invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year, if the US and Israel’s ceasefire with Iran held and oil prices stabilised.
“They still have a systemic problem,” Nilsson said in a rare interview in his Stockholm office. “It’s not a sustainable growth model to produce material for the war that is then destroyed on the battlefield,” he said.
Nilsson said Russia’s economic problems had spread to the defence sector itself, which has accounted for most of the country’s growth as the civilian sector struggles.
Moscow was diverting funding to the areas where the nature of the war was changing, particularly unmanned systems and long-range weapons, he said.
But outside the drone industry, Russia’s military-industrial complex was lossmaking, rife with corruption and embezzlement, and dependent on lending from state-run banks, Nilsson added.
Sweden had intelligence indicating that Russia was systematically manipulating data to fool Ukraine’s western allies into believing its economy had withstood the strain of its lavish war spending and western sanctions, Nilsson said.
Nilsson said the real situation was even worse and the Russian central bank was underestimating inflation, which it believed was closer to the 15 per cent key interest rate than the official 5.86 per cent.
Sweden agreed with the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, that Russia was understating its budget deficit by $30bn, and had also noticed some financial indicators that could point to a future banking crisis, he added.
“If you have created a system like Putin has, he might not know how bad the economic situation really is. But even with the false info he gets, you ultimately can’t run from all of this,” Nilsson said.
In other news, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency said in February that Russia’s military spending last year accounted for half of its budget and 10 per cent of its GDP.
Latvia’s intelligence agency SAB said in a report earlier this month that “despite Russia’s public announcements claiming its economy is successfully adapting to the impact of the Western sanctions, internal estimates made by several Russian institutions confirm that sanctions have already inflicted and will continue to create losses.”
