ANALYSIS: Where Could Ukraine Get More Patriot Missile Systems From?

Ukraine says it needs 25 Patriot systems to fully protect it from Russian missile attacks and says it knows which countries hold them. But who will give theirs up?

By Steve Brown
April 12, 2024


The “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target” (PATRIOT) surface-to-air guided air and missile defense system was advertised as one of the best available, based on its test performances long before it was used “in anger.”

The first Patriots were deployed by US Forces in the mid-1980s and during the first Gulf War they performed well against the Iraqi Scud missile threat. Since then, the system – its radars, fire control systems and especially its missiles – has evolved, been modernized, and upgraded as the threat has similarly become technologically more advanced.

Even so, the performance of the “2020s” versions has surprised everyone and underlined their indispensability as the basis for a modern multi-tier air defense structure. It is not only in Ukraine that Patriot has proved itself.

In Saudi Arabia, it has succeeded in bringing down multiple ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels against oil and infrastructure facilities and has been used extensively in Israel against drone, missile and air attacks.

In Ukraine, the missile has been successfully used defensively, against all types of air attack including cruise, ballistic and even hypersonic missiles. It has also been used in an innovative semi-mobile aggressive role to take down key aviation assets such as the high-value A-50U “Mainstay” airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.


The bottom line is Ukraine doesn’t have enough of either launchers or missiles to protect itself against the current levels of Russian missile attacks. On April 6 President Volodymyr Zelensky said that to fully protect Ukraine from Russian missile attacks 25 Patriot systems, each consisting of 6-8 missile batteries, were needed.

EU Sets Out Plan for Lasting Ukraine Security Commitments
The draft document lists the EU’s existing and ongoing efforts, ranging from political, military, and financial assistance to commitment to drive forward Kyiv’s accession process.

On Wednesday, April 10, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba said that he and his team had identified 100 Patriot systems being held worldwide. He said that some neighboring countries were using more than one complete system to guard a single airport. This was a follow-up to similar comments he had made while attending NATO’s 75th anniversary celebrations on April 3.


System Description

Patriot has four operational functions: communications, command and control, radar surveillance and interceptor missile guidance.

Each battery consists of six major components: power plant, radar set, engagement control station, launchers, antenna mast group, and the interceptor missiles themselves.The phased array radar set is resistant to jamming to provide detection and tracking of targets, fire control and helps guide interceptors to their targets.The manned engagement control station calculates trajectories for interceptors, controls the launching sequence and provides a communication link between launchers and other batteries.The launchers transport and protect the interceptor missiles and act as the missile launch platform.The antenna mast group is the communications backbone for the Patriot unit.There are two main missile types: the proximity-fused PAC-2 and the PAC-3 “hittile,” designed to intercept and destroy missiles by impacting them.

Who has Patriots?

Raytheon, that US defense contractor that designed and built the system, says it has delivered more than 240 Patriot fire units to 19 nations, while Lockheed Martin, the other US defense giant, has manufactured more than 10,000 missiles. By all accounts, the war in Ukraine is resulting in both corporations ramping up their manufacturing capability, not just to feed Ukraine’s needs but to address the interest the success of Patriot has sparked worldwide.








Persuading any nation which hasn’t already done so to voluntarily give up its Patriot missiles may be a challenge, but there is a potential solution.

As a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine and at the urging of the US government, both Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have increased their build capacity, as have component manufacturers such as Boeing, according to Defense News.

Raytheon is now able to produce 12 complete systems a year while Lockheed is already churning out 500 of the latest PAC-3 missiles annually with a target to get to 650 by 2027.

Some of its 2024 production has already been earmarked to replace US Patriots previously provided to Ukraine and this could be an option to any nation ready to transfer their own stocks. The attraction would be “new for old,” which has been the basis for many of the equipment donations previously made to Ukraine during the two years of the ongoing war.

With the European Parliament applying pressure on European holders of the systems to release Patriots by blocking the EU Council Budget, there are several users who don’t currently face an imminent threat, who might be better placed to ante-up. The key to achieving this would be finding the best combination of “carrot and stick” to encourage release of the Patriots.

The bottom line is that, as always, the best way forward will rely on the release of the funds currently blocked by the US Congress, although Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmitry Kuleba, has indicated that if the weapons became available Ukraine would find the funding needed to hire systems if not buy them.



Steve Brown
After a career as a British Army Ammunition Specialist and Bomb Disposal Officer, Steve later worked in the fields of ammunition destruction, demining and explosive ordnance disposal with the UN and NATO. In 2017, after taking early retirement, he moved to Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife and two sons where he became a full-time writer. He now works as an English language editor with the Kyiv Post.

Ukraine's air defence shortages leave Kharkiv more exposed to Russian bombs

US PATRIOT MISSLE DEFENSE DENIED SINCE '22

By Tom Balmforth

April 12, 2024

Summary

Ukraine's second city hardest hit by Russian air strikes

Russia wants residents to panic and flee Kharkiv: officials

Ukraine has 'catastrophic' shortage of air defences

War rages on, but momentum shifting in Russia's favour

Ukraine faces manpower, artillery problems, says analyst

KHARKIV, Ukraine, April 12 (Reuters) - Kateryna Velnychuk was having an afternoon nap when an explosion shattered the windows of her ground-floor flat, spraying shrapnel that tore holes through her walls and cupboards.
A Russian guided bomb had exploded in the courtyard outside the five-storey Soviet-era building, killing a postman on his rounds. As her flat filled with thick, milky smoke, the 22-year-old turned to see blood pouring from her boyfriend Vladyslav's head.

“As we’ve been living…in a state of war, there was no sense of fear in the moment,” Velnychuk said. “You just understand there was an explosion. The only thought in your head is ‘I hope we survive’.”

As Russia has intensified its air campaign against Ukraine in the last month, hammering its energy infrastructure and urban areas, no major city has been harder hit than Kharkiv.
Just 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border in northeast Ukraine, Kharkiv was already the most exposed to missile attacks and bombardment.

But the drying up of Western military support in recent months – as a vital U.S. military aid package has been stuck in Congress amid Republican resistance – has left Kharkiv even more dangerously unprotected.

"We have a catastrophic shortage of air defence systems," Governor Oleh Synehubov told Reuters, standing in the city’s vast central plaza, Freedom Square. "Not only in the Kharkiv region, but throughout the entire country. Especially in the Kharkiv region."

The city is so near the border that Russian missiles can reach their target in less than a minute. The deployment of Ukraine’s precious air defences, such as the U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, which are high-value targets for Russian airstrikes, has to be done more cautiously so close to enemy lines, officials say.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has urgently appealed for more air defence supplies from the West, said this week that almost a quarter of Kharkiv had been destroyed.

He accused Russia of seeking to reduce the city - which was home to 2 million people before the war - to rubble, clearing the way for its troops to advance. He said Ukraine's military would repel any such offensive.

The bombardments come as the momentum on the battlefield has shifted in Russia's favour, more than two years since it launched its Feb. 2022 invasion.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says Ukraine’s energy system is a legitimate military target. The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Reuters interviewed 15 civilians in Kharkiv who expressed their determination to stay in their homes despite the attacks - though two of them flagged the bleak situation on the power front as a real concern.

At least 10 missiles rained down on Kharkiv on Thursday, triggering emergency blackouts for 200,000 people in the surrounding region, as Russia launched its third major air attack on energy infrastructure across Ukraine in recent weeks.

The region's top prosecutor Oleksandr Filchakov told Reuters that all of the Kharkiv region's power facilities have been damaged or destroyed since Russia renewed its aerial assault last month, causing large-scale power cuts.

Russia had test-fired a new kind of aircraft-launched guided bomb at least six times as of Tuesday, he said, like the one that struck the courtyard outside Velnychuk's home.
The weapon, which Filchakov called a “unified multi-purpose guided munition”, weighs just 250 kilogrammes (550 pounds) and has a range of 90 km (56 miles), meaning aircraft have no need to risk getting close to the city’s defences.

While the guided bombs are less accurate and destructive than other missiles used by Russia, such as S-300s and Iskanders, they are much cheaper for Russia to produce, he said.

"The (attacks) are mainly aimed at intimidating the civilian population," Filchakov told Reuters in his offices. "They're trying to make people leave the city, leave their buildings, homes, apartments...To sow panic in the city."

Strikes and shelling have killed 97 civilians in the region this year, he said, adding that nearly all the recent attacks had hit civilian targets.

Velnychuk was shaken but suffered no major injuries from the guided bomb that landed outside her building on March 27, blowing out all the windows along two rows of the red-brick residential buildings. But both she and her partner, who works as a courier, said they had no plans to leave the city.

"I always imagined I would grow up and have some kind of life, move from the village to the city, study. Now I live and ... I don't even know if I'll wake up tomorrow morning," said Velynchuk, a hairdresser.

"But, at the same time, you want to live in your own home. It's normal to want to live where you were born."

RUSSIA GAINS MOMENTUM

 Local resident Kateryna Velnychuk, 22-years-old, shows her apartment damaged by a Russian military strike on March 27, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 8, 2024. REUTERS/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy

After months of attritional fighting, Russia is slowly advancing in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk this year. Kyiv's forces find themselves on the back foot, facing shortages of artillery shells and air defences, and grappling with manpower problems.

Ukraine's parliament passed legislation on Thursday to overhaul how the armed forces draft civilians into the ranks, in an effort to bolster the frontlines. The final law, however, excluded clauses on draconian penalties for draft dodging that had caused public outcry.
Much would depend on how well the new law – expected to take effect in mid-May - was implemented, analysts said.

"There are two issues now: the ammunition issue and the manpower issue. If they address them, I think Ukraine can hold back Russian advances," said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.

“But if they don't get addressed, there is a potential that Russia will make greater gains this summer."

Ukraine has tried to find a pressure point against Russia by bombing oil facilities far behind the front lines using long-range drones that have taken out 14% of energy giant Russia's oil refining capacity, according to Reuters calculations.

Zelenskiy, who inspected Ukrainian defensive fortifications in the Kharkiv region on Tuesday, has said Russia may be preparing a big offensive in late May or in June. He did not say where.

Russia, which captured the eastern town of Avdiivka in February and controls 18% of Ukrainian territory, has inched forward in the Donetsk region, keeping up pressure on the fronts west of Avdiivka and the city of Bakhmut.

Lee said Russia had fixed its own manpower problems and managed to recruit a large number of volunteers, allowing it to sustain losses in assaults, but that it faced equipment limitations that could become a problem next year.

Russia's decision on where to attack, he said, would in part depend on where it thought Ukraine looked weakest, although Moscow would likely maintain its focus on the eastern Donbas region.

Putin said last month he did not rule out Russia trying to establish a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory along the Russian border.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, an independent military analyst based in Odesa, said the strikes on Kharkiv looked aimed at setting in motion such a plan by trying to scare people to leave the city, laying the ground for a possible ground operation at a later date.
"For the moment, Russia does not have the forces and equipment to seize the city, but in the medium term they can terrorise the civilian population to prepare the corresponding conditions."

'HOW COULD I LEAVE?'

Kharkiv, an industrial hub that once served as the capital of Soviet Ukraine, is a jarring contrast of 1.3 million people going about their lives amid regular air raid sirens and the sound of machine guns downing drones at night.

Schools in the city have been closed because of the threat of attacks and children study online. But authorities have opened underground classrooms in a metro station to allow some pupils to come to classes in person.

The city’s population plunged to 300,000 after the invasion but, after Ukraine recaptured occupied areas of the region in two military offensives in 2022, it returned to around 1.3 million, where it has remained since.

Viktoria Zaremba, 37, a web designer and mother of a 10-year-old boy, said more than two years of war had changed her perception of risk.

"There is no fear," she said. She would only consider leaving Kharkiv if there were no central heating or electricity this winter, or a looming threat of occupation.

The number of attacks on the city and region began increasing in October, Filchakov said, rising more than 35% in the first three months this year to 130 from 95 in the last quarter of 2023.

They have intensified again this month, he said.

Rolling blackouts last up to 12 hours a day and the traffic lights don't work. Mobile coverage is patchy, online GPS maps don't function properly, and the street lights stay off at night.

But Synehubov, the regional governor, said there was no sign people were abandoning the city.

"I'll never leave," said Borys Nosov, 63, a pensioner walking his dog in the city centre. Nosov said he was a veteran of the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war.

"This is my city. How could I leave and abandon it? I served in Afghanistan. That was terrifying. I think everything will be okay."

HATERS HATE

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she ‘seriously hates’ people who support sending more aid to Ukraine: ‘Most repulsive, disgusting thing happening’

By Victor Nava

NY POST
Published April 12, 2024, 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) fumed Friday about people demanding that Congress approve more military aid to Ukraine, arguing that it is tantamount to “paying for the slaughter and the murder” of Ukrainian soldiers.

“This whole thing is the most repulsive, disgusting thing happening, and the American people are the ones writing the check,” the Georgia Republican told former White House adviser Steve Bannon on his “War Room” podcast.

“I absolutely hate everybody here that is doing this,” she added. “I seriously hate them for doing this.”

The Georgia Republican said that she “hates” people who support sending more military aid to Ukraine.

DNC War Room/X

Greene said her “stomach flipped” at the thought of providing Ukraine with President Biden’s $60 billion emergency funding request, and predicted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who she has threatened to have removed from the speaker’s office — will eventually find a way to pass the measure.

“Everybody should be demanding that the Republican-elected speaker of the House stop listening to the garbage and lies that he’s being told and do the right thing,” Greene said, arguing that the $60 billion would be better spent on US border security.

The congresswoman claimed that “amputees” and “injured soldiers” are being trotted out to the frontlines of Ukraine’s battle with Russia because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is being forced by US politicians to continue the fight.

“America is breathing down their throats and saying, ‘You must continue to fight and we’re going to pay for it and force you to do it,’” Greene told Bannon.

The Republican firebrand also dismissed fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has interest in invading other European nations and questioned why the Biden administration is so keen on providing military support for a non-NATO nation.

Greene argued that an “entire generation of Ukrainian men” are being wiped out because of American politicians funding Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia.

AFP via Getty Images

Zelensky has urged Congress to approve more military aid for Ukraine

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP via Getty Images

“That is the only country that — for some weird, sick and evil reason — that they care about,” Greene said.

“They don’t care about you at home.”

For nearly two months, the House has stalled on passing a $95 billion Senate-approved national security package with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region.
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Greene has warned Johnson that a vote on Ukraine aid could trigger her to introduce a motion to vacate, the same legislative procedure that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) used last October to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)

The last US aid package to Ukraine was sent in March, some $300 million worth of military equipment from existing US stockpiles.

Ukraine’s Three-Front War: Advancing Russians, Depleted Artillery, Exhausted Troops – Analysis

A Ukrainian soldier digs a trench. Photo Credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry

 April 13, 2024  

By RFE RL

By Mike Eckel

(RFE/RL) — The column of Russian armored vehicles carefully approached Chasiv Yar from the east, threading its way along dirt roads, skirting patches of forest, and avoiding Ukrainian-laid minefields while dodging incoming drones and artillery.

The April 4 assault on the Donetsk region city was repelled, according to Ukrainian commanders, open-source intelligence, and reports from soldiers on the ground. But more troublingly for Ukraine’s beleaguered frontline troops was what the grainy black-and-white drone video released by Ukraine’s 67th Separate Mechanized Brigade showed: a potential weakness in Ukraine’s defense, hastily built in some cases, and smarter tactics by Russian forces than earlier in the invasion.

Chasiv Yar is slowly being wiped from the map as Russian jets drop heavy, guided bombs that flatten apartment blocks and elite airborne assault units edge into the city’s eastern outskirts.

Ukrainian forces are exhausted, starved for artillery shells, desperate for reinforcements and rotations, struggling to hold back Russia’s offensive in several locations across the 1,200-kilometer front line. After the loss of the bigger city of Avdiyivka in February, Chasiv Yar is the next crucible, for Ukraine’s troops and for the West’s will to arm and support them.

“The battle for Chasiv Yar…is a litmus test for both sides,” according to Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian open-source research organization run by a Ukrainian reserve officer that analyzed the 64th Brigade drone video. “If Ukraine were to lose control of Chasiv Yar, it could have dire consequences as it would provide a direct route for the Russian Army to advance towards key cities in the Donbas, such as Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk.”

Chasiv Yar “is one of the hottest spots on the front line,” said Oleksiy Melnyk, a retired Ukrainian Air Force officer and former pilot, as Russia moves closer to the goal of occupying the entirety of the two eastern Ukrainian regions that make up the Donbas: Donetsk and Luhansk.

“That’s why it’s where the most intensive fighting is nowadays, and I assume that in the next weeks, there will be even bigger-scale attempts to capture Chasiv Yar,” Melnyk, now a researcher at the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv think tank, told RFE/RL.

A Faltered Counteroffensive 

Last summer, Ukraine pinned its hopes for a decisive shift on the battlefield on a major counteroffensive, armed by Western weaponry and bolstered by nine newly formed, NATO-trained brigades.

The effort faltered by late fall, however. Ukrainian soldiers ran into а buzz saw of extensively prepared Russian defenses: trenches, tank traps, “dragon’s teeth,” and minefields, collectively known as Surovikin Lines, after the Russian general who ordered them. An ambitious effort to establish a bridgehead on the Dnieper’s eastern bank, break though Russia’s defenses in the south, and draw its troops away from other locations sputtered.

Russian commanders, meanwhile, redoubled their effort to capture Avdiyivka, an industrial city on the cusp of the regional administrative city of Donetsk. Despite heavy initial losses of tanks and armor, Russian forces utilized “meat grinder” assaults by prison-inmate infantry units, along with extensive use of glide bombs — air-dropped, high-explosive munitions outfitted with satellite guidance systems and pop-out wings — and captured the city on February 17.

The loss was a blow for Ukraine — and highlighted problems with its tactics, equipment, and strategy for personnel.

Experts criticized civilian and military leaders for not prioritizing the construction of defenses, like the Russians had.

Grumbling from Ukrainian commanders about the need for more soldiers grew louder. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy replaced the country’s commander in chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, in early February, in part because of Zaluzhniy’s public comments that the government needed to find more soldiers.

After months of wrangling, Ukraine’s parliament this week passed legislationthat formalized a new system for mobilizing personnel, aiming to replenish the country’s exhausted forces.

Ukraine has disclosed little about the extent of its casualties since Russia launched its mass invasion in February 2022. This past February, Zelenskiy made his first official acknowledgment of the country’s combat losses, saying 31,000 troops had been killed in the previous two years. U.S. officials said last August that the total number of dead and wounded on both sides was roughly 500,000 — a figure that has climbed since.

Russia is estimated to have suffered as many as 350,000 dead and wounded, according to Western officials.

“I don’t remember a day when we did not have work at our triage unit,” Volodymyr, a senior lieutenant and medic with the 10th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, deployed in the Donetsk region, said by telephone. He asked not to give his surname.

“The situation is more controlled than in 2022, but people are dying every day,” he said. “We lack the life-saving equipment to quickly and safely evacuate people from the front line, such as armored vehicles and unmanned platforms.”

Undermanned, Outgunned

Located on higher ground relative to surrounding areas, Chasiv Yar is seen as a key stepping stone to Kostyantynivka, a town to the south where a major rail line is located. Russian capture of that site would put pressure on two bigger cities to the north: Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.

It’s not just a lack of soldiers that Ukraine is struggling with. Commanders are grappling with a severe shortage of weaponry — everything from rifle ammunition to artillery shells. The shortages are overwhelmingly due to the inability of Ukraine’s largest supplier, the United States, to agree to fund and ship new tranches of weapons.

“Ammunition is our sore spot. We have constant shortages,” one Ukrainian soldier deployed near Avdiyivka who asked to be identified by his call sign, Odin, said in an interview with Current Time. “For example, last spring in this area, the situation with ammunition was much better. We probably fired six or seven times more rounds then. We are very dependent on the political situation, and very dependent on aid.”

Ukrainian troops report having to ration artillery shells, with Russian forces currently firing five times as many shells. U.S. Army General Chris Cavoli, the head of U.S. European Command, told lawmakers this week that that number would go up to 10-to-1 “in a matter of weeks.”

“We’re not talking about months. We’re not talking hypothetically,” he said.

Despite strong backing from the White House and both Democrats and most Republicans in Congress, a new $60 billion package of new weaponry has been bogged down by a small group of Republicans who are conditioning its passage on major reforms to U.S. immigration and border policies.

“There is never enough ammunition,” said Lieutenant Serhiy Skibchyk, a press officer from the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade, deployed near Robotyne, in the southern Zaporizhzhya region. “If our allies continue to delay the supply of ammunition, we will have to choose between holding territory and [saving] the lives of our soldiers.”

Zelenskiy made another public appeal for U.S. elected officials to approve the aid package on April 7, arguing that a Ukrainian defeat would lead to threats, or outright attacks, on other European nations.

“It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said during a meeting of an international fund-raising campaign called United24.

“If Ukraine loses the war, other states will be attacked,” he said.

‘Critical Juncture’

Ukrainian officials have also pleaded for anti-aircraft missiles, in particular those used in the U.S.-manufactured Patriot system, which are seen as effective against Russia’s hypersonic ballistic and cruise missiles. At least two systems have been deployed, limiting their ability to defend crucial targets; Zelenskiy has asked for 25 to be supplied.

“We are at a critical juncture on the ground that is beginning to be able to impact not only morale of the Ukrainians that are fighting, but also their ability to fight,” Representative Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News.“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows this. This is obviously an area where we cannot allow Putin to win. Our European allies are saying that Putin’s goal is a war beyond Ukraine with Europe. We need to stop him in Ukraine.”

Ukraine may get a small reprieve, in the form of artillery shipments spearheaded by the Czech Republic, which rallied a group of nations to purchase shells from other countries. The current head of Ukraine’s forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said the country was also ramping up its ability to repair howitzers within Ukraine.

“The only advantage that Ukrainian forces have, which helps to mitigate this significant disproportion, is the quality of the Western weapons; not just guns, or artillery itself, but other systems that allow Ukraine to reach the same effect using less in number,” Melnyk, the former air force pilot, told RFE/RL.

Still, Ukrainian and Western officials warn that Russia may be gearing up for a new offensive in the coming months. Russian commanders have been able to continue recruiting men, relying on high wages and other lucrative compensation.

Last month, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said Russia was prepared to deploy up to 100,000 troops by the summer, and fears have mounted that Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, could be a primary objective.

“It will not necessarily be an offensive; perhaps they will replenish their units that lost combat capability. But there is a possibility that at the beginning of the summer they may have certain forces to conduct offensive operations,” Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk said on Ukrainian television.

Aleksander Palikot contributed to this report from Kyiv.

• Mike Eckel is a senior correspondent reporting on political and economic developments in Russia, Ukraine, and around the former Soviet Union, as well as news involving cybercrime and espionage. He’s reported on the ground on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the wars in Chechnya and Georgia, and the 2004 Beslan hostage crisis, as well as the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

RFE RL

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.

Military courts in Russia prosecute a record number of front-line deserters

April 12, 2024

The Independent Barents Observer

Journalists from the Russian news website Mediazona researched the publicly available records of Russian garrison and district courts and found that the increase in the number of cases against “refuseniks” (those soldiers who desert – leave the armed forces without permission and with no intention of returning) in 2024 is unprecedented.

In March 2024, 684 such sentences were passed by Russian military courts. This means that judges handed down 34 sentences under Article 337 every working day of the month, Mediazona reports.

After President Putin first announced mobilization in September 2022, the number of cases began to rise, reaching a peak after two years of war in Ukraine.

Based on the data analyses, since the beginning of 2024, military courts have received nearly 2,300 AWOL cases, and almost 7,400 cases since the beginning of mobilisation, Mediazona reports. According to journalists, most of them come from the Moscow region (496 cases), Sverdlovsk region (258) and Orenburg region (255).

In early February, the European-based Russian news website Novaya Gazeta also reported that the number of soldiers deserting the Russian army had increased tenfold in the past year.

Novaya Gazeta reported that many deserters head to Kazakhstan as Russians do not require a travel passport to enter the country. Conscious that it’s a risk for deserters to remain there for a long time, volunteers are working to secure him safe-passage to a third country, Novaya Gazeta reports.

One of the reasons for desertion is that some soldiers are not allowed to take leave. As a result, thousands of Russian women whose husbands have been sent to war with Ukraine are demanding that their loved ones return home. They are launching petitions, writing to lawmakers and protesting in the streets.

Ukrainian Teenager Develops Free Video Translator That Supports Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar Languages

A 17-year-old developer from the Donetsk region has developed a program to dub YouTube videos from different languages into Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar.

by Kyiv Post | April 13, 2024,

The silhouette of Ukrainian entrepreneur Dmytro Voloshyn, the co-founder and chief technical officer of the Preply language learning platform, is reflected in a glass as he examines a blackboard at his empty office in Kyiv on April 2, 2020. Preply network now has 10,000 tutors in 190 countries and "tens of thousands of students", the founder tells AFP at the headquarters of his company situated in a historic building in central Kyiv.

 (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)

Taras Ivanov, a 17-year-old developer from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, has developed a tool that could translate YouTube videos from most languages into Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar.

According to Ivanov’s Telegram post, the “Free Translator Service” tool is free and operates on a donation basis. Users simply have to paste the video link into the Telegram bot he created, and the program will generate an audio track in Ukrainian or Crimean Tartar.

To choose Crimean Tartar as the desired output, users can insert the “/settings” command into the bot and choose between a male and female narrator voice.

Ivanov told Ukrainian news outlet Mezha that his idea came about when he had to translate a video urgently and couldn’t find the appropriate services, and he created the tool within one day and later shared it publicly on Aug. 2, 2023.

He also told Mezha that Crimean Tatar was later added to his program since most current translators do not support the language.

“I would like to note that currently Crimean Tatar (the language of the indigenous population of the Ukrainian Crimea – the Crimean Tatars) is not available to most of the well-known translators. More languages ​​will be added in the future,” Ivanov told Mezha.

However, he also noted that as a non-Crimean-Tatar speaker, he could not determine the quality of the translation.

In one of his recent updates, Ivanov said he has relocated to a safer location further from the front and called on people to keep supporting Ukraine.

OTHER TOPICS OF INTEREST
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 12, 2024
Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

“I, as a resident of the Selydove community in Donetsk region, recently evacuated to a safer place. Russians are killing civilians. On Feb. 14, they shelled the town of Selydove. The apartments of my class teacher and my classmate were destroyed. The maternity ward was destroyed. People died.

“Russia is shelling Ukrainian cities every day. This is genocide. Genocide of the Ukrainian people. I want to call on everyone who has the opportunity to help our military and people who are in difficult life circumstances. Only together we can do something,” said Ivanov in a February update.

IT development has been Ukraine’s largest service export, contributing $8 billion to the country’s economy in 2023 despite the ongoing war, though it did suffer notable setbacks last year compared to 2022.

As Ukraine’s tech industry has long thrived on overseas projects, the war has had a noticeable impact on the local job market due to the lack of confidence from international clients. However, IT development continues to be one of the most profitable professions – reaching $2,630 of average salary a month by some estimates – that continued to lure numerous Ukrainians to the field.

A recent Kyiv Post report covered the IT industry in wartime Ukraine in detail.

OPINION: Time to Tell Russians They Are No Longer Safe

Russia relies heavily on propaganda and disinformation. In the wake of the ISIS attack in Moscow, the West should use the truth to let Russians know how Putin has failed them.

By Jason Jay Smart
By Ivana Stradner
April 13, 2024

A family watches a TV broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address in Moscow on February 29, 2024.

 (Photo by Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP)

Russia has launched a propaganda crusade to cynically argue that even though the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) took credit for the recent Moscow concert hall terror attack, it was actually Ukraine, with its American and British overlords, behind the death of 137 Russian citizens in the audience that day.

On April 9, the Russian Investigative Committee found a link between the terrorists who attacked Crocus City Hall and Ukrainian security services. And last week, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev confirmed that the terror attack could be traced to Ukrainian special services and reminded the Russians that “the Kyiv regime is not independent and is fully controlled by the United States.” Why is the Kremlin so keen to argue that it was not ISIS but Ukraine plotting the carnage in Moscow?

Aside from wishing to gin-up greater support for the invasion of Ukraine, which has caused nearly half-a-million Russian casualties and turned the world’s largest country into a pariah state, the Kremlin legitimately fears that the terror attack in Moscow could beg an uncomfortable question among Russians: Why are we fighting in Ukraine if we cannot even protect ourselves at home?

Putin rose to the presidency on the pledge that he alone could keep Russia stable and safe. As a result, the perception that Russia has been left vulnerable because of the Ukraine war undermines Putin’s leadership, now is requiring yet another round of mobilization of soldiers for the bloody quagmire which is increasingly causing disquiet in the public.

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On March 7, the US Embassy in Russia cautioned that there were reports that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts…” to which Russian citizens have not forgotten Putin’s cocky response to the unheeded warning: He rejected it as a “provocation,” precipitating Russian intelligence’s disastrous failure to avert the attack.

Like a Ponzi scheme veering towards collapse, the deceptional conspiracies that Putin espouses are becoming too hard to swallow. Putin senses that his regime, for the first time in over two decades, is in a position of weakness, hustling to get ahead of the ISIS-narrative and its associated implications of Moscow’s failures to protect its citizens. However, unlike earlier cover-ups and manipulations, the events in Moscow have already been seared into the minds of Russians.

With nowhere to back-peddle, Putin attempts to affirm: “This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime” – “Nazi” being a preferred Kremlin pseudonym for “Ukrainians” – based on the bizarre and illogical reasoning that since Ukraine, terrorists, and Nazis are bad – the words can be interchangeable.

Russia is not a stranger to Islamic terrorism being committed on its soil and they know that Putin’s involvement in Syria combined with his ties to the Taliban do not sit well with ISIS. So, for Russian citizens, it was readily believable when ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, releasing details of how it was planned and videos to back up their claims. However, seeking to now link Moscow attack to Nazis and Ukraine, is perhaps a bridge too far.

Undeterred, Alexander Bortnikov, the Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), stated that “the US, Britain, and Ukraine are behind the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall.” He concluded that “the action was prepared both by the radical Islamists themselves and, of course, facilitated by Western special services, and Ukraine’s special services themselves have a direct connection to this,” aligning with Nikolai Patrushev’s “Ukraine, of course,” when a reporter asked the Secretary of Russian’s Security Council whether it was ISIS or Ukraine behind the attack.

The Kremlin, through its control of the information space in Russia, uses communication as a weapon. However, Moscow’s lies in disinforming its citizens about the terror act’s “connections” to Ukraine is making the system unstable. That is why it is time to tip the balance to the side of truth by running information operations, in Russia, to give Russians a real view of how their dictator’s poor leadership has damaged their national security.

Discrediting Moscow’s claims regarding the terror meshes brilliantly with stoking concern in Russian society that perhaps Putin is no longer a guarantor of peace – but rather a catalyst for putting their very lives into jeopardy: Perhaps Russia would be better off without Putin?

The Kremlin has spent decades spewing deceptions at home and abroad. The US must set the record straight.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

Jason Jay Smart, Ph.D., is a political adviser who has lived and worked in Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Latin America. Due to his work with the democratic opposition to Pres. Vladimir Putin, Smart was persona non grata, for life, by Russia in 2010. His websites can be found at www.JasonJaySmart.com / www.AmericanPoliticalServices.com / fb.com/jasonjaysmart / Twitter: @OfficeJJSmart

Ivana Stradner
Dr. Ivana Stradner is a Special Correspondent for KyivPost focusing on Russia’s information security. Ivana serves as an advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and she is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington where her work centers on Russia’s security strategies and military doctrines related to information operations. Given the divergence between the American and Russian militaries’ understandings of cybersecurity, her work examines both the psychological and technical aspects of Russian information security. Ivana also analyzes Russian influence in international organizations; she is currently focusing on UN efforts to regulate information security and the UN Cybercrime Treaty. Ivana worked as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and a lecturer for a variety of universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.