In The News

Michael Kofman says, “I honestly think that Wagner probably did more damage to Russian aerospace forces in the past day than the Ukrainian offensive has done in the past three weeks.”

Samuel Bendett says that Putin, too, had lost something essential as the smoke cleared. As a head of state, he “was unable to fully exercise monopoly on forced violence and control.”

Samuel Bendett says, “Ukraine is advancing slowly in certain parts of the front it is advancing several kilometers here and there. The fighting is going to be very difficult, simply because the Russian military had time to dig in and we mentioned this last week and the week before.”

Jonathan Schroden says, "We ran a bunch of different calculations, scenarios, etc. One of the common themes in terms of force structure requirements that emerged from those is in almost every scenario we looked at, there was a higher demand for PSYOP forces, for civil affairs forces, for undersea warfare and maritime capabilities, than what the force has today."

Samuel Bendett says, “They [FPV drones] are indeed getting embraced more at the tactical level. It is unclear to what extent the high command is on board, but at least it seems not to be in the way.”

Samuel Bendett says, in Ukraine today, “commercial quadcopter and FPV [First Person View] drones are treated as expendable munitions. Both sides recognize that the adversary EW is having a massive effect on such drones, but it’s not cost-effective to proof them against EW. It’s just cheaper and easier to get large quantities of COTS [Commercial Off-The-Shelf] UAVs and replace lost drones.”

Samuel Bendett says that such a payload "can cause damage against vulnerable sites like energy infrastructure," but would not be sufficient for an assassination attempt against Putin.

Samuel Bendett says that the U.S. has primarily sent existing technology. It was unclear whether the U.S. had ever sent a weapon that was created from scratch for use specifically in Ukraine.

Sam Bendett says, “The counter-offensive has just begun, so it is important not to jump to any conclusions based on evidence seen on social media. Obviously, there will be losses when one side tries to breach the other side’s defenses. Over time the Russian military had time to dig in, so Ukrainian attacks are going to be met with a lot of resistance. “

Michael Kofman says, “It is too early to judge the operation, as much of the fighting has only reached Russia’s initial lines. The indications are that Ukrainian forces have made gains, digging into Russian lines, but also that the fighting is heavy, resulting in losses.”

Samuel Bendett says, “Many Russian companies answered the call from volunteers for cheap, readily available UAV solutions, especially in the FPV-kamikaze class, and the MoD is now looking at a range of options, including drones like Privet.”

Michael Kofman says, “It’s too early to tell. The disaster, “ultimately benefits nobody.”

Michael Kofman says, “Unfortunately, this breach is an ecological and a humanitarian disaster. It actually results in a lose-lose proposition for both sides. The flooding is going to substantially affect the Ukrainian-controlled right side of the riverbank it is probably going to damage even more on the current Russian side.”

Samuel Bendett says in a Tweet, pointed out that an operator says, "Let's test on this." That's not the sort of thing any warfighter would likely say about targeting a top-tier tank thought to rival Russia's best.

Samuel Bendett says, “It is interesting that we don’t have any follow-up details, you indicated that the reaction was muted and has remained muted. There has not been a lot of public discussion about this, the government has tried to downplay this as much as possible.”

Michael Kofman says that with Wagner fighters withdrawing, Russian forces are “going to be increasingly fixed to Bakhmut ... and will find it difficult to defend.”